The Beginning of Western Philosophy

CONTENTS

Translator's Introduction

PART ONE

The dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th–5th century

Introduction

§ 1. The mission and the dictum

a) Cessation and beginning

b) The dictum in the customary translations

Chapter I
The first phase of the interpretation

A. THE FIRST SECTION OF THE STATEMENT

§ 2. The theme of the dictum: beings as a whole

a) The meaning of τὰ ὄντα

b) Beings in γένεσις καὶ φθορά

c) ἐξ ὧν—εἰς ταῦτα—the whence-whither—our characterization of stepping forth and receding. Inadequacy of speaking about a “basic matter”

d) The whence and whither of the stepping-forth and receding κατὰ τὸ χρεών—according to necessity

B. THE SECOND SECTION OF THE STATEMENT

§ 3. Beings in the relation of compliance and noncompliance

a) Stepping forth and receding as giving way before, and against, each other

b) The inadequacy of the juridical-moral meanings of δίκη, τίσις, and ἀδικία

c) ἀδικία as noncompliance, δίκη as compliance

d) Translation of the second section of the statement

C. THE THIRD SECTION OF THE STATEMENT

§ 4. Being and time

a) Beings κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν. Time as measure

b) Insight into χρόνος by appealing to Sophocles

c) Being and time as φύσις

Chapter II
The second phase of the interpretation

§ 5. The unitary content of the pronouncement on the basis of its central core

a) The essential power of Being as noncompliance

b) The noncompliance. Day and night as the basic appearance

c) Noncompliance: persistence in contours over and against contourlessness; compliance: return to contourlessness

Chapter III
The other dictum

§ 6. The sovereign source of beings as the empowering power of appearance

a) The ἀρχὴ τῶν ὄντων

b) τὸ ἄπειρον as the empowering power of appearance

c) τὸ ἄπειρον, or, the difference between Being and beings

PART TWO
INTERPOSED CONSIDERATIONS

§ 7. Four objections to the interpretation

a) The dictum is too far removed and is antiquated, crude and meager, unreal

b) Presuppositions of the objections in a self-delusion

c) What the self-delusion consists in

d) The distance from the beginning of Western philosophy

§ 8. The negative relation to the beginning

a) The wanderer and the spring

b) The closest proximity of the concealed beginning

c) The inability to do anything with the beginning

§ 9. Demonstration of the need for a more fundamental formulation of the problem of the thesis and of a more radical foundation of this problem

a) Who is asking about the beginning? Toward determining the “we”

b) The concept of generation as off the path

c) The determination of the current situation by Friedrich Nietzsche

§ 10. The grounding utterance of Being

a) The characterization of the beginning

b) The pronouncement as an answer to a question

c) Questioning as a questioning that discloses Being

d) The essence of questioning; various modes of questioning

e) The question of Being as the most originary, first, and last question

§ 11. The actual asking of the question of Being

a) The question of Being becoming problematic

b) The question of Being as unproblematic

c) Familiar beings and unfamiliar Being

d) The familiarity with Being in saying “is”

e) The familiar diversification of Being into thatness, whatness, suchness, and trueness

f) The fact of the understanding of Being (Summary)

g) The question-worthiness of that which is most unproblematic

§ 12. Review of the linguistic usage

a) Becoming, the “ought,” thinking, semblance

b) The question of Being as provisional and narrow

c) Being in becoming, in the “ought,” in thinking, and in semblance

d) The question of Being as definitively lacking question-worthiness

§ 13. The basic question of existence

a) Unrest as the experience of questioning

b) The origin of existence in the esteeming of Being

c) The insistence on beings as a whole

d) The slackening of insistence

e) The complete dis-esteeming of Being

§ 14. Commentary on our concept of existence

a) The impossibility of a complete dis-esteeming of Being; the understanding of Being as the possibility of our existence

b) On the meaning of “existing” and “existence” as delimited in relation to Kierkegaard and Jaspers

c) The comportment toward beings

d) Restraint

§ 15. The full rendering of the understanding of Being

a) The priority of the understanding of Being as preconceptual understanding

b) The understanding of Being as the transcendence that constitutes existence

c) The dignity of the understanding of Being only in relation to existence

§ 16. The liberation toward freedom

a) The coming into sovereignty of existence as a transformation of the essence of humanity

b) The asking of the question of Being as the closest proximity of existence

c) The unasked question of Being as the closest proximity of existence

d) The historical re-asking of the question of Being as a re-beginning of the initial beginning

§ 17. Transition to Parmenides: the first explicit and coherent unfolding of the question of Being

PART THREE
THE “DIDACTIC POEM” OF PARMENIDES OF ELEA, 6TH–5TH CENTURY

§ 18. Introduction

a) On the text and the translation

b) The releasement into the meaning and content

c) Attitude toward my own interpretations

§ 19. Interpretation of fragment 1. Preparation for the question of Being

a) The grasp of the circumstances and images

b) The disclosure of method

§ 20. Interpretation of fragments 4 and 5

a) First meditation on the ways of questioning

b) The statement that Being and apprehending intrinsically belong together as a statement grounding the distinction between the ways

c) The absent grounding of the statement

§ 21. Interpretation of fragments 6 and 7

a) Further clarification of the ways. The third way

b) The lack of the correct indication of the way

c) The lack of the understanding of Being

d) The three ways in their interrelatedness

e) Conclusion of the preparatory meditation on the possible and impossible ways

§ 22. Interpretation of fragment 8

a) Traveling on the first way

b) The manifestation undertaken by the goddess Ἀλήθεια

c) The σήματα of Being

α) the character of the enumeration

β) The first group, the negative σήματα

γ) The second group, the affirmative σήματα

δ) Concluding judgment regarding the groups: comprehensive questioning

d) Being as ἀγένητον

α) A guiding respect concerning Being

β) The problem of “indirect proof”

γ) The understanding of Being in δόξα, according to which Being has an origin

δ) Appeal to the axiomatic statement about Being

ε) Semblance as a possible whence of Being

ζ) Δίκη as disposing Compliance

η) The impossibility of a whence is the same as the impossibility of a whither

e) Parmenides’s axiomatic statement and his essential statement

f) Being is the present. Parmenides’s temporal statement

g) The impossibility of absence in Being

h) The recourse to the axiom

i) The unity of the simple-unique self-sameness of Being

α) Being as the oneness that excludes all otherness

β) The correct understanding of the incompletability of Being

j) The insertion of fragment 2

α) The theme of ἀπεόντα

β) All absence lies in the sphere of presence

γ) The definitive understanding of the present and presence

k) The belonging together of νοεῖν and λέγειν

l) Changeable things as nonbeings

m) The way of δόξα

α) Coming to understand δόξα

β) Errancy and semblance

§ 23. The δόξα-fragments 9, 12, 13, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19 (in the order of their interpretation)

a) The equality of light and darkness

b) Birth as the basic occurrence of becoming

c) The history of the appearance of the world

d) Apprehension and corporeality

e) Being itself apprehends

Conclusion

§ 24. The inceptual question of Being; the law of philosophy

APPENDIX

Drafts and plans for the lecture course

Editor’s Afterword

German-English Glossary

English-German Glossary

The Beginning of Western Philosophy (GA 35) [GA App]

Ereignis