Aristotle plays a fundamental role in the development of Heidegger’s thinking. His ontological radicalization of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and his hermeneutic reinterpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology comprise two of the basic pillars that support the complex thematic and methodological framework of the philosophical program of his youth. Interpretations of Aristotle are a recurring theme throughout his university courses in the first half of the twenties and, as Heidegger himself has pointed out in different autobiographical statements, his journey through Aristotelian philosophy ended up being crucial for the development of his own thinking.1
From his arrival in Freiburg as Husserl’s assistant in January of 1919, Heidegger concentrated on developing a method for accessing the phenomenon of life. At first, he found in Christian religiosity an initial historic paradigm for his project of an original science of life. However, this first attempt did not end up coming together well – perhaps for philosophical reasons or perhaps because of personal differences with Husserl, who had encouraged him to develop a phenomenology of religion.2 Even in May of 1919, Heidegger still considered phenomenology of religious consciousness a central theme of his research. But in the 1920–1921 course, Introduction to Phenomenology of Religion, he was already hinting that “entering into such a complex [of Christian facticity] is almost hopeless” (GA 60: 121/87). The possibility of carrying out a truly phenomenological analysis of life was brought about with the early rediscovery of Aristotle, exactly as is
attested by his programmatic written work of 1922, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Directives for the Hermeneutical Situation, better known as the Natorp Report. The Arisotelian notion of practical wisdom (φρόνησις) here takes the place of primitive religiosity. Evidently, it is not only a question of a simple virtue that governs our behavior, but rather of a particular openness of life, of a way of being that is fundamental to mankind which Heidegger will bring together in the concept of “care” (Sorge).
What is the true nature of human life? What concept of the human being does philosophy control? Traditionally, the human has been defined as an animal endowed with reason (ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, animal rationale). If we had to find a modern equivalent to the Greek definition of the human as a ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, Heidegger wonders in his 1924 summer semester lectures, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, we could say that “the human being is a living thing that reads the newspaper” (GA 18: 108/74). For a start, such a comparison seems very surprising, if not disturbing. But if it is taken into account that, in the context of these lectures, Heidegger translates the definition of the human as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον in the sense that “the human being is a living thing that has its genuine being-there in conversation and in discourse” (GA 18: 108/74), one can perhaps better understand the background idea which is hidden behind the Heideggerian image. If we wanted to translate this image into contemporary terms, we could say without any great difficulty that any person carries out its existence by discursive and communicative means, and can carry it out either appropriately or inappropriately. With this general argument as a base, the present work is structured in two parts as follows.
First, special attention is given to the significance of the revaluation of Aristotelian rhetoric that we find in the aforementioned lectures of 1924, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. The interpretation of Aristotle in these lectures not only allows us to better understand the role of attunement and of discourse in Being and Time, but it also calls into question some interpretations which accuse Heidegger of totally disregarding ethics and politics. Unlike Platonic dialectics which
focuses on the connection between discourse and the truth of statements, Heidegger emphasizes that Aristotelian rhetoric explicitly places itself on the level of the communicability of what the speaker says to her audience. In accordance with this theory, the element of reference of discourse is not the universe of pure thought, but rather the realm of opinions and the communal system of beliefs which thus become the basic criterion for human understanding. In this way, opinion (δόξα) and belief (πίστις) contain, as does idle talk (Gerede), which Heidegger addresses in Being and Time, an eminently positive sense, insofar as they open up the world to us and reveal us to others through the common element of language (λόγος).
And, second, it is shown how Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s λόγος helps him understand speech not only as language or discourse, but also as the ontological condition of speaking in and of itself. People are able to speak of the same things due to the fact that they share a common natural language; in this sense, people are able to talk about something that they are not directly familiar with firsthand. But on the other hand, they run the risk of becoming trapped in the snares of public opinion and, consequently, of never achieving a genuine understanding of things. In Being and Time, Heidegger analyzes the positive and negative consequences of this occurrence in his detailed phenomenological interpretation of everyday discourse, which is given the technical name of “idle talk” (Gerede).
Contrary to medieval systematization which, starting from the 'th century, included rhetoric in the trivium of the liberal arts, Heidegger asserts that “Aristotle’s Rhetoric must be understood as the first systematic hermeneutics of the everydayness of being-with-one-another” (GA 2: 184/SZ2: 138).3 This assertion, which is stated within the context of the analysis of attunement, once again seems astonishing; on the one hand, because it goes back to an Aristotle that is forgotten by the prevailing Neo-Scholastic trends in the Catholic Freiburg of the beginning of the century, and, on the other hand, because it
occurred at a time in which rhetoric had fallen into deep obscurity. Heidegger specifically refers to this obscurity in the beginning of the third chapter of the aforementioned lectures of the summer semester of 1924, where he characterizes rhetoric as “the discipline in which the self-interpretation of being-there is explicitly fulfilled. Rhetoric is nothing other than the interpretation of concrete being-there, the hermeneutic of being-there itself. That is the intended sense of Aristotle’s rhetoric” (GA 18: 110/75). Starting from the fundamental possibility of being-together, Heidegger carries out an interpretation of Dasein which adopts Aristotelian rhetoric as its guiding thread. Coexistence or being-together is possible only within the framework of communicability or, as Ricoeur formulates it, in the intersubjective and dialogical dimension of the public use of language.4
Rhetoric basically appeals to communication among people: “Again, it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason (λόγος), when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs” (Rhetoric I 5, 1355b1–2).5 In the concrete case of rhetoric we do not move within the sphere of pure principles and axioms, but rather within the sphere of opinions (δόξαι). This point of view drastically changes the Platonic approach; the referential outline of opinions is no longer the ideal representation of things, but rather the representation of language. While dialectics focuses on statements from the point of view of the denotative function of language, from which conclusions can be made about the credibility of said statements, rhetoric centers its interest on those same statements from the point of view of the communicative abilities of language, from which now emerge conclusions about its ability to persuade. Rhetoric thus introduces itself as an instrument which determines the requirements that lines of argument must fulfill, as an instrument of selection and justification of persuasive statements.
This is to say that the meaning of a definition is produced in the order of what is said; dialectic formulas refer to other forms of a preexisting language and of a body of beliefs. Δόξα, as a common element of
all individuals in a community, constitutes the starting point of moral discourse, of philosophical arguments, scientific disputes, political discussions, etc.6 Therefore, δόξα expresses a true basis of wisdom in an already constructed and recognizable language. In this sense, rhetoric possesses a clear political aspect that refers to the space of coexistence that is intersubjectively shared with others. Contrary to those interpretations which maintain that Heidegger simplifies the analysis of ethical virtues and that he detaches Aristotelian πρᾶξις from its connection to the political community,7 we find in his commentary on Rhetoric an unusual interest in the political aspect. Heidegger explains that this rhetorical-political aspect shows a different side of the ζῷον λόγον ἔχον: “Insofar as the human being lets something be said, he is λόγον ἔχον in a new respect. He lets something be said insofar as he hears. He does not hear in the sense of learning something, but rather in the sense of having a directive for concrete practical concern” (GA 18: 111/76).8 The Greeks, and specifically Aristotle, clearly saw that λόγος comprises the fundamental determination of being human. Furthermore, the Greek definition of the human as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον is no accident, but rather echoes the way in which the Greeks primarily understood themselves within the framework of their coexistence in the πόλις (see GA 18: 110/76).9
Heidegger’s stimulating transposition of Greek philosophical language to contemporary vocabulary invites us to understand the phenomenon of λόγος as a concept that is specific to human life. Heidegger pleads against the metaphysical tradition that restricts λόγος in a unilateral way to its propositional and categorical dimension. In consequence, Heidegger is unable to accept the classical definition of humans as animals endowed with reason since it reduces their humanity to their rationality – a rejection, incidentally, that he shares with Kant, who thinks that human nature is determined neither by rationality (Vernünftigkeit) nor by animality (Tierheit), but rather by spirituality (Geistigkeit), that is to say, by personality. Contrary to the traditional definition, which reduces the human being to a thing among things, Heidegger highlights the practical, emotional, communicative, and dialogical components of human life. In this sense, he interprets λόγος
primarily as language, as the ability to speak, and, above all, as the capacity to discover par excellence. In all texts from this time period one can clearly see that Heidegger defines the function of language from the Aristotelian perspective of λόγος, interpreted as an openness and as a privileged access to the entity, that is, as a primordial form of human life’s disclosedness. In his different exegeses of De interpretatione, carried out in the lectures of 1923–24, 1925–26, and 1929–30, Heidegger considers statements, and language in general, as an act of discovery, as an unveiling behavior which human life sets in motion in its relationship with the beings it encounters in the world.10
Implicit in this interpretation of λόγος as openness, Heidegger asserts, is “an entirely peculiar, fundamental mode of being of human beings characterized as ‘being-with-one-another’: χοινωνία. These beings who speak with the world are, as such, through being-with-others” (GA 18: 46/33). Evidently, it is not a simple question of being-placed-one-nextto- the-other, but rather of “being-as-speaking-with-one-another through communicating, refuting, confronting” (GA 18: 47/33). Λόγος, as speaking, is the ontological basis of living-together (χοινωνία) in being-in-the- πόλις. In this respect, Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian rhetoric sheds new light on the political aspect of human existence.
Until now, much has been written about the role that πάθος plays in these lectures of 1924,11 since they refer directly to the analyses of attunement (Befindlichkeit), of mood (Stimmungen), and of the temporal structure of dasein that are present in Being and Time.12 within this context, it is su1cient to remember the place that πάθος holds in Heidegger’s interpretation of Rhetoric.
These πάθη [which Heidegger translates as Affekte, “affects”] are not states pertaining to ensouled things, but are concerned with a disposition of living things in their world , in the mode of being positioned toward something, allowing a matter to matter to it. The affects play a fundamental role in the determinations of being-in the world, of being-with-and-toward-others. (GA 18: 122/83)
In our case, it seems more interesting to highlight Heidegger’s interpretation of λόγος and δόξα. In section 15 of the aforementioned lectures of the summer semester of 1924, rhetoric, which for Heidegger “is nothing other than the interpretation of being-there with regard to the basic possibility of speaking-with-one-another” (GA 18: 139/96), is intimately related to δόξα, since – as he himself says – “δόξα is the mode in which living knows from out of itself” (GA 18: 138/94). In other words, “δόξα is the mode in which we have living there in its everydayness” (GA 18: 138/94). But this means that λόγος remains in the rhetorical-political sphere of opinions (δόξαι) as the true means and object of conversation. This interpretation is precisely the one which Heidegger supports when he asserts that “in δόξα, and on its basis, one has to do with the world in the way that one lives in the world in an everyday manner and has to do with things. One does not have to investigate everything with regard to its concrete content; what others say about it is what one thinks about it” (GA 18: 151/102).
In this sense, δόξα carries a positive aspect that Heidegger analyzes phenomenologically. Δόξα is not only limited to the practical world, but rather “reaches out to the entire world” (GA 18: 150/101), that is, it opens us up, first of all, to the world and to other people: “The world is there for us as what-is-with-one-another in discoveredness, insofar as we live in δόξα. Living in a δόξα means having it with others. That others also have it belongs to opinion” (GA 18: 149/101, italics original). Opinion is something that, by nature, is shared and, therefore, something that refers to living-together (χοινωνία). Likewise, the credibility of an opinion depends on who is supporting it:
With an ἐπιστήμη, it does not matter who has it. For a valid proposition, it does not matter who I am; that contributes nothing to the elucidation, to the being-true, of what is known. By contrast, the one having the view is, as such, co-decisive for δόξα […] In δόξα, the matter itself does not only speak for itself to the extent that it is uncovered, but it also speaks for who has the view. Accordingly, the stability of a δόξα is not exclusively
grounded in the state of affairs that it conveys, but in him who has the δόξα. (GA 18: 150/102)
The reason which explains the importance of who supports the opinion lies in the χοινωνία since we live in a community in which humans are already distinguished from one another and in which the mood (ἦθος) of one speaker seems more truthful and believable than that of another. but these differences can be overcome. to opinion belongs – as heidegger points out – the ability of revision “Its sense is to leave a discussion open” (GA 18: 151/102) and allow “the basic possibility of being-against-one-another” (GA 18: 138/94).
However, one can also not lose sight of the danger of falling captive to the opinions that circulate in the public sphere of the πόλις. The possibility of falling lies precisely in the fact that a human being exists in dialogue and in speech:
It is this possibility that being-there allow itself to be taken in a peculiar direction and become absorbed in the immediate, in fashions, in babble. For the Greeks themselves, this process of living in the world, to be absorbed in what is ordinary, to fall into the world in which it lives, became, through language, the basic danger of their being-there. The proof of this fact is the existence of sophistry. (GA 18: 108/74)Thus, the rhetorical-political sphere in which we live makes a first understanding as well as an inauthentic understanding of the world possible. On the one hand, δόξα opens us up in advance to the world with our already being familiarized with it, and, on the other hand, this same familiarity with the world can end up determining our ways of behaving. Δόξα carries the possibility of exercising a characteristic control by means of the undetermined and everyday self (Man) (see GA 18: 150–51/101–2). Δόξα, in short, provides the basis of and the impetus to conversation (to the speaking-with-one-another); phrased differently, δόξα is the source of “the genuine orientedness of being-with-one-another-in-the-world” (GA 18: 151/102). In this context,
one can very clearly observe the homologies between Aristotle’s δόξα and Heidegger’s Gerede.
In Being and Time, discourse (Rede) constitutes, together with attunement (Befindlichkeit) and understanding (Verstehen), one of the fundamental ontological characteristics of human beings. Rede is a technical term which denotes more than the mere ability to speak. Rede is the articulation of intelligibility that Dasein possesses by virtue of its communicative competence, which, at the same time, allows it to share the same world with others (see GA 2: 214–15/SZ2: 161–62). Unlike the conventional concept of language exclusively understood as a transmitter of propositional content, Heidegger highlights the dialogical, communicative, expressive, and performative components of discourse. Discourse promotes action. Therefore, it is not surprising that Heidegger includes the phenomena of listening and being silent as discursive elements, since both of these refer to the inter-subjectively shared world and to the language practices with which we are already socialized.
In any case, according to Heidegger, the peculiarity of the human ability to use language to communicate is its function of openness to the world. By sharing a natural language, speakers not only share a conventional system of signs, but, much more importantly, they share the same way of speaking about the things in their world that can be shown. Because of this, understanding language is never a question of hearing sounds, but rather of understanding the significant expressions of the world. Knowledge of the world and knowledge of language are two inseparable elements. This explains why speakers, through communication, are able to acquire an understanding about the world which transcends their own personal experience. However, for the same reason, they can become misinformed, deceived, and manipulated through communication. Speakers are able to speak about something that they are unfamiliar with or that they do not fully understand. In order to show the positive and negative consequences of this innovative point of view, Heidegger offers a detailed
phenomenological analysis of everyday speech, to which he assigns the technical name of “idle talk” (Gerede).13
The analysis of Gerede in Being and Time seems fascinating and problematic for several reasons. On the one hand, idle talk as the way of speaking within the framework of the public One (das Man), first of all, controls and levels out all interpretation of the world. This idea was fruitfully developed by the representatives of the Frankfurt School, in particular by Herbert Marcuse, who wrote his dissertation under the academic tutelage of Heidegger. And, on the other hand, the function of Gerede seems problematic within the framework of what Heidegger calls Dasein’s “falling” (Verfallenheit). This corresponds to Heidegger’s provision of two different definitions of the term and, furthermore, his using it to refer to two different, though interrelated, phenomena, without any advance warning.
First, let us observe the two definitions that Heidegger provides for Gerede: (1) “Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any previous appropriation of the matter” (GA 2: 224/SZ2: 169); (2) “Idle talk is constituted in this gossiping and passing the word along” (GA 2: 224/SZ2: 168). One first clear difference between the two definitions is that the latter conveys a particular type of communicative act in which speakers can actively engage in the form of “gossiping and passing the word along,” while the former refers only to the passive capacity of linguistic understanding that speakers possess simply by the fact of knowing a language. Without a doubt, these two phenomena are internally related, but they are not identical.14 Linguistic competence is a condition that is necessary for any type of communication using language (such as “gossiping and passing the word along”), but the reverse is not the case. A speaker with normal linguistic competence could decide not to perform the act of “gossiping and passing the word along.” However, she could not decide not to understand the meaning of the terms available in her language and still have linguistic and communicative competence.
Therefore, we find ourselves before two perceptions of Gerede: one passive and the other active. The passive form of Gerede (idle talk),
which does not involve any communicative act, is what Heidegger calls Rede (discourse), that is, the articulation of the intelligibility of the meaningful whole in which Dasein previously lives (see GA 2: 214/ SZ2: 161). In its passive meaning, Gerede refers to a specific possibility contained in Rede, namely, the possibility of having an understanding of something without previous appropriation of the matter. According to Heidegger, this is possible because “in accordance with this intelligibility, the discourse which is communicated can be understood to a large extent without the listener coming to be being toward what is talked about in discourse so as to have a primordial understanding of it. […] One means the same thing because it is in the same averageness that we have a common understanding of what is said” (GA 2: 223/SZ2: 168). Here, Heidegger points out the obvious fact that speakers are able to speak of the same thing, and understand to a certain degree what is said, thanks to the fact that they share a common language, even without being directly familiarized with those things which are being talked about.
For example, one can be informed of the risks of lung cancer without needing to have previously acquired a medical knowledge of this disease. Therefore, it is worth distinguishing between a genuine understanding and an average understanding. The average understanding that one can have of lung cancer is not negative per se. Rather the opposite, the purpose of communication is to share the public knowledge at our disposal. The purpose of communication is to make sharing experiences and information possible among speakers who previously did not have them; otherwise, communication would be redundant. In principle, there is nothing against such a practice, particularly to the extent that the acquisition of information and knowledge stems from those who have a genuine understanding of what is spoken about, that is, from the experts on that subject, from those who do not have a mere average understanding of it. As long as this is the case, our “gossiping and passing” is perfectly justified by reference to those who have such authority. In fact, we can only hope to acquire the genuine understanding that the experts already have by learning from them. All the same,
sometimes one asks the question of how expert understanding and average understanding are different, if all speakers that share the same language have – as is stated in the beginning of the section dedicated to idle talk – the same concepts. What is different among speakers is the accurateness of their respective understanding of those concepts by virtue of their different technical abilities, personal experiences, professional authority, and knowledge background.
Nevertheless, things are not so simple. Behind these positive aspects of everyday discourse lies the risk not only of over generalization, but also of certain determinability. Indeed, the communicative acts of Gerede do not seem as free as they had appeared at first. Communication does not allow us to expand our knowledge beyond our individual experience. In fact, much of what we know comes from this source, that is to say, our average understanding always surpasses our direct and primary understanding: “We get to know many things initially in this way, and some things never get beyond such an average understanding. […] The domination of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already decided upon even the possibilities of being attuned” (GA 2: 225/SZ2: 169, em). In this sense, the term Gerede, as a structural possibility, is a necessary characteristic of Rede, and, therefore, of the disclosedness of Dasein. However, as Heidegger quickly points out, once communication is set in motion it is almost impossible to distinguish what has been disclosed in a genuine understanding or in an average understanding. This is especially clear in the case of written communication, in which “the average understanding of the reader will never be able to decide what has been drawn from primordial sources with struggle, and how much is just gossip” (GA 2: 224/SZ2: 169).
Here is where one can begin to see the negative aspect of Gerede, which, as it reaches increasingly broader circles, loses the “primary relation of being to the being spoken about” (GA 2: 224/SZ2: 168). Gerede thus ends up taking on an authoritative and normative nature that decides in advance the way to interpret things: “Dasein can never escape the everyday way of being interpreted into which Dasein has grown initially. All genuine understanding, interpreting and communication,
rediscovery and new appropriation come about in it, and out of it and against it” (GA 2: 225/SZ2: 169). Now Gerede is interpreted as an existential, that is, as a way of being of Dasein, characteristic of its falling tendency: “Dasein itself presents itself with the possibility in idle talk and public interpretedness of losing itself in the they, of falling prey to groundlessness” (GA 2: 235/SZ2: 177). And the more one becomes immersed in Gerede, the more one falls and gets lost. In this way, Gerede loses its initial neutrality and acquires a negative sense. As Heidegger describes it, this is a process where Dasein passes from the initial lack of ground to complete groundlessness inherent to gossiping.
Dasein has the tendency to content itself with the average understanding that Gerede provides. As is shown in the section dedicated to falling prey and thrownness,
idle talk and ambiguity, having-seen-everything and having-understood-everything, develop the supposition that the disclosedness of Dasein thus available and prevalent could guarantee to Dasein the certainty, genuineness, and fullness of all possibilities of its being. In the self-certainty and decisiveness of the they, it gets spread abroad increasingly that there is no need of authentic, attuned understanding. (GA 2: 235/SZ2: 177)But this possibility of falling that is contained within Gerede is not in itself a negative phenomenon that necessarily sentences Dasein to inauthenticity by the mere fact that it participates in everyday discourse. As Lafont points out, we must bear in mind that the negative and positive aspects of Gerede analyzed by Heidegger “are part of a contiunuum and not an all or nothing affair.”15 The same choice of words that Heidegger uses to describe Gerede reflects this process in which the initial lack of grounds characteristic of everyday communication degenerates into the complete groundlessness of idle talk.
Trivialization and simplification are the true culprits behind Dasein’s thrownness and inauthenticity. Its mistake consists in being anchored to average understanding and in ceasing to look for new ways
of understanding. The average understanding is just our common point of departure. The fact that Dasein shares a common language does not prevent it from achieving a primordial relationship with the entities and with its own being.16 The social nature of language shows that Dasein always retains in Gerede an understanding of the open world, which necessarily becomes the starting point of all interpretive and communicative activity. But, as Heidegger points out, the inevitability of connecting with the public, average understanding of oneself does not exclude the possibility of transforming this understanding. Being and Time is the perfect example of such a possibility.
In short, the social nature of language does not itself lead to groundlessness. In the preliminary analysis of the definition of λόγος that Heidegger offers in the first sections of the 1924 lectures, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, we already find this dual negative and positive possibility. In λόγος – as a possibility of “speaking about something [and] speaking with others” (GA 18: 19/15) – “a common intelligibility is given, which has a peculiar character of averageness” (GA 18: 20/16), but this λόγος was also used by the Greeks “in order to determine the being of the human being itself in its peculiarity” (GA 18: 20/16). From the perspective of these lectures, one better appreciates the extent to which Heidegger’s analyses of
1 See, for example, the famous letter to Richardson (GA 11: 143–152), the autobiographical remembrances in My Way in Phenomenology in Zur Sache des Denkens (GA 14: 91–104), and the foreword to the first edition of Frühe Schriften (GA 1: 55–57). Undoubtedly, Aristotle is one of the authors to whom Heidegger devoted a considerable part of his energies during his first lectures in Freiburg and Marburg, including the unfinished project of writing a book on Aristotle, as we know thanks to the Natorp Bericht.
2 As Pöggeler remembers, in 1920 Heidegger expressed to Karl Löwith his indignation regarding Husserl, who still considered him a theologian rather than a philosopher; see Otto Pöggeler, “Martin Heidegger und die Religionsphänomenologie” in Heidegger und seine Zeit (München: Fink Verlag, 1999), 249–252.
3 In this sense Heidegger conceives rhetoric as a possibility (δύναμις) rather than a technique (τέχνη), namely, the possibility of speaking in certain ways; see GA 18: 114–119/78–81.
4 Paul Ricoeur, La metáfora viva (Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1980), 49.
5 For similar textual evidence, see Politics I, 1, 1253a9–18 and Politics VII, 12, 1332b5.
6 Heidegger recognizes in his commentary on the first book of Topics that δόξα is the basis for practical behavior as well as for the theoretical attitude. Δόξα is the specific form of being-in-theworld; to phrase the matter differently, the world comes to presence in δόξα (see GA 18: 152–154/103–105).
7 Stanley Rosen, “Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger” in Ricardo Pozzo (ed.), The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 250ff; Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 131; William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye. Heidegger, Aristotle and the Ends of Theory. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), ch. 2–4.
8 For a rhetorical and political reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Aristotelian text, see Robert Metcalf, “Aristoteles und Sein und Zeit” in Albert Denker et al. (eds.), Heidegger-Jahrbuch 3. Heidegger und Aristoteles (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 2007), 156–169, and Daniel Gross, “Being-Moved: The Pathos of Heidegger’s Rhetorical Ontology” in Daniel Gross and Ansgar Kemmann (eds.), Heidegger and Rhetoric (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 1–45.
9 Heidegger takes here up again the idea expressed later in Being and Time that the original meaning of λόγος is ἀπόφανσις: “to let beings be seen from themselves” (GA 2: 205/SZ2: 154). Heidegger shows how the different translations of λόγος (like “reason,” “judgment,” “definition,” “concept,” or “statement”) derive from the original meaning of ἀπόφανσις. But it occurs in other passages of Being and Time and this reference to Aristotle is really succinct, making it difficult to recognize to what extent his early phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle are fundamental for understanding his later analysis of language, attunement, truth, temporality and care, among other examples.
10 Among other passages, see GA 17: 13–41/9–31, GA 21: 162– 79/136–51, and GA 29/30: 441–73/304–26. For a more detailed analysis of the peculiar function of λόγος in early Heidegger, see Friederike Rese, Praxis und Logos bei Aristoteles. Handlung, Vernunft und Rede in “Nikomachischer Ethik”, “Rhetorik” und “Politik” (Tübingen: Mohr, 2003); Franco Volpi, “La Question du logos dans l’articulation de la facticité chez le jeune Heidegger, lecteur d’Aristote” in Jean-François Courtine (ed.), Heidegger 1919–1929: De l’herméneutique à la métaphysique du Dasein (Paris: J. Vrin 1996), 33–65; and Charlotta Weigelt, “Logos as Kinesis: Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Physics in Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie,” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 9/1, (2004): 101–16.
11 See in particular the paragraphs regarding the fundamental role of mood (πάθος) in human life and the concrete analysis of fear
(φόβος) in Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy (GA 18, § 18 and § 21 respectively).
12 See, for example, P. Christopher Smith, “The Uses and Abuses of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology: The Lecture Courses, Summer, 1924” in Babette Babich (ed.), From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy and Desire (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 315–33, and Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 276–308.
13 See GA 2: 221–26/SZ2: 167–70. Idle talk (Gerede) is an inauthentic mode of discourse (Rede). Together with ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit) and curiosity (Neugier), idle talk constitutes Dasein in its everydayness. Literally, Gerede means the whole, as the German collective prefix Ge- denotes, of what is said, that is, Gerede is the whole of what one says, one thinks, or one discusses in the diffuse context of openness. Therefore, one should avoid interpreting Gerede in the pejorative sense of “gossip,” “rumor,” “chatter,” or “prattle.” For more information regarding the technical meaning of Gerede see Jésus Adrián Escudero, El lenguaje de Heidegger. Diccionario filosófico 1912–1927 (Barcelona: Herder, 2009), 98–99.
14 Christina Lafont, “Was Heidegger an Externalist?” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 48/6 (2002): 5–6.
15 Ibid., 10.
16 For more discussion of this point, see Taylor Carman, “Must We Be Inauthentic?” in Mark Wrathall and Jeff Malpas (eds.), Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2000), 21–22.
Jesús Adrián Escudero - Heidegger on Discourse and Idle Talk: The Role of Aristotelian Rhetoric
Original version in Gatherings 3 (2013).