Emily Hughes
Throughout his philosophical path of thinking, Heidegger makes the repeated attempt to retrieve the originary, pre-Socratic Greek experience of Being as φύσις (phusis). That is, the immediate experience of Being as the “self-forming prevailing of beings as a whole,”1 or as the “emerging-abiding sway.”2 Heidegger’s attempt to recover the inceptive Greek experience of φύσις is given in the context of his more general attempt to retrieve the Greek experience of Being, whether as φύσις, as ἀλήθεια (aletheia), or as λόγος (logos). As Capobianco writes, “[t]he importance for Heidegger of the Greek Ur-word physis cannot be overstated — it remained at the heart of his lifelong effort to think the originary, unifying, and fundamental meaning of Being.”3 For Heidegger, the retrieval of the Greek experience of Being as φύσις is necessary because, throughout the history of Western metaphysics, this originary experience has been restricted to the idea of ‘nature’ (as in natura). Heidegger’s fundamental concern is that, by restricting φύσις to nature, the question of Being itself has been reduced to the question of beings as a whole. Understanding this distinction between φύσις and nature is fundamental to understanding Heidegger’s interpretation of the pre-Socratics more generally, and his account of Being as φύσις in particular, yet it remains problematically opaque in his work.
In the first half of this article I will consider Heidegger’s definition of Being as φύσις, drawing particularly upon the account he gives in the 1935 lecture course Introduction to Metaphysics. I will then give a brief explication of the way in which, for Heidegger, Western metaphysics has restricted φύσις to nature. I will argue that Heidegger’s distinction between φύσις and nature is made difficult to grasp by the fact that, by his own definition, φύσις is an inherently ambiguous, twofold phenomenon. In the second half of this article I will consider the way in which Heidegger’s own account of affectedness, or being-disposed through attunements, might help clarify the φύσις/ nature distinction. According to Heidegger, it is in being-disposed through the fundamental attunement of wonder, that the Greeks are able to experience Being as φύσις. In the restriction of φύσις to nature, however, Heidegger intimates that there is a correlate ‘restriction’ upon the fundamental attunement of wonder. Drawing upon Heidegger’s account of wonder, amazement and marveling given in Basic Questions of Philosophy and curiosity given in Being and Time, I will argue that whilst wonder disposes one toward the question of Being as φύσις, amazement, marveling, and curiosity dispose one toward the question of beings as a whole, as nature. By mapping the distinction between fallen and fundamental attunements onto Heidegger’s distinction between φύσις and nature, it is hoped that the latter difference might be brought more sharply into focus.
Whilst Heidegger engages φύσις across many of the texts that make up his collected works, my explication will be grounded primarily in the account given in the 1935 lecture course Introduction to Metaphysics. In alignment with Capobianco, it is my view that this text includes one of Heidegger’s most decisive and compelling attempts to retrieve the inceptive Greek experience of Being as φύσις.4, 5 This account both clarifies and elaborates upon the account given five years prior, in the 1929/30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Drawing (at times obliquely) on the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides, Heidegger defines φύσις in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics as: the “self-forming prevailing of beings as a whole.”6 Whilst in the Introduction to Metaphysics, he defines it as: the “emerging-abiding sway.” Heidegger writes:
Now, what does the word phusis say? It says what emerges from itself (for example the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance — in short, the emerging-abiding sway.7
Implicit in this preliminary definition of emerging-abiding sway, is the idea that φύσις opens itself up in a way that is dynamic rather that static, unfolding through a movement of Being and Nothing, presencing and absencing, emerging and passing away. For Heidegger, this movement is captured in Fragment 123 of Heraclitus: φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ. Conventionally translated as ‘Nature loves to hide,’ Heidegger translates it as “‘Being (emerging appearance) intrinsically inclines towards self-concealment.” As that which is inclined towards self-concealment, Heidegger argues that φύσις means: “to appear in emerging, to step forth out of concealment.”8 He clarifies this in ‘On the Essence of the Concept of Φύσις in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1’, by pointing out that φύσις comes-forth into and abides in unhiddenness, because only that which “in its very essence unconceals and must unconceal itself, can love to conceal itself.” As an unfolding that opens itself up in the emerging-abiding sway, then, φύσις is “the self-concealing revealing.”9
Extending his analysis beyond this preliminary definition of the emerging-abiding sway, Heidegger argues that φύσις should be understood as an ambiguous, two-fold phenomenon. On the one hand, φύσις means that which prevails in this emerging-abiding sway, namely: beings as a whole. As he writes in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
Φύσις means this whole prevailing that prevails through man himself, a prevailing that he does not have power over, but which precisely prevails through and around him…he understands it; it nears him, sustains and overwhelms him as that which is: φύσις, that which prevails, beings, beings as a whole.10
On the other hand, however, Heidegger argues that φύσις also means the prevailing of that which prevails in the emerging-abiding sway as such. He writes:
The fundamental meaning of φύσις is already ambivalent in itself, although this ambivalence does not clearly emerge at first. Yet it soon makes itself visible. Φύσις, that which prevails, means not only that which itself prevails, but that which prevails in its prevailing or the prevailing of whatever prevails…Here φύσις does not mean that which prevails itself, but its prevailing as such, the essence, the inner law of a matter.11
In this way, φύσις means both that which prevails, and the prevailing itself. Φύσις is thus an inherently two-fold phenomenon. Fundamentally, this twofoldness is grounded upon the ontological difference, that is: the difference between beings and Being. As Capobianco writes, “[w]ith this formulation we again recognize Heidegger’s motif of the ‘ontological difference,’ that is, the fundamental and primordial ‘difference’ between beings (‘what prevails’) and Being itself (‘the prevailing as such’).” As Capobianco acknowledges, whilst Heidegger does not use the specific expression ‘ontological difference’ in this context, “the core matter for thinking is the same.”12
For Heidegger, it is this second sense of φύσις as prevailing or presencing as such which names Being itself. He makes this clear in the Introduction to Metaphysics when he writes that, “Phusis is Being itself, by virtue of which beings first become and remain observable.”13 Further, it is this second sense of φύσις that is definitive of the originary Greek experience of Being. That is to say, the inceptive Greeks were uniquely compelled toward the question of not only that which prevails or presences, but toward the prevailing or presencing as such. As Heidegger writes in the ‘Seminar in Le Thor’ in 1969, “[i]n the Greek climate, the human is so overwhelmed by the presencing of what presences, that he is compelled to the question concerning what presences as what presences.”14 In his attempt to retrieve the inceptive Greek experience of Being as φύσις as the emerging-abiding sway, Heidegger wants to recover this latter sense of prevailing or presencing as such, in particular.
Throughout the history of Western metaphysics, however, Heidegger argues that this inceptive Greek experience of φύσις, as a two-fold phenomenon has been radically restricted. In fact, the restriction of φύσις provides one of the most profound examples of the way in which metaphysics has forgotten the question of Being. For Heidegger, the restriction of Being as φύσις occurs when it is reduced to the idea of ‘nature.’ He traces this reduction through the translation of the Greek φύσις into the Latin ‘natura.’ As he writes in the Introduction to Metaphysics:
In the age of the first and definitive unfolding of Western philosophy among the Greeks, when questioning about beings as such and as a whole received its true inception, beings were called phusis. The fundamental Greek word for what is is usually translated as ‘nature.’ We use the Latin translation natura, which really means ‘to be born,’ ‘birth.’ But with this Latin translation, the original content of the Greek word phusis is already thrust aside, the authentic philosophical naming power of the Greek word is destroyed.15
Restricted to the Latinate natura, Heidegger argues that φύσις is reductively misconstrued as representing the natural, material world. That is, physics as we understand it today. He writes:
…if one understands phusis, as one usually does…its later and current meaning, as nature, and if one also posits the motions of material things, of atoms and electrons — what modern physics investigates as phusis — as the fundamental manifestation of nature, then the inceptive philosophy of the Greeks turns into a philosophy of nature, a representation of all things according to which they are really of a material nature.16
As Heidegger explains, in Greek: τὰ φυσιχὰ (ta phusika) means ‘what naturally is.’ Whilst μετὰ τὰ φυσιχὰ (meta ta phusika) means philosophical questioning about beings as such, which means it questions beyond beings.17 In the reduction of φύσις to ‘nature,’ however, Heidegger argues that metaphysics definitively fails to question beyond beings. Rather, it remains concerned with τὰ φυσιχὰ, physics, what naturally is. According to Heidegger then:
‘Physics’ determines the essence and the history of metaphysics from the inception onward. Even in the doctrine of Being as actus purus (Thomas Aquinas), as absolute concept (Hegel), as eternal recurrence of the same will to power (Nietzsche), metaphysics steadfastly remains ‘physics.’18
The implication of this is that ‘metaphysics’ comes to focus on the prevailing of the totality of what naturally is, on beings as a whole, rather than the prevailing as such of Being itself. Heidegger reinforces this point in ‘On the Essence and Concept of φύσις in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1’ when he writes that:
Since those times, ‘nature’ has become the fundamental word that designates essential relations that Western historical humanity has to beings, both to itself and to beings other than itself. This fact is shown by a rough list of dichotomies that have become prevalent: nature and grace (i.e., super-nature), nature and art, nature and history, nature and spirit.19
Accordingly, “[w]hatever range has been attributed to the word ‘nature’ in the various ages of Western history, in each case the word contains an interpretation of beings as a whole…”20 For Heidegger, then, in the reduction of φύσις to nature, of metaphysics to physics, the complex two-fold ambiguity of φύσις as both the prevailing of beings as a whole and the prevailing as such of Being, is collapsed. Restricted to that which prevails, to that which presences, metaphysics utterly forgets the prevailing or presencing as such, and thus the inceptive Greek experience of Being as φύσις.
As Heidegger goes to some length to explain, when the two-fold sense of φύσις is kept intact, the emerging-abiding sway can be experienced in natural phenomena, but it is irreducible to natural phenomena. As he writes in the Introduction to Metaphysics:
Phusis as emergence can be experienced everywhere: for example, in processes in the heavens (the rising of the sun), in the surging of the sea, in the growth of the plants, in the coming forth of animals and human beings from the womb. But phusis, the emerging sway, is not synonymous with these processes, which still today we count as part of ‘nature.’ This emerging and standing-out-in-itself-from-itself may not be taken as just one process among others that we observe in beings.21
Taken in its first sense, φύσις does refer to beings as a whole, and thus includes that which prevails in natural phenomena, such as the wandering stars or the surging of the sea. Yet, taken in its second sense, φύσις also refers to Being itself, and thus to prevailing or presencing as such. In its second sense, φύσις necessarily implies the overabundance or excess of that which presences in these natural phenomena. As Schoenbohm emphasizes, in the same way that Being cannot be reduced to beings, “phusis cannot only be thought of in terms of physical or natural things.”22 By restricting φύσις to nature, Heidegger argues that Western metaphysics has collapsed this two-fold sense of φύσις, and thereby reduced the question of Being itself, to the question of beings as a whole.
Understanding the distinction between φύσις and nature is fundamental to understanding what it is that Heidegger is trying to retrieve in the inceptive Greek experience of Being. Yet the distinction is often problematically unclear in his work. I would argue that this lack of clarity is, in part, due to the inherently ambiguous nature of φύσις itself, a two-fold phenomenon which captures both the prevailing of beings as a whole, and the prevailing of that which prevails as such. Compounding this, is the fact that Heidegger implies, but rarely makes explicit, the ontological difference between beings as a whole and Being itself. The ontological difference is the structure upon which the two-fold sense of φύσις depends. Yet if it is not clearly delineated, it can be difficult to see what is lost when φύσις is collapsed into nature. In the remainder of this article, I want to look at how Heidegger’s own account of affectedness, and specifically his distinction between fallen and fundamental attunements, might help clarify the φύσις/nature distinction, and thereby what it is that Heidegger is trying to retrieve in the Greek experience of Being as φύσις.
The turn here to attunement is not an arbitrary one. For Heidegger, the very means through which the inceptive Greeks are compelled toward φύσις as both the prevailing of that which prevails and the prevailing as such, is in being-disposed through the fundamental attunement of wonder. As Heidegger writes in the ‘Seminar in Le Thor’ “[t]he Greeks name the relation to this thrust of presence θαυμάζειν [thaumazein].”23 In the restriction of φύσις to nature, however, Heidegger intimates that there is a correlate ‘restriction’ of the fundamental attunement of wonder. As Heidegger writes, “[i]n extreme opposition to this, one can say that when the astronauts set foot on the moon, the moon as moon disappeared. It no longer rose or set. It is now only a calculable parameter for the technological enterprise of humans.”24 Whilst the Greeks relation to Being as φύσις is given by the fundamental attunement of wonder, Western metaphysics’ relation to beings as a whole as nature, is here given by a ‘restricted’ or fallen form of wonder. Though it is only implied here, Heidegger gives us a precedent for attempting to clarify the φύσις/nature distinction in terms of the distinction he makes between fundamental and fallen attunements, a distinction which is absolutely central to his theory of affectedness. In what follows, I will give a brief overview of Heidegger’s distinction between fundamental and fallen attunements. I will then draw specifically upon Heidegger’s account of the fundamental attunement of wonder and the fallen attunements of amazement and marveling in Basic Questions of Philosophy and curiosity in Being and Time. In so doing, I will argue that whilst the fundamental attunement of wonder defines the Greek relation to Being as φύσις, the restricted or fallen attunements of amazement, marveling and curiosity define Western metaphysics’ relation to beings as a whole, as nature.25 In understanding the attunements that make these two very different experiences possible, it is hoped that Heidegger’s φύσις/ nature distinction might be brought more sharply into focus.
As I have argued elsewhere,26 Heidegger’s theory of affectedness is fundamental to his philosophy, and his engagement with affectedness is both extensive and extended, unfolding throughout the entirety of his philosophical path of thinking. Heidegger’s theory of affectedness, of being-disposed through attunements, is an hierarchical or stratified one. That is to say, his theory of affectedness is structured according to a differentiation between attunements that turn Dasein away from the question of Being, and attunements that turn Dasein toward the question of Being. Attunements that turn Dasein away from the question of Being can be defined as fallen attunements. Given the unsettling and disconcerting nature of the question of Being, Heidegger argues that, for the most part, “the attunement does not turn towards the burdensome character of Dasein which manifests in it.” Rather, Dasein’s attunements tend toward the “evasive turning away” of ‘fallen attunements,’27 so-called in my analysis because they are grounded in Dasein’s fallenness. Heidegger’s most insightful and important analyses of specific fallen attunements concentrate upon fear and indifference, the first and second levels of boredom, and amazement and marveling.
In ‘falling,’ Dasein, already immersed alongside the world of its concern, becomes lost in unthinking conformity to the average everydayness of Das Man or ‘The They.’28 Lost in the They, Dasein collapses into an undifferentiated everyone and no one, such that it flees the burden of its existence, and its “authentic-potentiality-for-Being-its-Self.” As a result, Dasein loses its ownmost self.29 Fallen attunements constitute the affective atmosphere of Dasein’s fallenness. As such, they are attunements that keep Dasein immersed alongside the world of its concern. They are ordinary, everyday attunements, that are entangled with either a determinate or indeterminate situation within the world. Interpreted according to the average everyday understanding of the They, fallen attunements are attunements that are out of tune with, or unattuned to, the voice of Being. Disposed through fallen attunements that is, Dasein finds itself in a discordant or disharmonious relation to Being itself.
By contrast, attunements that turn Dasein toward the question of Being can, following Heidegger’s own definition, be defined as fundamental attunements. For the most part, Dasein flees from the burden of its being through an evasive turning away. It is fallen into the world, and lost in fallen attunements. Nevertheless, Heidegger argues that there are some occasions, however infrequent, when Dasein’s attunements turn it toward the question of Being. These attunements are defined by Heidegger as Grundstimmungen, or ‘fundamental attunements.’ Heidegger’s most insightful and important analyses of specific fundamental attunements concentrate upon joy, anxiety, profound boredom, holy mourning, shock, awe and restraint, awe, wonder, startled dismay, and releasement. According to Heidegger, “the voice of Beyng speaks to us in every fundamental attunement.”30 As such, fundamental attunements are for Heidegger attunements that ‘tune’ (stimmen) Dasein to the ‘voice’ (Stimme) of Being. Disposed through fundamental attunements that is, Dasein is brought into accord or harmony with Being itself.
Turning now to Heidegger’s hierarchical stratification of the fallen attunements of amazement, marveling, and curiosity, and the fundamental attunement of wonder.31
In Basic Questions of Philosophy, Heidegger defines the fallen attunements of amazement and marveling32 as attunements in which one is “transfixed by the curious.” Captivated by curiosity, one finds oneself carried away by something that is “exceptional, unexpected, surprising, and therefore exciting,” because it is “conspicuously unusual.” As fallen attunements, amazement and marveling always pertain to a particular and determinate event within the world. As Heidegger writes, “amazement is always a determinate and singular event, a particular occurrence, a unique circumstance, and is always set off against a dominating determinate background of what is precisely familiar and ordinary.” This means that, in the context of one’s immersion in the everyday, familiar world, one particular phenomenon strikes one as clearly unusual.
Disposed by amazement and marveling, however, Heidegger argues that “being struck by what is uncommon comes to pass here in such a way that…the uncommon itself becomes something familiar that bewitches and encharms.” That is to say the uncommon itself obtains its own permanent character, such that “what is new every day and never happened before becomes something habitual and always the same.”33 In this way, an encounter with the exceptional, unexpected, surprising, and therefore exciting, does not disrupt or destabilize one’s immersion in the ordinary everyday world. Rather, that which is unusual is merely absorbed into the usual, such that the unusual itself becomes that which is familiar.
Though curiosity is not an attunement as such, we can see an immediate resonance between amazement and marveling and the account of curiosity that Heidegger gives in Being and Time. For Heidegger, curiosity is a kind of ‘seeing’ that “concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen,” not in order to grasp it, “but just in order to see.” Curiosity “seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty,” to another “changing encounter.” In this way, curiosity is the restless and distracted pursuit of that which is unusual. However as soon as the unusual is absorbed into the familiar, it is quickly abandoned. In this way, curiosity is “everywhere and nowhere,” it has the character of “‘never dwelling anywhere.’”34
As fallen attunements, amazement and marveling — and by implication curiosity — are attunements that keep Dasein immersed alongside the world of its concern, in unthinking conformity to the They. They are ordinary, everyday attunements, that are entangled with a conspicuously unusual encounter in the world. Interpreted according to the everyday understanding of the They, however, that which is exceptional, unexpected, surprising, and therefore exciting, does not disrupt or destabilize one’s immersion in the ordinary everyday world. Rather, the unusual is merely absorbed into the usual, into that which is familiar. I want to propose that this defines precisely Western metaphysics’ relation to beings as a whole as nature. Natural phenomena, such as the moon, can prevail in a way that is exceptional, unexpected, surprising, and therefore exciting because they are conspicuously unusual. This is evident in the spectacular race to land astronauts upon the moon, which transfixed and captivated the world. Disposed by the fallen attunements of amazement and marveling however, the moon becomes subject to the explanatory understanding of the They. Consequently, the unusualness of the moon is absorbed into that which is most usual and familiar. As Heidegger argues, the moon as moon disappears and becomes only a calculable parameter for the technological enterprise of humans. The rising and setting of the moon, its coming in and out of presence, is completely forgotten. The fact that the moon is, that it prevails or presences, is completely lost. Consequently, the twofold structure of φύσις as both that which prevails and the prevailing of that which is prevails, is collapsed. Metaphysics has become physics, and the question of prevailing as such, of the presencing and absencing of the emerging-abiding sway of Being as φύσις, has been completely obscured.
By contrast, it is the fundamental attunement of wonder that disposes the Greeks toward an experience of the prevailing as such of Being as φύσις. In Basic Questions of Philosophy, Heidegger defines of wonder as an attunement wherein that which is the most usual and familiar, becomes that which is the most unusual and unfamiliar. Unlike the fallen attunements of amazement and marveling, that which becomes unusual in wonder is not “something particular that has shown itself as objective and determinate.” Rather, Heidegger argues, that which is “the most usual of all and in all,” namely, everything, beings as a whole, “becomes the most unusual.” Disposed through the fundamental attunement of wonder, Heidegger argues that there is no way in or out of the “extreme unusualness of everything.” There is no means through which to dispel the unusualness and retreat to the familiar. It is simply inexplicable, ungraspable and incomprehensible. With no way in or out of the radical unfamiliarity, the wonderer finds themselves wrenched from the world of their concern, and displaced into a ‘between.’ According to Heidegger, it is wonder which separates out and then dwells in this between. It is a space which is defined as an opening between “the most usual, beings, and their unusualness, their ‘is.’”35 In opening up this between, Heidegger writes that:
…wonder now opens up what alone is wondrous in it: namely, the whole as the whole, the whole as beings, beings as a whole, that they are and what they are, beings as beings, ens qua ens, τὸ ὄν ἧ ὄν. What is meant here by the ‘as,’ the qua, the ἧ, is the ‘between’ that wonder separates out, the open of a free space hardly surmised and heeded, in which beings come into play as such, namely as the beings that they are, in the play of their Being.36
Here Heidegger makes implicit reference to the ontological difference, to the difference between beings and Being itself. Disposed through wonder, one finds oneself displaced into the ‘free space’ of the ontological difference and therein confronted with the fact that beings are what they are, that beings come to prevail or presence at all. It is precisely through being displaced into this difference that one is confronted with the emerging-abiding sway of Being as φύσις, the unconcealment of Being as ἀλήθεια, and the gatheredness of Being as λόγος. As Heidegger writes:
…as moved by wonder, man must gain a foothold in the acknowledgment of what has erupted, and he must see it in a productive seeing of its inscrutable disclosure, and must experience and sustain ἀλήθεια, unconcealedness, as the primordial essence of beings. For what we must above all come to know is that ἀλήθεια, unconcealedness, is for primordial Greek thinking the essence of Being itself. Unconcealedness means an emergent coming forth, a coming to presence in the open…in unconcealedness beings as beings, i.e., as open presences, approach man and displace him into the open of unconcealedness and thus place him into the essence of one who perceives and gathers into the open and thereby first experiences the hidden and closed as such.37
Unlike the fallen attunements of amazement, marveling and curiosity, the thoughtful questioning of wonder “is not the intrusive and rash curiosity of the search for explanations; it is the tolerating and sustaining of the unexplainable as such, despite being overwhelmed by the presence of what reveals itself.”38 In this way, wonder is a suffering which Heidegger describes as a “creative tolerance for the unconditioned.” By adhering to beings “in their unusualness, i.e. in primordial terms, in their pure emergence, in their unconcealedness (ἀλήθεια), and in what belongs immediately to this and unfolds out of it,” Heidegger argues that Dasein comes to preserve and shelter Being as φύσις from the midst of the free space of the ontological difference.39 Disposed through the fundamental attunement of wonder that is, one is attuned to the voice of Being and brought into a harmonious relation with Being itself. Wonder is therefore the means through which the inceptive Greeks experienced the complete, two-fold sense of φύσις, as both the prevailing of beings as a whole and as prevailing or presencing as such.
To conclude, for Heidegger, φύσις is an ambiguous, twofold phenomenon that means both that which prevails and the prevailing as such. Throughout the history of Western metaphysics, however, φύσις has been restricted to nature, metaphysics to physics, and the question of Being itself to the question of beings as a whole. Drawing upon Heidegger’s account of wonder, amazement, marveling, and curiosity, I have argued that whilst wonder disposed the Greeks toward the question of Being as φύσις, amazement, marveling and curiosity have disposed Western metaphysics toward the question of beings as a whole as nature. In so doing, I have argued that Heidegger’s hierarchical stratification of fallen and fundamental attunements, helps to clarify the φύσις/ nature distinction. I think it does so, fundamentally, because in differentiating between fallen and fundamental attunements, Heidegger is differentiating between attunements that turn Dasein away from Being, and attunements that turn Dasein toward Being. Thus whilst the ontological difference is concealed and covered over in fallen attunements, it is disclosively unconcealed in fundamental attunements. Heidegger’s theory of affectedness relies upon this distinction. The two-fold structure of φύσις is grounded in the ontological difference, and whilst it is covered over and concealed in Western metaphysics experience of nature, it is disclosively unconcealed in the Greeks experience of φύσις. The φύσις / nature distinction thus relies on the very same differentiation that is set out in the distinction between fallen and fundamental attunements. Yet whilst Heidegger makes this differentiation explicit in his hierarchical, stratified theory of affectedness, it is for the most part only implied in his discussion of φύσις. By appropriating the difference between fallen and fundamental attunements into the φύσις/nature distinction, that which is at stake in Heidegger’s retrieval of the Greek experience of φύσις — namely the emerging-abiding sway of Being itself — can be brought more sharply into focus.
1 M Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. W McNeill and N Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 25/ GA 29/30, 39.
2 Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. G Fried and R Polt, 2 ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 15–16/ EM, 11.
3 R Capobianco, Heidegger's Way of Being, ed. K Maly, New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 42–43.
4 According to Capobianco, Heidegger’s “distinctive philosophical claim” is the “aletheic character of Being as physis.” Whilst Capobianco refers to several of Heidegger’s works, including The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and The Beginning of Western Philosophy, he argues that Introduction to Metaphysics is notable for being one of Heidegger’s “most important statements on the matter.” Ibid., 61. In her close reading, Schoenbohm also emphasizes the distinctive significance of Heidegger’s account of φύσις in Introduction to Metaphysics. See S Schoenbohm, "Heidegger’s Interpretation of Phusis in Introduction to Metaphysics," in A Companion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, ed. G Fried and R Polt (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001).
5 As Introduction to Metaphysics makes clear, Heidegger interprets Being as φύσις as belonging intrinsically together with Being as ἀλήθεια and Being as λόγος. It is beyond the scope of this article to explicate the way in which the emerging-abiding sway of φύσις connotes both the unconcealment of ἀλήθεια and the gatheredness of λόγος. But as Heidegger writes of φύσις and ἀλήθεια: “Being essentially unfolds as phusis. The emerging sway is an appearing. As such, it makes manifest. This already implies that Being, appearing, is a letting-step-forth from concealment. In so far as Being as such is, it places itself into and stands in unconcealment, alētheia…[f]or the Greek essence of truth [as alētheia] is possible only together with the Greek essence of Being as phusis” (112/ EM, 77–78). And of φύσις and λόγος: “Phusis and logos are the same. Logos characterizes Being in a new and yet old respect: that which is in being, which stands straight and prominently in itself, is gathered in itself and from itself, and holds itself in such a gathering” (145/ EM, 100). In this way, whether or not it is made explicit throughout, the essential belonging together of Being as φύσις, Being as ἀλήθεια and Being as λόγος must be kept always in view.
6 Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 25/ GA 29/30, 39.
7 Introduction to Metaphysics, 15–16/ EM, 11. Note: transliteration of the Greek is in the original for this and subsequent references.
8 Ibid., 121/ EM, 87.
9 "On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," in Pathmarks, ed. W McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 229–230/ GA 9, 370–371.
10 The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 26/ GA 29/30, 39.
11 Ibid., 31/ GA 29/30, 47.
12 Capobianco, 54. See also D.O Dahlstrom, "Being at the Beginning: Heidegger’s Interpretation of Heraclitus," in Interpreting Heidegger: Critical Essays, ed. D.O Dahlstrom (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2011), 139.
13 Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 16/ EM, 11.
14 Four Seminars, trans. A.J Mitchell and F Raffoul (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012), 38/ GA 15, 331.
15 Introduction to Metaphysics, 15/ EM, 10.
16 Ibid., 17/ EM, 12.
17 Ibid., 19/ EM, 13.
18 Ibid., 20/ EM, 14.
19 "On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις in Aristotle's Physics B, 1," 183/ GA 9, 309.
21 Introduction to Metaphysics, 16/ EM, 11.
22 Schoenbohm, 147.
23 Heidegger, Four Seminars, 38/ GA 15, 69.
24 Ibid.
25 In a somewhat different application of the relation between attunement and φύσις, Joronen considers the significance of the “degradation of wonder” to the “calculative rationality of ordering” in the context of Heidegger’s interpretation of machination and the oblivion of Being. See M Joronen, "Heidegger on the History of Machination," Critical Horizons 13, no. 3 (2012).
26 Kept anonymous for peer-review
27 M Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J Macquarrie and E Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1962), 174–75/ GA SZ, 135–36.
28 Ibid., 163–68/ GA SZ, 126–30.
29 Ibid., 229/ GA SZ, 184.
30 Hölderlins Hymne 'Andenken', 2 ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992), GA 52, 72. “…es wissend zu erfahren, daß in jeder Grundstimmung die Stimme des Seyns spricht.” My translation.
31 For a detailed explication of Heidegger’s account of amazement, marveling and wonder in Basic Questions of Philosophy and curiosity in Being and Time (given in the context of an interpretation of Heidegger’s critique of ordinary time), see B. E Stone, "Curiosity as the Thief of Wonder: An Essay on Heidegger’s Critique of the Ordinary Conception of Time," KronoScope 6, no. 2 (2006).
32 Sichwundern and Verwundern
33 M Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected 'Problems' of 'Logic', trans. R Rojcewicz and A Schuwer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 136–37/ GA 45, 157–58.
34 Being and Time, 216–17/ GA SZ, 172–73.
35 Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected 'Problems' of 'Logic', 144–45/ GA 45, 166–67.
37 Ibid., 146–47/ GA 45, 169–70.
Emily Hughes - Understanding Heidegger’s φύσις/nature distinction in light of fundamental and fallen attunements
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