2. The determination of δύναμιν ἔχειν μεγάλην:357 that which comes toward me with the character of “powerfulness,” in opposition to which I find myself in a definite weakness, can do me harm. It is constitutive of threat. Something about which I have reckoned from the outset, that can do me no harm, is not able to threaten me, if it is also undetermined whether it touches me or not.
3. That which is thus powerful in the possibility of being-able-to-arrive, “being brought into proximity,” πλησιασμός, turns the threat into “danger.”358 Something threatening in the greater distance is not danger. Threat becomes danger when it draws nearer to me as such. From here, the distinctive aspect of fear becomes intelligible, with which we are familiar on the basis of the somatic, on the basis of restraint. That which threatens is the indeterminate possibility of something that can pertain to me, that is more than a match for me, that is concentrated on me, not factically but in the peculiar character of forcing-itself-into-my-proximity, such that the φοβερόν is announced, such that this φοβερόν is then, so to speak, represented by the σημεῖα.359 The σημεῖα take over the cultivation of the peculiar there-character of the φοβερόν: taking over the function of the there, to be a not-being-there-in-approaching. Three σημεῖα: (1) ἔχθρα, ὀργή,360 “hostile attitude,” “rage”; (2) ἀδικία,361 “unjust attitude”; (3) ἀρετὴ ὑβριζομένη,362 “seriousness that ridicules is provoked.” We will have to consider how these σημεῖα are precisely σημεῖα by virtue of the fact that they cultivate the possibility in its very indeterminacy.
For the intelligibility of the explication of fear, it is instructive to see how one, in fact, cannot yet fully define being-brought-into-fear on the basis of that which can excite fear. Therefore, not all of the aspects of the frightening are contained therein—there is no parallel between the frightening and beingafraid. What is, here, claimed in phenomenology does not correspond with the facts.
The characteristic aspect of that before which being-afraid stands must be grasped as what is possible. What is traced out therein is the mode in which the frightening itself genuinely becomes what it can be, the enhancement of what is possible as such a thing that is to come, that comes toward me in the character of the harmful. What is possible is enhanced in its possibility in that it is there and not there, in that it therefore announces itself in its being-there in a certain manner. But in the announcement lies its not yet being itself there. The manner in which the frightening is present as such is φαντασία, not αἴσθησις. The aspect that constitutes proximity is the πλησιασμός. Finding-oneself in the face of something threatening becomes a situation of danger through the πλησιασμός. The function of approaching, of announcement, the characteristic
357. Ibid.
358. Rhet. Β 5, 1382 a 32: τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι κίνδυνος, φοβεροῦ πλησιασμός.
359. Rhet. Β 5, 1382 a 30 sq.
360. Rhet. Β 5, 1382 a 33.
361. Rhet. Β 5, 1382 34.
362. Rhet. Β 5, 1382 a 35 sq.