Jacques Derrida
Philopolemology
(Geschlecht IV)
Starting from there, I shall try to show why and how φιλεῖν (I do not say φιλία and πόλεμος (most often translated by Kampf) will never be either excluded or opposed in Heidegger's path of thinking. This path of thinking traverses (I leave to this word all its equivocation) a historicopolitical space and time that must not be forgotten or placed between parentheses but about which we must avoid haste and stereotypes. Instead of proceeding in a continuous and chronological manner, I thought it more propitious to a certain demonstration to start again from a text relatively late and distant from Sein und Zeit, then to come back progressively or regressively toward the texts closer to Sein und Zeit, those of 1933 and 1935, the Rectorate Discourse and Introduction to Metaphysics and certain texts on Hölderlin.
I start again then from the later texts. One of the first affinities between the thematics of Sein und Zeit in the configuration that we have just recalled (Stimmung, Gestimmtheit, Befindlichkeit, Sprache, Rede, Hören, Hörigkeit, Zugehörigkeit, Ruf and Stimme des Freundes) and the thematics of Was ist das—die Philosophie? (1955—56), passes, I would say, through the ear. On one hand, its thematics is the determination of φιλοσοφία as hearing the voice and the call of being, correspondence, accord, but also on the other hand, the reinterpretation of "destruction" as hearing. The response to the question "Was ist das—die Philosophie?" consists in a correspondence, an Entsprechen, with that toward which philosophy is underway (unterwegs). To respond or correspond to philosophy, to reach this Entsprechen, we must lend an ear (hören), Heidegger says, to what philosophy has already said to us in speaking to us, in addressing itself to us in a sort of summons [assignation] (was die Philosophie uns schon zugesprochen hat) (WP 21). On this condition will there be response, correspondence, responsibility, dialogue, tradition (Entsprechung, Gespräch, Überlieferung). Heidegger describes all that passes through a first hearing of the address, of the addressed summons, also as a process of appropriation (Aneignung) and of transformation. I underscore this to mark strongly the role of the ear in such appropriation. The word Aneignung is used at least twice in this context, and something more remarkable still, not only to designate the welcome of the tradition but also its "destruction." Deconstruction, or rather 'Destruktion,' is also an experience of the appropriation of the tradition, and this deconstructive appropriation signifies first, it calls itself, it calls, heißt: "open our ear (unser Ohr öffnen)." I cite this important paragraph (WP 22 {GA 11}):
Solche Aneignung der Geschichte ist mit dem Titel "Destruktion" gemeint. 'The word "Destruktion" aims at such an appropriation of history.' Der Sinn dies Wortes ist in Sein und Zeit (§ 6) klar umschrieben. 'The sense of this word is clearly delimited in Sein und Zeit (§ 6).' Destruktion bedeutet nicht Zerstören, sondern Abbauen, Abtragen [I underscore this last verb, of course] und Auf-die-Seite-stellen—nämlich die nur historischen Aussagen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. 'Destruction does not signify demolition that puts in ruins, but de-construction (Abbauen), clearing away [or carrying away (déport), I shall not say deportation, but displacing in order to remove is in question], to put aside historicizing statements on the history (Geschichte) of philosophy.' Destruktion heißt: unser Ohr öffnen, freimachen für das, was Sich uns in der Überlieferung als Sein des Seienden zuspricht. 'Destruction means: to open our ear, to render it free for what, handed over to us in the tradition, is addressed to us or addresses to us its injunction as being of beings.'
To open the ear in order to appropriate the tradition of philosophy, to correspond to the call of the being of beings, to open the ear in order to appropriate also while "destructing," that is an experience that can give us to entendre (to hear and to understand) what the same text says in 1955 of symphony and harmony, of φιλεῖν as συμφωνία and as ἀρμονία. Was ist das—die Philosophie? does not name φιλία, and that is no doubt not by chance. Heidegger is pushed by a "destructive" necessity to try to hear and understand [entendre] φιλεῖν before the Platonic and Aristotelian φιλία. He translates φιλεῖν, of which he speaks a great deal, by das Lieben, loving, before any distinction between the loving of love and the loving of friendship, what in French, in a seminar I am devoting to these questions, I call aimance. What is rather funny [drôle] is that the modern Greek translation of Heidegger's text retranslates in its turn Lieben, not by φιλεῖν, but by ἀγάπη, ἀγάπαν, which gives some peculiar sentences. When Heidegger writes: "φιλεῖν, lieben bedeutet hier im Sinne Heraklits: ὁμολογεῖν, so sprechen, wie der λόγος spricht, d. h. dem λόγος entsprechen" (WP 13): "φιλεῖν, loving, signifies here, in the Heraclitean sense, ὁμολογεῖν, speaking as λόγος speaks, that is, to correspond to λόγος," the modern Greek says: "φιλεῖν, ἀγαπῶ, σημαίνει ἐδῶ ... τὸ ἡρακλείτειο νόημα: ὁμολογεῖν, νὰ ὁμιλοῦμε ἔστὶ ὅπως ὁμιλεῖ ὁ Λόγος, δηλαδὴ νὰ ὁμολογοῦμε πρὸς τὸν Λόγον."
When Heidegger links together the question "What is philosophy?" and that of φιλεῖν it is a matter of getting back to that moment, which was not only a moment in time but a dimension of the experience of being and of λόγος where the experience of φιλεῖν and even of the φιλόσοφος has not yet given rise to φιλοσοφία. Here one form of the same question that Heidegger does not formulate in this way but for which if you wish I would take responsibility could be: how does one hear and understand (entendre) (and this hearing understanding is not only the understanding of the sense of a word, but also an experience without limit) a φιλεῖν that not only is not yet φιλία but about which philosophy, still too young or come too late for that, has no authority to question, since it is born itself of something like an event unexpectedly coming over φιλεῖν and over the understanding agreement [entente] of φιλεῖν? What about φιλεῖν before φιλία and φιλοσοφία? "What about φιλεῖν?" and not "What is φιλεῖν?" or "What is the essence of φιλεῖν?" for the question form τί ἔστιν "what is?" does not hold the ultimate competence. It itself is rendered possible de jure by a movement of φιλεῖν. We are going to see how, according to Heidegger, it would already be in the sphere of influence [mouvance] of φιλεῖν.
We are caught in the ring of a circle insofar as, when questioning about philosophy, we have already taken a look over philosophy (wir schon einen Einblick in die Philosophie genommen haben) (WP 11). The ring of this circle has already engaged us in the Greek tongue that is not one tongue among others. Why is it not one tongue among others? The response to the question, as obscure and authoritarian as it seems, in any case for me, is indispensable to the intelligence of what Heidegger will say about φιλεῖν in the word φιλόσοφος, such as Heraclitus, Heidegger says, will probably have struck, stamped it (geprägt, ἐκτυπωθεκε, says the modern Greek translation). The Greek tongue alone, Heidegger says, is λόγος. From then on, in that tongue, what is said (das Gesagte) merges in a remarkable way with what the said names (nennt). The said of saying and the named would immediately merge, so that the language would be immediately transparent, transgressed toward the thing itself, without the sometimes opaque or indirect mediation of the verbal signification (Wortbedeutung). Heidegger writes what I have just given you without conviction but as the premise of what is going to follow:
When we hear a Greek word with a Greek ear (Wenn wir ein griechisches Wort griechisch hören), then we are docilely following its λέγειν, its immediate exposition (seinem unmittelbaren Darlegen). What it exposes is there before us (Was es darlegt, ist das Vorliegende). Through the word heard with a Greek ear (durch das griechisch gehörte Wort), we are immediately by the thing present there before us (unmittelbar bei der vorliegenden Sache selbst [I underscore the "by," the "bei"]), and not first by a simple verbal signification (nicht zunächst bei einer bloßen Wortbedeutung).
Supposing that such is demonstrated, concesso non dato, I fail to see how, from then on, that could not be said of every tongue from the moment one hears with the ear, so to speak, of that tongue. But let us leave this. The question that matters more to me is the following: what can λέγειν, when we lend to it a Greek and friendly ear, give us to hear and understand [entendre] in this history or in this fable of φιλεῖν? Heidegger then hears the word φιλοσοφία. This word would be originarily an adjective, formed on the model of φιλάργυρος, "the one who loves money," the friend of money (silberliebend); φιλότιμος, friend of honor (ehrliebend). It is important that this be an adjective, in the first place because, when Heraclitus strikes this word, φιλοσοφία does not exist: "for Heraclitus, there is not yet any φιλοσοφία (für Heraklit gibt es noch nicht φιλοσοφία)." The ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος is not what one would call today a philosopher, "a 'philosophical' man (ein 'philosophischer' Mensch)" (WP 12). The ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος is the one that loves σοφόν, "ὄς φιλει τὸ σοφόν." Now what does φιλεῖν mean? The response essentially implies the λόγος, whence the necessity of the detour of a short while ago. No φιλεῖν without λόγος or without λέγειν. Then, I shall add, no φιλεῖν without hearing. "Φιλεῖν," Heidegger says, "lieben bedeutet hier im Sinne Heraklits: ὁμολογεῖν, so sprechen, wie der λόγος spricht, d. h. dem λόγος entsprechen": "φιλεῖν, loving, signifies here, in the sense of Heraclitus, ὁμολογεῖν, to speak here as λόγος speaks, that is, to correspond to Λόγος". Φιλεῖν, then, is to accord oneself to the λέγειν of λόγος, to hear and respond to it. This given accord is indeed a responding, a corresponding, an Entsprechen, an understanding [entente] through correspondence in the order of Sprechen or Sprache, of λόγος, according to the same (ὁμολογεῖν). One could already carp, although I won't, about what opens the possibility of in the experience of correspondence but also of corresponsibility, in a nonsubjective sense and perhaps nonhuman, nonpsychoanthropological, nonmoral and nonpolitical sense. Responding, co-responding would be as co-responding with or to λέγειν and not first with some individual or collective subject. At least there would be correspondence with someone or a few only insofar as a correspondence in language, tongue, λέγειν and Sprache, will already be engaged, opened, or rather opening. It would be necessary to think correspondence according to λέγειν in order to have access to the correspondence called personal, friendly, or loving in general. (From there one would be easily led, I note in passing, to that Aristotelian proposition that is situated nevertheless in a place apparently derived with respect to this one here—according to which the ἐνέργεια of φιλία, the presence in act of friendship, requires that one speak to the other in its very presence. Friendship exhausts itself in ἀπροσηγορία, immediate non-hailing [noninterpellation], nonapostrophe, nonaddress, when one does not speak directly enough to the friend.) The correspondence Heidegger speaks about in order to define homology, ὁμολογεῖν, Entsprechen, as correspondence with λέγειν, is the accord of voices, harmony, unison, Einklang, with σοφόν: ἀρμονία. Moreover, Einklang is found retranslated in modern Greek by It is not only the understanding [entente] of the word φιλεῖν that must then pass through the ear and preferably the Greek ear, it is φιλεῖν itself. "Dieses Entsprechen steht im Einklang mit dem σοφόν. Einklang ist ἀρμονία": "This correspondence is in accord with σοφόν. Accord is ἀρμονία." "Dies, daß Sich beide ursprünglich einander fügen, weil sie zueinander verfügt sind, diese ἀρμονία ist das Auszeichnende des heraklitisch gedachten φιλεῖν, des Liebens": "This, that one being joins together5 with the other in the reciprocity, that the two originarily join together because they are enjoined one to the other, this ἀρμονία characterizes φιλεῖν as Heraclitus thinks it, loving (des Liebens)" (WP 13).
In this harmonization, a being (Wesen) is joined together or up (sich fügt) with another. This syn-harmony perceptible to a quasi-musical ear (the modern Greek translates sich fügen by συναρμόζεται, συναρμόζονται) supposes the reciprocity of the there-and-back, the going and coming of exchange (wechselweise). A serious problem when one tries to draw the consequences of this mutuality in the moral and political field of friendship. What would be the political carrying-distance [portée] of a thought or an experience of φιλεῖν that would no longer respect this law of reciprocity and would appeal to dissemblance, heterogeneity, dissymmetry, disproportion, incommensurability, nonexchange, the excess of every measure and thus of all symmetry? All these words* are not synonyms, of course. A democracy to come should give to be thought an equality that is not incompatible with a certain dissymmetry, with heterogeneity, or absolute singularity, an equality even requiring them and engaging them from a place that remains invisible but that orients me here, from afar, no doubt beyond the Heideggerian aim [propos].
In reciprocity (wechselweise), a being joins up and together with another, and the two, beide, one and the other in the two, both (French has neither beide nor both) Sich einander fügen originarily (ursprünglich) (WP 13). This originary harmony then is not constructed, derives from nothing, is a consequence of nothing. But above all, Heidegger reckons with the play so difficult to translate between sich fügen and verfügen, which means to order, arrest, decide, affect, enjoin, assign. The two, both join together originarily because an injunction is made and received, a mission assigned. This happens not only to the two, to the both of the two, nor only to both as one and the other or as one or the other, but to the both-two, one another. That is enjoined to them with the violence without violence of a law that assigns one to the other, promises them, recommends them, adjusts one to the other, as one another.
Heidegger, who speaks more often of the hymn than of music, then makes a second knot in order to tie, tighten, weave his interpretation of φιλεῖν at work in Heraclitus's ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος before all φιλοσοφία and before all Platonic or Aristotelian φιλία.
Since, in the sense of Lieben, of ἀρμονία, and of Verfügen, the ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος loves σοφόν, it remains to determine what σοφόν means in Heraclitus. Now if I said that Heidegger tightens up in the same sense the woven knot of his interpretation, that is because he also finds again in σοφόν this bond, this unity of the One, the gathering that joins up that he had already thematized in φιλεῖν and in ἀρμονία. And from this One of the σοφόν, he has no trouble in finding again the One that gathers of λέγειν, of λόγος, that he had already put to work or rather recognized at work in the ὁμολογεῖν of φιλεῖν, as he had also discovered, some years before, in Dif-ference (Unter-Schied, διαφορά, or durchtragende Austrag, in Die Sprache, US 25 {GA 12: 22}). With a discreet but efficacious, sweet and violent agility, in a single paragraph, Heidegger takes up again with being, re-ties the knot with being, weaves all these motifs with that of being. At the end of a very brief path, lovence [aimance], Lieben, φιλεῖν, λόγος or λέγειν, ὁμολογεῖν, ἀρμονία—and being, that will be the same, the gathering of the same: Versammlung, Sein, Λόγος. The concatenation seems impeccable and indivisible. Once again it is a question of the ear. Let us listen.
"The ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος loves (liebt) σοφόν. What this word says for Heraclitus is what is difficult to translate. But we can elucidate it according to the interpretation of Heraclitus himself [nach Heraklits eigener Auslegung erläutern, a word translated in modern Greek by ἑρμηνεια]." Heidegger then is going to take the example of what Heraclitus calls one σοφόν in order to say what the σοφόν was for Heraclitus. The hermeneutics of Heraclitus concerning σοφόν becomes then what one σοφόν, this σοφόν of Heraclitus, says, what Heraclitus says in the form of one σοφόν. Heidegger continues: "Demnach sagt τὸ σοφόν dieses": "In conformity to which σοφόν says this": "Ἓν Πάντα, 'One (is) all' ('Eines [ist] Alles'). "'All' means here: Πάντα τὰ ὄντα, the ensemble, the all of beings. "Ἔν, the One (das Eins) means: the one, the unique, what unites all (das Eine, Einzige, alles Einigende [the same words as for qualifying dif-ference, Unter-Schied, διαφορά, and Austrag in Die Sprache]). But united is every being in being (Einig aber ist alles Seiende im Sein). Σοφόν says: every being is in being. In order to say it more sharply (Schärfer gesagt): being is beings [Das Sein ist das Seiende: Heidegger underscores or italicizes the "ist" and comments on his gesture]. Here 'is' (ist) speaks transitively (spricht 'ist' transitiv) and signifies as well 'gathered' ('versammelt'). Being gathers beings in that it is beings (Das Sein versammelt das Seiende darin, daß es Seiendes ist). Being is gathering—Λόγος (Das Sein ist die Versammlung—Λόγος)" (WP 13).
What is then said in a finer, sharper way and must be heard clearly, with a finer ear than the common ear, is thus at once this transitivity of being, of the "ist," and the fact that this transitivity is exercised under the form of gathering. Heidegger accuses then the deafness of our modern and common ear before the extraordinary thing that he nevertheless just understood, heard (hören), and gave to be understood. Heidegger's ear then divides itself. More precisely, it is divided in two. There is a deaf ear like that of everyone today (Heidegger speaks in that case of what sounds "for our ear," ["für unser Ohr"]), and this ear perceives as "trivial" what has just been heard or said. The other ear over-hears the unheard through the deafness. And we find again the whole semantics of Hören-Gehören, of hearing-belonging, that we had questioned in Sein und Zeit around the voice of the friend. The fact is, Versammlung, gathering, is also a question, in being itself, of Hören, of Λόγος, and of Gehören. I cite: "Every being is in being (Alles Seiende ist in Sein). To hear that (Solches zu hören) is what sounds (klingt) trivial, if not insolent to our ear (für unser Ohr). For no one has the need to care about beings belonging to being (daß das Seiende in das Sein gehört). Everybody knows it well: a being is something that is" (WP 13—14).
When he says "our ear," Heidegger understands by implication, of course [bien entendu], "your ear," in any case the ear of those (I can also be one of them, he seems to say, at least through one of my ears) that hear neither being, nor the ontological difference, nor the λόγος as gathering, nor then the φιλεῖν of σοφόν. And not to hear—here, for this "we" of "our ear"—is also to be blind, is no longer to see the splendor of what amazed the Greeks. For what is most amazing (das Erstaunlichste), for the Greeks, what has provoked the θαυμάζειν of which speak Plato in the Theaetetus (155d) and Aristotle in Metaphysics (A2, 982b12ff.) (WP 24—25) is precisely that the being remains gathered in being and shines in being's splendor. But we could always not hear this correspondence, this Entsprechen between being and beings starting from the address (Zuspruch) of being. Being can be heard or not heard (gehört Oder überhört). Once it is heard, it can be said or be still. To be in the correspondence (Entsprechen) is to hear (hören) the voice or the call of the being of beings (die Stimme des Zuspruchs); it is to pay attention (achten) to that voice as soon as one is first disposed or accorded to it (bestimmt, abstimmt) (WP 23).
To better hear and understand [entendre] this passage on Hören and Überhören, on hearing and turning a deaf ear, no doubt it would be necessary, but we do not have time for it here, to follow closely at least some of the pages devoted to Hölderlin's Der Rhein in the seminars of 1933—34 (GA 39, § 14, pp. 194ff.). Very rich, these pages distinguish among the ordinary modes of hearing. The Gods hear in compassion (erbarmende), mortals are in the not-understanding, not-hearing, the Überhören as Nichthörenkönnen or Überhörenwollen, the "not-hearing" as "not-being-able-to-hear" or "unwilling-to-hear." Heidegger analyzes then what being accessible through the ear means, as he will do in similarly important passages from Logos and Der Satz vom Grund (chap. 6). And he comes to distinguish in sum three experiences of understanding [entente]. If the Gods hear in compassion (erbarmend is a word from Hölderlin) according to Erhören, which also means to answer; if there is also the Überhören of the mortals that cannot or do not want to hear; there is also, third, the hearing of the poet that is neither the Erhören of the gods nor the Überhören of mortals. This ear of the poet stands firm beside the origin that the poet has a passion for. The poet is steadfast in hearing what originarily and properly happens (was da eigentlich geschieht) and what in general "is" (überhaupt "ist") (GA 39: 201). This ear of the poet, which is distinguished from that of the gods as well as from that of the common of the mortals, greatly resembles the ear Heidegger sketches or evokes in Was ist das—die Philosophie? It hears the "ist" before or at the origin of philosophy.
Is this analogy justified? I am tempted to think so. We could say then that the ear pricked up toward the originary φιλεῖν is for Heidegger an interior ear, an ear of the inside; not in the sense in which anatomy objectively describes and localizes what it calls the "inner ear," but in another sense. This ear would be an ear of the inside because it just has no need of external, sensory, or metaphorical sonority. Of the ear of the inside, Heidegger speaks literally at least in two highly significant contexts, in particular from a political point of view.
(1) The first is precisely the seminar of 1934—35 on Hölderlin's The Rhine that I just alluded to and whose "Preliminary Remark" speaks of "that history that is opened on the struggle (Kampf) in which the coming or the flight of the god will be decided." Now in this important sequence that unfortunately I cannot reconstitute, Heidegger speaks of "the ear of the inside" in order to define the poet's hearing that, unlike the common hearing of the mortals and the gods, stands firmly by the origin: the origin insofar as it is and such as it is. This ear of the inside stands and remains firm because it hears what stands and consists beyond contingency. This ear is poetic (dichtende) because it hears in advance just what it causes to burst forth. It gives itself to hear what it hears [Elle donne elle-même à entendre ce qu'elle entend]. It is dichtende because it speaks, says, poetizes itself. It is interior in that it produces in some way of itself what it hears: it hears it in advance, is in advance of what it hears and gives to be heard, as if the ear were speaking or were speaking itself, hearing itself speak in advance, fore-telling itself, outside of all conscious or speculative reflectivity, outside of all absolute identity, indeed all proximity, with itself:
Das standhaltende Hören ist das Dabeibleiben mit dem inneren Ohr. Wobei? Beim Ursprung, bei seinem Entspringen als solchem, d.h. bei dem, was er und wie er eigentlich ist. Das standhaltende Hören hört nicht dieses und jenes als Einzelnes, sondern hört, was im zu Hörenden eigentlich Bestand hat und den Bestand ausmacht. Solches hört es über das Zufällige hinweg im voraus heraus. Das standhaltende Hören ist als dieses Im-voraus-heraushören das dichtende Hören. (GA 39: 202)
I give up translating this passage, save, approximately, its last phrase: "The hearing that stands firm [the stehen of Stand resonates with the previous Bestand], insofar as this hearing carries outside what it hears in advance, is hearing that is poetic/ poetizing, that poetizes."
(2) The second context in which Heidegger speaks of the inside ear is much later, but it is politically as significant. He begins with "Meine Damen und Herrn," at the beginning of the Vorlesung of June 20, 1952. The text corresponds to the transition from the fourth to the fifth hours of Was heißt Denken?:
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Today at Freiburg the exposition "Prisoners of War Speak" has been inaugurated.
I ask you please to go to it, in order to hear this mute voice (diese lautlose Stimme zu hören) and to let it no longer go outside your interior ear (und nicht mehr aus dem inneren Ohr zu verlieren).
Thinking is faithful thinking (Denken ist Andenken). But faithful thinking is some- thing other than a fleeting actualization of the past (Vergegenwärtigung von Vergangenem).
Faithful thinking considers what reaches us (Andenken bedenkt, was uns angeht). We are not yet in the space suitable for reflecting on freedom, nor even for speaking of it, so long as we also close our eyes on this annihilation of freedom (Vernichtung der Freiheit). (WD 159)
It is necessary then to see, but also to hear, from the inside ear, ours, what this annihilation signifies of our freedom that, still in 1952, in its mute speaking (lautlose Stimme), the memory of our prisoners of war can say to us.
From 1934 to 1952, at least, whatever particulars these dates answer, the inside ear was then an explicit theme. Evidently this is not the sensory or sensitive ear [sensitive ou sensible]. No more than the hand is this an organ with which graspable or perceptible things are received or perceived. Here we are dealing with the same schema that permitted distinguishing Dasein's hand, always engaged with speaking and λόγος, from the ape's prehensile organs. And that is why the ear is called interior. But that the ear does not belong to the order of sensory exteriority does not mean that it is, for all that, the innermost ear of the intellect or of reason, a function of the intelligible of which the sensory ear would be only a metaphor here. This interior ear is neither sensory, nor intellectual, nor the metaphysical metaphor that will have assured in the tradition the transfer from one to the other. In this respect, the major and most explicit texts doubtless remain, it seems to me, a passage of Logos, that lecture from 1951 on fragment 50 of Heraclitus, and a passage from chapter 6 of Der Satz vom Grund (1955—56). Around Heraclitus's fragment that will soundly support the remark of Was ist das—die Philosophie? (οὐκ ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ Λόγου ἀκούσαντας ὁμολογεῖν σοφόν ἐστιν Ἓν Πάντα), Heidegger advances in 1951 one of the densest, most active and gathered interpretations of Logos. For lack of time, I shall keep only some gestures that turn around the ear. First of all, the affirmation according to which the "speaking of the tongue (das Sprechen der Sprache)" that has its essence in λέγειν as legen ("to lay," étendre) is determined neither on the basis of the φωνὴ, nor on the basis of the σημαίνειν (VA 204; EGT 64), in other words, comes under neither an acoustics, a phonetics, or a phonology, nor a theory of signification. Let us not forget that Heraclitus's fragment spoke of hearing or acoustics and said: "οὐκ ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ Λόγου ἀκούσαντας," what Heidegger hears and translates in this way: "'When you have not only lent me your ear (Wenn ihr nicht mich [den Redenden] bloß angehört habt), but when you hold yourself in a belonging capable of hearing (sondern wenn ihr euch im hochsamen Gehören aufhaltet, dann ist eigentliches Hören), that is authentic hearing"' (VA 209; see EGT 67). Nowhere are hearing and belonging, Hören and Zugehören, more tightly associated than in this reading of Heraclitus. And whether it is a matter of Versammlung or of Sein, this always passes through the λόγος and concenters itself around λόγος. At bottom logocentrism is perhaps not so much the gesture that consists in placing the λόγος at the center as the interpretation of λόγος as Versammlung, that is, the gathering that precisely concenters what it configures.
Next, and consequently, the ear is not for Heidegger an organ of the auditory sense with which we hear. Hearing (das Hören), in the authentic sense, is a gathering, a self-recollection (Sichsammeln) toward the word [parole] that is addressed to us (Anspruch, Zuspruch). The gathering of hearing is done starting from the address and not from the organ of hearing. We hear when we forget the ears and auditory sensation in order to carry ourselves, through them, toward what is said and of which we are part (gehören). In other words, Heidegger unceasingly recalls to us that Hören (entendre, hearing understanding) must be thought starting from listening or lending an ear (Horchen), and not the inverse. Everything is played out in the difference between hören and horchen. In order to hear (hören) what hören means, it is necessary to listen, to hearken (horchen), and not only hear. "Das Hören ist erstlich das gesammelte Horchen. Im Horchsamen west das Gehör. Wir hören, wenn wir ganz Ohr sind": "Hearing is first a gathered hearkening. The heard has its being in hearkening. We hear when we are all ears." This gathering in "all ears" [literally in the "all ear"] is why we do not hear with one or two auditory organs. As he will repeat in Der Satz vom Grund, Heidegger underscores that we do not hear because we have ears, but we have ears because we hear. And when we speak of thinking as hearing or hearkening, this is not a metaphor (Übertragung) transferring a "properly so-called" or allegedly authen- tic hearing [audition] onto the spiritual plane (auf das Geistige). Finally, we find again here the thread of the meditation on Überhören. Not hearing or misunderstanding, mishearing (überhören or sich verhören), is an essential possibility of hearing: "So gehört zum eigentlichen Hören gerade dieses, daß der Mensch Sich verhören kann, indem er das Wesenhafte überhört" (VA 206; see EGT 65): "Thus it belongs properly to hearing precisely that man can hear wrongly (mishear) insofar as he mishears the essential."
Der Satz vom Grund includes in this regard another essential gesture. Not only because every interpretation of the Nihil est sine ratione is displaced around a changing of tone (Ton, Tonart) of the "nothing" toward "is" and of "without" toward "reason," a changing of intonation the hearing of which makes us perceive a harmony (Zusammenklang) between Sein and Grund, but because Heidegger rejects there the sensible/intelligible opposition as well as the rhetoric it commands, in particular the concept of metaphor. This concept exists only "within the boundaries of metaphysics" (SG 89). For a long time and on several occasions having tried to situate and analyze this passage, I will make do here, in the present context, with underscoring two points On its subject, namely, that on the one hand this movement is again that of a going back from Plato to Heraclitus, and that on the other hand it is as valid for the eyes as for the ears, or rather for the eye and for the ear, for as I have shown on the subject of hands, the passage from the plural or the dual to the singular is essential here.
(1) To go back toward Heraclitus: after recalling that thinking must grasp through the gaze what we have properly heard in intonation, thinking grasping with the gaze just what is heard, Heidegger writes: "Thinking is a grasping through hearing that grasps through gazing," in conformity with "ancient doctrines," for example: "What, in the being, constitutes what it possesses of its own properness, Plato names ἰδέα, the aspect of the being and what is seen by us. Earlier, the properness of the being Heraclitus had called λόγος, the speaking of the being, to which we respond in hearing. These two terms show us that thinking is hearing and seeing (daß das Denken ein Hören und ein Sehen ist)" (SG 86).
(2) If "with," hearing with the ear, seeing with the eye, no more signifies the instrumentality of the agent than in the expression Mit-sein, that is as valid for hearing with the ear as for seeing with the eye. The examples are musical. In the first place, the Bach fugue we would never hear if we heard "with" our ears sound waves come to strike the tympanum. In the second place, Beethoven's deafness that did not prevent him from hearing more things and things greater than before. "We hear, not the ear. . . . Our organ of hearing is a condition in certain regards necessary, but never its sufficient condition, never the presenter and giver of what properly must be perceived" (SG 87—88). In the meantime, Heidegger had given himself over, in passing, he said, to an etymological digression. Perhaps some will find this digression no longer exempt from political import [portée]. The digression concerns in effect the vocable dumm, then also Dummheit, a word whose misfortune one knows has been assured by Heidegger's belated confiding about his indulgence for Nazism in its Hitlerian episode (eine große Dummheit, he said). In the same passage of Der Satz vom Grund, directly after the allusion to Beethoven, Heidegger notes: "Let's say in passing that taub ('deaf'), tumb [from which comes today dumm, Dummheit] are equivalents of stumpf ('blunted'), which explains why we find again the same tumb in Greek under the form τυφλός, 'powerless to see,' thus 'blind"' (SG 87).
Therefore, in 1955, in Was ist das—die Philosophie? when he says "we," "our ear," Heidegger designates several ears and several hearings: we who find trivial the statement "Alles Seiende ist im Sein," we are mortals that cannot and do not want to hear and rather remain in the deafness of Überhören. We are not gods, nor at this point philosophers yet. But we should then be rather on the side of the poets, who stand firm close by the origin of what "is" (ist) and hear it, transitively, as poets.
At the point where we are, before even all φιλοσοφία and all φιλία, no longer can φιλεῖν, εἶναι, and λέγειν be disjoined. Lovence (aimance) would be this transitivity of being in which, closest to symphony, one gathers and collects oneself, one-another say lovence (aimance) to themselves. They declare they are in love according to the ὁμολογεῖν. They do so all the more originarily, intensely, with the just and sweet force of a destiny, since we are there before the distinction between love and friendship, before the friendships (the three friendships of Aristotle), before every subject, all anthropology, all psychology of the passions, and perhaps even, we are coming to this, before Eros, erotic desire or at least a certain inquisitive and jealous tension, a certain Streben of Eros.
What in effect happens between on the one hand the experience of φιλεῖν, at the Heraclitean moment of λόγος as <ι>Versammlung, and on the other hand the origin of φιλοσοφία?
What happens then, as one could say in a language that is not literally Heidegger's, but that seems to me not to betray it, is the drama of a scission, a separation and a discord. The gathering, the harmony, the homology, and the φιλεῖν of λόγος were threatened in their unity, the wonder was lost. And a few alone, small in number, tried to save σοφόν from [contre] the Sophists, from men of the market- place of culture and of common sense. What common sense, that marketplace of culture, forgets or does not hear (überhort) is precisely λόγος, Sein, Versammlung, the wonder before being's splendor in which beings appear. That is what the Greeks had "to save and protect (retten und schützen)" before the aggression (Zugriff) of the marketplace, of sophistry, of sophistry's intelligence and rhetorical cleverness. Instead of astonishing, the sophists had an intelligible explanation all ready: for everything and everyone. They brought [apportaient] that explanation onto the market (auf den Markt), both the place of public opinion and the auction room of opinions, the places of auctioneering, of the cry and prattle. In this rapid and incisive way of describing the complicity between the sophist understanding (Verstand) and the free market of opinions, one sees dawn a reservation with regard to a certain democratization that would resemble a vulgarization, which associates the sophist understanding and commerce, the majority and political liberalism, indeed parliamentarism, one could almost say the "media." Despite other important differences I would like to come back to, there would be in those differences an affinity between Heidegger and Schmitt. When Heidegger speaks of the saviors of "φιλεῖν" that have taken responsibility for λόγος and being, for the essential Versammlung, he says "a few," the small number of those that, as men or free subjects could make a choice about this, have taken on themselves such a responsibility, the responsibility of responsibility, the responsibility of corresponding in Entsprechen with being, λόγος, and φιλεῖν. Small in number, they have taken on themselves the salvation of the most astonishing (die Rettung des Erstaunlichsten). Heidegger does not even say—and one should not say—that they have taken on themselves such a responsibility, as men or free subjects could. This responsibility has come upon them. It happens to those very rare Greeks to make their path toward σοφόν: "The protection (die Rettung) of the most astonishing (des Erstaunlichsten)—beings in being—happened (geschah) thanks to a few that took the path toward what is more astonishing there—namely σοφόν." These few strove (strebten) toward σοφόν. Heidegger underscores the word strebten. This tension proper to the few (durch ihre eigenes Streben) will have awakened, then maintained in them this nostalgia (Sehnsucht) for the lost (WP 14).
This nostalgia is the origin of philosophy. It is a reaction to the loss of the originary φιλεῖν, of the ὁμολογεῖν, of the correspondence with λόγος. One could even say that every philosophical, for example Aristotelian, determination of the πρώτη φιλία or of the τέλεια φιλία inhabits the space of mourning, but also of reactive nostalgia, sometimes triumphant as mourning can be, the space of semideafness that still hears [entend] without hearing any longer the ὁμολογεῖν of the originary φιλεῖν. Because it grows hollow in this nostalgia and this inner division, in this loss of the originary Versammlung of λόγος, the φιλεῖν of φιλοσοφία is no longer the φιλεῖν whose memory is nevertheless kept. Philosophy would stand in the tensing of this nostalgic tension that would make of itself a search, a quest, an investigation, a Suchen. This Suchen is an ὄρεξις, the tension of a desire. In everyday language, ὄρεξις is even a desire for food. From ἀρμονία or συμφωνία, one has passed to the desire strained toward satisfaction, accomplishment, completude, the reconstitution of a totality, restoration, The ὄρεξις is strained. Ὀρέγεσθαι is to strain [tendre], to strive toward [se tendre vers], to await [attendre], to be strained [étre tendu], streben. It is the movement of return toward the lost place, the suffering of νόστος, a "nostalgia of/for being," to cite in another sense the title of the book of a French philosopher, Ferdinand Alquié, whom the students of my generation were still reading and who would not be considered a militant Heideggerian. Heidegger does not give here any example of the interpretation of ὄρεξις by philosophers like Plato or Aristotle. Such examples can be multiplied. Let us think of what Phaedon says about the ὄρεξις of the soul, when the ψυχή, breaking with the senses, first with hearing and sight, then with pain and pleasure, ready to send the body packing (χαίρειν τὸ σῶμα), as well as commerce and exchange, etc., becomes strained in the desire of being, the desire of what is (ὀρέγεται τοῦ ὄντος) (65c). This ὄρεξις defines for Plato the one that is "truly a philosopher" (ἀλήθως φιλόσοφος).
Φιλοσοφία seeks then after. comes after, is later than the symphony, mourns the harmony of the originary Einklang. This delay eroticizes the philosophical search, goads on the properly philosophical question, and determines φιλεῖν in tension with Eros. And with this unexpected arrival of a philosophical Eros plunged into mourning, we are not far from the question of Geschlecht, one could even say, you are going to see why, of the Geschlecht of the question. Heidegger describes the moment, the now of philosophy searching for, seeking after being in this way: "Σοφόν—the being in being (das Seiende im Sein)—is now properly sought (wird jetzt eigens gesucht). Because φιλεῖν is no longer an originary symphony with σοφόν (nicht mehr ein ursprünglicher Einklang mit dem σοφόν ist), but the particular tension of a searching after σοφόν (sondern ein besonderes Streben nach dem σοφόν), the φιλεῖν τὸ σοφόν becomes 'φιλοσοφία.' Φιλοσοφία whose tension (Streben) is determined [destined, bestimmt] by Eros" (WP 14).
With this erotization of the questioning Streben, in the inquisitive tension toward σοφόν, toward the Ἓν Πάντα, the being that is gathered in being, the question upsurges: "What is the being insofar as it is?" With this question is philosophy born, which did not exist so long as φιλεῖν was in harmony with σοφόν and in homology with λόγος. Heraclitus and Parmenides were not philosophers, not because they were not yet philosophers, philosophers in the future, but because they were "the greatest thinkers (die größeren Denker)" (in modern Greek μεγαλύτεροι στοχαστές, which signified rather in ancient Greek the seers, those that see and conjecture clearly). Why are they the greatest thinkers? Not because they had been capable of some exploit, of a heroic Leistung (WP 15), but because, in a completely other dimension, they are found in the accord of φιλεῖν, in symphonic harmony, in the Einklang or homology with λόγος and the Ἓν Πάντα. They were the thinkers of φιλεῖν as λόγος, that is, as the gathering of being. The erotic step [pas] toward philosophy was accomplished later, by others, Socrates and Plato in the first place. This first step toward philosophy was prepared, but because it just missed being paralyzed by sophistry.
The noun φιλία does not appear in this passage written around 1955 in the tracks [trace] of Heraclitus. The insistence bears [porte] on the infinitive or the verbal substantive, on φιλεῖν as λέγειν. But if this fact is significant, if it marks perhaps that φιλία is already too philosophical, too Platonico-Aristotelian, that fact can also be interpreted as the effacement or the retreat [retrait] from a previous use. The noun φιλία was in effect present, and even frequent, right in the title of certain chapters of the seminar devoted to Heraclitus in 1943—44, a seminar that remains, it seems to me, the massive and then still invisible base of these remarks of 1955, invisible at least in France where this lecture was given at Cerisy-la-Salle. Section 6 of Die Wahrheit des Seins (Heraklit, GA 55: 127ff.) bears twice, in a and b, the noun φιλία in its subtitles, with the words Gunst and Gönnen as equivalents (we encountered them a short while ago in Die Sprache [in Unterwegs zur Sprache]), favor and the accord of the favor, the gift accorded, the offering or the grace accorded: "Die φιλία ist das Gönnen der Gunst, die etwas schenkt . . . (GA 55: 129): "φιλία," Heidegger says thus in 1943—44 "is to accord a favor that offers something." We will read what follows in a moment. But before coming to that text of 1943—44 that uses the noun φιλία, whereas Heraclitus, it seems to me, never uses anything but the verb φιλεῖν, I would like to propose two remarks on the appearing of Eros that we just saw pass very quickly in Was ist das—die Philosophie?
First remark. The gravity of this elliptical allusion to Eros can be evaluated in countless ways. Its implicit context is so rich. But in supposing a sort of pre-erotic moment of φιλεῖν does not Heidegger point to a sort of Lieben or lovence [aimance] that would still stand not only short of φιλία and of the different types of friendship distinguished by Aristotle (according to virtue, political interest, or pleasure), but short of the distinguishing mark [insigne] and the enigmatic distinction between love and friendship, this last resembling perhaps in its canonic model, as I have tried to show elsewhere, the homo- or monosexual de-erotization [désérotisation] or sublimation of fraternity, that is, of the virile duo. Where then, in this respect, is the voice of the friend placed, the friend that each Dasein bei sich trägt? Is this voice pre-erotic or not? What can that mean? What about its Geschlecht and its rapport to fraternity?
The second remark is induced by the first, and I shall also leave it in the preliminary stages [en chantier]. It concerns the place, the status, and the moment of Sein und Zeit. This book, opened with a reference to Plato's Sophist, is dedicated to the question of being's sense (die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein) that is to be posed again while renewing it (erneut zu stellen), for we do not always know what the word "being" "properly" (eigentlich) means (SZ, foreword, p. 1). Does such a book, dominated as it is by this question and by all the modalities of the questioning search, through Gefragte, Befragte, Erfragte, does such a book belong, as one would be tempted to think, to philosophy such as it will have been situated in 1955 by Was ist das—die Philosophie?, to φιλοσοφία in its post-Heraclitean moment, in the tension of Suchen or Streben that is erotic, plunged into mourning, questioning, yet nostalgic, after the loss of originary ὁμολογεῖν and originary φιλεῖν? Or else does Sein und Zeit already try to pass this limit in order to go back, as certain signs also let it be thought, short of that limit? I do not believe one can respond with a simple "yes or no" to the question posed in this form. Moreover, there it is a matter of the question of the question, as I have tried to show in Of Spirit.6 If the status and the moment of Sein und Zeit overflow this hypothetical frontier from both sides, and such would be the force of this inexhaustible event, then one can draw from it at least one consequence, the only one that interests me here for the moment, to wit, that the brief evocation of the friend's voice in Sein und Zeit's section 34 shakes or oscillates between two times. The evocation is the between-time of these two times that are not in time: before and after the philosophical Eros of the question, at the birth of this Eros that the evocation will also have carried. If Sein und Zeit were the book of the friend, it would also be the most and the least erotic book given us to read in this century.
After these two remarks, I return to the use of the noun φιλία in the seminar on Heraclitus of 1943—44. Sections 5 and 6, which form its most immediate context, would merit by themselves alone much more than a long lecture. I will limit myself then to some indications.
(1) Heidegger has just (GA 55: 5, pp. 110ff.) translated or interpreted Heraclitus's fragment "φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ" in the German statement: "'Das Aufgehen dem Sichverbergen schenkt's die Gunst."' Gunst is the word that will next (GA 55: 6, p. 127) be exchanged with the word φιλία. In other words, the accorded gift is here the self-concealing of φύσις, that is, of what rises, opens out, emerges, blossoms (aufgeht), or inversely the "rising" of what is concealed. Φύσις is an essential relation between apparently contradictory traits (Aufgehen/Untergehen, Aufgehen/Sichverbergen: rise/set, show/conceal). And φιλεῖν, φιλία, die Gunst is what accords, as a gift, one to the other. The audacity of this interpretative translation of "φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ" by "Das Aufgehen dem Sichverbergen schenkt's die Gunst" is dictated by the ear, by a penetrating listening (Hinhören) that while advancing from the inside toward the inside accords itself to the most initial (anfänglich) (GA 55: 5, p. 125).
(2) Heidegger values here the noun φιλία because he wants to say something about friendship (Freundschaft) and not only about φιλεῖν. He wants to speak about friendship in its rapport with philosophy and education. Concerning "φύσις he recalls that he has translated φιλία τοῦ σοφοῦ, in a preliminary way, by "friendship for what is to be thought (Freundschaft für das Zu-denkende)." But if the translation of σοφόν by "what is to be thought" remains provisional, what is the φιλεῖν of φιλία, or the φιλία of φιλεῖν? How are these words to be translated? "We now translate φιλεῖν in Heraclitus's sentence" (φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ), Heidegger says (GA 55: 128), doing then what he says and saying what he decides to do in hearing what is dictated to him by his ear that is intimately penetrating according to the originary Hinhören: "Jetzt übersetzen wir das φιλεῖν im Spruch des Heraklit mit 'die Gunst schenken' to accord favor or grace. But in their originary sense, this favor, this grace, this gesture that consists in according (Gunst, Gönnen, Gewähren)—we must not hear and under- stand (verstehen) them in their secondary and accessory sense, however related, of favoring (Begünstigen) or protecting (Begönnern). How then are we to hear and understand this accorded grace? To respond to this question, Heidegger writes a phrase that I cite and try to translate because it strangely resonates, across a certain interval, with the little phrase of Sein und Zeit and with its immediate context. One finds in the phrase the other, the being of the other, the belonging (gehören), and the enigmatic purport [portée] of "carry" (tragen, porter): "Das ursprüngliche Gönnen ist das Gewähren dessen, was dem anderen gebührt, weil es zu seinem Wesen gehört, insofern es sein Wesen trägt" (GA 55: 128): "Offering in an originary way is to accord to the other what comes back to it [what is due it] because that belongs to its being [or essence] insofar as that carries [sup- ports, bears, carries with it, includes, trägt] its essence."
The grace of this friendship leaves the other, lets it be, gives it what it has and what it already is. Nothing more and nothing less: this grace gives it what it has or what it already is, to be sure, but what it has and what it is only in the offering and according to the listening of this friendship. That is why, no doubt, this resonance "bei sich" of the friend's voice is essential to Dasein's own potentiality-for-being about which Sein und Zeit spoke to us. This grace: essential and light, since it lets be the other that it permits to be; grave but almost useless and inaudible, like an aphonic voice for an interior ear; discreet and inconspicuous but decisive, constitutive. Essential then also to its freedom, for what this grace of φιλία accords to the other is nothing less than the birth [eclosion] of freedom proper (eigene Freiheit) to the being thus accorded. There is certainly a reciprocity in the being thus accorded (das wechselweise gegönnte Wesen) (GA 55: 128), in the being thus freed for itself by such a friendship. But this reciprocity does not signify that one can be substituted for the other and that this substitution is a testimony of friendship, for example in the case of necessity, of distress, or of danger. In Dasein's being-one-for-the-other, manifestations or proofs of friendship are not required. It is even necessary that in acting each renounce exercising an influence, Heidegger specifies. One would be mistaken if one thought that such an offering of being is a matter of course, as if Dasein then were nothing other than a Vorhandensein. No, this ontological offering, this Gewährung des Wesens to the other requires knowledge and patience. One must be able to wait for the other to find itself in the unfolding of its being. One must accept that for its part the other does not attach any great importance to this self-discovery (aus dieser Wesensfindung kein Aufhebens macht) (GA 55: 129).
This insistence resembles the commentary, fifteen years later, of the little phrase from Sein und Zeit, where it is a matter of the "füreinander Dasein," of the structural character of the bond of friendship, of its rapport with the being of Dasein and its freedom, of the respectful, silent, almost voiceless discretion of this consonance effaced up to renunciation. The root of this renunciation is described in an admirable formula whose analogue will be found later in Lacan. Φιλία, Heidegger says in short, gives the being that φιλία is not. Φιλία gives to the other, recall what he said just before, what already belongs to the other, but φιλία for all that is no less required by Dasein as such. "Die φιλία ist das Gönnen der Gunst, die etwas schenkt, was ihr im Grunde nicht gehört und die doch Gewähr geben muß, damit des anderen Wesen im eigenen verbleiben kann" (GA 55: 129): "Φιλία is to accord a grace that makes the offering of something that at bottom does not belong to it and whose guarantee it must nonetheless give [for which it carries the responsibility] so that the being of the other can remain in what is proper to it." Φιλία is in short the other's proper, the gift to the other of what is to the other its very own proper or properness. And what then is due it. But this due escapes no doubt the dimension of the contracted debt. In Der Spruch des Anaximanders (1946), Heidegger also says that justice (δίκη), which he also translates by Fuge (joint, accord, coupling) is given, and he wonders how what is unfolded in ἀδικία, injustice or disjoining, can give justice, δίκη, in other words, can give what it does not have, and the question becomes: "Kann es geben, was es nicht hat?" "Can it give what it doesn't have?" (HW 329: EGT 43). It is necessary to pose the question and to respond if, why, and how such a gift, the gift itself, is possible or necessary: the gift of what one does not have as the only gift possible.
That for Heidegger is "the essential and concealed ground of all education." But by that very thing, insofar as this friendship is also philosophy, friendship for what is to be thought, φιλία is what gives to every historial people (geschichtliche Volk) a regard for the essential (GA 55: 129). This allusion to the historial Volk and to education is the trait that one would be tempted to call the most political in this 1943 text.
(3) But in order to avoid any misunderstanding, any mishearing. and any precipitation over this word "political," one must immediately specify that Heidegger is doubly careful concerning all human, subjective, anthropological, and psychological interpretation of Heraclitean φιλεῖν that upholds this whole discourse. Φιλία must not first be heard and understood [entendue] as human, subjective, or objective comportment. That would be an anachronism. Heidegger goes so far as to say that the anthropological or psychological point of view would be foreign even to Aristotle. What in modern times is called anthropology or psychology doubtless depends in his eyes, as one knows, on a metaphysics of subjectivity, on the interpretation of man as subject. He can thus declare that psychology did not exist for the Greeks, that Aristotle's Περὶ Ψυχῆς has nothing to do with psychology, that the fulfillment of metaphysics transforms that work [celle-ci] into psychology, that psychology and anthropology are the last word of metaphysics, that psychology and technics go together like the right and the left. And even that Christianity (and then, we can conclude from this, every Christian concept of friendship, of the "neighbor" or the "brother") constitutes the first stage in the formation of the passions for the subject of psychology (GA 55: 130). Whatever once more may be the case of this epochal distribution and of all the problems it poses, there appears to be little doubt that Heidegger always claims to speak here of φιλία, as he spoke of the friend's voice fifteen years earlier, in a space that is no longer, or not yet, that of the ego or the alter ego, of the ethicopolitical person or subject, of the åv0ponog of anthropology or of the ψυχή of psychology, to say nothing of the God of ontotheology.
(4) As regards the gods, but also Eros, I must neglect, for lack of time, what Heidegger says in the same passage about sentence 15 of Parmenides that names the Eros of the gods. Eros here is, when one thinks according to the essence, Heidegger says, "der dichtende Name für das denkende Wort 'die Gunst'" (GA 55: 132): "the poetic [poetizing] name for the thinking word that is said [or called] 'grace."' For this fourth and last point of reference, I shall not speak of Eros but of Ἔρις, which will introduce me onto the other slope [versant] of this reading. The other slope that is in truth only the same, fold according to fold,7 or fold according to false fold (or crease [faux pli]). If the grace, the favor, or the gift of friendship, die Gunst, is accorded to φύσις and through φύσις in its double movement of self-opening and -closing, of blossoming forth [eclosion] and dissimulation, of Aufgehen and Untergehen, of Aufgehen and Sichverbergen or Sichverschließen, then the conflict and the discord are neither strangers nor opposed to the grace of friendship. No more than Kampf, at the end of Sein und Zeit, was opposed to what it nonetheless is opposed to, namely, the voice of the friend. Here the grace accorded, die Gunst, is also the fundamental trait of Ἔρις, of discord (der Grundzug der Ἔρις, des Streits). On condition, of course [bien entendu], that one think Ἔρις, discord, in an originary way and not under the form of current and commonplace representations like what is placed opposite the adversaries in prejudice, detriment, quarrel, or disagreement (Ungunst, Mißgunst, Hader, Zwist) (GA 55: 133). In thinking the truth of being (and this part, Haupteil, of the seminar on Heraclitus is entitled Die Wahrheit des Seins), one could say that Ἔρις is also the truth of φιλία, unless it also be the inverse, perhaps in the sense in which Blake inscribes in a hardly legible way in the manuscript of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "Opposition is true Friendship."
Translator's note. I consulted the English translations of Heidegger where available and cited some passages with modifications as indicated herein; the exception is the translation of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), which gives the German pagination in the margins; for that text I have only given the German reference, although I have used the translation with modifications. However, in all the "translations" of Heidegger I have attempted to follow Derrida in his "translation," which "always risks," as he says, "a war and a sacrifice" between sound and sense.
5. I choose this word [join together, conjoindre] a bit conjugal—one could also say "become engaged" ["se fiance"]—because the Latin spondere signifies to promise, to promise in marriage [fiancer]. The spouses, the fiancé, the fiancée (sponsi) are first the promised, those that have been promised because they promise themselves in a place that is first that of spondere and of respondere. Spondere, but also sponsare, is to promise solemnly in prescribed forms, singularly in marriage. Sponsio, -onis, or moreover sponsus, -üs, is the solemn promise, engagement, the "yes," the pledge [gage] of what is engaged. If I do not imprudently go too far, the etymology of the Latin spondere leads back to a family of Greek words (σπονδή, σπονδεῖος, σπονδοφόρος) that all have a certain rapport with libation, more precisely with wine and other drinks that are offered or poured out at the moment of the sacrifice. This family of words would concern the sacrificial libation or the wine poured out on the earth, the hearth, on the altar, or on the victim: libation consecrated to god. From there the word σπονδή is thought to come to designate every alliance, the peace treaty or armistice, sworn faith, convention: from there, one is thought to have passed to the written or diplomatic document sealing an engagement, symbol or σύμβολον. The σπονδοφόρος is the herald that carries the propositions of peace or alliance.
6. Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
7. Pli selon pli 'fold according to fold' is a citation by Derrida without quotation marks from Mallarmé's "Remémoration d'amis belges," a citation that Pierre Boulez takes up in a composition of five pieces (see the sleeve note for the recording, CBS 75-770, a note that has been reprinted in Orientations: Collected Writings by Pierre Boulez, ed. Jean- Jacques Nattiez, trans. Martin Cooper [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986]: 174—76).—Trans. note.
Jacques Derrida - Geschlecht IV Heidegger's Ear part 2
Ereignis