keeping with the expanse of those limits within which this occurs, and in keeping with the way in which the essence of human beings is determined in unison with the manifestness of beings as a whole.
This connection has also been maintained in Aristotle's thinking. Toward the beginning of his Politics, Aristotle designates the human being as ζῷον πολιτικὸν. Translated in a superficial way. this oft-quoted word means: "the human being is a political being." In ascertaining this, however, people are content to let their knowledge of Aristotle's Politics rest. No one asks why the human being is and is able to be a "political being." One pays no attention to the fact that Aristotle also provides the answer to this question at the beginning of his Politics. The human being is a ζῷον πολιτικὸν because the human being, and only the human being, is a ζῷον λόγον ἔχον — a living being that has the word, which means: that being that can address beings as such with respect to their being. Who or what the human being is precisely cannot be decided "politically" according to that thinker who names the human being the "political being," because the very essence of the πόλις is determined in terms of its relation to the essence of human beings (and the essence of human beings is determined from out of the truth of being). Aristotle's statement that the human being is ζῷον πολιτικὸν means that humans are those beings capable of belonging to the πόλις; yet this entails precisely that they are not "political" without further ado. But how is this determination of the essence of human beings accomplished? Where is the word that gives the measure to this determination? We can hear it as the choral song of this tragedy, this tragedy that is a poetizing.
REVIEW
We have to understand the extent to which, according to the choral song of the Antigone tragedy, the human being is the most uncanny of all beings. Commensurate with the Greek meaning of δεινόν, we equate the uncanny with the fearful, the powerful, the inhabitual. Here each of these can in itself assume an oppositional form. For us, the uncanny signifies in the first instance the unity of these three. together w1th the1r poss1ble oppositional forms in each case. Thought directly. that which is most uncanny would then be this full essence of the uncanny, taken in its highest possible degree or intensification in every possible respect. Were we to think that which is most uncanny in this way. however. we would not hit upon what constitutes the proper and accordingly singular essence of uncanniness, nameley being unhomely. Many kinds of things can be fearful, powerful, inhabitual, yet they need not have the kind of essence specific to the