moves, in what one “on the whole” means about things and about oneself (64). It is the “authentic discoveredness” of being-with-one-another in the world that grows out of speaking with one another in and out of everyday concerns (149). Even though doxa has a certain fixity and solidity in its peculiar familiarity and confidence in what first shows itself, that about which one has an opinion is always open to discussion and thus subject to negotiation (151). For opinion belongs to the realm of “that which always can be otherwise” and is accordingly always capable of revision. In its partiality, it can be true and false, and so must be left open to further discussion. Being-with-one-another thus contains the possibility that one is of this opinion and another of that, which leads to the possibility of speaking-against-one-another (138), disputation, and debate. A basic change in circumstances, say, in the state of a city, may also dictate a change of opinion (161) and reorientation toward its world. That is why doxa incorporates the possibility of negotiating-with-one-another (Verhandeln: also “parley, deliberate, plead, discuss, debate”), by which the common ground of a community is actualized and brought to fulfillment. But all such coming-to-an-understanding-and-agreement takes place on a ground of a familiarity which itself is left undiscussed (153). Doxa is thus at once permanent ground and source as well as impetus and end result of speaking-with-one-another (151). A similar “bargaining over opinions” (Abhandeln) occurs in the dialectic of a theoretical treatise (Abhandlung [152]), which also commonly starts in opinion. But on the practical level, it is the art of rhetoric, which is always conditioned by the politics in which it stands (134), that seeks to guide us to the right opinion and decision needed for resolute action (entschlossenes Handeln [145]) in a crisis situation. In such deliberations, the appropriateness of the judgments is to be evaluated not only in terms of the viewpoint being expressed and what speaks for it, the doxic context out of which it arises (162), but also how the opinion is held and presented (ethos of the speaker) and how the auditor stands to the opinion (pathos). Has the speaker, like a good statesman, risen above partial views to an oversight of the whole of the problematic situation, its kairos and full temporal horizon? And if the speaker is fully acquainted with the situation, is the speaker perhaps not saying all, veiling his or her own position and view of the matter? Is the speaker resolute and prudent in his insight into the issues at hand and competing views? Is the speaker attuned to the mood of his audience as well as that of the situation? And so on.
The later Heidegger will develop two additional concepts of the political: