Translated by Pete Ferreira
41
First, though, we should take a further consideration. It must be noted that, even if the correspondence were full, what profoundly distinguishes the Heideggerian division from the Aristotelian is the hierarchy according to which the three modes of being are coordinated among themselves. In Aristotle, in fact, it is towards the character of the entity that are directed, respectively, the theoretical attitude, the practical attitude and the poetical attitude, to act as criteria for ordering the modes according to a scale of value; and it is precisely because of the nature of its objective that θεωρία is considered to be the exalted activity for man. For Heidegger, instead, the order of value between the three distinct modes of being is not directed towards the object, but is a reflection on the characteristics of the way of being of the human life, of being-there, and the assignment to the latter of ontic and ontological primacy. This peculiarity and that primacy are based, as we intend to show, on the practical determination of being-there. In other words: what one wants to show is that the Heideggerian characterization of human life in terms of being-there aims to capture the fundamental ontological determination on which rest all other determinations of being-there, and that this fundamental determination of being-there is instilled from an understanding on its way of being as a way of being-practical (moral).
With careful consideration, this appears already in the first and more general characterization of being that Heidegger introduces in § 4 and then develops in § 9 of Being and Time. Being-there is characterized in its essence as a having-to-be (Zusein), rather as the entity which goes always by its own being, in the sense that it, knowing it or not, refers, indeed, has to refer in all ways and always to its own being. Now, this referring by the being-there to its own being is not a referring where the latter is observed, identified and described in its truth, but it is a practical referring to, in the sense that the being has to assume itself in its own being, taking charge of it. This is not a reflective folding like inspectio sui, it is not a theoretical attitude, constative and veritable, which is addressed to being-there for it to apprehend characteristics and properties in the same way that it can turn to external reality. It is rather a reference that, while always requiring a decision about its own being, is of an eminently practical type.29
In the light of this understanding of the eminently practical character of being-there referencing its own being we can fully grasp the sense of the other fundamental determinations of being-there that Heidegger elaborates. It can be fully understood, before anything else, because Heidegger denotes the unitary determination of being-there as care (Sorge), which is the fundamental mode of disclosing (Erschlossenheit) of being-there in its being-in-the-world and the unity of existentials. But it also better understood because Heidegger in general denotes being-there referring to things as a taking care (Besorgen) – in which Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit have their unifying foundation – and the referring to others as a caring (Fürsorge); now it is better understood, because we now know that all these determinations of being-there have in common the practical character of 'care' because the very being of being-there has an eminently practical connotation.30
29 See E. Tugendhat, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstbestimmung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, pp. 164-244; also M. Bartels, Selbstbewußtsein und Unbewußtes, de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, 1976, pp. 132-189. However, it is important to point out that this practical (in the Aristotelian sense) connotation of being of being-there as having-to-be is maintained by Heidegger only until he tries to determine being-there from being itself in its almost transcendental purity. (Also on this M. Ruggenini, Il soggetto e la tecnica. Heidegger interprete inattuale dell’epoca presente, Bulzoni, Roma, 1977 pp. 41-70, speaks of a subjectivism of the 'first' Heidegger.) Subsequently, when it comes to understanding being-there starting from being, Heidegger will scrupulously wipe every trace of this practical determination and will turn the aperturale character of existence not to having-to-be, but the horizon of being itself. Hence the significant terminological correction – "being" instead of "have-to-be" — made to § 9 starting from the seventh edition of Being and Time. The renewed understanding of existence is no longer in reference to having-to-be plain and simple, but in reference to being itself, can be found in The Essence of Truth (particularly in § 4), dating back to 1930 but published in 1943, and in the introduction (1949) to the fifth edition of What is Metaphysics? (both texts are now in Wegmarken, 177-202, 365-383, GA 9, trans. It. U. Galimberti, Adelphi, Milano, in press). Even the handwritten notes of Heidegger at the so-called "Hüttenexemplar" of Being and Time (now published in GA 2) give an unequivocal testimony of this renewed understanding. It also manifests itself in the corrections that Heidegger brings to his interpretation of Aristotle, for example at the end of the course of the winter semester 1929/30 (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit), where, resuming his own interpretation of the problem of truth in Aristotle from 1925/26, he did not connect truth to the discovering attitude of being-there, but to its being free (Freisein), that it is no longer due to the spontaneity of being-there, but in the ontological connotation of its situational horizon (the being-free of course) (cf. GA 29/30, §§ 72-73).
30 See Being and Time, §§ 41-42, 63-65, GA 20, § 31; GA 24, § 15. Rightly Ruggenini in Il soggetto e la tecnica, pp. 54-58, points out that the "project of the world" is an "original practice"; from our perspective, which highlights the reference to practical philosophy in Aristotle, it should be noted, however, that the character of original practice lies in being and not only in its referring to the world of things (i.e., in Besorgen), but also in its referring to itself, to its own being (i.e. as Zu-sein). The same observation may be made against the acute interpretation of Besorgen proposed by G. Prauss in "Erkennen und Handeln" in Heideggers "Sein und Zeit", Alber, Freiburg-München 1977. – To properly understand this, it is important to have in mind the interpretation of the concept of πρᾶξις that, particularly since the beginning of the 1920s, Heidegger gives on the basis of the Nicomachean Ethics Book VI. Using this interpretation, in fact, Heidegger believes he can grasp two uses of the concept of πρᾶξις in Aristotle. In the first sense, it designates the action of man that has its own end in itself and not in the production of works: in this meaning, the human πράξεις is alongside the ποίησεις, the έπιστήμαι and the μέθοδοι (see Nic. Eth. I, 1 1094 to 1). In a more radical and more profound sense, however, the πρᾶξις would be the form of movement (κίνησις) of man's life in general, and the ποίησεις and the έπιστήμαι would then be modes of actualizing this originary πρᾶξις, they would be actualizations of the specific movements of human life. The πρᾶξις, understood as the κίνησις proper to man, acquires the character of fundamental determination of the being of man, i.e. it becomes its ontological character. So the originary πρᾶξις becomes for Heidegger the structure of the being of being-there. – Of this interpretation, mainly developed in coursework and in manuscripts still unpublished, traces remain visible even in writings published in his lifetime, as in the courses on Nietzsche, where, for example, we find a significant step in which Heidegger explicitly states that "Man is the highest form of living creature. The basic type of self-movement for him is action, πρᾶξις" (see Nietzsche, Neske, Pfullingen 1961, vol. I, p. 67; emphasis mine. See also pp. 66-69).