Translated by Pete Ferreira
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The most interesting motives for the confrontation appear when we consider them from this perspective. First, if we don't stop at the first contact with the hermeticism of the exegesis of Phys. B 1, but if we keep in mind the entire development of Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle reconstructed here, it is easier to understand and accept the fact that what Heidegger seeks is not so much the historical truth about Aristotle, but the speculative emphasis presented in the Aristotelian text. And it's easier, therefore, to set aside for a moment the historical-philological compulsion rooted in us, it would be a shame if they ill-disposed us against the speculative passages which cannot but appear as forced and violent if we measure them with parameters and a finality that is not theirs, that is with historical truth and its ascertainments. And then we can open ourselves up, more willing to consider the confrontation by focusing on the philosophical issues that it raises and which need to be addressed.
Secondly, detecting the presence of Aristotle, especially in those central nodes of the reflections carried out by Heidegger in Being and Time, where so far it had been unsuspected, documents how when setting up and developing his philosophical project Heidegger knew how to readopt and rethink in new forms the problems and fundamental determinations of ontology and of Aristotelian practical philosophy, giving them new relevance and renewal. This allows us to highlight another important dimension of Heidegger's work, capturing in it not so much the highest expression of existentialism and not just the radical will to overcome metaphysics, but also and above all the most vigorous contemporary attempt to rethink the fundamental problems of philosophy that were asked for the first time in Greece.
Finally, in connection with this engagement with Greek thought, Heidegger's confrontation with Aristotle provides several points to consider in the analysis of the crisis of the meaning of modernity, even as it offers an understanding of our times that, problematic as they may appear, the sometimes prophetic tones of his discourse still indicate a way to call into question the '-isms ' of modernity and to grasp them more deeply in their connections with the fundamental thinking of the West, namely with Greek thought. In that sense you could say that, in reviving the broken link with Greece, Heidegger represents in our century what Hegel had represented to the nineteenth century.