The Beginning of Philosophy

THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY

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Hans-Georg Gadamer THE

BEGINNING OF

PHILOSOPHY Translated by Rod Coltman

CONTINUUM • NEW YORK

2001 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX Original German edition, Der Anfang der Philosophie © 1996 Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co. Stuttgart English translation copyright © 1998 by The Continuum Publishing Company All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Continuum Publishing Company. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gadamer, Hans Georg, 1900[Anfang der Philosophie. English] The beginning of philosophy / Hans-Georg Gadamer. p. cm. ISBN 0-8264-1225-4 (pbk.) 1. Pre-Socratic philosophers. I. Title. B187.5.G3313 2000 182-
Contents Translator's Preface 1. The Meaning of Beginning

7 9

2. Hermeneutic Access to the Beginning

19

3. Solid Ground: Plato and Aristotle

33

4. Life and Soul: The Pbaedo

41

5. The Soul between Nature and Spirit

50

6. From the Soul to the Logos: The Theatetusand the Sophist

60

7. Aristotle's Doxographical Approach

71

8. Ionic Thinking in Aristotle's Physics

83

9. Parmenides and the Opinions of the Mortals

94

10. Parmenides and Being Index

107 126

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Translator's Preface CC TTie crucial thing in my lectures on the Presocratics is that I A begin neither with Thales nor with Homer nor do I begin with the Greek language in the second century before Christ; I begin instead with Plato and Aristotle. This, in my judgment, is die sole philosophical access to an interpretation of die Presocratics. Everything else is historicism without philosophy." With these unequivocal words, Hans-Georg Gadamer initiates a philosophical and philological exploration in which he peels away the palimpsestic layers of interpretation and misinterpretation that have built up over twenty-five hundred years of scholarship on the Presocratic philosophers. Moving easily from such ancient interpreters as Simplicius and Diogenes Laertius to the nineteenth-century German historicists and then to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, Gadamer presents us here with his only book-length work on philosophy before Plato and Aristotle and one of only a few extended treatments of the Presocratics in his entire corpus. I am not sure whether it is ironic or just oddly coincidental, however, that a book offering such a thorough critique of textual reproduction, reception, and interpretation should have its own peculiar doxographical history. The lectures presented here go back to one of Gadamer's last lecture courses on the topic of Presocratic philosophy, which he conducted toward the end of 1967, shortly before retiring from full time teaching to become Professor Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg. Some twenty years later, in 1988, he was asked by the Institute per gli Studi Filosofici to deliver another series of talks on the beginnings of philosophy, which he did without a manuscript and in what Gadamer himself refers to as "quite inelegant Italian." Vittorio DeCesare then transcribed a set of audiotapes of these lectures, smoothed out the Italian prose, and had them published in 1993 under the tide, Uinizio della filosofia occidentale. The Reclam publishing house then asked Gadamer to prepare a German edition of the book based on a translation from the Italian by Joachim

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Translator's Preface

Schulte. This present translation into English is based on Gadamer's definitive revision of Schulte's translation, which Reclam published in 1996 under the tide, Der Anfang der Philosophic. As the translator of these lectures into English, therefore, I was presented with the text of a series of talks based ultimately on a German lecture course; these talks, however, were delivered in Italian, then transcribed and revised for publication in Italy, then translated back into German and revised by the author before being published in Germany. As one might imagine, such a convoluted textual history could introduce certain difficulties for producing an "accurate" and readable English version. And, in fact, while the German edition is highly readable, I did have to contend with a few minor errors (mostly of a bibliographical nature) and a number of rhetorical inconsistencies, some of which seem to be traceable to the original transcription from audiotape. Through the helpful mediation of Richard Palmer, who happened to be in Heidelberg during the final editing process, all of my bibliographical corrections have been verified by Gadamer himself. Also, any substantial departures from the rhetorical structure of the German have been footnoted and explained. In a number of instances, however, without noting it, I have adjusted the punctuation of the German text to clarily Gadamer's own translations of Greek words and phrases and render them more consistent throughout. I have also transliterated the Greek so as to make it somewhat more readable, but scholars of the language may note an intentional inconsistency in my transliteration. For purely visual reasons, I have consistently written the Greek upsilon as a Roman "u" except in certain standard philosophical terms such as "pbysis" "hyle," and "hypokeimenon," all of which are traditionally written with the Roman "y.w While I alone assume all responsibility for any errors or awkwardness in this translation, I would like to acknowledge two people in particular for the invaluable assistance. In addition to Richard Palmer, who, aside from relaying questions and answers to and from Professor Gadamer for me, was kind enough to read and comment on every line of my translation, I want to thank Sigrid Koepke for her close reading of my original draft and her help in ironing out some of the more subtle idiomatic difficulties of the German text. I would also like to thank Charles Bambach of the University of Texas at Dallas for his helpful suggestions on various linguistic and philosophical problems.

1

The Meaning of Beginning

E

order to present the theme dealt with here, a theme that as always held a very particular fascination for me, I fall back on the notes from my last Heidelberg lecture-course, which I offered toward the end of the year 1967. Ever since then, in fact, I have thought that it might be worthwhile to take up the thread of that lecture-course once again. The theme is the beginning of Greek philosophy, which also represents the beginning of Western culture.1 This theme is not merely of historical interest. It touches on current problems of our own culture, which finds itself not only in a phase of radical change but also one of uncertainty and a lack of self-assurance. We therefore strive to establish connections to altogether different kinds of cultures, cultures that, unlike our own, did not originate in Greek culture. This is one reason for our interest in the first stages of the development of Greek thinking. Such an examination of the Presocratics does have relevance for us. It deepens our understanding of our own destiny, a destiny which begins, as do Greek philosophy and science, precisely in those years in which Greece's hegemony in the Mediterranean world, both on the sea and in trade, begins to take hold. A rapid cultural development follows immediately thereafter. It is no accident that the first Presocratics came from Asia Minor, from the coastal area around Miletus and Ephesus, thus from the same region that 1. Kultur

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The Beginning of Philosophy

dominated the trade and culture of the entire Mediterranean area at the time. This, then, is the theme I propose to address, though obviously only within certain limits and without any claim to exhaust it. For an undertaking of this kind never ends by arriving at a predetermined destination, as you can surely see from the fact I myself am coming back to the same topic once again after so many years in order to pose numerous new questions that have arisen and to pose them in a newly thought out and (I hope) improved form. At this point, I think it is necessary to begin with an introductory methodological consideration that will, in a certain sense, serve to justify my approach: the crucial thing in my lectures on the Presocradcs is that I begin neither with Thales nor with Homer, nor do I begin with the Greek language in the second century before Christ; I begin instead with Plato and Aristotle. This, in my judgment, is the sole philosophical access to an interpretation of the Presocratics. Everything else is historicism without philosophy. This preliminary assertion does require substantiation. As we know, it was the Romantics who first set themselves the task of researching and offering an interpretation of the Presocratics that comes out of the Romantic preoccupation with original texts. In eighteenth-century European universities, it was not yet the rule to study a Platonic text or any other philosophical text in the original. One used handbooks. As the study of original texts got underway, it signaled a change of attitude that was due to the great universities of Paris and Gottingen as well as other European schools in which the great humanistic tradition survived— just as it did, of course, first and foremost in the English colleges and universities. The German teachers of philosophy who first opened the gates to philosophical investigation and interpretation of the Presocratics were Hegel and Schleiermacher. The significant role that Hegel played in this respect—not only with his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, which were published by Hegel's friends after his death—is well known. (This is really quite an inadequate edition, which, of course, doggedly persists in the field of Hegelian thought; but the posthumous works have not been edited with the diligence that a thinker of such magnitude deserves.) Besides this, there are still other things in Hegel's

The Meaning of Beginning

11

works that demonstrate far more impressively how important Presocratic philosophy was for Hegel's thinking. Take, for example, the beginning of the Science of Logic, a "systematic" work that proposes to interpolate itself by dialectal means into the framework of Kant's extensive program of transcendental logic. It is extremely interesting to compare this beginning with the early manuscripts in which Hegel deals with the system of Kantian categories, to see how these concepts unfold step by step from out of one another toward the goal of the dialectical transition to the Idea. In Hegel's early writings from the Jena period, the best-known chapter of the Logic is missing—precisely the whole first chapter about being, nothing, and becoming. Hegel added this chapter later, and in it he undertook something nearly incomprehensible—that is, to introduce three beginning categories (namely, being, nothing, and becoming) that lie prior even to all logos, thereby preceding even the form of the proposition. Hegel begins with these mysteriously simple concepts that cannot be determined propositionally but are nevertheless foundational. Herein lies the beginning of Hegel's dialectical thinking—a beginning that is carried out by way of the Presocratics. In that other great work of Hegelian philosophy, the Phenomenology of Spirit, we find the same thing: the first chapters can be read as a single commentary on none other than the chapter in the history of philosophy devoted to the Presocratics, which Hegel himself was lecturing on at the time. It seems obvious to me that Hegel allowed himself to be guided by this first stretch of the philosophical road in formulating the architecture of his dialectical method of thinking. We can therefore conclude not only that the historical research into classical philosophy begins with Hegel in the nineteenth century, but that an ever-newly initiated and never-ending philosophical dialogue with the Presocratics begins here as well. The other great scholar and thinker was Friedrich Schleiermacher, the celebrated theologian and translator of Plato's works into German. In the context of translated literature from every culture, Schleiermacher's achievement stands out as a true paradigm. It constitutes a prelude to a new cooperation between humanists, such as philologists, on the one hand, and theoreticians, such as philosophers, on the other. Recently, the rediscovery of the indirect tradition of the Platonic doctrine by the Tubingen school of Konrad Gaiser and Hans-Joachim Kramer (following Leon

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The Beginning of Philosophy

Robin) has, as you know, led to the coining of the new expression, "Schleiermacherianism." This expression sounds awful in German, and I think it entirely misses the mark in terms of content. In my opinion, Schleiermacher deserves the credit for allowing Plato to be studied again not only as a writer but also as a dialectical and speculative thinker. In contrast to Hegel, Schleiermacher had a particular feeling for the individuality of phenomena. The discovery of the individual was indeed, at that time, the great achievement of romantic culture. The famous catch-phrase, that the individual is "ineffabile" and thus there is no possibility of conceptually grasping the individual's singularity, emerges in the Romantic period. Admittedly, this phrase does not have a written tradition behind it; but the gist of it shows up already in the early stages of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics where the differentiating of the logos finds it limits in an indivisible eidos. In Schleiermacher, one finds an extraordinarily flexible dialectical and speculative thinking combined with impressive classical and humanistic erudition. As a theologian he wrote, in addition to his main works, a succession of essays aimed at putting to rest the superficial and unwarranted equation of Greek philosophy and Christianity. It is thanks to him that the trail was blazed for the study of the Presocratics. One of his students, Christian August Brandis, wrote a great work on the philosophy of the Greeks2 and inspired the Berlin historical school from then all the way up through Eduard Zeller. Now I would like to interrupt these deliberations on the very beginnings of Presocratic historiography to pose a question of a theoretical nature: What does it mean to say that Presocratic philosophy is the beginning, the principium, of Western thinking? What do we mean here by "principium"'? There are many and various concepts of principium. It is clear, for example, that the Greek word, "arche," encompasses two senses of principium, namely, principium in the temporal sense of origin and beginning as well as principium in the speculative, logical-philosophical sense. I will leave out of consideration for the moment the fact that, according to scholastic usage, "principium" also generally means "philosophy" in the sense of a doctrine of principles. Instead, I will occupy myself with the many facets and horizons of the concept of 2. Handbuch der Ceschichte der Griechisch-romischen Philosophic

The Meaning of Beginning

13

"principium" in the sense of "beginning."3 The German word "Anfang" has always presented difficulties for thinking. For example, there is the problem of the beginning of the world or the beginning of language. The riddle of the beginning has many speculative aspects, so it will be worthwhile getting to the bottom of the problems harbored within it. In a certain sense, Aristotle had already seen the dialectic inherent in this concept. In the Physics (specifically, I believe, in the fifth book), he argues that motion ends in rest, for at the end of motion there must be something that remains and stands there completed. But what is its beginning? When does the motion begin? When does it end? When is it that what is living begins to be dead? When does death set in? When something is dead, after all, the moment of its beginning is no longer a concern. This is similar to the riddle of time, which likewise did not go unnoticed in the framework of Aristotle's dialectic: time has no beginning; for the moment we posit as the very first inevitably causes us to think of yet another, earlier moment. There is no escape from this dialectic of the beginning. What all of this means with regard to our theme is clear. When does the history of the Presocratics begin? With Thales, as Aristotle tells us? This is one of the points we will deal with in our discussion. Yet, at the same time, we should also note here that, in reference to the beginning, Aristotle also mentioned Homer and Hesiod, the first "theologizing" authors, and it may be correct that the great epic tradition already represents a step along the path toward the rational explanation of life and the world, a step that is then fully initiated by the Presocratics. But besides these, there is yet another, far more obscure precursor—something that lies prior to all written tradition, prior to epic literature as well as the Presocratics, namely, the language spoken by the Greeks. Language is one of the great riddles of human history. How is language formed? I remember quite well one day in Marburg, when I was still very young, how Heidegger spoke of the moment in which man raised his head for the first time and posed a question to himself. The moment in which something begins to occupy human understanding: when was that? This became a great bone of contention among us. Who was the first human to raise his head? Adam? Or Thales? 3. Anfang

The Beginning of Philosophy

14

If anything, all this strikes us today as laughable, and we were, in fact, still very young at the time. Nevertheless, perhaps this discussion did point to something of real significance, something connected with the great riddle of language. Language—according to an expression that no doubt stems from Nietzsche—is a fabrication of God. To come back to the Greek language: Greek in itself already offers speculative and philosophical possibilities of a particular kind. Here I wish to name only two. The first is well known as one of the most fruitful properties of the Greek language (which, by the way, it has in common with the German language), namely, the use of the neuter, which allows it to present the intentional object of thought as the subject. Moreover, there are the studies of Bruno Snell and Karl Reinhardt, those great teachers with whom I had the good fortune to be closely associated. They have made clear how the concept already announces itself in this use of the neuter. Indeed, something is indicated in the use of the neuter that is found neither here nor there and yet is common to all things. In Greek poetry, just as in German poetry, the neuter signifies something omnipresent, an atmospheric presence. It has to do not with the quality of a being,4 but the quality of a whole space, "being,"5 in which all beings appear. The second distinguishing characteristic is obvious as well. It is the existence of the copula, the use of the verb "to be** to link the subject and predicate, that constitutes the structure of the sentence. This is also a crucial point, but we need to bear in mind that the copula does not yet have anything to do either with ontology or with the conceptual analysis of being that begins with Plato, or perhaps with Parmenides, and never comes to a definitive conclusion in the Western metaphysical tradition. It occurs to me here that I forgot to mention a question that, in my opinion, we do not entertain often enough but which has claimed my attention for a long time. It is the question of the Greeks' adoption of the alphabet. In comparison to other kinds of writing—say, those which use ideograms or pictograms—the alphabet is a prodigious feat of abstraction. The Greeks, of course, did not invent alphabetic script, but they did appropriate 4. eines Seienden. Unless noted otherwise, "das Seiende" will be rendered as "that which is," "what is," oii occasionally, "beings," depending on the context, while the word "being" will be reserved for "das Sein.*

5. das Sein

The Meaning of Beginning

15

it, and—by introducing vowels into the Semitic alphabet—they perfected it. This appropriation took two hundred years at the most. Homer, for example, is unthinkable without the general introduction of alphabetic writing. All of this goes to show how complicated things are with regard to the meaning of "principium" in the sense of that which comes first As we see, with this sense of beginning an entire series of alternatives is brought into view: Thales, epic literature, the riddle of the Greek language, and writing. I think it necessary at this point to adhere precisely to the fact that something is only ever a beginning in relation to an end or a goal. Between these two, beginning and end, stands an indissoluble connection. The beginning always implies the end. Whenever we fail to mention what the beginning in question refers to, we say something meaningless. The end determines the beginning, and this is why we get into a long series of difficulties. The anticipation of the end is a prerequisite for the concrete meaning of beginning. We are dealing here with the beginning of philosophy. But what actually is philosophy? Plato furnished the word "philosophy" with a somewhat artificial and decidedly unconventional emphasis; for him, philosophy was the sheer striving after wisdom or truth. For Plato, philosophy was not the possession of knowledge but only the striving for knowledge. This did not correspond to the customary usage of the terms "philosophy** and "philosopher.** The word "philosopher" usually referred to a person who was entirely engrossed in theoretical contemplation, hence someone like Anaxagoras, who reportedly answered the question of happiness by saying that it consisted in observing the stars. Whatever else it might have been, as striving after wisdom and as possession of wisdom, philosophy had at its disposal a domain far broader than the one we ascribe to it today as a combination of the Enlightenment, Platonism, and historicism. In its present sense, there is essentially no philosophy at all without modern science. In its highest meaning, philosophy is considered the supreme science; nevertheless, in the end, we must admit that philosophy, for its part, is not really a science in the same sense as die others. Beginning and end are thus bound up with one another and cannot be separated. From where something shows itself to be a beginning and what direction it will take both depend upon the goal.

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The Beginning of Philosophy

In this relationship between beginning and end we can already begin to detect one of the main problems in the analysis of historical life, namely, the concept of teleology or, to use a current expression, development. This, as you know, is one of the best known problems of modern historicism. Nevertheless, the concept of development has absolutely nothing to do with history. Strictly speaking, development is the negation of history. Indeed, development means that everything is already given in the beginning—enveloped in its beginning. It follows from this that development is merely a becoming-visible, a maturing process, as it plays itself out in the biological growth of plants and animals. This, however, means that "development" always carries a naturalistic connotation. In a certain sense, therefore, discourse about an "historical development" harbors something of a contradiction. As soon as history is in play, what matters is not what is merely given, but, decisively, what is new. Insofar as nothing new, no innovation, and nothing unforseen is present, there is also no history to relate. Destiny also means constant unpredictability. The concept of development, therefore, brings to expression the fundamental difference that exists between the process-quality of nature and the fluctuating accidents and incidents of human life. What comes to expression here is a primordial opposition between nature and spirit. How, then, are we to understand my thesis, according to which the beginning depends upon the goal? Perhaps in the sense that the end of metaphysics is taken to be this goal? This was the nineteenth-century answer. In a masterfully written chapter of his book, Introduction to the Human Sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the followers of Schleiermacher and his school, depicted the beginning of metaphysics from the viewpoint of its collapse. For Dilthey, the nineteenth century is the period in which metaphysics loses its authority to the positivism of the sciences. In this sense, it is therefore possible to speak of the end of metaphysics and, consequently, also of its beginning in the way that Aristotle does in the first book of the Metaphysics, where he refers to Thales as the first person to have relied upon experience and evidence for his explanations rather than just retelling the divine myths. Another concept of the end, one that is connected with the above, is the one according to which scientific rationality or scientific culture forms the goal. In this case, we are dealing with nearly the same thing, albeit from a different perspective. While, in the first case, metaphysics comes to a conclusion in the

The Meaning of Beginning

17

nineteenth century after a two-thousand-year ripening process, in the second case, scientific rationality—and metaphysics along with it—is seen as determining the goal of humanity in general. In this regard, one could cite the slogan, "From Mythos to Logos," a phrase that seeks to capture the entire history of the Presocratics in one comprehensive formulation. Still more widely known is the concept coined by Max Weber, die Entzauberung der Welt,6 or even the Heideggerian concept of the forgetfulness of being. As we are gradually realizing today, however, it is perhaps not so entirely obvious that the end of metaphysics is the goal toward which the path of Western thinking was headed from the beginning. Furthermore, there is a third and more radical conception of the goal: the end of man. This is an idea that we know of not just from Foucault, but also because it is put forward by many other authors. It seems to me that this is not a perspective from which we can derive a satisfactory definition of the concept of beginning. For in this case, the determination of the end is just as imprecise and as nebulous as the beginning. But there is yet a further meaning of "beginning,** and, for our purposes, it seems to me that this one is the most productive and the most suitable. This meaning is brought out when I speak not of that which is incipient but of incipience.7 Being incipient8 refers to something that is not yet determined in this or that sense, not yet determined in the direction of this or that end, and not yet determined appropriate for this or that representation. This means that many eventualities—within reason, of course—are still possible. Perhaps the true sense of "beginning" is nothing more than this: that one knows the beginning of a thing means that one knows it in its youth—by this I mean that stage in the life of a human being in which concrete and definite developmental steps have not yet been taken. The young person starts out in uncertainty but at the same time feels excited by the possibilities that lie ahead. (Today this fundamental experience of being young is threatened by the excessive organization of our lives—so much so that, in the end, the young no longer know or scarcely know the feeling of launching into fife, of the ongoing determination of their lives from out of their own lived experience.) This analogy suggests a movement that 6. Literally, the "de-magification" of the world. 7. nicht votn Anfangenden, sondern von Anfanglichkeit 8. Anfanglichsein

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The Beginning of Philosophy

is open at first and not yet fixed but which concretizes itself into a particular orientation with ever-increasing determinateness. This, I believe, is the sense in which we must speak of the beginning that commences with the Presocratics. In them there is a seeking without knowledge of the ultimate destiny, the goal of an emanation rich in possibilities. It comes as a surprise when we discover that the most important dimension of human thinking opens itself up in this beginning. This discovery corresponds in a way to Hegel's intuitive insight when he begins his Logic with the riddle of the unity of being and nothing. He even refers to religion in this context in order to suggest that this is not simply an empty word, not merely a perspective that loses itself in indeterminacy, but is determined by the fact that it is potentiality—or rather virtuality, as I like to say, for potentiality is always the possibility of a determinately real actuality, whereas virtuality is open in the sense of an orientation toward an indeterminate future. Finally, I want to point out that the beginning is not something reflected but rather something immediate. The discourse of "principium" is, to my mind, much too reflexive to indicate something that is not yet a stage upon the path of reflection, but is rather—as I have tried to suggest through the analogy with the youth—open to concrete experience.

2

Hermeneutic Access to the Beginning 'Throughout my remarks, it is essential to bear in mind the role J. that Hegelian logic plays as the reference point for the writing of the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century. Significant names such as Eduard Zeller or Wilhelm Dilthey are closely tied to the tradition of Hegelian logic. When it comes to discussing the initial categories of Hegel's logic, I, for one, disagree with the claim that it is all about being and non-being. For nothing is not nonbeing but precisely nothing.1 A fundamental point of my argument asserts that the first three categories are, at bottom, not categories at all because they are not predicated of anything. On the contrary, they are like simple orientation points, and this is extremely important if we are to grasp that our understanding of the beginning that emanates from the end is never definitive. It is not the last word simply because even the movement of reflection has its place within the context of a beginningless and endless tradition.2 Admittedly, Hegel insists that this is not a question of the movement of self-consciousness but of the movement of ideas. Still, to assume that ideas and the thinking of them form separate poles is truly a superficial way of looking at things. Indeed, Hegelian logic is an entirely Greek logic insofar as Greek philosophy knows only ideas and knows nothing of self-consciousness. The concept of nous is but an early manifestation of reflexivity as 1. Denn das Nichts ist kein Nichtsein, sondern eben das Nichts. 2. Tradition

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The Beginning of Philosophy

such, and this reflexivity does not yet have the character of modern Cartesian subjectivity. This, of course, only defers the problem. In the end—in absolute knowing—the difference between the Idea and its movement is superseded3 and the movement is unquestionably the movement of thinking, which we, nevertheless, view as something like the projection of the ideas upon a wall. By way of elucidation, I would just like to add that the three meanings of "beginning" that I spoke of [in chapter 1] cannot be separated from each other. They must be understood as three sides of one and the same thing. These are the historical-temporal meaning, the reflexive meaning with respect to the beginning and the end, and the one meaning that suggests perhaps the most likely and the most authentic idea of the beginning, namely, that of the beginning that does not know in advance in what way it will proceed. I put this three-part division forward to serve as my premise for opening up the Presocratics philosophically. In any case, according to this premise, the beginning is not given to us directly; rather, it is necessary to proceed back to it from another point. In this way I avoid completely excluding the reflexive relationship between beginning and end, which would, after all, be a question of applying a concept that I myself proposed, a concept that would thereby carry over into the realm of the history of philosophy and its origin in Greek culture. As I have already emphasized, the interest in the Presocratic tradition arises with Romanticism, and Hegel, like Schleiermacher, affirms the significance of temporal movement and of history for the development of the content of Spirit. Here we could recall Hegel's famous assertion that the essence of Spirit lies in the fact that its appearance occurs in time, in history. The object here is not to go through the entire development of European scholarship in the nineteenth century. I have already given an overview of the great nineteenth-century interpreters of the Presocratics in an article published only in Italian.4 Here, I would like to recall just two figures who are representative of both historical interpretation and the debate over the principles and methods of Problemgeschichte5 that raged within the 3. aufgehoben: canceled and preserved at the same time. 4. "I Presocratici," in volume 3 of Questioni di storiografia filosofica (edited by Vittorio Mathieu, Brescia: Editrice La Scuola, 1975), 13-114. 5. Literally, "problem history," the term signifies a technique of interpreting history in terms of the problems that one discerns within it. Unfortunately, there is no elegant way to render this term in English,

Hermeneutic Access to the Beginning

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framework of German culture at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In addition to these remarks, I will then comment on what I call "effective history"6—an expression affiliated with hermeneutics—which plays a central role in the whole of philosophy that is founded upon language, understanding, and interpretation. First of all, I would like to recall Eduard Zeller and the great work he devoted to the philosophy of the Greeks. This work is also well known in Italy, and indeed for good reason. The five volumes of the last Italian edition are a treasure trove of scholarly knowledge and expertise. It is to their credit that Rodolfo Mondolfo and his followers have enlarged and edited the Italian edition by taking account of scholarly advances in the field of the ancient philosophy. Mondolfo, with his erudition and good judgment, has succeeded in renewing Zeller's classic opus and keeping it up to date. Turning back now to Zeller's work itself, the question arises as to what really sets it apart. Eduard Zeller was originally a theologian; his interests, however, led him into the history of philosophy and historical research. Thus he made numerous contributions along the lines of German historicism. His conceptual basis is a moderate Hegelianism. This led him to detect a certain meaning in the development of philosophical thinking—and especially Greek thinking. He sees a meaning in it, but not one commensurate with Hegel's conception of the necessity of development. Besides, even if we admit that a complete parallelism between the logical development of the ideas and its progress in the history of philosophy cannot be accepted unreservedly, interpreting the philosophical tradition by means of the Hegelian schema is by now a fixture of our way of thinking. In any case, this constitutes Zeller's moderate Hegelianism, and I would now like to offer an example to illustrate how it becomes operative: As you know, the relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is a controversial one. One side tells us that Parmenides criticizes Heraclitus, another side claims that Heraclitus is a critic of Parmenides, and yet another side says that there is probably no historical relationship here at all. Maybe the truth is that neither of the two knew anything of the other. It would not be at all unlikely that they had no connection to each other whatsoever— 6. Wirkungsgeschichte

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at least not during their respective periods of creative activity— since, after all, the one lived in Ephesus, the other in Elea. Why has this diesis of mine caused such a stir? The answer is clear: to this day, Hegel has a hand in everything! Even the historian finds it plausible that all things are bound together in the progressive development of knowledge! This historical way of thinking, which arises in the nineteenth century and still appears plausible to us today, seems to me a convincing example of the living Hegelian legacy, a legacy that is certainly present in Zeller as well. We must always bear this legacy in mind if we are to see Zeller's limitations when it comes to textual interpretation. Just as the specter of Hegel looms behind the figure of Zeller, so Schleiermacher, the other reference point for nineteenthcentury Presocratic historiography, comes into view behind Wilhelm Dilthey. In a country like Italy where historicism has deep roots, Dilthey is well-known. Here, I would just like to recall very concisely what, to my mind, is fundamental to Dilthey, namely, the concept of structure, which, of course, is used here in its comprehensive sense and not in the specialized meaning of contemporary structuralism. Dilthey's introduction of this concept into the philosophical discussion is a remarkable accomplishment. It marks the first resistance on the side of the human sciences7 to the incursion of natural-scientific methodology. In a time when epistemology occupied a dominant position, Dilthey dared to take a stand against the prevailing tendency to posit inductive logic and the principle of causality as the only models for explaining facts. In this context, "structure" means that there is yet another way of understanding truth besides inquiring into causes. Structure denotes a connectedness among parts in which no one part is thought of as having priority. This accords with the teleological judgment of Kant's Third Critique, where something obvious is soundly demonstrated, namely, that in a living organism no part occupies the first position and has to fulfill the sole executive function while the others are all secondary. On the contrary, all the parts of the organism are unified, and they all serve it. Although the expression "structure," as such, comes from architecture and the natural sciences, Dilthey's understanding of the word is largely metaphorical. Structure does not mean that there 7. Wissenschaften vom Menschen

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is first a cause and then an effect; rather, it has to do with an interplay of effects. Accordingly, Dilthey brings into play another concept which has been of great importance to me, namely, the "matrix of effects,"8 a concept that does not focus on differentiating between cause and effect but on the connection that each and every effect has relative to the others. The same holds true for the work of art as is does for the living organism. Dilthey's favorite example is the structure of a melody. A melody is not a mere sequence of tones. A melody has a conclusion, and it finds its fulfillment in this conclusion. A feature which the knowledgeable listener distinguishes—and, in particular, the listener of difficult music—is, as you know, an occurrence that stands out from the rest, the moment in which the composition comes to an end and immediately, because the work has fulfilled itself in the conclusion, the applause sounds. Like an organism, the artwork forms a well-structured matrix of effects, and thus, as long as we remain in the realm of the aesthetic, there can obviously be no question of the artwork having a causal explanation; rather, its explanation must be based on such concepts as harmony and interaction, thus it must be based on structure. With this way of looking at things, Dilthey wants to justify the originality and the autonomy of the human sciences.9 There is indeed in the human sciences a kind of evidentness of structural connections and a mode of understanding them that is completely different from the procedures by which the natural sciences work (the natural sciences at that time being understood in mechanistic terms). Now the question arises of how far we can carry this way of looking at things in terms of structural connections into the realm of Presocratic philosophy. Where is there a pristine work here? Where is there a text in the realm of Presocratic philosophy that is complete enough to present itself in a way that shows its internal connections? We know nothing more than fragments and quotations by later authors, often mere allusions and distortions, in short: a tradition so tenuous that to apply the "principle of structure" adapted from aesthetic experience would seem extremely forced. We can add to this difficulty an observation of a more general character that has great significance for me: We never find 8. Wirkungszusammenhang 9. Geisteswissenscbaften

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ourselves in the situation of being pure observers of or listeners to an artwork because in a certain sense we are always involved in our tradition. Comprehending the objectives, the inner structure, and the context of a work is not in itself sufficient to clear away all our prejudices that arise from the fact that we ourselves stand within a tradition. The most convincing example, one that vividly illustrates this problem, is found in Dilthey's Introduction to the Human Sciences. In the second part of this book, Dilthey describes the origin, the development, and the decline of scientific metaphysics. It is surprising how Dilthey portrays the venture that the Greeks had undertaken—a hopeless one in his view—as they tried to conceptualize the images of religious, speculative, poetic, and mythological intuition scientifically. For him, a scientific metaphysics is in itself something of a contradiction. For it is the desire to express the depths of life scientifically in spite of their being inaccessible to science. This state of affairs is wonderfully exemplified by Dilthey's interpretation of Democritus. Democritus is the last important thinker of his epoch. He has continually been denied the recognition he deserved because the entire history of humanity has been dominated by a metaphysics based on the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. In Hellenism this perspective admittedly declined in significance, but the classical tradition of metaphysics persisted through the entire period and came to predominance once again in the Middle Ages. Only in modern times, only in the wake of natural-scientific development, do Democritus and atomism find new supporters (and today there are authors who, like Popper, glimpse in Aristotle an antiquated dogmatism and in Plato a completely misguided ideology of the same stamp as National Socialism). The point that I want to establish here is clear: even such a disciplined thinker as Dilthey, a thinker who represents an historical mode of thinking entirely his own, ultimately clings to a kind of modernistic perspective that is entirely alienated from history. I am therefore persuaded that even historicism, which recognizes the individuality of each structure, is not free from the prejudices of its epoch, prejudices that continue to exert an influence on the disciples of this Dcmocritan perspective. Nowadays, of course, it would not be easy to imagine anyone in the third century before Christ who would have thought a Galileo possible. Despite the great achievements of Euclid and Archimedes,

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mathematics at that time was still not well enough developed for this, and there are many other historical arguments that preclude this view of things. There is, however, yet another way to approach an object of scholarship, and we call this "Problemgeschichte."10 A new principle gained acceptance toward the end of the nineteenth century: In philosophy there is no systematic truth, no universally valid system. Every system is one-sided; it is not the truth as such but only a more or less partial view of the truth. Nevertheless, the same problems underlie the formation of the different systems, and to this extent it is possible to speak of a history of philosophy and even of a philosophy of the Presocratics. Hermann Cohen, for example, interprets Parmenides as the discoverer of identity, Heraclitus as the discoverer of difference, etc. Even here we can detect a Hegelian foundation, a foundation of which the historians of philosophy are seldom adequately aware. Hegelian logic is like a huge quarry from which all later history of philosophy takes its building materials. But what is a problem, really? The term comes from the language of competitors who line up against each other and attempt to throw obstacles in each other's way. From here, the expression is transferred figuratively to debate: an argument posed against the perspective of the other participants in a conversation is like an obstacle. In this sense, a problem is something that impedes the progress of knowledge. Aristotle has formulated this concept of the problem quite aptly in the Topics. This gives us an opportunity to point out the difference between science and philosophy. In science, the problem is something that demands that we not be satisfied with hitherto accepted explanations but continue on and seek out new experiences and new theories. This is why the emergence of a problem in science is, as Popper says, the first step along the road of progress. But where this problem comes from is another matter, which Popper would perhaps dismiss as a psychological question. To precisely test and verify the consequences of a theory is not the sole decisive point for scientific knowledge. On the contrary, as a rule, the hallmark of the true researcher is the discovery of new questions. This is the most important legacy of the researcher: the imagination—for the main thing is to find a fruitful way of 10. See note 5 above.

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putting the question. This—and not verification or falsification, as dogmatic Popperianism would have it—is the crucial element for scientific creativity. Of course, Popper is correct when he says that the sciences have the task of solving the questions they pose for themselves. But the task of posing the right question is no less important. And one must also admit that there are problems that lie beyond the realm of scientific possibility. We can see from this how philosophy is different. Even if the philosopher realizes that the solution to such problems is ruled out, the problems are nevertheless not inconsequential because of this. It is therefore not correct to say that if a problem admits of no falsification then it presents no question for the thinker. This is exactly why it is in the Topics, hence within the context of the theory of the dialectic, that we find Aristotle's theory of the problem, which, of course, is not to be understood in Hegel's sense but in exactly the opposite sense of a movement of thinking that does not claim to solve problems completely and thus remains in the neighborhood of rhetoric. The rigidity and intractability of the problem is eliminated in this version of the concept. Whoever would look for stable problems in the instability of historical life would obviously have to maintain that the same problems recur again and again. Let us take the problem of freedom as an example. But which freedom are we dealing with here? Freedom as eleutberia in the historicopolitical sense of independence and sovereignty? In that case, being free means nothing more than not being a slave. This freedom is certainly not the same as that preached by Stoic moral doctrine, according to whose dicta the highest condition of freedom consists in not desiring things which we cannot have. This too is freedom, and indeed it is well-known that Stoic philosophy proposes the thesis that one who is wise is free even if he is in chains. Or what about the freedom of Christian doctrine, the freedom of choice that Luther discusses in De servo arbitriot Furthermore, there is the freedom thematized in the framework of the dispute between determinism and indeterminism. This debate unfolded throughout the nineteenth century, and the discussion continues into the twentieth. But in this case the concept of freedom is not defined in opposition to the dominance of a ruler who has at his disposal the lives and the actions of subjects, but rather in terms of nature and its necessary causality. Over against this the question arises as to whether freedom exists at all. I still

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remember when the physicists of the Copenhagen school created quantum theory. This was then brought forward by many reputable scientists as the solution to the problem of freedom. This seems almost ludicrous to us because we have not forgotten the Kantian distinction between causality as a category that applies to the facts11 that the natural sciences deal with, and morality, which is not a fact12 in the same sense as the set of facts13 examined by physics, but rather a "fact"14 of reason. Freedom is a "fact of reason."15 This formulation, which Kant himself employed, may cause confusion. Opposite concepts are brought together in it, namely, the truth of facts16 and the truth of reason,17 to put it in Leibnizian terms. But what about Kant's assertion that freedom is a necessary condition for the human being to be a moral and social person? Evidently, this concept of freedom is fundamentally different from the one that seems to be suggested by the non-determinacy of phenomena but which, for that very reason, cannot use as its basis the freedom of humanity. A further characteristic example of the error one commits when one attempts at all costs to find the same problem in historically diverse concepts can be drawn from the realm of value ethics. In the nineteenth century, the concept of value taken over from political economics was, as we know, also carried over into to philosophical theory. This concept, which Lotze used, came to be applied by Max Scheler and in even larger measure by Nicolai Hartmann, who was one of my first teachers and a fatherly friend. Hartmann interpreted the Aristotelian virtues as values, yet this interpretation is obviously inadequate. "Value" has an objectifying meaning. Value has its own validity; it is independent of any evaluating; thus it is knowledge. In Aristotle, on the other hand, virtue comes from education.18 Aristotelian virtue characterizes the human being as the person among people, not just in the sense of correctly recognizing values that are valid in themselves, but in the sense that the human being exists and comports 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Tatsachen Faktum Tatbestdnde Tatsache ein Faktum der Vernunft Tatsacbenwahrheit Vernunftwahrheit Erziehung

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him- or herself through education,19 habit, and character. In this respect, Aristotelian virtue is fundamentally different from the concept of value found in phenomenology. This is one of those cases where the lack of historical differentiation is patent, and for this reason everything gets reduced to one and the same problem. Let us not forget, by the way, that Scheler, too, raised objections against Hartmann's equating values with Aristotelian virtues. How do I now define my own procedure and my interpretations in relation to Dilthey and problem history? I refer here to "effective history" and of "historically effective consciousness." This means, above all, that it is not correct to assert that the study of a text or a tradition is completely dependent upon our own decision making. Such a freedom, such a standing at a distance from the examined object simply does not exist. We all stand in the life-stream of tradition and do not have the sovereign distance that the natural sciences maintain in order to conduct experiments and to construct theories. It is certainly true that in modern science—for example in quantum mechanics—the measuring subject plays a different role from that of the purely objectifying observer. This, however, is something completely different from standing in the stream of tradition, being conditioned, and knowing the other and his views, as such, on the basis of one's own conditionality. This dialectic involves not only the cultural tradition, i.e., philosophy, but also moral questions. Indeed this too has nothing to do with the expert who "objectively" studies the norms from the outside but rather with a person already imprinted with these norms: a person who finds himself already within the context of his society, his epoch, his nexus of prejudices, his experience of the world. All of this is already in effect and is determinative whenever we confront a particular perspective or interpret a doctrine. The concept of effect is ambiguous and is in certain respects an attribute of history, but it is also in some sense an attribute of consciousness. Consciousness, without being conscious of it, is conditioned by historical determinations. We are not observers who look at history from a distance; rather, insofar as we are historical creatures, we are always on the inside of the history that we are striving to comprehend. Herein lies the peculiarity of this kind of consciousness—an irreducible peculiarity. For this reason 19. Bildung

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it appears to me completely mistaken to assert that the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences is no longer as important as the nineteenth century believed. In fact, it would even be anachronistic since the natural sciences, for their part, no longer speak of a nature without development, without history. According to the natural sciences, since the human being has its place in the long history of the universe, it is fitting that the sciences of the moral and the spiritual domain also belong with the natural sciences. This is completely wrong. It is an inappropriate interpretation of the historicity of humanity. Human beings cannot be observed from the secure viewpoint of a researcher, and it is impossible to reduce them to the objects of evolution theory and to understand them from that perspective. The experience of human beings encountering themselves in history, this form of dialogue, this way of coming to understand one another—all of this is fundamentally different from the study of nature and from an examination of the world and Homo sapiens based on a theory of evolution. Those are exciting topics in their own right, but I hope it is now clear that when it comes to memory, this life of the mind,20 it is a different story altogether. Platonic anamnesis is really is really quite similar to the riddle of language. They both have no principium, no beginning, and their terms cannot be derived from a principium as if there were an "ortho-language." The speaking of a language is a totality, a structure within which we have our place—a place which we have not chosen. Likewise, memory, which represents one way of articulating our experiences, is a process that may already be underway in utero. Of course, I cannot be sure of this, for I have no recollection of my embryonic state. But that is not what is important. The important thing is whether an experience is a recollecting, a re-perceiving, a re-establishing.21 In the end, it seems clear that the hermeneutical situatedness of the human being is confirmed and that the pretense of standing back from things as if they were nothing more than objects of observation leaves out of account the crucial point of our understanding other people (and other cultures). It is inevitable that in our encounters with others those others speak to us as well. Even the risky enterprise of interpreting the beginning of 20. Geist 21. Wiederaufnahmen21. Wiederaufnahmen

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Western thought must always be a dialogue between two partners in a conversation. And with this even the meaning of the word "method" must change. Here there is no researcher in the privileged position of an observing subject. In the sense established by Descartes, the word "method" presupposes that there is but a single method which leads to truth. In the Discours de la method, but also in other writings, Descartes asserts emphatically that there is only one universal method for all possible objects of knowledge, and even if we acknowledge that the method may be flexible in its procedures, this concept of method has ultimately gained the upper hand and dominated modern epistemology. In contrast to this, the distinguishing characteristic of my own position in the framework of the philosophical work of our century is that I once again take up the well-known debate between the natural sciences and the human sciences. If we overlook the fundamental differences between their two standpoints, it seems to me that the debate between the logic of John Stuart Mill, on the one hand, and that of Wilhelm Dilthey, on the other, is based upon one and the same presupposition, upon the claim for the objectivity of method. Within this presupposition, everything is reduced to their contrasting methods of objectification. Bu is precisely what is misleading here. "Methodos," in the ancient sense, always means the whole business of working with a certain domain of questions and problems. "Method" in this sense is not a tool for objectifying and dominating something; rather, it is a matter of our participating in an association with the things with which we are dealing. This meaning of "method" as "going along with"22 presupposes that we are already find ourselves in the middle of the game and can occupy no neutral standpoint—even if we strive very hard for objectivity and put our prejudices at risk. This claim, of course, sounds like a challenge to the natural sciences and their ideal of objectivity. Yet the human sciences occupy themselves with other, quite different tasks. Of course, the question of the existence or non-existence of a set of facts and how to establish this also arises here. In the human sciences, this is an elementary and self-evident concern. What really matters is the human being's encounter with himself in relation to an 22. Mitgehen

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other different from himself. It is more of a "taking part" in something,23 a participation that more closely resembles what takes place, for example, in the believer who is faced with a religious message than it does the relationship between subject and object that plays itself out in the natural sciences. In any case, this hypothetical neutral standpoint would amount to the elimination of the knowing subject, and, in fact, it goes without saying that the ultimate goal of the scientific rigor that one strives for here is to eliminate every subjective point of view. In cultural as well as in social life, however, this is inappropriate. This is not the task of the human sciences. Here, the help of a method will not enable me to place myself in a determinate relationship to an other who has been posited by me as an object. Jean-Paul Sartre has aptly described what is disastrous about the objectifying gaze: in the instant that the other is reduced to an observed object, the mutuality of the gaze is no longer maintained, and the communication ceases. Discussion of the unity of the natural sciences and the human sciences is thus misleading as soon as it does not proceed from the fact that the functions of these two sciences are fundamentally different. The former behaves in an objectifying way; the latter has to do with participation. This certainly does not mean that objectification and methodical approach have no value in the humanistic and historical disciplines, but only that they do not constitute the meaning of scholarship in these fields. Otherwise, we could never explain our interest in the past. In fact, the natural sciences themselves tell us that their concern is with achieving advances in knowledge and, with these advances, achieving control over nature and maybe even society. Culture, however, exists as a form of communication, as a game whose participants are not subjects, on the one hand, and objects, on the other. We should understand, of course, that the cultural sciences do, indeed, have scientific methods available to them. But these are only self-evident presuppositions in comparison with the value that our mutual participation in, our involvement in the tradition and the life of culture has for these sciences. But I must now conclude this theme and turn to our special topic. The inadequacy of the concept of method in the sense of guaranteeing objectivity becomes quite evident when I insist on 23. eine Teilnahme

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the fact that our sole access to the topic of "the Presocratics" is Plato and Aristotle, whose texts, of course, are available for us to study and to see which questions they themselves have posed and in which sense. This is no easy undertaking, especially when it comes to Plato. It can be carried out concretely only by reading the texts in which Plato and Aristotle speak of their predecessors. And as we do this, we must not forget that in their work Plato and Aristotle did not have our historical scholarship in mind but were guided by their own interests, by their own search for the truth, a search that was common to these two authors but that also displayed different tendencies. At this point, therefore, a collective interpretation of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy comes into play. For example: only when we have grasped the significance of the fact that in the context of Aristotle's critique Plato is regarded as a Pythagorean can we make what Aristotle says about the Presocratics at all understandable.

3

Solid Ground: Plato and Aristotle "K Tow we must come to the main point. Our real theme is "The -L\l Presocratics and the Beginning of Western Thinking.** In connection with this theme, we will need to apply the principles we have formulated up to now. The first really important question is which texts we can use for support. My response to this is that the first true texts for our theme are the writings of Plato and Aristotle. There is, of course, the Diels collection of quotations, which we have had ever since Hermann Diels gathered the Presocratic fragments together. This is a solid and serviceable work that everyone will gratefully use for his or her initial studies. It was designed for philosophy students. For scholarly research, however, it is secondary when compared to the possibilities for understanding offered by a text that has been handed down to us authentically and completely. As we know, the technique of using quoted passages lends itself to any use whatsoever—even sometimes proving the opposite of what the original text says; for when it is torn out of its context, if we are not aware of this fact, even the most faithful and most exact quotation can mean something quite different than it did in the original. Whoever quotes already interprets by means of the form in which he or she presents the text of the quotation. All of the fragments compiled in the Presocratic collections are merely quotations that have not come to us in finished and polished texts but via Plato and Aristotle, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Church Fathers—a plethora of authors who cite

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and describe these teachings for completely different purposes. Therefore, our first task consists in studying those texts in which Presocratic thinking is interpreted in a coherent form. Only from out of the context of these complete texts by Plato and Aristotle can we even understand the pieces of text that Diels printed in his supplements. The single text that refers in its entirety to Presocratic thinking is Simplicius' commentary on the first book of Aristotle's Physics. This is the oldest text on the teachings of the Presocratics to be handed down to us. It goes back to a scholar of the sixth century after Christ who incorporated numerous citations into his commentary on Aristotle's Physics. So we must, first of all, ask ourselves what this Aristotle commentator's selection criteria were. We can hardly assume that the Presocratics from the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ had actually already spoken of a concept of physis like the one which has been self-evident since Aristotle. The title "On Nature" occurs for the first time in Plato—in the Phaedo. We may conclude from this that concept of physis as well as the title had become customary at that time. The word itself had long been used but always only as the nature of something, hence not as the concept of nature. This, indeed, only begins in Platonic times. But, of course, the formation of the concept as such had long since been prepared for within the language. Nevertheless, this was not yet an actual formation of the concept. I completely agree with the English scholars, Kirk and Raven, that the concept of physis in Heraclitus did not yet have any philosophical import. On the contrary, we must assume that an actual concept began to form only when the counter-concept to it had also taken shape, and that takes us into the sophistic age. At that time the discussion of the problem of language centered on whether language is a product of nature or of societal rules (nomos). The concept of techne does not arise until late either, and all of this fits in with Sophism and with Plato's use of physis in connection with psyche. The concept of physis gains its particular importance, however, in Aristotle. When Aristotle comments frequently and extensively on the concept, it is always accompanied by a conscious distancing of himself from Plato. For, in Aristotle's eyes, Plato was too much of a mathematician. At any rate, neither in Heraclitus nor in Empedocles is the word used in a sense that anticipates the Aristotelian concept of

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physis. For Aristotle, however, physis is the first appearance of being and constantly thrusts itself forward in his Metaphysics. Metaphysics is really just a loose collective concept that clearly shows its connection with the fundamental Aristotelian interest in physis but [the Metaphysics] is not, in any case, as coherent a context for physis as the books of Aristotle's Physics. We must constantly have the preeminence of the Aristotelian concept firmly in mind if we want to evaluate the Presocratic citations. But, apart from Aristotle's Physics, there is another relevant point which we must take into account when dealing with the Presocratic passages that have been handed down to us, a point which was commonly understood in the Hellenistic age—if not literally, then at least in an academic sense: for us, Hegel's interpretation, more than any other, has taken root so deeply that we can never imagine how we could completely free ourselves from this model. I am thus convinced that the whole problem of "Parmenides and Heraclitus**is due to the overweening influence of Hegel's way of thinking. We should not forget that, in spite of the fact that all of the nineteenth-century historical scholarship that introduced historiography into the study of Greek philosophy took place during the decline of Hegelian idealism, Hegel's construction of history has still proven to be very influential even with historians—with Zeller, for example. Yet, how weak these constructions of history are according to which philosophy begins with Thales and the Milesian school. What really was a "school" at that time in a thriving trading center like Miletus? We can scarcely give an answer to this. But what, then, does the traditional academic sequence of ThalesAnaximander-Anaximenes mean? This ordering is, in fact, extremely problematic. That Anaximander supposedly took the infinite as his starting place and that, after him, Anaximenes supposedly declared air to be the first substance—what an absurd step backwards! In truth, all this shows is that these assertions do not rest on historical realities but on a way of thinking belonging to a later academic period, the period in which Apollodoros had reconstructed the chronological evidence. Actually, there is yet another perspective that we must keep in view in this sphere of inquiry and that is the religious background against which Greek philosophy, following Aristotle, stood out. It is [summed up in] the familiar catchphrase, "From Mythos to Logos."

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This is a contemporary formulation. But what do we understand in this case by mythos? In nineteenth-century historiography the answer seemed clear: mythos had to do with Homeric religion. But did a Homeric religion in this sense really exist? If one follows Herodotus, mythos was rather the deed of a great poet who did his creating from out of a manifold tradition of legends and from out of an oral tradition sustained by rhapsodes going back to a very early age. The other poet to whom we refer (following Herodotus) when we speak of the "theology'* of that time is Hesiod and his Theogony. Now, it is certainly true that Homer and Hesiod are also referred to by Aristotle as the first ones to reflect upon the divine. But by saying this, Aristotle does not mean to speak of religion so much as cosmologically ordered ideas and a divine family with all of its all-too-human tensions. In view of this, the customary schema, "From Mythos to Logos," appears to be quite dubious. Perhaps one would have to say that in both cases one is dealing more with logos than with mythos. On the one hand, we have the noble society of the gods, like a group of great lords; on the other hand, we find throughout the country a wide variety of sites for religious cults dedicated to individual deities. The expression "theology** fits both cases rather badly. Werner Jaeger has treated this theme with admirable erudition in his important book, The Theology of the Early Greek Thinkers. But the word "Theology** in the title is quite misleading. To be sure, the above-mentioned book is extremely instructive, but, in the case of Xenophanes, the viewpoint that the word "theology** expresses in the title does not work very convincingly. To me, the chapter that Jaeger had written on Xenophanes earlier, in the first volume of his Paideia, at a time when he still had in mind the sophistic idea of paideia, seemed much more apt. I am convinced that Jaeger was right in his earlier discussion when he saw in Xenophanes' verses a typical portrayal by a rhapsode and not a theologian or a philosopher. But enough of these introductory remarks! Let us begin the real work of interpreting Plato's and Aristotle's most important references to Presocratic philosophy. Let us begin afresh with Plato or, more precisely, with the Phaedo (96ff.). Here, Plato—long after Socrates' tragic end—has Socrates sketching his scientific and philosophical autobiography. Before we go into the interpretation of this text, however, it is appropriate to stress once again that I cannot make the whole

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work my object, but rather only one instance within it. The text to which we will refer is merely one chapter out of a whole, a complete work. In essence, the complete dialogue—the Phaedo in its entirety—is the one text on the basis of which it is possible, although certainly not easy, to work out the question for which Plato is trying to provide an answer. This dialogue belongs among Plato's most famous. Nietzsche designated the figure drawn by Plato of Socrates immediately before his death as the new ideal for the leading young men of Greece, and thus Socrates stepped into the place of Achilles. There is definitely something true in this. One does indeed find a Homeric motif at the beginning of the dialogue: the enormous secret of death and of what lies beyond death—the "life" of the souls of the dead in Hades. Recall those unforgettable scenes with which Homer (or whoever composed the Odyssey) portrays Odysseus' trip to Hades. Odysseus goes down into Hades in order to visit the heroes of Troy. The most important thing to ponder here is the meeting with Achilles, who, like all the souls beyond the Acheron, has lost his memory and regains it as he drinks the sacrificial blood: a profoundly significant ritual. Upon hearing from Odysseus that his son has conquered Troy, Achilles returns, deeply moved, to the darkness. Death is the night of memory; without memories we die. We could say that all of these images point us toward something like a popular religion. It is also clear, however, that a theme of reflection is introduced here. The shadows of the heroes do still exist down there in Hades, but they have left all memories behind, and only the sacrificial blood awakens these memories. Therefore, the problem posed here has to do with the soul and the question of the soul's relationship to life and death. At this point, there is a further source of possible misunderstandings that influences our way of thinking. I mean the Augustinian concept of the soul as the inferiority of consciousness. The complex Christian doctrine of the soul and its redemption through the sacrificial death of Jesus has been integrated into our concept of the soul.1 The German word "Seele" is an expression that is more likely to recall sentimentality than perhaps the Latin word "anima" does, and, in a phonetic sense, it also suggests something far more transitory. Thus we stand under the influence of a tradition that pushes us to believe that in Homeric poetry 1. Seele

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there may be an idea of the soul that is somehow the same as our own. Or is this still true? At any rate, the supposed "religion of Homer" is not the only source of prejudice for the interpreter. Besides this, there is also the so-called Orphic, an idea which has influenced scholarship for a long time and which still represents a completely open realm of problems for research. What was really going on in this religious movement—a movement that stretched back into the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ but did not yet exist in Homer's time or, at least, was not received by the poet? The amazing plethora of religious movements and myths that came together at that time remains just as much an open problem as the emergence of the Dionysus cult; for, as we have come to realize well enough since Nietzsche's writings, the figure of Dionysus was virtually unknown in the Homeric epic. In any case, we are dealing with extremely vague things here, and in this area of Presocratic studies our interest lies only in the fact that the soul was at the center of the cult's religiosity. What the figure of Pythagoras has to do with all of this seems obvious to me. If one reads the biographies of the Presocratics, the same thing shows up again and again: every one of them, from Anaximander to Parmenides and so on, is portrayed as a follower of Pythagoras. This fact is quite significant. In my estimation, it means that Pythagoras brings together fundamental motifs like the riddle of numbers and the riddles of the soul, the transmigration of the soul, and the purification of this soul. This leads us to the problem of memory. It is clear that, as a rule, a religion that speaks of reincarnation presupposes the loss of memory. That someone like Empedocles has a vague clairvoyant impression of having been something else in another life seems to be an exception to this rule. A number of problems connected with the soul impose themselves at this point. Is the soul a breath which animates animals and people? Is it like a first light within the human being, the light of incipient knowledge, of memory, or of some such thing? All of this remains a vague background that cannot be used as the key to understanding. It lies in the darkness of antiquity. Thus we must examine how the problem of the soul is dealt with in the Phaedo in order to see which problems preoccupied a thinker of Plato's time. This is an example of the problem I raised earlier, the problem of how we can interpret a tradition we are interested in by using a text that was not drafted for this purpose but which

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nevertheless permits us to guess at certain basic tendencies of the culture of this bygone era. By way of conclusion, we could formulate the problem as follows: is the soul something other than the vital energy of the living? Is it something like a special spiritual capacity? Is it living or is it thinking? Or are these two aspects intertwined with one another? And in what way? This is Plato's theme, and it is with Plato's help that we must seek to grasp how the Presocratics dealt with death. Here, I would like to add one last general remark about the Phaedo—ot, rather, about the setting of the dialogue. Socrates' two conversation partners, as we know, are Pythagoreans who were living in exile in Athens during that time because their society had previously dissolved as a result of political events. Simmias and Cebes are historical figures. They do not, strictly speaking, represent the original Pythagoreans but rather the evolution of this religious and political body into a group of scholars and scientists. This is a point we should keep in mind as we read the conversation between Socrates and the two friends. The two were no longer Pythagoreans in the sense of being followers of the great founder of a half-religion. The dialogue concerns a discussion with two scientists who only use the themes and teachings of the Pythagoreans in order to describe the results of the new science of their time. As I see it, this is a very important fact. Who the real Pythagoreans were is a topic that has been discussed at great length. I still remember the radical thesis that Erich Frank put forward when I was young in his book, Plato and the So-called Pythagoreans.2 He claimed that our entire customary idea of the Pythagoreans as mathematicians, astronomers, etc., was a new interpretation taken up by Plato's school and particularly by Heracleides Ponticus. The radicality of this thesis has not been generally accepted. Today, we even take it as certain that there was already a Pythagorean mathematics, albeit set against a religious background. But, in any case, we must realize that in Plato's time it was not religion but science that predominated. That the two conversation partners with whom Socrates talks in the Phaedo are scientists is shown by the fact that they seem to have no knowledge of the religious prescriptions of Philolaos, a great master of the sect, but are well informed about the biology and the astronomy of Plato's epoch. 2. Halle: Niemeyei; 1923; reprint Tubingen 1962.

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How does Plato manage to bring the discussion of an old religious tradition and a science belonging to his own time so readily into the structure of the action and incorporate them both into his depiction of the interlocutors? Of course, the conception of science to which Plato alludes in the Phaedo does not at all correspond to what was held to be valid at the time of Socrates' death. Today, no one doubts that this dialogue was written not shortly after Socrates' death but much later—perhaps twenty years later. Plato apparently takes up the figure of the dying Socrates again as he begins to outline the main points of his theory of Ideas and establishes a kind of school, the Academy to be precise, which we can more readily call a real school—in contrast to the so-called schools of the Sophists, the Atomists, or the Eleatics, etc., which were not institutions. I consider these remarks to be important for understanding how the Phaedo is connected to our theme. The discussion of the problem of the soul finds its crowning conclusion in Socrates' long autobiographical narrative—stemming from Plato, of course—in which he depicts his experiences with scientists of his time and his own new orientation. But in this account—just as in others of his dialogues—Plato is not claiming to depict "Presocratic" doctrines but rather his own turn toward the "Idea."

4

Life and Soul: The Phaedo he theme of the Pheado, which is developed in the account of the last day of Socrates* life, is the problem of life and death as well as the question of what the life of a human being is and what relationship this has with what we call the soul or the psyche. This dialogue consists of a discussion about the problem of the soul and the belief in immortality that the religions teach. Can our reason find a rational ground for this? The Pheado begins in an almost religious tone. It is has to do with the question of suicide and the expectation of a new life after death. This is the dialogue's prelude out of which the immortality of the soul will then unfold as its real theme. The bridge between the two parts depends upon the idea of catharsis, of purification; and for our interpretation this is crucially important. The philosophical dimension opens up from here. It is well-known that the Pythagorean doctrine of catharsis was, above all, a collection of purity laws, like, for instance, the proscription against using a knife to stir the fire, or like that other commandment: Eat no beans. The decisive thing here is that Plato imbues these purity rituals with a new meaning, precisely that meaning that has become familiar to us through Kant and the concept of "pure reason." As already follows from the Meno and the theory of pure mathematical concepts formulated there, mathematics is pure reason to the extent that it transcends what is accessible through the senses. This holds for mathematics—but also for the soul. Indeed, just as the moral and religious view of

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life requires the separation of the soul from the body, mathematical science requires separation from sensory experience. If death is conceived of as a separation of the soul from what is corporeal/ sensory, then, in this sense, the life of the philosopher is a path to death, and thus the religious doctrine of the soul's immortality finds its corroboration. The first argument for the immortality of the soul calls upon the cyclical structure of nature. Since life is a natural phenomenon, death might also be nothing other than a stage in the cycle of coming into existence and passing away, genesis and pbthora (Phaedo 70e ff.). The line of reasoning that bases itself on the circular character of nature is depicted here with wonderful linguistic skill. When Plato speaks of a nature in which there is no continual return to new life, he causes his Socrates to speak a language that conveys the impression of a nature without spring. Thus, insofar as Socrates conclusively (71e) asserts the reality of rebirth, anabioskesthai, the conception of nature as a cycle becomes an overt argument for the soul's return. It seems to follow from this that if the living are generated from the dead, then the souls of the dead cannot perish but must continue to exist. Very surprisingly, then, the text reads: kai tats men ge agathais ameinon einai, tais de kakais kakion (72e), which means "this new existence will necessarily be better for good souls and worse for the wicked." This assertion seems to fit so poorly with the cycle argument that some philologists have omitted it. I myself am not sure this is the right thing to do. Its situation in the manuscript is unambiguous; there are no variants to the passage. The argument is found throughout the entire tradition, a tradition which has perhaps been a little wiser than these philologists and has understood that precisely this lack of logical consistency lay within Plato's intentions. He thereby indicates which interest truly stands behind the belief in immortality. The subsequent fate of the deceased should depend upon the morality of the life that one has led—which will ultimately be the point of the entire dialogue. Then, in response to Simmias' doubt and hesitant uncertainty, Socrates will reply that, although it is certainly correct that there are no guarantees in this realm, it is still undoubtedly better to lead an honest life. Here it becomes abundantly clear that Socrates does not actually claim to have "proven" the soul's immortality when he says that a life with this

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attitude is better than a life without it. We should notice that here the argument forsakes the realm of logic and moves into the realm of rhetoric. I am reminded that the same turn in the argument also occurs in Kant. In Kant, too, there is no proof that freedom really exists. If we really wanted to produce this proof by interrogating nature and even seeing a proof for free will in quantum physics, then that would mean being blind from the start with respect to the ontological status1 of freedom. Freedom is not a fact of natural science. Kant calls it a fact of reason—Plato's line of reasoning is, of course, a different one. He is not driving at the fact that science has its limits, nor is he emphasizing the honest life. Rather, Plato's argument also contains something transcendental and aims at the limitedness of our human reason in view of the riddle of death and eternity. In this sense one could say that Hegel's "bad infinity" is also Plato's position: as far as the main question of morality and life is concerned, the dialectic remains unresolved and there is no result that can claim to be a proof. Of course, this comparison between Kant and Plato does not really concern the concept of freedom, for there is no such concept in Plato's philosophy. I want, rather, to say the following: just as Kant refrains from establishing freedom through a theoretical line of reasoning—as does Fichte for practical reason—so Plato does not enlist the help of theoretical arguments to prove the immortality of the soul. Instead, he goes back to the figure of Socrates and to his unflinching death, which he explicitly refers to at the end the dialogue. But we can maintain one thing: all of this demonstrates the inappropriateness of an argument for or against the soul's immortality that bases itself on a naturalistically derived concept of the soul. Here, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that my use of the term "naturalistically" rather than "materialistically"—which is always a little too Aristotelian—is not accidental. We can perhaps apply this latter term to an interpretation of the Sophist, but, as we will see, even there is it not completely appropriate. Strictly speaking, what is "materialistic" assumes the idea to be morphe or form—and thus it also assumes fabrication, like in the model of the craftsperson who shapes the stuff, the material. I prefer the term "naturalistic," which corresponds to the 1. Seins-Rang

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Greek concept of physis and which, incidentally, we also come across in this dialogue. The intellectual autobiography of Socrates begins, as we have already stated, with his declaration that he had occupied himself in detail with the problems of "nature." This is "history** in the Greek sense, that is to say, in the sense of a report of personal observations on the part of a traveler, for instance, who communicates what he has observed on his journey. In this sense the title, peri physeos historia, must be understood as a report of the experiences undergone by the witness to events, as the story of a person who has himself seen the things that he is commenting on. Moreover, it is clear that in the meantime, in the time of the Pheado, this was already a popular title for designating treatises on nature, the cosmos, the heavens, and so on. The second argument—which Simmias presents as a wellknown Socratic doctrine—is that of anamnesis. Socrates states that knowledge must be a remembering because, for example, mathematical concepts—such as to ison (equality)—cannot be gained from experience, for in experience there are never two completely identical entities. (This theme reminds me of Leibniz, who invited his students to the Valley of the Roses in Leipzig to look for two entirely identical leaves.) The mathematical concept of equality is that of complete equality, which we never encounter in sensory experience. In Socrates* view this goes for the soul as well—that the soul, like equality as such, cannot be perceived in sensory experience. But I am not interested in offering a complete interpretation of the Pheado. So I now turn directly to the two Presocratic forerunners of Plato's philosophy as they are understood in Plato's texts. To this end, let us now examine the two objections to the immortality of the soul that the two "enlightened** Pythagoreans, Simmias and Cebes, offer, objections which lead to the high point of the dialogue. The first objection, formulated by Simmias, is readily understandable even to modern thinking: the soul is nothing more than the harmony of the body. As soon as its strength flags, the harmonic cooperation of its limbs also wanes until death occurs, wherewith the soul ultimately dissolves altogether. This is obviously an argument derived from the science of the time; stated more precisely: with its concept of harmony, it is a typical Pythagorean argument. Moreover, it comes quite close to the way Aristotle defines the concept of the soul; it is the "entelechy of the body,** hence the full actuality of the living organism.

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Immediately after this comes Cebes' objection that immortality does not necessarily follow from reincarnation; the soul, with its migration through the different bodies, could consume itself more and more and finally dissolve itself along with the last body. Undoubtedly this objection reflects one of the discoveries of the biology of that time. As we know, science in Plato's time—and medical science in particular—had already conceived of the regeneration of living organisms as a continual process. We can therefore understand the objection that despite the soul's transcending the limits of an individual existence, its migration exhausts it, and it finally dissolves itself completely. This is an inescapable idea dictated by a naturalistic conception of the soul and especially by the idea that the soul is nothing more than the harmony of the body and for that reason is impelled to dissipate along with the body. These two objections are perceived as truly catastrophic for the immortality of the soul. They seem so plausible that even Phaedo and Echecrates, the two narrators of the dialogue, interrupt the account to express their bewilderment. The deep despondency of the mood that spreads among the interlocutors is unparalleled by any poem. This points to the fact that the dialogue takes a decisive turn at this moment of highest tension. In response to Simmias' objection, Socrates replies that the problem cannot be posed at all in the terms that Simmias has used to formulated it. The soul is not really the same as harmony. Rather, harmony is something that the soul itself only seeks to gain or to find. In any case, the harmonious soul is nothing given by nature but rather a good that prescribes the direction for life. It seems clear to me that we must make a strict differentiation here. On the one hand, we are dealing with the conflict between a naturalistic or, if you will, a mathematical theory of harmony in that it forms itself from out of its constitutive parts. On the other hand, we are dealing with a harmony toward which the soul is striving as though towards a highest goal. The second objection, that of Cebes, demands a more complex reply. Socrates remains silent a few moments and concentrates completely. Then he begins as follows: in order to attain clarity, it is necessary, above all, to discuss the cause of coming into being and passing away (genesis and phthora). Only in this way will it be possible to correctly understand the meaning of death. In order to reach this clarity, Socrates begins to talk about

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his experiences with the science of his time until he decided to take quite a different path, namely, the path into the logoi, the path toward the ideas. Here, I would like to interrupt our textual analysis in order to put forward once again some general concepts that I mentioned earlier. Above all, I would like to make a supplementary hermeneutical remark. There can be no doubt that in the course of my work I have become an advocate of the bad infinite that Hegel criticizes. It is nevertheless a very simple truth that I am advocating here, namely, that something like a general history—for which in German we have the expression "Weltgeschichte"2—must be written anew by each generation. It seems quite evident to me that along with historical change itself the ways of observing and knowing the past must also change. Nevertheless, this truth cannot be applied so easily to the philosophical tradition; for hi this case it means recognizing that this tradition itself has not already come to its conclusion with the great Hegelian synthesis, but that there may be still other expressions of thought that can also open new perspectives for us. One such expression, for example, is Nietzsche's, who, whatever authenticity he attained in his conceptual work, certainly cannot be compared with Hegel. Nevertheless, Nietzsche has pervaded our whole attitude toward the past and has left his mark on our philosophical work. This prompts me to offer a few words on a concept that I introduced—the concept of effective-historical consciousness. This term is meant to imply that we are fully aware of the constitutive prejudices of our understanding. Of course, we cannot really know all of our prejudices because we are never in a position to reach an exhaustive knowledge of ourselves and to become completely transparent to ourselves. On the other hand, mis circumstance—that prejudices are constitutive for understanding—in no way means that the approach to a text is an arbitrary decision of the thinker or scholar involved. For these prejudices are nothing other than our rootedness in a tradition—in the same tradition, in fact, that we seek to bring to language as we interrogate the text. Herein lies the complexity of the hermeneutical situation. It always depends upon the kind of text one is dealing with. Our classical culture is the stuff of hermeneutics, 2. world history

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and it is found for us in multiple forms, not just in scholarly pursuits but above all within the traditions of theology, jurisprudence, philology; but it is clear that our most profound impressions go much deeper than we could know or ever fathom. All of this also helps us to understand, for example, the difference between Plato's writings and Aristotle's "doxography." Plato's writings are not working notes but literary works, and this is why the doxography in these writings is something entirely different from what Aristotle offers us, for instance, in the Metaphysics, the Physics, and De anima. Plato's texts were, in their own way, published and were intended to be read and even given as lectures in Athens. This is why those writings of Aristode's that have been preserved were unknown for centuries—they were composed as teaching notes, which may have continued to have an effect within the oral tradition for a few generations, but nothing that was intended for the public has come down to us—at least, not such that anything we have could be considered Aristode's last word on die subject On the other hand, take the Pheado. It is obvious that this is not a treatise but a work of high literature. There are true-to-life portrayals in this piece, and it accomplishes a complete fusion of theoretical argumentation and dramatic action. Thus in the Pheado the strongest argument put forward for the soul's immortality is really not an argument at all but the fact that Socrates holds onto his convictions right up to the end and corroborates them through his living and dying. Here, the course of the action itself plays the role of an argument. At the end of the dialogue stands a myth, the myth describing the earth upon which we live and depicting, moreover, how this earth ought to be the scene for a honest life. We can never really provide satisfactory arguments in answer to questions about the constitution of a world that is based on the principle of the good. Thus it happens that myths, with their particular forcefulness, get their chance instead. Plato himself tries to sound the cautionary note that with myths we are not dealing with mere stories, but that concepts and reflections are also woven into them. Therefore, they are like an extension of the dialectical argument—an extension in a direction that is inaccessible to concepts and logical substantiation. Even Socratic ignorance is a literary figure. It is the pattern which helps Socrates lead the conversation partner to draw upon his own ignorance in comparison. The end of the dialogue, Lysis,

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is exemplary in this sense. Neither Menexenos nor Lysis succeeds in defining friendship, and the dialogue is suddenly interrupted as the teachers intervene and take the boys home. This negative ending is a model which is likewise found in all of the elenctic dialogues. They are always about the same problem, namely, that in order to put a virtue into practice one must already be directed toward it in a theoretical way. In this regard, we can indeed speak of the intellectualism of the Greeks, yet we must add by way of elucidation that we are dealing here with an intentionality that never fully corresponds to commensurate concepts. In Plato (who was a tremendous writer of the rank of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare), wherever concepts are inadequate this intentionality is expressed in the action of the dialogue—in the case of the Lysis, in the dialogical relationship between Socrates and his two young friends. On the other hand, take the text of the Politeia:3 there we find a Socrates who—in the way he conducts a conversation and an argument—seems to be a quite different person. Here, Plato wants to describe an ideal city, one in which an elite class is formed in the field of mathematics and the dialectic, an elite who will be able to govern practical life. In my work, The Idea of the Good in Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy, I present the thesis that both philosophers are concerned with the same thing, namely, the problem of the good and its concretization in an ideal city. Yet one must recognize that the ethos of Plato's Politeia has a Utopian dimension that does not correspond to anything at all in Aristotle. This ethos appears in Plato's Politeia in such a way that everything there is regulated. There it is nearly impossible to do anything evil or abnormal, an idea which seems inconceivable to the modern person. It would only take a miscalculation on the part of the "planning committee," as one could call it, to carry the Utopia too far and bring the downfall of this ideal city. A further peculiarity of the Platonic dialogues is that Socrates' interlocutors express themselves in quite a colorless way—they say "yes," "no," "maybe," "of course"—with no further character development. This is no accident. The author intends it. No one should try to see these dialogue participants as specific types as if we were dealing with a drama. In Plato's dialogues, the conversation partner is more like a shadow in which each reader is meant to recognize him- or herself. 3. I.e., the Republic.

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All of these remarks should not only clarify the differences between a Platonic dialogue and a didactic Aristotelian text but also the differences among the texts we have from Plato. These texts must be continually questioned in such manner that they answer in a different way each time; for the living dialogue, the communication between people, and the participation in the written tradition are all structured in such a way that they occur as if by themselves. The tradition is not something rigid; it is not fixed once and for all. There are no laws there. Even the church must deal with a living tradition and a continual conversation with this tradition.

5

The Soul between Nature and Spirit et us return to our main Platonic text, the Phaedo. The most important part of the dialogue (96a) begins with the answer to Cebes introduced by a long silence, and kideed the dialogue now turns to the question of a general principle for knowledge. It holds true for all knowledge (holds) that in questions of becoming and passing away we must always look for the cause. This is the moment in which Socrates begins telling how he himself has fared with this passion for knowledge (his pathe, his painful experiences). He studied the sciences of his time with great interest. Clearly, this depiction refers to the contemporary understanding of nature and medicine. According to Socrates, therefore, he tried to understand the "soul" in terms of those sciences that we have discussed as naturalism—how the "soul" originates, whether the brain is the seat of the sensations, how recollection and memory, and then the formation of opinion,1 emerge from it, and how knowledge originates from the establishment of recollection, memory, and the formation of opinion. If we now reflect upon the fact that recollection is the ability to hold on to something so that it is durably present and remains in the memory and that opinion-formation is also something that wants to remain stable and permanently valid, then here we find the first hint of the Platonic problem—how anything stable at all could arise from the stream of the sensual experiences. How the

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1. Gedachtnis und Erinnerung und dann Meinungsbildung

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intentionality of thinking develops within the framework of the physical organism remains a puzzling problem even for us. Here, for the first time, Plato points to this puzzle in terms of the opposition of flow and stability, and in doing so he points to the main theme of the Theatetus. Ultimately, Socrates confesses that all his efforts have yielded no results about knowledge—indeed to the very end he understood nothing more at all, even when it concerned things which he had previously believed he knew something about, like, for instance, how human beings grow. He illustrates this example with help of a quantitative-mathematical argument, which, however, contains a logical difficulty. Socrates says, that is, that he had previously thought the cause of the human growth lay in the fact that material elements were added to the organism through food. But lurking behind this is the problem of how duality2—meaning at the same time the two in relation to the one—is formed, whether through the addition to a unity or through division of the unity. Here, we are faced with the paradox that the formation of the two could by caused either by addition or by separation. As such, this is indeed contradictory. How is this possible? For us it seems obvious that the answer should be that when we speak of increasing or decreasing we are not dealing with an actual process. Rather, the problem must be viewed within a quite different ontological dimension and not at all in connection with the problem of what truly causes something to come into existence and pass away. With the next step that Socrates takes, we really begin to overcome the first and apparently inadequate kind of question concerning the cause of becoming and passing away. That is, Socrates tells us how in his search for this cause he came across the text of Anaxagoras and believed that there, namely in nous, he had finally found a solution for the problem of causation and along with this how two comes to be from out of one. But in the end this hope is also disappointed. The passage is quite famous, and I recall it here only because we can find in it a confirmation of our own interpretive perspective. Socrates' hope, his critique of Anaxagoras, and the function of nous apparently indicate the lack here of a conceptuality that corresponds to what is intended. When Anaxagoras speaks of "HO«S," it is clear that 2. das Zweierlei

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Socrates wants to ascribe to this word a meaning like "thinking," "ordering," "planning," and in the received text (which we owe to the zeal of Simplicius) Anaxagoras actually presents nous first as the creator of order in the universe—almost in the sense of a cosmogonic theory—but then, in the description of this process, Anaxagoras ultimately refers only to HOMS'S physical effects in the formation of the universe. When we resume our interpretation of the text once again, we rind that Socrates counters this by saying (99c) that the true origin of each thing as well as its inner determination is the good. With regard to this claim, he criticizes the various theories of the earth's place in the cosmos: the one according to which the earth is kept in place because it is surrounded by the motion of the universe as though by an enormous vessel, or one that imagines that the earth is carried on the air as though on a pillow, or even the one that believes it to be supported by Atlas. In Socrates' eyes, all these ideas are much like the famous Indian fable in which the globe is carried on an elephant who, for his part, stands on a turtle—at which point we cannot understand how it is that the turtle does not, in turn, have to rest on something else. If we want to avoid such an infinite regress we must look for the answer to the question of causation in something other than the physical, such as, for instance, in the good. Indeed this marks a complete shift in the trajectory of the argument. It is no longer about history (historia), no longer about the quest for something capable of carrying the earth. Formulated in these ways, the question has no answer. In the Critique of Pure Reason—in the transcendental dialectic, to be precise—Kant refutes the possibility of a rational cosmology. Nevertheless, even there the problem of the creation of the world, the problem of its beginning and its determination as a requirement of pure reason, remains a question without an answer. But the Platonic Socrates says that the good is the origin from which the order of the world in its totality is derived, the world of human beings with their praxis, and the order of the universe with all its components, the sun, the moon and the stars, the earth, and so on. For the first time, the idea of the good, "the whole," comes into view in a completely different sense from the whole grasped as sum of all its individual parts, provided we thus understand this to be what one might call the object of historical inquiry. Here, Socrates formulates a task

The Soul between Nature and Spirit 53 that is later developed in Aristotle's Physics, namely, an interpretation of reality based on the idea of the good. In this way, the teleological structure of Greek natural philosophy ultimately becomes generally accepted and has, in a certain sense, retained its relevance. For it suggests the concept of a totality in which nature, the human being, and society are all viewed as members of one and the same system. Seen from this perspective, the modern sciences are like ancient history: they accumulate an indefinite quantity of experiences that can never reach the whole because the whole is not an experiential concept—it can never be given. But how is it at all possible to reach a convincing and certain solution for the problem of causation? At this point, Plato begins his positive answer by, first of all, setting up a rule: we must presuppose as true the one hypothesis that appears particularly cogent and certain, and we must hold as true the consequences following therefrom that stand in harmony with this hypothesis. But "hypothesis," here, does not mean the same as it does in the terminology of modern scientific theory. It does not mean that the validity of the hypothesis must be verified on the basis of experience, hence on the basis of the "facts." No, here we are dealing only with the logical, immanent coherence of the concepts. The consequences we speak of at this point are not the consequences that result from empirical facts. This is a crucial point. The epistemologists of the Englishspeaking world who have employed this mode of argumentation recognize its logical value, but they miss the real criterion of truth in this context, namely, experience. It is true that Plato does not mention experience here at all. But why not? The reason for this is that we are dealing here with the logos, with the famous turn to the logoi. In Socrates' eyes, the linguistic universe possesses more reality than immediate experience. So, just as the sun—according to the famous metaphor—cannot be observed directly but only on the basis of its reflection in water, whoever who wants to get information about the true nature of things will achieve clarity sooner in the logoi than through deceptive sensory experience. Thus Plato insists on elucidating each hypothesis in view of its consequences, and he bases his criticism of the enemies of logic on this. Whenever we fail to make the content of a concept explicit, it becomes fruitless to discuss it. When using words and arguments, it is always easy to become confused.

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The Sophists' technique of argumentation is aimed directly at this confusion. On the other hand, to the extent that the true content of a hypothesis is unfolded, it gains its logical believability through observation. At this point, the argument in which the cause is equated with the idea begins. It proceeds from the ideas of the beautiful, the good, the large, and so on. Clearly, there is a parallel between these essences and those of mathematics: the beautiful, the good and the large are also not derived from experience. In any case, the eidos seems to be somehow in the things. I say this with extreme caution. For there is no ontological separation here as Aristotle assumes; rather, what this means (lOOd) is that there is nothing through which a thing is beautiful except the presence of the beautiful. In this text as in the rest of Plato's writings there is never a more precise theory of participation in the idea given—a point which Aristotle criticizes. Plato is completely free in his choice of concepts that formulate the relationship between the idea and the particular. The two are not as separated from each other as Aristotle's criticism would have it and according to whom the idea would be a mere duplication of the world. This point is crucially important. The Academy knew many theories about the intimate relationship between general and particular, yet there was no concept of their separation. In contrast to this, the separation between mathematics and physics was fundamental. Therein lay Plato's great advance with respect to the Pythagoreans. Archytas, for example, was an outstanding mathematician who also already knew that mathematics does not deal with the triangle drawn in the sand but that this is merely a picture of its true object. Nevertheless, the Pythagoreans had not yet reached the point of conceptually formulating the true, "pure" object of mathematics. For them, mathematics always turned into "physics." The separation of mathematics and physics does not mean, though, that numbers and geometrical figures exist in another world. Similarly, the beautiful, the just, or the good is never [something belonging to] a second world of essences. This is a misguided ontologizing of Plato's intentions provoked by the influence of the subsequent tradition. It can already be seen in criticism of Aristotle, who, for his part, was guided precisely by his interest in the physical. It is Neoplatonism, as we call this tradition today, that first makes a thinker of transcendence out of Plato, and this was also the Plato of the nineteenth century.

The Soul between Nature and Spirit 55 As Socrates' argument progresses it leads him to maintain that the idea is not only identical with itself but proves itself to be insolubly linked with certain other ideas. So, for instance, warmth is obviously connected with fire. This relationship of ideas to one another is the most interesting point. Only in this way does the logos exist. It is not the simple appearance of an individual word but the linking of one word with another, the Unking of one concept with another. Only in this way is logical proof possible at all, and precisely because of this we are able to explicate the implications contained in a hypothesis. What are the consequences of this for the theme of "the soul"? In thinking through the connection between different ideas we see that the soul as a life principle is necessarily connected with an idea, namely, with the idea of life, an idea that cannot be reconciled with death. At this point, something is put forward that, it seems to me, Plato's interpreters have not adequately grasped. This conclusion of Socrates' seems convincing to the dialogue partners and also to the reader. It is indeed true that the idea of the soul, insofar as it is brought into connection with life, cannot be reconciled with the idea of death. This entails that the soul is life itself, and, consequently, it is clearly "deathless" (athanatos). Here, of course, the soul is obviously being treated as a principle of life—albeit in a specific form. But for Socrates the soul is above all else the orientation toward pure essences, pure ideas. In any case, this conclusion seems clear. Yet, Socrates now continues in a way that is surprising for the modern reader (106a ff.). He asserts that the soul, insofar as it is immortal, is also indestructible and indissoluble (anolethros). The meaning of the word "athanatos" is clear. It is a typical term from the Greek epic tradition and it indicates something being lifted up into a higher state of being. It is the predicate of divinity, Homer's athanatoi.3 But what does anolethros mean? The argument is quite difficult here. Above all we need to keep in mind that the argument runs parallel to the previous description of immortality. Those passages in which the discussion occurs seem to consider the equivalence of immortality and indestructibility to be completely plausible, an equivalence which Aristotle also corroborates (Physics 203/13). Of course, the suspicion arises here that it may possibly have been Aristotle himself who introduced this 3. Literally, "deathless ones."

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inseparability of immortality and indestructibility into the doxographical tradition of the Presocratics. We should not forget, however, that it was Plato who, in the Phaedo, discovered the decisive arguments. But could he possibly have had grounds for this? Proceeding from the religious background of the by then waning Pythagoreans, Plato attempts to carry through with their idea of immortality and their belief in the transmigration of the soul (against the threat of materialism) in that, with clarity, he brings into play an eidetic realm, a realm of relationships we can conceive of just as we do in mathematics. If we trace the entire Platonic argument in these passages (106a-b), then we see that the concept of immortality is elevated to this eidetic level with the help of the concept of indestructibility. Just like it says in the text! These two elements—like the even and the odd or the soul and death—are not commensurable with one another. Thus it is also clear that one is not capable of taking the other up into itself. Where the one exists, the other cannot exist. Nevertheless, we could still hold that "one passes away and another takes its place." This, however, is cogent only so long as the equal and the unequal (or similarities, like, for instance, fire and the warm) are viewed only as characteristics of something and not as "ideas.** As eidetic relations they are thus something like the concept of the equal or the unequal, which in its being-in-itself is unchangeable, which realizes itself innumerably often in even or odd numbers— just as, according to the genuine Pythagoreans, the immortal soul returns in new incarnations. Consequently, the Phaedo, it seems to me, anticipates the critique of the Pythagorean identification of being with mathematics that gets worked out later in the theory of ideas and then finds a clear confirmation specifically in the Philebus' "third kind." In the end, the world of ideas is not that other world that exists only for the gods. Standing behind this, above all, could be the fact that the Eleatic conception of being or of the one goes only badly with the transition into the nothing. The irrepressible desire in human experience to overcome the inconceivability of death through the thought of immortality also makes the transition into the nothing seem unthinkable. The interesting thing, therefore, is this concept of olethros, of downfall,4 "of nothing." It is the concept of 4. des Untergangs

The Soul between Nature and Spirit 57 something that—in contrast to death (thanatos), which continually threatens life—does not occur within the experience of, within the consciousness of, human beings. Essentially, the doubleness of the question follows from the ambiguity of the concept of the soul, which is taken as both the origin of life and the seat of thinking. The tension between these two conceptions of the soul becomes a problem. "Thinking" in mathematics and in the dialectic is not the same as "thinking" in the sense of the methodical procedure of modern science; rather, thinking is present when being is. I mean by this that Plato and Aristotle are convinced that without life there is no thinking, without psyche there is no nous, because thinking is nothing but this presence, and as such it is life. It seems that these two aspects—life and thought—do not allow themselves to be separated from each other, and we can also see this in modern philosophy insofar as it is just as much a philosophy of life as it is a philosophy of consciousness and self-consciousness. As we know, Hegelian phenomenology brings this transformation of the cycle of the living being within the reflexivity of consciousness to presentation. The transposition of life into self-consciousness is fundamental for all of German idealism. Furthermore, this problem is found not only in the Phaedo but also in Aristotle. Aristotle states quite clearly in De anima what already occurs in Plato—albeit in narrative and mystical form—namely, that the division of the soul into parts does not form an absolute division because the soul is always only one in its vegetative, its affective, as well as its theoretical function. This is the mystery, the secret, of the soul, which lies precisely in the fact that it does not consist, as the body does, of various discrete organs, each individualized according to its function, but rather it takes effect with intensive concentration in each of its aspects. In light of these considerations, we can understand what meaning there is in the fact that philosophy wavers back and forth between the beginning in the sense of the origin of life and the beginning of cognition and thinking. This wavering has its ground in the structure of the human being itself. It is no mere fluctuating muddle but a living exchange between the various forms in which human life articulates itself as entelechy. The conclusion to this problem that Socrates draws in the Phaedo (106d) suggests that what is immortal is also indestructible and that it is the same with the soul as it is with the even,

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which, of course, does not become odd but also cannot pass away. To put it another way: in the end it will be conceded that the soul is immortal—and then it must also be admitted that it is indestructible. For, indeed, both god and the idea of life would then be immortal as well as imperishable We are no doubt dealing here with an argument that displays a certain weakness. Indeed, in the final analysis the acknowledgment of immortality seems to be based on approbation. Simmias, however, seems sensitive to this weakness; yet all doubts are overcome with the assertion that, in any case, it is better to lead an honest life. The most widespread interpretation that puts particular emphasis on this passage is that, ultimately, immortality has really only been proven for the idea of life, for the idea of the soul, not for the indestructibility of the discrete individual. This is a problem that runs through the entire history of philosophy. One recalls, for instance, Averroism and the trials of Meister Eckhart and others for heresy. What should we make of this? Should we think that Plato has not recognized the problem and for this reason has proven immortality only for the idea of the soul and not proven it for the individual soul? Here, we come back to a fundamental problem of Platonic philosophy, a problem that is not thematized, namely, the relationship between universal and particular. Concepts that involve the immanence of the one in the other develop only within the framework of the subsequent tradition. It is pure Aristotelianism if we ask ourselves what significance there is in Plato for the relationship between the particular, which represents an unquestionable givenness, and the universal, which we interpret realistically or nominalistically. This is a topic that is discussed a great deal in later philosophy but one that does not occur at all in Plato. For him, it is obvious that true essence, true being, announces itself in language and that language is able to reach with words that which exists. The psyche is not only a universal concept but it is the omnipresence of life and particularly [its presence] in the living being. In truth, what presents itself as a weakness in Socrates' argument confirms that a separation is not possible between the ideas and the particular. Incidentally, one further drastic confirmation could be drawn from the dialogue, Parmenides: it is nonsense to believe that the world of the ideas is only for the gods and that the world of facts is only for mortals. All of this is important in order to understand better what actually lies hidden behind the Platonic dialectic of immortality

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and indestructibility in the Phaedo. Of course, the presence of the soul in the individual, which is based on self-evidence and not on arguments, is connected with the religious tradition. In the end, Socrates will reach the conclusion that after the onset of bodily death the soul continues to exist in another place, namely, in Hades. At this point, the religious tradition is completely present, albeit in a very detached way. The following should be noted here: whereas Socrates asserts (106d) that because of his immortality we must admit that "the god" (ho theos) could not perish, his interlocutor replies that this must be admitted of all the gods (para theon). Now the plurality of the gods certainly belongs to the religious tradition just as much as the image of Hades does, but here "the god" is tantamount to "the divine," and this signifies that Plato certainly wants to refer to conventional religion but also to a rational concept that confirms it. By way of explanation, however, I would like to add that this talk of "the god" does not, of course, mean monotheism but something indeterminately divine. As far as this entire thematic is concerned, an excellent explanation for why Socrates has reservations about the traditional religion of his city can ultimately be derived from the Euthyphro. In conclusion, please bear the following in mind: my remarks demonstrate tendentially that the arguments formulated in the Phaedo for the soul's immortality always tend to develop themselves within the context of a theoretical deliberation stemming from the ambiguity of the soul's function. It can just as well be consciousness as the principle of life.

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From the Soul to the Logos: The Theatetus and the Sophist nphe Phaedo, as we saw, is a first step on the path that leads A from the concept of the soul as the origin of life to the new Socratic-Platonic orientation toward knowledge and mathematics. In a certain sense, the Theatetus tries to further clarify the problem of the opposition between the vitalistic and the spiritualistic concepts of the soul. The dialogue begins with the definition of knowledge as aisthesis or perception (151e). Be careful! Theatetus—a mathematician—is saying here that knowledge is perception. This does not mean he is referring to the function of the senses. We are not dealing here with the Aristotelian concept of aisthesis but rather with immediacy, with a perception that corresponds completely to selfevidence, a perception that mathematics makes use of that is different from "mere" argumentation. By way of explanation, we should point out that the word "mere" here is used in the sense that it has in the Greek expression "psiloi logoi."1 Theodores of Cyrene says that in his youth he himself engaged in bare ("mere") discourse; later, however, he turned to mathematics, in which there is self-evidence. It is thus clear that in this context "perception" means self-evidence hi the sense that "one cannot help but see." Later, the actual theory of perception formulates it in the 1. "bare words" or "plain words"

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same way, as a collision or encounter with reality (153e). This theory is found again in an extremely sophisticated form, indeed in a downright Protagorean form, in Alfred North Whitehead, and also as the only long Plato quotation that occurs in Wittgenstein (in the Philosophical Investigations). In precisely this passage in the Theatetus, Socrates explicates the theory according to which perception is a kind of physics and resembles a concurrence of movements in which the slower movement appears as something standing, while the faster, in contrast, appears as something flowing and variable (156d ff.). As we know, Socrates demonstrates that coming to a standstill is not possible in this physics of perception. Perception is not merely physical motion as Empedocles and others understood it. We are well acquainted with the theory of seeing that stems from Empedocles because Theophrastus has handed down to us the part of Empedocles' work dealing with this topic. Apparently the encounter theory arises for the first time with Empedocles and then persists until Protagoras. The crucial point of Socrates' argument is that perception is not an encounter between the eyes and what is, but rather that, in seeing, the eye is exclusively the organ of the soul. Seeing is certainly accomplished with help of the eye, yet it is not the eye that sees (184d). In the course of this train of thought, Plato brings into play his predecessors, from Heraclitus to Empedocles and Protagoras, although he also names Homer and Epicharmus, and they all are described as proponents of the general flow of things, as though none of them had ever heard of Parmenides. In this respect it must be clearly understood that we are dealing with irony, with imagination, and with a construction originating from the mind of Plato. The concept of that which flows cannot, in truth, be separated from the concept of that which remains fixed. The one implies the other, as I have already stressed in my analysis of the Phaedo, where it came to light that recollection and opinion come nearer and nearer to the identical and the enduring. Specifically in the text of the Theatetus, and thus in its contrast with Protagoras' position, we are dealing with an invention of Plato. It is hard to believe that Mario Untersteiner included this section of the Theatetus in his collection of the Sophists' fragments. It is certainly obvious that this is not Protagoras himself but an interpretation of Protagoras—albeit an extremely refined interpretation that is of great interest for modern philosophy. In essence, we find here once again the problem

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of how observation and interpretation of the factual are to be explained by starting with just the mind. The Platonic construction shows up clearly in a different passage (180-81), where two positions are placed opposite each other like two combatants: on the one side, the rheontes, those who are for flux and maintain the eternal flux of things, and, on the other side, the stasiotai, a wordplay designating those who, like "rebels,"2 take a stand on the immobility of that which exists and in this respect are revolutionaries at the same time. Indeed, in the vernacular "stasiotes" means the same thing as revolutionary, and indeed, as the taking of a stand against the predominant view of the general flux, when one insists on the identity of being, the permanent, and the constancy of being, this truly is a revolution. After it has been shown that knowing cannot be equated here with sensory perception but rather brings the soul into play, the second answer to the question of the essence of knowing asserts that knowing is doxa, opinion. I will not spend further time on this very complicated answer because it is essentially coextensive with the previous one and because the third and last answer is of particular interest. This answer states: knowledge is opinion accompanied by logos. It is rationally established opinion. With this we have apparently reached the goal that the whole dialogue strives toward, namely, to comprehend knowledge as logos. Nevertheless the form in which this definition is presented is very unsatisfactory. Reason is made out to be something additional, something merely added on to opinion, while opinion is already there and is only subsequently verified and confirmed. But this is not "logos." Logos is not merely the expression of a secure opinion, and it is a mistake to comprehend it as mere expression and linguistically formulated opinion.3 The Tbeatetus thus ends with a theme, /ogos, which this dialogue does not succeed in adequately defining and which later stands at the center of the Sophist. In this sense, the conclusion of the Theatetus is actually an introduction to the Sophist. So, let us now take up the Sophistl Here (242c ff.) we find, in light of our interest in the Presocratics, a quite detailed presentation, something like a doxography, which is also of great significance for later Aristotelian doxography. Actually, several allusions 2. Aufstaendische, literally, "those who stand up" or "take a stand." 3. ausformulierte Meinung

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to the Sophist (242c ff.) can be documented in Aristotle. Plato presents the earlier accounts critically as mythical stories. Socrates' conversation partner, the Stranger who has arrived in Athens from Elea, talks about that which is and asserts that, in all likelihood, everyone who has spoken of this before has just been telling fairy tales. One person says that there are three kinds of entities4: three principles that will at one time struggle with each other and another time unite with each other. We cannot establish to whom the speaker is referring here. Many authors have tried, but to my mind there is no satisfactory solution, and I think this fits into a more general characteristic of the Plato's writings: namely, that precise historical accounts cannot be derived from them. At any rate, the Stranger then continues, saying that someone else has claimed that there is a dual essence: the wet and the dry or the warm and the cold, and these pairs come into a bond with one other. The third position, he says, is the point of view of the Eleatics: Eleatikon ethnos, apo Xenophanous te kai eti prosthen arxamenon. This third position began with Xenophanes and even earlier. This is a mysterious depiction, and it is certainly wrong to interpret it as evidence for the role of Xenophanes as founder of the Eleatic school. All of the elements out of which this kind of an interpretation is constructed are inadequate: there was certainly no Eleatic "school," and Xenophanes was not its founder. He probably also had very little to do with Parmenides. I am fully aware that this contradicts the doxographical tradition that goes back to Aristotle. But Plato expresses himself here very specifically (kai eti prosthen5), as though the Eleatics had already begun [philosophizing] before Xenophanes. This is, I think, in a certain sense correct. Eleatic philosophy is probably a reply to the first philosophical attempts to explain the universe, attempts that began with the Milesians. The true significance of Xenophanes, however, lies elsewhere: he testifies to the shifting interests of an aristocratic society that now interests itself in a new science instead of Homer and Hesiod. Xenophanes was quite simply a rhapsodist who recited the texts of the Greek mythology of Homer and the other poets. Later, in Sicily, where a new society had emerged in the mean time, Xenophanes, in his elegant verses, treated the cosmos as the divine and showed that these "gods" 4. dreierlei Seiendes 5. and those before him

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were in reality not the way they were presented in mythology. In any case, it seems to me that this passage in Plato is not an historical source for establishing a Presocratic chronology but has a different meaning, as I will demonstrate later. At the end of the list, the Ionic muses are mentioned, which evidently means Heraclitus and Empedocles and can also serve as the classic example of a Socratic-Platonic description of their predecessors. Let us now ask ourselves what the entire list means. Apparently, it classifies the predecessors according to the number of their principles. Accordingly, in the first group there are three principles, in the second group there are two principles, for the Eleatics there is only one, and according to Heraclitus and Empedocles there are the one and the many, which in Empedocles alternate with one another while in Heraclitus they form a dialectical unity. We are dealing, therefore, not primarily with a chronological order but with a Pythagorean-style logical classification that is connected in some way to the mystery of numbers. A new perspective, a reflected perspective follows this classification. The stranger from Elea goes on to say (243a) that those who have discussed the number of principles have in each case continued on their own way without concerning themselves about **us"—about our ability to follow and to understand them. What does this mean? Here, we must establish a relationship to the beginning of these remarks. It was asserted there that apparently the earlier thinkers had only told fairy tales when they spoke of the number of principles. Consequently, we are dealing here with the difference between a telling of myths, which is common to all the predecessors, and another access to the problem, which is now put forward by Socrates' conversation partner. This Eleatic conversation partner shows that it is necessary to take a new step in the reflection. It is above all necessary to understand the significance of what is, which in the earliest thinkers had merely been presupposed. These thinkers simply tell how existing things6 combine, how they arise, how they connect with one another. They depict all of this as a process, whereas the problem consists primarily in comprehending the meaning of being. The dialogue then proceeds to investigate precisely this problem. For this, it is crucial that the confrontation over the meaning of being is carried 6. die seienden Dinge

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out between two points of view in a manner similar to the dispute, described in the fheatetus, between that which flows (rheontes) and that which is permanent (stasiotai). One of these points of view is the one ascribed to the tradition of the "materialists." Here we need some clarification. The concept of "matter" does not occur at all in Plato with the significance that it has assumed in the tradition. Rather, this is a concept introduced by Aristotle. Therefore, as we can also see from our investigation of Aristotelian texts, it would be extremely naive of us to now impute the concept of hyle to the Presocratics. We have no citations confirming that the Presocratics had anything like the concept of matter. Even Thales' water is something other than matter. Moreover, the speech from the passage we just now examined in the Sophist (246a) speaks only of the people who maintain that only those things exist that can be touched and handled with the hands, like rocks and tree-trunks, which clearly alludes to Hesiod's depiction of the Titans' rebellion7 against Mount Olympus (Theogony 675-715). The metaphor is meant to refer to those who recognize being in the tangible, and this standpoint is understood in a deeply ontological sense— hence not in the modern sense whereby what can be established through experience and what can be measured count as "being," but rather in the sense according which being is dynamis, thus in the sense of that which produces effects. This is the term with whose help the philosopher in this context seeks to determine the sense of being that is recognized in the tangible. It is the resistence with which "being" withstands penetration—somewhat like solidity in Democritus. We are thus dealing with a dynamic concept, and one posited by reason. The dialogue arrives at this concept by forcing the "materialists" to admit an irrefutable consequence concerning "life"—that, in one way or another, souls and virtue exist. For we see that they do indeed produce effects: hence there arises the concept of dynamis. Likewise, the other party, the "friends of ideas"—perhaps the Pythagoreans?—cannot, in the final analysis, maintain that being is immovable and unchangeable. It is clear, even with no particular explanation, that what is cannot be dumb as a post. Therefore, the concept of dynamis applies to both parties, to that which is looked upon as something material as well as to that 7. Aufstand

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which is grasped as something psychic. So the contrast between what flows and what is fixed ultimately proves to be badly construed. Even the party of the "friends of ideas," who declare everything to be fixed and motionless, must admit the necessity that what is moves. Admittedly, the objects of mathematics and Euclidian geometry know no motion; yet Plato, as a philosopher, rejects the mathematical dogmatism of this standpoint, according to which being should be immovable, fixed, and so on. Indeed, it is unthinkable to anyone that what exists is, as such, deaf, motionless, and has no nous. This is not the consequence of a proof but an appeal to a self-evident certainty: that which is cannot make do without life, without motion, without something like nous. Consequently, we come upon the same problem here as we did in the Theatetus: the relationship between flux and permanence, the same problem, incidentally, that also presented itself in the Phaedo in form of the soul within the tension-field between zoe and nous—between life and mind.8 In the Sophist, this problem is developed with the help of a complex dialectic of the following five fundamental ideas: that which exists, motion, rest, sameness, and difference—a series of concepts that contains a considerable intellectual demand. How is it possible at all to properly situate sameness and difference (which, as we know, are concepts of reflection) alongside motion and rest? In the Hegelian logic of essence, their function is clear, but with this arrangement, we ask ourselves about the relationship between these reflexive concepts and the concepts of motion and rest. Discussing this is extremely difficult, but in the end the following conclusion seems clear: through the parallel dialectic of the same and the different, the disintegration of the strict alternative also occurs between motion and rest, and, eventually, these two no longer mutually exclude each other. The two initial concepts of movement and permanence develop in that they become, according to the depiction in the tenth book of the Nomoi? permanent movement and moving permanence. In the Sophist, the reciprocity of beteron and tauton is the means by which Plato succeeds in justifying the unity of motion and rest. To be sure, the relationship between two such different pairs of concepts is not completely clear; yet, 8. Geist, spirit 9. I.e., Plato's Laws.

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as a significant artist, he knows how to make comprehensible the alternating relation of the back and forth between the one and the other. As I see it, Plato realizes how problematic the transition is from pure concepts of reflection (to put it in Hegelian terms), that is, from concepts like identity and difference to conventional and concrete concepts like motion and rest. Similarly, this also occurs in the Timaeus when the sequence of the seasons is described. It is an image that, just as in the tenth book of the Nomoi, suggests the idea that the perdurance of what exists is not excluded by the fact that, as motion, it also participates in temporality. The goal of the Sophist is neither a merely formal solution to the aporia nor a compromise between the two opposing theses, [a conflict] in which, quite to the contrary, both theses lose the battle. According to Plato's perception, we are really dealing here with consciousness, with the power of identifying. Thinking is always identifying, but it is also a self-movement. Thinking is also always an action, something flowing in time in such a way that temporality is contained within identity throughout. The fact that all this belongs together with the vision of Platonic thought also emerges from the Parmenides, from the wellknown paradox of the structure of the moment, the paradox of being time and yet not being in time. This is also an extremely important point for modern thinking. Hegel was the first to revive the problem of the inner contradiction within the temporal concept of the "moment,"10 just as Kierkegaard was the first to connect this concept with the anxiety of life. Yet, between Plato and Hegel/Kierkegaard, there are essentially no documents that deal with this problem. I have searched in vain for them; although the problem now and then comes to light casually, as for example in the Attic Nights, a work from the time of Caesar, in which table conversations of ruling-class sons are described, conversations that are, to all appearances, just pretentious intellectual frivolities. Here, we find an allusion to the problem of the moment as it was brought forward in the Parmenides. The question is raised regarding the moment in which the dying person dies. For, as soon as he is dead, he is no longer a dying man, and, as long as he lies dying, he is not yet dead. We also find an allusion to this problem in Pseudo-Dionysius. But all of this, of course, is of no consequence. What counts is to grasp what Plato 10. Augenblick

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intended. Undoubtedly this is connected with the ontological status of the soul, of thinking, or of consciousness. Essentially, this topic runs through the Phaedo, the Theatetus, and the Sophist, and it also shows up in the Parmenides, in the problem of the moment investigated there. It is the structure of the soul. In its essence, the contradiction between movement and permanence is overcome. It would be very interesting to discuss the similarity that exists between this synthesis of motion and rest, on the one hand, and the self-reflection of modern idealism, on the other. There is a correspondence between the transition carried out in Greek philosophy from the principle of life to the principle of mind11 and the dialectical development in Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic. The problem of the circular, and hence the self-reflexive, structure of Me corresponds to this as well. It is quite similar. The transition from the idea of life to the particularity of the living individual, as I have already indicated, is treated by Hegel when in the Phenomenology he describes the transition that leads from ever-flowing life to the individual organism and to self-consciousness. The chapter that contains a detailed presentation of self-consciousness is prepared for by the analysis of the self-relatedness of life. Ultimately, along with self-consciousness, self-relatedness, and absolute knowing, Hegel took the Platonic theme of life—the world-soul that animates itself and differentiates itself into various individual organisms—and amplified it into absolute spirit, which, in attaining complete transparency, leaves behind the limits of human finitude. Of course, we must be on guard against equating Plato and Hegel. If this were indeed the result, we could simply deal directly with Hegel. The problem that fascinates us lies in the distinctions between them. Self-reflection, as the autonomous structure of that which is, is actually a standpoint that one attains only after a protracted development of thought. When we study Plato, we should not forget that, with respect to with Hegel, he lies far in the past—but this, of course, holds true for the entire Greek tradition. Plato does not base everything on the structure of selfreflection; rather, he describes the relationship between the concepts of identity and difference, on the one hand, and two distinct dimensions of reality—rest and motion—on the other. But we must be careful even when we deal with Aristotle. A 11. Geist

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Hegelian would say that Aristotle has certainly survived in Hegel's Encyclopedia, but with a merely verbal description of divine self-reflection. Sure enough, this is what we find in Book A of the Metaphysics, the only text in which the onto-theological peak of Aristotelian metaphysics is expressly described. Here, the self-movement in self-reflection unfolds toward the completely autonomous form of the First Mover. However, I also bear in mind that this complete autonomy is nothing human but rather the universe as the Greek thought of it, and therefore we should consider the difference between the human being and the divine being. The divine being is distinguished by the continuity of its presence, which is the whole that is. Its superiority lies in the fact that it knows no limit, no obstruction, no illness, no fatigue, no sleep. In comparison, in the case of the human being, all of these are limitations of its being awake. The finitude of the human being brings all this with it. Aristotle himself insists on the fact that reflection always presupposes an immediate act; it is always a parergon, a subsequently occurring excess that is added onto something immediate. Reflection presupposes throughout that we have already submitted to the given in such a way that—and this is what reflection is—we then turn ourselves back to the given starting point. Besides this, there is still much else connected with the finitude of the human being. Thus, for example, the great mystery of forgetting. The computer is something impoverished because it cannot forget and therefore is not creative. Creativity depends on the choices made by our reason and our capacity to think. All of this shows that it is no trivial claim when one thinks that there is a metaphysics of finitude and finite beings and that, in a certain sense, this "ontology" has been the last word of Greek metaphysics. When Hegel takes this up position again, he certainly remains within the limits set by the autonomy of self-consciousness that belong to a culture founded, in opposition to reality, upon the independence of the subject which reflects upon itself. It is also precisely this culture from which springs the "aggressiveness" of modern science, which always wants to become master over its object by means of a method and thus excludes that mutuality of participation existing between object and subject that represents the highest point of Greek philosophy and makes possible our participation in the beautiful, the good, and the just, as well as in

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the values of communal human life. For the Greeks, the essence of knowledge is the dialogue and not the mastery of objects comprehended as proceeding from an autonomous subjectivity, that victory of modern science that has even in a certain sense led to the end of the metaphysics. All of this perhaps can perhaps help us to understand why Husserl, with his analysis of timeconsciousness, and, after him, the author of Being and Time, pointed the way for contemporary philosophy.

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B

efore we continue our investigation, I would like once again to briefly review the path we have already traveled. Within the framework of the perspective I have designated as "effective history,"1 we have made well-preserved and unreconstructed texts the object of our investigation, namely, the writings of Plato and Aristotle. We have thereby proceeded from the conviction that the beginning of Greek science and philosophy must be grasped from the answers that the great thinkers—like, for instance, Plato and Aristotle—have given to the questions raised by this beginning. These questions were undoubtedly those of scientific, mathematical, astronomic, and physical access to what, since Plato, we have called nature. With this intention, we looked at the Phaedo, and in doing so we had to take note of the fact that it is not possible to understand a fragment of such a well-structured text without taking into account the entire movement of thought and the dialogue conducted between Plato and the past. In this sense, we made the concept of the soul our theme and discussed the soul on the one hand as a life-principle and on the other hand as thinking and mind. From there we proceeded to the Theatetus and to the Sophist and examined the passages that deal with the beginnings of philosophy for the Greeks. In the course of this reflection, I emphasized that "beginning** or "principium" is meant here not in the temporal sense, but rather in the "logical" senses. 1. Wirkungsgeschichte

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The prindpium is that on whose basis everything else is structured, like, for instance, in the domain of numbers, where we know two first as the number and [then] as n + 1. With this it has been clearly established that even for Plato this beginning lies very much in darkness, which follows, for example, from the manner in which Plato refers to Xenophanes, namely, as the messenger of a prehistory lying far in the past. All of this goes to point out once again that even these Plato passages and in general all the passages on which the tradition is based should not be viewed as documents and testimonies that inform us in an historically valuable way about the Presocratics. Considered from this point of view, they are extremely unreliable and lead us into error. The chronologies are constructions by scholars of the Hellenistic age, and the "biographies" by Diogenes Laertius, for instance, are a conglomeration of legends and indirect tradition. This warning also applies to the citations collected under the title "Fragments of the Presocratics." These are quotations that at least reflect the interests and the points of view of the later authors who quoted them. In the Theatetus and in the Sophist, in the analysis of knowledge and of what is, and, likewise, in the Sophist, in the problem of the soul and its relationship to motion and rest, we recognized the same problem that had been thematized in the Phaedo with regard to the soul in relation to life and mind. Now we must proceed to the effect of Presocratic philosophy in the framework of Aristotelian philosophy, that is, we must ask how the Presocratic looks to Aristotelian philosophy. This is an extremely important point because the subsequent doxography since Theophrastus and his followers leans heavily on Aristotle's testimonies. Therefore, it is necessary to point out that, with his explications of the Presocratics, Aristotle does not wish to write history any more than Plato does, but rather he is prompted to do so by problems in his own philosophy. Here, we can assume that Presocratic philosophy presents a constant challenge for Aristotelian doctrines and that the passages of the Physics or the Metaphysics dedicated the Presocratics belong to a living dialogue between Plato and his predecessors. Only if we follow this dialogue is it possible to understand adequately the question-frame formulated by the Milesian, the Eleatic, or the atomistic "schools." That there is a basic orientation common to Plato and Aristotle, is clear. Both of them opted for the "flight into the /ogo/,"

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and, in this sense, they are both followers of Socrates as he is portrayed in die Phaedo. Then with Hellenism—especially with the Stoa—a reestablishing of the origin occurs, which no longer proceeds on the basis of the logoi. But the basic difference between Plato and Aristotle is also no less clear: Plato is mathematically oriented, while Aristotle sticks to physics and, above all, to biology. The former orientation largely eliminates the problem of contingency because in the realm of mathematics there is nothing at all of the particular. The application of numbers to the particular wants to be nothing other than a practical implementation of mathematics. But numbers and the relationships between the numbers are more than mere tools for the construction or the reconstruction of matter. They are the actual bearers of the order of reality, the regularity of the circular movement of the heavenly bodies. Also, in the sublunar world in which the movements are less regular, there is—as follows from the propagation of the species, the rhythm of the seasons, the path from the seed to the ripe fruit, and so on—a fixed order. Nevertheless, the orientation toward physics and biology includes the recognition of the individual creature, the particular, that which Aristotle calls "tode ti" a something that only manifests itself through showing and not through words. What matters here, obviously, is living nature and its being rather than mathematical structures. This complex relationship between Plato and Aristotle has its consequences. They are both concerned with the reality of the universe, yet Plato speaks about it mostly with the help of splendid myths—what is recounted in the Timaeus, for example. As you know, the Platonic Timaeus is illuminating in a certain sense for the integration of Greek philosophy into Christian philosophy, insofar as the demiurge is interpreted as an approximation of the Creator-God of the Old Testament. Admittedly, as the word [of the Timaeus} already tells us, the demiurge is like a master craftsman who does indeed manufacture something but who, in contrast to the "Word" of the theological doctrine of Creation, does not simply create from out of nothingness. The divine craftsperson manufactures things according to the model of ideas, of which he is not at all the creator. Here it is clear that the model that governs the action of the demiurges conforms more to the mathematics of Pythagorean astronomy. The demiurge fashions the world-soul, but what does it have to do with this soul? It is neither life-principle nor knowledge, but rather

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the origin of the periodic, regular, always constant motion that is the mark of the heavenly bodies and whose essence can be expressed by numbers and their relationships. If we want to use Aristotelian terminology here, it is not so much a question of physis but rather of techne, which obviously does not mean techne in the modern sense of technology but intellectual2 creation as it was understood prior to the emergence of modern technology. For the Greeks, techne is a knowing how one fabricates something, not the fabrication itself. Aristotle apparently did not feel comfortable with this explanation of nature by means of images like that of the craftsperson, the technikos. This construction, rather, is the opposite of physis, and I would remind you that the concept of physis has developed only recently from the self-evident usage within the Western tradition into counter-concepts like nomos and techne. But these counter-concepts to physis are typically sophistic. Its clear, in any case, that Aristotle was not content with myths and images, and as he was occasionally prone to making quite blunt judgments, he flatly stated that the Timaeus brings only empty metaphors, mat it contains nothing conceptually consistent and is without value for the philosopher, who, of course, wants to explain things with concepts. The universe for Aristotle, indeed, as for Plato, appears to be founded on mathematical regularities, but this is precisely why the universe is not at all similar to the world that is regulated by politics, society, and laws. By contrast, all of this becomes for Plato the object of a mythical tale. According to Plato, the world is designed by a sovereign craftsperson-god, yet it is implemented in its details by subordinate deities who are responsible for what is irregular and accidental in our earthly lives. Only heaven is perfect. Aristotle transforms this Platonic myth into concepts that constitute the essence of physis. Such concepts are: matter, the origin of motion, form, function,3 time, space, and so on. These are the concepts of techne; they are concepts with which the action of the craftsperson can be described; and they are precisely the kind of concepts with which Aristotle undertakes to determine the specific essence of nature. This should not surprise us. Greek civilization had reached such a level by that time—the epoch of rhetoric and sophistic dialectic—that the 2. Geistig: mental or spiritual. 3. Or purpose: Zweck.

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skillful craftsperson was regarded as a model for humankind and all human knowledge was regarded as techne. Thus the concepts connected to techne were those most readily available for expressing the order of the world to which Aristotle attached such importance. Before we continue, it is necessary to point out that the Aristotelian doctrine of the four causes was not constructed in order to establish a metaphysics. Rather, the chapter on the four causes was originally a chapter of the Physics, and this, in turn, was certainly not the first subject in the framework of Aristotle's lecture courses, nevertheless it undoubtedly belonged to his earliest writings. Exactly when the Physics was worked out remains a very difficult problem. Apparently, the text had already been partially written earlier, before it was enlarged and received the shape in which we know it today. Let us now begin with an examination of the Physics. This is a text in which (much as in the Metaphysics) the thought is not presented in a finished and systematic form but rather as something in development, and it is a text that is dictated above all with the intention of emphasizing his difference from Plato and from the Academy, even when Aristotle, by way of elucidation, presents the thinking of his predecessors. This objective of the whole is clear from the first book on, and this book is essentially a critique of Plato. This should not surprise us. In the comparison employed here, the previously suggested difference comes to light, the difference, that is, that existed between Plato, the mathematician and Pythagorean, on the one hand, and Aristotle, the physicist, biologist, and doctor's son, on the other. In this first book, we come upon a classification of principles that is less complicated than the enumeration that occurs in the Sophist. The second and third chapter of the first book subsequently contain a detailed criticism of Parmenides and Eleatic philosophy, within which he first makes the quite illuminating remark that in physics, the science of moving things, there is no place for the Eleatics since they completely deny the existence of motion. This criticism of the Eleatics is actually a criticism of Plato. It implies that the attempt to determine the various meanings of being, of what is, and so on, is an extremely complicated task and is not limited to physis. Remarkably, it becomes at no place clear in these two chapters that the longer and now lost second part of Parmenides' famous poem was preoccupied with nature, the

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cosmos, and the self-moving heavenly bodies. The critique focuses exclusively on the first part of the Parmenidean didactic poem, which has survived through the transcription of Simplicius. Simplicius thought (apparently not altogether unjustly) that only the first part needed to be transcribed because the Aristotelian critique was aimed only at this first part. But this means that Aristotle really attacked Plato's point of view by way of a detour through the text of Parmenides. To put it another way: in the Physics—that is, in a book that occupies itself with nature—Aristotle only goes into that part of the Parmenidean poem that does not confront nature. In essence, he thus had the intention of differentiating himself from Plato, whose views he simply identified with the first part of the poem. The fourth chapter goes into the experts on nature (physikoi), whom he sometimes calls physiologists and at several other times he calls physicists. There is no established terminology here. In any case it is clear that we are dealing with designations that encompass all the preceding thinkers—except for the Eleatics and, to some extent, the Pythagoreans and Plato. The text states that there are two types of experts on nature: the ones who declare that things can originate through puknotes and manotes, that is, through condensing and rarefying, as well as the ones who declare that they come about with the help of ekkrisis, that is, by separating them out from a mixture. Puknotes/ manotes and ekkrisis are obviously two distinct theories, and the classification of the nature experts is based on this difference. Aristotle attaches no names to puknotes/manotes, yet it is readily understood that he refers above all else to Anaximenes, who advocated the doctrine that the basic element is air, which could assume many different shapes through condensing and rarefying. (Here, by the way, I am convinced that Thales also had something similar in mind.) Puknotes/manotes apparently stands for the class that Aristotle ascribes to the Milesians. The second concept, the concept of ekkrisis, is no doubt introduced to make explicit reference to Anaximander, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras. But what immediately stands out in this classification is that the first of these authors seems to have been brought together with the two others by force. Ultimately, the discourse in the text is only about Anaxagoras, and this in a manner that makes it clear that mixing and separating out form the model that first proves to be necessary on the basis of the Eleatic critique

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of the multiplicity and changeability of the processes of nature. In order to reply to this criticism, there is nothing left but to fall back on those concepts of mixture and separation (ekkrisis). This is a well-known Aristotelian thesis that is repeated in many passages, and I find it quite understandable that, in the end, the corpuscle theory was held to be an answer to the Eleatic critique. But since this is the case, it becomes impossible to proceed in an Aristotelian manner and to accommodate Anaximander within the framework of this theory. To do so would be to anticipate the "effect" of the Eleatic critique, and thus we would be committing an anachronism comparable to the one that we ran into with Xenophanes in the Sophist (242d 4-7). In truth, it seems that Anaximander's theory is superimposed here on the philosophy of Anaxagoras. This superimposition, of course, must have had a basis in the tradition. This also emerges from Theophrastus, for example, who, as Diels has proven, ascribes to Anaximander a cosmogony based on the bursting of an originary cosmic egg, hence a cosmogony based on the idea of liberation and differentiation. Aristotle obviously knew this tradition, which inclined him to ascribe the corpuscle theory to Anaximander as well. This arrangement, by the way, seemed so obvious that modern philosophical historiography has also fallen in line with it. The Viennese school of Gomperz and his supporters as well as the early Dilthey speak quite similarly in this regard. Essentially, it always comes down in the end to the fact that one thinks this condensing as a compression of countless particles. This, of course, should only be seen as an image that imposes itself through the influence of Galilean mechanics. However, if we put ourselves into the culture of the fifth century before Christ, the picture looks different. It seems obvious to me, for example, that in Anaximenes it is a question of attributing becoming, with all its different appearances, to the same substratum. What is crucial is thus flexibility or changeability. From an Aristotelian perspective this means that here, of course, the origin of motion is still not at all developed. Air is simply movable and cannot exist in the condition of rest. Aristotle himself says that element of earth is entirely absent in the Milesians because earth lacks flexibility. In these earliest theories, therefore, the problem of the material cause does not come into consideration at all, or at least not primarily; here, rather, the question is the problem of motion's origin. Thus it seems to me completely

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misguided to maintain, following Aristotle, that first water and then air were proposed as principles and that they were each proposed in the sense of a material substance. No, here, we are dealing with something else, namely, the changeability of things and not elements. This was also the decisive point with Anaximander, only that his cosmogony looks suspiciously similar to that of Anaxagoras, which for me is the reason [for thinking] that it has perhaps has been mixed in with Aristotle. In the end, Anaximander even falls into complete oblivion, while Anaxagoras is spoken of extensively. With this we have a further example of what I have already brought to light, namely, that we usually get to know the philosophy of the earliest thinkers through the figure of a thinker from Socrates' time. In this case, it is the figure of Anaxagoras. We observe the same problem with regard to Thales. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle says with subtle reservation that the thesis put forward by Thales, namely, that water is the originary element, follows from die observation that there is no life without moisture. This does not correspond to the sixth-century cosmologicalcosmogonic way of thinking. This time period would be more likely to maintain that other assertion by Aristotle, the one that concluded that water was valid as the originary element because a log always stays at the surface and is carried by water. Obviously, this observation is entirely in accord with Greek argumentation and has nothing to with the telling of myths. Actually, that the **fundamentality"of water should be demonstrated by4 the fact that the log climbs again and again to the surface whenever one tries to submerge it is an extraordinary observation. This argument appears plausible to me. Perhaps it is the only one that really corresponds to Milesian thinking. The other one, which accepts water as the principle of life, presupposes a development of biology and medicine that had not yet taken hold at the time of the Thales cosmology and that only pushes [its way] into consciousness in the fifth century. Thus the conclusion is that there may be a superimposition on the part of the fifth century present in this case as well, specifically on the part of Diogenes of Apollonia, as follows from the investigations by 4. The logic of the German here appears to have been inverted from what was originally intended. The German reads more literally as follows: "In fact, in that the 'fundamentality' of water should prove that [beweisen soil, dafi] the log climbs again and again to the surface whenever one tries to submerge it is an extraordinary observation."

Aristotle's Doxographical Approach 79 John Burnet and Andre Laks.5 This is another instance, as I see it, in which the doxography of the Presocratic theme is strongly stamped by the fourth century, and the doxographer here is no less than Aristotle himself. Of course, these are not conscious falsifications by Aristotle; rather, it comes down to the fact that the precision of the information and the variations between this and that philosopher had no particularly great significance for Aristotle since he was more interested in the problems themselves. And if we study the Presocratics as philosophers on the basis of the writings of Aristotle, we must refer to Aristotle's interests rather than believing, in accordance with the desires of modern historical research, that here we have a fragmentary tradition to decipher and appraise historically. Now I would like to call attention once again to the reasons why the texts of Plato and Aristotle are reviewed again and again. We must begin from the fact that a gap exists between the intention and the conceptual apparatus. This has been the starting point for the manner in which I have treated Plato and Aristotle. Both of them are well acquainted with the distinction between intention and conceptual work. This is also the reason why in the Sophist the theories of the Presocratics are smiled at like myths; they do not quite succeed in adequately clarifying the concept of that which is that Parmenides introduced. In Aristotle, the concept of hyle (wood, forest) seemed to be crucial for the formation of such a concept of what is precisely because wood was such a generally available raw material. It turns out once again that this concept belongs less to nature than to the world of techne. This is probably die reason Aristotle uses the more precise expression "hypokeimenon" in order to gain a grasp of the object of the investigation—that is, a grasp of becoming in nature: insofar as there is change, there must be a substratum of this change, but in nature it may not be "material." Basically, our discussion is trying to show that we are standing here at the origin of doxography. Yet, at the same time, this origin is a distortion of the true intentions of the first thinkers of the West. For example, when Aristotle begins to speak in the Metaphysics of the first conception of cause and says that Thales 5. See Burnet's The Greek Philosophers, revised ed. (London, 1982) and Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed. (London, 1930) and Laks' Diogene d' Apollonie (Lille, 1983).

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proposed this and that Thales was the first thinker who did not simply recount myths but also made use of evidence, then we must understand that by 'cause' he meant matter. Subsequent doxography was deeply influenced by this interpretive approach. Water, then, essentially signifies a material element, and the same also happens with some violence to the apeiron of Anaximander and then to the air of Anaximenes. In this way, the image of a "school" is developed around a common theme standing in the center, and, as we know, from this image later emerges the embarrassment that Anaximenes' air appears to be a setback in comparison with the indeterminate of Anaximander (which cannot possibly be a material!), even though by the "school" of Miletus most people mean the people around Anaximenes. All of this is apparently a consequence of the concepts that Aristotle must introduce in order to overcome the mathematical and mythical view of the Timaeus. But at the same time it is dear that Aristotle is not convincing here, and this is why I have begun with the Physics, in which the Milesians are depicted in a completely different way: there, Anaximander is situated quite differently in relation to Thales and Anaximenes, such that they can both be conceived of as expounding the ideas of the condensing, the flexibility, and the changing of things. Even in Plato we clearly observed the lack of a conceptuality appropriate to his intentions. We have seen what pains Plato takes in this respect to reach purely formal and logical concepts like sameness/difference from the conceptual pair of rest/motion. This is not, of course, meant to be a criticism. After making the formalism of the fourfold Aristotelian conception of cause one's own, one is inclined to judge Plato's endeavors as incomplete. No, the problem is a different one. It is a question of gleaning the attainments of ancient knowledge and the power of its imagination from the use of concepts. We have a similar example [today]. An advance in the philosophy of our own century is the insight into the preschematization [involved] in the use of phenomenological concepts and their horizons of meaning. When Heidegger analyzes the concept of consciousness, for example, he makes clear that the use of that concept presupposes being as presenceat-hand.6 Now it is clear that a philosophical tradition begins to enter into the conversation here as soon as the concepts it 6. Vorhandenheit

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employs are no longer taken up as something self-evident, if the exertion of thinking is directed toward bringing to speech die discernable implications of conventional concept usage. This is precisely what happens when Aristotle situates his critical position over against Plato's mathematical-Pythagorean cosmology. The doctrine of the four causes, as I have already said, is, above all else, the conceptual basis of Aristotle's Physics as it develops. This permits him to reject the myth told in the Timaeus and to overcome the mathematical conception of physis. By contrast, the Aristotelian concept of the causes allows the world of what is handcrafted to step into the foreground. The salient point of this doctrine remains the concept of the material cause. The Greek word is "hyle"—that is to say, forest or wood—an expression that loudly proclaims its descent from the world of the craftsperson, while many corresponding Latin concepts came from the world of the farmer. What is important about the material cause as such? For the craftsperson, matter is obviously not the substance of his action but only its sine qua non. The material is indispensable, yet it is completely dependent on the choice and execution of the plan. In any case, the matter does not acquire the design on its own. When Aristotle first speaks of nature, he must state expressly that it is something that contains the beginning of its movement, that is, the principle of its development, in itself. Matter, on the other hand, in no way contains its development in itself; indeed one can define it directly as that which does not possess this quality. "If one sticks a piece of wood into the ground," says the Sophist, Antiphon, "no tree grows from it," and Aristotle quotes him approvingly. The first thing that we must comprehend is thus that matter has no autonomous function and is something completely different from nature. Certainly, it is a something, it is ousia pos, in a certain sense a thing that exists.7 In another sense, however, it is something that does not exist.8 That is, if we understand matter to be something determinate—like, for example, the paper on which I write—then this "material" is already more than matter. It is quadrilateral, white, and so on; that is, it is itself already a product because it has a form and a purpose and is available for use. In a certain sense, matter does not exist; it does not exist, that is, 7. einSeiendes 8. etwas Nichtseiendes

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if "existing" means "being" as in "being here."9 If I point to something as material, I certainly do not mean it as matter but already as something shaped, structured, a product of techne. But then, how is it with nature, if, like Aristotle, we exclude the work of a creator? As Aristotelian science was transformed at the beginning of modern science, in order to bring the technical tone of the matter concept closer to "nature" the concept of matter in the Presocratics came to be expressed with the help of hylozoism. But even this concept is little more than a metaphor that cannot solve the problem of the essence of nature in the form in which this problem is posed by Aristotle's Physics. It is obvious that matter is not what distinguishes nature. The crucial thing is the principle of motion, the hothen he kinesis. Granted, Aristotle emphasizes the fact that matter is indispensable. This emphasis follows from the fact that he is an opponent of PythagoreanPlatonic mathematism. In order to defend his own point of view, he must lean on the material cause. The problem arises as soon as it becomes necessary to determine conceptually which proper function the material cause fulfills in reality. The answer that Aristotle finds [however] has a certain ambiguity within Aristotelian philosophy. This expression, "hypokeimenon," is something "nameless" that forms the substratum of all qualitative alteration, but it can also mean the subject of the sentence. The meaning of "hypokeimenon" is purely functional: the underlying, the substrate. The word "substantia" is nothing other than the categorial and grammatical translation of this word into Latin.

9. Hiersein

8

Ionic Thinking in Aristotle's Physics A ristotelian terminology can already be distinguished in Plato. x\Toward the beginning of the Philebus, Socrates—in fact, an extremely mature Socrates—says that there are four kinds of things: the first is the unlimited, the second is limit, the third is the limited, and the fourth is mind,1 which accomplishes the limiting. This connects with the Pythagorean tradition, that is, to the relationship that obtains between the apeiron (the undetermined, the unlimited) and the peras (the limit). Thus number is what eliminates unlimitedness and therefore constitutes the essence of things through die knowledge of number. But for the Pythagoreans number becomes being itself. In the things themselves,2 Plato sees a third thing, the real, and this is the third kind. Above all else, Plato speaks of a fourth cause: mind, which brings about this limitation. With both of these, we have gone beyond the Pythagorean tradition. Precisely by further differentiating this tradition, Plato gives to wows, to die intellectual,3 its true essence, which produces the synthesis between the unlimited and the limit. As I see it, the difference between Plato's standpoint and Aristotle's position is therefore clear: Aristotle sees the substratum of change in the hyle, Plato sees it in the indeterminate, in the more or the less (mallon kai hetton), or even in the large and the small 1. Geist: nous in die Greek.

2. in der Sache selbst 3. dem Geistigen

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(mega kai mikron), therefore in a mathematically, that is to say, an idealistically conceived substratum that eventually becomes something through number. Of course, Plato is aware of the fact that the problem consists in explaining the transition that leads from the indeterminate to the determination of the things of nature, that is, to physis. Thus he comes to distinguish wows, mind, which accomplishes the determination in that it unifies the unlimited with the limit as a particular kind. This is the fourth factor that is necessary in order to overcome the strictly numerical scheme of the Pythagoreans. Yet in this respect, in Aristotle's eyes the demiurge is nothing more than a meaningless metaphor, a poetic image of Plato's that suggests a mind dominating reality. But the concept is missing. So he asks how concrete, determinate being comes to be in nature. This is the problem of the origin, of haplei genesis. With this, since all becoming presupposes something that was previously not there, the question of the possibility of becoming arises. If becoming must be explained without recourse to a mythical craftsperson, the question poses itself as to how this is legitimately possible without thinking the unthinkable nothing. To this question, Aristotle responds that there could not be nothing. This is an interesting point. Here Aristotle apparently considers the Eleatic argument that rejects every use of the nothing (me on) in that he introduces his own concepts, which are more appropriate for natural beings,4 for which motion is suitable as a distinguishing characteristic. Aristotle employs for this the term "deprivation" (steresis), privation. This means, for example, that the transition from cold to warm is thus explained by the fact that one grasps the cold as a lack of the warm and not as something that an authoritative external action must accomplish, like, for instance, the craftsperson who takes the material and endows it with a new form. The concept of steresis is the Aristotelian solution to the problem of genesis. With this concept, as we know, the concepts of dynamis and energeia come into play, that is, the concepts of potential and actual being. These concepts are found not only in the Metaphysics but also in the sixth and eighth chapters of the Physics and elsewhere in the early writings. In this way, Aristotle gains the possibility of solving the contradiction inherent in the concept of motion and thus getting at the dialectical 4. das naturlicbe Seiende

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problem of the unity of rest and motion that we already found in the Sophist. Already in Plato, dynamis opens a new ontological perspective: a concept of what is that does not grasp this as something present—as static and permanent givenness—but as something that is motion and leads to motion. In the Aristotelian conceptual pair of dynamis and entelecheia, being and motion no longer stand in opposition to one another. All of this means that Aristotle takes up certain standpoints with regard to the explanation of the concrete and the contingent, standpoints that constitute a conscious opposition to the Pythagorean approach and its mythical aberrations, and he thereby presents an opposition to Plato's divine craftsperson. This view of physis in Aristotle points toward his "doxography." It also explains the inconsistency of the tradition according to which Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes stand in such an illogical sequence. In Aristotle, there is no such sequence among them. As Aristotle himself says, Anaximander's theory can only be associated with those who take the separating of what is mixed as a basis. Because the conceptual pairing of "separating/the mixed" is a different one from the pairing, "condensing/dissolving," we can conclude that Anaximander, according to Aristotle in the Physics, cannot be associated with the same group as Anaximenes. It is obvious, therefore, that Aristotle acts quite summarily in the Metaphysics when he classifies all three Milesians together under the fundamental idea of the material cause and thereby distorts Anaximander's position in particular. This is why it is necessary to ask ourselves what Aristotle really thought about the lonians. In regard to Thales, I have already explained that the material cause was not his real problem. As the Phaedo confirms, the problem for Thales, according to Aristotle, consists in the fact that the whole rests upon water like the piece of wood that comes to the surface again and again when one pushes it under. We refer to this whole with an extremely subtle expression that is indicative of something unitary and oriented toward unity: the "universe." This is apparently the only information about Thales that Aristotle really possessed, which is also confirmed by the fact that the view ascribed to Thales—that water is the originary element since it represents the nourishment of living beings—is expressly characterized in the text only as a supposition. In reality, this is more of a fourth-century opinion that derives from Diogenes of

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Apollonia. In truth, the Aristotelian sources themselves testify to only a single theme from Thales, namely, the question regarding the way in which the universe rests on water. But how do things stand with Anaximander? Let us first deal with the famous epigram to which Heidegger, as we know, dedicated an extremely profound essay but which has also been very carefully analyzed by classical philology with highly interesting results. I mean the following famous passage, which is quoted by Simplicius: archen eireche ton onton to apeiron (Physics 24,13^. Here, of course, the word "arche" means nothing more than "beginning" in the temporal sense. It would be an anachronism if one wanted to interpret Anaximander as though he had intended the metaphysical meaning of a "principle" from which something is derived. If "arche" refers to apeiron, the meaning is clear: "The unlimited is at the beginning of the whole." Here, I would like to recall that Werner Jaeger discusses the infinity chapter of Aristotle's Physics in an excellent footnote of his Theology of the Early Greek Thinkers. The correct path is taken there, a path that I myself likewise walk in that I proceed from the Aristotelian concepts of the Physics. The text continues: ex hdn de he genesis esti tots oust, kai ten phthoran eis tauta ginesthai kata to chreon. This, too, is a wellknown formulation: "There, where existing things have their origin, their becoming, there passing away also takes place." "Phthora" is a very suggestive expression for this, which I could also render as "dissolution." Again and again I place great value on these questions of lexical significance because in them we have the life of philosophy: we speak with the help of words, and in order to be understood as expressions of thought the words must be grasped in terms of both their original meanings and their respective contexts. So this means here that, of necessity, the dissolution always follows: didonai gar auta diken kai tisin allelois tes adikias kata ten tou chronou taxin. I remind you once again of the interpretation of this famous saying, stemming from Schopenhauer and based the Upanishads, that Nietzsche formulates in his treatise on Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. At that time it was read as: "Existing things5 pay the price for the offense that they committed by breaking away from the whole and becoming individuals." This interpretation, however, cannot be maintained 5. Die seienden Dinge

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because meanwhile the word [for] "each other" ("allelois") has been found in the text as recorded by Simplicius. This means that existing things suffer the penalty and produce atonement for each other. It is no wonder that the older interpretation was supported by a text in which the word "each other" is missing. The truth is—and this is particularly valid since the restoration of the text— that the meaning of the passage handed down by Simplicius is a completely different one and definitely has nothing to do with the "Buddhism" upon which Schopenhauer's metaphysics is based. Provided we do not delete the term "each other" but pay proper attention to it, we realize that it refers to oppositions (enantia), hence to the opposites and their reciprocal relationship. But then Anaximander's formulation amounts to nothing more than balance, the permanent equilibrium that exists in the universe, and to the fact that each prevailing tendency is always superseded6 again by an opposite tendency. Consequently, the purpose of Anaximander's aphorism is obviously to express the natural balance between phenomena. Heidegger's essay can likewise be studied profitably in light of this textual emendation. One last point about this text: it has also been proposed that the words kata ten tou chronou toxin ("in accordance with the temporal order") are an interpretive addition by Simplicius. This thesis, originating with Franz Dirlmeier, seems plausible to me, and for this reason I do not find entirely convincing Jaeger's supposition that Anaximander has borrowed from the Ionic polls and its order the image of Time enthroned on his chair as a judge who lays down penalties. There is indeed nothing of this in Anaximander. It is merely an added interpretation, albeit an interpretation that comes from someone whose interpretation is always worth considering. This interpreter knows that the myth about the bursting of the cosmic egg stands at the origin of Anaximander's cosmogony. This also justifies the Aristotelian intuition according to which Anaximander's view is not based on the idea of condensing/rarefying enunciated by Thales and Anaximenes, but rather on the separation of the mixed. That Thales and Anaximenes may be construed as similar should be clear. Water and air really are subject to the changes in density and composition. But that Anaximander should have his place between the water and the air and in such a way that 6. verdrangt

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Anaximenes appears as a step backwards in relation to Anaximander is totally absurd. Indeed, the fact that Anaximenes was considered to be the head of the school also speaks against this. Aristotle speaks of hoi peri Anaximenen. It is Anaximenes who is regarded as representative of the Milesian thinkers. Accordingly, it is out of the question that Anaximenes should not have comprehended the depth of the concept of the indeterminate, the apeiron, which Anaximander coined. In truth, the whole difficulty stems from a misunderstanding of the word "apeiron," which must have another meaning here besides that of indeterminate substance. Moreover, as I see it, the interpreter who added the words kata ten ton chronou taxin had recognized this. He probably realized, similarly to Anaximander, that a periodic motion continues without limit and without end. The apeiron is actually that which has neither beginning nor end, in that it comes back into itself again and again like a loop. This is the miracle of being: the motion that regulates itself constantly and progressively into the infinite. This, it would seem, is the true beginning of existing things. Heidegger has established precisely this decisive point, namely, the idea that temporality is the key characteristic of that which is. But can this view of the periodicity of being be brought into harmony with the word "apeiron"? This problem solves itself if we understand the opening words—archen ton onton to apeiron—as, in a certain sense, a paradoxical formulation what may certainly not be taken literally. But this is precisely what has been done by the doxography that considers that, since the arche must either be something finite or something infinite, it is plausible to understand Anaximander's apeiron as infinite substance. Formulated schematically and a little provocatively, I would like to suggest that, for existing things, the beginning consists in the fact that they have no beginning because what exists preserves itself in its continual periodicity. Admittedly, we know that this line of reasoning is not carried out in Anaximander. But the view according to which the universe is a balanced self-turning necessarily raises the question of what actually preceded this perpetual balance of things. There is an answer to this. It lies in the new cosmogonic mythos that is being told at this time. It is the myth of the bursting of the cosmic egg. Through recent research, we have proven that the cosmogonic myths of the East stand behind this view, especially the myths of the Hittites and the Sumerians. As we know,

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a confrontation has also arisen over the question of how far these cosmogonies extend: does Anaximander have in mind a cosmogony in the sense that it always periodically repeats itself, such that multiple universes hatch from cosmic eggs? Certainly, the multiplicity of universes is asserted. But along with this, we would be accepting the fact that Anaximander is superimposed on Empedocles as well as Democritus. In their century, it is indeed possible to abstract from sense perception to such an extent that one reaches the assumption that periodicity means a new formation of a cosmos each time a new order is brought about through the bursting, the determination, and the structuring of all things, and then in each case a process of dissolution and a new bursting follows upon all this. Such an interpretation does not accord with the explanation that, in my own view and those advocated by other authors, corresponds to the testimonies about Anaximander. For, after all, our attention should be directed to the reciprocal equilibrium of the various existing things in the one universe. After evidence was produced that the language used by Anaximander expresses no mystic religiosity of a Buddhistic sort according to which individualization is regarded as an offense that must be expiated by a penalty, Werner Jaeger, in particular, showed that Anaximander's language is the language of the city-state, the language of the law that holds sway in the city, and that we are dealing here with the social and political balance of the city. Even though, as I have already said, I would not like to go as far as Jaeger, according to whom Anaximander supposes the image of Time to be a judge enthroned on his chair, it is nevertheless clear to me that Anaximander's language goes back to political language, to the language of the city-state with its order and its institutions. But for precisely this reason I consider it unlikely that one can ascribe to Anaximander the idea of the multiplicity of universes. It is much more plausible that a later superimposition occurred, similar to the one that is responsible for the idea of moisture being Thales* concept of the originary element when, in fact, it originates from a superimposition by Diogenes of Apollonia and his contemporaries. With regard to Anaximenes, I would like to restrict myself to the remark that he is the first one whose method has been irrevocably handed down as what passed at that time for a "proof." Think, for instance, of the "proof* for the condensation of

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being—that, because of compression and condensation, when one's mouth is closed the air is cold, and, because of rarefaction, when one's mouth open it is warm. We may smile at the naivete of this "proof," yet its importance lies in the fact that it wants to produce a proof, albeit an extremely ridiculous one, that is founded on the observation of things, a procedure that may have been typical of the thinkers of that time. In conclusion, the following result can be formulated: among the three names that are passed on to us as members of the socalled school of Miletus, there is an obvious commonality of orientation. The same problem poses itself in each case—in Thales with water, in Anaximander with the periodicity of the universe, and in Anaximenes with air—all of which we can formulate by resorting to the conceptuality developed in Aristotle's Physics, for which we employ the concept of physis. What is new about what these thinkers bring to light is precisely this: it has to do with the problem of physis, with something that endures in becoming and in the multiplicity of appearances. What lends these thinkers unity and what causes them to appear as the first stage of Greek thinking is their willingness to separate themselves from mythos and to express the thought of an observable reality that carries itself and orders itself in itself. This attempt can be described aptly within the framework of the conceptuality of Aristotle's Physics. My viewpoint can be corroborated further by evidence drawn from the elegies of Xenophanes. Xenophanes was, as you know, a rhapsode who, just as Pythagoras had, emigrated from Asia Minor to southern Italy after the Persian occupation of his home. This was an exceedingly important event, the beginning of a new chapter in Western thinking. Xenophanes has left us an extremely fascinating trail. Certainly, he was no thinker, and he was also not the founder of the Eleatic school, which apparently did not even exist. The Eleatic school is probably the invention of a later, school-happy age. In the eyes of schoolmasters everything becomes a school. But the enormous importance of Xenophanes now lies precisely in the fact that he was something entirely different. He was a rhapsode, an elocutionist who was trained to recite the great epic poetry. His own elegies have been praised because, instead of telling us about titans, giants, and centaurs, they deal with virtues, and he expressly puts forward as improper the singing of athletic achievements and victories in competition.

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The highest things are of a different kind—namely, education and knowledge—and these alone should be honored and celebrated. This is a testimony of extraordinary value, even if here we do not hear the voice of the philosopher but rather that of the rhapsode. But there are also some aphorisms by Xenophanes that are of philosophical interest, like, for instance, fragments 23 to 28 of the Diels/Kranz edition. The following sentence stands at the beginning of these fragments: eis theos, en te theoisi kai anthopoisi megistos, outi demos thnetoisin homoiios oude noema, which means roughly: "Lone god, the greatest among the gods and people, similar to mortals neither in form nor in insight." (Here one could criticize the fact that the formulation "Lone god, the greatest among the gods and people" contains a contradiction. But whoever said this was meant to be a logical treatise?) What is really going on with this lone god? We find the answer in the following fragments: all' apaneuthe ponoio noou phreni panta kradainei ("with the help of his nous he rules the whole"), and aiei d' en tautoi mimnei kinoumenos ouden ("always he remains in the same place without moving"). This last distinct sentence has come to be of momentous importance, for Xenophanes has been put forward as the founder of the Eleatic school because of it, since, by positing the One as the unmoved, he denies motion. Against this, I take it to be obvious that these lines allude to the same problem that the Milesians also debated: it is the whole, the universe, that carries itself and corresponds to the globe swimming on water, or the periodicity of the world, or the air described by Anaximander that endures alternating condensation and rarefaction. With this, everything becomes clear. The lone god, the new god, is what we call the universe. This is the only thing that exists. For the Greeks, "god" is a predicate. But who adopted this new point of view; who was it who really taught the universe that rests in itself motionlessly? That, of course, was Parmenides. His poem is a splendid answer to the questions raised by the Milesians. This is the logic of the things that we are discussing here, not the logic according to which water comes first, then the indeterminate, and, finally, air. None of this concerns us; for us it is rather a question of what lies behind this, the manner in which a view of reality is brought forward in its totality. Incidentally, this, as we have already seen, is the same thematic with which Socrates will occupy himself in the Phaedo, where he expresses his dissatisfaction with tales peri

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physeos ("about nature"). This is also just how it is with our interest in Anaximander's cosmogony, in which the main thing for us is to try painstakingly to find an order that lies within things. The bursting originary egg has the same meaning as Plato's later remarks: the order of things presupposes a mind that supports reality and orders things. This involves a typical and continually recurring problem. We come upon it even in the context of Christian culture, when the question is posed of what God did before Creation. This question is discussed by Augustine in the tenth book of The Confessions (and Luther proposed the answer that God went into the forest in order to cut himself a rod with which he could thrash those who raise such questions). If a thinker is striving to understand this "new mythology," which takes the place of the mythology of the epic tradition, he must apparently ask himself how it is even possible to think the origin of a nature that is understood as bearing the whole in itself. How is this question to be answered? With the help of a new mythology, a cosmogony, an originary egg, or a mystical description? All such answers are no longer satisfactory for those who think in the concepts of reason. The answer, therefore, runs as follows: there is no originating, no motion, no change. Thus we have arrived at the theory of what is that is formulated in Parmenides' poem. It was an answer to the problem that unfolded as a scientific approach supplanted the mythical tradition as well as the gods of Mount Olympus, who, like Hermes, for instance, were always involved in worldly affairs. The first, true, one god does not move but rather rests in himself because he is none other than the universe and is the predicate that the universe deserves. With this, we come to Parmenides' poem, the single coherent philosophical text that has come to us stemming from the time of the beginning of Western thinking. Admittedly, only a small part of a whole is preserved, a whole which we do not know in its complete form. Nevertheless we can conceive of a whole on the basis of what has been handed down—that is, on the basis of the nearly complete first part and some later pieces. As we will see, the problem of this whole lies directly in the compatibility of the two parts. For in the first part "what is" is regarded as something motionless, while a view of the processuality of nature is conveyed in the second part. In order to conclude what I have said up to this point, I need to add a clarification. In my approach to these themes, I

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dispensed with differentiating where there are no philosophically significant differences. Accordingly, I did not differentiate among the three lonians, but I did indeed between the lonians and the Eleatics, for example. Therefore, I also did not dwell on Heraclitus, who, with regard to this new view of the universe, undoubtedly advocates a similar position to that of Parmenides. For example, there is evidence that Heraclitus criticizes polymathy, hence the superfluous pronouncements about many things that he admonishes, for instance, in Homer and Hesiod, in Pythagoras, and other authors. Heraclitus refers to them collectively as the authors who have not grasped things correctly. This is also an answer to the question raised by the development of the new view of the universe. Heraclitus and Parmenides advocate the same position thus far. Moreover, it has not been established whether they were contemporaries or if Heraclitus was possibly a little older; yet as I see it, there can be no doubt that they fulfilled the same function within the framework of the development of early Greek thinking. And if they actually fulfilled the same function, it is not particularly astute to quarrel about the supposed relationship between them. Perhaps they knew nothing at all of each other. All in all, the Aristotelian and Hegelian schema adopted by nineteenth-century historicism according to which Parmenides is regarded as a critic of Heraclitus, as well as the counter-schema that has arisen in our own century, function in the end like a useless game. What is really important is to understand that both Parmenides and Heraclitus answer the same philosophical challenge that had taken shape— albeit in different ways—in Greek poetry and tradition.

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e left off at the following point: with regard to the history of the Presocratics, Parmenides' poem is the first original text that is available to us. And this history is the theme of our investigation. As we said at outset, the great epic tradition dating from Homer and Hesiod, despite its mythical and narrative form, also, of course, has philosophical value. It is no accident that Eleatic philosophy—and it is not alone in this—makes use of the Homeric hexameter to formulate its arguments. That a close connection can exist between the epic religious view and conceptual thinking goes without saying. We first reach a caesura between them with Plato, particularly when he puts forward as an especially characteristic feature of his predecessors the fact that they told fairytales. (We have seen this in our consideration of the Theatetus as well as the Sophist.) From this point on, thinking sets out on the path to the logoi, to reasoning, and to the dialectic. With Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy a new path toward the truth is taken. We already come upon the rudiments of this kind of conceptuality in the work of Parmenides, albeit in poetic form. One complete part of his poem (about sixty lines) has been handed down, while only a few fragments of the other part have come to us. One explanation for this, among others, is the influence exerted by Plato and Aristotle. In the first place, it is thanks to Plato's interest in the first part of the poem that it received its enduring importance. Fortunately, this influence has not been strong

Parmenides and the Opinions of the Mortals 95 enough to cause us to lose the Proem of the didactic poem. So we have an intact whole of this first part of the lost whole. Before we move on to the interpretation of this piece, it is appropriate to point out that the text is written in the style of the epic tradition originating from Homer. This means that this is not a book by a teacher who wants to debate another teacher polemically. A polemic intent would not be very effective in the epic style. In the historical presentations of the Presocratics, it has nevertheless been generally accepted that a critical discussion is carried out between the proponents of becoming, on the one hand, and the advocates of stability, on the other. Certainly, something like this is actually present there, but not, in my opinion, in the form of a polemical debate between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Ever since historicism and the philological works of the nineteenth century, the sixth fragment (according to the Diels/Kranz numbering) has always been interpreted as evidence of this alleged polemic. Here one supposed Heraclitus to be the addressee of the Parmenidean criticism, the one who contradictorily equates being with non-being. As have I said, however, if one takes the epic style of the whole into account, this interpretation is, in my judgment, untenable. In this connection, it suffices to recall the fact that the supposed cohort against whom Parmenides* polemic is presumed to be directed is referred to by the words "doxai broton" ("opinions of the mortals'*), which are used in the poem several times. The term "brotoi" ("the mortals**) is not a word [appropriate to] a critical confrontation with Heraclitus. It is used in epic poetry as synonym for "human beings** in general so as to point out the common lot of us all—in contrast to the immortals. It is obvious, therefore, that this is not the form in which one can introduce a critical discussion with a great thinker. Rather, it is clear that when "doxai brotdn" is mentioned in the sixth fragment the common views of the people are meant—and not the teachings of the wise man from Ephesus. In its time, historicism left the poetic value of the Parmenidean text entirely out of consideration. It is strange that this could happen again and again— that, even in Diels, the sequence runs, "first Heraclitus, then Parmenides.** In reality, the two were presumably contemporaries, and when one presents them in this order then it is already on the basis of the assumption that Parmenides had directed his criticism against Heraclitus.

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But now we need to go into the text itself, which I cite here according to the Diels/Kranz edition, from which I begin with the Proem. This is obviously written according to the model of the Proem of Hesiod's Theogony. At the beginning of the Theogony (22-28), the muses appear to Hesiod: Hesiod is at the foot of the Helicon grazing his sheep. This is the world of his everyday life. There the muses announce to him his mission as singer of the things that have been and the things that will be, of the great family of the gods and heroes. We should notice that the muses say they have many truths to teach but also much that is false. This duality of the true and the false is extremely important, and, as will become clear to us later, it comes to be decisive for our interpretation of the Parmenidean poem. Incidentally, the same doubleness also occurs in Plato, when he says, for example, that even the fastest athlete can be defeated in the race. There, it is an ironic formulation for the intertwining of truth and error in intellectual action, and this even has its support, for instance, in Aristotle's Physics and in De anima. Objection and refutation were used even in the discussions of Catholic doctrine conducted in the Middle Ages in order, ultimately, to reach an understanding and a confirmation of the thesis with respondeo dicendum.1 This intertwining of the true and the false also occurs in Parmenides' poem, except that, like in Hesiod, it is also expressed here in poetic form.2 Ever since Karl Joel, perhaps even under the influence of the interest in Orphism that came to light with Nietzsche and his contemporaries, the value of the poetic has remained practically unheeded in the framework of the culture of the late nineteenth century, while the mythical-religious aspect was also underestimated. It does not follow at all, however, that the form in which the new view of the motionlessness and immutability of being proclaims itself is connected with religion. Rather, it is a typically logical argument that being could not be non-being. Moreover, something similar was already involved in the reaction (which I previously pointed out) of a rhapsode like Xenophanes to the new 1. In the Sunttna Theologica, Aquinas proposes a series of possible objections to each article or thesis that he puts forward. He then introduces his refutation of these objections with the phrase "Respondeo. Dicendum quod..."—literally, "I respond. Saying that...." Most translators, however, elide the phrase and render it simply as "I answer that... .*

2. The syntax of this sentence is slightly modified from the German.

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theories of nature. In addition to this, if we presuppose a universe in balance with itself in virtue of either being carried by water or being ordered in accordance with a regular periodicity, as the case may be, we encounter the following problem: how is it possible to describe or rather to think this universe without at the same time raising the question of how the universe originated and what was there before it? This is a problem that has occupied human thinking to this day. Let us come back to the text, however. As we know, the Proem describes the poet's journey on a wagon. The daughters of the sun accompany the narrator and lead him on his way. In the end, we reach a gate and the maidens remove the veils from their heads. This is a symbol for the light of truth into which they are now entering. Here stands a gate, a mighty gate that is described in detail. The elaborate description (to which Hermann Diels has devoted an extensive commentary) is again connected to the refined literary technique that distinguishes this text. But the details of this interpretation are controversial. According to Simon Karsten, who likewise published a Parmenides edition, the journey is described first in the Proem, then the departure, and, finally, the arrival. This construction seems all too artificial to me. The departure does not actually occur at all. The poem tells of the arrival of the wagon at the gate, which is opened by Dike, who is fortunately persuaded to do this by the daughters of the sun. This entrance is portrayed with that wonderful vividness that is characteristic of this whole part of the Proem. One thinks, for example, of the wheels of the wagon, which rotate swiftly and squeak as they turn. These are swift images and quick transformations that bring to mind the suddenness and immediacy of inspiration. That this reflects inspiration is also confirmed by the fact that after the salutation the goddess announces to the poet that she wants to teach him many things. It is extremely suggestive, however, that verbs are frequently used here in the iterative form, that is, in a form that corresponds neither to the thought of inspiration nor that of sudden revelation, but rather seems to indicate something repetitive, which suggests a more pondering and reflective contemplation. The same thing is expressed through repetition. If, in addition, the two sun-maidens urge the poet "again and again" (therefore not just once) to step out of the night and into the realm of the light, then we must draw the conclusion that the Proem contains a double metaphorical meaning. It is to be understood not only in the sense of inspiration

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but also in the sense of die preparation for a wide road, the hodos polyphemos of the first lines, a road upon which the traveler has experienced much. All in all, the poet wants to give us, in extremely refined form, an understanding of what experiences he has undergone as investigator, as knower of many things, and yet in the end he needs something like an introduction by a goddess. Another intensely debated problem concerns the identity of the goddess. It is the same problem that also arises with regard to the name of the goddess invoked in the Proem of the Iliad. For my part, I believe I know quite well who the goddess is who speaks to the thinker. It is Mnemosyne, the goddess of mneme. Knowledge is based on the unifying power and the carrying-ability of memory. Knowledge is a making available of experiences which accumulate more and more and awaken the question of the meaning all of this has for us. In a certain way we already know things through our experiences, and yet we would like to know what confers meaning on them all. Thus, for example, we attain true knowledge of the theory of the universe erected by Milesian thinkers as soon as we put this theory in relation to the problem it raises, and that is the question of how the unity of the universe itself can be thought. Of course, this problem of memory remains in the background of Parmenides' lines, and it does not come to light in conceptual form but only as the poetic image of the goddess who reveals truth. Let us now talk about what it is that the goddess proclaims she wishes to teach. She receives the visitor kindly in that she extends her hand in reception and thus expresses greeting and trust. This also makes us feel at home in sixth-century Greek culture. "The divine instruction will encompass everything" (chred de se panta puthesthai), "not only the well-rounded truth, its unwavering heart** (emen aletheies eukukleos atremes etor), but likewise "the opinions of the mortals" (broton doxas). We should notice right away that in the formulation "the heart of truth" the singular is used, while the plural stands in contrast to it: the "the opinions of the mortals." It is remarkable that the interpretation of Eleatic philosophy has developed in such a way that Parmenides himself has placed truth and doxa3 in opposition to one another. In reality, Parmenides does not speak at all of doxa but rather of doxai,4 which seems quite natural to me. The truth is but 3. opinion 4. opinions

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a singular thing, while the opinions of the people are multiple. Doxa, no doubt, was first a Platonic concept through which the difference was marked between opinions and the one truth. It becomes clear, therefore, that the goddess wants to teach truth—but she also wants to teach about the opinions advocated by mortals, opinions which do not contain the truth. The message, however, becomes more complicated in the two subsequent lines, and it is not by chance that the interpreters have focused their attention on them: "One must grasp opinions in such a way that they present themselves with their self-evident plausibility and irrefutability." (It is unfortunate that the poetic value of the lines gets lost in translation. The Greek text has a suggestive sonority, even a cascade of tones: all' empes kai tauta matheseai, bos ta dokounta chren dokimos einai dia pantos panta peronta.) Thus the posing of the problem has to do not only with truth but also the multiplicity of opinions. This is indirectly confirmed by Aristotle (who, as we should not forget, knew the complete didactic poem) when he says that since Parmenides wants to assert the identity of being he certainly denies motion and becoming, yet later he also gives in under the pressure of experiential truth and describes the universe in its multiplicity and in its becoming. Many a present-day interpreter behaves just as naively: Parmenides, they say, initially denies motion and simply posits being, but then, under the compulsion of experience, he makes room for that which is moved. To me, this seems just as absurd as the attempt undertaken by several other authors to solve the problem by adopting a different reading of the text, one in which the selfevident contradiction is made to disappear. In truth, we are faced here with a speculative problem having to do with the inseparability of the truth of logical thought from experience and its plausibility, that is, a state of affairs having to do with human nature, even lending it a certain superiority when it knowingly makes [use of] divine help.5 The development of the human being is not fixed and is not dependent on the whole of the naturally given conditions it is subject to. The human being has the ability to think, to raise himself above these conditions, and to entertain a multitude of possibilities. This is the mystery of the openness granted to the human being, the openness for what is possible, the idea that mortals can never simply know the one 5. wenn sie die gottliche Hilfe wissend macht

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truth but will only find multiple possibilities instead. It seems to me that the basis of this thematic lies in these Parmenidean lines, where we find the inseparability of the one truth from the multiplicity of opinions formulated in the mouth of the goddess. Let us now examine how the theme initiated in the Proem develops. This development consists of a first part on truth and a second part on opinions. Now, I would like to dwell, first of all, on the transition from the first part to the second. For in this passage the correlation between the two aspects and the articulation of the whole comes to light with great clarity. Lines 50 to 52 of the eighth fragment state: "At this point, I am bringing my cogent argumentation and my thinking about truth to its conclusion."6 But now you must also grasp the opinions of the mortals (doxas d* apo toude broteias), who explain in words how everything forms one cosmos, one order, that can nevertheless also deceive, and thus it need not be true but must only comply with appearance. It is obvious that the formulation "doxas... broteias" here corresponds to the expression "doxai broton" used in the Proem.7 This is a conscious repetition, a frequently used technique in Greek literature that indicates the conclusion of a thought. We should expect the beginning of a new chapter in such a case. This new chapter thus deals with what is persuasive among the opinions and views concerning the universe but is not the whole truth. The interpretation of the first lines (53ff.) is very difficult. Numerous experts have worked with them and have helped to clarify the situation by their contributions. Before I go into these difficulties with the help of textual analysis, I would like to mention in advance how I understand these lines: human beings have decided in favor of two forms of existing things and have firmly designated them with two kinds of expressions. In doing this, they have obviously committed a basic error, namely, separating the two forms rather than keeping one being.8 It is clear that we have here a confrontation with the becoming of the world [as put forward in] in Milesian philosophy. We must repeat here: bear in mind the one saying of the Milesians that has come down to us, namely, the Anaximander fragment, which maintains that existing things pay penance to "each other" (allelois). You will 6. Text slightly modified from the German. 7. Text slightly modified from the German.

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Parmenides and the Opinions of the Mortals 101 recall that, proceeding from this term "each other," we have seen that, according to Anaximander, the process of becoming is definitely not injustice removing itself from the divine whole and then being absorbed back again into this whole, this "nirvana," of which Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and other nineteenth-century interpreters speak. They had a text at that time in which the crucial "each other" was missing. Anaximander really means an order of the universe in which no particular ever finally and absolutely gains the upper hand, but rather is constantly balanced by another particular, as, for example, the summer comes after the winter in such a way that balance reestablishes itself. We come upon this theme again, then, in the lines considered here, as was already announced elsewhere by the goddess when she said she also wanted to teach that which, in connection with nature, presents itself in such a way that observation is enough. We have the task, therefore, to comprehend not only the themes in Parmenides that the lonians dealt with but also to realize that these already well-known themes are presented in a more intellectually conscious and better articulated form. Let us now look at the text. Line 53 reads: morphas gar katethento duo gnomas onomazein, "The mortals have decided to name two forms of existing things." The theme is then invoked further in line 54: ton mian ou chreon estin, and this is the formulation that has caused the readers of this passage the greatest interpretive difficulties. According to the conventional interpretation, the text asserts here that one of the two forms or designations of reality is incorrect. That, however, distorts Greek usage. For if one says in Greek "one of the two," wanting in this way to speak of one thing in relation to another thing, one does not use the word "mia" but the word "hetera." Consequently, this "one" is not "one of two," but rather the unity of the thing that is the true unity behind the two different kinds. Indeed, the first word of the following line reads "tantia," and this is a poetic form of "ta enantia? by which is meant the placing of one in opposition to another,9 and apparently it was this that underlay the thinking of the lonians, namely, that the oppositions (enantia) resist each other and displace each other, and this puts directly into motion the single unending process, a process in which the balance continually restores itself. That is the apeiron. The two separate forms of 9. das einander Entgegengesetzte

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which die text speaks accordingly indicate a theory of opposites that balance themselves again and again, like, for instance, the balance between warm and cold or between light and darkness. The first step of the new "chapter" apparently consists of the insight that all of this is compatible with the views of the lonians, while the second step has to do with the fact that in such an exchange of opposites what is unthought in the nothing is still avoided. There is no becoming and no passing away there. When light and darkness replace each other—is this something separated? And does not the being of things remain untouched by this? The text confirms this: it is only subsequently that human beings have distinguished opposites by signs (semata) that are separated from one another. In the text we find charts ap* allelon, and here once again we come upon the term "each other" (alleloi), which is already known to us from Anaximander's statement. Now we are in a position to understand the meaning of the word; evidently, it will assert that the opposites stand in correlation with one another and to this extent are not really separated from each other. And what kind of opposites do we find here in the text? Milesian philosophy deals with the warm and the cold, the wet and the dry, and the like. By contrast, here in line 56, on the one side stands te men phlogos aitherion pur, "the extremely light, ethereal fire that is completely identical and homogeneous with itself but not with the other, to which it is not identical but opposite," to d' hetero me tauton. For on the other side stands night, die darkness, the dense and heavy gloom. Observe how superior this is to the Milesian view. Here, the talk is of a single opposite that is not "being" at all but rather appearance, be it light or darkness. At the same time, the excellence of the light, which is portrayed with positive qualities and thereby distinguishes itself from the night, stands out. Night is characterized by negative qualities. But what does "positive" mean here vis-a-vis "negative"? In my opinion, the answer is clear: light and darkness are "positive" and "negative" not as realities but rather in relation to knowledge. Light is something positive for the appearance of being, while night has a negative effect on this appearance. Here, we may get the impression that these opposites go without saying, yet I would hope that by now the principle inspiring them is clear, namely, that a thing is understood correctly when we have grasped its implications. The principle of a viable hermeneutics is always to interpret a text in such a way that what is implicitly in it is made explicit;

Parmenides and the Opinions of the Mortals 103 if, for example, I set about interpreting a section from Hegel's Logic with my students or even some colleagues, what emerges as the result of our long debate is an elaboration of the Hegelian text The same also happens in our Parmenides interpretation, provided we are on the right path with our work. The result that we have reached through the interpretation of these lines amounts to the following: first, we find in the abovementioned lines a view of the universe according to which it consists of reciprocally interrelated and inseparable oppositions. Second, this view is conceptually superior to that of the lonians because it avoids the thought of the nothing. Third, the image of light and darkness that recapitulates this view points to the appearance of being and its knowability. This last point can be made clearer when we refer to those passages of the didactic poem (like, for example, fragment 6, line 1, as well as fragment 3) in which being is equated with noein. We usually render the word *noein" in translation as "thinking"; however we should not forget that the primary meaning of the word is not to become absorbed in oneself, not reflection, but, on the contrary, pure openness for everything. In regard to MOMS, it is not, first of all, a question of one asking oneself what is seen to be there in each case but of observing that there is something there. The etymology of the word probably leads us back to the sensation of the animal, which notices the presence of something by its scent and without any more exact perception. This is how we must understand the relationship between "thinking" and being in Parmenides and also why, in the eighth fragment, which we have examined here, noein is mentioned with particular emphasis alongside the other features of being. It is as though the text wanted to say that it is the being of being itself that comes into presence in such a way that this being is as immediately there in its existence as the day is. In view of the Parmenidean image of the mild (friendly and benevolent) ethereal fire that is homogeneous in itself, I would like to raise another question. We have interpreted this fire as the light in which the appearance of being becomes clean But we must also place it in relation to ancient cosmology. The ancient view according to which the heavenly bodies are fires requires that fire be reduced to a stable being10 that has no destructive or self-consuming 10. ein stabiles Sein

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reality—and, indeed, Anaximander is attributed with the idea that there are holes in the firmament through which the fire of the heavenly bodies sparkles and twinkles. It therefore emerges from the doxographical descriptions that, in Anaximander, fire, as an element, must above all exclude that which is destructive. Now, the opposite of the destructive is epion, and the text actually uses this expression (in fragment 8, line 57), where the word signifies mildness, gentleness, friendliness. How much of a problem fire was, one can also see in the Timaeus (31b-33). In the construction of that enormous living organism that forms the universe, a difficult relationship exists between fire and the remaining elements. One also comes across the same thing in Stoic philosophy, according to which there is a fire that does not destroy but rather illuminates and animates. Thus, as we saw, with the background of Anaximander's cosmological ideas, fire can be assumed as a nondestructive but instead stable and homogeneous element that dispenses light and makes [things] visible, albeit only with help of holes. Still further examples could be cited to validate the fact that some motifs of the lonians' meteorological and astronomical theories are mirrored in Parmenides. Yet what matters to us here is understanding what happens in such mirroring. We have to understand this fire as becoming light and [taking on] the homogeneity and self-identity of light. The identity of being is made plain with this. Here, there is an evident rapprochement with the opinions of the mortals, opinions which are satisfied by appearances. Through the analysis of the last lines of the eighth fragment, we have therefore reached the conclusion that these lines characterize the transition from a first part dedicated to explicating the truth (hence the first fifty lines of this eighth fragment), to a second part, which is occupied with the presentation of opinions that mortals hold regarding the universe. This second part has not been handed down to us as well-preserved as the first, yet it will also have certainly contained a detailed and well-structured depiction that is, to be sure, an opinion of mortals but one in which knowledge is presented. This is not merely a vague supposition, for there is a uninterrupted tradition here. A confirmation for this can be found, for instance, in the sixteenth fragment, which consists of the only four undoubtedly authentic lines that are quoted by Aristotle (Metaphysics T5, 1009b 21). The text reads: hos gar hekastot echei krasin meleon polukampton—"as the relationship of the limbs of the organism develops itself*'—ids

Parmenides and the Opinions of the Mortals 105 noos anthropoisi paristatai—"so nous appears in human beings." (Put another way: thinking as consciousness of something, as intellectual perception, is related to the constitution of the organism; the one exists as soon as the other is present—and, in regard to this, one must keep in mind the medicine and the biology of those centuries.) To gar auto estin hoper phroneei meleon physis anthropoisin kai pasin kai panti—"it is always the same thing that thinks, (namely) the composition of the organism in each and every person"; to gar pleon esti noema—"that which is perceived is always what predominates," like the light that fills everything. This text, toward an interpretation of which true rivers of ink have been spilled, must stand in relationship to the medicine and the sciences of that time, a time in which we already find the idea that perception depends on the mixture of the elements in the human organism. This idea is not really new, it seems to me. But if we take into account the already discussed intention of this part of the didactic poem—the intention of commonly accepted ideas— then the real task of interpretation comes into view. Here, that is, our task is to comprehend in what sense, on which points, and in what respect this conception is superior to that of the lonians. We want first to emphasize here that in epic poetry there was already a mythological explanation according to which the appearance of thinking in the human being is traced back to a divine power. In the lonians, as in Parmenides, who in turn refers back to the lonians, the theme is brought to light in a new way: perception and thinking do not originate through the influence of a divine power but rather by the mixing of the humours of the organism. This is, as we have seen, an idea that must be brought into connection with the balance of the organism that medicine had worked out at that time. In this approach, the sensation of warmth or coldness, for instance, is based on changes in the inherent balance of die organism—like, for example, in the case of fever, where it is clear that there is no warmth in itself or coldness in itself as two separate essences. In regard to this theme, let us recall the previously examined Parmenides quotation where it says that people posit separate and opposing forms of reality and designate these with different names (here one could cite "the warm" and "the cold" as examples), while that which truly is11 is their unity. For this reason, their separation into independent 11. das wabrhaft Seiende

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powers is misguided; in truth, it is precisely noein that constitutes their unity. Grasped in this sense, the relationship between knowledge and light is also explained: in conscious thinking, when things become visible and identifiable it is like a light going on. The absence of such acuity presents itself like a darkness in which nothing at all exists. Thus it gradually becomes clear why this view of noein signifies a step forward in the direction of truth. The unity and the self-sameness of noein lead to the self-sameness, the homogeneity, in the end, to the identity of being. To get a grip on all of this, we should not, of course, come to a stop with the opposition between the relativity of sense perceptions and the absoluteness of "thinking." Sensory perception is in a certain sense already conscious perception. Therefore it is co-intended in noein. We are constantly inclined toward seeing things in that we know and recognize their identity. Thanks to modern psychological research, how much the tendency to the identical is inherent in all things of the senses12 is no longer big news. Here we see something that we have come across in Parmenides' didactic poem: the stability of being is that which announces itself in the relativity of perception.

12. alien Dingen der Sinnlichkeit

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p to this point we have gone into the Proem of the Parmenidean didactic poem and also into the first part of the poem, which is dedicated to truth and is quite tersely composed, though Simplicius did hand it down to us intact. We then turned to the second part, which deals with opinions and must have been longer. But only the beginning lines and some fragments have come down to us. I would like to place our encounter with this second part of the didactic poem ahead of our treatment of the first part, which we have not yet analyzed completely. This forestalling is well-considered. It was important for me to make clear that the task announced in the Proem is not just restricted to the truth but that it also encompassed the opinions of mortals and was actually present throughout the course of the didactic poem. This is why I made a leap that led immediately from the Proem to the last lines of the eighth fragment, where the transition from the presentation of the truth to the comments on the opinions of the mortals is carried out. I would like here to underscore once again the importance of this double thematic in the mouth of the goddess. In truth, it is a characteristic feature of the human being, indeed, even the sign of its superiority. For it is humanity's mark of distinction to raise problems and to open up the dimension of diverse possibilities. This is why the capacity for truth and falsehood both in our will to know and in our being-with-one-another is a peculiarity of the human being. Thus we recall seeing that even in Hesiod, that is, at the beginning of the Theogony, the muses make it known that they could teach the true but also the false. Even these seed donors play on our weaknesses. All in all,

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since human beings are by necessity exposed to a multitude of influences and distractions, it turns out that untruth inheres in the concept of knowledge itself, that it is an inseparable, even constitutive, element of knowledge. Starting with these reflections, I have then tried to show that Ionic conceptions of the universe stand behind Parmenides' didactic poem, conceptions that replace the cosmogonies of the myths, especially the representation mentioned by Anaximander in the only surviving aphorism of a universe formed in an orderly way through opposites that constantly and regularly balance each other. In contrast to these Milesian doctrines, Parmenides introduces an important innovation: in place of the many different oppositions between wet and dry, warm and cold, and so on, Parmenides inserts a single oppositional pair, namely the contrast between light and darkness. On the basis of this innovation, Parmenides surpasses the Ionic tradition. This light is the light of knowledge. This is why it is positively emphasized in the didactic poem that the fire is not a destructive fire but a mild one, thus not a blazing flame but only one that sheds light. The distinction between these two types of fire still remains unexpressed in Parmenides and will only be made entirely explicit with the Stoics. Furthermore, in order to support the thesis of Parmenides' superiority, I have analyzed the fragment quoted by Aristotle, fragment 16, hi which it is said that noein, thinking, rests on the relationship between the different components of the organism. Here I have initially rendered the word "noein" in the traditional way by the term "thinking." Yet in doing so we should not forget that this word would be completely incomprehensible here if we did not grasp it in its original meaning. I repeat: "noein" means the sensing1 of something that is there, rather like the scent2 of game, to which we are perhaps also led by the etymology of the word. The immediacy implied in the meaning of this word is fundamental to the entire argument of the didactic poem. If we do not comprehend this, we cannot even begin to understand the claim that Parmenides makes about the inseparability of being and noein: there is something only to the extent that evidentness—that is, perception in its broadest sense—is present in noein', only to this extent is "being" there. If we wished to use a 1. dasSpiiren 2. Or spoor: der Witterung.

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scholastic expression, we could say that we were dealing here with the problem of haecceitas.3 We do come across this problem today in Heidegger's "being-question," but it already becomes visible much earlier in Parmenides' noein and likewise in Aristotle, who connects noein with touching (thinganein) as it occurs in the immediacy of perceiving, when no distance at all is indicated between the perception and what is perceived. Indeed, even we say "it smells" or "it smells of something" long before we speak of it in reflective manner—we say that a certain nose notices this or that smell. As soon as words and concepts come into the play, such immediacy is gone. In conclusion, I would like to come back once again to the declaration expressed in the Proem about the path of truth and the path of opinions in order to substantiate an earlier admonition that is worth repeating: in Parmenides, we find only the plural, "doxai" The word is hardly ever used in the singular. Even when related expressions are used, they always occur in the plural (like, for example, "ta dokounta").4 This is why it is misguided to claim that die second part of Parmenides' didactic poem is all about doxa. This is Platonism not Eleaticism. The word "doxa" only becomes a concept in Platonic philosophy. Aisthesis, doxa, and logos, as we know, are the three concepts with which Plato in the Theatetus attempts to define knowledge. Let us now come back to the analysis of the first part of the poem, the part, that is, that deals with the presentation of truth, and let us begin with fragments 2 and 3, the sequence of which is much debated. I think they can be read consecutively, and both can also be read as elaborations of what has been designated as the first fragment, that is, the Proem. The second fragment begins with the claim that two paths of investigation are conceivable. The one path is that along which it is said that the "is" exists but "non-being" does not (estin te kai hos ouk esti me einai), and this is the path of truth that is accompanied by the power of persuasion. The other path is that along which it is said that the "is-not" (ouk estin) is and non-being is asserted. But this is a completely hopeless path. We undoubtedly have before us here an extremely refined and conceptually polished text that is not easily interpreted. The task 3. "thisness" 4. "things that appear" or "things that seem"

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of the interpreters is hindered by the fact that not two but three paths are indicated in the fragment, which then raises the question of what this third path is. The proponents of the thesis that Parmenides was a critic of Heraclitus latch onto this problem. They claim that the third path is precisely the thinking of Heraclitus. But a third path is mentioned in the sixth fragment, and mortals travel along this path. Nevertheless, as we have already seen, the expression employed here, "brotoi" cannot be read as though an individual were intended by it—and thus not the philosopher from Ephesus either. For now, we would like to restrict ourselves to the two paths mentioned in the second fragment and try to understand why the one path leads to truth while the other leads to no goal and is indeed an impossibility. With this, we must first realize that "it is" (estin) here is tantamount to "there is"5 and does not function like the copula that binds the subject and the predicate together as it does in Aristotle and in grammar. Here it is the immediacy of being that we perceive in "noein," wherein "legein"6 has not been separated from sensory perception, but rather, as I have tried to show, where immediacy, the inseparability of the perceived and the perceiving, is meant exclusively. Some might see in this the concept of identity characteristic of German idealism, but that would be an anachronism, as this could only arise in the period of historicism. In the realm of philosophy, historicism has often produced the paradoxical result of misjudging the difference between immediacy and reconstructed immediacy. The last line of the second fragment says that it is not possible to formulate that which is not7 (me eon), for this can neither be investigated nor communicated. It is possible that the third fragment forms the continuation of this text: to gar auto noein estin te kai einai.6 In the meantime, Agostino Marsoner has convinced me that fragment 3 is not a Parmenides quotation at all but a formulation stemming from Plato himself, which I believe I have correctly interpreted and which 5. esgibt

6. Literally, "to gather": infinitive of the verb "/ego," which is the root of the noun "/ogos." 7. das Nicbtseiende 8. "For the same thing exists [ot, is there] for thinking and for being" (Gadamer will argue against this reading; see below); alternatively, "For thinking and being are the same."

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Clement of Alexandria has ascribed to Parmenides. In order to interpret this fragment, we must confirm that estin does not serve here as a copula but instead means existence9 and, in fact, not just in the sense that something is there but also in the characteristic classical Greek sense that it is possible, that it has the power to be. Here, of course, "that it is possible" includes that it is. Secondly, we must be clear about what is meant by "the same" (to auto). Since this expression stands at the beginning of the text, it is generally understood as the main point and therefore as the subject On the contrary, in Parmenides "the same" is always a predicate, hence that which k stated of something. Admittedly, it can also stand as the main point of a sentence, but not in the function of the subject, about which something is stated, but in the function of the predicate that is stated of something. This something in the sentence analyzed here is the relationship between *'estin noeinn and "estin einai," between "[is] perceiving/thinking" and "[is] being." These two are the same, or, better yet: the two are bound together by an indissoluble unity. (Furthermore, it should be added that the article "to" does not refer to "einai" but to "auto." In the sixth century, an article was not yet placed in front of a verb. In Parmenides' didactic poem, where the necessity arises of expressing what we render with the infinitive of a verb together with a preceding article, a different construction is used.) This interpretation, the one I am proposing for the third fragment, was, as I recall, the object of a dispute with Heidegger. He disagreed altogether with my view of the evident meaning of the poem. I can well understand why Heidegger wanted to hold onto the idea that Parmenides' main theme was identity (to auto). In Heidegger's eyes, this would have meant that Parmenides himself would have gone beyond every metaphysical way of seeing and would thereby have anticipated a thesis that is later interpreted metaphysically in Western philosophy and has only come into its own in Heidegger's philosophy. Nevertheless, in his last essays Heidegger himself realized that this was an error and that his thesis that Parmenides had to some extent anticipated his own philosophy could not be maintained. Let us now proceed to the fourth fragment, whose placement after the third fragment is admittedly highly dubious. The fourth fragment throws a very bright light on an approach, never before 9. Existenz

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attempted, of a thinker who was occupied with the themes of becoming and being for the relationship between identity and difference. It should be mentioned here that these concepts were first brought together in the Sophist with the words "stasis" and "genesis," unmoving and originating. Let us now interpret the fragment leusse d* homos apeonta nodi pareonta bebaios: along with nous (the capacity for immediate perception) we must also consider that which is absent (hence that which is also accessible to nous), and we should proceed in this "with firmness" (bebaios), without wavering. Accordingly, we should not regard as self-evident the fact that what is present is and what is absent is not, but rather we should establish without uncertainty in each case that what is absent is, in a certain sense, also present. I stress "bebaios" emphatically because in the didactic poem we are frequently reminded that the danger is always present of straying from the path leading to truth and letting ourselves be seduced by the illusion that if something just appears then it did not previously exist. In fragments 7 and 8 a quite exact and precise argument is then expounded to justify the necessity of avoiding this diversion. The tine of the fourth fragment examined here is essentially a prior declaration of what is then established in the first part of the didactic poem. The fragment then continues with the same topic: "what is cannot be separate from its connection with what is" (ou gar apotmexei to eon tou eontos echesthai), and "according to the order of things it is neither possible that what is scatters itself nor that it conglomerates" (oute skidnamenon pantei pantos kata kosmon oute sunistamenon). It clearly emerges, even from the formulations used here, that he is speaking of Ionic philosophy. That what is, is not separable from what is does not mean, by the way, that there are two of what is. This conclusion is already precluded by Parmenides' wording. At this point, we come across "to eon"10 for the first time, the emphatic singular that occurs again and again in Parmenides' poem and anticipates the One (to hen) of Zeno and Plato. It does not lead to exactly the same thing, however. Parmenides' "to eon" is only a first approximation of the abstract concept of the One. Thus the One also occurs in Parmenides, yet in the first place and strictly 10. Singular imperfect for eimi, "to be."

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speaking, for him the one being11 is intended as "being."12 Before him, one said "ta onta" and thus it is said in Homer that Tiresias knows the things that are (ta onto) and the things that will be (ta proionta). In regard to this topic, we also want to recall the Socrates of the Phaedo, who says he has concerned himself much peri physeos historia. Here he uses a formulation in which the last word, "historia," signifies the course of experiences in all of their diversity. To put it another way, previously the diversity of what is was all about the balance of the universe. "To eon" however, implies that it has nothing to do with the diversity of experiences, the listing of them, but rather that without the unity of being all of this no longer exists. This certainly means that to eon cannot be separate from tou eontas; what is possesses cohesion (continuity) and unity. Obviously the universe [is meant] as universe in its unity, and this universe in its unity means at the same time the concept of being. To put it more precisely, it is not yet the concept but it is a full abstraction of the diversity of things. This singular is like an indicator of the beginning of conceptual-speculative reflection. The fifth fragment states that it makes no difference from which point one proceeds, since one always comes back to the same place anyway. This obviously confirms the homogeneity of, the uniformity of, existing "being,"13 a theme that, as we saw, is taken up anew later on. The sixth fragment is the answer to the problem of truth and to the declaration of the correct path of truth. This fragment begins with following words: chre to legein te noein t* eon emmenai; esti gar einai; meden d* ouk estin. In order to understand the meaning of this part of the text, we first want to recall that the "esti" of the second clause displays the ambiguity that we clarified previously. The term means "it is," but for precisely this reason it also means "is possible that it is." It not only expresses existence,14 but exactly at the same time it also expresses the possibility of existence. Accordingly, the meaning of the second clause runs as follows: "being is, and it is possible; the nothing, by contrast, is not, and it also is not possible." This helps us to understand that the "eon" of the first clause also has this ambiguity and 11. 12. 13. 14.

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means the one that is and is possible; that is, it possesses the capacity to be. Finally, it remains for us to clarify that "to" must refer to "eon" because this latter term never occurs in the didactic poem without an article. A preliminary interpretation of the first clause is as follows: "It is necessary that both the saying as well as the thoughtful perceiving of what is cannot, as existence,15 be disengaged from the consequence of being expressed and perceived; the presentness16 of being is precisely its perception." Understood in this way, the clause seems like a convincing repetition of what has already been said. We will come back later to the significance of this repetition. For the moment we will follow the progress of the fragment, which, following the admonition to think over the truth proclaimed here and not forget it, states expressly that we must not forget to avoid the path of the nothing, but we must also not forget the other path, the path upon which mortals stumble about hesitantly, erringly, and in constant uncertainty. Their inability to orient themselves, an inability which they carry in their hearts, leads them to a foolish perceiving (plakton noon). This is the point from which the problematic third way, which will be added to the two mentioned previously, originates. I repeat, this is a problem that historicism has solved in its way by equating this supposed third path with the thinking of Heraclitus because the description of the path is, in a certain way, reminiscent of certain of this philosopher's aphorisms. Parmenides had obviously not foreseen the tremendous acumen of the philosophers of the nineteenth century, who were even capable of finding in the text what was not in it. In truth, the so-called third path is nothing other than the description of the second, that is, the path of nothingness; and the mortal people who stride ahead on this path are, as we have already said, called by the epic term "brotoi," which cannot really serve to describe an individual, and certainly not Heraclitus. It is rather about people in general. They blunder around, are blind, dense (akrita phula), that is, people without the ability to judge. They conceive of being (pelein) and non-being now as something identical and now as something non-identical. They are seen this way: "Their path is always wrong because it is contradictory" (panton de palintropos esti keleuthos). This means 15. alsdasDasein 16. Gegenwdrtigkeit

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that all hypotheses of mortals regarding the "is** and the "is not" always end in a contradiction; these hypotheses amount to the fact that we intend "is" and "is not" in the same breath. Only a superficial interpretation could maintain that this description of the contradiction—somewhat like with the claim that tauton and thateron are identical—points to the dialectic of Heraclitus. Occasionally even a little arrogance is involved in the certainty with which this interpretation is pursued. We are pushed toward it by the superb historical research of the nineteenth century. Yet, as we have seen, historicism, despite all its astuteness, could be blind in some respects. I would not by any means want to be understood as though I did not appreciate the method of the historians. It is just that philosophy is something different. With the insight that this sixth fragment describes the consequences of the lack of orientation common to all human beings, we have, in my opinion, taken a decisive step forward. Human beings have the characteristic of getting into contradictions without noticing it because they conceive of what is absent as a nonbeing, and the delusion of becoming occurs because of it. That something could be produced from nothing simply is not acceptable for human reason. Ex nihilo nihil fit—this is the highest principle of our orientation in the world of experience. The Divine Creation of the world was brought into play here first through Christianity, or actually through the Old Testament, albeit without understanding the mystery of such a Creation. This happens earliest with Augustine when he speaks of the Word that announces: **Let there be light!" The Greeks were able to understand [the equivalent of] the Word of God with which the Old Testament introduces the Creation in the sense of a creative capacity. Thus die sixth fragment portrays the chaos of opinions between which human beings of blurred judgment vacillate back and forth whenever they must find their way about in the world: "It is, it is not"; "There is something, and precisely the same thing is not there"; "It is there, it is not there"; and "As soon as it comes into appearance it comes from out of nothing." Such lack of direction is certainly not the description of a speculative thinking—like that of a thinker such as Heraclitus—but rather depicts the unconscious contradictions upon which the errors and aberrations of human beings are based. Here, I would like to offer a concluding comment regarding the sixth fragment. In order to clarify the structure of the text and

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to bolster the logic of its argument, Parmenides, like Plato, must make use of a literary device. The method of repetition, of which the beginning of our fragment furnished an obvious example, belongs to devices of this type. This method is used for a public that does not read but follows the recitation of a text spoken by the author. This is characteristic of the preliterate cultural epoch with which we are dealing here. For this reason, the repetition should not be regarded as an accident. It belongs to what we might well call a mnemonic technique, and indeed it belongs just as much to the rhapsode as to the listener. From this it emerges that Parmenides' text is not thoroughly archaic even from a literary standpoint but rather presents itself as an exquisitely articulated composition—even through "repetition.** Now we want to proceed to fragments 7 and 8, which together form one coherent text. It says here that "it cannot be forcibly maintained that what is not17 exists** (ou gar mepote touto damei; einai me eonta), and through no force, as it further says, can we be compelled to follow this path, which would be tantamount to "letting wander eyes that do not see** (noman askopon omma). This latter formulation is of high literary worth. The eye wanders eagerly (implicit in the word "noman" is the incentive for the attainment of a goal), and moreover it wanders over the surveyed18 totality of things, yet it is without sight, sightless (askopon)9 because it cannot grasp any existing thing. This is a very beautiful image that expands further and extends from the eyes to the din-filled ear (echeessan akouen) and to the tongue (kai glossan ). (We should observe here that the tongue—just like the sightless eye and the ear that hears nothing because of the din— is meant here in the sense of the sense of taste.) The advice is thus to lend no credence to appearance; rather, we must judge "with the understanding** (logoi). The term "logoi," it seems to me, is used here without conceptual implications. I have not pursued the matter further, yet I suspect that "krinai logoi," just like many other formulations from the didactic poem, is rhapsodic in origin, and it is understandable that a philosopher of this time would be glad to come upon expressions that could be useful for instruction in his own teachings. For this reason there are often agreements with Homer. 17. das Nicbtseiende 18. angepeilten

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The argument is continued in the eighth fragment: monos d' eti mythos hodoio leipetai hos estin. (We should observe that here "mythos" stands closer to "logos" than to fairy-tale; "mythos" means everything that I can relate and plainly connotes a wide-ranging story.) A single account of a path remains, and on this path there are many signs—here, Heidegger would speak of "Wegmarken"19—to indicate the direction of the goal and to prevent any straying from the path. In Heidegger, as well, the path-signs20 undoubtedly signify the continuous progression of a path in a certain direction, toward a goal. In Parmenides, this expression has the same meaning, and in this context we should think of the word "bebaios" of the emphatic insistence with which it is to be stressed that what is absent is at the same time present and that there is no non-existing being.21 The emphatic repetition that what is, is and what does not exist22 is not indicates the direction toward which what is thought is oriented by the goddess's instruction. There are therefore many signs from which it follows that the nothing can never be. The first says: hos aganeton eon kai anolethron estin, which is usually understood in the sense that what is has not been generated and cannot pass away. But this is not how it stands in the text because there it is not called "to eon" but "eon" without the article. This substantiates my point and means that because it is, it is not generated and cannot pass away. The text then continues: "It is a whole, immovable and without goal" (esti gar oulomeles te kai atremes ed' ateleston). This line is interesting because of the variants of "oulomeles." In place of this word we find—as we do, by the way, in Simplicius—the word "mounogenes."23 Now, I think that this term, if it follows immediately upon "ageneton,"24 is not to be expected straightaway, and "mounogenes" is therefore highly questionable above all because it is a term characteristic of Christian confessions. Thus it more likely comes from the quill of a copyist than the text of Parmenides. The word "oulomeles" means something like "of sound limbs," a formulation that recalls the living organism, 19. pathmarks 20. Wegzeichen 21. Nichtseiende 22. das Nichtseiende 23. one of a kind, unique 24. unborn, uncreated

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hence that image that is often used as a model to describe the universe (and certainly not in its multiplicity but rather as the One), the universe which leads its life and is lacking nothing in order for it to be itself a single great organism. The word "oulomeles" as used by Parmenides evidently means that the universe is one thing and by itself contains everything in itself. Thus the text continues: "It is impossible, furthermore, that it ever has been and that it ever will be" (oude pot* en oud* estai), "for it is now as the whole universe" (epei nun estin homou pan). We should note here the singular "pan." Heribert Boeder has pointed out that "being"25 in Presocratic philosophy was first indicated in certain cases by the plural, as "ta panta," or with the expression "ta onta," which also occurs in Homer. Thus the use of the singular here is an emphatic stress: "It is all one"; and so the text continues: "one and unbroken" (hen suneches). This is the only passage in this text in which oneness26 is expressly named— which then in Zeno leads to the dialectic of the one and the many and produces the discourse of the Eleatic doctrine of unity. At this point, the argument begins concerning the previously mentioned characteristics of that which is, above all concerning the fact that it was not generated: tina gar gennan dizeseai autou; pet pothen auxethen—"How would it be possible to determine its origin; how would it be able to grow?" In my opinion, Guido Calogero has seen things correctly—even against Karl Reinhardt, who invoked inappropriate evidence for support here—when in his book on Eleaticism Calogero explains in a comment in the chapter on Melissus that Parmenides' argument at this point excludes two things, namely, generation and growth. Generation obviously includes non-being27: it implies that that which is now generated was not previously there. But already excluded by this is the fact that what is not can be intended or brought to expression. For its part, growth leads in turn to the contradiction of genesis and of becoming because it likewise implies that that which it now is was not previously there in this way. To summarize, both becoming and growing obviously include the me eon.2* In this way, the further course of the argument becomes clear. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Sein Einssein Nichtsein not being

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One can neither say nor think (noein) a becoming from out of nothing. This will be explained further. We find the conclusion that is to be drawn from this argument in lines 15 and 16: he de krisis peri teuton en toid' estin; estin he ouk estin—"the decision about these things goes: either it is, or it is not.** Everything is decided with this. The path of what is not is impassable. At this point, we notice a repetition that marks the end of one train of thought and the beginning of a new one in accordance with the previously formulated principle, a kind of "period" or "new paragraph.** The new train of thought amounts to the claim that what is is not divisible, it is in itself dense (continuous), homogeneous, and immovable. Of course, the claim that there is no motion raises the biggest problems. This, we could say, is the toughest challenge. Plato also discusses motion—he does so, in fact, in the Theatetus—yet he distinguishes two forms of motion, namely, a change of place and alteration, a qualitative change. Parmenides, on the other hand, makes no such differentiation and uses a poetic image in respect to these two forms as if they were the same: necessity has clapped being in irons, and it could not therefore remove itself by itself. This thought influenced the physicist, Aristotle, and inclined him to pay little heed the doctrine of Parmenides, just as it also affected the mathematician, Plato, who, on the other hand, found in the Eleatics the conceptual model for the immutability of the ideas. Being has no external purpose: esti gar ouk epideuest it lacks nothing at all, and if something were lacking—me eon d* an pantos edeito—then everything would be missing (line 33). A fresh and well-judged repetition occurs in this passage. As a representative of a preliterate culture, Parmenides structures his discourse with this repetition and, in that he brings prominence to such an especially important thought, he lends it strength. This thought reads: tauton d* esti noein te kai houneken esti noema; ou gar aneu tou eontost en hoi pephatismenon estin, heureseis to noein. The first part of this quotation (tauton . . . noema) reminds us a little of the third fragment, which seemed suspicious to us. Of course, utautonn is a predicate here as well and refers to "esti noeinn and "esti noema." (With regard to this, we must offer the

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explanatory remark that "noema" does not, of course, have the same meaning that it will have later in Aristotle. Here, is it synonymous with "noesis." It is that which is felt, that which is touched, and cannot be separated at all from feeling, from touching. The important thing, as we have already mentioned, lies exactly in this lack of a differentiation.) Being that appears already involves being: esti noema, "noema is." Moreover, in the second part of the quotation (ou gar . . . to noein) it is then claimed that "without the being29 in which it is expressed no thinking is to be found.** This is not quite comprehensible for modern philosophy. Therefore we understand it like this: "being could not be in what is expressed, but rather it must be in being itself.** At most, being could be inherent in thinking. This would seem to be what Parmenides wants to say. Hermann Frankel was also of this opinion—that being does not inhere in what is expressed but in what is thought. But all this is the result of a modernistic distortion that goes so far as to read a raft of things into Parmenides that are not present there at all: subjectivity, selfconsciousness, Hegel and speculative idealism, epistemology and its distinction between subject and object. So we imagine that Parmenides had already recognized the superiority of the selfreflexivity of thinking. I am sorry, but none of this is in the text. There is, however, something in the text about being that expresses itself, and that is: "There, where being comes to appearance, the perception of being occurs.** Another important thought follows from the thesis according to which there is no perception without the self-expression of being: since there is no non-being, there can be nothing outside of being, for now it is the whole that is without motion, and so forth. Moira has fettered it and has so fixed it in place that it is one (again we find here the expression "OM/OW,** "whole**) and without motion. Human beings are mistaken when they maintain that there are becoming, originating and passing away, being and non-being, motion, and finally even that bright color changes: dia te chroa phanon ameibein. This is a very beautiful image, an image that I would like to linger with here at the end of my analysis of the Parmenidean didactic poem. Here, we are dealing with an allusion to the fact that human beings are practically emptied by their experiences between being and non-being. This is an 29. dasSeiende

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allusion to the transitoriness and futility of all things. Color fades and disappears. Even in English we can say that the color fades and is no longer as vigorous and fresh as it was before. This fading of the color cannot actually be observed; we can only determine at a certain point in time that color has become weaker without our being able see when and how the color began to lessen, lime fades away, and colors also fade . . . . That is the mood behind this image, and the poet is undoubtedly driving at this. He wants to call into consciousness the anxiety that mortals feel about the fact that everything generated falls prey to transience, that everything born must die. But the goddess knows this better than mortals do. As I now come to the conclusion of this lecture series, I would like to recall our starting point again and add some considerations of a general nature. We first brought the Presocratics closer to us via the texts of Plato and Aristotle. This happened in the conviction that this approach was necessary in order to gradually bring language into the discussion. This is a language that, for the most part, is not yet conceptual but is already moving in this direction. Thus we found out that this language wants to convey an image of what we call the universe. We can now use the expression "universe" in the correct way in reference to the Presocratics. That is to say, we know that, on the one hand, this expression represents an anticipation, for Milesian philosophy does not yet succeed in really unifying the totality of things conceptually—and [seeing them as] the One. On the other hand, their philosophy does correspond to the direction that thinking takes later on. They were on a quest for the unity of the world, but the concept was not yet there. At the moment, I myself am not entirely sure at what point the word "universe** appears; I am certainly not sure about the equivalent of the Greek "cosmos." Perhaps it is in Lucretius. In any case, we are dealing with a Latin expression full of significance, for it helps explain the quest for the one world. Let us now turn to a few thoughts about the [historical] position of these interpretations of the Presocratics. I do not want to repeat here what I have already written in my essay published in Questions di storiografia filosofica; I will therefore limit myself to pointing out that interest in the Presocratics begins first with Romanticism. Of course, there were comprehensive handbooks

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even earlier—in die eighteenth century—which, like the work of Johann Jakob Brucker, for example, offered an abundance of material about the writings of antiquity as they had been collected through the efforts of Fabricius or Stephanus. This material was nothing more than a repetition of the ancient doxography without any historiographical ambition; just like in the ancient doxography, it was a simple catalogue of the various opinions. We have now seen in the course of our investigation to what heights of nonsense blind doxography can attain. Here, I would like to cite another example: if in line 42 of the eighth fragment Parmenides says that the universe is tetelesmenon, then that means that the universe is complete in itself, that it is a whole and leaves nothing outside itself. This view is then rendered by Melissus with the expression "apeiron." Theophrastus, on the other hand, is later quite surprised to "discover" that Parmenides said that his universe is tetelesmenon, and yet this means "finite," while Melissus advocated an infinite universe, the apeiron. All of this is complete nonsense. As we have already seen with reference to Anaximander, "apeiron"can mean boundless, but it can also mean something circular, something involved in itself and returning to itself—like a ring. Thus no difference exists in this respect between Melissus and Parmenides. The sad fact is that Theophrastus was a schoolmaster who applied his concept of the apeiron blindly. We still come across interpretations of this kind in the eighteenth century. An historiography30 in the authentic sense of the word occurs first hi the nineteenth century, a writing of history31 that distinguishes itself from the doxographic tradition. The interesting thing is that, as we have seen, despite all of its sensitivity, despite its immense erudition and its study of sources, even this historiography does not remain free of naive anachronism, even when it deals with fundamental themes. I admire the great philologists of the nineteenth century, their mastery of research methods, their extremely comprehensive education. But it is also a form of superior creativity when one is able to see things under the influence of one's own expertise and, in doing so, find one's eyes and ears opened. This truly happens in Hegel when at the beginning of the Logic he brings to the table being, nothing, and becoming in the 30. Historiographie 31. Geschichtsschreibung

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sense of the tradition established by Kant's and Fichte's doctrine of categories. Perhaps Heidegger was right when he said that, all in all, this nothing is no true nothing and also that becoming is already implied in the concepts of being and nothing. Being is "posited" as something indefinite. As we know, in his inaugural Freiburg lecture, "What is Metaphysics?," Heidegger directed his attention (just as he did in Being and Time) to precisely this point—that the nothing is like the veil of being and that this nothing does not resemble anything that is32 but rather being, which the multiplicity of existing things33 leaves behind itself like a veil. Here, Heidegger apparently feels himself drawn toward Parmenides. Parmenides, too, goes beyond the multiplicity of existing things and places to eon34 at the beginning. In a way, this to eon expresses Heidegger's "ontological difference." Yet we have abused this expression to such an extent that it has become incomprehensible. "Ontological difference"—I still recall quite dearly how, in Marburg, the young Heidegger developed this concept of die "ontological difference" in the sense of the difference between being and beings, between ousia and on. One day, as Gerhard Kriiger and I accompanied Heidegger home, one of the two of us two raised the question of what, then, the significance of this ontological distinction was, how and when one must make this distinction. I will never forget Heidegger's answer: Make? Is the ontological difference something that must be made? That is a misunderstanding. This difference is not something introduced by the philosopher's thinking so as to distinguish between being and beings. — Our reading of Parmenides' didactic poem, I believe, makes it quite clear that Heidegger was correct in this matter. The ontological difference [just] is; it is not introduced [by us], but rather opens itself up. As a matter of fact, in the didactic poem there is a back and forth between that which is, in its totality, and being. The ontological difference is not yet named here, but in a certain sense it is already operative. And that is one of the reasons why Heidegger, like Plato before him, felt an especially deep regard for old Parmenides. Heidegger, as we have already indicated, hoped and attempted to prove that Parmenides had already suspected that there was this difference, a difference 32. etwas Seiendem 33. seienden Dinge 34. being

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that is not made but which occurs on it own. For this reason, he took the trouble to steer the interpretation in this direction, and in the course of this he also did violence to the text. For example, when he interprets the passage in the Proem in which the unshakable heart of truth and the opinions of mortals is discussed, Heidegger tries to prove that standing in the background here is that great problem, the miracle of self-differentiation. To grasp the One is something normal, but what does this have to do with the capacity for differentiation? This is already presupposed in the Creation that the Old Testament relates because the most variegated existing things are held apart from each other, and this is also the case with us when we perceive. Heidegger tried to find all of this in Eleatic philosophy and also in Heraclitus so as to then claim—in all too close a connection with Nietzsche—that the first philosophers of the classical period of Greece stood beyond metaphysics and that the great drama of Western thinking, the fall into the abyss of metaphysics, was not there at all in Presocratic philosophy. Heidegger later realized that the West was already developing toward that time,35 and with regard to this point I would like to recall something that I said at the beginning of these lectures, namely, that even epic poetry was already very far removed from the mythology of the early epoch and presented something quite different from a religious proclamation of the divine. Homer and Hesiod were more like enlightened intellectuals and great psychologists. Think, for instance, of the scene at the beginning of the Iliad where Achilles, out of fury over Agamemnon's demand that he hand over his slave, seizes his sword and... suddenly the face of Athena looms up behind Agamemnon. At the last minute, Achilles regains his self-control and puts the sword into its scabbard again. A double action occurs here: there is Athena, who restrains Achilles, and there is Achilles, who restrains himself; there is a reference to the divine, but genuine interiority also plays a role, which of course is not yet named as such; nevertheless it is present in Homer's lines and is able to say something to us. This one example suffices to make clear the greatness of poetry as well as the fact that, despite the great distance, we still recognize ourselves in a view of a world like that of the Olympian gods or that of the disputes among the gods that Hesiod portrayed. 35. I.e., toward the fall into the abyss of metaphysics.

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In closing, I would like to make yet one further remark about Heidegger. In my opinion, he has placed Hegel at the end of the history of the metaphysics. In a certain sense, Hegel's synthesis is not to be surpassed. The fall from the conceptual level attained in nineteenth-century philosophy begins with the most brilliant thinker of the later part of the century, with Nietzsche. Certainly, he was in many ways almost a dilettante who did not understand much of modern philosophy and had not even read Kant but merely Kuno Fischer instead. The collapse of a still living tradition and its transformation in the history of philosophy in the sense of becoming a sequence of philosophical systems is extremely significant. In the nineteenth century it was regarded as a point d'honneur—and at the beginning our own century it was no different— that a system is a necessary prerequisite of philosophy. In any case, we can recognize how truly radical a thinker Heidegger is when he claims that metaphysics has changed and that it has shifted from being the common horizon of the Western culture to being a new metaphysics, a metaphysics that he designates "the forgetfulness of being" and describes in terms of the domination of technology in all areas of human culture, and certainly not just in Europe but in the whole world. Heidegger has thus seen many things in a new way that has opened new possibilities of thinking for us as well as the possibility of letting the texts of philosophy that have been handed down—and the language of art—speak for themselves. It is as if a new atmosphere originated with him. Admittedly, finding one's way around in this new atmosphere and following one's own path does not come easily. This is why I like to say that, just as Plato was no Platonist, neither can Heidegger be held responsible for the Heideggerians.

Index Academy, Plato's, 40, 54, 75 alphabetic writing, introduction of, 14-15 anamnesis (Greek: memory, recollection), 29,44 Anaxagoras (499-422 B.C.E., Presocratic philosopher), 15, 51-52, 76-78 Anaximander (610-547 B.C.E, Presocratic philosopher), 35, 38, 76-78, 80, 85-92,100-102, 104,108,122 Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.E., Presocratic philosopher), 35, 76-77, 80, 85, 87-90 Anfang (German: beginning), 4, 8, 13 anima (Latin: soul), 37,47, 57, 96 Antiphon (480-411 B.C.E., Greek Sophist), 81 Apollodorus (second century B.C.E., Athenian scholar), 35 arche (Greek: beginning), 12, 86, 88 Archimedes (267P-212 B.C.E., Greek mathematician), 24 Aristotelian, 12, 27-28, 32, 34-35, 43,48-49, 60, 62, 65, 69, 72, 74-77, 80-87, 93-94 Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 7,10,13,16, 24-27,32-36,44,47-48, 53-55, 57, 63, 65, 68-69, 71-86, 88, 90, 94, 96, 99, 104,108-110,119-121

Asia Minor, 9, 90 astronomy, 39, 73 Athens, 39,47, 63 Atomists (school of Greek philosophy associated with Democritus), 40 bebaios (Greek: firm, steady), 112, 117 Being and Time (Heidegger), 70, 123 Berlin historical school, 12 biology, 39,45, 73, 78,105 Boeder, Heribert, 118 Brucker, Johann Jakob (16961770, German philologist), 122 Buddhism, 87, 89 Burnet, John (1863-1928, British philosopher), 79 Calogero, Guido (1904—, contemporary Italian philosopher), 118 Cebes (character in Plato's Phaedo), 39,44-45, 50 Christianity, 12,26, 37, 73, 92, 115,117 Church Fathers (early Christian writers), 33 Clement of Alexandria (150-215, Christian Gnostic philosopher), 111 Cohen, Hermann (1842-1918, German philosopher), 25

Index Confessions (Augustine), 92,117 Copenhagen school, 27 copula (use of verb "to be"), 14, 110-111 cosmogony, 52, 77-78, 87-89, 92, 108 cosmos, 44, 52, 63, 76, 89,100, 121; cosmology, 52, 78, 81, 103 craftsperson, 43, 73-75, 81, 84-85 Creation, the, 52, 73-74, 92,115, 124 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 52 cultural development, 9 culture, 9-12,16, 20-21, 28, 31, 39, 46, 69, 77, 92, 96, 98, 116,119,125 De anima (Aristotle), 47, 57, 96 death, 10,13, 37, 39-45, 55-57, 59 demiurge, 73, 84 Democritus (460P-370? B.C.E., Greek philosopher of atomist theory of universe), 24, 65, 89 Descartes, Rene (1596-1650, French philosopher), 20, 30 dialectic, 11-13, 26,28,43, 47-48, 52, 57-58, 64, 66, 68, 74,84,94,115,118 Diels, Hermann (1848-1922, German philosopher), 33-34, 77, 91, 95-97 Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833-1911, German philosopher), 16,19, 22-24, 28, 30, 77 Diogene d'Apollonie (Laks), 79 Diogenes Laertius (third century Greek biographer), 7, 72 Diogenes of Apollonia (fifth century B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 78, 85, 89 Dionysus, cult of, 38 Dirlmeier, Franz (1904—, German philosopher), 87 Discours de la method (Descartes), 30 doxa (Greek: opinion), 62, 98-99, 109

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doxai broton (Greek: opinions of mortals), 95,100 doxography, 47, 62, 72, 79-80, 85, 88,122 dynamis (Greek: that which produces effects), 65, 84-85 Echecrates (character in Plato's Phaedo), 45 eidos (Greek: form, that which can be seen), 12, 54 Elea (ancient Greek city in today's southern Italy), 22, 63-64 FJeatic (school of philosophy in Elea, exemplified by Parmenides and Zeno), 40, 56, 63-64, 72, 75-77, 84, 90-91, 93-94, 98,109,118-119, 124 Empedocles (fifth century B.C.E., Greek philosopher who originated the doctine of the four elements), 34, 38, 61, 64, 76, 89 Encyclopedia (Hegel), 69 Enlightenment, the (eighteenthcentury philosophical/ cultural movement), 15 Ephesus (ancient Greek city in Asia Minor, located in present-day Turkey; home of Heraclitus), 9,22,95,110 epic literature, 13,15 epic poetry, 90, 95,105,124 Epicharmus (fl. c. 450 B.C.E., Greek poet), 61 epistemology (study of knowledge), 22, 30, 53,120 etymology, 103,108 Euclid (third century B.C.E., Greek mathematician), 24 Euthyphro (Plato), 59 evolution, theory of, 29, 39 existence, 14, 30,42, 45, 51, 75, 103, 111, 113-114 experience, 16-18,23,25,28-29, 40,42,44,46, 50, 53-54, 56-57, 65, 98-99,113,115, 120

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Fabricius, Johann Albert (1668-1736, German Lutheran scholar), 122 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814, German idealist philosopher), 43,123 fire, 41, 55-56,102-104,108 Fischer, Kuno (1824-1907, German philosopher), 125 Foucault, Michel (1926-1984, contemporary French philosopher), 17 Frank, Erich (1883-1949, German philosopher), 48 Frankel, Hermann (1888-?, German philosopher), 120 freedom, 26-27 Gaiser, Konrad (contemporary German philosopher), 11 Galelei, Galileo (1564-1642, Italian astronomer), 24 geometry, 66 German idealism, 57,110 German poetry, 14 Gomperz, Theodor (1832-1912, German philosopher), 77 Gottingen, university of, 10 Greek culture, 9,20, 98 Greek gods, 35, 90,122 Greek Philosophers, The (Burnet), 79 Greek poetry, 14, 93 harmony, 23,44-45, 53, 88 Hartmann, Nicolai (1882-1950, German philosopher), 27-28 heavenly bodies, 73-74,76, 103-104 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831, German philosopher), 7,10-12,18-22,26, 35,43,46, 67-69,103,120, 122,125 Hegelian, Hegelianism, 10-11,19, 21-22,25, 35,46,57, 66-67, 69,93,103 Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976, German philosopher), 7,13,

80, 86-88,109, 111, 117, 123-125 Heidelberg, university of, 7-9 Hellenism (spread of Greek culture and thought after Alexander the Great in fourth century B.C.E.), 24, 73 Heracleides Ponticus (390-322 B.C.E., Greek philosopher and astronomer), 39 Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.E., Greek philosoher born in Ephesus), 21,25, 34-35, 61, 64,93,95, 110,114-115,124 hermeneutics (theory of interpretation), 19,21,29,46,102 Herodotus (fifth century B.C.E., Greek historian), 36 Hesiod (fl. eighth century B.C.E., Greek poet), 13, 36, 63, 65, 93-94, 96,107,124 historicism, 7,10,15-16,21-22, 24, 93, 95,110,114-115 historiography, 12,22,35-36,77, 122 history of philosophy, 10-11, 19-21,25, 58,125 Homer (fl. 850 B.C.E., Greek epic poet), 7,10,13,15,36-38, 55, 61, 63, 93-95,113,116, 118,124 human sciences, 16,23-24, 29-31 Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938, German philosopher), 70 hyle, (Greek: matter; originally: wood, forest), 8, 65, 79, 81, 83 Idea (Platonic concept), 11,17,20, 36,38-41,43,45,48,52-56, 58,67-68,77, 85,87-89,99, 104-105, 111 Idea of the Good in Platonic and Aristotelian Philsophy, The (Gadamer), 48 idealism, 35, 57, 68,110,120 Iliad (Homer), 98,124 immortality of the soul, 41-45,47, 55-56,58-59

Index incipience, 17, 38 indeterminacy, 18 Introduction to the Human Sciences (Dilthey), 16,24 Ionia (ancient Greek region in Asia Minor along coast of Aegean Sea), 64, 83, 85, 87, 93, 101-105,108,112 Jaeger, Werner (1888-1961, German philosopher), 36, 86-87, 89 Joel, Karl (1864-1934, German philosopher), 96 Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804, German philosopher), 11,22,27, 41,43, 52,123,125 Karsten, Simon (1802-1864, German philologist), 97 Kierkegaard, S0ren (1813-1855, Danish philosopher), 67 Kramer, Hans-Joachim (1929—, German philosopher), 11 Kruger, Gerhard (1902-1972, German philosopher), 123 Laks, Andre (contemporary French philosopher), 79 language, 7-8,10,13-15, 21,25, 29, 34, 42,46, 53, 58, 62, 89, 121,125 Lectures on the History of Philosophy (Hegel), 10 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1766, German philosopher), 27,44 logos (Greek: word, account), 11-12,17, 35-36,46, 53, 55, 60, 62, 72-73, 94,109-110, 117 Luther, Martin (1483-1546, German religious reformer), 26, 92 Lysis (Plato), 47-48 manotes (Greek: thinning, rarefying), 76 Marburg, university of, 13,123

129

mathematics, 25, 39,41,48,54, 56-57, 60, 66, 73 matter, theory of, 25, 30, 65, 73-74, 80-82,116,123 me on (Greek: non-being, nothing), 84 Meister Eckhart (1260-1327, German theologian, mystic), 58 Melissus (fifth century B.C.E. Greek philosopher), 118,122 memory, 29, 37-38,50,98 Meno (Plato), 41 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 16, 35,47, 69, 72, 75, 78-79, 84-85,104 method, 30-31; methodology, 10, 22 Middle Ages, 24, 96 Milesian school, 35, 72, 78, 88, 98,100,102,108,121 Miletus (ancient Greek city in Asia Minor, located in present-day Turkey), 9, 35, 80, 90 Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873, British Utilitarian philosopher), 30 modern science, 15,28, 57, 69-70, 82 Mondolfo, Rodolfo (contemporary Italian philosopher), 21 moral questions, 28 Mount Olympus, 65, 92 music, 23 mythos (Greek: tale, story), 17, 35-36, 88, 90,117 myths, 16, 38,47, 64, 73-74, 78-80, 88,108

National Socialism, 24 natural sciences, 22-23,27-31 nature, 8,12,16,26,29, 31, 34, 42-45, 50, 53, 71, 73-77, 79, 81-82, 84, 92, 97,99,101, 121 Neoplatonism, 54 neuter gender, use of, 14 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900, German philosopher), 7,14, 37-38,46, 86, 96,101,124-125

130

Index

Nomoi (Plato's Laws), 66-67 notnos (Greek: law, convention), 34,74 non-being, 19,95-96,109, 114-115,120 non-existence, 30 nous (Greek: mind), 19, 51-52, 57, 66, 83-84, 91,103,105, 112 numbers, 38, 54, 56, 64,72-74 objectivity, 30-31 Old Testament, 73,115,124 Olympian gods, 124 One, the, 91,112,118,121,124 ontology (philosophy of being), 14,43, 51,54, 65,68-69, 85, 123 opinion, 12,14, 50, 61-62, 85, 95, 98,102,104,115,118, 120,125 Orphic rites, 38 Paideia (Jaeger), 36 Paris, univeristy of, 10 Parmenides (515-450 B.C.E., founder of Eleatic school of Greek philosophy), 14,21, 25, 35, 38, 58,61,63, 67-68, 75-76, 79, 91-99,101, 103-112,114,116-120, 122-123 Peripatetics (school of Greek philosophy founded by Aristotle), 33 Phaedo (Plato), 34, 36-42,45, 50, 56-57, 59-61, 66, 68, 71-73, 85, 91,113 phenomenology (philosophical study of appearances in human experience,), 11,28, 57, 68, 80 Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel), 11 Philebus (Plato), 56, 83 Philolaos (b. 470 B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 39 Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein), 61

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (Nietzsche), 86 Physics (Aristotle), 13,34-35,47, 53, 55, 72-73, 75-76, 80-86, 90,96 physis (Greek: nature, being), 8, 34-35,44, 74.75, 81, 84-85, 90,105 Plato (428-348 B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 7,10-12, 14-15,24, 32-34, 36-45, 47-49, 51, 53-59, 61, 63-68, 71-76, 79-81, 83-85, 92, 94, 96,109-110,112,116,119, 121,123,125 Plato and the So-called Pythagoreans (Frank), 39 Platonic dialogue, 49 Platonic, Platonism, 10-12,15,29, 32, 34,48-50, 52,56,58, 62, 67-68,73-74, 82, 94,99, 109,125 Popper, Karl (1902—, British philosopherof science), 24-26 Presocratics, 7, 9-13,17-18,20, 22-23,25, 32-36, 38-40,44, 56, 62, 64-65, 72,79, 82, 94-95,118,121,124 principium (Latin: beginning), 12-13,15,18,29,71-72 Problemgeschichte (German: problem history), 20,25 Protagoras (490-410 B.C.E., Greek Sophist), 61 Pseudo-Dionysius (unknown Neoplatonist author of mystical treatises, around 500 C.E.) 67 psyche (Greek: soul, mind), 41, 58 puknotes (Greek: condensing), 76 purification, 38,41 purity rituals, 41 Pythagoras, 38, 90, 93 Pythagoreans, 39,44, 54,56,65, 76, 83-84 quantum mechanics, 28 quantum theory, 27

Index reincarnation, 38,45 Reinhardt, Karl (contemporary German philosopher), 14,118 repetition, theme of, 97,100,114, 116-117,119,122 Republic (Plato), 48 rhapsode (reciter of epic poetry), 36, 63, 90-91, 96,116 rheontes (Greek: flux), 62, 65 rhetoric, 26,43, 74 Robin, Leon (1866-1947, French philosopher), 12 Romanticism (philosophical and cultural movement of the late eighteenth century), 10,12, 20,121 Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905-1980, French existentialist philosopher), 31 Scheler, Max (1874-1928, German phenomenologist), 27-28 Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768-1834, German theologian), 10-12,16,20,22 Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860, German philosopher), 86-87, 101 Science of Logic (Hegel), 11 Seele (German: soul), 37 self-consciousness, 19,57, 68-69, 120 senses, 12, 41, 60, 71; sensory experience, 42, 44, 53 Simmias (character in Plato's Phaedo), 39,42,44-45, 58 Simplicius (sixth-century Neoplatonist and commentator on Aristotle), 7, 34, 52, 76, 86-87,107,117 Skeptics (school of Greek philosophy), 33 Snell, Bruno (1896—, German philologist), 14 Socrates (469-399 B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 36-37,39-45, 47-48,50-53,55,57-59,61, 63-64, 73, 78, 83, 91,113 Sophist (Plato), 43,60,62-63,

131

65-68,71-72,75,77,79, 81, 85, 94,112 Sophists (wandering Greek teachers of fifth century B.C.E.), 40, 54,61 spirit, 11,16,20, 50, 66, 68 stasiotai (Greek: those who take a stand), 62, 65 Stephanus (Henri Estienne, 15311598, French scholar and printer of Greek classics), 122 Stoicism (Greek and Roman philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium), 26, 33,104,108 structure, philosophical concept in Kant and Dilthey, 20-22 subject and object, 31,120 Summa Theologia (Aquinas), 96 ta enantia (Greek: in opposition to each other), 101 tecbne (Greek: art, skill), 34, 74-75,79, 82 teleology (theory of ends or goaloriented activity), 16,22, 53 Thales (648-546 B.C.E., early Greek thinker from Miletus), 7,10,13,15-16, 35, 65, 76, 78-80, 85-87, 89-90 thanatos (Greek: death), 57 Theatetus (Plato), 51, 60-62, 65-66, 68, 71-72, 94,109, 119 Theogony (Hesiod), 36,65, 96, 107 Theology of the Early Creek Thinkers, The (Jaeger), 36, 86 Ttmaeus (Plato), 67, 73-74, 80-81,104 to auto (Greek: the same, identical), 111 to ison (Greek: equality), 44 Topics (Aristotle), 25-26,29 transmigration of the soul, 38,56 Tubingen school, 11 unity, 18,31,51,64, 66, 85,90, 98,101,105-106, 111, 113, 118,121

132

Index

universe, 29, 52-53, 63, 69, 73-74, 85-93, 97-101, 103-104,108,113,118, 121-122 Untersteiner, Mario (1899-1981, Italian philosopher), 61

Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947, British philosopher), 61 Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951, Austrian philosopher), 61 world-soul, 68,73

values, 27-28, 31, 53, 70, 74, 86, 91, 94-96, 99 Viennese school, 77 virtue, 27-28,48, 65, 90, 97 virtuality, 18

Xenophanes (570-470 B.C.E., Greek philosopher), 36, 63, 72,77, 90-91,96

Weber, Max (1864-1920, German sociologist), 17 Weltgeschichte (German: world history), 46

Teller, Eduard (1814-1908, neoKantian German philosopher), 12,19, 21-22, 35 Zeno of Elea (490-430 B.C.E., disciple of Parmenides), 112, 118