Abstract
Force and dynamism (actuality and potentiality; energeíta and dunámis) together constitute one of the four fundamental “ways” of being described by Aristotle in the Metaphysics; and one of the two “ways,” along with being according to the categories, that constitutes the subject matter of the primary science. Aristotle’s ontology remains the phenomenologist’s touchstone, and indeed this characterization of being has guided the work of Heidegger among others.
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Notes
Such a view is expressed in one form or another in works by, for example: Franco Volpi, Heidegger e Aristotele (Padua: Daphne Editrice, 1984); Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendre, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Richard Kearney, “Heidegger, the Possible and God” in Martin Heidegger Critical Assessments Vol. IV, ed. Christopher Macann, (NY: Routledge, 1992).
See Heidegger on this point in GA31, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit; Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 77 ff.
Helene Weiss, Heidegger’s student, notes in her book Kausalität und Zufall in der Philosophie des Aristoteles (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967) that the translation of sumbebekós with “accident” [German “Zufall”] is misleading. The word is constructed from the perfect stem of baínein [to walk, to step, to stand or to be in a place, to come] + sum, and thus literally means “to have come together”, “to have stepped together” and so what goes together (p. 157). Indeed, an “accidental being” cannot stand alone, without being a substrate.
Aristotle in book Delta of the Metaphysics defines these notions separately, though he admits of some conflation: see Meta: 1019a 24.
Aristotle’s main treatment of being as accident (1026a 33–1027a 30) is complex, as hinted above. He presumes, but does not specify, the distinction developed elsewhere (Epsilon; Delta) between three different kinds of attribute (sumbebēkóta): 1) essential per se (kath’hautó) attributes; 2) non-essential per se attributes; and 3) accidents that are neither per se nor essential. He does not specifically relate these to possibility, but given the definition of “accident” in Delta (1025a 14ff), it is clear that accident in the latter two senses refers to that which could, but does not necessarily, belong to an individual thing qua itself: in short, possibility.
Heidegger’s comments on this section in GA33, particularly with regard to the meaning of logos, are helpful here. See p. 99ff.
Cf. NE book VI, 1139bff — chapters that Heidegger cites frequently in courses and published texts.
The telos of human being is the good, and the good for human being is happiness, and happiness is the life of contemplation, the exercise of the noetic rational soul.
In this 1928 course (The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic: Michael Heim, trans., (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1992)), Heidegger cites note xxiii from section 64 of Being and Time that reads in part: “the intentionality of ‘consciousness’ is grounded in the ecstatical unity of Dasein” (SZ: 363 414). Cf. also WG: 28, (The Essence of Reasons: trans., Terence Malick, (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1969)), where Heidegger again says that intentionality is possible only on the basis of transcendence. Cf: Arion Kelkel: “Immanence de la conscience intentionnelle et transcendence du Dasein”, in Heidegger et l’idée de la phénoménologie, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988).
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstader, (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1988).
History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena: trans. Theodore Kisiel, (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1992).
The for-the-sake-of seems to be a retrieval and ontologization of Aristotle’s häu héneka (Cf: Franco Volpi 1994: “Being and Time: A ‘Translation’ of the Nichomachean Ethics?” in Reading Heidegger from the Start, (Albany: SUNY Press 1994) p.207–209). In Aristotle, praxis is an end in itself, that is, its “for the sake of” is itself. Since Dasein is for the sake of itself, this accrues further evidence to the thesis that transcendence is the praxis that unifies poíēsis and theoría, determinations borrowed from Aristotle and transformed.
“To put it briefly, Dasein’s transcendence and freedom are identical!” (GA26: 238 185).
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Hanley, C. (2002). Force and Dynamism in Aristotle and Heidegger: Becoming What You Are…to Be. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Life Energies, Forces and the Shaping of Life: Vital, Existential. Analecta Husserliana, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0417-6_1
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