Abstract
This paper starts by investigating the Aristotelian roots of Heidegger’s stance toward animal life from 1924 lecture course “Basic concepts of Aristotelian philosophy” to 1929/30 lecture course “The fundamental concepts of Metaphysics”. In following Aristotle, Heidegger displays the ontological transition from life to existence as grounded to the peculiar linguistic ability of human beings. In doing that, both Heidegger and Aristotle seem to establish a connection between an existential faculty (logos) and the apparently dominant position occupied by our species. On the other side, though, to be endowed with logos means for human beings to be able to de-centre themselves in recognizing the essential connection to other beings in the whole of life. This insight will concur in leading Heidegger after the 20’s to the rethinking of the role played by man in the new structure of Ereignis and to crucial notions as Lichtung, Open and Quaternity. But this peculiar function seems also to specify Aristotle’s system of human (anthroposcopic) knowledge as pointing to the idea of a general continuity of life, from simplest living beings via the sublunar world to the perfect life of stars and Deity. So apparently maintaining, despite Heidegger’s claim of going beyond metaphysics, the connection with Aristotle strong even in the later stages of his thought.
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Notes
- 1.
Derrida (2006).
- 2.
Agamben (2004).
- 3.
On the debate concerning Aristotle’s anthropocentrism, see Sedley (1991).
- 4.
See Sorabji (1993).
- 5.
E. g. De Fontenay (1998).
- 6.
See Labarrière (2005).
- 7.
See Singer (1975) and Regan (1983).
- 8.
As an introduction to animality studies, see Lundblad (2009).
- 9.
See on this Shepard (1996).
- 10.
- 11.
See Calarco (2008).
- 12.
Heidegger (2009).
- 13.
Heidegger (1995).
- 14.
See on this McNeill (1999).
- 15.
Heidegger (2009, 14).
- 16.
As distinctively pointed out by Bailey (2011).
- 17.
Heidegger (2009, 14).
- 18.
Kisiel (1995, 295).
- 19.
Heidegger (2009, 39).
- 20.
Heidegger (2009, 39).
- 21.
Heidegger (2009, 37).
- 22.
See Heidegger (2009, 39): “Aristotle supplies the reference to phone and zoa as theria at the outset, in order to give the correct background for the further being-characteristic of human beings in the world, for the logos-investigation.”
- 23.
Cf. Heidegger (2009, 39).
- 24.
Reference is to Aristotle, Pol. A 2, 1253 a 14–16 ff.
- 25.
Heidegger (2009, 41).
- 26.
Heidegger (2009, 42–43).
- 27.
Heidegger (2009, 37–38).
- 28.
Heidegger (2009, 220).
- 29.
Cf. Heidegger (1995, 177).
- 30.
Heidegger (1995, 248). On the theories of Jakob von Uexküll as a source for this Heideggerian principle, see Agamben (2002), 42: “Uexküll affirms - and thus formulates a principle that would have some success - that “no animal can enter into relation with an object as such,” but only with its own carriers of significance”. For a general overview of Uexküll’s influence in the philosophy of twentieth century (Heidegger included) see Kull (2001).
- 31.
Derrida (2006, 89).
- 32.
Among the various (and constantly increasing in number) tendencies that could be briefly quoted as paradigmatic of the current scenario: Animality Studies: an emerging interdisciplinary academic field focused on the cultural study of animals and animality. It can be distinguished from animal studies and critical animal studies by its resistance to animal rights or animal welfare as an explicit justification for work in this field (Lundblaud, 2002); Zoography: a perspective developed by Calarco (2008), who is opposed to Heidegger and Derrida’s notion of difference: the idea of a radical indistinction which rules over any form of animal life, insofar as what specifies life in general is bodily and fleshy constitution; Philosophy of animality: a perspective recently developed among the others by F. Cimatti (2015, 2016).
- 33.
Cimatti (2015, 42).
- 34.
- 35.
Cimatti (2015, 50).
- 36.
Cimatti (2015, 52).
- 37.
Agamben (2004, 39).
- 38.
Agamben (2004, 13–14). The reference is to Aristotle, De Anima 413 a 20 ff.: “It is through life that what has soul in it differs from what has not.1 Now this term “to live” has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that the thing is living—viz. thinking, sensation, local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of all species of plants also as living, for they are observed to possess in themselves a principle and potentiality through which they grow and decay in opposite directions... This principle can be separated from the others, but not they from it—in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic potentiality they possess. Thus, it is through this principle that life belongs to living things... By nutritive power (threptikon) we mean that part of the soul which is common also to plants.”. Quoted in Agamben (2004, 13–14).
- 39.
Agamben (2004, 14).
- 40.
Agamben (2004, 15–16).
- 41.
Agamben (2004, 16).
- 42.
- 43.
E. g. the case of the De Motu Animalium, in which the eminent case of movement, according to the premises of the work, could be considered the perfect living being, i.e. the divine. On the possibility of a “multicentric” approach of Aristotle, according to the various domains of his investigations, see Nussbaum (1986, xv).
- 44.
Heidegger (2009, 69).
- 45.
On this, see the chapter «Who speaks for the Animals?» in (2006, 103).
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Le Moli, A. (2021). Between Life and Existence. Heidegger’s Aristotelianism and the Question of Animality. In: Di Martino, C. (eds) Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56566-4_8
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