Heidegger vs. Aristotle - Smackdown Extraordinaire

Philosophy is defined by Heidegger as the attempt to open up again the domain of originary thinking, and the release of this radical questioning. In contrast, Heidegger suggests that Western metaphysics, while governed by such originary, radical questioning, often holds these questions in a repository.

In The End of Philosophy, he says that metaphysics “can never bring the history of being itself, that is, the origin, to the light of its essence.”

The tradition is viewed as a deposit of doctrines that develop and progressively work out the meaning of being. Aristotle and Greek philosophy are thereby taken to be primitive expressions of truths that have since been incorporated or superseded by a higher development and systemization that surpass it.

It is clear from Heidegger’s writings that he considers a de-structuring of Aristotle’s works to be essential if philosophy and thinking are to be set free for their proper task. But simply returning to Aristotle is not so simple. If it is true that every historical epoch of philosophy owes its impetus to the Greeks, it is also true that our interpretation of the Greeks has derived from assumptions rooted in later history (Scholasticism, for example). And this confusion is not accidental. It reflects an essential characteristic of interpretation itself (fallenness).

But we should not cast Heidegger’s hermeneutic project of reading Aristotle in terms of an attempt to view Aristotle as a non-metaphysician. Such a project would be naive. Heidegger says: “The greater a revolution is to be, the more profoundly must it plunge into its history.” The return to the origin of the tradition is not a return to a past that is now over. Heidegger says: “Repetition as we understand it is anything but an improved continuation with the old methods of what has been up to now.”

The historical life of a tradition depends on a constantly new release and interpretation of the overabundance that cannot be confined to any one saying. Language is founded on this unsayable origin, and the disclosure of this originary logos is essentially a creative and poetic response to being.