Heidegger’s Greek: Inversions, Reversals, and Promising Entwürfe.

~by David Aiken~

 In important ways, Martin Heidegger is becoming more and more well-defined to post-WWII generations. His Heraclitean mask is finally slipping; or, to use a scriptural metaphor—the handwriting on the wall of history has once again set about to compose for a man, like it did at old Belshazzar’s feast, its Mene, mene, techel, upharsin.

Heidegger had a clear and reiterated commitment to the thought-world of the Nazi state; his was an anti-enlightenment program and an anti-rationalist method to Thinking; his, also, was a miserable and arrogant personality, in all points exemplary of Pliny the Elder’s affirmation: Et homine nihil miseries aut superbius (–and nothing is more miserable or arrogant than man). Numbered, numbered, weighed in the balance, –divided.

The gestour

However, Heidegger also dwells in a linguistic universe that does not fail to draw us in and to tease us in a playful kind of way, especially in those writings where he poetically embroiders his tapestries between Greek and German languages—because he is of the opinion that the only proper languages of philosophy are Greek and German. This is pervasively implicit in Heidegger’s writings, and made explicit in works such as Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (GA 31, 1982) and Einführung in der Metaphysik (GA 40, 1983). Then, reading such layered texts in translation—in English, for example, simply adds hermeneutical pizazz to the already zesty interpretative stew.

And in at least this respect his position in Western philosophy is assured—Heidegger is taking his place as gestour in the court of Western Thinking; he is the jargon-bedecked fol of the darkly obscure; a consummate homo ludens whose self-appointed task is coyly to inhabit the abstruse interstices between words and meanings and thoughts. Distinctly unlike Walt Whitman who declaimed, “I am large, I contain multitudes,” Heidegger is a murky glass of retreating, refracting surfaces in Western philosophy’s carnivalesque House of Mirrors.

House of Mirrors

Text I: Rektorat Rede

Comment: It would seem that Heidegger’s Rektorat Rede, which has for title “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” has been somewhat sanitized during the course of its existence as text, not only by Heidegger himself but also by his (esp. French) disciples, and family, with differences between an original version, which was pronounced in May 1933*, a reworked version (Niederschrift) that Heidegger published in 1945, and the definitive and utterly rectified filial version, the only one currently available to scholarship, which appeared after Martin Heidegger’s death in 1976, in the (almost completely) Nazi-jargon free edition revised by son, Herman Heidegger, and published by Klostermann in 1983.

*NB: For a translation of the unadulterated ‘original’ text of Heidegger’s discourse, including language of “the glory and the greatness of the Hitler revolution,” see Dagobert Runes’ translation of the Rektorat Rede in Martin Heidegger: German Existentialism (NY: Philosophical Library, 1962, pp. 18-20).

»Wissen aber ist weit unkräftiger denn Notwendigkeit.« Heidegger’s translations from ancient Greek are, more often than not, pretty straight-forward and unproblematic, especially when they are lengthy passages (cf., e.g., below in the correspondence with Kurt Bauch: Aristotle, de part. An. A5, 645a17sqq). Occasionally, however, there is the odd ‘rendering’ that, no matter how curious or problematic its translational value (in the form of inversions and reversals), yet could suggest some degree of philosophical promise—even if only as a draft-quality idea. These might well be called, Heidegger’s Promising Entwürfe. From the Rektorat Rede, a first Promising Entwurf is from the following passage:

“Nur dann, wenn wir uns wieder unter die Macht des Anfangs unseres geistig-geschichtlichen Daseins stellen. Dieser Anfang ist der Aufbruch der griechischen Philosophie. Darin steht der abendländische Mensch aus einem Volkstum kraft seiner Sprache erstmals auf gegen das Seiende im Ganzen und befragt und begreift es als das Seiende, das es ist. Alle Wissenschaft ist PhiIosophie, mag sie es wissen und wollen - oder nicht. Alle Wissenschaft bIeibt jenem Anfang der Philosophie verhaftet. Aus ihm schöpft sie die Kraft ihres Wesens, gesetzt, daß sie diesem Anfang überhaupt noch gewachsen bIeibt.

Wir wollen hier zwei auszeichnende Eigenschaften des ursprüngIichen griechischen Wesens der Wissenschaft unserem Dasein zurückgewinnen.

Bei den Griechen ging ein alter Bericht um, Prometheus sei der erste Philosoph gewesen. Diesen Prometheus laBt Aischylos einen Spruch sagen, der das Wesen des Wissens ausspricht:

technè d’anankès asthenestera makhrooi

(Prom. 514 ed. Wil.)

»Wissen aber ist weit unkräftiger denn Notwendigkeit.« Das will sagen: jedes Wissen um die Dinge bleibt zuvor ausgeliefert der Übermacht des Schicksals und versagt vor ihr.

The English translation that follows is taken from the University of Texas website.

“Only if we again place ourselves under the power of the beginning of our spiritual-historical existence. This beginning is the departure, the setting out, of Greek philosophy. Here, for the first time, Western man rises up, from a base in a popular culture [Volkstum] and by means of his language, against the totality of what is and questions and comprehends it as the being that it is. All science is philosophy, whether it knows and wills it – or not. All science remains bound to that beginning of philosophy. From it science draws the strength of its essence, assuming that it still remains at all equal to this beginning.

Here we want to regain two distinguishing properties of the original

Greek essence of science for our existence.

An old story was told among the Greeks that Prometheus had been the

first philosopher. Aeschylus has this Prometheus utter a saying that expresses

the essence of knowing:

τέχυη δάυάγκης άσθєυєστέρα μακρώ

(Prom. 514, ed. Wil).

“Knowing, however, is far weaker than necessity.” That means that all knowing about things has always already been surrendered to the predominance of destiny and fails before it.”

Prometheus Bound

Now the reference from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, which was written ca. 430 B.C., is from line 514 (in bold in the following texts). The Aeschylean context for the dialogue between Prometheus and the Chorus, is the unforgettable machination of the Titanic god, Prometheus, who has set himself over and against the will of Olympian Zeus in coming to the rescue of Zeus-damned mortals. [English]

CHORUS

Shoot not beyond the mark in succouring man
While thou thyself art comfortless: for
Am of good hope that from these bonds escaped
Thou shalt one day be mightier than Zeus.

PROMETHEUS

Fate, that brinks all things to an end, not thus
Apportioneth my lot: ten thousand pangs
Must bow, ten thousand miseries afflict me
Ere from these bonds I freedom find, for Art (514)
Is by much weaker than Necessity.

CHORUS

Who is the pilot of Necessity?

PROMETHEUS

The Fates triform, and the unforgetting Furies.

CHORUS

So then Zeus is of lesser might than these?

PROMETHEUS

Surely he shall not shun the lot apportioned.

CHORUS

What lot for Zeus save world-without-end reign?

PROMETHEUS

Tax me no further with importunate questions.

CHORUS

O deep the mystery thou shroudest there

The Greek text of our passage follows here:

Πρ. οὐ ταῦτα ταύτηι Μοῖρά πω τελεσφόρος
κρᾶναι πέπρωται, μυρίαις δὲ πημοναῖς
δύαις τε κναφθεὶς ὧδε δεσμὰ φυγγάνω.
τέχνη δ’ ἀνάγκης ἀσθενεστέρα μακρῶι.
Χο. τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος;   (515)
Πρ. Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ’ Ἐρινύες.
Χο. τούτων ἄρα Ζεύς ἐστιν ἀσθενέστερος;
Πρ. οὔκουν ἂν ἐκφύγοι γε τὴν πεπρωμένην.
Χο. τί γὰρ πέπρωται Ζηνὶ πλὴν ἀεὶ κρατεῖν;
Πρ. τοῦτ’ οὐκέτ’ ἂν πύθοιο, μηδὲ λιπάρει.   (520)
Χο. ἦ πού τι σεμνόν ἐστιν ὃ ξυναμπέχεις;

The ‘art’ that Prometheus is referring to, of course, is the eternal fire that he purloined from Zeus and gave to ignorant men, which is narrated for us in Hesiod’s Works and Days [lns. 51ff].

He hid fire; but that the noble son of Iapetus stole again for men from Zeus the counsellor in a hollow fennel-stalk, so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it. But afterwards Zeus who gathers the clouds said to him in anger: “Son of Iapetus, surpassing all in cunning, [55] you are glad that you have outwitted me and stolen fire—a great plague to you yourself and to men that shall be. But I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.”

Prometheus Unbound

Our Greek word of interest in this reference is art [τέχνη], which Aeschylus puts in the mouth of Prometheus, who is called by Heidegger “der erste Philosoph.” A first point of interest is Heidegger’s assertion that Prometheus is Germany’s philosophical forefather—it is not insignificant to note that, on this point, Heidegger is building upon a foundation also used by Hitler in his Mein Kampf, where he writes that “the Aryan is the Prometheus of humanity” (cf. Faye, 2005, 162).

In this passage of his discourse, Heidegger renders tekne as “Wissen” or Knowing, which is not necessarily problematic, as the Greeks themselves also commonly straddled this fence between ‘knowing’ and the ‘skilful application of knowing’ in their use and understanding of tekne. However, Heidegger’s translation of tekne in fact demonstrates a distinct and deliberate inversion of meaning, which is precisely where poetic uncertainty enters into possible interpretations and authorial intent. Heidegger’s linguistic ‘playfulness’ is not located in the interstices between ‘art’ and ‘artful knowledge’, which would be entirely Greek in nature, but represents, instead, a more challenging meaning and translation choice that belongs distinctly to MH, who has long since abandoned Aeschylus’ meaning and spun off into his own, very unique poetry.

In defining tekne as unkräftiger, as does Heidegger, the sense is no longer that tekne is less ‘powerful’, per the normative sense of the German Kraft (i.e., Mangel an Kraft; strength), but it is rather in a collateral sense of being un-artful (i.e., English, like in arts & crafts). With his rendering, then, “Knowing, however, is far weaker than necessity” (Wissen aber ist weit unkräftiger denn Notwendigkeit), Heidegger deliberately inverts the meaning of the Greek Aeschylus, where tekne is “significantly weaker than Necessity,” which is under the control of the “Fates triform, and the unforgetting Furies,” which, in turn, are subject to Zeus. And the Chorus rightly deduces, of course, the entirely Greek tragic logic that follows: that “Zeus is of [no] lesser might than these…”

Our Greek affirmation from Aeschylus is that tekne is asthenestera makroi [ἀσθενεστέρα μακρῶι], which is to say that it is much weaker than Necessity [ἀνάγκης]. In the face of Divine Necessity (viz., Moira and the Erinyes, and ultimately Zeus, who is not himself asthenesteros [ἀσθενέστερος], any weaker than either Moira or the Erinyes), tekne of any and every sort cannot stand against heavenly Necessity. The root idea of asthen-es, then, is to be feeble; without strength; insignificant next to; paltry; and similar such ‘comparatively inferior’ ideas. The makroi idea is used generally in the spatial sense of large in size or in degree, but it can also bespeak notions of time, with the sense of long (time) or long-lasting. So, tekne is so much more feeble or insignificant than Heavenly Necessity, which is of course consistent with just about every religious attitude known to man, Greek and other, toward the heavenly places.

Heidegger’s refashioned and thereby inverted text, which he disingenuously continues to attribute to Aeschylus, is that Knowing is by far less-artful than Necessity, (Wissen aber ist weit unkräftiger denn Notwendigkeit), by which Heidegger means that “all knowing about things has always already been surrendered to the predominance of destiny and fails before [i.e., cannot resist] it (Das will sagen: jedes Wissen um die Dinge bleibt zuvor ausgeliefert der Übermacht des Schicksals und versagt vor ihr).”  The mytho-historical irony in the Aeschylean text is that the Greek Prometheus will in fact outwit Zeus in the game of fire’s transmission, and the fire or knowledge of men will endure. The lack of irony in the Heidegger text, is that behind all the tricked-out word-play, Heidegger’s intent is to say that the Germans, by following in the Western [abendländische] ‘path’ inherited from their Greek forefathers, are thereby fated to enter into the full destiny or mythological necessity of their German Da-sein. Aeschylus invites us to consider the role of Men in the outworking of heavenly conflicts, which is without doubt a mythology of tragic transcendence, while Heidegger speaks of the earthly destiny of the German descendants of this, the West’s “first Philosopher.”

So, when all the dust has settled from the word-jousting and hither and yon-ing in this multi-layered, poetic conversation, we discover that Heidegger is in fact constructing an anthropological mythology for the German people. We have the German people’s past History in the form of the misotheistic promise of Prometheus’ revolt against the Heavens (Aeschylus) on the one hand; and we have that people’s irresistible entrance into its present and future inheritance as the offspring of that first, inclusively Western philosophical descendence (Heidegger) on the other. This is, after all, the import of Heidegger’s reversal of the Aeschylean meaning – that the German people will and must surrender to their destiny [bleibt zuvor ausgeliefert der Übermacht des Schicksals], and will not be able to fail in the face of that destiny [versagt vor.... der Übermacht des Schicksals].

The Promising Entwurf in this section actually resides only in identifying Prometheus as the “first philosopher.” Says Heidegger: Bei den Griechen ging ein alter Bericht um, Prometheus sei der erste Philosoph gewesen. Now it may not really have been much of a generalized “Greek” idea, but in the Protagoras Plato’s Socrates certainly speaks appraisingly of Prometheus’ wisdom and foresight in the ‘bedecking’ of humankind. Similarly, in the Philebus (16d) Socrates attributes the founding of dialectics to Prometheus, who stole it from the Gods and gave it to Men. But Plato is obviously also flexible about this tradition, because dialectics in The Republic is reduced to a very human method of discovery about Being and levels of reality, and hence the Platonic tool par excellence for philosophy.

Otherwise, the Greek tradition for Prometheus as “the first philosopher” is minimal in the extreme, which allows us reasonably to conclude that Heidegger is being, yet again, overly zealous in attributing this old Bericht about ‘Prometheus the philosopher’ to the Greeks. So, in yet another reversal of meaning, it would seem that this Bericht actually has in it more of the German romantic (and more precisely Sturm und Drang) poet, Goethe, than of Greek philosophy.

Goethe’s (1749-1832) poem, Prometheus, was composed between 1772-1774, and published in 1789, and actually reflects more precisely than does Aeschylus, the mythological anthropology that Heidegger is trying to establish in this section of his Rektorat Rede.

[...] Wer half mir Wider der Titanen Übermut? Wer rettete vom Tode mich, Von Sklaverei? Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet, Heilig glühend Herz? Und glühtest jung und gut, Betrogen, Rettungsdank Dem Schlafenden da droben? Ich dich ehren? Wofür? Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert Je des Beladenen? Hast du die Tränen gestillet Je des Geängsteten? Hat nicht mich zum Manne geschmiedet Die allmächtige Zeit Und das ewige Schicksal, Meine Herrn und deine? [...] Hier sitz' ich, forme Menschen Nach meinem Bilde, Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei, Zu leiden, zu weinen, Zu genießen und zu freuen sich, Und dein nicht zu achten, Wie ich!

[...] Who helped me Against the Titans' insolence? Who rescued me from certain death, From slavery? Didst thou not do all this thyself, My sacred glowing heart? And glowedst, young and good, Deceived with grateful thanks To yonder slumbering one? I honour thee, and why? Hast thou e'er lightened the sorrows Of the heavy laden? Hast thou e'er dried up the tears Of the anguish-stricken? Was I not fashioned to be a man By omnipotent Time, And by eternal Fate, Masters of me and thee? [...] Here sit I, forming mortals After my image; A race resembling me, To suffer, to weep, To enjoy, to be glad, And thee to scorn, As I!

»Alles Größe steht im Sturm…« A second Greek reference of interest from Heidegger’s Rektorat Rede is found in the following passage from the closing paragraphs.  Unfortunately, far from containing any Promising Entwurf, in this section we shall soon find ourselves tripped up, yet again, in another full-scale reversal, quintessentially poetic in nature.

Ob solches geschieht oder nicht geschieht, das hangt allein daran, ob wir als geschichtlich-geistiges Volk uns selbst noch und wieder wollen - oder ob wir uns nicht mehr wollen. Jeder einzelne entscheidet darüber mit, auch dann und gerade dann, wenn er vor dieser Entscheidung ausweicht.

Aber wir wollen, daß unser Volk seinen geschichtlichen Auftrag erfüllt.

Wir wollen uns selbst. Denn die junge und jüngste Kraft des Volkes, die über uns schon hinweggreift, hat darüber bereits entschieden.

Die Herrlichkeit aber und die Größe dieses Aufbruchs verstehen wir dann erst ganz, wenn wir in uns jene tiefe und weite Besonnenheit tragen, aus der die alte griechische Weisheit das Wort gesprochen:

ta … megala panta episfalè

»Alles Größe steht im Sturm…«

(Platon, Politeia 497 d, 9)

Whether this will or will not happen depends solely on whether we, as a historical-spiritual people, still and once again will ourselves – or whether we no longer will ourselves. Each individual participates in this decision even when, and especially when, he evades it.

But we do will that our people fulfil its historical mission.

We do will ourselves. For the young and the youngest strength of the people, which is already reaching beyond us, has already decided the matter.

But we will only fully understand the magnificence and greatness of this new departure [NdE: Aufbruchs=emergence] when we carry within us that profound and far-reaching thoughtfulness that gave ancient Greek wisdom the saying:

τά... μєγλα πάυτα έπιφαλη...

[All that is great stands in the storm ...]

(Plato, Republic, 497 d. 9).

The English translation of this passage of Heidegger’s discourse renders the German as, All that is great stands in the storm ... By adding the demonstrative pronoun ‘that’, which is a legitimate language strategy albeit heavy handed, the English thereby sacrifices the linguistic brevity of Heidegger’s German: Alles Größe steht im Sturm…. The sense of Heidegger’s German is clearly that, ‘All greatness stands in the storm’, where he seems to want to shift the weight away from individual greatness, which is underscored by the English and the Greek — (not everything, but) only those things that are great stand in the storm…, and seems to want to render great- or grandness to Alles as a qualitative idea—greatness is achieved by virtue of an emergence from our individual cocoons, by taking that first step [Aufbruchs] into the storm of historical destiny, united as one Volk. Greatness emerges then, when German individuals stand together as one Volk in the storm, daß unser Volk seinen geschichtlichen Auftrag erfüllt.

So much for the German and the English versions of Resp. 497d9 in Heidegger’s Rektorat discourse. Of course, the fly in the ointment in this reference from Plato is that neither version of Heidegger’s Alles Große steht im Sturm, English or German, has anything much to do with Plato’s Greek text or context, but represents instead another Heidegger inversion of meaning.

The immediate context of Resp. 6.497d reads in English (cf. Tufts, Perseus) as follows:

 [497d] having the same conception of its constitution that you the lawgiver had in framing its laws.” “That was said,” he replied. “But it was not sufficiently explained,” I said, “from fear of those objections on your part which have shown that the demonstration of it is long and difficult. And apart from that the remainder of the exposition is by no means easy.” “Just what do you mean?” “The manner in which a state that occupies itself with philosophy can escape destruction. For all great things are precarious and, as the proverb truly says, fine things are hard.” “All the same,” [497e] he said, “our exposition must be completed by making this plain.” “It will be no lack of will,” I said, “but if anything, a lack of ability, that would prevent that. But you shall observe for yourself my zeal. And note again how zealously and recklessly I am prepared to say that the state ought to take up this pursuit in just the reverse of our present fashion.”

For the reference that interests us, Plato’s Greek reads as follows:

  Ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἱκανῶς, εἶπον, ἐδηλώθη, φόβῳ ὧν ὑμεῖς ἀντι-
λαμβανόμενοι δεδηλώκατε μακρὰν καὶ χαλεπὴν αὐτοῦ τὴν  (5)
ἀπόδειξιν· ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὐ πάντων ῥᾷστον διελθεῖν.
  Τὸ ποῖον;

 Τίνα τρόπον μεταχειριζομένη πόλις φιλοσοφίαν οὐ
διολεῖται. τὰ γὰρ δὴ μεγάλα πάντα ἐπισφαλῆ, καὶ τὸ
λεγόμενον τὰ καλὰ τῷ ὄντι χαλεπά.    (10)

A first observation about Heidegger’s use of this proverb is that he identifies the wrong bit of Plato’s text as the adage. According to Heidegger, the proverbial item in Plato’s reference is, “All that is great stands in the storm”; but according to Resp. 497d 9-10, the proverb is actually “fine things are hard” [τὸ λεγόμενον τὰ καλὰ τῷ ὄντι χαλεπά.]. On the Perseus site for this passage there is even a note on whether to read “τῷ ὄντι with χαλεπά as part of the proverb. Cf. 435 C, Crat. 384 A-B with schol.” For the general cultural reference: this saying is in fact attributed to Solon the Wise (638-558 BC), Athenian lawmaker and poet, and the common rendering (B. Jowett) of Solon’s proverb is, ‘The hard is the good’.

A better proverbially-styled rendering for this fine saying would be: ‘High [things] are in fact difficult to do’. And it may perhaps be useful to point out that this proverb was dusted off and ushered out at this point in the Socratic narrative in order for Socrates to underscore the difficulty introduced in line 5, that ‘it is in fact difficult to demonstrate’ (hence the proverb) how indeed “a state that occupies itself with philosophy can escape destruction.

Now, leaving behind for the nonce the actual Greek proverb that one finds in this passage of Plato’s Republic, let us turn to a consideration of Heidegger’s neologistical adage: Alles Große steht im Sturm. In context we read: “But we will only fully understand the magnificence and greatness of this new emergence (departure) [from our individual cocoons by taking that first step [Aufbruchs] into the storm of historical destiny, united as one Volk], when we carry within us that profound and far-reaching thoughtfulness that gave ancient Greek wisdom the saying: τά... μєγλα πάυτα έπιφαλη... (Alles Große steht im Sturm; All that is great stands in the storm).”

The strong grammatical piece of this Greek phrase from line 9 is of course the substantive with the article, which is τὰ … μεγάλα. The immediate contextual parallel is striking, and must not be hermeneutically diminished, between ta kala (τὰ καλὰ) of Solon’s proverb, which has the sense of good things, noble things, beautiful things, and ta megala (τὰ … μεγάλα), which has the sense of high things, great things, important things. The relationship between ta megala and panta (πάντα) is appositional and therefore formulaic, which translates as: ‘great things, (=) all that…’ Which then pitches us headlong into the sticky wicket caused by the adjective, episphale (ἐπισφαλῆ). So, structurally at this point we have: ta megala = panta episphale.

Heidegger renders episphale with the German stehen (to stand). Unfortunately, there is no level of meaning, connoted or denoted, where this import can be derived from the Greek. Grammatically superglued to both ta megala and panta (neut, acc, pl.), episphale is an adjective that derives from the verb sphallomai (σφάλλομαι), which means, inter alia, prone to fall, unstable, precarious; making to fall, misleading (σφάλλω); dangerous, to be in danger; dubious. The LSJ reads specifically this passage from Resp. 497d as ‘prone to fall, unstable, precarious’.  So, Heidegger’s choice to reverse the sense of episphale (prone to fall) by rendering its meaning with the German stehen (to stand, as in, not prone to fall) is not a legitimate translation option here, especially with the sense seemingly inferred by Heidegger, which is to resist or even to defy (as in the sense of wider-stehen) the substantive “storm.” There is no proverbial storm in this text, just the allegorical nationalist storm in Heidegger’s metaphor.

Our Greek text, then, τὰ γὰρ δὴ μεγάλα πάντα ἐπισφαλῆ, yields in Socratic meaning: “For, indeed, great [events/undertakings] are each and every one risky.” Which brings us to yet another inversion of meaning between a Greek saying and Heidegger’s rendering of that saying. Because the Greek meaning, which leans heavily on the idea that there is an instability inherent to every great enterprise, is light years removed from the absolute stability in the face of opposition inferred in Heidegger’s neologising and metaphorical rendering.

Text II: Fragment 119… Der Aufenthalt ist dem Menschen das Anwesen Gottes

In Heidegger’s correspondence with the art historian, Kurt Bauch, which lasted from 1932 until Bauch’s death in 1975, Heidegger drops this little poetic beauty in letter #74, without further context or explanation, a phrase that has all the ear-marks of another Promising Entwurf: “Der Aufenthalt ist dem Menschen /das Anwesen des Gottes.” This is, according to Heidegger, a rendering of Heraclitus, Fragment 119: ethos anthropoi daimon (ἦθος ἀνθρώπωι δαίμων). In the vernacular, Heidegger’s German rendering yields something like: “The dwelling, for a Man, / is the domain of the God.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Now, all petty hyperbole aside, there is yet some little bit of self-explanatory context given at the top of Heidegger’s strange letter; because the entire, albeit very brief letter from Christmas 1946, is a series of quotations around a central theme—the establishment of a Heidegger/Heraclitus equivalency. Heidegger, channeling Heraclitus, is become the fusionally obscure gestour, and so writes as if this letter were from ÔHra¿kleitoß oJ Skoteino\ß (Heraclitus, who is called the riddler), to his Friend, on the occasion of Christmas 1946, and it is then signed, Martin. This letter consists of three Greek fragments concerning Heraclitus; the first is about Heraclitus, and the second and third are fragments attributed to Heraclitus. The first text is an anecdote about Heraclitus drawn from Aristotle, de part. An. A5, 645a17sqq. The second is Frag. 119, which is the subject of our present reflection and whose Heideggerian rendering was given above. And the third and final fragment in Heidegger’s letter is Heraclitus, Frag. 93. All the fragments are then rendered by Heidegger into German (106).

Der Aufenthalt ist dem Menschen /das Anwesen des Gottes (The dwelling, for a Man, / is the domain of the God). There is much poetic and thus philosophical promise in Heidegger’s rendering of this fragment from Heraclitus. But it needs to be said right at the outset—that Heidegger’s rendering, for it is in no wise a translation of Fragment 119, has nothing whatsoever to do with Heraclitus and his philo-poetic obscurities. Rather, it has everything to do with Martin Heidegger’s obscurantist vision for intuitionist poetry qua philosophy. That said, the task at hand is to think toward the kinds of Promise for thinking that might indwell this Entwurf.

At first blush, the idea of ‘dwelling’ is certainly as philosophically interesting as it is poetical. This is an old concept in English, and already very much at home in the various expressions housed in the notion of ‘abiding’, which seems fully to render the levels of meaning inherent to ‘dwelling’. Obviously, English derives from this the word ‘abode’, which is the habitation where one lives or indwells. There is also the expression ‘not to be able to abide [X]’, in the sense of finding [X] to be grievously offensive to one’s innermost person. Perhaps in its highest poetical sense, in one of King David’s psalms (91) the Scriptures give us an image of the greatness of the Deity and of the capacious abode afforded by its outspread wings: those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High will “abide in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Psalm 91.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
² I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust!”
³ For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper
And from the deadly pestilence.
⁴ He will cover you with His pinions,
And under His wings you may seek refuge;
His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.

Heidegger’s interest in this Promising notion of ‘dwelling’, of course, is predictably focussed on the matter of words, and language, and linguisticity. In an essay called “Aus einem Gesprich von der Sprache,” Heidegger even calls language “the house of Being.” Now, there is good reason to think that Heidegger’s reflection on the notion of ‘dwelling’ in language was inspired by the German romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetic insight, found in his 1826 lyric poem In lieblicher Bläue, which may be summed up by the now famous lines: Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch, wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde.

In lieblicher Bläue

Die Himmlischen aber, die immer gut sind,

alles zumal, wie Reiche, haben diese, Tugend und Freude.

Der Mensch darf das nachahmen.

Darf, wenn lauter Mühe das Leben, ein Mensch

aufschauen und sagen: so will ich auch seyn?

Ja. So lange die Freundlichkeit noch am Herzen, die Reine,

dauert, misset nicht unglücklich der Mensch sich

der Gottheit.

Ist unbekannt Gott? Ist er offenbar wie die Himmel?

dieses glaub' ich eher. Des Menschen Maaß ist's.

Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch,

wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde. Doch reiner

ist nicht der Schatten der Nacht mit den Sternen,

wenn ich so sagen könnte,

als der Mensch, der heißet ein Bild der Gottheit.

The following English rendering of the poem, with the title In lovely blue, is available at Panathinaeos.

But the heavenly ones, always

good, possess, even more than the wealthy, virtue and

joy. Humans may follow suit. Might a person, when

life is full of trouble, look up and say: I, too,

want to be like this? Yes. As long as friendliness and purity

dwell in our hearts, we may measure ourselves not unfavorably

with the divine. Is God unknown? Is he manifest

as the sky?(a) This I tend to believe. It is the measure

of the human. Deserving, yet poetically, we dwell

on this earth (b). The shadow of night with its stars,

if I may say so, is no purer than we

who exist in the image of the divine (c).

Now, however, we must cease dwelling on Heidegger’s Promising Entwurf, and turn our attentions more properly to Heraclitus’ actual text. One surmises from the correspondence between Heidegger and Bauch, that Professor Bauch was at least conversant to some degree with ancient Greek. If this was not the case, then one can well imagine Bauch’s surprise at receiving from his friend Heidegger/Heraclitus a letter composed entirely of Greek quotations, in Greek, about Heraclitus. If it was indeed the case, however, that Professor Bauch had a working knowledge of ancient Greek, then we can also well imagine his astonishment at reading Der Aufenthalt ist dem Menschen /das Anwesen des Gottes, as Heidegger’s translation of Fragment 119 from Heraclitus’ poem On Nature: ethos anthropoi daimon (ἦθος ἀνθρώπωι δαίμων).  

So, just for the sake of clarity and posterity’s potential interest: Heidegger’s The dwelling, for a Man, / is the domain of the God does not render, even remotely, Heraclitus’ ethos anthropoi daimon. But, then, that is precisely quod est demonstrandum (Q.E.D.) at this point in our thinking.

An idea is attributed to Heraclitus in Fragment 119, which reads: Heraclitus said: ἦθος ἀνθρώπωι δαίμων. This phrase is sublime in poetic economy, consisting of only three words, and it quite literally says that ‘a man’s habit is his lord’.

Grammatically thrifty as only Greek can be—and in this respect Heidegger’s appreciation for the Greek language as a pristine poetico-philosophical vehicle for insights and intuitions is entirely justified—Heraclitus’ affirmation proves to be versatile in the extreme in its potential for meaning. Ethos (ἦθος) is a nominative, neuter, singular noun that casts a wide net for possible meanings: routine, custom, usage, habit, disposition, character, outward bearing. It is interesting to note, to Heidegger’s discharge (but only slightly), that when found in the plural (which this is not), this noun refers to the haunts or abodes of animals and men. Daimon (δαίμων) is a nominative m/f, singular noun having a variety of meanings, ranging of course from the literal to the metaphorical—god/deity; fate, destiny (“the power controlling the destiny of individuals), fortune (numen); possibly as adjective = skilled in a thing. Finally, sandwiched politely in-between the two nouns of this phrase, is anthropoi (ἀνθρώπωι), a dative (indirect object or showing possession), masculine, singular noun, meaning to or for a man. And there, in its own little nutshell, you have Heraclitus’ insight.

In this ancient poetic puzzle, the Greek language provides the world of possible word-meanings the audience has to play with, and Heraclitus, by the manner in which he positions those word-meanings in his phrase, gives us the elements of structure and function. The appositional or compliment structure of Heraclitus’ phrase gives us the following emphatic formula—emphatic because the nominative nouns occur at the beginning and at the end of the phrase and are therefore the most significant elements of the phrase—which is to say, ethos = daimon.

Heidegger’s rendered phrase: Der Aufenthalt ist dem Menschen /das Anwesen des Gottes is entirely his own poetic confection and does not yield us any thought from Heraclitus; so this rendering is, in its own right, a Promising Entwurf for philosophical reflection. This is, however, an extremely poor ‘translation’ of Heraclitus; because in order to arrive at Aufenthalt as a translation value for ethos (ἦθος), Heidegger had to make a series of mistakes: to misread ethos (mistaking the singular noun for a plural, with the meaning change this entails), and then to correct that first mistake, he had to create ex nihilo, das Anwesen (the domain), which he draws from really thin air, in addition to adding a genitive construct in exchange for Heraclitus’ nominative daimon (des Gottes; of the God). This admission of a Greek massacre on Heidegger’s part, however, seems a bit much, even for Phrontisterion, which is critical of Heidegger and Heideggerian thought in the extreme. To conclude, then: Heidegger’s poetically free construction is simply not one of the possible meaningful renderings of Heraclitus’ insight in Fragment 119.

So, leaving aside Heidegger’s amicable woolgathering on this fragment, among possible Heraclitean translations for ethos anthropoi daimon (ἦθος ἀνθρώπωι δαίμων), are the following: 

•       The actions of a man flow from what he values.

•       A man’s action flows from his character.

•       Habit to a man is God.

•       Character to a man is his deity.

•       What we do habitually is who we are or who we become.

•       Our routines create our character.

With this single, pithy statement Heraclitus provides us with a foundation for both a metaphysic (what is true about the world, and therefore about human nature) and an ethic (how we should act in the world given what is true about human nature in the world). And from this amazingly spare source shall flow the headwaters of both poetry and philosophy for almost three millennia, until they pass through enough history to arrive at Martin Heidegger’s doorstep. At which time that source, flowing at once from the mind of the riddler Heraclitus and the gestour Heidegger/Heraclitus, shall provide nourishment once again to our contemporary thought-world.

Further readings about Heidegger’s Rektorat Rede:

·      http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEHeideggerSelf-Assertion.pdf [English]

·      http://www.zeit.de/1983/19/heidegger-die-nazis-und-kein-ende

·      http://www.zeit.de/2011/44/L-S-Denker

·      http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/heideggerfascism.html

·      Fédier, François, “L'Intention de nuire” [« Le Débat ». 1988/1 n° 48 | pages 136 à 141. ISSN 0246-2346. ISBN 9782070713035.

·      Grün, Bernd, “Martin Heidegger als Gleichschaltungsrektor. Eine vergleichende Studie anhand der Rektoratsreden des Jahres 1933,” in Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus, Heidegger-Jahrbuch 5 (München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2009).

·      Faye, Emmanuel, Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005).

Further reading about Heidegger’s thinking concerning ‘dwelling’:

·      Heidegger, Martin, Poetry, Language, Thought (US: Harper Perennial, 2013)

·      -----, “Letter on Humanism,” 1946.

·      -----, “Aus einem Gesprich von der Sprache: Zwischen einem Japaner und einem Fragenden," GA 12:79-146, 1985.

·      -----, “Bauen Wohnen Denken.” In: Bauen Wohnen Denken: Vorträge und Aufsätze. Stuttgart: Neske, 1994.

Further readings:

·      Martin Heidegger-Kurt Bauch Briefwechsel 1932-1975, Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2010.

·      Phrontisterion: “Heraclitus–a (short) reflection”