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The Ambiguity of Being

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Heidegger in the Twenty-First Century

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 80))

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, philosophy still needs to raise the question of the meaning of being. We therefore, follow Heidegger’s return to Parmenides—for being is neither a being nor a concept; rather, it is an essentially ambiguous universal. Being’s ambiguity allows us to understand both why it withdraws from thought and why there is something rather than nothing. The problem for philosophy then becomes: How can we think the original ambiguity of being without disambiguating it? Heidegger’s answer—ironically or not—is by not thinking it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Friedrich Nietzsche signed the above as ‘The Crucified’ in a letter to G. Brandes, dated 4 January 1889. It is quoted by Heidegger in GA 8, p. 56.

  2. 2.

    Heidegger cites Nietzsche: ‘Something un-fixed with respect to power, something un-dulant, is totally unthinkable for us [Etwas Un-festes von Kraft, etwas Un-dulatorisches ist uns ganz undenkbar]’ (GA 6.2, p. 286). Metaphysics is nihilism insofar as it throws up its hands and remains caught in resignation and passivity, immobility and indifference when faced with the unthinkable. See also (GA 6.2, pp. 384, 397).

  3. 3.

    Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. James H. Nichols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 188.

  4. 4.

    As Kojève comments: ‘Parmenides’ assertion: “Being and Thought are the same thing,” can at best be applied only to true thought, but certainly not to false thought. The false is certainly something other than Being. And yet, one cannot say that the false “is nothing,” that “there is no” error. Error “exists” in its way: ideally, so to speak.’ ibid., 187. For Heidegger’s interpretive translation of Parmenides’ Fr. 3 (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι), see GA 11; for Fr. 8, 34–41, see Heidegger’s essay, ‘Moira,’ in GA 7. For the consideration of ἀλήθεια as Entbergung in Parmenides, see Parmenides in which Heidegger also considers the essential ambiguity of the Greek tragic word (GA 54, pp. 104–23). For a reflection on Parmenides’ ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι [Es ist nämlich Sein], see Heidegger’s first published document after 1945, ‘Brief über den “Humanismus”’ in GA 9.

  5. 5.

    Bernd Magnus quotes Löwith who notes with respect to Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik: ‘Many decades after its publication, after all of its deficiencies had been discussed to death, Heidegger told a friend of mine: “It may not be good Kant, but it is awfully good Heidegger.” I feel the same thing can be said of Heidegger’s Nietzsche studies: They may not be good Nietzsche, but they are first-rate Heidegger.’ See Karl Löwith, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1977), xvii.

  6. 6.

    See G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957); G. L. E. Owen, ‘Eleatic Questions,’ Classical Quarterly 10, no. 1–2 (1960): 84–120.

  7. 7.

    See Jonathan Barnes, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (New York: Routledge, 1982), 611n.5.; Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).; Nestor-Luis Cordero, Les deux chémins de Parménide dans les fragments 6 et 7 (Paris: Editions Critique, 1984).

  8. 8.

    This is in accordance with Karsten’s 1835 correction in the light of Simplicius’ interpretation of Aristotle’s Physics. See Pierre Aubenque, ‘Syntaxe et sémantique de l’être dans le Poème de Parménide,’ in Etudes sur Parménide II (Paris: Vrin, 1987). See also Jürgen Wiesner, Parmenides: Der Beginn der Aletheia, Untersuchungen zu B-2, B-3, B-6 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 10–1.

  9. 9.

    Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Erster Band, ed. Walther Kranz, 9th ed. (Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1960), 232. Tarán points out that the ‘nur’ is clearly an embellishment. See Tarán, Parmenides: 55.

  10. 10.

    See John A. Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 110 ff.

  11. 11.

    I will not here deal with the issue of Heidegger’s etymologies. It is clear however, that this strategy is already well-known by Aristotle—which is no wonder, considering that Heidegger advises students to read Aristotle for 15 years before opening Nietzsche (whether he took on this pedagogical strategy himself or not). Aristotle writes: ‘you may devise a line of attack by reinterpreting a term in its literal meaning, with the implication that it is most fitting so to take it rather than in its established meaning: e.g. the expression “strong at heart” will suggest not the courageous man, according to the use now established, but the man the state of whose heart is strong; just as also the expression “of a good hope” may be taken to mean the man who hopes for good things. Likewise also “well-starred” may be taken to mean the man whose star is good, as Xenocrates says “well-starred is he who has a noble soul.” For a man’s star is his soul.’ See Aristotle, Topica, trans. E. S. Forster, Posterior Analytics, Topica (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960b), Bk. 2, Ch. 6. So, τοὔνομα ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον, ibid., 112a32, is a way of reinterpreting a word by going back to its etymological or literal meaning, translating it back into its own language; and for this reason, all of Heidegger’s (oft contested) etymologies are perfectly legitimate qua ways of thinking that, under the pretense of returning words to their original or literal sense, seek to illuminate something about the way in which they are spoken.

  12. 12.

    ‘Übersteigt das Denken jeweils das Seiende, transzendiert es in der Richtung auf dessen Sein, nicht um das Seiende hinter sich zu lassen und es preiszugeben, sondern um das Seiende durch diesen Überstieg, die Transzendenz, in dem vorzustellen, was es als das Seiende ist’ (GA 8, p. 226).

  13. 13.

    Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1869–1874, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 29 [222]. The specific fragment can be found on pages 718–19.

  14. 14.

    oὐχ oἷόν τε δὲ τῶν ὄντων ἓν εἶναι γένος οὔτε τὸ ἓν οὔτε τὸ ὄν: ἀνάγκη μὲν γὰρ τὰς διαφορὰς ἑκάστου γένους καὶ εἶναι καὶ μίαν εἶναι ἑκάστην, ἀδύνατον δὲ κατηγορεῖσθαι ἢ τὰ εἴδη τοῦ γένους ἐπὶ τῶν οἰκείων διαφορῶν ἢ τὸ γένος ἄνευ τῶν αὐτοῦ εἰδῶν, ὥστ’ εἴπερ τὸ ἓν γένος ἢ τὸ ὄν, οὐδεμία διαφορὰ οὔτε ὄν οὔτε ἓν ἔσται. See Aristotle, Metaphysics: Books 1–9, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 998b22-27. Cf. also, ibid., 991a. and Aristotle, Posterior Analytics: 92b13, 1960a.

  15. 15.

    ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ τῶν νυκτερίδων ὄμματα πρὸς τὸ φέγος ἔχει τὸ μεθ’ ἡμέραν, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ὁ νοῦς πρὸς τὰ τῆ φύσει φανερώτατα πάντων. See Aristotle, Metaphysics: Books 1–9: 993b9-11.

  16. 16.

    Plato, The Republic: Books 6–10, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 509b9.

  17. 17.

    See Franz Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, trans. Rolf George (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975).

  18. 18.

    GA 33, p. 46. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 1096b27-28. For an argument against the traditional interpretation that Aristotle thinks being as analogical, see Pierre Aubenque, ‘Les origines de la doctrine de l’analogie de l’être: Sur l’histoire d’un contresens,’ Les Etudes philosophiques 1 (Janvier-Mars 1978): 3–12. Cajetan is quoted in this article.

  19. 19.

    ‘Es gilt…Aristoteles zu überholen; nicht in der Richtung nach vorwarts, im Sinne eines Fortschritts, sondern rückwarts in Richtung einer ursprünglicheren Enthüllung des von ihm Gefaßten. Damit ist weiter gesagt: Es handelt sich nicht um eine Verbesserung der Definition, um ein freischwebendes Grübeln über einzelne leblose Begriffe, sondern dieses Nachrückwärts-überholen ist zugleich in sich die Anstrengung, durch die wir uns wieder vor die Wirklichkeit bringen, die in den für die Überlieferung abgestorbenen Begriffen im geheimen waltet. Ob uns hier diese ungeheure Aufgabe gelingt oder nicht, is eine spätere Sorge’ (GA 33, p. 82).

  20. 20.

    Already in 1922, in Phänomenologische Interpretation zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (GA 61), Heidegger thinks Aristotelian being and φύσις as twofold and ἀρχή as Auslegung/Verfügung, that out of which something emerges/that which governs and preserves something’s ordering. The oneness of being is, therefore, understood as the unity through which the many are originally gathered by virtue of which they essentially belong-together, a πόλεμος of λόγος. See Walter Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 14, 34, 37. For an interpretation of the original Greek insight that being and non-being (nothing) simultaneously (ἅμα) are—but are not the same, see Jacques Derrida, ‘Ousia et grammè: note sur une note de Sein und Zeit,’ in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972), 31–78. For Levinas’ argument that truth is paradoxical, amphibological, essentially ambiguous, see Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 65, 75, 79.; Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005), 25; Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1974), 149n.

  21. 21.

    ‘Einheit kann immer nur der Widerschein des Unterschiedes bleiben und niemals in den Ursprung führen, von dem aus diese Unterscheidung als nicht mehr ursprüngliche ersehen werden kann’ (GA 65, § 132).

  22. 22.

    Although I do not have the space to take up the relationship between Hegel and Heidegger, it is clear that Hegel is assumed here to belong to the history of philosophy of metaphysics since Hegel is taken to have resolved the aporia of being: being and nothing are the same, namely, moments of the movement of the concept of becoming and every concept is said to follow the logic of supersession, sublation, Aufhebung, through which contradiction is overcome. For Hegel, however, aufheben is ambiguous: ‘to give, like to supersede, two-meanings: (a) to give up—to view it as lost, destroyed; (b) [to give]—but even therewith simultaneously, to make it into a problem, whose content is not destroy; but which is saved and whose distortion is a difficulty to be solved [Aufgeben, wie Aufheben, doppelsinnig: (a) Aufgeben—es als verloren, vernichtet betrachten; (b) [Aufgeben]—eben damit aber zugleich es zum Problem machen, dessen Gehalt nicht vernichtet ist, sondern der gerettet und dessen Verkümmerung, Schwierigkeit zu lösen ist],’ See G. W. F. Hegel, Berliner Schriften 1818–1831 (Werke 11) (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986a), Aphorism 52, 574. In order to fulfill his own Abgrenzungsbedurfnis, his need to differentiate himself over and against another, Heidegger interprets Hegel as one-sided philosophy of (absolute) consciousness and (absolute) subjectivity, as the logical conclusion of Cartesianism, and as incapable of maintaining aporia. But, for Hegel, ‘all things are contradictory in themselves, and in fact, in the sense that this sentence, as opposed to all others, much more expresses the truth and essence of things [alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend, und zwar in dem Sinne, daß dieser Satz gegen die übrigen vielmehr die Wahrheit und das Wesen der Dinge ausdrücke].’ See G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik 2 (Werke 6) (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986b). See particularly, Lehre des Wesens, Kapital Zwei, C. Der Widerspruch, Dritte Anmerkungen. Nevertheless, the debt to Hegel is clear; the last line of Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift points towards a ‘Philosophie des lebendigen Geistes, der tatvollen Liebe der verehrenen Gottinnigkeit’ (GA 1, p. 410; cf. GA 8, p. 141). I have tried to think through some of these issues in Andrew Haas, ‘Being and Implication: On Hegel and the Greeks,’ Cosmos and History 3, no. 3 (2007a): 192–210.

  23. 23.

    See also Günter Figal, Martin Heidegger zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 1992). I have taken up the task of addressing these issues in Andrew Haas, The Irony of Heidegger (London: Continuum Books, 2007b). See particularly Chaps. 2 and 5. In many ways, it seems that Heidegger is thinking that which Keats notes in a letter to his brothers George and Thomas, dated December 21, 27 (?), 1817: ‘I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ See Grant F. Scott, ed. Selected Letters of John Keats (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 60. I have most recently taken up this question in Andrew Haas, “Truth Beauty,” Cordite, Vol. 47, 2014.

  24. 24.

    See GA 40, p. 140.

  25. 25.

    See GA 6.2, p. 369.

  26. 26.

    See GA 8, pp. 236–37. In the Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger also refers to the indeterminacy and Janus-head, Doppelgesicht, of ‘being’ and ‘is’ (GA 6.2, p. 224). With respect to the understanding of truth, see not only Being and Time (in which Dasein is always in the truth and the untruth), but also GA 54, p. 241.

  27. 27.

    ‘Vermag das Denken diese Gabe in seinen Empfang und d.h. in die Acht zu nehmen, urn es im legein, in einem Sagen dem ursprünglichen Sprechen der Sprache anzuvertrauen?’ (GA 8, p. 247).

  28. 28.

    Levinas writes: ‘There is, according to Heidegger, a circuit which leads each moment of our existence to the task of existing; thus in turning the handle of our door we open up the totality of existence.’ See Levinas, Existence and Existents: 36. Levinas’ argument with Heidegger however, is that, although being is the being of beings, it is not always the being of beings; on the contrary, being qua being, being itself, is the other of the being of beings. If being is not a being, then the ontological difference means that being arises from a hypostasis, and being and nothing are phases of a more general es gibt, il y a, there is. See ibid., 5.

  29. 29.

    See GA 8, pp. 240, 246. Withdrawal is the essence of being’s ambiguity, but also of a series of other phenomena (e.g., uncertainty in the Rektoratsrede). Thus, the forgetting of being [Seinsvergessenheit] of Being and Time is never simply a criticism of Western metaphysics, nor of us, and it is neither just good nor bad, neither merely positive nor negative. As Heidegger says in the Parmenides lectures: ‘What is happening here proceeds from the very essence of forgetting, which withdraws itself and hides’ (GA 54, § 2).

  30. 30.

    See GA 65, §§ 132, 185, 256.

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  1. The Higher School of Economics, A National Research University, Moscow, Russian Federation

    Andrew Haas

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  1. Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Tziovanis Georgakis

  2. School of Business, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Paul J. Ennis

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Haas, A. (2015). The Ambiguity of Being. In: Georgakis, T., Ennis, P. (eds) Heidegger in the Twenty-First Century. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 80. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9679-8_2

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