Cologne, 6 September 1996
Dear Allen,
Thank you for your various eMails. I am all too pleased to be involved in a
stimulating discussion with you. Since you'll be in Bochum soon, why not drop by
in Cologne as well?
You say:
"Rather than being a "response to a response," I think Parmenides' saying, for
example, can be read as a response itself trasmitted as a formal indication with
which Heidegger then joins by enacting a cor-respondence (Entsprechenden). I
think one can call such a response rhetorical because it lies in the dimension
of this capacity (dynamis) that grounds Aristotle's definition."
This example of Parmenides response and Heidegger's cor-respondence seems to me
to be precisely a "response to a response". Is the response rhetorical, however?
You refer here to dynamis (capacity). Since the formal indication/pointing
points to a transformation (metabole) of historical human being, something to do
with dynamis is going on here, it seems.
In Metaphysics Theta (cf. GA33 and the detailed phenomenological interpretation
- H. at his best), Aristotle treats dynamis as a mode of being in depth. The
short definition is: _arche metaboles en alloi e hei allo_ (1046b2-4). (ASCII is
a thought-less crime against our historical origins!)
Now, rhetoric is an art, a techne and thus a _dynamis meta logou_: the point of
origin for a transformation in something else or insofern it is something else
which is guided by in-sight into an end (telos). Physis as a mode of being is
also an _arche metaboles_ but not _en alloi_ and not _meta logou_. Heidegger:
"Die _physis_ ist _arche_, und zwar Ausgang fuer und Verfuegung ueber Bewegtheit
und Ruhe und zwar eines Bewegten, das diese arche in ihm selbst hat." (Vom Wesen
und Begriff der _Physis_ in WM S.245/316).
English:
"_Physis_ is _arche_, and that means point of origin and disposition over motion
and rest of a moved being that has this _arche_ within itself."
Both _physis_ and _techne_ are _dynamis_.
For thinking as formal indication to be rhetorical it must be guided by a logos,
i.e. an understanding in-sight and fore-sight into the transformation to be
brought forth. The fore-sight sees the end within its limits, i.e. a being as
standing presence and the _dynamis_ guides this fore-seen being into
_entelecheia_. But thinking as formal indication is not like this. It has
stepped back from any fore-sight of an end. The transformation of humans into
the da-sein within them is the questioning - and therefore knowing - opening up
of the dimension that first makes the sight of beings possible. This dimension
is itself multidimensional with many names such as: being-unto-death, history,
existence, moodedness, and can only be opened up by winding oneself out of
self-evidences of the givenness of beings.
Greetings,
Michael
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