Re: Heidegger's use of the word "polis"

>
> On Mon, 30 Oct 1995, Laurence Paul Hemming wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 12:34:42 -0000
> > From: Laurence Paul Hemming <laurence@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: "'heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'"
> <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Subject: Heidegger's use of the word "polis"
> >
> > Dear Mr. Rickey
> >
> > On 26th October you wrote:
> >
> > He also says in his lectures in the 30's and 40's that he is
> > writing "politics" in the essential sense when he is doing philosophy;
> > the polis is the pole around which all things revolve, which means that
> > the polis is the same as Being.
> >
> > I am most interested in what you have written. I wonder, could you give some references please?
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > Laurence Hemming.
> >
>
> Sure. In GA 53, Heidegger writes, "The polis is polos, that is, the
> pole, the whirlpool, in which and around which everything turns." On the
> same page he adds, "Thus polis means so much as 'state.'" So far, no
> surprises. Then he says, "it is neither merely state, nor city, but
> rather first and foremost 'the site': the site of the human historical
> abode of man in the middle of beings." This site is for the most part
> the same as the site Heidegger later calls the site of the gathering of
> the fourfold, and earlier, a work of art. Out of this site arises the
> manner and way of all beings, or what Heidegger had called the worlding
> of worlds and later the thinging of things, out of which all relations of
> man to beings is determined. In short, the polis is the site of the
> being of beings as a whole.
>
> I need to make one interpretive move clear. Although we need to make
> clear a distinction between being and beings, being is not a thing other
> than beings; it is the event of beings as what they are. Heidegger would
> substitute clearing for being, clearing as the site and topos of being.
> The site of being is the clearing of being which manifests itself as the
> being of beings. Thus I would say that the polis is being.
>
> Chris
>
As usual, Chris raised a set of important and difficult questions,
which--since they haven't been endlessly rehashed here already,
deserve to be further elaborated, if possible. Toward that end let
me say the following.

Given the political questions with which this intersects, the dates
here become very important. GA 53, from which Chris's quote is
drawn, is Heidegger's lecture course on f Hoelderlin's Hymn, Der Ister,
the Greek name for the Danube) from the Summer Semester of 1942. As
Chris points out, in this lecture Heidegger employs a subtle
etymological twist, refusing to identify the _polis_ either with the
state (_Staat_) or with the city-state (_Stadt_), preferring instead
to translate Polis as "place" or spatio-temporal "site" (_die
Statt_), namely as the "site of the historical dwelling of man in
the midst of being." Polis is thus the arena of the contest of
being, the implicit but constant _agon_ whereby intelligibility is
contested, constituted, and maintained. On 100-101 of GA 53,
Heidegger writes, "perhaps polis is the place and space around which
everything that is questionable and undomesticated revolves in a
preeminent sense. Polis then is _polos_, that is, the pole or
vortex in which and around which everything turns." It is thus
misleading to equate the polis with the state too quickly.

To emphasize this point, and to understand the philosophical grounds
for Heidegger's hesitanncy here (the political grounds could also be
discussed, and should be...), it is useful to examine the lecture
from the following semester (Winter, 1942/43), GA54 now translated
as _Parmenides_, where Heidegger returns to these issues. Here,
perhaps displaying a vigilance against equating political life with
the state, he writes "The polis is just as little something
political as space itself is something spatial" (96). Rather, "The
polis is the polos, the pole, the place around which everything
appearing to the Greeks as a being turns... The polis is the essence
of the place (ort) or settlement (Ortschaft) of the historical
dwelling of Greek humanity. Because the polis lets the totality of
beings come in this way or that into the unconcealedness of its
condition, the polis is therefore essentially related to the Being
of beings." In other words, while Heidegger maintains the
importance of the ontopolitological, the fact that society shapes
the way things show up (reflecting and driecting), the Greek polis
is "essentially related" to metaphysics (!), in its attempt to
ground and secure a political community in, on, or around the Being
of beings. In contrast, Heidegger maintains that our
ontopolitological condition is primordially one of homelessness. In
this way he connects the _apolis_ to what he takes to be the essence
of tragedy, the we "far exceed abodes, and are homeless." This
ontological overflowing, defying conceptual (and political, Prop 187
in CA) xenophobia, means we can't exclude the Dionysian in favor of
the Apollonian, can't simply *root* a historical home (here the
political disgruntelment shows through, I believe). Obviously, the
differences between semesters will be subtle (in fact, the critique
I've located in the _Par_ shows up in Andenken, the semester before
Der Ister), but the difference between this treatment of the
political and that from 1935's IM is immense (and it is from this
difference that I would draw, or begin to draw, the lessons
Heidegger learned from his previous political affiliations and
beliefs).

Iain Thomson


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