Heidegger

Michael Eldred wrote:

>> AC: For Aristotle and Plato, though, the gods are in *no* sense there in
>> cleaning the latrine or peeling potatoes, or any such productive
>> activity. Aristotle quite explicitly states that there is only one human
>> activity that has any kinship to the activity of the gods -
>> contemplative wisdom:
>
> ME: I said “_to theion_, not _ho theos_”. I am not talking about any “activity of
> the gods”, but about the presence of the godly, _to theion_, in the everyday, even
> when peeling potatoes. For both Plato and Aristotle, the presence of the _idea_ and
> _eidos_ in beings is divine, by virtue of which the philosopher has a divine gaze.

I do agree that Aristotle says the philosopher’s gaze is divine, but I
can’t find any text in which he says or indirectly implies that simply
the eidos in everyday beings is divine. I can find, on the other hand,
countless texts in which Aristotle explicitly characterizes the
philosopher’s gaze regarding *changeless and eternal* beings
(specifically) as divine. For Plato, on the other hand, there is much
more of an affinity between the divine and the eidos of everyday beings,
precisely because he metaphysically *distinguished* everyday beings from
their ideas. But this was the main point of contention between Aristotle
and Plato.

> ME: What comes from the oracle is not “knowledge”, but “signs” which hint at the
> possibility of self-knowledge.

Plato’s appeals to oracles were hardly limited to general hints about
self-knowledge (i.e., to what the oracle said about his “mission” or his
motto to “Know Thyself”). In the Laws, Plato calls upon Delphi to help
set laws on religious matters (VI, 729c) and establish festivals and
rites (VIII, 828a). He also appeals to the oracle in settling matters of
civil law where some sort of divine choice is required (IX, 856c-e ; XI,
913c-914a). In these texts, oracles clearly play more the role of an
authoritative arbiter that is called upon to settle very specific
matters. This is very different from Heraclitus’ attitude towards oracles.

>> AC: Also, there is a long tradition in medieval Christian philosophy of
>> thinking man as being in the “image and likeness” of God due precisely
>> to our *reason*, with many of those Christian philosophers citing the
>> above passage as well as others in which Aristotle similarly references
>> reason as being the part of us that is most divine. So I don’t think
>> that this Greek philosophical exposition of the divine is
>> incomprehensible from within Christianity. Heraclitus, on the other
>> hand, may be a different matter.
>
> ME. There is a long debate within Christianity (and Islam) about whether the use of
> reason (in theology) supports faith or ruins it. What interested Christianity about
> Aristotle was _ho theos_ as the summum ens and causa sui, not the presence of _to
> theion_ in the everyday.

Agreed that that is what primarily interested Christianity about
Aristotle, but my point was that Aristotle’s thesis that reason is the
most divine part of us was indeed *comprehensible* from within
Christianity, even if that is not the original source of Christian
interest in Aristotle.

Posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
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