.... we need to look briefly at the analysis of aisthesis, perception,
in section 20 of the text. This is required according to Aristotle because
the Megarian thesis—that dunamis is present only as energeia—implies
also that only when one is perceiving is there perception; and
therefore objects of perception require perception in order to be. Aristotle
claims that this implication proves that the Megarians agree with Protagoras
that the human being defines and measures all being, that beings only
are in the aisthesis, the power of the soul, and that therefore the Megarians
must deny the possibility of any knowledge of beings themselves.
Aristotle’s resistance to this conclusion is strongly stated. For him,
“aisthesis is a capability, a dunamis, for aletheuein, for making manifest
and holding open, a capability for knowledge in the broadest sense.”
What is at stake then in the dunamis of aisthesis is the question of whether
human being has the capacity to truly reveal the being in itself, whether a
relationality between the human being and other beings is possible that
does not overpower the other in its being, closing off the being rather than
disclosing it in its otherness, as it is in itself.
Protagoras implies that we can never know beings in themselves, in their
being. Similarly, the Megarian thesis that there is only perception when
something is being perceived implies the denial of the possibility of independent
beings. So Aristotle’s task is to show that the being, the actuality, of
the perceivable is not in perception and vice versa. Heidegger says that this
issue of the mutual relation of the perceiving and the perceivable has been
misunderstood because the nature of twofoldness has been inadequately
grasped. It is not a matter of collapsing one pole into the other. No one has
asked about the Zwischen, the between. Heidegger tries to address the
openness that characterizes the relationship between the aistheton and
aisthesis. He tries to show that the relationship does not destroy but founds
the independent self-reliance of beings.
Drawing oneself back out of the practice of perceiving is not the mere breaking
off and disappearance of this practice, but rather has the character of a giving
over of the perceived to itself as something which is then perceivable.
The being in themselves of beings becomes not only unexplainable without
the existence of humans, it becomes utterly meaningless; but this does
not mean the things themselves are dependent on humans.
In section 20, Heidegger briefly returns to the question of the difference
between animals and humans. Both are able to perceive. Aristotle characterizes
the difference between humans and animals in terms of how humans
have logos. His point is that logos is not something in addition to
perception. Rather logos is a way of perceiving that is uniquely human. All
perceiving beings stand in relation to and are open to beings. But human
perception has a peculiar directedness toward beings that is twofold, that
also holds itself back from beings and recognizes them in their otherness,
that is, in their own being as such. Heidegger says: “In this perceptual relation,
the relationship of the human to beings and of beings to the human is
in a certain way co-determined.” Human perception is the between that
belongs neither to the perceiver, nor to the perceived, that is, it belongs to
both, though not in a way that collapses the difference between them. This
“between” is not a third place where the two meet. For one thing, the
“site” where perception occurs could never itself be present at hand. It is
the thinking of this place that Heidegger says most calls us for thought
today and requires the entire effort of our philosophizing. Questioning
such a site for human being, Heidegger says, would begin to allow us to
understand what it means that we are fundamentally atopos, unable to be
at home in any site (ohne Ort). Aristotle failed to develop the questioning
of this site adequately and, Heidegger says, the entire subsequent history of
philosophy moves within the failure to address this question, though Aristotle
takes a first decisive step toward its proper formulation.
At the end of his course, Heidegger begins the transition from the retrieval
of Aristotle’s philosophy, achieved during this course, to a demarcation
of his own Auseinandersetzung with Aristotle. He writes:
Aristotle was not capable of comprehending, no less than anyone before or after
him, the proper essence and being of that which makes up this between—between
aistheton as such and aisthesis as such—and which in itself brings about the very
wonder that, although it is related to self-reliant beings, it does not through this
relation take their self-reliance away, but rather precisely makes it possible for
such being to secure this self-reliance in the truth.
I believe that, for Heidegger, this “between” is the unaddressed and unthematized,
but presupposed, sense of dunamis toward which the entire discussion
of Metaphysics Θ1–3 is under way. It is the higher, singular meaning
of dunamis-energeia for which the discussion of dunamis kata kinesin
has been a preparation. This is a concept of power that is worthy of
thought, one that I hope we have seen involves the privative character of
force and the twofoldness of being.
. So, when I make assertions about the nature of shapes, the relationships between particular dimensions, I'm not doing it by examining actual triangles and circles. I'm thinking about these Platonic things I've talked about, these abstract objects that are somehow accessible to our thought. If I can come to know something sat in an armchair with pen and paper, then it's probably a priori. Of course, it's a kind of skycastle, as you point out, I'm pulling myself up by my own bootstraps, but that's the beauty of a Quinean view of the structure of knowledge, I'm not trying to find some foundation to pin it on, it just becomes this self-strengthening network. As an aside, what is our obsession with knowledge, anyway? In all our skepticism, we seem to forget that, despite all our difficulties assigning the status of knowledge to anything but the narrowest or most trivial of propositions, that whatever we've got works fine.
. Your post was very coherent and interesting.