Existential physics as phenomenology: Heidegger’s comment on Aristotle’s Physics

One can interpret the “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense as the existences (“existentia”) of the “things themselves” or by themselves. Husserl rejected that approach as “naturalization” of his phenomenology. Heidegger himself, though revising or developing far further Husserl’s phenomenology, refuted to be an “existentialist”.

He tried to reinterpret Greek philosophy especially a few Presocratics in that manner, in which the phenomenon (as “meaning it in itself by itself”) might be identified as naïvely as wisely with the being (inseparable from the existence) of each certain thing.

The same approach of Heidegger penetrates his extended comment on a single fragment (B, 1) from Aristotle’s Physics. The part in question refers to the concept of “Φύσις” at all, and Heidegger’s reflection addresses the relation of that term in Greek philosophy and Aristotle’s particularly to the modern European understanding of nature as opposed to both human being and technics.

Heidegger’s way of interpretation merges the things and their Platonic “ideas” in the initial Φύσις thinkable as both χάος and ἀλήθεια. Heidegger means the latter as that truth relevant to both Greek and his philosophy: ἀλήθεια is ἀ-λήθεια, i.e. the appearance at all from hiddenness as un-hiddenness. That concept of truth is not underlain by any opposition to anything: it has not the form of the Latin adaequatio, the origin of which is often searched again in Aristotle.

Truth as ἀ-λήθεια is phenomenon as appearance where being and existence are both yet and initially inseparable from each other. Thus truth as ἀ-λήθεια is φύσις at the same. Nature is Truth before any opposition, particularly that of human being to nature.

Further, the Greek τέχνη is seen in the same way rather than in the modern manner as creating something artificial, technical, which has not existed in a natural way, and even it might not exist in nature in principle: τέχνη cannot be the modern technics at all.

On the contrary, τέχνη means the hidden essence to be revealed, literally the veil to be removed, and thus truth to be seen: τέχνη is not and cannot be opposed to φύσις, it assists for the human beings to be able to observe the φύσις in an obvious way.

For example, a wooden chair reveals the strength and reliability of the tree, from which the chair has been made. That τέχνη is not opposed furthermore to philosophy and poetry: It may be thought as an another, namely material way of philosophizing or poeticizing.

Aristotle’s ἐντελέχεια is interpreted analogically and relatively to τέχνη: it means the “essence to be given at the end” in Heidegger’s interpretation, i.e. as the ultimate stage in the natural development. One may say that mankind and nature collaborate with each other by means correspondingly of τέχνη and of natural development both sharing ἐντελέχεια as their essence.

References:
Heidegger, M. (1939) “Vom Wesen und Begriff der Φύσις. Aristoteles, Physik, B, 1,” in: Gesamtausgabe. Band 9 (Wegmarken). Frankfurt AM, Vittorio Klostermann, 1976, 239-302.




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