Part 2
So, what is “proper”? First of all, the situation
presented is “originary”, that is, the beginning
or, not diminutively, the ‘childhood’ of
human perception AS DETERMINED BY WORDS.
But these are the words of other imposed
upon the child’s own vision. Secondly, the
term itself implies its answer. It is cohesive,
integrated community throughout a person’s
lifetime, of man as the political animal
AND as the zoon logon echon, the animal that
has speech. It is being-with where dogs are
not allowed. “We keep domestic pets in the
house with us, they ‘live’ with us. But we
do not live with them if living means: being
in an animal kind of way. Yet we are with
them nonetheless. But this being-with is
not an existing-with, because a dog does
not exist but merely lives”, FUNDAMENTAL
CONCEPTS, 210 [308]. This is NOT cited to
put down Heidegger or place him in a bad
stance. His concept of the animal mood of
being “poor in world” is far too complex
and shares the same ambiguity as “authen
tic” and “inauthentic”, the casual reader
automatically assuming the first is more
“proper” than the second when it is the second
that creates the first. The same with “animal”:
we are an animal first and foremost, THEN
we speak. We see first, we hear noise, THEN
we begin to understand “words”. And having
these “ words” is very far from having any
guarantee at all that our experience of life
is more “proper” and “sufficient”. In fact,
again, the exact opposite is the fact of
the matter. All of this is precisely relevant
to what follows.
“We are an animal first and foremost.” It
is ‘natural’ to think that the “world” understands
you and grasps you better than you can yourself
when you are a child. This goes well with
Robert Burn’s
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us’
And foolish notion. To a Louse
(It is interesting in this connection to
remember Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov’s
ideological passion was not to discover whether
he was a mere man or was “superman” but,
rather, whether he was a louse or a superman
by the ability to arbitrarily murder someone.
The gulf is between being a tiny animal and
being a ‘divinity’.)
When you are a child, you necessarily live
in a real community of the kind Aristotle
and Plato believed is basically ideal. This
is, in part, how we should think of the REPUBLIC
considering that classical scholars are clearly
divided whether Plato meant it literally
or ironically. Considering Aristotle’s hostile
comments, he certainly took it as serious
political statement. However, Aristotle also
highly prized the cohesiveness of the political
community making it a basic concept in the
definition of being human as opposed to –
“a beast or a god”, POLITICS, Book I, chapter
1, 1253a3-39. But consider how highly Aristotle
esteems man through contemplation becoming
like a god in the first book of the METAPHYSICS,
1, 982b25-983a11, and all of chapter 7 of
Book X of the NICOMACHIAN ETHICS in which
both references praise both man’s seeking
to be divine through contemplation and also
gaining the total self-sufficiency thereof
which in the POLITICS throws man out of the
community as making him unable or unwilling
to be ‘political’ and therefore “either a
beast or a god.” Aristotle’s seeming equivocation
as to the clearly definite absolute division
between political and self-sufficient man
as beast/god is the same equivocation between
zoon logon echon in Heidegger with the nature
of being animal. What Heidegger is doing
is trying to set up the visual possibility
of seeing the difference between man and
animal by showing that the animal viewed
THROUGH language is necessarily “poor in
world”, that is, language forms HOW we PROPERLY
see the animal. Language actually has “privilege”
INSCRIBED within its essence. But the Greeks
had no word for language, and Aristotle constantly
debates the privilege of logos being exclusively
given only to man throughout his works. Language
as such for Aristotle cannot possess that
sense of ‘natural’ superiority so ingrained
in “We moderns”.
In his lectures ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS È
THETA 1-3: On the Essence and Actuality of
Force, trans. Brogan & Warnek, Indiana,
1995, Heidegger makes it laboriously clear
Aristotle thinks some animals possess krinein,
“judgment” (chapter 2, all of §13, pages
99-110, “Concerning logos (conversance) and
soul. The divisions ‘conversant/without conversance’
and ‘besouled/soulless’). In other works,
Aristotle seems to deny this because animals
supposedly cannot possess memory, or, at
least, linguistic memory.
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