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Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy (Studies in Continental Thought)

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THE FUNDAMENTAL DUPLICITY OF LANGUAGE: Part2
`Language is duplicitous in several senses.'
This book introduces Heidegger's REAL philosophy as well as, according to Walter A. Brogan, HEIDEGGER AND ARISTOTLE: THE TWO FOLDNESS OF BEING, SUNY, 2005, four and a half stars, the REAL Aristotle, a two-for-one bargain for sure! It is tough going but only in the sense that Heidegger is relating his other tortured concepts, that are even more tortured by other scholars, in his other books, both before and after these 1924 lectures released in 2002 by Victorio Klosterman and translated for Indiana UP in 2010, to very 'factical', down to earth, common sense, in the true sense as communal sense, in the Greek sense of shared understanding with other Athenian citizens whether farmers or philosophers.

You get a thorough introduction to the NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, the POLITICS, with a startling confrontation in chapter 16, BK V delta, 1021b3-1022a3 to death as man's 'rightful' and 'proper' 'goal' or rather the simple boundary of human nature. The classical sense of `moral value' is very different from our own. The `two foldness of being' speaks of the basic Aristotelian logic of contrasting perception, concepts, etc, that is `this' is defined by being NOT `that', synthesis as uniting, versus diairesis as dividing and distinguishing. It is the positive and, neutrally, negative aspects of being, and part of the ontological difference Death, in Aristotle, is simply the limit of human life but is therefore its TELOS. But, emphatically, it is a necessary part of human nature. Aquinas divides the concept of death two fold, yes, but one of his necessary definitions of death is that man naturally dies. This brings up the whole subject of human nature. What is it?

It is defined by rather the simple boundaries of human nature, phenominalogically, that is, as it is observed [Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson, `You see but you do not observe.']. LIVING human being is defined by observation as always acting, even breathing, heart beating in sleep, towards a goal, a TELOS constantly, all the time while alive. Death is defined as a complete stopping. Aquinas describes the afterlife more or less as being frozen in one's last act. This contradicts all that he says about the specialness of human nature as the reason why God created man in the first place. So it becomes everlastiness, either in heaven or hell, as a lump of ice [John Henry Cardinal Newman's image mainly of Hell]. For Aristotle, death is just a limit, PERAS, one cannot according to one's nature go beyond. There is no other `side', no further boundaries. Afterlife is rendered pointless then by Aquinas, at least as an unstated consequence from his interpreters. PERAS is a fundamental concept in both Aristotle and Heidegger. So everything has a positive AND a negative limit, definition.
Heidegger's thesis goes further, introducing a fantastic explication of Aristotle's RHETORIC. The two foldness of being is further evolved as the difference between the speaker and the hearer, an always necessary twosome. That it is ontological as such might be crudely explained as the difference between sensation and imagination as in Hume's TREATISE ABOUT HUMAN NATURE where sensation obviously `tells' you nothing but does impel you to action of some sort which when noticed you apply your imaginary creation of language. Everybody believes in language but nobody can see it [`Everybody says they believe in God but nobody acts like it.', Hume] But language creates blueprints which creates skyscrapers. Language creates something NEW for sensation. So, there IS a twofoldness of being.
It gets worse than that. Human being is primarily by nature committed to political [`social'] activity which calls out in response [`conscience'] language as spoken to the specific situation of another, literate or illiterate. The overall TELOS is always the whole of people which is the state - or church. Language, spoken or written, ALWAYS has an immediate, at-hand goal, TELOS. Deprive human being of this and he is nothing. [Long term isolation is the worst of tortures and distorts human nature almost as much as death does.] Political activity is always necessarily self-centered [also, to a degree, phenominologically, but NOT as a `subject' which is actually a complex of things, the most important and most self-centering of which is REASON] as you are the one that sees. You are also motivated that way, `doing something for your country' so your name will be honored. The word you apply to the object is your appropriation, but with the intent of expressing it to `another' even if that `other' is your `listening' self. Even your relation to a rock has a `political' dimension. It does have a phenomenological `otherness' to you as it revels its presence, but not as `communicating' any concept. You just see `it' and existentially `know' its presence.
But there is worse. Richard Bodeus, the great Canadian scholar, makes it clear that the audience - you as a human being naturally always act for an audience as `hero', Abraham Maslow, Colin Wilson, Ayn Rand, or Ted Bundy in a different sense - for the NICOMACHIAN ETHICS is for `always already' politically experienced mature adults. So, one might say Politics is the most important pursuit [Heidegger says this also] for which the best training is RHETORIC, including logic and philosophy [logic is derived from rhetoric], and ETHICS is an explicit consideration only for experienced people. Bodeus makes an excellent companion for Heidegger [and the understanding of the early Stoics] in that the material universe is obviously determined since everything has a previous cause and effect. BUT!!! Human beings can change [Heidegger takes up this aporia of `deciding' when to move in his ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS THETA 1-3] by making the effort to learn a new skill, new ways of acting [ look up Hubert L. Dryfus work on learning curves]. And a human being CAN learn to do something and to it differently. It is the intentional power of habituation. You learn habits from your parents, good and evil and bad, and you modify them as you grow into a more and more deliberately and intentional political world.
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Aristotle's Metaphysics T 1--3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force (Studies in Continental Thought)The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, SolitudeLogic: The Question of Truth (Studies in Continental Thought)The Phenomenology of Religious Life (Studies in Continental Thought)The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and TimeParmenides (Studies in Continental Thought)Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy (Studies in Continental Thought)Plato's Sophist (Studies in Continental Thought)Introduction to Phenomenological Research (Studies in Continental Thought)Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics (S U N Y Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy)Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals (S U N Y Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy)Heidegger And Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)Aristotle on Life and DeathHeidegger And Rhetoric (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)The Theology of Thomas AquinasAyn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist