(Page 2 of 23) - Seeing and Acting: Heidegger's Appropriation of Aristotle authored by Weidenfeld, Matthew.

It is now recognized that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as it is presented in Being

and Time was born in a confrontation with and appropriation of Aristotle. The actual content of

this appropriation has been a matter of debate - after all, Heidegger rarely cited his “sources” in

Being and Time and, as anyone familiar with Heidegger’s texts knows, Heidegger’s meaning can

be elusive – but a consensus seems to have been reached on how Heidegger appropriated

Aristotle. The consensus runs along these lines: Heidegger spent the years from 1921 until 1924

engaged in a sustained confrontation with Aristotle’s texts, especially Nicomachean Ethics, Book

6 and this conformation culminated with his 1924-1925, Winter Semester course on the

Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist. That sustained confrontation had a lasting influence on two of

Heidegger’s most influential students, Hannah Arendt and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

important, Heidegger’s confrontation manifested itself in the two divisions of Being and Time;

the first division draws its model of pre-theoretical getting about from Aristotle’s discussion of

poiēsis and technē and the second division draws its model of being-toward-death and

resoluteness from Aristotle’s models of praxis and phronēsis.

Gadamer had this to say about the influence of these lectures, “These were memorable interpretations with respect

to both the strength of their illustrative content and the philosophical perspectives they opened up. In Heidegger’s
lectures we were often so personally touched that we no longer knew whether he was speaking of his own concern
or that of Aristotle.” Quoted in Robert Bernasconi, “Heidegger’s Destruction of Phronesis,” Southern Journal of
Philosophy (1989): 23 (supplement), 129.

The leading account of the influence of Aristotle on Heidegger is offered by Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of

Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). There is now no doubt about the
influence of Aristotle on Heidegger, though the actual content of that influence is subject to debate. For examples
of the debate, see Robert Bernasconi, “The Fate of the distinction Between Praxis and Poiesis,” Heidegger Studies
(1986): 2, 114; Robert Bernasconi, “Heidegger’s Destruction of Phronesis,” Southern Journal of Philosophy (1989):
23 (supplement), 127-147; Walter Brogan, “A Response to Robert Bernasconi’s ‘Heidegger’s Destruction of
Phronesis,’” The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1989): 28 (supplement); Jacques Taminiaux, “The
Reappropriation of the Nicomachean Ethics: Poiesis and Praxis in the Articulation of Fundamental Ontology,” in
Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology (Albany, NY: Sate University of New York Press, 1991);
Francisco J. Gonzalez, “Beyond or beneath Good and Evil? Heidegger’s Purification of Aristotle’s Ethics,” in
Heidegger and the Greeks, eds. Drew a Hyland and John Manoussakis (Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press,
2006); John Van Buren, “The Young Heidegger, Aristotle, Ethics,” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and
Continental Thought, eds. Arleen B. Dallery, Charles E. Scott, and P. Holley Roberts (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1992); Walter A. Brogan, “Heidegger and Aristotle; Dasein and the Question of Practical Life,”
in Crises in Continental Philosophy, eds. Arleen B. Dallery, Charles E. Scott, and P. Holley Roberts (Albany, NY: