"Sense" in Being and Time

Instead of following Heidegger down the path of the Ereignis, however, I would like to briefly pursue the suggestion I made. I have already explained why Heidegger's thesis in Being and Time that time constitutes the sense of being is philosophically problematic. I would now like to explain why it is also historically problematic. The Greeks (Aristotle), I suggested, did not (not even implicitly) understand being in terms of time in the way that Heidegger suggests. Rather, they understood time in terms of motion, and motion in terms of power (dunamis-energeia, δύναμις-ενέργεια), a fact Heidegger knew very well, and which he analyzed in many contexts, but which he consistently interpreted in ways that favor the priority of time (constant presence) over every other "horizon" of the understanding of being. Why did Heidegger insist on the primacy of time as the unthematized foundation of ontological reflection in the West since Aristotle, if not earlier? In Heidegger's texts, it is clear that this historical thesis rests on his interpretation of the basic categories of Aristotelian ontology. The basic thesis running through all of Heidegger's interpretations of Aristotle is that the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian ontology are only intelligible in light of time (and, more specifically, the privilege Aristotle gives to constant presence in his interpretation of being). He frequently contends that Aristotle, together with the subsequent history of ontology up to Hegel, failed, for essential reasons, to fully appreciate the dependence of being on time, and so could not pose the Seinsfrage in the way in which, he felt, it had to be posed: viz., in terms of the relation between being and time. Heidegger's presentation of these theses is extremely abbreviated in Being and Time, but it can be found in a more elaborated form in texts written both before and after. One of the clearest formulations can be found in On the Essence of Human Freedom (1930), where Heidegger examines the concepts of ousia, parousia, eidos, energeia, and finally aletheia. He interprets all of these Aristotelian concepts in terms of time and, more importantly, in terms of constant presence, and he regards his temporal interpretation of Aristotelian concepts as evidence for his own thesis that being has always been understood in terms of time, even and perhaps especially when the relation between being and time is not explicitly stated as such or even remotely understood.

It is important to remember that Heidegger does not simply regard his interpretation of Aristotle as a merely "external" confirmation of an independently, phenomenologically verifiable thesis about the relation between being and time. On the contrary, as he himself explicitly asserts: "If this interpretation of being as constant presence [beständige Anwesenheit] is not correct, there can be no basis for unfolding a connection between being and time, as demanded by the fundamental question". Nevertheless, things are not so clear. Heidegger wavers. Immediately after, he continues: "Yet although Greek metaphysics as such, together with the subsequent tradition of Western metaphysics, is of great significance for our problem, its implications do not extend this far. For even if for some reason or other our interpretation of Greek ontology could not be carried through, what we have asserted as the fundamental orientation of the understanding of being could be exhibited from our own immediate comportment towards beings […] as will be shown – we humans must understand being in terms of time". Here, Heidegger insists on the fundamental exteriority of any historical investigation vis-à-vis the correlation between being and time, which can, he claims, always be demonstrated independently by reference to the understanding of being, and so remain secure from history, should any "anomaly" in the history of being creep in and destabilize the required correlation between being and time Heidegger demands. Clearly, Heidegger is worried about the possibility that his analysis might not yield the required conclusion: that the history of ontology, beginning with the Greeks, has always understood being in terms of time. But he is too subtle to simply reverse his earlier statement, for he adds yet another fold: "However, the history of metaphysics provides us with more than just examples. […] [History] offers us more than a picture of earlier and superseded stages of thought. […] If we try to grasp the Greek concept of being, this is not a matter of acquiring external historical knowledge," for it helps us show that the Greek concept of being has determined the history of ontology up to Hegel in a non-arbitrary way.

How should we interpret Heidegger's hesitations? He is not seeking in history a series of "examples". Indeed, Dasein's understanding of being must always live itself out in terms of time, and the interpretation of historical texts must always confirm this. Any historical exception is no longer a mere exception, but rather constitutes an objection to the philosophical thesis that Dasein always understands being in terms of time. In other words, Dasein's Seinsverständnis places constraints on the interpretations of being historical Dasein has produced from the Greeks to the present. Suppose, then, that Heidegger were to demonstrate what we now know he cannot: viz., that the focal sense of being is constituted in the horizon of time and that this sense organizes all other possible senses of being. What would happen if Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle were to turn out not to confirm the thesis that being is always interpreted in terms of time? Would we say that this is a mere anomaly? An exception that proves the rule? Not at all. We would say that such a "disconfirmation" should be a priori impossible, given the kind of being that Dasein is and the fact that the history of ontology is but the history of various attempts to articulate what its understanding of being consists in. The trace of time as the foundation of the sense of being must leave its mark in every understanding of being whatever, from the most ancient to the most contemporary, and from the most vulgar to the most elevated. This trace can never fully be erased, however buried it might be.

Significantly, Heidegger's hesitations about the importance of the history of ontology in confirming his thesis that being has always been interpreted in terms of time occur immediately after the section of the course devoted to the concept of energeia. Regarding the latter, he writes: "In summary, we can say that the Aristotelian concept for the actuality of the actual, i.e. the concept of energeia as well as the later concept of actualitas, determined by this, does not initially confirm our thesis of 'constant presence' as the fundamental meaning of Being in Greek philosophy". Why? This is not immediately clear. On the contrary, everything in Heidegger's text up to this point seems to suggest that his interpretation of energeia does confirm the thesis that constant presence is the fundamental meaning of being in Aristotle. After all, Aristotle himself, as Heidegger interprets him, correlates dunamis to apousia and energeia to parousia in the conceptual economy of metabolé, which is the essence of phusis, and which Heidegger's regards as fundamental to Aristotle's concept of ousia

    metabolé (μεταβολή)

    apousia (απουσία) parousia (παρουσία)

    dunamis (δύναμις) energeia (ενέργεια)

Why, then, if energeia belongs to parousia, can there be any risk of a disconfirmation in Heidegger's fundamental thesis that being has always been interpreted in terms of time? Here, I can only risk the following hypothesis: because the play of dunamis and energeia grounds the play of apousia and parousia (i.e., of ousia as defined by these two terms), rather than the other way around, because dunamis and energeia are more fundamental, since they ground time itself. Time is but the measure of change, and the play of dunamis and energeia are the source of all change in phusis. Time reveals itself as secondary, derivative, by comparison to dunamis and energeia, for these do not depend on time, rather time depends on them. The value of presence in Aristotle is but the value of fully manifested power in energeia. No manifest power, no presence. Energeia does not occur "in the present," it is itself the source of any and all presencing. The word energeia denotes the manifestation of a dunamis, of an ability-to-be. In short, energeia is the manifestation of a Seinkönnen, which is also the origin of Dasein's temporality. Dasein does not project into a future that is already there, but rather in projecting its own potentiality-for-being is the future. Even in Being and Time, power has priority over time, since time arises directly from Dasein's ability-to-be. Heidegger's reduction of energeia to parousia in On the Essence of Human Freedom is a strategic decision made in the interest of preserving the correlation between being and time, for in truth parousia is reducible to energeia. But if this is so, then we must raise questions about Heidegger's temporal interpretation of the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian ontology, and perhaps invert the order of priority:

    metabolé (μεταβολή)

    dunamis (δύναμις) energeia (ενέργεια)

    apousia (απουσία) parousia (παρουσία)

To conclude, I have defended two theses, one "historical," and one "philosophical," although the distinction between them cannot be rigorously maintained in this context. The "philosophical" thesis is twofold. First, Heidegger demonstrates neither that the sense of being is given in the understanding of being in the introduction to Being and Time nor that time constitutes the horizon of the sense of being by the end of Being and Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Second, power determines Heidegger's own interpretation of the understanding of being even in Being and Time itself: Dasein always understands itself in terms of its ownmost ability-to-be, and time is nothing over and above this ability-to-be, in all of the various ways (authentic and inauthentic) in which it can be modalized. The "historical" thesis is that Aristotle did not interpret being in terms of time. Ousia is reducible to energeia as the manifestation of dunamis, and time, despite its importance, is secondary. The concept of the phenomenon in Aristotle, and perhaps beyond, is essentially the concept of expressed power. These two theses reorient the concept of the phenomenon and the question of being in a different direction, towards the concept of power, and away from the concept of time.