Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy

IIThe Text of the Lecture Course on the Basis of the Preserved Parts of the Handwritten Manuscript

II. The Text of the Lecture Course on the Basis of the Preserved Parts of the Handwritten Manuscript On §1 The purpose of this lecture course is to bring to understanding some basic concepts from out of the circle of Aristotelian research. More precisely, it is to give direction as to listening for what Aristotle has to say. And this direction is to be conveyed by way of our attempting listening in concrete examples. Basic concepts: some. The selection is favorable: Metaphysics Δ: examples . Some of these and others: life, movement, knowledge, truth. To examine which matters are meant in these concepts, how these matters are experienced, toward-which they are addressed and, accordingly, how they are expressed (significantly). Thus the full conceptuality as such: matters in the how and the how itself. With the understanding of conceptuality there is to emerge insight and familiarity with the exigencies and possibilities of scientific research. Therefore a philosophy is not to be taught and learned. Accordingly, the purpose is not to render a portrait of Aristotle’s system nor to characterize the personality and the overall manner of the philosopher. No history of philosophy and philosophy of problems. Only to listen for what Aristotle perhaps has to say. If philology means the passion for knowledge of what has been spoken and of self-expression, then the purpose and procedure is purely philological. Literature—secondary material On §2 Purpose: to bring proper reading somewhat into practice in such a way that we thereby attend to conceptuality. The provisionality of the undertaking comes to light by its standing under presuppositions that are not to be discussed: 1) That in particular Aristotle has something to say with respect to the aim of the lecture (and not Plato or Kant or Hegel). 2) That we admit to ourselves that we are not yet so advanced that there is nothing more to say to us in this particular respect. 3) That conceptuality, properly understood, is the genuine substance of any scientific research (not an affair of formal thought-technique). Whoever has chosen science has taken over responsibility for the concept. 4) That scientific research, science, is no occupation, but is rather a possibility of human existence, accordingly, a choice and decision. 5) That there is, in being-there, a possibility in which alone a stand is taken with respect to the possibilities of one’s interpretation and determination. 6) Methodological presupposition: that history and the past can have impact insofar as one clears the path for it—today, the strongest demand, but the air in which philology lives and breathes. 226 Preserved Parts of the Handwritten Manuscript [335–336] Many presuppositions, but only philology. Philosophy, by contrast, especially today, does not need them, since it lives from out of the basic presupposition that everything is as it should be. Indeed, the consideration treats of matters that are designated as belonging within philosophy, but our kind of treatment is nothing philosophical, its results are no philosophy. Aristotle can offer us a pointer in the demarcation: φιλοσοφία and διαλεκτική and σοφιστική.1 On §3 Purpose: to understand some basic concepts, to attend to conceptuality. What is to be understood by this? This must go to prove wherein we have to transpose ourselves in order to be able to pursue concept-formation and to understand conceptuality in the concrete. Things to be shown: 1. Where we encounter the concept exposed? 2. What that means, why in this case in particular it is determined in this way, and why the definition according to the decisive experience? 3. The enrooting of the conceptual wherein? 4. From there the next course of the consideration. According to tradition, “logic” treats of the concept. “Logic” as discipline —determinate type of treatment of a delimited realm of objects—arose only when logical research had run itself into the ground. Plato and Aristotle know nothing of “logic”—an outgrowth of philosophy in the Hellenistic schools. What was here collected in a scholastic way passed into medieval and modern logic as a fixed inventory and was at the same time handed down, as “logic,” as a fixed inventory of questions and problems. Logic knows, on the authority of Aristotle, something like definition: definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. Reflected in this rule is the fate of Aristotle’s researches. Definitions: a) homo animal rationale. b) The circle is a curved, closed line, all of whose points are equidistant...