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5. The Retrieval of History
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
This chapter is an analysis of "Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indicationof the Hermeneutical Situation," known as Heidegger's "lost manuscript," which is the prospectus that he sent to Marburg and Göttingen for the purpose of attaining teaching positions at those universities. Initially, it shows how the present can take hold of the past. It can do so only by taking account of the radical questioning of the past and the caring movement of traditions immanent within the past. Next, it looks at the problem of sophia. Heidegger is critical of sophia because it is an unconcerned pure beholding that cannot take account of the facticity of life. For Heidegger, it is phronesis that, in a moment of insight, can bring the facticity of life into a truthful safe-keeping. What needs to be grasped is the temporalizing movement of history. This chapter shows that the factical life of the past, the How of its temporal movement, needs to be retrieved in order to renew a discipline's current traditions and concepts. Lastly, this chapter describes the structures of factical life: caring, falling, and the How of having death, as well as the countermovement against falling, what Heidegger here calls Existenz.