Heidegger and Language

NINE Truth Be Told: Homer, Plato, and Heidegger

163 nine Truth Be Told: Homer, Plato, and Heidegger Dennis J. Schmidt The question that I want to ask concerns what Aristotle called the “κίνησις του βιου,” the basic movement of life. More precisely, I want to ask how we might speak of this movement without losing its elemental unity and its dynamic character. An assumption that I will make, but not defend, is that the language of philosophy—that is, the language of the concept—is poor at following this movement since such language aims at capturing and grasping this movement. But I want to suggest that one finds an interesting answer to this question of the proper way of speaking of this movement of life when one turns to Heidegger’s reading of Homer, since in Homer’s language Heidegger finds a way of following this movement, this movement of all appearance, that is closed to the less agile, conceptual language of philosophy. What Homer offers that is foreclosed to our philosophical habits—habits that are amplified by the habits of understanding characterizing modernity—is a way of speaking of the real struggle defining this movement of life; namely, that life both shows and hides itself in its movement. * * * Heidegger’s analysis and argument about the need to move away from a static conception of truth wedded to the ideal of certainty and to move toward an understanding of truth as the movement of ἀλήθεια is well known.1 It is, however, not well understood since there is a tendency to regard ἀλήθεια, which Heidegger characterizes as the movement of 164 · Dennis J. Schmidt revealing and concealing, as, in the end, the overcoming of concealing. But the matter is much more complex and here Homer can be of help.2 HeideggerturnstoHomerbecausehefindsinHomeralanguageprior to the language of philosophy, a language closer as it were to the ways in which what appears can be spoken of. Instead of taking a distance from Homer’slanguage,Heideggerismostconcernedwithdrawingclosetothat language and hearing it in a register not measured by the language of the concept. His readings of Homer are all shorn of any concern with justice, morality,ordidacticpurpose.Heideggerdoesnotfind“lessons”inHomer; instead, he takes up Homer as celebrating the various ways in which appearanceshappen .HefindsinHomera languagesensitivetothetruththat definesappearancebeforetheideabecamethemeasureoftruthofappearance , before something apart from the movement of appearances became the standard for speaking the truth. In short, Heidegger suggests that Homer is able to translate us out of our philosophically defined language and into a “thoughtful and thoughtfully uttered word.”3 One finds an example of how Heidegger explains the way that we have been translated out of a language capable of speaking of the movement of life in the following passage. Here Heidegger refers to the decisive moment for us, one found in another translation, namely, the translation from Greek into Latin, in which appearance comes to take on a very different meaning: Think back to Homer, who . . . brought to light the presence of what is present. A scene in the homecoming of Odysseus needs to be recalled. When Eumaios leaves, Athena appears in the form of a beautiful young woman. She appears to Odysseus as the goddess. But his son, Telemachus, does not see her, and the poet says: ου γάρ πως πάντεσσι θεοὶ φαἰνονται εναρεις (Od. XVI, 161). “Not to all do t he gods appear εναρεις”—one translates this word as “visible.” However, άργός means “gleaming,” “shining.” That which shines illuminates itself from out of itself. That which shines, essences from out of itself. Odysseus and Telemachus see the same woman. But Odysseus perceives the presence of the goddess. Later, the Romans translated εναρεις, this shining from out of itself, with evidentia; evideri means to make visible. Evidence is thought from out of the human being as the one who sees. εναρεις on the other hand is a characteristic of the presencing thing itself.4 In other words, the Roman translation and appropriation of the Homeric way of speaking of how things appear changes that sense by rendering it a truth be told · 165 subjective matter. Or, as Heidegger remarks in another text: “For the Greeks,thingsappear.Forus,thingsappeartome.”5 Heardproperly,then, Homer’s language speaks of appearance, of presencing, not as a subjectively defined event but as a character of the world itself. Homer “brought to light the presence of what is present” insofar as he understands this presence as a “shining from out of itself.” It is difficult for us to understand sucha wayofspeakingoftheworld,ofunderstandingthat“fortheGreeks, things appear,” since “for us, things appear to me.” As...