GA18:198-199 – thinking not an appeal to a brain process

Most people [invocation of the average experience [Erfahrung  ] of human beings [Menschen] regarding being-there itself] believe that the body [Leib  ] somehow takes part in all having-courage [Mut-Haben  ], and so on, and in all perceiving [Vernehmen  ] in general. [The expression αἰσθάνεσθαι — having-courage toward . . . , being-inclined [Geneigtsein], and so on — is not   used in the narrow sense of perception [Wahrnehmung], but as awareness [Vernehmen] in the sense of having-there of the world [Dahabens der Welt  ]. It is not theoretical considering, but being-open for something that is around me.] To most, even νοεΐν seems to be an ΐδιον of the soul. [To most, pure considering — for example, pure mathematics — seems to [134] [GA18   198-200] be the sort of thing in which the body does not take part.] If, however, even νοεΐν [the thorough deliberating of a matter, when I do not have it perceptually present] is something like a φαντασία   or cannot be without φαντασία, then thinking too could not be without standing in the context of the entire life of a human being.” Thinking: this is not an appeal to a brain [Gehirn  ] process, but to φαντασία, the “making-present-to-itself” [Sichvergegenwärtigen] of the world, in which what is made present [Vergegenwärtigte] is not actually there, but instead is, say, in memory [Erinnerung  ] or in a merely faint making-present. Even in thinking about something, the matters are there in the making-present [Vergegenwärtigung  ]. Φαντασία is the ground for νοεΐν. Insofar as νόησις   is the highest possibility for the being of human beings, the entire being of human beings is determined so that it must be apprehended as the bodily being-in-the-world of human beings [leibmäßige In-der-Welt-sein   des Menschen].

What was, here, provided by Aristotle  , is still not taken advantage of today. Only in phenomenology has this begun. No division between “psychic” and “bodily acts”! This is to be seen practically, for example, in the way that I move my hand  , the way that I make a movement with it. One must note that the primary being-there-function [Daseinsfunktion] of bodiliness [Leiblichkeit] secures the ground for the full being of human beings. The beginnings of the entire tradition  ’s erroneous orientation toward the biological (Descartes  ’s res cogitans   — res extensa) is also found in Aristotle. (GA18MT:133-134)