McNeill (1999:12) – thaumazein

O Thaumazein  , então — como Ser e Tempo   já indicou — não deve ser identificado com curiosidade. Se existe um certo desejo relativo a tal maravilha ou "espanto" (Er-staunen) — pois este último só é experimentado na medida em que a techne   humana se volta para e se depara com a physis  , contra a prevalência auto-emergente dos seres como um todo — este desejo e sintonia intrínsecos ao thaumazein escondem, no entanto, um perigo inerente, o perigo da sua própria auto-destruição.

By way of conclusion, let us return to the question of thaumazein and its relation to curiosity. The threefold conception of "having seen" which may already be in play in Being and Time, and the analysis of thaumazein that we have suggested, are further illuminated by some remarks made by Heidegger in a lecture course delivered in 1937/38 under the title Fundamental Questions of Philosophy. Speaking of the origin of philosophy, Heidegger there states the following:

The customary accounts of the provenance [Herkunft  ] of philosophy from thaumazein usually give the impression that philosophy arises from curiosity [Neugier  ]—a feeble and pitiful determination of its origin, and one that is possible only where one has never given thought to what it is that is here to be determined in its "origin" [ Ursprung  ]…. (GA45  , 156)

Thaumazein, then—as Being and Time already indicated—is not   to be identified with curiosity. If there is a certain desire pertaining to such wonder or "astonishment" (Er-staunen)—for the latter is experienced only insofar as human techne turns toward and runs up against phusis, against the self-emergent prevailing of beings as a whole—this desire and attunement intrinsic to thaumazein nevertheless conceals an inherent danger, the danger of its own self-destruction. It can happen, Heidegger remarks,

that the craving [ Gier] to acquire knowledge and to be able to calculate takes the place of the fundamental attunement of astonishment. Philosophy itself now becomes one undertaking among others; it is made subordinate to an end that is all the more dangerous the higher it is set—as, for example, in Plato  ’s paideia  , a word that is poorly translated as "education" [Erziehung]. Even the fact that in Plato’s Republic the "philosophers" are called upon to be the highest rulers, the basileis, is already an essential demotion of philosophy. As the grasping of beings, our acknowledging them in their unconcealment, unfolds into techne, those aspects [Anblicke ] of entities that are brought into view in such grasping—the " ideas"—inevitably and increasingly become that which alone provides the measure of things. Grasping becomes a knowing familiarity with ideas, and this requires constant conformity to these ideas…. (GA45, 180-81)