McNeill (1999:2-3) – curiosidade (Neugier)

Heidegger, as the context indicates, is well aware of the primacy accorded to vision in the philosophical tradition from the Greeks onward. His citation of this first line of the Metaphysics occurs in §36 of Being and Time, and serves to introduce a discussion of this very tradition. Heidegger remarks that the philosophical primacy accorded to vision was recognized particularly by Augustine in Book X of his Confessions, which discusses the concupiscentia oculorum, the desire of the eye. “Originary and genuine truth,” as Heidegger (3) puts it, “lies in pure beholding [or intuiting: Anschauung]. This thesis has remained the foundation of Western philosophy ever since” (SZ, 171). Yet is it not quite remarkable that Heidegger should here locate a discussion of this tradition and its emphasis upon seeing within a section that bears the simple title “Curiosity” (Die Neugier)? A section which, in a few sentences, spans Parmenides, Aristotle, Augustine, and Hegel: Western philosophy from its first beginnings to its culmination! Is Heidegger implying that the whole of Western philosophy can somehow be reduced to curiosity? It is difficult to avoid this impression, notwithstanding the assertion that curiosity does not seek to understand what is seen, but seeks “only to see,” or “only to see and to have seen,” as Heidegger later puts it (SZ 172, 346). Notwithstanding also the assurance that ”Curiosity has nothing to do with contemplating beings and marvelling at them—with thaumazein.” For it could be that an originary thaumazein was precisely what died out when philosophy entered the scene. This might indeed be read into the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Book I, chapter two of the Metaphysics remarks:

It is through wonder ( thaumazein ) that men now begin and originally began to philosophize, wondering in the first place about the aporias at hand…. Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels ignorance ( agnoein ) … therefore it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy…. (M, 982 b12)

Yet would not an escape from ignorance necessarily entail the disappearance of thaumazein? Is not the association of thaumazein with ignorance already symptomatic of the appropriation of thaumazein by philosophy?¹ Is there perhaps a more originary “contemplation” of beings belonging to the pre-philosophical experience of thaumazein—more originary, that is, than the theoria or contemplation of the philosophers?