McNeill (1999:6-8) – eidos

Yet the outward appearance or “look” of something, which somehow comes to excite and arouse in advance the desire of curiosity, enigmatically giving rise to its emergence, is also at the starting point of the philosophical desire. Aussehen, the outer appearance, look, or aspect of something, is Heidegger’s translation of the Greek eidos, which, via Plato and Aristotle, comes to be interpreted as the nonsensible idea or primary form. That Heidegger is indeed also alluding to the genesis of philosophical knowledge here is supported by a more detailed, though still concise account of cognitive knowledge (Erkennen) provided early in §13, whose title identifies this kind of knowledge as a founded mode of being-in-the-world. It is an account which, moreover, has its precedent in Aristotle. How does such cognitive knowing arise? Seeing as theoretical, “scientific” knowing, eidenai qua episteme, Aristotle tells us, began with leisure, when practically all the necessities of life had been provided. (M, 981 b14f.; 982 b23f) Heidegger, paraphrasing, writes that cognitive knowledge arises on the basis of a “deficiency” in our involvement with things, a holding oneself back, an interruption of our being captivated by worldly activities:

In holding back from any kind of producing, manipulating, and the like, concern puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of being-in-the-world, a merely tarrying alongside…. On the basis of this way of being toward the world—one which now lets us encounter entities within the world merely in their pure outward appearance (eidos)— and as a mode of this way of being, an explicit looking at (Hinsehen auf) what we thus encounter is possible. This looking at is in each case a specific way of taking up a direction toward something, a setting our sights on what is present-at-hand. It takes over an “aspect” ( Gesichtspunki ) in advance from the entity which it encounters. Such looking-at itself enters the mode of dwelling autonomously alongside entities within the world. (SZ, 61)

An early formulation of the same account, in the 1922 treatise “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle,” actually identifies such “merely looking at”—which “is accomplished as a determinative looking at, and can organize itself as science”—with curiosity. The German Neugier, Heidegger there adds parenthetically, means cura, curiositas. It is (7) thus a mode of caring, of Sorgen as curare. (PIA, 7-8. Cf. GA 63, 103) Significantly, this early account from 1922 makes no attempt to distinguish between a merely looking-at in the everyday sense that would seek only to have seen, and a scientific or philosophical contemplation that would desire to see a more concealed truth of things.

Being and Time, in any case, here provides a concise account of the genesis of philosophical and theoretical comportment, of the life of theorem: a possibility which, Heidegger goes on to say, can develop into science and as such may come to govern our being-in-the-world.

And this is indeed what has happened. What was once philosophical knowledge became science, today subservient to technology which orders the contemporary world. Our present existence is overwhelmingly dominated by technology. As is well known, one of Heidegger’s later concerns is that our contemporary, technological understanding of being—of being as a particular configuration and ordering of presence—is unduly and perhaps dangerously restrictive, and that this understanding has arisen because philosophical knowledge was itself unduly restrictive from the beginning. It arose, Heidegger alleges, in the light of a reductive understanding of techne, namely techne considered in terms of productive activity as craftsmanship. Yet why and how this reductive understanding of techne itself came to dominate is less easy to ascertain. Its ascendancy occurred—as Plato’s Republic documents clearly enough—under the pressure of a certain political necessity, a “necessity” that is becoming more and more worthy of question for us today.

Philosophical knowing as founded by Plato and Aristotle was not, of course, a sighting of the eidos as the sensible outward appearance of something. Such seeing is merely the sensory apprehending of a particular thing, but not yet an explicit knowledge of the essence (ousia), or of what the thing truly is as such. This essence must be given (as Heidegger indirectly indicates in the passage just quoted) by the sighting of a particular “aspect” or eidos “in advance.” This is the nonsensible eidos that can be “seen” by the eye of the soul. The exemplary vision of such an eidos is the form sighted in advance by the artisan before producing his actual product. This form or eidos is not reducible to an image, and, moreover, is independent of all the particular examples that the craftsman may produce of his product. As such, it is at once common to all (koinon), universal (katholou), and yet not bound to any particular image or sense-perception. Furthermore, unlike the actual thing produced, the eidos is what is most constant, even “eternal”: it is not (or not yet) subject to material decay in the realm of the sensible. Finally, and most importantly in view of subsequent historical (8) developments, it is that which is earlier or prior to the particular product: the eidos as essence is what Aristotle characterizes as the to ti en einai: that which the thing already was before its actualization. As such, it constitutes the genos or origin of the product and determines its morphe, its eventual figure or form in each instance. The eidos is cause, aition. The genesis of beings comes to be sought in their nonsensible and primary form.

Philosophical knowledge, then, according to this model which finds its exemplary moment already latent within the activity of artistic production, is understood as a seeing, a pure theorem of the nonsensible eidos in the soul. Such knowledge lies in the sighting of the eidos that comprises the universal origin and determinative essence (essentia) of each sensible object as that which already was: the apriori. Because the artisan’s sighting of the nonsensible eidos (which is already a theorem, although not yet “pure” or disinterested, since it is part and parcel of the productive activity) governs in advance the being of the eventual product, the vision that truly sees this eidos will know in advance what governs the order of being.