agonist said in #3342 2w ago:
I was reading the Heraclitus fragments this weekend, and luckily my pdf had the Greek alongside English. Fragment 10 says "Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ", which was translated as "Things keep their secrets". My Greek knowledge, despite being basic, was enough that I realized that the translation was bunk. For instance, the first word, physis, has much more exegetical meaning in our sphere than "things". So I deleted the pdf and looked for something better.
I found Heidegger's 1943 and 1944 summer lecture courses on Heraclitus at Freiburg. I really didn't want to dive into them at first — I usually find Heidegger verbose, dry, and confusing. Fortunately, these are very good, indeed they show phenomenology at its peak, both historically and in explanatory power. Phenomenology's big insight is that when reading the works of an alien mind, translation is the central problem. As has been commented by other notable readers of Greek philosophy, the mind of the Greek philosopher falls squarely in the category of alien. So when a modern English mind reads 'physis' or 'ho logos' or 'philei' in translation as 'nature' or 'the word' or 'loves', he is getting at best a compression of the full meaning and at worst a total bastardization of it. Good phenomenology solves this by doing a sort of high-dimensional word sudoku to recover meaning from available context. Here's a sample of what that looks like for fragment 10:
> Of φύσις, Heraclitus says: φιλεῖ. Translated literally, this means: φύσις ‘loves.’ We could take this word φιλεῖν in a variety of ways: however, we must be careful not to let our initial inclinations lead our thinking here. φύσις ‘loves to,’ it ‘likes to.’ So understood, one could translate the saying as “the essence of things likes to conceal itself,” which reads nearly the same as the phrases ‘children like to snack,’ or, ‘the grandmother likes to sit near the stove.’ The essence of things—φύσις—“likes to hide itself.” Even if it is philologically precise, we must leave aside this profusely quaint presentation of φύσις.
> ...
> We now translate the φιλεῖν in Heraclitus’s saying as “to give favor.” In doing so, we understand favor in the sense of the originary granting and bestowal, and therefore not in the secondary meaning of ‘benefit’ and ‘patronage.’ This originary granting is the bestowing of what is owed to the other because it belongs to the other’s essence, insofar as it bears that essence. Accordingly, friendship, φιλία, is the favor that grants to the other the essence that the other already has, and in such a way that through this granting the granted essence blossoms into its proper freedom. In ‘friendship,’ the essence that is reciprocally granted is freed to itself.”
As we read the works of the Old Ones and develop our understanding of The Agon, I encourage engagement with phenomenological turbo-autists. Alamariu is very entertaining to read, but he is only the most recent inheritor of a rich tradition.
I found Heidegger's 1943 and 1944 summer lecture courses on Heraclitus at Freiburg. I really didn't want to dive into them at first — I usually find Heidegger verbose, dry, and confusing. Fortunately, these are very good, indeed they show phenomenology at its peak, both historically and in explanatory power. Phenomenology's big insight is that when reading the works of an alien mind, translation is the central problem. As has been commented by other notable readers of Greek philosophy, the mind of the Greek philosopher falls squarely in the category of alien. So when a modern English mind reads 'physis' or 'ho logos' or 'philei' in translation as 'nature' or 'the word' or 'loves', he is getting at best a compression of the full meaning and at worst a total bastardization of it. Good phenomenology solves this by doing a sort of high-dimensional word sudoku to recover meaning from available context. Here's a sample of what that looks like for fragment 10:
> Of φύσις, Heraclitus says: φιλεῖ. Translated literally, this means: φύσις ‘loves.’ We could take this word φιλεῖν in a variety of ways: however, we must be careful not to let our initial inclinations lead our thinking here. φύσις ‘loves to,’ it ‘likes to.’ So understood, one could translate the saying as “the essence of things likes to conceal itself,” which reads nearly the same as the phrases ‘children like to snack,’ or, ‘the grandmother likes to sit near the stove.’ The essence of things—φύσις—“likes to hide itself.” Even if it is philologically precise, we must leave aside this profusely quaint presentation of φύσις.
> ...
> We now translate the φιλεῖν in Heraclitus’s saying as “to give favor.” In doing so, we understand favor in the sense of the originary granting and bestowal, and therefore not in the secondary meaning of ‘benefit’ and ‘patronage.’ This originary granting is the bestowing of what is owed to the other because it belongs to the other’s essence, insofar as it bears that essence. Accordingly, friendship, φιλία, is the favor that grants to the other the essence that the other already has, and in such a way that through this granting the granted essence blossoms into its proper freedom. In ‘friendship,’ the essence that is reciprocally granted is freed to itself.”
As we read the works of the Old Ones and develop our understanding of The Agon, I encourage engagement with phenomenological turbo-autists. Alamariu is very entertaining to read, but he is only the most recent inheritor of a rich tradition.
referenced by: >>3363
I was reading the He
