things & people

ELDRED on ANAXIMANDER/Heidegger, Aristotle & Marx
(Auszug / Ende eines längeren Textes 2011: http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/prncprsn.html#5.1)
WOHLRAPP zum Glauben ans ARGUMENT & bringing all into joint

Zit.n. Rapp, S. 45 – in Parenthese ein in der Forschung strittiger Passus, den Rapp eher Aristoteles zurechnet; altgriechisch: (ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι) κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν.
Christof Rapp: Die Vorsokratiker. München (Beck) 1997 ISBN 3-406-38938-4
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximander: Mit dem einzigen erhaltenen Anaximander-Fragment liegt der erste schriftlich gefasste und überlieferte Satz der griechischen Philosophie überhaupt vor. Allerdings ist die diesbezügliche Forschung uneins, in welchem Umfang das Überlieferungsgut tatsächlich authentisch auf Anaximander zurückgeht.Die Kernaussage lautet:
„(Woraus aber für das Seiende das Entstehen ist, dahinein erfolgt auch ihr Vergehen) gemäß der Notwendigkeit; denn sie schaffen einander Ausgleich und zahlen Buße für ihre Ungerechtigkeit nach der Ordnung der Zeit.[Rapp]“ Eldred könnte bemerkt haben, dass es in der Übertragung zwischen „das Seiende“ im ersten Teil des Klammerausdrucks und „ihr Vergehen“ im zweiten Teil eine (kognitive ?) Dissonanz gibt ...


… the sky can be said to 'esteem' the Earth, for instance, in raining upon it. In the case of mortals, i.e. human beings, the coming and going out of the present is the initial coming ( ἡ γένεσις ) and the final going-away ( φθορά ), since human beings are those beings who are ex-posed to, stand-out toward death, death itself being a present withheld for a life-time in absence toward which each mortal is ecstatically stretched.
 
/ AUSLASSUNG
 
The phenomenological interpretation of the extant fragment of Anaximander's archaic saying

… for they do right by giving each other due esteem, thus bringing everything into joint


allows deeper insight into the temporal meaning of being as presencing in its relation to (human) beings in their interplay than that provided, say, by the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, not to mention modern discussions of commodity exchange-value in political economy and its critique from Adam Smith on in which all trace of being as standing presence has been lost in oblivion. Commodity value (ΤΙΜΗ τιμη) and the striving for τιμη (esteem) among men already abundantly thematized in Plato and Aristotle are shown to be more deeply games of presencing played in presencing's time-space, in particular, games among mortals vieing for estimation of their finite, mortal powers. Through such insight, rivalry among individual mortals is not done away with, but seen no longer merely in the light of individual personal ambition and the striving for the gain of wealth. Rather, such mortals are first of all granted presence as the presents of presencing, and strive and vie with each other to stand phallically in the shining light of the present for a while. The temptation of hubris, however, misleads them to strive to present themselves not uprightly and to exceed their allotted time in shining presence, thus putting the interplay of mutual estimation out of joint. 
 
By contrast, Heidegger suggests in the following passage that a recasting of being and human being from the insight into its temporal nature as presencing amounts to an overcoming of so-called individualism altogether, which he locates solely in the modern age. "Insofar as they are human beings out of the essencing of their presencing in the gleaming of the pure brightness, they have already met in destinal sending through themselves as presents." (Insofern sie Menschen sind aus dem Wesen ihres Anwesens im Erglänzen des reinen Lichten, haben sie [sich] einander, durch sich als Anwesende, schon im Geschick getroffen. GA78:93) Insofar as he conceives such individualism as "some sort of non-destinal meeting-together of the already individualized multitude of people in some sort of agreement [that] effects community" (Nicht irgendein geschickloses Zusammentreffen der bereits vereinzelten Vielen der Menschen in irgend eine Übereinstimmung bewirkt Gemeinschaft, GA78:93), his rejection of individualism is justified. However, such a conception has itself overlooked that the modern individual itself is already enabled by, and goes hand in hand with, and is, a kind of sociation mediated by a reified medium, namely, value, an insight to be had from the mature Marx and Hegel. This kind of sociation is itself a destinal sending from being with its own kind of reified interplay among beings. 
 
Heidegger does not conceive value as a reified medium of sociation (in the various value-guises of money, commodity, capital, wages, interest, etc.) in the gainful game of estimation among things and mortals. Rather, he asserts that value as "the goldness of gold has dissolved into an effectiveness within the circulation of payment transactions" (Das Goldsein des Goldes hat sich aufgelöst in eine Wirksamkeit innerhalb des Umlaufs des Zahlungsverkehrs, GA78:70) in an "effectiveness in causing effects" (Wirksamkeit im Verursachen von Wirkungen, GA78:70). Heidegger thus has a technical-causal conception of value and money, and displays a patent lack of elementary understanding of a market economy. Moreover, (exchange-)value in its various masks is the reification of what the Greeks experienced as ΤΙΜΗ. Heidegger ignores that value in the modern age is, and has already been disclosed by Marx to be, the medium for estimating the value of things and people
-doch Marx löste ja den „Wert“ der Ware Arbeitskraft auf - (Siehe: http://marx101.blogspot.com/2008/03/value-of-labour-power.html)
in an "exchange process" (Austauschprozeß) that, more properly, is to be seen as a gainful game ungraspable by the schema of cause and effect.

Would the gainful game be overcome when human beings knew themselves as presents of the giving of presence into the finite, temporal clearing? Or would it be only gotten over in a stepping back from an unconditional striving for gain and estimation that puts the game out of joint? 
 
Human beings are used by being / vom Sein / as the destination for the presencing of beings as such. Their shining in the present would have no recipient, their being no radiance, were it not for recipient human being(s) existing as Da-sein in the Da of time-space. Hence human beings, as those exposed to the clearing of time-space in which the interplay of mutual estimation takes place, are never 'out of play'. They are the presents needed as witnesses to the spectacle of beings' interplay. Anaximander's saying ( in a phenomenological reading:
. . . giving one another due worth in estimation, thus bringing the present conjuncture of presents into joint )

points to the interplay of estimation among all beings in their plurality. Only by virtue of this interplay do beings come to shine and hence be in having their shine of presence reflected in due heed and esteem. They would have no worthy stand in presence as disclosed without such interplay and without such interplay being witnessed. Insofar, their very being as presents depends not only on the granting-withholding handing-out by presencing itself, but also on the interplay of estimation among beings of all kinds to which human beings as such are witness. The plural forms employed in Anaximander's saying are therefore indispensable and should be given due regard explicitly, and not conflated carelessly with the singular, as is natural in German.The in-jointness of right can then be seen as fair interplay among a plurality of presents in the present.
(Eldred had mentioned earlier that Heidegger discusses at length in GA78:48ff why it is justified to render in German the Greek plural ΤΑ ΟΝΤΑ in German as the singular 'das Seiende' rather than 'die Seienden'/die Präsenten, die Mitspieler des gainful game in Eldreds Redeweise. And he disagrees. Im Anaximander-Fragment finden sich die plural Formen τοῖς οὖσι und sie logisch vorausetzend, ἀλλήλοις / gegenseitig)

Anaximander: they do right by giving each other due esteem
Marx hat zeigen wollen, dass „giving each other due esteem“
- im Verhältnis von Lohnarbeit und Kapital nicht der Fall ist.
The point is: humans would do right giving each other due esteem.
Doch geht das im „gainful game“? Ist es mit dem System der Lohnarbeit vereinbar?


Eldred folgt Heidegger in der Ablehnung einer strikt naturphilosophischen Interpretation jenes ältesten überlieferten Textschnipsels unserer philosophischen Tradition. Die dort angesprochene umfassende „Aktion“ (Eldred überträgt διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ ἀλλήλοις : „giving each other“) wird als Austausch gefasst. Der materiell-kommerzielle AUSTAUSCH ist aber zugleich Stoffwechselprozess, Natur und (nicht nur „Agri“-)Kultur verbindend. Und unter nun „öko“-logisch genannter Perspektive bekommt auch der vorsokratisch -„natur“philosophische Aspekt des fragmentarischen Weisheitsspruchs Anaximanders in der Verbindung mit sozialkulturaler Argumentation eine sinnvollerweise wiederzubelebende Bedeutung. Wie handeln wir > giving due esteem to each other <, - other = einschließlich der anderen Teile im Ganzen der (für eine Weile) menschliches Leben auf Terra ermöglichenden Natur?

Über die Beziehungen zwischen Wissen, Forschen, Glauben IM HANDELN erschien in zweiter Auflage 2009 /Würzburg das magnum opus des erfrischend scharfsinnig formulierenden Harald Wohlrapp. Erhellend die Begleitumstände der zuletzt aufgeworfenen Frage ist seine Behandlung der Kontroverse “Autofahren?“ (ja, bitte! / nein,danke?) in DER BEGRIFF DES ARGUMENTS, - was Manche/r hinter diesem Titel vielleicht nicht erwartete.