It would be very superficial and, above all, very un-Greek, if we would believe that Plato and Aristotle are only determining here that astonishment is the cause of philosophizing. If they were of this opinion, that would mean that at some time or other men were astonished especially about being and that it is and what it is. Impelled by this astonishment, they began to philosophize. As soon as philosophy was in progress, astonishment became superfluous as a propelling force so that it disapeared. It could disapear since it was only an impetus. However, astonishment is ἀρχή--it prevades every step of philosophy. Astonishment is πάθος. We usually translate πάθος with passion, ebullition of emotion. But πάθος is connected with πάσχειν, to suffer, endure, undergo, to be borne along by, to be determined by. It is risky, as it always is in such cases, if we translate πάθος with tuning, by which we mean dis-position and determination. But we must risk this translation because it alone protects us from conceiving πάθος in a very modern psychological sense. Only if we understand πάθος as being attuned to, can we also characterize θαυμάζειν, astonishment, more exactly. In astonishment we restrain ourselves (être en arrêt). We step back, as it were, from being, from the fact that it is as it is and not otherwise. And astonishment is not used up in this retreating from the Being of being, but, as this retreating and self-restraining, it is at the same time forcibly drawn to and, as it were, held fast by that from which it retreats. Thus, astonishment is disposition in which and for which the Being of being unfolds. Astonishment is the tuning within which the Greek philosophers were granted the correspondence to the Being of being.
