[L]et us re-read the famous sentence, steeped in eurocentrism, by M. Heidegger: "If they (science and democracy) are able to leave a mark of the civilization of the entire world it is because they issue from the core of the European historical process, which is to say, the philosophic process."

Looking at the beginning, it seems we cannot help putting the very question that was asked for the first time by the Greeks, ti-estin? The civilization of the whole planet, the sciences of the whole planet have had this mark, and again, calling upon Heidegger, we can read "If they are able to give their own imprint today, if that specifies the history of the man on the whole planet, this happens because they draw origin from the most internal process Western European history, that is to say, from the philosophic one".

It deals, in sum, with the philosophical questioning. The word philosophia, in this way comes to coincide with the action of the birth of our history, with the action of the birth of the present epoch. The Greek adjective philosophoz, philosopher, very probably coined by Heraclitus, attached to the man, means him who loves sophon, him who can speak as the logos speaks. The relation between philein and logos, between the two terms, is armonia, but harmony is not something of static and fixed, is not a synthesis, it is also tension toward the logos, tension for knowledge, establishing a new relation with “the world”. Commonly, by the concept of “world” we assume, usually unreflectively, the totality of that to which human behaviour can be related and assume that this “totality” can be viewed as a whole.

It is useful, anyway, to make a well-timed distinction between harmony and what in English we call attunement (in German Stimmung). The first is the experience of moods, which stir or shake us deeply and has a lasting effect on our whole lives, the second is the superficial attunement, the rapidly fluctuating good and bad mood of everyday life. The first experience arises from out of the fundament or ground (Grund) of human existence and constitutes simultaneously the ground or reason (Grund) for the discovery, by individuals or communities, of the possibilities from which human existence receives its measure. In this case the right and fundamental meaning of logos is not “gathering,” as Heidegger suggests, it can be better signified by the phrase “laying-open of a relation”.

¶ 8:56 PM