enowning
Saturday, October 22, 2011
 
Jussi Backman on understanding movement.
In short, in phenomenologically elaborating the structures of dynamis and energeia, Aristotle gains an initial understanding of the phenomenon of world (Welt) in Heidegger’s sense – of the significance (Bedeutsamkeit) of the world given in the mode of “handiness” (Zuhandenheit), in which particular worldly beings gain their sense through their historical and cultural context of reference (Bewandtnis) and through their futural “for-what-purpose,” their “in-order-to” (um zu) character. The most general structure of this significant givenness of beings is the temporality of being (Temporalität des Seins) that Heidegger intended to work out in the missing Division 3 of Part I of Being and Time, “Time and Being,” and later reworked under the title Ereignis. The temporality of being – that is, the temporal constitution of all meaningfulness – correlates with the ecstatic temporality of Dasein itself: the self-transcendence of the opening (Da) as the context for all possible sense is a precondition for the self-transcendent givenness of beings within this context. The motivated movedness of living is not just one kind of movement or process – it is precisely the movement that renders possible the motional, kinetic givenness of all reality. In 1926, Heidegger argues that “it is indeed precisely the initial phenomenological grasp on life that led to the interpretation of movement and allows the radicalization of ontology.” The horizon for Aristotle’s revolutionary analysis of movement is a pre-ontological understanding of the motional and motivated essence of life itself.
 
Comments:
Not sure about the "motivated" aspect. MH is clear about the flower that blooms without a why.

In a recent enowning post I seem to recall someone analyzing Aristotle as describable in terms of "production." If that equates to "moveable," then motion is basic.
 
In Aristotle, motion (physics) is the canonical example of production/dynamism/change, but there's also growth (biology), and processing a syllogism (logic). The motive is that things strive towards their natural ends; to be all they can be.
 
""MH is clear about the flower that blooms without a why."

Some catholic types seem to assume that the Arisotelian causes--telos in particular do explain biological phenomena (and phyics) better than the reductionist accounts of modern science. Yet ...on inspection, Aristotle himself might be said to offered a posit about a final cause (ie, something like Mind inherent in the substance itself makes roses bloom, because it has been directed to--that is it essence). It's not much of explanation either (ie, not axiomatic) but does have a certain poetic resonance (tho not at all monotheistic)--and rather cumbersome once...the experimentalists took off.
 
J, I have begun to work my way systematically through Stambaugh's The Finitude of Being but family demands have stopped me before I am even half-way through. So I cannot manage the exact quote.

Somewhere in the last half of the book she does say quite clearly that MH is not interested in cause and effect explanations. I remember seeing that because that had become my inkling and I was delighted to see her say so.

I assume, since this Stambaugh book is mostly about the later MH, that MH relegates questions as are usually answered causally with his conception of the fourfold. I have yet to find anyone elaborate the fourfold, even while I am aware from titles that some have given it a go. Maybe enk knows if anyone has successfully tackled that task.
 
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