Lecture "Heidegger and the Retrieval of Thinking in Greek Philosophy"

Phenomenology Research Centre, Faculty of Humanities, Charles Universtiy in Prague invites you to a lecture "Heidegger and the Retrieval of Thinking in Greek Philosophy" by Kenneth Maly (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse).

Lecture summary:

All three of the above questions – matters for thinking, Sachen des Denkens – culminate in Heidegger’s rethinking and retranslating the Greek philosophers. For this purpose he especially focuses on Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus. All three of them – in their texts and words – show us nondualistic thinking, the nondual phenomenon, nonconceptual language, and – above all – how translation into another language calls for thinking. I will use examples from all three of these early Greek thinkers. Two of Heidegger’s remarkable insights and ways of saying manifest this. One, the words of the Greek thinkers must claim us, and we are called to heed that claim on us, as to what is thought and thinkable, from the future. Two, this requires our understanding of the two beginnings: the first beginning – in the history of being, at that time, “then” – which is further away from us than the second beginning, which is near to us and of a very different kind. The “beginning” of philosophy some 2500 years ago is paltry when compared with the “beginning” of philosophy that comes from out of the future, i.e., possibility: the one that starts us on the way, that gets us started. Quoting Heidegger: Das Sein ist der Anfang.Being is this start. (GA 54, 10) Not the beginning, but the start. Translating Anfang as “beginning” or translating An-fang as “start” makes all the difference, in translating and in thinking.