DICHTUNG, DISCOURSE, THINGVALUE
“Value,” like the French valeur or the German Gewalt, derives from the Latin valere ( “to be strong, vigorous, in good health, well”; “to have force, to be able”; “to be worth”; cf. the salutation, Vale, in PLEASURE, Box 1 ), which is a translation of the Greek dunasthai [δύνασθαι] ( see POWER ). The German language contains a constellation of terms without equivalent, which includes Wert ( worth ), which connotes an “ought-to-be” ( Fr. devoir-être; Ger. werden [“to become,” Fr. devenir] ) and Geltung ( value ) or Gültigkeit ( validity ) from gelten ( to pay tribute ). In German philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, the different uses of “value” were developed in a systematic fashion. A rigorous distinction was made among terms, based primarily on the Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy ( the Baden School ) or on an attempted challenge to that distinction ( Nietzsche’s “conversion” of values, Umwertung der Werte ), whose impact extended to attempts to establish a phenomenology of values ( Max Scheler ). The German network of meanings is thus an essential starting point; see WERT; cf. SOLLEN, WILLKÜR.
The difficulties around the term “value” derive from the diversity of domains in which “value” takes on its significance. In addition to WERT, which articulates the ensemble of these domains, one should refer to parts of the following entries.
I. Value and Virtue
“Value” comes under the lexicon of physical and moral personal qualities ( “strength, bravery, courage” ): see VIRTÙ ( especially for the Greek aretê [ἀϱετή], L. virtus, It. virtù ). See also VIRTUE. On ethics as a system of values more generally, see DUTY, MORALS.
II. Value and Verity ( Truth )
The central question is the articulation among “true,” “valid,” and “valuable,” with the notion of “truth-value”: see TRUTH, and PROPOSITION; see also CROYANCE [BELIEF, DOXA, GLAUBE]. On the separation of the spheres of ethics and knowledge, in particular, see WERT, IV.
III. Value and Meaning
On the relation between the meaning and value of a word, see SENSE ( especially SENSE, III and SENSE, Box 4; cf. HOMONYM, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, WITTICISM, WORD.
IV. Value and Economy
See ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, OIKONOMIA. On the relation between moral value and economic value, see more specifically BERUF, UTILITY; cf. SECULARIZATION, SOBORNOST’.
On the question of a thing, see RES ( and RES, Box 1 ), VORHANDEN.
On the question of “surplus value,” refer to WERT, Box 1.
V. Value and Aesthetics
On the question of values in color and timbre, see STIMMUNG. On the judgment of aesthetic value, see GOÛT, STANDARD, and especially AESTHETICS, ART, BEAUTY, INGENIUM, SUBLIME.
VERB
The word “verb” derives from the Latin verbum, which signifies “word, term, expression,” based on an Indo-European root that led to the Greek Fereô [Ϝεϱέω] ( “I will say” ), the English “word,” and the German Wort. Thus the translation of verbum e verbo refers to the translation “word to word”; see TO TRANSLATE, III.
1. On the manner of designating the minimal unit of language, on the differences between word, noun, and verb, as well as on the evolution in the meaning of the terms that designate them, see WORD; cf. LANGUAGE, LOGOS, SENSE, SIGN.
2. On the verb as a structuring element of a proposition and as a grammatical category, see ESTI, PROPOSITION; see also CATEGORY, PREDICATION, SUBJECT, TO BE.
On the verb as an expression of time and aspect in particular, see ASPECT, PRESENT, TO TI ÊN EINAI; cf. MEMORY. See also ESTI for the present participle, ENGLISH for the gerund.
3. On the primacy of the verb as expression of action, linked to being and existence, see ACT and SPEECH ACT.
4. On the relation between logos [λόγος], verbum, davar [רָבָּד], verb, and divine word, see especially LOGOS, III.B; cf. ALLIANCE, GOD.
VERGÜENZA ( SPANISH )
| ENGLISH | shame, modesty | ||
| FRENCH | vergogne, honte, fierté, honneur | ||
| GREEK | aidôs [αἰδώς] | ||
| ITALIAN | vergogna | ||
| LATIN | verecundia |
SHAME and ART, CIVILTÀ, DESENGAÑO, FAIR, GENIUS, MIMÊSIS, NEIGHBOR, PHRONÊSIS, POLIS, RELIGIO, SPREZZATURA, THEMIS, VIRTÙ
In Spanish and in Italian, the terms vergüenza and vergogna have not fallen out of favor. Indeed, they are used in many different situations. In Spanish, the term has become oriented toward one’s own dignity and self-esteem; but as the Spanish psychologist Eduardo Crespo reminds us, it must be understood as a collective sentiment, illustrated by the expression vergüenza ajena ( “the shame of the other” ), which refers to the shame one feels as a result of the behavior of another. Here we find one of the essential features of aidôs [αἰδώς], the Greek personification of modesty.
I. Vergüenza/Vergogne
The terms vergüenza ( Sp. ), vergogna ( It. ), and vergogne ( Fr. ) share the same Latin root, verecundia, “diffidence,” “bashfulness,” “modesty” or “decency”—which in imperial Latin means “shame in the face of the blameworthy.” Verecundia is itself derived from the adjective verecundus, “respectful,” “reserved”/“revered,” “venerable.” The latter comes from the verb vereor ( or vereri ): in religion, “to fear,” “to revere,” “to have respect or scruple for.” Vereor belongs to a family of words that derive from the Indo-European root ᵒswer-, meaning “pay attention,” like the Greek horan [ὁϱᾶν] ( to look, pay attention, see ).
Current French usage of vergogne is limited to the negative form: sans. The very obsolescence of the term is incorporated into its indication of a well-meaning disapproval bordering on irony. But what does he or she lack when one speaks of someone being or acting sans vergogne? In the adverbial form, one would say a lack of scruples and restraint; the attributive form adds a connotation of immorality: debauched ( Fr. dévergondé ). The definition of vergogne seems only to reside in the space of its opposite: sans vergogne is used exclusively as a figure of accusation or judgment.
One must take the path in exactly the opposite direction in Spanish. Before being sin vergüenza, one must first be con vergüenza. Persons con vergüenza are persons of honor, persons of their word. It is not so much that they keep their promises, but that they are bound by the word that they have given: they commit to cumplire and to à ser cumplido, “to carry out,” “to accomplish a mission” ( to fulfill their duties in relation to the community ), and “to be fulfilled” ( Fr. s’accomplir ). In this context, the oath prevails over judgment. The motif of shame, at that point, derives from betrayal, the violation of a commitment that constitutes an affront to dignity. Self-accomplishment is a “compliment” to the group. The dignity of each is to the credit of the community, is a mark of its worth; on the other hand, to lack vergüenza is to attack the community, to injure it.
In French culture, the negative judgment is a reflection of immoderation, or the extreme nature of a person’s conduct that is stigmatized. Here, the reaction of indignation translates or conjures with the rupture of an implicit contract based on norms and conventions ( see MIMÊSIS, Box 6 ), whereas in Spanish the negative judgment is what guarantees and constructs relations of social solidarity.
To delve more deeply into the Spanish nuances, one can examine the expression vergüenza ajena, which, according to Eduardo Crespo, captures the feeling of shame that is experienced in the face of the incompetent or inadequate conduct of another person. The feeling of shame in this case has nothing to do with the subject’s actions, for he or she has not done anything and cannot feel responsible or be held guilty. It is precisely because there is no direct relation to the person for whom one feels shame that the sentiment of vergüenza exhibits and constructs the tie. Vergüenza in this instance helps build a sense of community. The one who brings vergüenza ( as in the related expression ¿No te da vergüenza? [Aren’t you ashamed?] ) does not stand accused or excluded from the community but is, rather, recalled to the duty of dignity.
■ See Box 1.
|
The sans vergogne of Francis Ponge Many uses of vergüenza resemble those of the Italian vergogna. Many invocations and exclamations in French are to be found in the lexical field of honte, and some of the common expressions from Spanish and Italian can be translated as Quelle honte! C’est une honte! ( For shame! That’s shameful! ), but the meaning in French is most often considerably weakened. For in both Spanish and Italian, to call on vergüenza or vergogna is to bring pride into play. We would like to revive the French vergogne and give it back its meaning, a meaning that Francis Ponge was able to recover from disuse. Three examples suffice to show how the power of the term’s signification can be reactivated. As far as syntax, prose, or rhetoric goes, renewal is a matter of instinct, without shame [sans vergogne] ( yet prudent, concerned only with the result, and with efficacy ). But first and foremost, one must insist that the experience of recent successes ( and setbacks ) in matters of literary or artistic fame has been most enlightening ( Mallarmé, Rimbaud ). We have seen how daring in these areas pays off. ( “My Creative Method,” in Méthodes ) Some may reproach us for expecting our ideas to come from words ( from the dictionary, from limericks, from rime, from who knows where . . . ): well, yes we admit it, one has to use this process, to respect the material, to foresee how it will age, etc. . . . But we would answer that this is not the only way and we also ask that an unprepared contemplation, and a cynicism, a shameless [sans vergogne] honesty of relations, provide some of them as well. ( Ibid. ) [I]f you want to go off on a tangent, follow me—it may look pretentious—but it is so simple at the same time. You won’t have to follow me very far. Just as far as this cigarette butt, for example, to pretty much anything, as long as it is considered honestly, which in the end is to say ( without concern for everything we are told about the mind, about man ) that it is considered shamelessly [sans vergogne]. ( “Tentative orale,” in Méthodes ) This search for the “height of propriety in the use of terms” ( comble de la propriété dans les termes ) revitalizes the word “shame” ( vergogne ). Even if Ponge only uses the negative form sans vergogne, he lets it loose by placing it in other systems of opposition; in a system of echoes and resonances ( which he calls being “only concerned with the result”—from the Latin resulto, which in poetic usage “resounds,” “rebounds as an echo” ). In the first quotation, sans vergogne connotes spontaneity of instinct and invention, and it is linked once again, with daring and prudence, to the concept of being “without fear”—verecundia, verecundus, vereri. In the second quotation, sans vergogne implies the leveling of relationships, freed from the weight of literary and social convention, effectively liberated from an approach that takes the side of the human ( or ideas ) against the side of things. In the third quotation, considering anything ( even a cigarette butt ) sans vergogne means to look at it “honestly,” as worthy of interest without regard to ontological hierarchies. The beauty of the paradox—and the sign of the inventiveness of the work—lies in the following: Ponge needs to do away with shame in order to bring into existence the “honorability” of the side he has chosen. By contrast, the Spanish and Italians must cultivate the positive side of “with”—as in ( avec ) vergogne—to translate their demands for dignity. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ponge, Francis. Méthodes. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. |
II. Aidôs and the Gaze of the Other
The relation to the community expressed in the Spanish expression of vergüenza ajena is clearly transmitted in the Greek aidôs [αἰδώς], which A Greek-English Lexicon ( RT: LSJ ) translates as “reverence, awe, respect, shame, self-respect, sense of honor, regard” and also the so-called active sense, “that which causes shame or scandal,” whence the plural form the “shameful parts” ( Homer, Iliad, 2.262 ).
Although both terms can be translated as a sense of shame, aidôs is to be distinguished from aischunê [αἰσχύνη], “to shame or dishonor” ( RT: LSJ ). The family of the latter word also refers to deformity and ugliness ( as opposed to beauty ); aischunô [αἰσχύνω] has the primary meaning of “to dishonor,” “to tarnish,” or “to disfigure” ( Homer, Iliad, 18.24 ), and Plato opposes aischos [αἶσχος] or aischros [αἰσχϱός] to “beauty,” kalos [ϰαλός], in the Symposium ( 201a 4–5, 206c 4–5; see BEAUTY, Box 1 ). Aischunê is often tied to the body, and in the case of the female body, to modesty in the modern sense. Aischunô takes on the meaning of “blush,” and in botany, aischunomenê [αἰσχυνομένη] means “the sensitive,” as in the “sensitive plant” ( whether Mimosa pudica [RT: Dictionnaire grec-français] or Mimosa asperata [RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque; RT: LSJ] ). In this sense, it can even designate the feeling of shame that results from rape, and in the plural to the act of rape itself, the “the most extreme outrage” ( for example, Isocrates, 64d [= Panegyric, 4.114] ).
Both aidôs and aischunê move from the possibility of feeling shame to that which causes it, so that one could well translate the nuances of either term in the same author sometimes as “honor” and sometimes as “dishonor” ( Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.51.5; 1.5.1 ). This fold in the structure of shame is illustrated by Phaedra, who does not know in which direction ( honor or dishonor ) aidôs will incline her love for Hippolytus: “Yet they are of two sorts, one pleasure being no bad thing, another a burden upon houses. If propriety [kairos ( ϰαιϱός )—due measure or proportion: RT: LSJ] were always clear, there would not be two things designated by the same letters” ( Euripides, Hippolytus, 385–87; for a different analysis, see Williams, Shame and Necessity ). The Latin pudor, from pudeo ( to be ashamed, to cause shame ) has the same type of extension: “ecqui pudor est?” ( where is your sense of shame?; Cicero, In Verrem, 4.18 ); “vulgare alicujus pudorem” ( to broadcast someone’s dishonor; Ovid, Heroides, 11.79 ). But unlike pudor, which, when used by itself is normally rendered by aidôs, the doublet pudor/pudicitia denotes “modesty”/“chastity”: the syntagm pudor et pudicitia speaks to chastity, morality, and high morals ( Cicero, Orationes in Catilinam, 2.25; on the Spartan conjunction of aidôs-aischunê, see Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.84.3 ).
For its part, aidôs defines the Homeric hero: the word ( aidomai [αἴδομαι] ) designates, according to RT: LSJ, “to stand in awe of,” “to fear especially in a moral sense,” “to have regard for a reputation for valor.” In the French translation of The Illiad by Paul Mazon, Ajax rallies the Argives thus: “Amis, soyez des hommes, mettez-vous au coeur le sens de la honte [aidô thesth’ eni thumôi ( αἰδῶ θέσθ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ )]” ( put a sense of shame in your hearts ), followed by “Faites-vous mutuellement honte [allêlous t’ aideisthe ( ἀλλήλους τ’ αἰδεῖσθε )]” ( shame each other mutually, instill a sense of collective shame ) ( Iliad, 15.580–90 ). The 1900 Samuel Butler English translation renders these lines: “ ‘My friends,’ he cried, ‘be men and fear dishonour [aidô thesth’ eni thumôi ( αἰδῶ θέσθ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ )]; quit yourselves in battle, so as to win respect from one another’ [allêlous t’ aideisthe ( ἀλλήλους τ’ αἰδεῖσθε )].” In the 1990 translation by Robert Fagles, shame is more clearly foregrounded as the rallying point of the call to battle: “ ‘Shame, you Argives! All or nothing now— . . . Quick, better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches, slowly crushed to death . . . by far inferior men!’ ”
Aidos and Nemesis ( Aidôs kai Nemesis [Aἰδὼς ϰαὶ Nέμεσις] ) appear together in Homer ( Iliad, 13.122 ) and Hesiod ( Works and Days ). Aidôs is comparable to an individual conscience, while Nemesis is comparable to a public conscience ( for example, the feeling of righteous indignation aroused especially by the sight of the wicked in undeserved prosperity ). But perhaps one can say more correctly that in both shame-honor-respect and justice-vengeance, the look of the other is at issue more than the consciousness of self and that the other’s look determines or insists upon a behavior or punishes a misbehavior ( see CONSCIOUSNESS, Box 1 and THEMIS ). We would support Van Windekens’s ( RT: Dictionnaire étymologique complémentaire de la langue grecque ) etymological hypothesis, according to which aideomai [ἀιδέομαι] would derive from *a-Fidomai [*ἀ-Ϝιδομαι] of the same family as the Greek Fidein [Ϝιδειν], the Latin videre, and the French voir. Aidôs precisely identifies the definitive requirement of the hero, his “regard” for his philoi [φίλοι] and his genos [γένος].
Aidôs as “honor in the eyes of the other” leads to the pursuit of kleos [ϰλέος], “fame,” and timê [τιμή], “honor as esteem,” and more precisely ( in Homer ), that part of honor that men and gods accord to royal dignity and that is materialized in the geras [γέϱας], the gift of honor, the prize due to the king ( cf. RT: Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, vol. 2, chap. 5, “honor and honors” ). The threat to aidôs is hubris [ὕϐϱις], “insolence, arrogance, excess, wantonness, outrage” ( it can also be a heading for legal accusations; cf. RT: LSJ, s.v. hubris [2.3]: a term covering all the more serious injuries done to the person ) and can apply to both the actor and the object. Thus the intrigue of the Iliad is entangled around the hubris of Agamemnon for his quarrel with Achilles over Chryseis and the intrigue of the Odyssey culminates in the hubris of the arrogant suitors ( Odyssey, 4.627; “behaving with their old hubris” ). Hubris, which a popular etymology connects with huper [ὑπέϱ], “to be superior,” consists for Aristotle “in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved” ( Rhetoric, 2.2.1378b23–25 ). Hubris is an indication of a bad or false superiority that men should avoid among themselves as well as when they face the jealous gods: it is an insult to the cosmic and human order.
It is against this background of the regulation of the world in common that one must interpret the myth of Protagoras: an assembly of citizens replaces the assembly of warriors. Even though they already have at their disposal the Promethean technai [τέχναι] as well as the logos [λόγος] of the arts and discursivity ( see ART, LOGOS ), humankind is still being killed off by animals or, if they gather in cities, people kill off each other. Fearing that the race would be wiped out, Zeus “sends Hermes to bring to men aidôs and dikê [δίϰη] [in A. Croiset’s French translation, pudeur et justice; in C.C.W. Taylor’s English translation, “conscience and justice”] to serve as the organizing principles of cities and as the bonds of friendship” ( Plato, Protagoras, 322c2–3 ). Aidôs and dikê together constitute the aretê politikê [ἀϱετὴ πολιτιϰή], the “excellence or virtue in politics,” which, unlike technical competence, needs to be distributed equally among all: “and lay down on my authority a law [nomon ( νόμον ); see LEX] that who cannot share [metechein ( μετέχειν )] in conscience and justice [aidôs and dike] is to be killed as a plague on the city” ( Plato, Protagoras, 322d3–4 ). Aidôs is behavior, good comportment, self-restraint ( the term is conveyed by sôphrosunê [σωφϱοσύνη] “moderation” 323a2; see PHRONÊSIS ) provoked by the regard and expectations of the other. Dikê, before it came to signify “justice,” referred to the rule, usage, procedure, everything that could “bring to light” ( deiknumi [δείϰνυμι] ), public codes of conduct. Thus aidôs is the motivation to respect dikê, and dikê carries weight insofar as everyone experiences aidôs. The Protagorean combination is not concerned with ethical intention, and even less with the autonomy of the moral subject, but instead with a definition of politics as respect for the rules of public behavior—such that, as concludes Protagoras with no risk of moral scandal, the man that we know to be unjust, if he does not pretend in public to be just, is not showing his wisdom, his sincerity, or his moderation ( sôphrosunê ), but simply revealing his folly ( mania [μανία], 323b–c ).
Aristotle underscores this political dimension of aidôs. Insofar as politics is not to be confused with ethics ( Nicomachean Ethics, 1.1; see PRAXIS ), it is of important consequence that aidôs not be a virtue, nor an aretê, but a pathos [πάθος], an affection that involves the body, rather than a hexis [ἕξις], a state or disposition chosen by the soul ( 4.15.1128b10–11; see 2.6.1106b36–1107a1 for a definition of virtue as hexis proairetikê [ἕξις πϱοαιϱετιϰή] ). As a result, the distinction between aidôs and aischunê becomes increasingly fragile ( cf. Rhetorics, 2.6 and J. Tricot’s protestations in his notes to the Nicomachean Ethics, 4.15 ), in which he renders aidôs as the French modestie, but it appears more than ever that aidôs hangs on the intersection of the gazes: as the proverb goes, “shame [aidôs] dwells in the eyes” ( Rhetoric, 2.6.1384a33–36 ). This is why in the Politics, the “visible presence” ( en ophthalmois parousia [ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς παϱουσία] ) of the magistrates is recommended in the gymnasia, for the young as well as the old, because it “induces the true respect which is the form of fear proper to free men” [ἐμποιεῖ τὴν ἀληθινὴν ἀιδῶ καὶ τὸν τῶν ἐλευθέρων φόϐον] ( Nicomachean Ethics, 7.12.1131a40 ); a contrario, the multitude, hoi polloi [οἱ πολλοί] “do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their baseness but through fear of punishment” [οὐδ’ . . . διὰ τὸ αἰσχϱὸν ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς τιμωϱίας] ( ibid., 10.9.1179b20–31 ).
From aidôs, which is linked to the Latin videre ( to see ), to vergüenza, which is linked to the Greek horan ( to see ), we remain in the space of the gaze. But the structure of this space changes. As the public and private spheres diverge, the difference between what has been more recently labeled “shame civilization” and “guilt civilization” is recuperated ( cf. Williams, Shame and Necessity ). When the public space is primary, the oikos [οἶϰος], the “home” or the “family,” takes on the role of the private, specifically of privacy shielded from the public, or the properties proper to truth ( see TRUTH, especially I.B, and PROPERTY ). In serving thus to give structure to the relationship to the gods as well as that between persons, aidôs becomes constitutive of shame civilization. With the rise of subjectivity and the mediation of links between human beings and God, it is conscience ( see CONSCIOUSNESS )—the eyes of the self and the eyes of God, not the eyes of the other—that gives structure to a form of the private that can be publicly presented: guilt civilization. But perhaps the notion of shame civilization is not refined enough to signify aidôs. The English word “shame,” or the German Scham, derives from a root that means to “cover up” ( see, for example, RT: Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language ). There can be little doubt that error and culpability were required when “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked” ( Gen. 3:7 )—Greek statuary did not conceal the pudenda. This is why vergogne, and to a lesser extent vergüenza, both of which preserve a connection to the Greek aidôs and the Latin videre, are vestigial remainders of a shame culture that continues to mutate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross, revised by J. O. Urmson. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen, 1984.
. Rhetoric. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press / Bollingen, 1984.
Cairns, Douglas L. Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Cassin, Barbara. L’effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. In Verrem. In The Verrine Orations, translated by Leonard Hugh Graham Greenwood. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
Crespo, Eduardo. “Emotions in Spain.” In The Social Construction of Emotions, edited by R. Harré, 209–17. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Euripides. Hippolytus. Translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Hesiod. Theogony; Works and Days; Shield. Translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.
. Iliade. Translated by Paul Mazon. Paris: Collection des Universités de France, 1961.
. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Samuel Butler. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1925. First published in 1900.
Ovid. Heroides. Translated by G. Showerman. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Plato. Protagoras. Translated by C.C.W. Taylor, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Williams, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
VERNEINUNG ( GERMAN )
| ENGLISH | negation, denial, denegation |
NEGATION and ANXIETY, AUFHEBEN, CONSCIOUSNESS, DRIVE, ENTSTELLUNG, ES, SUBJECT, UNCONSCIOUS
Formed from the verb verneinen ( “to say no [to a question], to answer in the negative,” and by extension, “to deny, refuse” ), the substantive Verneinung has come to designate, in psychoanalysis, a turn of phrase in which the analysand becomes conscious of a thought-content while simultaneously disowning what he is saying. To achieve this, the analysand employs a grammatical or logical denial of the content of the judgment he offers and attributes the undesirable thought to the other, the analyst. The classical Freudian example goes as follows: “You ask who this person in the dream can be. It’s not my mother” ( “Die Verneinung”; “Negation,” 235 ). The French translations initially proposed, denégation or déjugement ( the terms used by Jean Hyppolite ), erased the linguistic connection between the logical operation of negation and the conflictual relationship of the subject in relation to his own thought-content. But after lengthy discussions regarding the relations of psychoanalysis to German language philosophy, both Kantian and post-Kantian, the translation of Verneinung returned to “negation.” As J. Laplanche reminds us in the French edition of the Standard Works, the Œvres complètes of Freud, there were more than ten different translations of the term by French psychoanalysts. The first dates from 1934 ( H. Hoesli, Revue française de psychanalyse 7, no. 2: 174–77 ). The review Le Coq Héron published several others in 1975 ( and 1976 ) for comparison.
I. The No and Negation in Psychoanalysis
The history of the translation of Verneinung is a function of the fact that psychoanalysis seeks to understand what is happening in relation to the instinctual drives when a subject uses logical categories. And in philosophy, one must take into account the fact that this same term is usually used as a synonym for “negation,” a word that takes up the Latin term. In addition, modern metaphysics sometimes approaches the question of the status of the real in relation to thought through the certainty of the subject in his affirmations, making use of the same vocabulary by which Freud characterizes the various compromises that construct the subject as divided through the recognition of castration on the one hand, and on the other hand, by the subject’s refusal of the same. For Freud, the subject is formed by the ways in which he compromises with everything that poses a threat to the omnipotence of his desires, whether he becomes set in the negation ( Verneinung ) of castration, in its denial ( Verleugnung ), or in its repudiation ( Verwerfung ) ( Fr. forclusion ), which lead, respectively, to neurosis, perversion, or psychosis.
Thus, the specific manner by which to deny the fact of castration is constitutive of the different modes of structure for the subject. At first glance it would seem that philosophy and psychoanalysis do not engage one another on the subject of Verneinung. The former speaks of logical inferences and of utterances relating to the world. The latter, on the other hand, approaches negation as a certain way of setting up a subjective division that applies to a subject of desire faced with a “lack of being” that sexual difference introduces into human reality. But on closer analysis the question of beliefs is a place of multiple encounters between psychoanalysis and philosophy in relation to negation.
For Freud “negation” and Verneinung are synonymous. He approaches the use of the expression “don’t” ( Ger. nicht, Fr. ne pas ) by superimposing the linearity of discourse and the dissymetries of the system of the cure; in speaking, the analysand speaks to an Other. In a first moment, negation enables an accommodation, a distribution, between the self and the supposed Other, of what constitutes the subject. By attributing the thought to another through negation, the patient can come to terms with a thought-content that constructs him or her as a subject, all the while rejecting that construction. In a second phase, knowledge as such, even in its positive affirmation, can be caught up in that same system of alterity that sets negation to work: to know something, whether something of one’s self or something outside the self, always consists of keeping at bay that which threatens us. Denial keeps that distance, as long as an Other can be assigned that which we cannot admit even as we express it. The theory of negation stands with the theory of knowledge, when understood as being carried along by drives. As one can see, it is precisely because the linearity of discourse carries with it a set of coordinates of a condition of language linked to the work of desires that Freud’s Verneinung is distinct from an ontology of negation.
But in a third pass at an approach to negation, Freud in 1925 makes an incursion into the logic of judgment by referring to Aristotelian logic, which serves to articulate ontology and logic. By distinguishing the effect of the copula “to be” as joining or dis-joining subject and predicate, from the absolute meaning of “to be,” it is possible to define two functions for negation in the implication of the subject in his or her judgments. To untie the bonds between subject and predicate through a judgment in the form of a negative attribution is to spit out or expel ( ausstossen ) something to an outside that is constituted as bad and as outside by this very act of expulsion. The negation of the judgment of existence, which rejects while it knows, is a way of coming back on this first exclusion of an outside. It is an important point: the Verneinung as refusal is less radical a refusal than the expulsion that sets up the excluded. It is a victory over the radical exclusion of some content that would cause too much pain if it were recognized as inside the self. But this victory comes at a high price: the intellectual recognition of content distances it from the self; for Freud, it serves to maintain the repression. One could even claim that it establishes the repression by leaving affect out of the new-found awareness. Negation does not establish just any repression: repression through consciousness occurs nearest the most menacing figures of alterity, in the immediate vicinity of that which a subject has been tempted to radically expel from the self. Negation is a second recourse, in the face of imminent threat—and in relation to a primary defense that consists of destroying the threat by expulsion—but negation requires the prior destruction of affect in the subject. Here Freud expresses himself “backwards”: he says that negation shows how the “intellect separates itself from affect.” But by dwelling on negation as a second recourse to an expulsion that sought to abolish a content through expulsion, he in fact establishes the reverse: negation restores that which had previously been abolished, but without reestablishing the affect or instinctual content of what it enables to come to consciousness. Negation does not illustrate how the intellect separates itself from affect, but rather that negation is an attempt by the subject to limit or offset the previous exclusion of a content. It is an attempt that establishes conscious thought without being able to reconcile the subject with his own experience. Negation does not suffice to account for repression, but it characterizes that form of repression that is linked to the establishment, in thought, of logic. Freud locates negation in the sequences of discourse and judgment, but he relates it to an experimental plan, somewhat like what Kant did when he left behind the formalism of onto-logic and reflected on the negative grandeurs, or more generally on the transcendental situations that our utterances and judgments return to. But in Freud, negation does not return to non-being.
The text of 1925 still does not make explicit the question of the relations between the lack inherent in desire and negation. Affirmative judgments of existence, according to Freud, are not a matter of finding an object in reality that corresponds to a desire, but to find it again, to regain it, which means that there is the possibility, already inscribed in the system of the psyche, of “not” regaining it. Admitting the absence ( of the object that would be good to regain ) would be another possible function of negation, which Freud does not address explicitly in this text, but which is nonetheless implicit in it. It is on this point that Lacan, making reference to Hyppolite, takes up the question again.
II. Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Readings of Negation
When Lacan asks Hyppolite whether the Freudian Verneinung has anything to do with Hegelian negativity, he returns to this possible relation between negation and non-being: in the first function of judgment, which unties the bonds between subject and predicate in such a manner that the bad is radically expelled to the outside, Lacan dwells on the effective workings of the death drive and wonders about its link with Hegelian negativity. He asks Hippolyte if the use of negation in language has something to do with the reality of death: whether there is a relation not only between negation and the lack internal to desire, but also between the destructiveness of desire and the negation that functions through expulsion ( Ausstossung ). He stresses the death instinct, which was, of course, a notion found in Freud, but which Freud did not set in direct relation with an ontology of negation. Freud limited himself to considering the psychotic’s compulsion to deny everything as a panic of negation, which at that point no longer plays the role of Verneinung, as a compromise between radical exclusion and the acceptance of a threatening thought-content. Lacan, on the other hand, asks the philosopher who specializes in Hegel to clarify such a possibility, which also means that the bridges between psychoanalysis and philosophy have been mended.
Hyppolite’s reading is a subtle one: by translating Verneinung as dénegation ( denegation ) or déjugement ( readjudication ), he separates psychoanalysis from philosophy, since Hegelian negation has an ontological reach: death is active in reality, not just in the case of the desiring and thinking subject, but in the real taken as a universal whole. Freud relies on a distinction between affirmative judgment ( Bejahung ) and negative judgment ( Verneinung ), which is why he uses the latter as a general term, as the correlate and opposite of affirmation.
Curiously, Hyppolite does not give a direct answer to Lacan’s question regarding the lack of desire in relation to Hegelian negativity. What he focuses on in Freud is the privileging of negation in relation to affirmation: in the relationship set up between the two functions of judgment, affirmation is the simple substitute for the logical unification of subject and predicate, that is to say, between a subject and a thought-content in psychoanalysis. Negation, on the other hand, is more than an impulse to untie the subject from the predicate, to expel something from the self. Verneinung is a subsequent effect ( Nachfolge ) of the Ausstossung. There is something creative about negation, something that produces out of a previous destruction. “A margin for thought can be generated, an appearance of being so in the guise of not being so” ( Lacan, Écrits ). Hyppolite clearly sees that the purpose of Freud’s incursion into the theory of judgment is not to lead him back to Aristotle but to characterize the function of negation as a sublimating link between the two functions of the verb “to be.” Affirming replaces unification. To deny is more than to destroy. Taking Hyppolite’s formulation as a basis, one could say that for psychoanalysis the appearance of being, ontology, is conveyed by an instinctual process in which negation is the operator. Being and language are never alone in their own company.
It is all the more astounding that Hyppolite nonetheless brings together this instinctual function of negation and Hegelian negation, which is an ontological operator. Indeed, the latter occurs in being and experience, rather than in judgment. Hyppolite refers to an example in the Phenomenology of Mind: the struggle to the death for recognition invents a negation that modifies the absolute negation of animal desire. This first negation destroyed its object. The second negation, on the other hand, opens the way to the future by removing a situation of mastery and slavery from the risk of complete destruction. Hyppolite borrows the term “sublimation” from Freud and speaks of an “ideal negation,” an idea that the philosopher obtains from the Freudian Verneinung, and which would avoid a real destruction. The relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy are thus more complex in the case of negation: Hyppolite starts from the idea of a revocation of judgment ( déjugement ), which serves to distinguish psychoanalysis from philosophy and which limits the scope of Verneinung to settling conflict internal to a subject. But in the end he draws on the idea of the sublimation of destruction to reinterpret Hegelian negativity.
Hyppolite starts out by distinguishing negativity from ( de )negation. Nonetheless, he brings Freud and Hegel together on two points: first—and this is perhaps superficial—he calls the Freudian example in which the patient goes back on the first negation of a thought-content “negation of the negation” ( Lacan, Écrits, 883 ). But this Freudian example is not a case of negativity, that mysterious sojourn that converts nothingness into being. What is at issue is how an intellectual acceptance of a previously denied content can still maintain the nonacceptance of that content. But this connection is made in order to introduce another observation: Hyppolite then connects the inventive character of Freudian Verneinung, which manages to limit a first exclusion, to the inventive character of negativity, which manages to limit the destruction at play in the work of the negative. The example he takes here is the passage from the absolute destruction of its object by animal desire according to Hegel, to the resource that in the “dialectic of master and slave” substitutes a situation of domination and slavery for the death of the adversary, enabling the possibility of a later invention of human existence. The negation of negation would be an ideal negation, as the Verneinung is an end result of expulsion, which limits the destructiveness of the Freudian death instinct.
The rapprochement between philosophical negativity and negation in psychoanalysis has one more consequence: the unilateral underscoring of the inventive aspect of negation in psychoanalysis, even though it is true that this negation differs from Verwerfung as the complete abolition of a content that cannot be recovered later. Yet it still does not eliminate the repression; it establishes it in a manner particularly difficult to transform in the therapeutic context of the transference: the destruction of part of the self derives sustenance from the activity of knowledge and the development of logical thought.
III. “Negation,” Verneinung, Verleugnung in the Philosophical Problematics of Belief
Verneinung is the term employed in German to designate negation as applied to the form of attributive judgment ( in Kant, for example ) or to a proposition ( for example, in Frege ). So we can understand that Frege would entitle a text from 1921 Die Verneinung, as Freud would do in 1925, even though they were dealing with separate sets of problems. Frege is only interested in objective thoughts “independent of anyone thinking them,” and the only negation that he is concerned with applies to a complete proposition: “It is the case that / It is not the case that. . . .” Freud, on the other hand, is interested in the way a subject carries on his thinking, so to speak, but he finds it in a counterpoint of affirmative and negative judgments, which brings him too to speak of Verneinung.
Kant bases his redefinition of formal logic into transcendental logic on a study of judgment: it is important for him to distinguish cases in which a judgment—either positive or negative—has an objective correlative from cases in which reason confuses a nothing with a something. He thus has recourse to the term Verneinung in its transcendental function as constitutive of a real object of knowledge. Thus, as early as 1763, he sees the importance of the concept of negative grandeur: an algebraic algorithm for finding the resultant of conflicting forces can be made to correspond to opposing judgments, one positive and the other negative. But since attention to judgment is for Kant only a stopping point on the path to transcendental and critical propositions, one can understand how Verneinung would be a synonym for “negation” in his terminology and that both words could apply either to a proposition as a whole or to one of its terms. This is the case, for example, when he opposes two pairs of antinomic judgments in relation to the world: the world is infinite or it is not infinite / the world is finite or infinite. What is important for Kant in relation to such pairs is to understand the difference between two cases. In one case negation divides the two alternative terms in a mutually exclusive way because the transcendental judgment, if it is correctly formed, has a real correlate. In another case the negation—whether it applies to a term or to the whole proposition—makes no distinction between the two alternative terms for the simple reason that there is no “case” at all, even if the formal appearance of the judgments seems to depict some “something” in this opposition of poorly formed propositions. Thus Kant usually uses Verneinung, but sometimes he has recourse to “negation”; and he accepts the difference between a negation that applies to a term and the negation that applies to a judgment ( especially when he reflects on the question of knowing whether there are negations compatible with the idea of God ), but he recognizes it as being of secondary importance compared to his transcendental concerns.
■ See Box 1.
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The alternatives of Verneinung ( Kant ) and Negativität ( Hegel ) Unlike Kant, Hegel never uses the term Verneinung but uses “negation” instead. This is consistent with his philosophical direction: he shows that the form of the proposition, specifically because it distinguishes between subject and object—whether to separate them or unify them—is ill suited to grasp the speculative element of thought. In effect, the latter consists in the destruction and internal critique of the propositional form of thought that occurs when negation affects each part of the proposition in turn, thereby critiquing the abstract hypothesis of their separation. It would seem that Hegel never gave his reasons for rejecting Verneinung, but his radical renunciation of the term is an integral part of his critique of the attributive proposition. Such an abandonment is all the more remarkable in that it extends to the author’s treatment of consciousness and all relations it has to itself, as well as to pure concepts of logic. In his critique of the moral vision of the world, one might well expect his descriptions of the tortuous displacement of moral consciousness in relation to itself, even including its disguises ( die Verstellung ), to include terms like “misreading” ( Fr. méconnaissance ) or “misjudgment” ( Fr. déjugement ). But such is not the case. Only the terms “negation,” Negativität, and Aufhebung are employed. The moral conscience “abolishes” its own conviction, without denial, misreading, or rejection. Even if the empirical positions of consciousness resemble those experiences in which consciousness revokes its judgment ( Fr. se déjuge ), to use Hyppolite’s term, Hegel never comes back to Verneinung because his primary interest is to break down the separation of subject and predicate in judgment ( whereas Kant relies on it in order to evaluate, depending on the case, the capacities for tying them together, to establish a position of existence by means of the transcendental synthesis ). To this end, Hegel works on what starts to move in Being when “negation,” in the logos, affects in turn the subject, the verb, the predicate, and the adverb ( for example, the passage of the adverbial form nichts, “in no way,” to the noun das Nichts, “nothingness,” enables the stringing together of the first categories in the Science of Logic [Wissenschaft der Logik], 66–67, §133, chap. 1 ). Even when he describes the arcana of self-consiousness, Hegel’s intent is ontological. This is why he resolutely puts aside the verb verneinen. This is even more striking when he occasionally refers to specific Kantian expressions ( Phänomenologie des Geistes, 565; Phenomenology of Spirit, 374 ) ( “a whole nest” of thoughtless contradictions ). In that very context Kant used the term Verneinung ( Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 573–75, B 601-3, in Werkausgabe, 4: 506–17 ). But in his reference to Kant and without explanation, Hegel replaces Verneinung by Aufhebung. For example, when he describes the permanent perversion ( Fr. travestissement ) of the moral consciousness, he employs the expression that Kant reserved for the illusory and tortuous reasonings regarding God, the ideal of pure reason. But at the same time, without explanation, he replaces Verneinung, which Kant had employed in that very passage, with “negation.” With all due respect to Jean Hyppolite, the negation of negation is thus not a Verneinung. |
When the authors we have referred to use other German verbs such as leugnen, ableugnen, bezweifeln, and verneinen in relation to negation, we can see in these different choices a concern to distinguish the different positions of consciousness of metaphysics when it comes to doubting the reality of the external world. Kant has recourse to the difference between doubting ( bezweifeln ) and denying ( leugnen ) to distinguish Descartes from Berkeley, that is to say, questioning idealism from dogmatic idealism. Schelling establishes the same distinction between bezweifeln and leugnen so as to oppose Descartes from both Berkeley and Malebranche together ( Einleitung, 76–77 ).
Kant does not maintain these distinctions in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, which claims to “refute idealism,” instead of inscribing, as he did in the first edition, the theses on the real within the discourses on reason that constitute so many forms of belief. In that text, in effect, he affirmed that the existence of external reality could not be demonstrated but that it could be placed “out of doubt” ( ausser Zweifel ). One can understand, a contrario, that when psychoanalysis distinguishes between the positions of belief by which a human subject works out its relations to the real and to sexual difference—and hence indirectly to what philosophers call reality—it defines the work of negation in discourse in a far more explicit and precise fashion, by distinguishing between “denying” ( verneinen ), “disavowing” ( verleugnen ), and “foreclosing” ( verwerfen ).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baudry, Francis. “Negation and Its Vicissitudes in the History of Psychoanalysis—Its Particular Impact on French Psychoanalysis.” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 25, no. 3 ( July 1989 ): 501–8.
Freud, Sigmund. “Die Verneinung.” In Gesammte Werke. Vol. 14. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1948.
. “Negation.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 19 ( 1923–1925 ): The Ego and the Id and Other Works. Edited by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1989.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: International Humanities Press, 1969.
. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Hyppolite, Jean. “Commentaire parlé sur la Verneinung de Freud.” In Écrits by Jacques Lacan, 879–87. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Translation by Bruce Fink: Écrits. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Schelling, Friedrich. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Edited by W. E. Ehrhardt. Schellingiana 11. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989. First published in 1830.
This, Bernard, and Pierre Thèves. Die Verneinung. Nouvelle traduction. Étude comparée de quelques traductions disponibles. Commentaires sur la traduction en général. Le Coq Héron 52 ( 1975 ).
. Die Verneinung II. Essai de remise en place du concept de dénégation. Correspondance avec J. Laplanche et R. Lew. “Die Verneinung dans la théorie freudienne.” Le Coq Héron 55 ( 1976 ).
. Die Verneinung III. J. Rosenberg: “Kant avec Freud, la négation.” R. Schutzwalder-Lochard. “De la realité psychique.” Le Coq Héron 60 ( 1977 ).
Thom, Martin. “Verneinung, Verwerfung, Ausstossung: A Problem in the Interpretation of Freud.” In The Talking Cure: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Language. Edited by Colin MacCabe, 162–87. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981.
Ver Eecke, Wilfried. Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative: Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
VIRTÙ ( ITALIAN )
| ENGLISH | virtue | ||
| FRENCH | vertu | ||
| GERMAN | Tugend | ||
| GREEK | aretê [ἀϱετή] | ||
| LATIN | virtus, virtutes |
VIRTUE and DESTINY, FORCE, GENIUS, GLÜCK, LEX, MORALS, PHRONÊSIS, PIETAS, SECULARIZATION, TALENT
The Italian virtù, constructed within the semantic field of the Greek aretê ( excellence ) and the Roman virtus ( courage ) as well as the Christian virtutes ( virtues ), takes on a new complexity with Niccolò Machiavelli and could be said to rise to the rank of concept. For Machiavelli, virtù must relate to two fundamental paradigms: the paradigm of virtue/fortune, as a principle of distinction between the new States, and the paradigm of virtue as decision and resolute action. In Machiavelli, the transition from the first to the second of these paradigms occurs through a transvaluation of the qualities traditionally associated with virtue, the result of which is to pass beyond these two paradigms in conceiving fortune as historical necessity. This necessity, to which abstract virtue must pay heed, is what Hegel in the Phenomenology of the Spirit will call “the way of the world” ( Weltlauf ). In relating virtù to temporality and historical necessity, Machiavelli moves away from the virtue of ancient philosophers, from Plato to the Stoics and to Augustine, to reconnect with the tradition of virtus of the Roman Republic, and he announces the relation between power and necessity that will be found in Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
I. The Two Fundamental Paradigms: Virtù/Fortuna and Virtù-Impetus
It is only in his major writings after 1512, The Prince and The Discourses, that Machiavelli takes advantage of his experience as a diplomat and his familiarity with the work of Greek and Roman historians to speak of virtù, and to lay claim to the two fundamental paradigms that give it structure. Though he neither explicitly lays out the problematic nor pens the word itself, his missions to Cesare Borgia in 1502–3 and to Julius II in 1506 clearly helped to orient his thinking on the topic.
The first paradigm concerns Cesare Borgia and the distribution of virtue and fortune. The specific virtue of this model of the “new prince” for Machiavelli was to set the proper basis for his politics, but the model’s success depended on chance—in this case, the life of the pope. Thus in The Prince ( chap. 6 ), Machiavelli made Cesare Borgia the very model of the “virtuous man” who nonetheless is struck down by “extraordinary and extremely malign fortune.” Still, Borgia’s defeat was determined not only by the death of the pope, but also by his lack of foresight in allowing an enemy ( Julius II ) to then be elected pope. The relationship between virtue and fortune is constructed in an unstable equilibrium dependent on the success or failure of the enterprise.
In the course of his mission to Julius II, Machiavelli encountered the second paradigm of virtù, which is a matter of decisiveness, determination, and audacity. In an important letter to Giovan Battista Soderini, who was the nephew of the gonfalonier of Florence ( published under the title Ghiribizzi, or “fantasies” ), Machiavelli sketched out the principles of political decision-making. He asked himself how, in his conflict with his enemy Gianpaolo Baglioni, the pope was able to obtain by chance and without force that which he would probably only have succeeded in obtaining with difficulty through orders and arms. This is because, as Machiavelli says, men govern themselves according to different whims and talents. And since the times are unstable and changing, he who succeeds, whether he is good or bad, is the one who either best adapts his nature to the order of things ( the role of virtù ), or is lucky enough to live in times that correspond to his nature ( the role of fortuna ). As far as the first possibility is concerned, Machiavelli is quite skeptical. Since for him, human nature is something rigid and immutable, it is just as unlikely for there to be men capable of changing their natures according to the times as it is for there to be wise men capable of ruling the stars. So what is to be done? Human actions, wrote Machiavelli ( The Prince, chap. 25 ), depend in equal parts on free will and fortune, the latter of which reveals its might most clearly where there is no clear virtue in place to resist it. In this respect, virtù is related to Greek phronêsis and to Roman prudentia, qualities that consist in taking precautionary measures, as when one erects dikes to protect against river flooding. Machiavelli returns to the theorem of Ghiribizzi and concludes that if there are no qualities that are good in themselves, “it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled” ( The Prince, chap. 25 ). In addition to virtue as prudence, there is virtue as impetus, in the decisive and deciding act. It is the “impulse and passion” of Julius II ( Discourses, 3.9, trans. Thomsen ). It is the principle according to which “fortune is more friendly to the one who attacks than to the one who defends” ( Florentine Histories, 4.6, trans. Banfield and Mansfield ). And it is the “extraordinary” act by which one obtains that which is beyond the reach of ordinary actions ( Discourses, 3.36 and 44 ). The problem of fortune returns in the Discourses ( 3.9 ), providing further fodder to the partisans of Machiavelli’s republicanism, who argue that republics have a better “fortune” than principalities, “since they are better positioned to adapt themselves to diverse circumstances.” The issue of fortune returns one last time in the Discourses ( 3.21 ), linked to the counsel that a careful dose of cruelty and generosity can provide the proper mixture of personal virtue with the terror one needs to inspire if one wants to obtain respect.
II. The Transvaluation of Values from Antiquity
The second paradigm of virtù would seem to qualify the basic elements of political decision-making: preemptive prudence on the one hand, resolutive impetus on the other. Fortune acts as an independent variable relative to virtue ( as shown throughout the Discourses ). Virtue is all the stronger and fortune all the weaker when men act out of necessity and not out of choice ( 1.1 ). Good institutions lead to good fortune ( 1.11 ). Rome was able to benefit from the “fortune and virtue” of its consuls, and a well-organized republic should necessarily have a succession of able rulers ( 1.20 ). Machiavelli claims that the Romans were able to dominate more through their valor and ability ( virtue ) than through good fortune ( 2.1 ). And he constantly criticizes Italian princes who attribute the ruin of Italy to fortune rather than to their lack of virtue. The culmination of Machiavelli’s thought is to be found in chapters 29 and 30 of the Discourses, in which he outlines a kind of pre-Hegelian philosophy of history, in which fortune no longer appears in opposition to virtue but rather seems to flow through it. Fortune blinds the minds of men who are opposed to her desires, but when she “wishes to effect some great result, she selects a man of such spirit and ability that he will recognize the opportunity which is afforded him.” Machiavelli concludes that men can second-guess Fortune, but they cannot oppose her: “They may weave the threads, but they cannot break them. They should never abandon her though, because they can never know her aims, which she pursues by dark and devious means. Men should remain hopeful, never giving up no matter what troubles or ill fortune may befall them.”
After arriving at a wager in the second paradigm that recalls the Virgilian adage audaces fortuna iuvat ( Fortune favors the bold ), Machiavelli’s qualification of virtue reaches another adage, from Seneca this time: “fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt” ( The Fates lead the willing soul, but drag along the unwilling one ). One must submit to this kind of necessity if one wants to succeed. But if fortune comes to the aid of volentem, what is the object of this will? What does it “intend”? What is its eidetic target? Since antiquity, virtue ( whether it takes the form of the Greek aretê [see Box 1], the Roman virtus, or the Christian virtutes ) has referred to a form of human action based on a teleological principle, whether it be Socratic wisdom, Epicurean pleasure ( hêdonê ), Stoic happiness ( eudaimonia, vita beata ), or those actions that, since Augustine, are meant to provide access to the City of God. With Machiavelli, however, the value of virtue or of good political conduct consists of love of country, affection for liberty, and state security. Regarding love of country, the object of the sagacious legislator and founder of a new state should be “to promote the public good, and not his private interests, and to prefer his country to his own successors” ( Discourses, 1.9 ). The “exaltation and defense of country” is, according to Machiavelli, something that even the Christian religion endorses, despite its location of the ultimate good “in humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects” ( 2.2 ). As for Brutus’s assassination of his sons, the crime is nonetheless an object of praise for Machiavelli ( and thus an act of virtue ) because it was committed “for the good of his country, and not for the advancement of any ambitious purposes of his own.” Thus virtue is that “natural affection that each man should hold for his country” ( letter of 16 October 1502 ), or ( as he claims in a letter of 16 April 1527 ) the ability to esteem his fatherland more than his own soul, like those Florentine magistrates who dared oppose Pope Gregory IX in 1357–58 ( Florentine Histories, 3.7, trans. Banfield and Mansfield ).
Machiavelli’s transvaluation of ancient values has contributed to the negative reputation of The Prince because it is proposed in the name of state security rather than of wisdom, pleasure, or happiness. In chapters 15 through 21 ( summarized in Discourses 3.41 ), he condenses love of country and security of the State into the formula “safety of the country”: “For where the very safety of the country [salute della patria] depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. On the contrary, the only question that is valid is: What course will save the life and liberty of the country?” So it is as a function of the “safety of the country” that the “qualities” of traditional ethics change their meaning, as well as their relation to vice and virtue. Thus a prince should not shy from those vices without which he may not be able to safeguard the State. To follow what might seem to be the virtuous course could be his downfall, while taking the vicious one could ensure his security ( securità ) and well-being. The prince must then eschew liberality and not fear the infamy of cruelty if he wants to hold his subjects “united and faithful.” He must not hold to his word if it would damage his rule. He must know how to be as wise as a fox or as strong as a lion depending on the circumstance, and he must act if necessary against faith, charity, humanity, and the respect of religion. Machiavelli does seem to deplore conduct that plays on appearance and reality, on simulation and dissimulation. It can ultimately lead to a kind of absolute relativism of political action ( of the Jesuitical type ), if it is not required by necessity. It is only out of necessity that the prince must adopt “a versatile mind, capable of changing according to the winds and changes of fortune . . . [he should not] swerve away from the good if possible, but [he should] know to resort to evil if necessity demands it” ( The Prince, chap. 18 ).
■ See Box 1.
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Aretê: Excellence and purpose
Aretê [ἀϱετή]: excellence, value, virtue, merit, consideration. . . . In ancient Greek, a single word, based on aristos [ἄϱιστος], the superlative of agathos [ἀγαθός], “good” ( see also BEAUTY, Box 1 ), serves to designate all sorts of excellence that are thus bound together: excellence of the body ( “value,” in the sense of “valor” and “courage,” which is linked to strength, beauty, and health—and is inseparable from the qualities of the heart and intelligence that already in Homer constitute the excellence of the hero [Iliad 15.642ff.], of the gods [ibid., 9.498], and even of women [Odyssey 2.206] ), as well as the soul ( with “virtue” defined as control of the self [sôphronein aretê megistê ( σωφϱονεῖν ἀϱετὴ μεγίστη ), Heraclitus 112], by respect [to aideisthai ( τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι ), Democritus 179], and by political and public virtues just as by ethical and private ones [Plato, Republic 6.500d, 9.576c16] ), including the rewards of that excellence, the consideration and happiness that come with it ( Odyssey 12.45; Hesiod, Works and Days 313 ). In a much broader context, the word refers to the “competence” of a workman as well as to the “performance” of a well-adapted organ that functions correctly. Aretê is thus the accomplishment or realization of purpose, whatever that may be, and for any being. Aretê always has an ontological dimension, even when it is translated as “virtue” in a moral sense. And if the value of human action can effectively be defined within moral systems according to some determinate teleological principle ( wisdom, sophia [σοφία]; pleasure, hêdonê [ἡδονή], etc. ), it is because every value as such is essentially the enactment of a telos [τέλος], of an end, of a proper aim, as in the notion of perfecting an art: hê aretê teleiôsis tis [ἡ ἀϱετὴ τελείωσίς τις] ( Aristotle, Metaphysics Δ.16, 1021b20, trans. Tredennick ), “goodness is a kind of perfection” such that one can speak of a “perfect doctor” and, as even he points out, a “perfect thief.” In order to illustrate some of the difficulties of translation into a modern moral idiom, let us look at two classical texts whose intent is to define what we call “virtue,” to determine whether it can be taught and to see it in practice, but whose breadth of examples forces us to considerably enlarge our framework of understanding. In Plato’s Protagoras, Protagoras claims to teach the technê politikê [τέχνη πολιτιϰή], and Socrates doubts whether this is possible, because he doubts that virtue can be taught ( 320b ). The two registers of art and ethics are indissolubly tied, and both fall under the rubric of aretê. Everything hinges on the comparison between competence in the technai [τέχναι] ( for example, the aretê tektonikê [ἀϱετή τεϰτονιϰή], which can be translated as “architectural merit” or “excellence in building,” 322d ) and excellence in politics ( aretê politikê [ἀϱετή πολιτιϰή], 323a ), which opens up the question of “human excellence” ( 325a2 ) and “excellence” tout court ( 328e9 ). There is no satisfactory translation, even if “excellence” is the most common denominator, because no translation makes sense for every occurrence. If one wants to find out about technical competence, one consults the practitioners of an art—architects, for example, if one wants to build a rampart. But if one wishes to understand the practices of the Athenian assembly, which pertains to how to run the city well, then one listens to everyone, the blacksmith and the sailor, the rich man and the poor man, the nobleman and the commoner. For Socrates, the fact that the Athenians do not consider virtue to be teachable proves that they think there is nothing to teach. But for Protagoras, this is the proof—as illustrated in the celebrated myth of Zeus’s equal distribution of aidôs [αἰδώς] and dikê [διϰή], respect and justice ( see aidôs under VERGÜENZA and dikê under THEMIS ), to all men in common—that political virtue, unlike technical competence, is shared simply and equally by all those who make up the city. That, Socrates, is why the Athenians—as indeed everyone else—hold the view that when their deliberations require excellence at building [peri aretês tektonikês ( πεϱὶ ἀϱετῆς τεϰτονιϰῆς )] and other such practical skills [ê allês tinos dêmiourgikês ( ἢ ἄλλης τινὸς δημιουϱγιϰῆς )], only a restricted group of men should contribute advice, and so they refuse to tolerate advice from anyone outside that group, as you say ( naturally so, I would add ); and that is why, on the contrary, when their deliberations involve political excellence [politikês aretês ( πολιτιϰῆς ἀϱετῆς )] and must be conducted entirely on the basis of justice and moderation [dia dikaiosunês . . . kai sôphrosunês ( διὰ διϰαιοσύνης . . . ϰαὶ σωφϱοσύνης )], they quite naturally tolerate everyone. For they believe that all men must have this excellence in common [tautês ge metechein tês aretês ( ταύτης γε μετέχειν τῆς ἀϱετῆς )], since otherwise there would be no cities. ( Plato, Protagoras, 322d–323a, trans. Hubbard and Karnofsky ) This breadth of meaning is equally evident in Aristotle, in the second book of his Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defines ethical virtue and the moral actions that correspond to it. In order to convey in what sort of disposition of habitus ( poia hexis [ποία ἕξις] ), the aretê ethikê [ἀϱετή ἐθιϰή] consists, and before singularizing it as a mean between two extremes ( mesotês [μεσότης] ), he defines it as a virtue—and once again, “excellence” is the least misleading equivalent: Every virtue or excellence [pasa aretê ( πᾶσα ἀϱετή )] both brings into good condition [auto te eu echon apotelei ( αὐτό τε εὖ ἔχον ἀποτελεῖ )] the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well [to ergon autou eu apodidôsin ( τὸ ἔϱγον αὐτοῦ εὖ ἀποδίδωσιν )]; e.g., the excellence of the eye [hê tou ophthalmou aretê ( ἡ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀϱετὴ )] makes both the eye and its work good [spoudaion ( σπουδαῖον )]; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well [têi gar tou ophthalmou aretêi eu horômen ( τῇ γὰϱ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀϱετῇ εὖ ὁϱῶμεν )] . Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good [agathon ( ἀγαθόν )] at running and carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy. ( Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1106a15–21, trans. Ross, 36–37 ) Spoudaios [σπουδαῖος] ( from spoudê [σπουδή], haste, effort, zeal, ardor, serious engagement ) is opposed to phaulos [φαῦλος] ( ugly, trivial, paltry, petty, sorry, poor ), and is used as a term, in the Politics for instance, to distinguish good citizens from bad. Thus a single Greek expression carries a “physiological” meaning, such as “the excellence of the eye,” and a “moral” meaning: “The excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good.” Since excellence is thus the optimum of the ergon [ἔϱγον] proper to each thing, by rights and when unobstructed, we can understand that Aristotle’s version of happiness is part and parcel with virtue, and that this conception is far from Kant’s precautionary hopes for the sovereign good. Barbara Cassin BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Metaphysics. Ιn Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vols. 17–18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. . Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. Edited by Lesley Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Plato. Protagoras. Translated by B.A.F. Hubbard and E. S. Karnofsky. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. |
III. Virtù and the Public Sphere, between Rigorism and Utilitarianism
These chapters of The Prince effect the transition between the first paradigm and the second, because they qualify the value of an act that invariably relates to fortune in the assumption of power and is defined as a variable because of the choice involved, as impetus and as furor. But it does not involve, as it does in Kant, a universal value that holds for all circumstances. For on the one hand, if success in politics depends on the conjunction of the times in keeping with either the nature of man ( on the side of fortune ) or his capacity to adapt that nature to the times ( on the side of virtue ), then there are no good or bad qualities, nor absolutes of good and evil, and Hannibal’s cruelty can be as much of a virtue as Scipio’s humanity. On the other hand, this is not a form of absolute relativism, as in the Marquis de Sade, for the virtuous act must be linked to the common good, to the security of the State, to patriotic purpose ( The Prince, chap. 26 ).
This reference to the public sphere locates Machiavellian virtue in a sort of conditional generality, equidistant from Kantian rigorism ( which addresses the subject confronting the universality of law ) and Sadean utilitarianism ( which only concerns an individual through his particular interests ). All of these parameters serve to define what one could call Machiavelli’s “system,” but it is a system that is far from coherent, stable, or linear, because it is affected by fluctuations, changes, and frequent contradictions. It is a function of two variables: first, the mixture of hope ( desirable ) and necessity ( unavoidable ); and second, the inscription of these thoughts not onto a peacetime logic ( of better government, theories of justice, ideal or imaginary states, etc. ), but onto a wartime logic, in times that are defined by the effective truth ( verità effettuale ) constituted by variation, circumstance, and accident. This is what Machiavelli calls the “quality of the times” ( qualità dei tempi ), which already points to a history being made, to the radical historicity of the world. It is thus within this system, with its instability, that it is necessary to evaluate the general significance of virtù in all of its various occurrences. This significance is refracted throughout a multiplicity of local and particular ascriptions as a result of context and what is called for by the argument.
■ See Box 2.
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Virtù and virtus The multiple uses of virtù and virtus reflect the various significations of virtù in the Roman semantic field in which virtus—as Joseph Hellegouarc’h has shown—is associated in turn with qualities of character: with generosity of spirit ( magnitudo animi ), with judgment ( consilium ), with wisdom ( sapientia ), and with prudence ( fortitudo, animus ) on the one hand, and with the capacity for governing on the other. In Machiavelli, virtue can in turn be associated with discipline and the stability of the military, with courage and the exploits of an army or its leader, with force ( dunamis ) and the proper disposition of affairs ( the virtue of a city, people, or institution ), with the excellence of great men and legislators of States, with political and military power, with generosity and prudence as capacities for foresight, for “seeing the problem from some distance” ( Discourses,1.18 and 3.28 ). This is in contrast to the disorder, the cowardice, the lack of foresight, the hesitation, the common behavior and half-measures that can be part of “humanity and patience,” yet for conduct that fits the times, the impetuosity and fury of Julius II ( Discourses, 3.9 ) is still to be preferred. The model for this kind of virtue is classical virtue ( antiqua virtù ), the Spartan and especially Roman forms of virtue, which are opposed not so much to wealth and the vices that result from it, as in the ancient philosophers, but to corruption and its political consequences, like the weakening of, the insecurity of, the threats to, and the ruin of States. Machiavellian virtue is never an abstract principle: on the one hand, it always corresponds to real forms of behavior, to concrete and historically determined examples; on the other hand, these are carried by and subject to historical translations. This is the theory of translatio imperii ( transfer of rule/authority ): virtue as exceptional ability, says Machiavelli ( in the introduction to book 2 of the Discourses ), was first lodged in the “world” by the Assyrians, moved to Media, passed into Persia, from there to Rome, and subsequently to the peoples ( of the North primarily ) who still today “live in virtue.” At any rate, as Cicero points out, there is no virtue except “in practice [in usu]” ( Republic 1.2 ) and “in action [in actione]” ( De officiis 1.19 ). In the face of this multiplicity of meanings, the translation of the word virtù in Machiavelli must take into account these two sets of coordinates, position in the system and situation in context, even if some will still prefer to always translate Machiavelli’s virtù as “virtue” in English, vertu in French, and Tugend in German. BIBLIOGRAPHY Hellegouarc’h, Joseph Marie. Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1963. |
On a more general level, Machiavellian virtue radically distances itself from the ethico-philosophical Greco-Roman and Christian traditions. It is not something acquired through practice and exercise ( askêsis [ἄσϰησις] ), nor by the lengthy and assiduous work of the self on the self ( cura sui ). It is not something that can be learned like an art ( technê [τέχνη] ), which has fed a debate from Socrates to the Stoics and Plutarch; nor is it a measure of moderation ( metron [μέτϱον]; see LEX, Box 1 ) between excessive extremes ( as it is in Aristotle ); nor is it even a simple rule for living ( technê tou biou [τέχνη τοῦ βίου] ). It is something that one either has or does not have. Virtù does not exist outside of an act, a conduct, or a behavior that inflects time or tries to reorder its course. It is thus not the Stoic practice of individual subjectivation posited in a solitary relation of self to self, or of self to others and to society. It is a modification of the world made by public man through acts of taking and maintaining power or through increasing the size of the State. It is never linked to some form of natural or cosmopolitan universalism, but is inscribed as effective action in a historico-political context that gains legitimacy from civic and patriotic objectives or a commitment to preserving the State. In The Prince, the most significant act is the founding of a new State; in Discourses, it is a return to the basic and original foundations of the State.
The precedents for Machiavellian virtù should be sought not in the philosophers, but in the historians ( Thucydides, Titus-Livy, Sallust, Plutarch, and especially Tacitus ) who rely for their models on the Sparta of Lycurgus and Republican Rome ( before the outbreak of civil wars and the establishment of the empire, in which, as they acknowledge, ancient virtue was lost ). It was on the basis of the Roman models—revived by the English republicans of the seventeenth century and leading to the French equation of “virtue” with “republic” by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Robespierre that the Anglo-Saxon “Cambridge” school ( J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner ) retracted the second paradigm of virtue as impetus. Virtue as impetus connotes the conduct of someone like Septimus Severus, a villain as an individual, but endowed, like Servius Tullius, with “great good fortune and virtue” ( Discourses, 1.10 ), or Cleomenes in Sparta ( Discourses, 1.9 ) or Agatocles in Syracuse ( The Prince, chap. 8 ), neither of whom hesitated to employ extraordinary, violent measures to protect themselves from enemies and reestablish State power.
IV. Virtù and the Way of the World: Exemplum and Weltlauf
At the stylistic level, Machiavelli’s use of virtù differs from the language of his diplomatic correspondence, where the term almost never appears. When he uses it in his major writing, he seems to want to elevate the political discourse to the “high” level of literary language, as if he had not so much “invented” his political subject as brought it back to the grand style of the history-writing of antiquity. His political analysis, previously limited in his diplomatic dispatches to deciphering current conditions and making conjectures about the future, is anchored by the use of virtù in the exemplum, which constitutes something that is not teachable, neither a warning, nor a precept, nor a piece of advice. The example consists of a history lesson that modern princes, in an era of corrupt morals and political institutions, are incapable of understanding or imitating.
Machiavellian virtue irrevocably marks the irruption of history and historicity into political discourse: ancient history as exemplum; contemporary history as an ensemble of occasions, circumstances, and accidents; history to come as a matter of intention and political will. Machiavelli’s radical novelty lies in having transposed the sovereign virtue of the philosophers, in what Hegel, criticizing the “knights of virtue [Ritter der Tugend]” from the time of the Stoics to Don Quixote and Kant, called the “world process” ( Weltlauf ). As a result of this transposition, the previously irreconcilable opposition between abstract virtue and worldly event was suddenly annulled, voiding the “pompous discourse” of the supreme good, along with the waste of precious gifts. In this discourse, according to Hegel, the individual “puffs himself up and fills both his empty head, and that of others,” with the verbiage of virtue as a value in itself, an “abstract unreal essence” ( The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, 172–74 ) separate from the world’s processes and struggles. The virtue inscribed in the Weltlauf ( and the virtue of Machiavelli ) is that of the historians from antiquity, which is to say, a virtue referring to historic republican practices.
Virtue in the olden time had its secure and determinate significance, for it found the fullness of its content and its solid basis in the substantial life of the nation, and had for its purpose and end a concrete good that existed and lay at its hand: it was also for that reason not directed against actual reality as a general perversity, and not turned against a world process.
( “Virtue and the Course of the World,” in The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie, 174 )
What Machiavelli calls “fortune” in his first paradigm is none other than the representation of what Hegel calls Weltlauf; immediate temporality within the immanence of a secularized time, and a brazen law of necessity according to which the man of virtue, the great man, “is what he does; of whom one must say that he wanted what he did just as he did what he wanted.” Within the world process, virtue is no longer wisdom, pleasure, happiness, mastery of self, or any of the other principles that served to measure the value of acts in traditional ethics. It is an irruption into temporality, the abrupt encounter of human nature and history, the will to resolute action. Thus—and here is the second paradigm—virtue has become nothing but power, pure power, and power in its pure state, in Benedict de Spinoza’s sense of the word:
Virtue is human power [virtus est ipsa humana potentia] defined solely by man’s essence . . . that is, . . . which is defined solely by the endeavor made by man to persist in his own being. Wherefore, the more a man endeavors, and is able to preserve his own being, the more is he endowed with virtue, and, consequently in so far as a man neglects to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power.
( Spinoza, The Ethics, pt. 4, prop. 20, proof 20:1; trans. Elwes, 203 )
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, it is with Socrates that aretê is written into a moral framework and into a system of “values” in the Heideggerian sense of the term. It is no longer the manifestation of an originary power, but is the evaluation of merit as a function of values ( knowledge, rectitude, conviction ) that are necessarily outside of it. Nietzsche’s conception of values is the same as that which Callicles claims in Plato’s Gorgias and which Socrates is quick to refute, specifically in the name of “values” such as moderation and the mastery of desires. The virtue of Callicles, the force and energies of intelligence in the service of passions, are, according to Nietzsche in the Posthumous Fragments of 1887–88, “virtue in the style of the Renaissance, virtù, virtue not embittered by morality” ( Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale ). And in the Tractatus politicus that he was thinking of writing during the same period, Nietzsche talks of the “politics of virtue, of how virtue is made to dominate.” This politics of virtue is none other than Machiavellianism. “But,” as Nietzsche says, “Machiavellianism pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son âpreté, is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it will never be achieved by man, at most approximated” ( ibid., 304 ). It is the virtue of the historians of antiquity, revisited by the Greco-Roman and Christian philosophers. As he says in the Twilight of the Idols in 1888, his “cure from all Platonism” has been Thucydides, “and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli . . . by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality—not in ‘reason,’ still less in ‘morality’ ” ( Twilight of the Idols, trans. Hollingdale ).
Machiavelli’s virtù revives the tradition that goes back to the theia moira ( the unteachable divine element of Aristide, Themistocles, and Pericles ), according to the definition that Socrates gives to virtue in the Meno ( 100a ). It harks back to the Spartan aretê of Tyrtaeus ( which indicates military valor, not caste membership, as in Homer ) and the aretê of the Athenians in the speech that Thucydides attributes to Pericles in his funeral oration ( The Peloponnesian War, bk. 2 ); and finally it reasserts its relationship to the history of republican virtue at the end of the Roman Republic and under the empire. But the real posterity of this virtue is to be found in Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche, rather than among the “skeptics” with their relativism ( from David Hume to François de La Rochefoucauld and Sade ) or among the politicians with their realism ( from Montesquieu to Rousseau and Robespierre ). Without a doubt, Machiavellian virtue is nothing but power, the will to power, in the grip of time, with the “character of the times” ( qualità dei tempi ), and with that fortune that is just another name for the Hegelian Weltlauf.
The Machiavellian concept of virtù thus bears no relation to the “liberty” of ancient moral philosophy ( the becoming free through practice and prudence; the proper measure of, government of, and concern for the self ). It is related, rather, to historical necessity, with its constraints and submissions. For Machiavelli, virtù appears only where there is necessity. Free will, on the other hand, awakens the ambitions and desires that cause the downfall of the States ( cf. Discourses, 1.5, 1.37 ). In the face of necessity, virtue lies in the collection of acts and decisions that increase the power of an individual or State. And this historical necessity has not waited for modern revolutions to bring it into the open, as Hannah Arendt would seem to think in her book On Revolution. Indeed, Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, and their contemporaries experienced very early on the instability of the word, the changing times, the multiplicity of incidents and accidents, and the insecurity of States that followed the Italian wars after 1494. At some level, Machiavellian virtue, when confronted with the State logic of modern warfare, strangely resembles the attitude of the reformation in the face of salvation through grace—except that the faith of Luther and Calvin corresponded to what Machiavelli called virtù, whereas grace, in that century, corresponded to what Machiavelli called fortuna, fortune-necessity: the invincible force of the times, the brazen law of the world process, and the reasons and inscrutable ruses of history.
Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. New York: Viking, 1963.
Dumézil, Georges. Servius et la fortune: Essai sur la fonctíon sociale de louange et de blâme et sur les éléments indo-européens du cens romain. Paris: Gallimard, 1943.
Fontana, Alessandro. “Fortune et décision chez Machiavel.” Archives de Philosophie 62 ( 1999 ).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes. 1807. Translation by J. B. Baillie: The Phenomenology of Mind. London: Harper and Row, 1967.
Hyppolite, Jean. Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Translated by Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius. Translated by Ninian Hill Thomson. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1883.
. Florentine Histories. Translated by Laura Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
. The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli. Translated by Christian E. Detmold. Vol. 2. Boston, MA: J. R. Osgood, 1882.
. The Prince. Edited by Quentin Skinner. Translated by Russell Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Complete Works: The First Complete and Authorised English Translation. Edited by Oscar Levy. 18 vols. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
. The Portable Nietzsche. Selected and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1976.
. The Twilight of the Idols. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin, 1990.
. Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967–.
. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1967.
Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
. Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Spinoza, Benedict de. The Ethics. Translated by R.H.M. Elwes. New York: Dover, 1955. Translation originally published 1883.
Walker, Leslie J. The “Discourses” of Machiavelli. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950.
VIRTUE
In his clarifications to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu writes, “Le mot de vertu, comme la plupart des mots de toutes les langues, est pris dans diverses acceptations: tantôt, il signifie les vertus chrétiennes, tantôt les vertus païennes, souvent une certaine vertu chrétienne, ou bien une certaine vertu païenne; quelque fois la force; quelque fois, dans quelques langues, une certaine capacité pour un art ou de certains arts. C’est ce qui précède ou ce qui suit ce mot qui en fixe la signification” ( Œuvres complètes, Gallimard, 2:1169 ). ( The word “virtue,” like most words in every language, takes on different meanings: sometimes it refers to Christian virtues, sometimes to pagan virtues, often to a specific Christian or pagan virtue; sometimes to strength, and sometimes to special talents and abilities in the practice of an art or craft. The meaning of this word is determined by what precedes it or what follows it. ) The French word derives from the Latin virtus, which refers to the physical and moral qualities that define the value of a man ( vir ). The polysemy of “virtue”calls for a complex history of the term that does justice to the various strata of time and language. In particular the following should be noted:
1. The Greek aretê [ἀϱετή] ( excellence ): see VIRTÙ, Box 1, where one can see this excellence conceived ontologically as an energeia [ἐνέϱγεια], as the actualization of a power or capacity; see also ART, I and PRAXIS; cf. ACT, POWER, I, II, and INGENIUM. On the relationship between the physical and the moral, see BEAUTY, Box 1; on the link to measure and moderation, see TRUTH, Box 2, and LEX, Box 1. Lastly, on phronêsis [φϱόνησις] as practical wisdom, and the relationship between virtue and wisdom, see PHRONÊSIS and GLÜCK.
2. The Latin virtus ( courage ): see VIRTÙ, especially VIRTÙ, Box 2; cf. PIETAS, RELIGIO.
3. Christian virtues: see LOVE, cf. BERUF, SERENITY.
If the meaning given to “virtue” by Montesquieu—l’amour des lois et de la patrie ( “the love of laws and the homeland” )—which goes with a renunciation in relation to the self—does not derive directly from any of these other meanings, that is because it draws on another moment of the term’s history: Machiavelli’s elaboration of virtù. From Machiavelli on, the notion takes on a more distinctly political sense that will be taken up not only by Montesquieu but also by Hegel and Nietzsche: see VIRTÙ. Cf. DEMOS/ETHNOS/LAOS, FATHERLAND, LAW, POLIS, POLITICS, STATE/GOVERNMENT.
DUTY, GOOD/EVIL, MORALS, SECULARIZATION, SOBORNOST’, VALUE
VOCATION
The concept of “vocation” ( based on the Latin vocare, “to call” ) is not simply a milder form of destiny, in the sense that a person could take charge of his or her fate ( see DESTINY ). Instead, it specifically addresses Martin Luther’s notion of a Beruf ( calling ), as taken up and developed by Max Weber, whose French translations as vocation or profession have never proven themselves satisfying. See BERUF and VOICE.
ALLIANCE, ECONOMY, ENTREPRENEUR, SECULARIZATION, WORK
VOICE
“Voice” ( Fr. voix ) derives from the Latin vox ( the voice, the sound of the voice, word ), which in turn, like the Greek epos [ἔπος] ( speech, word, discourse, song ), is formed from the Indo-European root *wekʷˉ, which indicates the voice’s emissions as well as the religious and juridical force carried by them.
I. The Human Voice
1. The “voice,” or at least the Latin vox, can serve to distinguish the human from the animal—as for the Greek phônê [ϕωνή], which can also be used in connection with animals and refers to the power and sharpness of the sound emitted, one needs to specify that it is articulated and conveys meaning: see ANIMAL, LOGOS ( especially LOGOS, II.B ), SIGN, SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED, WORD ( especially WORD, II.B.2 ) and also cf. HOMONYM.
2. It is linked to music and song: see SPRECHGESANG, STIMMUNG; see also ACTOR, DICHTUNG; cf. ERZÄHLEN.
On epos ( Fr. épopée; cf. epic poem ) as distinct from muthos [μῦθος] ( speech, discourse, account, myth ) and logos [λόγος] ( speech, discourse, reason, proportion ), see LOGOS, MIMÊSIS; cf. MÊTIS, RÉCIT.
3. It is also linked to destiny ( Lat. fatum, from fari, “to say” ); see DAIMÔN, Box 1, DESTINY, KÊR, SCHICKSAL, STIMMUNG, cf. BERUF, VOCATION.
4. Finally, it serves to speak and to lay claim to a right: see CLAIM and DROIT, RIGHT/JUST/GOOD.
II. Voice in Grammar
1. Vox is one of the most common ways of designating the “word” in Latin. See WORD; cf. LANGUAGE and PROPOSITION.
2. It is also one of the grammatical characteristics of the verb, along with tense, mode, and aspect; see ASPECT ( especially as to the meaning of normal voice in Greek ).
VORHANDEN / ZUHANDEN / VORHANDENHEIT / ZUHANDENHEIT ( GERMAN )
| ENGLISH | presence-at-hand / ready-to-hand / readiness-to-hand; extant, extantness / handy, handiness; occurrent/available | ||
| FRENCH | subsistant / disponible, présence-subsistance / disponibilité, sous la main / à portée de la main | ||
| SPANISH | estar-ahí-delante / estar a la mano |
UTILITY and ART, DASEIN, ES GIBT, ESSENCE, IL Y A, OBJECT, POETRY, PRAXIS, PRESENT, REALITY, RES, SEIN, THING, TO BE, WELT, WERT, WORLD
In Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time the analysis of the surrounding world ( Ger. Umwelt ) opens with a contrast between two clearly defined modes of being: that which is present-at-hand, or extant ( Ger. Vorhanden, Fr. sous la main ), which is an object of simple consideration, and that which is ready-to-hand and available ( Ger. Zuhanden, Fr. à portée de la main ). While the former mode is merely deficient in relation to the second, both stand in contrast to Dasein, being-there ( Fr. être-là ). This triplicity is clearly fundamental and raises numerous problems of translation. Ontological determinations, we would suggest, should be considered in a more general framework in order to take into account the distinctions thematized by Lotze or Meinong. We will thus start by examining the first occurrences of Vorhanden in Sein und Zeit ( Being and Time ) and comparing a series of translations, most into French. We will then seek to disengage the doctrinal background that is the object of Heidegger’s “destruction” before finally establishing the indispensable and irreducible polysemy of Vorhandenheit, which precludes any simple opposition between Vorhanden and Zuhanden.
I. The Multiple Senses of Being
The coupling of the adjectives vorhanden/zuhanden is not actually an invention of Heidegger’s, but before Heidegger the abstract substantive Vorhandenheit is rarely used, and, to our knowledge, the term Zuhandenheit not employed at all. Heidegger’s purpose, in starting with the fairly common terms vorhanden, Vorhandenheit and then differentiating them from zuhanden, Zuhandenheit, is primarily to characterize a specific mode or manner of being. This is clearly evident in their first unmarked occurrence in Being and Time.
Let us start with the original text:
“Seiend” nennen wir vieles und in verschiedenem Sinne. Seiend is alles, wovon wir reden, was wir meinen, wozu wir uns so und so verhalten, seiend ist auch, was und wie wir selbst sind. Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein, in Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im “es gibt.” An welchem Seienden soll der Sinn von Sein abgelesen werden, von welchem Seienden soll die Erschließung des Seins ihren Ausgang nehmen? Is der Ausgang beliebig, oder hat ein bestimmtes Seiendes in der Ausarbeitung der Seinsfrage einen Vorgang? Welches ist dieses exemplarische Seiende und in welchem Sinne hat es einen Vorrang?
( Heidegger, Sein und Zeit )
The English translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson goes as follows:
But there are many things which we designate as “being” [seiend], and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the “there is.” In which entities is the meaning of Being to be discerned? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take its departure? Is the starting-point optional, or does some particular entity have priority when we come to work out the question of Being? Which entity shall we take for our example, and in what sense does it have priority?
From the point of view of our present investigation on Vorhandenheit, there is no significant difference between “presence-at-hand” ( Macquarrie/Robinson ) and “being-at-hand” ( Stambaugh ).1
This extended quote clearly describes what is at stake in the determination of manners of being: if, as is classically the case, Being is understood in various senses ( to on legetai pollachôs [τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς] ), if we refer to various things as being ( Ger. seiend, Fr. étant, both participles of verbs ) and in different senses of the word, the question at issue is whether there is some sense that can serve as a guiding principle, or even better, if there is some exemplary being that can be privileged and thus serve as a model for reading the meaning of “Being.”
How would we recognize such a being, if there is one? asks Heidegger. This fairly rough paraphrase of the text quoted above already shows that Heidegger formulates the question—and no doubt, very deliberately—in a more or less explicit reference to the doctrine of the analogy of Being, or even more precisely to the doctrine of the focal unity of senses of being ( pros hên legomenon [πϱὸς ἓν λεγό μενον] ). It is through this doctrine that Heidegger addresses “the formal structure of the question of Being,” starting in section I.2 of Being and Time ( Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, §55, in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 22 ). We will start by examining three existent French translations—but not for the purpose of a contest or choice between them:
1. Étant est tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce à quoi nous pensons, tout ce à l’égard de quoi nous nous comportons, mais aussi ce que nous sommes nous-mêmes et la manière dont nous le sommes. L’être réside dans l’existence, dans l’essence, dans la réalité, dans l’être subsistant, dans la consistance, dans la valeur, dans l’être-là, dans l’ “il y a.” En quel étant faudra-t-il lire le sens de l’être, en quel étant l’exploration de l’être prendra-t-elle son point de départ? Le point de départ peut-il être arbitraire, ou quelque étant jouit-il d’une primauté dans le développement de la question de l’être? Quel est cet étant exemplaire et quel est le sens de sa primauté?
( Trans. R. Boehm and A. de Waelhens, 22 )
2. Nous appelons “étant” beaucoup de choses, et dans beaucoup de sens. Étant: tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce que nous visons, tout ce par rapport à quoi nous nous comportons de telle ou telle manière—et encore ce que nous sommes nous-mêmes, et la manière dont nous le sommes. L’être se trouve dans le “que” et le “quid,” dans la réalité, dans l’être-sous-la-main, dans la subsistance, dans la validité, dans l’être-là [existence], dans le “il y a.” Sur quel étant le sens de l’être doit-il être déchifrée, dans quel étant la mise à découvert de l’être doit-elle prendre son départ? Ce point de départ est-il arbitraire, ou bien un étant déterminé détient-il une primauté dans l’élaboration de la question de l’être? Quel est cet étant exemplaire et en quel sens a-t-il une primauté?
( Trans. E. Martineau, 29 )
3. “Étant,” nous le disons de beaucoup de choses et en des sens différents. Est étant tout ce dont nous parlons, tout ce que nous pensons, tout ce à l’égard de quoi nous nous comportons de telle ou telle façon; ce que nous sommes et comment nous le sommes, c’est encore l’étant. L’être se trouve dans le fait d’être comme dans l’être tel, il se trouve dans la réalité, dans le fait d’être-là-devant, dans le fonds subsistant, dans la valeur, dans l’existentia ( Dasein ), dans le “il y a.”
( Trans. F. Vezin, 30 )
We can start with a few preliminary remarks. Unfortunately, the BW translation drops the quotation marks around the term “seiend.” This immediately gives too much ontological intent to a remark that applies primarily to terms that are clearly “voices” ( voces ) that signify things ( pragmata ), as is the case in Aristotelian categories. The translation goes on to reinsert the classical terminology of essence and existence in speaking of an appreciably different distinction. Heidegger does not say that “being is to be found in existence, in essence” ( Fr. l’être réside dans l’existence, dans l’essence ). He says, “Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein” ( Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is ). He says, in what may be an implicit reference to Schelling and is most certainly a reference to Alexius Meinong, that being is or occurs in the quod, the “that” of the “that is” or the “that is the case” ( hoti esti [ὅτι ἐστι] ), and not only in the quid, the “what is?” or the “what is this?” ( ti esti [τί ἐστι] ): thus in the “that” as well as in the so-being or suchness ( Ger. Sosein, Fr. être-tel ).
The opposition between Sein and Sosein had already been thematized by Meinong as early as the Theory of Objects ( Über Gegenstandstheorie, 1904 ), at the same time as he set out the principle of the independence of the so-being or suchness in relation to being in the sense of affirmation, of positing a fact or a state of things ( “that is!” or “that is the case” ) ( see SEIN, SACHVERHALT ). F. Vezin misses part of the point of this first opposition by making the Daßsein into “the fact of being” ( Fr. le “fait d’être” ). But it is in the subsequent sentences that the slippages become more serious. In all three French versions the translators resolutely overtranslate, without concern for the context of the general problematic, which is nothing but a very first pass at the question of being, or rather of the meaning of “being,” by way of the guiding thread of fundamental ontology.
■ See Box 1.
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Existence, Arabic wuğūd, and Vorhandenheit Like Hebrew, Arabic does not use the copula in the present: the verb that serves its function in the past and in the future ( kāna [َكان], yakūnu [يكون] ) has no existential meaning. To render the Greek einai, translators had recourse to the verb “to find” ( Fr. trouver ), which in the passive voice can mean “to find oneself there,” “to be there.” The grammatical noun ( in Arabic grammar maṣdar [مصدر] ) that corresponds is wuğūd [وجود], “the fact of finding,” or “the fact of being found.” [Ibn] The Hebrew of the translators of the ibn Tibbon school has the exact equivalent, nimṣā [נִמְצָה]. Al-Fārābī ( d. 950 ) retains the memory of this derivation: “It may be that what they understand by “being” [lit.: “found”], used by them [the Arabs] in an absolute sense, is that the thing becomes known by the place where it is found, that it can be used however one wants, and that it lends itself to whatever one demands of it.” ( Al-Fārābī’s Book of Letters [Kitâb al-Hurûf], Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, I, §80; Arabic text, edited with an introduction [in Arabic] and notes by Muhsin Mahdi. Beirut: Catholic Press, 1969; 110, I, 12–14 ). When Avicenna’s writings in Arabic were translated into Latin, the translators recognized the origin of the term and rendered it by esse, ens, or existentia. The verb “to be,” whose existential significance had remained more or less latent in Greek, was able to deploy it to the full only at the end of a journey in which the Arabic leg is an important one. When Heidegger sought to find a term capable of embodying the thesis of being in traditional ontology, he chose Vorhandenheit, “being available” or “at hand” ( for example, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie [The fundamental problems of phenomenology], summer semester course, 1927, Gesamtausgabe, 24: 173 ). It is interesting to note that the concept he focuses on has a semitic prefiguration. Rémi Brague |
II. Some Classical Concepts of Ontology in German Metaphysics
The original text spoke of Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, es gibt. In his reference to Realität, we can assume ( though this is doubtless the most difficult point to establish ) that Heidegger is using the term in its classical sense ( up to Kant ), which he luminously presented in a course during the summer of 1927, The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology. The term Vorhandenheit only gains its “technical” sense ( which can be translated as “presence-at-hand” ) through its contrast to Zuhandenheit, that is to say, when it is an issue of opening up domains or regional ontologies. Here Vorhandenheit should be understood in its uncomplicated sense, characterizing everything that is there, that is present—to provide an ordinary example, a book on the bookshelf, as long as it was not borrowed ( in which case it would be checked out, nicht vorhanden ). A single example should suffice to illustrate this traditional usage, taken from the “German Metaphysics” of Christian Wolff: “Wo etwas vorhanden ist, woraus man begreifen kann, warum es ist, das hat einen zureichenden Grund [Wherever there exists something whose reason for being one can grasp, it has a sufficient ground]” ( Vernünftige Gedanken, §30 ). The French translations of être-subsistant, être-sous-la-main, or être-là-devant are all overtranslations whose principal drawback is precisely their obscuring of the lexical and doctrinal background on the basis of which ( as in the case of endoxa [ἔνδοξα] and the Aristotelian construction of aporia; see DOXA ) Heidegger elaborates the question of the meaning of being. In the Ideen Husserl still used Vorhanden in its most common sense:
By my seeing, touching, hearing, and so forth, and in the different modes of sensuous perception, corporeal things with some spatial distribution or other are simply there for me, “on hand” in the literal or the figurative sense [. . . sind für mich einfach da, im wörtlichen oder bildlichen Sinne “vorhanden” . . . ] whether or not I am particularly heedful of them and busied with them in my considering, thinking, feeling, or willing.
( Husserl, Ideas Pertaining, trans. Kersten )
The term Bestand, just like the term Geltung, needs to be taken in the sense it receives from Bolzano, through Lotze and Rickert, up to Meinong—but not further. It is truly misrepresented when a violent retrospection already imbues it with the meanings that it will later accrue through Heidegger’s analysis of technique, and already translates Bestand into French as F. Vezin does, as some “fonds subsistant” ( “standing reserve” ).
■ See Box 2.
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From Bolzano to Heidegger: The common meaning of Bestand B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, I, §48: The subjective idea [subjektive Vorstellung] is thus something real [etwas Wirkliches]; at the particular time at which it is present, it has a real existence [wirkliches Dasein] in the mind of the subject for whom it is present. As such, it also produces all sorts of effects [Wirkungen]. This is not true of the objective idea or idea in itself [objective oder Vorstellung an sich], which belongs to every subjective idea. I mean by it something [etwas] not to be sought in the realm of actuality [das Reich der Wirklichkeit], something that makes up the direct and immediate material [Stoff] of the subjective idea. This objective idea requires no subject to whom it is present, but would have being [besteht]—to be sure not as something existent, but nevertheless as a certain something—even if no single thinking being should apprehend it [auffassen]. And it is not multiplied when one or two or three or more beings think of it, as the subjective idea related to it then exists in plural number. ( Bolzano, Theory of Science, 78 ) Objectness changes into the constancy of the standing-reserve, a constancy determined from out of Enframing [Gestell]. ( Heidegger, “Science and Reflection,” in Question Concerning Technology, 173 ) If technique is “provocation” and “interpellation,” it assures itself of that which is in respect of its own position and stability ( Stand ): Whatever is ordered about in this way [being immediately at hand] has its own standing. We call it the “standing-reserve” [Bestand]. The word expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere “stock.” The name “standing-reserve” assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the challenging revealing. Whatever stands [steht] by in the sense of standing-reserve [Bestand] no longer stands over against us as object [Gegenstand]. ( Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology,” in Question Concerning Technology, 17 ) This collage of quotations is not meant to suggest that Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre constitutes the backdrop to the introduction of Sein und Zeit but only that every supposedly immanent and violently self-interpretative translation runs the risk of creating its own misapprehensions. There is no question of “standing reserve” ( fonds subsistant ) in Being and Time, where Bestand is the specific mode of being of that which besteht, which consists or subsists, without existing, as is the case of an “idea in itself,” of an ideality, a fiction, even a chimera, or an internally contradictory entity like a square circle. As Heidegger notes in the margins of his own copy of the book, Dasein here is also to be taken in its common meaning, in the sense that Kant for example spoke of the impossibility of an ontological proof of the Dasein Gottes ( the existence of God ), or the sense in which Bolzano spoke of the effective existence of the subjective idea in the one who conceives of something. This is a precision that E. Martineau incorporates in his French translation by adding the word “existence” between brackets to his translation as être-là. As for the last es gibt, we believe that it is meant to be understood in a technical sense prior to any of Heidegger’s elaboration, in the way that Heidegger had treated it from his first course in Freiburg in 1919. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bolzano, Bernard. Theory of Science. Translated by Dailey Burnham Terrell. Dordrecht, Neth: Reidel, 1973. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Edited and translated by William Lovitt. New York: Garland, 1977. |
III. The Vocabulary of Being in Lotze
What we have just described as an indispensable lexical/doctrinal context enables us to follow Heidegger’s way of addressing the question of being—by starting with the concrete and by subsequently overturning it. This can be read, for example, through Lotze’s classical distribution of terms. When he questions the mode of being of Truth, Lotze seeks to distinguish between the specificity of gelten ( to be valid or effective, or to have value ) and of es gilt ( it holds ).
We all feel certain in the moment in which we think any truth, that we have not created it for the first time but merely recognized it; it was valid before we thought about it and will continue so [auch als wir ihn dachten, galt er und wird gelten]. . . . The truth which is never apprehended by us is valid no whit less than that small fraction of it which finds its way into our intelligence.
( Lotze, Logic, 212 )
These precisions of definition allow Lotze to distinguish two types of reality/actuality. In a passage that is all the more remarkable because he draws explicitly on the German language and its specific resources, Lotze continues:
Finally it must be added that we ourselves, in drawing a distinction between the reality/actuality that belongs to the Ideas and laws and the reality/actuality that belongs to things, and by calling the latter Being [der Wirklichkeit der Dinge als dem Sein] and the former Validity [Wirklichkeit als Geltung], have so far merely discovered a convenient expression which may keep us on our guard against interchanging the two notions. The fact [die Sache aber] which the term validity expresses has lost none of that strangeness which has led to its being confused with Being.
( Ibid., 217–18 )
Just prior to that passage, Lotze had listed four forms of Wirklichkeit ( as distinguished through their verbs ):
Wirklich nennen wir ein Ding welches ist, im Gegensatz zu einem andern, welches nicht ist; wirklich auch ein Ereignis welches geschieht oder geschehen ist, im Gegensatz zu dem, welches nicht geschieht; wirklich ein Verhältnis, welches besteht, im Gegensatz zu dem, welches nicht besteht; endlich wirklich wahr nennen wir einen Satz, welcher gilt, im Gegenstand zu dem, dessen Geltung noch fraglich ist.
( Lotze, Logik, 512 )
For we call a thing Real/Actual which is, in contradistinction to another which is not; an event Real which occurs or has occurred, in contradistinction to that which does not occur; a relation Real which obtains, as opposed to one which does not obtain; lastly, we call a proposition really true which holds or is valid as opposed to one of which the validity is still in doubt.
( Lotze, Logic, 208 )
The point about Validity stems from Lotze’s conviction that “the language of ancient Greece never found any term to express the reality of simple Validity as distinguished from the reality of Being, and this constant confusion has prejudiced the clearness of the Platonic phraseology” ( ibid., 211 ).
Let us recall that in 1925–26 Heidegger had already cited Lotze’s passage on Validity in relation to the four meanings of Wirklichkeit in a course in Marburg ( Logik, die Frage nach der Wahrheit ). The course was also an occasion for him to take some distance from it: “In an earlier research into the ontology of the Middle Ages, I myself returned to Lotze’s distinction and used the expression ‘actuality’ for ‘being,’ but I no longer consider that correct.”
Heinrich Rickert, who was a teacher of Heidegger, noted for his part in his celebrated Logik des Prädikats:
Ich nenne jetzt alles “seiend,” was es überhaupt “gibt,” oder was sich als “etwas” denken läßt, also auch das Gelten, den Sinn, den Wert, und das Sollen. . . . Wir haben also zunächst “Seiendes überhaupt” als den Begriff, unter den alles Denkbare fällt.
( Now I call “being” anything that “there is” in general, or anything that can be thought of as “something,” and thus also validity, meaning, value, and that which ought to be. . . . So we take “being in general” to be the concept which subsumes everything that is thinkable. )
( Rickert, Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, 264 )
We can take analyses of this sort ( Lotze’s or Meinong’s on the one hand, or Rickert’s on the other ) as the background for the celebrated paragraph in Sein und Zeit in which Heidegger outlines different modes of being corresponding to different regional ontologies: quod est ( the fact that something is ) and Being as it is ( Daß- und Sosein ), Reality ( Realität ), presence-at-hand ( Vorhandenheit ), consistence and subsistence ( Bestand ), validity ( Geltung ), and existence ( Dasein ).
IV. Vorhandenheit/Zuhandenheit: The Play of Difference in Heidegger
The English translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson suffers from the same lack of contextualization, and the direct consequence, once again, is overtranslation:
There are many things which we designate as “being,” and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being; and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the “there is.”
In 1962 the first English translators, in a particularly unfortunate reference, were already claiming that the term Dasein was untranslatable ( 27n1 ). “The word Dasein plays so important a role in this work and is already so familiar to the English-speaking reader who has read about Heidegger, that it seems simpler to leave it untranslated.” And yet if there were one and only one passage in Being and Time where it would be appropriate to translate Dasein, it would surely be that one!
Joan Stambaugh and J. Glenn Gray, in Basic Writings, from Being and Time ( 1927 ) to the Task of Thinking ( 1964 ), proposed with more precision, “Being is found in thatness and whatness, reality, the objective presence of things, subsistence, validity, existence, and in the ‘there is’ ” ( 47 ).
The very remarkable Spanish translation, Ser y tiempo, by Jorge Eduardo Rivera Cruchaga does not escape overtranslation either: “El ser se encuentra en el hecho de que algo es y en su ser-así, en la realidad, en el estar-ahí ( Vorhandenheit ) en la consistencia, en la validez, en el existir, en el ‘hay’ ” ( 30 ).
The turn of phrase estar-ahí is proposed as a translation of Vorhhandenheit/Vorhandensein in counterpoint to the ser-ahí of José Gaos’s translation ( 1951 ). The Gaos translation was intended to restore the terminus technicus “Dasein” in an apparently literal fashion, following the French être-là or the Italian esserci. Gaos had suggested translating Vorhandenheit as ser ante los ojos. In this he was followed by Jean Beaufret in his Dialogue avec Heidegger, speaking of être devant / sous les yeux. In this regard Beaufret’s presentation remains especially illuminating: Beaufret recalls how Heidegger, in Being and Time, sought to follow an analytic of the everyday as a guiding thread to determine being’s mode of being in its immediate presence for us, by looking to an analysis of the first objects that present themselves, not to theôria [θεωϱία], but to that practical outlook ( praktische Umsicht ) that clarifies them in commerce ( Umgang ) with something whose reliability ( Verläßlichkeit ) is supposedly well established. This is the mode of being of pragmata [πϱάγματα], those ordinary things of this world that we deal with, or even better of procheira [πϱόχειϱα] ( Aristotle, Metaphysics Α, 2, 982b13 ):
In this respect, as Jean Beaufret noted, things are essentially available to us [disponible]. Heidegger uses the expression zuhanden “within reach” [à portée de la main]. . . . He opposes this term to vorhanden . . . which situates the same things beyond the horizon of their availability, where they generally first encounter us. Still present, but no longer a utensil, the thing as Vorhandenes is no longer . . . anything but the subject of predicates that apply to it when its use is no longer a preoccupation. . . . From the beginnings of philosophy, what characterizes the presence of things is that the pragmata are no longer anything other than onta [ὄντα], beings étants much more within view sous les yeux rather than within reach à portée de la main.
( Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger, 3 )
The Chilean translator justified his decision in the following terms:
Estar-ahí . . . in German, Vorhandensein or also Vorhandenheit. . . . Gaos translates it as “ser ante los ojos” [to be in front of one’s eyes]. This translation is not bad, and it affords a basis for following the young Heidegger’s courses, but it doesn’t seem excellent to me. First of all, because the expression “ser ante los ojos” doesn’t say much in Spanish; it does not “speak” to us [no dice nada en español, no nos “habla”]. We would of course say “estar delante, estar a la vista” [to be there in front of us, to be in view]. I have preferred to translate Vorhandensein, Vorhandenheit as “estar-ahí” and sometimes for emphasis as “estar-ahí-delante.” This is the Spanish way of saying what in classical German is meant by Dasein, which was the common translation of the Latin existentia. Dasein literally means “estar-ahí” ( and never ser-ahí ). What is fundamental about the idea of Vorhandenheit is simply that something “is there” [está without our necessarily being affected by it. Unlike Zuhandenheit, which we translate as “lo que es o está a la mano” that which is at hand], and which has some meaning for us, because there is something at stake [lo que tiene un significato por nosotros, lo que nos importa porque en ello nos va algo], Vorhandenheit is that which does nothing else but be there, which is, if you will, “pure presence” [es lo que no hace más que estar-ahí; es, si se quiere, “pura presencia”].
( Rivera Cruchaga, Ser y tiempo, 462 )
One might perhaps object once again that this is a case of overtranslation. Perhaps it is, but with the difference that here the proposed translation extends Heidegger’s own approach of reinterpreting existentia, or Dasein in its standard accepted use, in terms of Vorhandenheit.
Rivera Cruchaga justified his translation of Zuhandenheit in these terms:
Estar a la mano: in ordinary German, the term zuhanden is used as an adjective to indicate that something is at hand [encuentro a mano], that it is available: Heidegger creates the neologism Zuhandenheit to express the particular manner of being of that with which we have a daily commerce, a mode of being. . . . The Zuhandenes is that which we handle [lo que “traemos entre manos”] without paying attention, so to speak, without any form of objectification [cas sin advertirlo y sin ninguna objetivación].
( Rivera Cruchaga, Ser y tiempo, §69, note s.v., 467 )
This is indeed well put, yet it seems to us impossible to be satisfied with a simple opposition of two modes of being that correspond to two attitudes—one purely theoretical and always secondary, abstract, and impoverishing, the other primary and “pragmatic—even if this opposition is often stressed by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. It is indeed within the “pragmatic” horizons of preoccupied commerce that being is first discovered in its utensil dimension, as zuhanden, à portée de la main, within reach, at hand. But for its part, Vorhanden, according to Heidegger’s quasi-genealogical account in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, does not immediately lead to some form of seeing or to pure consideration, but rather to poiêsis [ποίησις]. It is in consideration of creative production that being is first apprehended as Vorhandenes ( literally, procheiron [πϱόχειϱον] ) and is thus referred to an “agent” in front of whom being comes “at hand” ( vor die Hand ) so to speak, for whom it is something handy ( ein Handliches ) ( Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 143 ).
In Heidegger’s genealogy of the notion of existence ( existentia ), this “return to the productive behavior of being [Rückgang auf das herstellende Verhalten des Daseins]” leads him to shed new light on fundamental ontological concepts ( eidos [εἶδος], morphê [μόϱφη], to ti ên einai [τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι] ). He relates them no longer to a specific target or intentionality of perception but to a Verhalten, a “behavior” or primordial “posture” in relation to being. Such behavior can just as easily be called “pragmatic” or “poetic,” since it is a matter of going beyond Aristotelian separations among theôria, praxis [πϱᾶξις], and poiêsis. The Vorhandenes, in its “primitive” usage, can thus be understood not as présent-subsistant ( the received French translation, meaning present-abiding ), but as vorhandenes Verfügbares ( Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 153 ), present-sous-la-main disponible—“available, present-at-hand.”
Should we conclude from all of this that the distinction that seems to have been drawn so firmly in Being and Time is in fact a moving target and that we should put aside vain quarrels of translation and resign ourselves to arbitrary transpositions? Surely not. The principle of establishing an equivalent for a German term with a single univocal term in French or any other language is a falsely rigorous one. It runs the risk, especially in the case under consideration, of obscuring the complexity of Heidegger’s gesture toward genealogy and phenomenological destruction. This gesture aims at rediscovering, beneath the sedimentations of traditional philosophical conceptualization, the living source from which the first conceptual elaborations were drawn, as well as their primary meanings. It is how ousia [οὐσία] ( Wesen, essence ) is led back to Anwesen ( presence ), and from thence to property, possession, and holding. It is how Wirklichkeit ( the translation of actualitas ) is led back to Verwirklichung ( realization, effectuation ) and to Gewirktheit, the effectuated ( also translated as that which has been actualized ), by which we understand the result of an operation.
V. Beyond the Division: The Circularity of Vorhandenheit/Zuhandenheit
Let us return once more to the passage in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology that previously drew our attention:
Schon die Worterklärung von existentia machte deutlich, daß actualitas auf ein Handeln irgendeines unbestimmten Subjektes zurückweist, oder wenn wir von unserer Terminologie ausgehen, daß das Vorhandene seinem Sinne nach irgendwie auf etwas bezogen ist, dem es gleichsam vor die Hand kommt, für das es ein Handliches ist.
( Heidegger, Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, 143 )
The verbal definition of existentia already made clear that actualitas refers back to an acting on the part of some indefinite subject or, if we start from our own terminology, that the extant ( das Vorhandene ) is somehow referred by its sense to something for which, as it were, it comes to be before the hand, at hand, to be handled.
( Trans. Albert Hofstadter, 101 )
L’explicitation littérale du terme d’existentia a déjà fait apparaître clairement que l’actualitas renvoie à l’agir ( Handeln ) d’un sujet indéterminé, ou encore, selon notre terminologie, que l’étant-subsistant ( das Vorhandene ) est, conformément à son sens, référé d’une certaine façon à un sujet devant lequel il vient pour ainsi dire à portée de la main ( vor die Hand ), pour lequel il est maniable.
( Trans. J.-F. Courtine, 130 )
A passage like this one is obviously a challenge to translation, especially if one wants to retain the lexical play of handeln, Vorhandene, vor die Hand. But it becomes singularly opaque with the superimposition of the “well-known” distinction of vorhanden/zuhanden. At issue here is not the legitimacy of the distinction; Heidegger will maintain it for as long as the meaning of being is getting worked out in the framework of fundamental ontology. Yet one needs to take into account that the terms must have maintained their separate identities and that they should still be able to do so. Before becoming coupled to Zuhandenheit, vorhanden was used by Heidegger to unpack, or to interpret, the Greek and subsequent Latin work of ontological conceptualization, and this through a procedure of trans-lation ( Fr. tra-duction, Ger. Über-setzung ) in its literal sense. In this case, the vorhanden—beyond its opposition to the specific mode of being of the utensil, and in the broadest meaning of Zeug—can serve to designate anything that is present, more or less at hand, and capable metaphorically of coming to hand. Such is the case of ousia as Heidegger interprets it, reinvesting it with its primary and concrete meaning: property, real estate, “farmland.” Here ousia—restored to its earlier, prephilosophical meanings of Wesen or Anwesen, in the sense of “goods, riches, possession, property”—is clearly “available,” like wood in the forest, marble in the quarry, fruits on the trees, or grain in the barn. Here ousia carries with it a natural dimension but one that, according to Heidegger, can open up only within the framework of technê [τέχνη].
So we should not confuse the two meanings of Vorhandenheit. Its first meaning , which we cannot dare call its original or first meaning, still maintains—and this is the whole point of Heidegger’s analysis of the term—an essential tie to action and handling. Its second meaning, which has been divested of its originally “technical” or pragmatic dimension by its philosophical usage, signifies only the “given,” that which is there-present, present-subsistent. It is in relation to that second sense that it has been possible to speak ( Granel, Traditionis traditio ) of Heidegger’s destruction of the ontology of Vorhandenheit or of Vorhandenes ( whose second meaning is retained in the English “extant,” “occurrent” ).
We can recognize a certain priority to the first meaning insofar as the Vorhandenes is literally “vor der Hand” ( “at hand,” devant la main ), present, available as a “material.” It is always already there ( in the sense of prouparchein [πϱουπάϱχειν] ); it is “das schon Dastehende,” which is there, which persists there ( estar-ahí ) ( Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 25: 99 ). In this “first” meaning, Vorhandenes, which is always there ( Fr. là devant ), which does not need to be produced or brought out into presence, becomes confused with what lies at hand before us ( das Vorliegende, Fr. le pro-jacent ), the hupokeimenon [ὑποϰείμενον]. Anteriority, permanence, stability, these are the constitutive features of Vorhandenheit. The Vorhandenes is, in fact, vorfindlich—it comes forward, it finds itself “there already” ( Fr. il y en a ). Availability ( Verfügbarkeit ) can be taken as the proper characteristic of Vorhandenheit, in its first meaning ( ibid., 24: 153 ).
The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind “in the sails.”
( Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson )
On the other hand, Vorhandenes in its second meaning is given a negative definition: it consists of deficient modes of preoccupation that include “abstaining from,” “neglecting to,” “refraining from.” The fundamental feature of access to the Vorhandenes in this sense is the “nur noch”: “to only,” to refrain from any handling, to refrain from any use, to abstain from the practical attitude and only “consider” ( nur noch hinsehen ) ( Sein und Zeit, 57 ).
VI. The Available World and the Workshop: Grounded Presence
One should not be surprised that the analysis of Zuhandenheit and of the Zuhandenes that begins as early as §15 of Sein und Zeit is conducted within the framework of a study of the being of beings such as it is initially encountered in the environment ( Umwelt ) and that it starts with the destruction of the concept of thing ( Ding ), guided by insistent references to the hand and to handling ( Handlichkeit, 68–69 ). Ding is to be understood here as a metaphysical concept, a translation of ens rather than res ( see RES ).
As opposed to this metaphysical reduction of being as pragmata [πϱᾶγματα], chrêmata [χϱῆματα], prokeimena [πϱοϰείμενα] ( so many Greek terms that can be translated as vorhanden in its first meaning, as that which comes vor die Hand ), in Being and Time Heidegger attempts to clear away the specific meaning of Zeug ( the tool or instrument ) such as it is experienced in the workshop ( cf. §15–16 ), and, more generally, wherever there is work to be done, where the tool is to be put to work.
In 1925 ( Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 20: 263 ) he introduces Zuhandenheit ( Zuhandensein ), as opposed to Vorhandenheit, to characterize the mode of being of instruments or tools, as distinct from the being of natural entities. The question ( as will still be the case in Sein und Zeit, §15 ) is of being as it is initially encountered, as it first presents itself. In volume 20 ( Prolegomena ), the analysis clearly starts from the Werkwelt, the world of works and working ( cf. also Sein und Zeit, 117, 172 ). Why is the Werkwelt given this importance? Precisely because of its Begegnisfunktion: it is through the Werkwelt that we encounter a person or thing. It enables the encounter with the ready-to-hand, with the immediately available: “das Zuhandensein, besser die Zuhandenheit, das Zuhandene als Nächtsverfügbare.” As for the Vorhandenes, as we have seen, it is always already there. We can better understand what Heidegger is aiming at if we go back again to the Werkwelt: the world of work refers us back to nature, to the world of nature ( Welt der Natur ), at least insofar as we think of it as a world that is available ( “Natur aber hier verstanden im Sinne der Welt des Verfügbaren,” Gesamtausgabe, 20: 262 ). It is, then, in the very midst of “availability” that it becomes important to take note of a difference: the difference between the wood in the woodworker’s shop, for instance, and the tools that are ready to hand. Thus the Werkwelt is not self-contained but open to nature as being available. In its very constitution working always refers back to “das Werk selbst hat eine Seinsart des Angewiesenseins auf, der Schuh auf Leder, Faden, Nagel, Leder aus Haüten [The work itself has a way of being-dependent-on, the shoe on leather, thread, nails, the leather from hides]” ( History of the Concept of Time, 193 ). That form of being that refers to, that relies on, explains that Greek ontology, in its emphasis on the primacy of Vorhandenheit, passed over the phenomenon of the world. It is precisely because Greek ontology is developed in the context of working, of producing ( or even better, of poiêsis [ποίησις] ), that it is oriented toward nature ( Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 24: 162 ) and misses the world, for if the world is “daseinsmäßig” ( at the measure of the being-there ), it is nonetheless inaccessible from the starting point of nature ( ibid., 20: 231 ).
In the Prolegomena, Heidegger borrows Husserl’s concept of “underpinning” ( Fundierung ) to clarify the primacy of the Werkwelt. The world of work, where the artisan is caught up in his work, “appresents” the ambient world close by, as well as the public world ( in common ) and the world of nature ( “die Welt der Natur,” in the sense of always already being there, as resource, as materiel, as available stock ). One should posit that the world of preoccupation, the Werkwelt, underpins worldliness in general. Weltlichkeit reveals itself first as the worldliness of the ambient world: the phenomenon of the world reveals itself as and in the worldliness of the environment.
We maintain that the specific world of preoccupation is the one by which the world as a whole is encountered. We maintain that the world in its worldhood is built neither from immediately given things or sense data nor even from the always already present subsistence of nature, which consists of itself as one puts it [aus dem immer schon Vorhandenen einer—wie man sagt—an sich bestehenden Natur]. The worldhood of the world is grounded rather in the specific work-world [Die Weltlichkeit der Welt gründed vielmehr in der spezifischen Werkwelt]
( Heidegger, Prolegomena, 194; Gesamtausgabe ( mod. ) 20: 263 )
We can thus say that Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit are co-originating, inasmuch as both are complementary modes of being that the Werkwelt necessarily opens up. Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit are the features that make a priori possible any “encounter with.” Primacy is not a feature of Zuhandenheit but more fundamentally of the Werkwelt. The Werkwelt—the world-of-work, the world-of-labor: despite appearances it is not a composite term, the sort that the language of German philosophy is fond of. The world only opens itself through and for working. Vorhandenheit is not just thought of as a foil, as a simple correlate to the abstraction that results from an objectivizing intent entirely cut off from the world. Here the Vorhandenes is a co-constituent of the world of work, as a dimension of “nature,” of “natural products,” or of materials ( Sein und Zeit, 70 ). What Heidegger characterizes as “founded presence” ( fundierte Präsenz ) is thus the Zuhandenes, without any real contradiction in relation to Sein und Zeit. If handiness ( Fr. l’à-portée-de-la-main ) is founded presence, this is always insofar as it presupposes a “taking care of,” “concern for,” “having to do with.” The “givenness” for the factive being, which is in the world, is always the Zuhandenes, and certainly not the Naturding, which is apprehended through perception, the Naturding in its claim to be given as “in the flesh” ( Leibhaftigkeit ).
What is given? What gives? What is there ( Ger. Was “gibt es” )? This could well be the question that leads ultimately from Sein und Zeit to Zeit und Sein.
Das echte zunächst Gegebene ist . . . nicht das Wahrgenommene, sondern das im besorgenden Umgang Anwesende, das im Greif- und Reichweite Zuhandene. Solche Anwesenheit von Umweltlichen, die wir Zuhandenheit nennen, ist eine fundierte Präsenz. Sie ist nicht etwas Ursprüngliches, sondern gründet in der Präsenz dessen, was in die Sorge gestellt ist.
The genuine immediate datum is thus . . . not the perceived but what is present in concerned preoccupation, the handy within reach and grasp. Such a presence of the environmental, which we call handiness, is a founded presence. It is not something original but grounded in the presence of that which is placed under care.
( Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 20: 264; Eng. trans. Kisiel, Concept of Time, 194–95 )
Presence ( Präzens ) is here to be understood as Besorgtheitspräsenz, the coming into presence whose origin and guiding thread lies in preoccupation and care. The insufficient attention that has been paid to this double meaning of Vorhandenheit has made it possible to repeatedly deplore the absence of any ontology of nature or of natural reality in Being and Time ( cf. Michel Haar, Le chant de la terre ). One must not reduce all the ontological determinations elaborated in it ( except of course for Dasein ) to an “ontology of the workshop” or of “work” when, in fact, what is at stake in the complex play of Vorhandenes and Zuhandenes is to find a means of access to the phenomenon of the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Crowell, Steven, and Jeff Malpas, eds. Transcendental Heidegger. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
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Granel, Gérard. Traditionis traditio. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.
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Haar, Michel. Le chant de la terre: Heidegger et les assises de l’histoire de l’être. Paris: L’Herne, 1985. Translation by Reginald Lilly: The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings, from Being and Time ( 1927 ) to The Task of Thinking ( 1964 ). Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Also translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. London: SCM Press, 1962.
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1 A note on translations of Heidegger in English: One of the main difficulties in standard English is that Sein ( infinitive ) is normally translated as “Being,”—that is to say, already a present participle. How then shall we distinguish between Seiend ( etant, “being” ) and Sein ( etre, “Being” )? The solution adopted by Macquarrie and Robinson is to translate the present participle seiend using “entity”/“entities” ( the difference between singular and plural in the English translation seems arbitrary ), and to maintain Being for Sein. Two problems then arise: 1. The so-called ontological difference Sein/seiend, etre/etant is no longer recognizable in the word pair “Being”/“entity.” 2. It is difficult to maintain the translation “entity” when Heidegger underlines the present participle and the presence of the present in it ( cf. the first occurrence of “being” for seiend ).
Stambaugh’s translation proposes an alternative that more fully takes into account the present participle. She translates seiend by “in being,” insisting on the progressive present. She maintains Being with a capital “B” for Sein. We are thus confronted with the manifold uses of “-ing” forms in English and the difficulties of nominalization in English.