93

§15. Δόξα [136–137]


of being brought into court. Everyone has the opportunity to hear a eulogy, for example at the Olympic games. This peculiar region, the everydayness of being-there, becomes manifest through the right interpretation of the Rhetoric, and in fact is manifest as already conceptually explicated in a detailed way.


§15. Δόξα (Nicomachean Ethics, Ζ10 and Γ4)

In order to make intelligible the basic phenomenon of everydayness, the phenomenon that underlies this speaking itself, it is necessary that we come to understand beforehand the sense of ἔνδοξον, of δόξα. Δόξα designates, first of all, the “view of something,” but at the same time it means, for the most part, “to have a view.”

a) Demarcation of δόξα in Contrast with Seeking (ζήτησις), Knowing

(ἐπιστήμη), and Presenting-Itself (φαντασία)

1. According to Aristotle, δόξα is οὐ ζήτησις, “not a seeking,” but rather φάσις τις ἤδη:97 I have “a view already.” I do not seek first; I am not, at first, on the way to the ascertaining of the structure of a matter, but I am situated thus and so toward the matter. Φάσις: a certain λέγειν, a certain yes-saying to that of which I have a view. Insofar as δόξα is characterized by its being a certain yes-saying and not an investigating, a reflecting, a coming-first-to-a-view, it is in the context of ἐπιστήμη. That is, if I possess a knowing of something, in the sense that I know exact information about it, that I can say something about the matter—even if I do not have it before my eyes—this knowing as ἐπιστήμη does not have the character of a ζήτησις, but one knows, thereby, a yes. Δόξα is also a certain yes, a being-situated toward the matter, but it is distinguished from ἐπιστήμη insofar as the following belongs to δόξα.

2. Ὀρθότης.98 If I know definite information about something, it belongs to the sense of this knowing that what is known cannot be “false,” cannot be ψευδές, since in that case it would not be ἐπιστήμη. Δόξα must possess ὀρθότης, to which belongs “direction” toward, “being-directed” toward ἀλήθεια.99 Having-a-view is thus only a view; it could also be otherwise. In itself, δόξα is true and false. It could be thus, and could also be otherwise. Being-directed toward ἀλήθεια is constitutive of δόξα, and therefore the possibility of ψεῦδος belongs to it. Plato (Theatetus, Sophist, Philebus) could not yet see that this “it could be otherwise” also belongs to the view itself. This implies that I do not claim absolutely that “it is so,” but instead that it could be otherwise; we suppose within a certain φάσις.

3. Therefore, δόξα is also distinguished from φαντασία. Φαντασία: the



97. Eth. Nic. Ζ 10, 1142 b 14.

98. Eth. Nic. Ζ 10, 1142 b 11.

99. Ibid.

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