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§20. Πάθος as ἡδονή and λύπη (Nicomachean Ethics, Κ1–5)
From this consideration of the being-character of living things, we have seen that living means being-in-a-world. This determination now becomes ambiguous:
1. The being of this living nature is determined in its εἶδος as this δύναμις of being-in-the-world—thus, on the one hand, as εἶδος, as the being-determination itself of beings.
2. As encountering from out of the world: the living thing is in the world in yet a second sense, in the sense of belongingness-to-the-world. At the same time, my being is being-in-the-world, in the world in the second sense, as belonging to it in such a way that I can be encountered by another within the world, like a chair.
For the Greeks, both are εἶδος, as the Greeks do not recognize the distinction between the external and internal. This yields fundamental connections regarding the being of living in a wider sense. I mean to point out that being-with-one-another now undergoes a sharper determination:
1. In being-with-one-another, those beings, each of which is for itself being-in-the-world, are with one another. Encountering-one-another is being-there-for-one-another, such that every being that is for another is in the world. Such a being is in the world of things encountered, is there for another way of being.
2. In being-with-one-another, we have the same world with one another. Being-with-one-another is, at the same time, having the same world with one another.
This is presupposed if one is writing a book on the theory of knowledge. Whether or not the questions can then still be posed in the usual way, one can leave to the theorists of knowledge to decide. Then again, one hears today that there holds sway a great schism among philosophers as to whether philosophy should be “life-philosophy.” On one side, it is asserted that philosophy cannot be life-philosophy; on the other side, that it indeed must be. “Life-philosophy” is like “plant-botany”! The emphatic assertion that botany has to do with plants is as comical and senseless as the other assertion.
We now summarize the results of the overall consideration of the πάθη. The πάθη are the sort of thing that occurs in the soul, the sort of thing that is in living-being, and that means more precisely being-taken, losing-composure, κινεῖσθαι, which aims at the genuine being of living things, being-in-a-world. Πάθη are modes of being-taken with respect to being-in-the-world; through the πάθη, the possibilities of orienting oneself in the world are determined essentially. Being-out-of-composure is in itself related to being composed, ἕξις. We are taken in an average and everyday way; we move ourselves within parameters in relation to which there is a being-composed. Since the πάθη are characterized in this way, as a mode of being of living things whose basic structure is being-in-the-world, dealing with the world, dealing with others, there results