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§6 [29,30,31]


b ) Task and first outline of the investigation.


Aristotle now interrogates these two basic modes of disclosure, the ἐπιστημονικόν and the λογιστικόν, more precisely: which one would be the μάλιστα ἀληθεύειν, which one most takes beings out of concealment? ληπτέον ἄρα ἑκατέρου τούτων τίς ἡ βελτίστη ἕξις (a15f.): with regard to each we are to discern what is its βελτίστη ἕξις, its most genuine possibility to uncover beings as they are and to preserve them as uncovered, i.e., to be toward them as dwelling with them. For the ἐπιστημονικόν, this highest possibility lies in σοφία; for the λογιστικόν, in φρόνησις. Thus there are distinctions and levels of the disclosive access and preservation; the ways in which the world is uncovered for Dasein are not all indifferently on the same plane. The disclosedness of Dasein, insofar as Dasein does possess the possibility of disclosing the world and itself, is not always one and the same. Now Aristotle's more precise analysis does not proceed from the highest modes of ἀληθεύειν but from the modes which are most immediately visible in Dasein, i.e., ἐπιστήμη (chapter 3) and τέχνη (chapter 4). And as Aristotle proceeds he demonstrates that these are not the highest. Thereby Aristotle appropriates the customary understanding of the modes of ἀληθεύειν. Thus it is not a matter of invented concepts of knowledge and know-how, but instead Aristotle only seeks to grasp and to grasp ever more sharply what these ordinarily mean. Furthermore, the type of consideration Aristotle carries out in his analysis of the five modes of ἀληθεύειν is the one that was already alive in the fundamental distinction he drew: it takes its orientation from the actual beings which are disclosed in the respective mode of ἀληθεύειν.


§6. The determination of the essence of ἐπιστήμη (Nic. Eth. VI, 3).


Aristotle begins his more precise consideration with ἐπιστήμη. Ἐπιστήμη has an ordinary, rather broad sense in which the word means much the same as τέχνη or any sort of know-how. Ἐπιστήμη has this sense for Aristotle too.


Martin Heidegger (GA 19) Plato's Sophist