Arche and Nous in Heidegger’s and Aristotle’s Understanding of Phronesis

1.1 The Ends of Phronesis

A clear conception of what constitutes phronesis for Aristotle can be attained by adumbrating the different dispositional distinctions he makes concerning the soul. The logistikon, the part of the soul that contemplates beings that can be other than they are,^[8] is applied differently in two ways, namely poiesis and praxis, that express different dispositions of the soul, namely techne and phronesis, respectively.^[9] If we consider poiesis/praxis as actualisations of the dispositions that are techne/phronesis, then we can characterise to what ends such dispositions are directed: for techne its end is something other than itself, that being the specific object produced by the actualisation of techne in poiesis, while for phronesis its actualisation is its own end, that being the very actualisation of phronesis in the act of praxis.^[10] If we just talk about the ends of the acts of poiesis and praxis, then they are, respectively, either discernible independently from the act itself or are constitutive of the well-accomplished act itself. This should be intuitive: for techne and the productive act of poiesis, one can understand an object and evaluate it as well-made without necessarily having to refer back to the very process of making it, while for phronesis and the practical action of praxis, one can only understand and evaluate the act as well-accomplished by reference to the act itself.^[11]

This is not because acts are in principle unintelligible outside of their actional contexts – i.e. contexts consisting of the person acting, the judgment made in relation to said action, and the sensitive/affective elements grounding that judgment – but that the evaluation of phronetic acts specifically is inextricably linked to their actional contexts. Not only does Aristotle already note how this link with one’s sensitive and affective elements informs how a phronetic judgment can be true,^[12] but that this judgment is itself part of the action to which it relates since, according to Smith, “it will have been directed toward this action from the very outset.”^[13] When taking all this into consideration, along with Brogan’s reading of Aristotle, wherein “[t]he goodness of the agent determines the quality of an action,”^[14] it should now be easier to see how determining whether one has acted well phronetically cannot be done outside the actional context – after all, passing a judgment on a different act would itself constitute part of a separate action, and thus entail the judger’s being ensconced within a different actional context altogether that risks alienation from the object of said judgment. Therefore, within this article, talk about acts and the actional situation (context + content) in relation to phronesis is largely interchangeable.

Now, this does not mean that phronesis’ goal amounts to the specific action in question as a final end that fails to point past itself towards something greater. Indeed, as Vardoulakis interprets Aristotle in NE: 1139a32-33, phronetic “[j]udging determines acting (it instigates the movement of action, not its final end), and judging is determined by desire and rationality toward a certain specific or provisional end.”^[15] This end is provisional in relation to the good life, which is one way in which praxis points beyond its own good acts; but we must also note, as Smith does, that good acts “are not themselves something different from that good life, since a good life is cut from the fabric of good actions – they are what it is made of.”^[16] Similarly, in concordance with Brogan’s link between agents and their actions, the good life must also be cut from the fabric of good agents as well.^[17] In this sense, the ends of phronesis point both past themselves, to a good life consisting of good acts/actors, as well as to the acts/actors that fully constitute themselves.

Let us now move on to how Heidegger characterises the ends of phronesis differently from Aristotle. According to Vardoulakis, phronesis for Heidegger has its end not in some provisional practical act but in “the single, unified [B]eing itself.”^[18] We can also arrive at this conclusion by considering both Heidegger’s notion that logos “possesses, as pregiven from the very first, the unarticulated unitary being,” and his picking up on Aristotle’s argument that phronesis is both meta logou (beyond logos) and dialego (with logos),^[19] since by this phronesis as dialego has as its end that which its logos possesses, which is unified Being itself. It is also crucial to note that Heidegger paints Aristotle, at least more explicitly early on in Plato’s “Sophist,” as espousing the idea that phronesis is a mode of disclosure (aletheia), which “is itself a mode of Being … of the beings we call human Dasein.”^[20] Indeed, this may explain why some have pointed out how Heidegger reads in the Sophist Aristotle as understanding that all features of the soul that involve logos – i.e. phronesis, techne, episteme, and sophia – are modes of disclosure that “are inseparable from the being-there that is Dasein.”^[21]

Therefore, the structure of phronetic ends in Aristotle consists of a movement of provisional ends pointing to the final end of the good life, while for Heidegger in the Sophist it consists of a disclosive movement of Dasein, a movement that expresses Dasein’s Being precisely because this movement, as disclosure, not only is itself a mode of the Being of Dasein but also involves logos, which already has pregiven within it Being itself – i.e. if disclosure is a mode for Dasein to be then phronesis, as a mode of disclosure that structures the movement of ends according in part to Being-possessed logos, forms part of the structure of Dasein’s Being as that which constitutes a particular kind of disclosive understanding of said Being. What this understanding, given in part in disclosure by that which is dialego, amounts to and entails, and how this becomes more maturely read in its also being meta logou, is taken up more explicitly from Section 4 onwards.

Crucially, phronesis is not the only mode of Dasein’s Being (e.g. knowing, utilising, judging, appreciating), nor is it the only mode of disclosing Dasein’s Being – this specifically applies to the discussion of sophia in Section 1.2, but we should be able to interpret other modes, like knowing and utilising, as those that are in other ways also disclosive of Dasein’s Being. This is why when Heidegger claims that phronesis is a mode of Being, we should take that to mean it being one of many modes, and specifically of those modes dealing with disclosive movements of Being.

Let us be clearer on the difference between Heidegger and Aristotle in this regard. On the one hand, for Aristotle, not all movements are equivalent, given that techne and sophia involve, respectively, inferior and superior dispositions than that of phronesis.^[22] Nonetheless, I follow Smith’s interpretation that this pointing functionality of phronesis for Aristotle is one of moderation, where “phronesis qua praxis [acts as] the ‘golden mean’ between poiesis (techne) and theoria (episteme and sophia), [guarding] against the potential excesses of both.”^[23] On the other hand, for Heidegger, Aristotle’s understanding of phronesis risks what some, including Heidegger, have seen as an overly formal determination of human being, given how the latter for Aristotle must be disclosed by always pointing past itself, to the good life, for positive content – i.e. content that adds to what the human being can be disclosed as in terms of the good life.^[24]

This initial tension between Heidegger and Aristotle regarding how to characterise phronetic ends is just one of the explananda of the dual reading of arche discussed below in Section 2, in that this reading can account for a change in the ends of Heideggerian phronesis by grounding it on arche as logos-unmediated nous. Thus, to better appreciate the transition into this reading, let us discuss another explanandum thereof in the form of how Aristotle and Heidegger differently understand the relation between phronesis and sophia, and specifically between phronetic and sophic ends.

1.2 Phronesis and Sophia

Now, Aristotle does not deny that the apprehension of being in phronesis is unique compared to what sophia apprehends – beings that can be otherwise and those that cannot (e.g. transient and universal/eternal beings, respectively) are not equivalent after all. Nevertheless, there is, as Brogan notes, a “philosophical closeness” between the two dispositions that comes about via their involvement with nous, an involvement that, as Bowler’s reading of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics indicates, is one of nous acting for both phronesis and sophia as their “originative source (arche).”^[25] Brogan also comments similarly when discussing, specifically for phronesis, that, for Aristotle, nous bases how the disclosure of good acts informs the choice to bring about any actional situation “on a [noetic] fore-grasp of the good that is the ultimate end for which we act.”^[26] Taken together, these readings of Aristotle imply that the disclosure of good acts, and therefore of an agent’s being in the actional situation, is positively informed by the same capacity we have to apprehend all manners of beings, even Being itself, in nous.

For Heidegger, both phronesis and sophia are disclosive of Being. Specifically, according to Hohler, phronesis reveals Being as the very unfolding of “itself as its own possibilities,” unfolding “in life as the very possibility of that life to become actualized as a particular way to be,” while sophia reveals it “as being complete, already finished, where motion has come to full self-presence.”^[27] This offers another variant of philosophical closeness between the two dispositions due to their involvement with disclosing Being itself. We can even see Heidegger here agreeing with Aristotle that sophia is epistemically superior in apprehending Being than phronesis, which explains why some have taken BT’s analysis of Dasein’s Being as anticipating the way to understand Being in general.^[28] However, this latter understanding cannot be reducible to a mere sophic understanding of Being, at least not for a sophia that is rigidly distinct from phronesis, for that would risk adopting the very formalism that Heidegger ascribes to Aristotle’s determination of human being, and consequently the disclosure of such being via phronesis as always needing to point past itself for positive content. This is because, if our highest extent of apprehending Being is through sophia, then the human being disclosed through an inferior phronesis will always be beholden in our conception thereof to whatever positive content is gleaned in sophic understanding.

In short, we can glean from this interpretation of Heidegger’s understanding of the closeness between phronesis and sophia how they mutually resemble each other at ontological levels proper to the analysis of Being.^[29] It is a dissolution of the sophia/phronesis distinction at the highest, properly ontological level since, if sophia is meant to uncover Being past how it merely appears to us, then at the highest levels of analysis, there would be nothing left to point past to from what is already being apprehended. This allows for phronesis to resemble sophia in the way that acts/human beings are disclosed in the actional situation, because if at the highest levels one fully grasps a being that can be otherwise, then this feature of being other would be constitutive of that being that can be otherwise, but in a way that cannot be otherwise, for being other would be fundamental to the Being that such beings possess in themselves. In other words, apprehending the pointing past would itself be the disclosure of Dasein’s Being at the highest properly ontological level. We can also talk about sophia resembling phronesis since the disclosure of Dasein’s Being to itself through this apprehension of the pointing past would not require one to go past what is being disclosed in the moment.^[30] If we go with the understanding that BT’s analysis of Dasein is preparatory for analysing the meaning of Being itself, then actualising praxis/theoria at this stage would be “autotelic,” according to McNeill,^[31] because the apprehension of Being would be transformed into a pointing past that at the fundamental level points back to Being itself.

Now, Heidegger does regard the arche (originative source) of phronesis, which he reads as the hou heneka, the “for the sake of which” of action, as also its telos/end.^[32] This is different from sophia, wherein the telos and arche seem to be more mutually separable – this is reasonable given that, for phronesis, action and agent are inextricably interlinked, while for sophia, the theoretical act of understanding beings is supposed to go beyond their appearance to what allows for them to be disclosed as something more. In a sense, going by Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle in the Sophist, sophic telos is associated with the arche as disclosive of beings as a whole – as giving beings their Being – not of whatever arche is disclosive of beings at the particular moment.^[33]

My analysis here remains consistent with these facts if they are meant to represent phronesis and sophia but not at the highest ontological level, for at this highest level it is questionable whether Heidegger would even consider the arche of beings’ particularities as all that differently conceivable in sophic understanding from the arche of beings’ wholeness. Arche for Heidegger, therefore, attains a greater role within his analysis, specifically, of sophia. This concords with what Thanassas acknowledges as Heidegger’s identification of sophia “on the basis of its” arche in opposition to Aristotle’s identification of it with its telos, which ultimately allows sophia to gain “practical significance” in Heidegger while being distinct from phronesis in Aristotle.^[34] Now, while I do agree here, I am not convinced by Thanassas’ claim that, at the foundational explanatory level, Heidegger’s approach is based on his recognition “that theory, as an activity of life, remains a form of praxis.”^[35] Based on the preceding considerations of the sophia/phronesis relation, and associating theory with sophia and praxis with phronesis, I argue instead that the practicality Heidegger affords theory is based more on the fact that, at the highest ontological level, theory resembles praxis more in how the latter must be sensitive to the actional situation in the moment of its disclosure and less in how the former must be also sensitive to what is revealed past said moment.

Some have taken this to be where Heidegger misinterprets Aristotle. Rosen, for example, argues that the Heideggerian assumption “that the [Aristotelian] grounding of the superiority of theory to practice in the superiority of eternal to transient beings is the same as the ontological grounding of ethics” misconstrues Aristotle’s insistence that “[e]thics is grounded in the endoksa, … [in] common sense, not the meaning of Being.”^[36] Common sense is mediated in part by the nous, but what is noetically grasped and aimed at in sophia is instead “the happiness or blessedness (eudaimonia) of the life of theoretical contemplation.”^[37] Moreover, there is evidence already pointing to Aristotle’s ambivalence towards the status of sophia as sufficient for the highest of goods, where its “adequacy” in this manner “remains confronted with the complementarity of [phronesis] as an indispensable part of virtue as a whole.”^[38] McNeill also observes that, even in Book IX of the Metaphysics, “where we find the most rigorous determination of praxis, [Aristotle] gives no grounds whatsoever for preferring the vision of theoria over the vision we find in phronesis, or for that matter in rudimentary sense-perception.”^[39] This evidence fits well with Aristotle’s understanding of nous as permeating the movements of both phronesis and sophia, granting them a somewhat equal standing regarding what can be gleaned from both, but in a way that still preserves their mutual distinction.

1.3 Setting Up

I have devoted space for the above discussion because I argue that the phronesis/sophia indistinction in Heidegger is only justified given Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends. In particular, phronesis having its arche and telos be the same concerning the disclosure of Dasein’s Being implies that such a disposition would resemble sophia. Otherwise, if instead we interpret phronesis’ ends as Aristotle does, where their accomplishment is beholden to a noetic fore-grasp of and common sense about the Good informing the situation at hand, then phronesis would never be able to reach the heights of the properly ontological level as Heidegger considers it.^[40] This is because the disclosure of good acts in the actional situation would perennially be dependent for its positive content on something past the situation itself.

In other words, if, by an analysis of phronesis, how Dasein is disclosed in its can-be-otherwise is always inform-able by one’s noetic grasp of an even higher, more perfect truth, then how Heideggerian phronesis, the fuller expression of which is to be found in how he appropriates it throughout BT, grasps the cannot-be-otherwise of Dasein as its very can-be-otherwise at the properly ontological level can no longer be the logical endpoint of said analysis. This sophia/phronesis indistinction in Heidegger is thus different from an Aristotelian ambivalence towards these dispositions by virtue of an appreciation of how keeping phronetic ends within an Aristotelian context does not allow for phronesis to meet sophia on equal ontological grounds at the highest levels.

This analysis of Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends is meant to be broadly applicable, in that it should be able to explain the disclosure of Dasein regardless of what this disclosure can manifest specifically as. As an example, let us take Rosen’s view that phronesis discloses Dasein’s cannot-be-otherwise by way of exhibiting “the underlying ontological structure of the epitactic dimension of human existence” as its very can-be-otherwise^[41] – i.e. what cannot be otherwise for Dasein being disclosed as the fundamental way in which we are variously commanded to act in life. Now, this is to interpret the disclosing of Dasein’s cannot-be-otherwise fundamentally as an exhibition of the very modality in which human existence calls us to action as what underlines Dasein’s can-be-otherwise. However, this interpretation can only be valid on account of Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends, else some other higher noetically grasped level would provide positive content for these ends. If so, then we revoke from Heideggerian phronesis its fundamental exhibitory role in human existence given that the changing contours of Dasein’s can-be-otherwise become exhibitable by reference not to the phronetic grasp of life’s fundamental call to act that is Dasein’s cannot-be-otherwise but instead to a higher level of content that removes from the can-be-otherwise all marks of finality of a cannot-be-otherwise.

Now, one other example I explore below, starting in Section 4, to substantiate this same analysis is the treatment Heidegger gives of Dasein specifically in BT, especially in terms of the dimensions of the infallibility and temporality of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being. This treatment involves a plethora of different concepts, and so, as a first attempt at approximating substantiation for my analysis, I leverage it to explain one facet of said disclosure, that being the relation between Dasein’s finitude and Dasein’s openness to its own possibilisation.

In BT, Dasein is open to its own possibilisation, to “its current factical potentiality-for-Being,” where Dasein “brings itself to itself and face to face with itself” in its openness to its genuine possibilities for Being.^[42] How this relates to Dasein in the disclosure of its own finitude is in how, as succinctly put by Zickmund, Dasein’s openness to its own possibilisation can only emerge “from Dasein’s having faced its final possibility, its own null basis.”^[43] My analysis of Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends, which for Dasein’s Being discloses its cannot-be-otherwise as its very can-be-otherwise, can explain this openness of Dasein as follows: the fact that being aware of one’s own mortality and finitude, of one’s own-most potentiality for destruction, naturally leads to one’s openness to Dasein’s possibilisation can only be justified on the true grasping of the cannot-be-otherwise of the Being of Dasein as its can-be-otherwise. This is because, otherwise, coming to grips with one’s own mortality would be situated too closely to Dasein’s Being’s cannot-be-otherwise, and not viewing the latter as its can-be-otherwise is to already foreclose on possibilities for Dasein to be, even that of one’s death. This is to not be open to Dasein’s possibilisation – i.e. to not be open to the can-be-otherwise as fundamentally ontological – because the possibility would thereby remain of Dasein’s Being being disclosed, like how the actional situation is disclosed in Aristotelian phronesis, in terms of some higher, more perfect truth positively informing, and thus biasing, the noetic fore-grasping of the disclosure of one’s immortality.^[44]

This suffices to give preliminary justification to my approach of understanding Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends, but this is certainly not the end of the analysis of Heideggerian phronesis in general, especially if it aims to connect its various explicit and implicit instantiations in Heidegger’s works. Fleshing out this analysis thus follows this threefold proposal: (1) understanding Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends is best served by analysing his take on the structure of human nous, and establishing plausible motivation for the former hinges on the warrant of the latter. (2) This warrant can be feasibly grounded on a dual interpretation of arche as arche-as-origin and arche-as-grasping that denies nous’ logos-mediation, contra Aristotle; and (3) this grounding not only helps more directly explain elements of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being as it is presented in BT, such as its infallibility and temporality, in terms of phronesis but also presents important implications for how the phronesis/sophia relation may be changing between Heidegger’s different works.

Therefore, it behoves us to first analyse the structure of nous for Aristotle, specifically what we as finite living beings engage in, before discussing, in Section 3, how to interpret Heidegger as implicitly reappropriating it to inform the movement of his variant of phronesis, at least in a pre-BT stage. I then proceed to outline first the roles that phronesis and arche play in BT (Sections 4 and 5, respectively) and then subsequently how they infer the infallibility and temporality of Dasein’s disclosure therein (Section 6). I finally offer concluding remarks in Section 7. More precisely, Section 2 sets up the justification of parts 1 and 2 of my threefold proposal given in Section 3, while part 3 is substantiated in Sections 4–6.

3.1 The Status of Nous’ Logos-Mediation

To contextualise Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian nous, let us first make sense of his remark in the Sophist that logos can grasp beings as “unitary pregiven whole[s]” because it “possesses, as pregiven from the very first, the unarticulated unitary being.”^[63] In evaluating the relation between phronesis and deliberation (bouleuesthai), Heidegger remarks that phronesis is carried out in deliberation with logos, or, “in speech, in the discussion of something.”^[64] This discussion takes the form of a “something as something,”^[65] which resembles the aforementioned in-terms-of disclosure proper to Aristotelian phronesis. Indeed, phronesis being conditioned by logos structures the disclosure of individual beings, wherein them being apprehended in their situational particularity comes in the form of them being apprehended in part as predicated on, as Zickmund indicates, the facets of this unarticulated unitary being that “are brought to the fore.”^[66] Since we, as beings that can be otherwise, are privy to this mode of logos, we attain epistemic access to that in terms of which individual beings are disclosed to us phronetically. These specifically are the archai/teloi on which phronesis discloses beings as predicated, so they must be grasped instead by phronetic nous, not by what is involved in logos as deliberation-cum-speech.^[67]

How Heidegger starts to differ, in his interpretation of Aristotle, from Aristotle’s thought as has been characterised above is in a shift of focus: instead of emphasising phronesis’ relation to the good orienting our actions, there is greater attention paid to its sensitivity to the eschaton, the particular moment of action. In disclosing itself as its own arche, as its own “for the sake of which,”^[68] human being essentially becomes revealed in terms of its ownmost Being. This in-terms-of structure fails to have the same sense as in Aristotle, wherein deliberation involves the entire movement from intention to actualisation, because the structure, as Heidegger notes, is significant for phronesis inasmuch as it is involved in the kairos, “the entirety of circumstances, the how, when whither, and about which.”^[69] This primacy of disclosure-in-the-moment for human being is not equivalent to phronesis’ sensitivity to the actional situation’s full particularity in Aristotle, because while both involve nous, they are being differently characterised: Aristotelian phronetic nous is logos-mediated, while for Heidegger, according to Brogan, “phronesis is a revealing, an aletheuein that is without logos.”^[70] Even if Brogan is specifically referencing phronetic nous here, this still diverges significantly from interpretations of Aristotle that have him arguing for a logos-mediation of human nous.

To clarify, Heidegger in the Sophist does not wholesale eschew the relevance of logos for phronesis. Indeed, as Pedersen correctly argues, the disclosure of the actional situation in terms of, say, the arche “is a form of logos.”^[71] The dia-noetic feature of phronesis consists in a noetic grasping of both particularity and actional goods, but how they are brought to bear on each other in the disclosure of the actional situation as accommodating such goods constitutes phronesis’ dia-logic aspect.^[72] As such, going from Aristotle’s understanding that grasping at action-orienting goods – that it is such a good – does not foreclose upon deliberation’s capacity to specify or concretise them further – what such a good is – we can interpret Heidegger as locating both the disclosure of a good’s thatness and whatness within the deliberative movement instantiated by the kairos itself. Phronetic nous therefore grasps the fullness of situational particularity already with respect to the aforesaid in-terms-of structure.^[73]

Pointing out how phronesis is both mediated and unmediated by logos is in keeping with traditional interpretations of Heidegger’s adoption of Aristotle. However, speculating about precisely locating where in phronesis both logos’s mediation and un-mediation act is uniquely significant, for it lends a deeper appreciation of how arche’s dual reading informs a lot of how Heidegger interprets Aristotle and how he adapts it for his later thought in BT.^[74]

Therefore, I think we can understand Brogan’s characterisation of non-(logos-mediated) nous in Heidegger with reference to how nous is conditioned structurally, not objectually, in that while the disclosive relation between archai (the good and the situation) is dialogic, the relation between arche’s two senses is not – i.e. the relation between nous as arche-cum-origin and as arche-cum-(grasping of first principles) is not conditioned nor mediated dialogically, contra Aristotle. This entails nous itself not being dialogically conditioned for Heidegger, even if the connection between different noetically grasped objects is.

Keep in mind that this is all still Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle, but this reading of Heidegger’s understanding of phronesis as logos-mediated objectually but not structurally already helps explain much of what Heidegger acknowledges as proper functions of Aristotelian phronesis: its sensitivity to the kairos, function of disclosing novelty, and possession of unitary Being. I discuss each individually to corroborate this reading of Heideggerian phronesis, as it is still, pre-BT, closely connected to the original Aristotelian context.

3.2 The Relation Between Arche and Phronesis

First, structural logos-mediation of nous entails a type of thinking about arche (origin) with arche (grasping). Concerning Aristotelian sophia, this culminates in “the tautological movement of thought thinking itself,”^[75] which is denied for phronesis given its inferior disclosive status. For Heidegger, nous resembles more so a mere instantaneous grasping, one that is not guaranteed to originate further disclosive instances past the moment of initial origination, because nous as either arche-as-origin or arche-as-grasping is no longer being disclosed in terms of either a grasping or as originative, respectively. What this means is significant because recall that, as discussed in Section 2, logos’ in-terms-of disclosure can consist in the predicate conceptually extending past the predicated subject – e.g. for Heidegger, logos reveals facets of unitary Being whenever beings are disclosed phronetically – so, for instance, arche-as-grasping not being disclosed also as an arche-as-origin entails that what content such grasping is revealed as does not extend past this as-grasping modality to some greater content proper to its as-origin qualification. Nous, as phronesis’ origin, is thus not relevant past the moment of disclosure; hence, as Grant correctly observes, the relevance Heidegger ascribes to the kairos as being “essential to praxis as its purpose and culmination.”^[76]

Second, to establish phronesis’ function of disclosing novelty, Rosen’s comments on Aristotle and Heidegger are salutary. First, Aristotelian phronesis can be described as a form of “knowledge of how to adapt the ends [orienting an act] into a correct command of the calculative reason concerning the correct act to perform under the relevant circumstances of the situation about which we deliberate now.”^[77] For Heidegger in the Sophist, Rosen also notes that phronetic disclosure is a “type of uncovering” that cannot “be forgotten, … because it is always new (i.e. appropriate to the circumstances, not a universal rule).”^[78] After all, in line with the golden mean analogy given in Section 1.1, “phronesis cannot be systematised like a techne,” nor can it be universalised like in sophia.^[79] Now, the novelty inherent in Aristotelian phronesis is given in the actional situation, specifically in how it is disclosed through a chosen path of action, which is a know-how about adapting ends to specific actional situations. Nonetheless, this knowledge is based on “the regularity of nature, of the stability of human motivation, of practical likelihoods, and so on,” meaning that it is “dependent upon the general knowledge of human nature, and so of human affairs,” in order to “establish the good in each case.”^[80]

It is therefore useful for our purpose of establishing the novelty of phronetic disclosure from an absent structural logos-mediation for phronesis if we read Heidegger’s stance on the novelty of phronetic disclosure in terms of how such disclosure turns novel if it is no longer being constituted by a more general human knowledge. This is because bounding the desired novelty of the disclosure by such knowledge corresponds to precisely the “grasping-as-origin” type of disclosure of arche that Heidegger rejects – i.e. arche-as-grasping may originate the actional situation’s disclosure, but not to the extent that this indicates some more foundational epistemic origin past the situation at hand. This can also explain why Rosen considers Heidegger as “over-interpret[ing] Aristotle’s very succinct remark about the novelty of phronesis,”^[81] because, for Aristotle, arche-as-grasping, when also disclosed as arche-as-origin, affords what is held in phronetic nous its positive content, which is sourced from a broader knowledge bounding phronetic disclosure. This bounding functionality concords with Aristotle’s insistence that phronesis accords with the appropriate logos.^[82]

Third, phronesis no longer being logos-mediated mandates for phronetic logos its possession of unitary Being. On the one hand, the consideration that facets of Being are made explicit in the actional situation’s disclosure is how Heidegger can claim a logos-mediation for phronesis but not for nous, because the situation being disclosed in terms of such facets characterises a logos-mediation between the various noetic graspings of the archai constituting the situation and the action-orienting good that belongs to Being. On the other, without phronesis being conditioned by general knowledge of matters past the situation at hand, this disclosure cannot therefore rely on phronetic nous grasping archai outside of what is proper to phronesis itself – i.e. what phronesis discloses must be self-contained, in a way, within its appropriate movements as they matter for the kairos. This is why logos possesses unitary Being, because phronesis must safeguard the truth of its “in-terms-of” disclosures, relating the above two noetically grasped objects, without having to refer to content past what is relevant to phronesis, that being the situation at hand.^[83]

This is not to say that phronesis capacitates one’s understanding of Being itself, for we have not yet mentioned the logos proper to sophia, which comprehends Being as applied to beings that cannot be otherwise. Instead, phronesis in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle safeguards the truth of its disclosures by properly comprehending the Being of beings that can be otherwise via a sensitivity to how they are grasped in the situation as wholly novel instances of some orienting good of action that does not require, for its positive content, a view of what is outside of the situation itself – e.g. what sophic nous apprehends. It should therefore be unsurprising that Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian phronesis is taken in terms of the latter being not only limited by the above sense given to its nous,^[84] but also dependent in a radically ontological way on the theoretical insight of sophic nous.^[85] This is because, if phronesis no longer contentfully depends for its noetic graspings on the archai of beings as a whole (katholou) that subsist past any one instantiation of situational particularity, then its dependence must be, rather, ontological in nature – i.e. a grounding of one’s very capacity to grasp in phronetic nous instead of any particular content of what is grasped. In short, Aristotle’s notion that phronetic disclosure can be achieved while being informed by the good that is grasped in sophic nous without having to explicitly refer to this good, as stated in the previous Section, is reread by Heidegger ontologically – i.e. this informing functionality cannot be by positive content but by a content-nonspecific capacitating functionality – because the absence of arche’s structural logos-mediation precludes arche-as-grasping’s situational realisation linking contentfully to some supra-situational arche-as-origin, which would otherwise occur for Heidegger if he did not deny arche being disclosed in a grasping-as-origin manner.^[86]

3.3 Arche and The Ends of Phronesis

Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends can now be motivated as follows. In Aristotle, phronesis’ teloic structure consists of a series of ends that are instrumental to, and also contain the final end of the good life. These ends are made manifest as actional situations, the disclosure of which is based on how one adapts them to a chosen action-orienting good through deliberation. Now, the grasping-as-origin disclosure of arche, in extending arche-as-origin past situational instantiations of arche-as-grasping, functions to link phronesis’s origin in part to the final end, whereby noetic grasping of content concerning the good life becomes originative of phronetic deliberation that establishes ends in service of such a life. By negating this disclosive modality of arche, Heidegger resists extending arche past teloic particularity in the disclosure of the actional situation, thereby undergirding a stronger association between arche and telos wholesale. This association also persists despite sophic nous being an ontological source for phronesis, since the former provides no positive content to the latter, thus manifesting a phronesis that is limited by way of its ends no longer being instrumental for the attaining of the final end – an instrumentality that would otherwise obtain given a positively contentful fore-grasp of the good life towards which one might phronetically move. With instrumentality removed from phronesis, its disclosive movements become infallible expressions of one’s Being instead of what may be progressing to some higher, more perfect good. Sophic nous provides the ontological grounds for phronesis, while phronesis’ telos and arche both equally take part in it.

It is integral to my aim here that arche’s dual reading makes sense of this outcome, for then the role of arche in BT becomes all the clearer. Note, first, that phronesis’ ontological basis on sophia is conditioned on an absent structural logos-mediation of phronetic nous between arche-as-grasping and arche-as-origin – i.e. objectually there is present a mediation between different archai since you have a good being disclosed in terms of a higher good, but the latter is not provided any positive content by sophia since the lack of structural logos-mediation means that arche-as-grasping does not go past itself to some supra-phronetic arche-as-origin. This ontological basis still permits a relation between phronetic and sophic nous though, but only if this relation is not a predicative one – e.g. you can have phronesis’ arche-as-origin be at a lower rung in the hierarchy than sophia’s arche-as-origin, but you cannot have the former’s arche-as-origin be disclosed as the latter’s arche-as-grasping since that would instead represent a contentful basis of phronesis on sophia as opposed to merely an ontological one. However, phronesis no longer having this ontological basis on sophia happens only if one denies this hierarchical relation, because having a phronesis that is distinct from sophia, such that the hierarchy persists, suffices to have one at least ontologically grounded on the other. In other words, arche’s dual reading is needed to understand the difference between not only a contentful and merely ontological basing relation, but also an ontological basing relation and a lack thereof – i.e. specifying the hierarchy of the ontological basing relation requires a disambiguation between arche-as-origin and arche-as-grasping, because not only does this disambiguation allow one to specify both arche-as-grasping as not structurally related (logos-unmediated) to arche-as-origin and the different phronetic archai as objectually related (logos-mediated) to each other, but it also avoids conflation of the difference between an absent ontological basis and a present one with the difference between an absent ontological basis and a contentful basis.

Let us remind ourselves of parts 1 and 2 of my threefold proposal given in Section 1: (1) understanding Heidegger’s recasting of phronesis’ ends away from its Aristotelian origin is best served by analysing his take on the structure of human nous, and establishing plausible motivation for the former hinges on the warrant of the latter. (2) This warrant can be feasibly grounded on a dual interpretation of arche as arche-as-origin and arche-as-grasping that denies nous’ logos-mediation, contra Aristotle. Setting up the motivation for part 1 necessitated an understanding of phronesis’ grounding in nous, but specifically in a nous no longer conditioned by a logos mediation, at least structurally speaking. This is because expounding on how nous is both mediated and unmediated by logos, itself demanding a prior notion of how arche’s ambiguous dual reading as originative grasping entails differences in the content of phronetic disclosures that depend on whether “origin” and “grasp” are themselves logos-mediated or not, serves as explanatory grounds for the particular character Heidegger ascribes to phronetic ends. This thereby grants warrant to part 2 in the form of the important explanatory work delegated to this very ambiguity present in arche, one that is left largely unaddressed in Aristotle’s works since the potential is left unexplored therein for employing this ambiguity to viably differentiate between a contentful and merely ontological grounding of phronesis in sophia. I now move to justify part 3 of my proposal, that the abovementioned explanatory grounds provided by arche’s ambiguity serve as further explanatory grounds, in BT, for both how Heidegger’s earlier reappropriation of Aristotelian phronesis as ontologically, but not contentfully grounded in sophia is further reappropriated as differently related to sophia and how the infallibility and temporality of Dasein’s disclosure can be adequately inferred from this latter reappropriation of phronesis.

The general outline of my argument for part 3 is as follows: we can, in BT, allocate to Heideggerian phronesis, or to what transformed elements of phronesis are present therein, a similar ontological role previously granted to Heidegger’s understanding of Aristotelian sophic nous, particularly in the Sophist. This allocation interprets at least part of BT’s analysis of Dasein as an account of transformed phronesis consisting in a mode of disclosure of the Being of Dasein to itself that most infallibly apprehends the meaning of such Being. If this is the case, then it is thus to BT that our analysis must take us, because there one can find traces of not only phronesis, but of, I argue, an arche that informs the disclosure of Dasein’s Being – i.e. the disclosure of arche that bases Dasein’s Being as a kind of openness to its own possibilities, as its very possibilisation.

Specifically, understanding arche’s role there necessitates its dual reading, as phronesis now playing an ontological role in Dasein’s disclosure makes sense only if arche-as-origin and arche-as-grasping are disambiguated. This is because the difference between these as-origin and as-grasping modalities is what highlights in exactly what sense the arche of phronesis, although no longer grasped in terms of some higher and more perfect truth, can still exhibit a hierarchical ontological relation to the arche of sophia, which thus helps to conceive of what takes place when phronesis’ arche is ontologically self-sufficient, in a way, for Dasein’s disclosure. Hence, arche’s dual reading is integral to understanding its role in BT.

Finally, when viewed through the lens of arche’s dual reading, the Being of Dasein as its very possibilisation can explain Heidegger’s attitude concerning Dasein’s relation to time, with “time” here being expressed as the type of temporality most relevant to the infallible disclosure of phronesis’ arche, and with “relevant” expressing what precludes needless limitation of said disclosure. Effectively, I claim that we can understand phronesis in BT as capacitating an infallible apprehension of the meaning of Dasein’s Being that is obtained via precluding needless limitation of its disclosure, with the reason why being traceable to how arche’s dual reading works in Heidegger’s understanding of the temporality of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being.

Section 4 discusses the ontological role of phronesis in BT, while Section 5 expands the discussion to bring in arche’s place in BT. Section 6 then leverages the discussion to explain how the temporality of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being in phronesis can be gleaned from the role of arche in BT.

6.1 Infallible Disclosure of Dasein’s Being

First, much of the first component has already been discussed. The truth of phronetic disclosures is safeguarded by Heidegger’s attribution to phronesis of its possession of unitary Being given its absent instrumentality for achieving the final end. This entails that whatever content relations these disclosures have concerning any other higher, more perfect ends are irrelevant to phronesis itself – hence its constitution as a content-non-specific orientation/attunement. The reason, therefore, that resoluteness in BT is how Dasein is brought back “to itself” as its very “revealing and Being-revealed”^[121] is because what is revealed about the actional situation is always in terms of this resoluteness (attunement), this arche of phronesis, out of which Dasein’s possibilities-for-Being are revealed. How this is expressed is by resoluteness entering into an objectual logos-mediated relation with the actional situation, whereby nothing about this resoluteness is prefigured in content by some higher, more truthful arche-as-origin movement as which the arche-as-grasping of phronetic disclosure is revealed.

Disclosures simply cannot be wrong because whatever is disclosed cannot be adjudicated by content grasped about what is external to single instances of situational disclosure, and to say otherwise would be to pre-empt how the situation would disclose possibilities about such adjudication – i.e. to needlessly limit Dasein’s disclosure is to prefigure situational content, thereby bounding what possibilities to take seriously. Now, Aristotle also argues for the calculations of the phronimos being infallible, but they are so only by not being intentional errors since Aristotelian phronesis does permit faults outside one’s intentions.^[122] For Heidegger, phronetic calculations, by way of one’s resoluteness/guilt, are infallible both intentionally and not, because all that matters is whether the proper attunement obtains, not whether some unintended content relation to higher goods is present as well.^[123]

6.2 The Temporality of the Disclosure of Dasein’s Being

Related to the second component, what this implies about the temporality for phronetic disclosure should already be apparent to the careful reader:^[124] what has occurred in the past to instantiate what Aristotle would consider proper content relations are not by this account of Heideggerian phronesis as significant as one’s attunement grounding the disclosure of what one can possibly be in the future. Why? Because of phronesis’ arche, which is Dasein’s possibilisation and its attuned openness to its own possibilities, wherein this attunement is one of anxiety and guilt about the instability of any actional situation’s meaning and not being able to live all it could amount to, respectively. Why anxiety and guilt play such integral roles in phronesis is because the relative safety of having the past inform what the actional situation could be disclosed as is denied for Dasein, so all that is left are, one, a disclosed field of possibilities that has a foothold in the now, the kairos, while also attaining a sight to the future, and two, one’s affective comportment (anxiety/guilt) capacitating such possibilities.

Sinclair’s brief sketch of the temporality of Dasein’s disclosure is salutary here. Past and future, for Heidegger, are read in specific ways: the past, the having-been, “occurs as repetition (Wiederholung), according to which Dasein assumes and takes up its past expressly as a source of possibility for its existence as a being-futural.” The future is not synonymous with futural – the future is implied by the past, but it mainly “consists in Dasein’s apprehension of the finitude of its own temporal existence.” These modalities of repetition and apprehension, which Sinclair translates respectively from Heidegger’s notions of Wiederholung and Vorlaufen, are staged in the present moment – really in every present moment of disclosure – and it “is the unity of the authentic appropriation of the present, past, and future [that] is, in fact, predominantly futural.”^[125]

However, we have already discussed how Dasein’s existence is the very “condition of possibility” for Dasein to be otherwise,^[126] which forms part of its possibilisation, so the past can be understood as the mere condition for the possibility of this possibilisation. This implies that phronesis does not require that the past repeats in terms of disclosing the same content, because what is important is not contentful repetition of the past but instead taking up the past in the futural ontologising of its very modality as repetition. By reading repetition as contentful repetition, we can therefore see how McNeill relates to our discussion here when he comments how “anxious, anticipatory resolve … brings us … face to face only with the possibility of retrieval or repetition.”^[127] It should thus be easy to see how the temporality of Dasein’s disclosure, as its very possibilisation, is also inextricably linked with anxiety, since anxiety temporalises its disclosure by one’s openness being held “toward the world as such in its already having been,” or, “toward the world as such as possibility, in the dimension of possibility out of which any particular possibility can first come to presence.”^[128] This holding of one’s openness toward the past in its ontologising capacity regarding future possibilities of Dasein’s Being is a way of grounding this openness in the now of situational particularity that has both a look toward the past but primarily through this look we get a view towards the future, which is essentially the grounded possibilisation of Dasein and a mark of its finitude.^[129]

We must ask, “why this temporality for Dasein’s disclosure; why not others?”, in which case the answer already lies in our characterisation of arche’s disclosure outlined in Section 2. Remember that, for Aristotelian phronesis, the ambiguity of arche leads to one sense (arche-as-grasping) being disclosed in terms of another (arche-as-origin). Heideggerian phronesis amounts to a denial of this, opting instead to not have the disclosure of one overstep into content that could persist past any one disclosive instance, lest arche-as-grasping be disclosed in terms of some broader arche-as-origin. The grasping and origin modalities of arche are therefore equivalent in a way wherein arche is simply equiprimordially both this grasping and the origin being grasped, thereby mirroring in BT what is said about Dasein being both a revealing and Being-revealed.

Indeed, the temporality of Dasein’s disclosure, whereby the past is seen as merely the possibility of Dasein’s possibilisation, is explainable with respect to this characterisation of arche’s dual modality. Arche-as-origin provides a singular origin for phronesis that needs to be renewed any time arche is disclosed, while arche-as-grasping indicates a movement and directionality for said grasping, a movement from potency to act.^[130] However, does a grasping that grasps itself – i.e. itself as this grasping and not as anything broader – entail a futural temporality for arche’s disclosure? I say yes, for what is grasped, if not some broader origin (e.g. having to do with past content), can only be either a null set or one with content. It is not a null set,^[131] so it must be positively content-filled; but if the content is not bound by the past, then what is permitted is a bounding by either the present (in this case, the present situation) or the future.^[132]

However, this fact of already being content-bound by either the present or the future already highlights part of anxiety’s and guilt’s functionalities in BT, those that express not only a sight to future possibilities for life, but a sight that is grounded in a sensitivity to the present situation at hand and one that originates from a questioning of the norms involved in das Man’s social conditioning through a concern for the situation as novel, as not necessarily intelligible solely in terms of said norms. The past thus matters for Dasein’s possibilisation only when it is appropriated for the sake of viewing anew the situation, or when the past, as repetition, is employed to renew one’s resolute choice to choose for oneself in the present – a choice borne out of an openness to Dasein’s possibilisation (anxiety) that is closed off by singling out one possibility over others in action (guilt) – for otherwise any other approach utilising the past would deny Dasein’s possibilisation by virtue of having the past inform one’s choice – i.e. the past would contribute to das Man’s conditioning and needlessly limit the disclosure of Dasein’s Being – instead of having one’s resoluteness in making a choice condition how the past is taken up in disclosing one’s possibilities for being.^[133]

How arche-as-grasping gives rise to this part of anxiety’s functionality is, in my view, foundational, in that why the past does not matter to situational disclosure in the same way as it does in Aristotle is because of arche-as-grasping, not the other way around. This is because situational possibilities that are interpretable in terms of past regularities disclosively influencing present possibilities are safeguarded only whenever arche-as-grasping is disclosed in those terms of arche-as-origin that already conceive of the past as mattering in that way – i.e. the past being disclosed as already within the purview of an origin that extends past any singular instance of grasping.^[134]

Additionally, this also illustrates how arche-as-origin gives rise to this part of guilt’s functionality in a manner that is just as foundational. Without being disclosed as some broader arche-as-grasping, the arche-as-origin of any instance of phronetic disclosure exists only as long as the disclosive moment of which it is the arche does – i.e. arising at one’s openness to Dasein’s possibilisation and ending once the chosen act closes off alternative possibilities for Dasein to be. In other words, arche-as-origin is concurrently both what structures an instance of grasping and what finalises it. This is integral to how guilt arises, for without this broader disclosure of arche-as-origin, there is no structural link to a further instance of grasping, such that the meaning of arche-as-origin is tied in part not to some other opening of Dasein’s disclosure, but to the closing of whatever moment of disclosure just so happens to be presently, which is how guilt functions in necessarily closing off alternative possibilities of action. Therefore, we can see how phronesis, through arche’s dual reading, offers a straightforward path to the temporality of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being in BT.