Heidegger's 1924 Lecture Course on Aristotle'sRhetoric: Key Research Implications

Daniel M. Gross University of California, Irvine

Abstract

ABSTRACTOnly recently have we begun to realize how Martin Heidegger's 1924 lecture course on Aristotle's Rhetoric permanently altered the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. This article explains how it did so, outlining what exactly Heidegger reclaimed in Aristotle's Rhetoric just as he was radically reformulating the history of Western metaphysics against his contemporaries in philosophy. Key are a couple of scholarly moves. Heidegger places Aristotle's Rhetoric in the Corpus Aristotelicum next to the Physics, away from the logical works and the Poetics. And he defines rhetoric as the hermeneutic of Dasein itself only after working out what he calls the “Greco-Christian interpretation of life.” Finally, this article explains how and why Heidegger left rhetoric behind soon after 1924, as he actively took up Weimar politics and consequently lost faith in the analysis of factical life Aristotle made possible.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2017-11-15
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.50.4.0509
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (46)

  1. Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  2. Aristotle. 1991. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford Universit…
  3. Austin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University i…
  4. Bagchee, Joydeep. 2010. Review of Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, by Martin Heidegger. Bryn Mawr C…
  5. Barnes, Jonathan, ed. 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Show all 46 →
  1. Bultmann, Rudolf. 1969. Faith and Understanding. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
  2. Carnap, Rudolf. 1967 [1928]. The Logical Structure of the World: Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. Berkeley: Univ…
  3. Cicero. 1954. Rhetorica ad Herrenium. Trans. Harry Caplan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  4. Clark, Andy. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  5. Davis, Bret W. 2007. Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  6. de Man, Paul. 1979. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Ha…
  7. Derrida, Jacques. 1982 [1971]. “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy.” Margins of Philosophy. …
  8. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1991. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's “Being and Time,” Division I. Cambri…
  9. Dubois, Jean. 1970. Rhétorique générale. Paris: Larousse.
  10. Düring, Ingemar. 1957. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.
  11. Düring, Ingemar. 1966. Aristoteles: Darstellung und Interpretation des Denkens. Heidelberg: Winter.
  12. Garver, Eugene. 1994. Aristotle's “Rhetoric”: An Art of Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  13. Gross, Alan G., and Arthur E. Walzer. 2000. Preface to Rereading Aristotle's “Rhetoric,” ed. Alan G. Gross an…
  14. Haugeland, John, and Joseph Rouse. 2013. Dasein Disclosed: John Haugeland's Heidegger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard…
  15. Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.
  16. Heidegger, Martin. 1979. Nietzsche. Vol. 1. Trans. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row.
  17. Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Plato's Sophist. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Bloomington: Indiana Un…
  18. Heidegger, Martin. 1998. Parmenides. Trans. André Schuwer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  19. Heidegger, Martin. 2000. Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910–1976). Gesamtausgabe, vol. 16. Fr…
  20. Heidegger, Martin. 2002a. Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie: Marburger Vorlesung Sommer Semester …
  21. Heidegger, Martin. 2002b. Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to “Being and Time” and Beyond. Ed. John van …
  22. Heidegger, Martin. 2004. The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Trans. Matthias Fritsch. Bloomington: Indiana U…
  23. Heidegger, Martin. 2005. Phänomenologische Interpretation ausgewählter Abhandlungen Aristoteles zu Ontologie …
  24. Heidegger, Martin. 2009. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanz…
  25. Heidegger, Martin. 2015. Nature, History, State: 1933–1934. London: Bloomsbury.
  26. Jaeger, Werner. 1934 [1923]. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  27. Kemmann, Ansgar. 2005. “Heidegger as Rhetor: Hans-Georg Gadamer Interviewed.” In Heidegger and Rhetoric, ed. …
  28. Kisiel, Theodore. 1993. The Genesis of Heidegger's “Being and Time.” Berkeley: University of California Press.
  29. Kopperschmidt, Josef. 2009. Heidegger über Rhetorik. Munich: Fink.
  30. McKeon, Richard. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House.
  31. Moraux, Paul. 1951. Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote. Louvain: Universitaires de Louvain.
  32. Most, Glenn W. 2002. “Heidegger's Greeks.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 10 (1): 83–98.
  33. Noë, Alva. 2004. Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  34. Rapp, Christof, and Klaus Corcilius. 2011. Aristoteles-Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Stuttgart: Metzler.
  35. Rickert, Thomas. 2013. Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunement of Rhetorical Being. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pi…
  36. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  37. Smith, Robin. 2017. “Aristotle's Logic.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entr…
  38. Vickers, Brian. 1988. In Defence of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  39. Walker, Jeffrey. 2000. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  40. Wheeler, Michael. 2005. Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  41. Woods, Marjorie Curry. 2010. Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the “Poetria Nova” across Medieval and Renaissa…