Kant's Dog by David E Johnson

Author:David E Johnson [Johnson, David E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438442655
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

The homonymy of being

In his 1931 lectures on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Heidegger observed that the unity of Being is neither equivocal (homonumos) nor univocal (sunonumos). Rather, the unity of Being is analogical, which means Being is said in many ways without, however, being reduced either to mere homonymy or to synonymy. The unity of Being corresponds to the unity of analogy, which depends on transference: “This corresponding, analegein, is intrinsically an anapherein pros to proton …: ‘a carrying onto the first’ of the meaning and securing it there” (1995, 33). Heidegger refers to Metaphysics IV where Aristotle notes: “[S]ince there are many senses in which a thing is said to be one, these terms also will have many senses, but yet it belongs to one science to consider them all; for a term belongs to different sciences not if it has different senses, but if its definitions neither are identical nor can be referred to one central meaning. And since all things are referred to that which is primary, as for instance all things which are one are referred to the primary one, we must say that this holds good also of the same and the other and of contraries in general” (1984, 1004a22–28/2.1586). Heidegger goes on to elaborate the regulatory principle of analogy: “The manner of the carrying back and forth of the meanings to the first is different in each case. The first, however, is the sustaining and guiding basic meaning; it is always that from out of which the meaning which carries itself to it and corresponds to it is capable of being spoken. In Greek, the ‘from and of which’ is the arkhe” (1995, 33–34). There must be a rule or principle that governs the pollakos legomena. Heidegger writes, “For on [being] is said neither homonumos nor sunonumos (as the genos)”; rather, “it is said koinon” (34). “How, then,” he asks, “is the unity of this universality of being to be conceived as a sort of analogy?” (34) and he stresses Aristotle's qualification of homonymy: Being is not said by means of a merely accidental homonymy.

For Heidegger, this is important for two reasons. First, although Aristotle claims in the Nicomachean Ethics that the unity of the good is not the unity of homonymy, Heidegger remarks that in Metaphysics IV (1019b8), “being is used in the sense of a homonym” (36). But Heidegger insists on the distinction between the spurious unity of an accidental homonym and the unity of Being indicated by non-accidental or necessary homonymy. Second, Heidegger's reading of the opening sentence of Aristotle's Categories allows for no alternative to homonymy or synonymy: because Being is not said through synonymy, it must be said through homonymy, for “what is not συνωνυμως is a oμωνυμως” (36). Were it said through synonymy, Being would be a genus; this would, however, limit Being, restricting it from saying all that is in that there is no universally determinate genus.9 Therefore, the unity of Being—the way Being says itself in whatever is—must

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