This article attempts to show that Heidegger’s phenomenology may shed light on political phenomena. It pursues this project by arguing that Heidegger’s phenomenology is an appropriation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and his conceptualization of phronesis. I argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger’s ‘circumspection’, which is a capacity for making sense of practical situations, is a translation of phronesis. Heidegger argues, though, that the sight of circumspection is foreshortened by the rules and norms of ‘the one’. In division 2, ‘conscience’ (...) becomes a sharpening of the vision of phronesis, which sees through the one. I then defend Heidegger’s appropriation of phronesis and argue that Heidegger’s concept of conscience, which takes up a critical stance toward plurality, may actually be a proper vision of practical wisdom under modern conditions. I substantiate this claim by turning to an unlikely source to bolster Heidegger’s reading of phronesis and the modern public, Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This essay tries to retrace Heidegger’s interpretation of the Aristotelian concepts of συμβεβηκὸζ, τύχη and abróparov and their role within daseinanalytic ontology. We will try to show how Heidegger manages to unify the three terms (which in Aristotelian philosophy remain distinct although related) into a single ontological concept, capable of exercising a negative function with respect to the conception of being as Anwesenheit. However, one will come to notice the lack of an effective Heideggerian thematization of the concept of τύχη, (...) whose ontological importance for the Dasein will instead be prepared and enhanced by his student Helene Weiss. (shrink)