Etymology Five Examples of Another Truth, from Democritus to Foucault

Etymology Five Examples of Another Truth, From Democritus to Foucault Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Ph.D. (European Graduate School, 2011) M.Mus. (Royal Conservatoire, 2007) M.A. (Leiden University, 2005) A thesis presented for the degree of Ph.D. in Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen. 2016 Summary In lieu of an introduction, this dissertation starts with a short exposé on the paradigm, or the example, which provides the general framework in which the argument will de- velop – namely to the side of more classical modes of deductive or inductive reasoning. Our argument here is that in order to inspect a concept – etumos logos – that has been repressed throughout most of the history of metaphysics, our biggest chance of uncov- ering some of it is to avoid modes of the logos that have been specifically prominent in that history of repression. In the First Example we investigate the predominance of alētheia as philosophically dominant word for truth, while locating in the work of Martin Heidegger a sustained attempt to undermine and recast the precise meaning of that word. It is our claim that even though Heidegger, ever reaching farther back in the history of Western philosophy, up to the first, non-philosophical, poetical attestations of the Ancient Greek language, manages to uncover many subtleties in the meaning and origin of truth as alētheia, he fails to notice that in the epic literature predating the first philosophical works alētheia is in no way the privileged word for truth. By investigating the precise semantics of the contrast between etumos/etētumos/ eteos and alēthēs in the work of Homer and Hesiod, and the slow disappearance of this contrast in Aeschylus and Pindar, we suggest a parallel between on the one hand the disappearance of the former and Heidegger’s insistent neglect of this disappearance. This neglect is also the reason that Heidegger’s readings from Homer and Hesiod fail to convince; they project onto these authors a “basic meaning” of alētheia that in fact post- dates their texts. At the same time, we inspect Heidegger’s attempts to “go beyond” etymology, and the insistent professions of his aversion to mere “word philosophy,” in spite of the fact that his methodology often follows precisely the figura etymologica. Thus it appears that both his dislike for etymology and his blindness for this “other” Ancient Greek word for truth can be interpreted together in a way that suggests that Heidegger’s attempts to recover a lost meaning of truth and go beyond “metaphysics,” are in fact strongly anchored within one of its most important precepts: a rejection of the etumos. In the Second Example we depart from the adverbial usage of eteon ge “in truth, reality” in the Iliad and the Homeric Hymns, and subsequently its nominal form eteē in the work of the pre-Platonic materialist philosopher Democritus, where eteē as “reality” or “truth” is the condition upon which truth as alētheia can be known, even if with difficulty. It is thus conceptualized as a truth, which, unlike alētheia, is independent of human perception or subjectivity. This specifically Democritean concept has been subsequently lost in the Platonic–Aristotelian tradition, as confirmed by the doxographical tradition, most probably not in the least because of Plato’s great dislike of the atomist philosopher. Democritus only returns to prominence in philosophy with his rediscovery by Friedrich Albert Lange and, more thoroughly, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche spent a considerable part of his early career studying the work of Democritus, which exerted an enormous influence on his later thought, not so much in terms of his atomism, which Nietzsche discards later, but in terms of his ethics, which is untethered to a world beyond or eternal principles. It allows the contemplation of a philosophical life for us. In an inversion of Plato’s hatred for Democritus, Democritus becomes essential in Nietzsche’s rejection of Platonism and thus, down the philosophical road, for Heidegger’s decon- struction of metaphysics and ontotheology. In the twentieth century, both classicist Gregory Vlastos and philosopher Jan Patočka discuss the work of Democritus as essential for coming to an understanding of a philosophical practice that does not depend on alētheia, but on reaching eteē. The Third Ex- ample traces the development of etumos as a specialized word meaning the “true meaning” of a word. The first usage of this word in that form is from the choral passages in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, which are traditionally spoken in the Doric dialect of Greek. In fact, it appears that etumos only survives in later works as a dialect word, with all its appearances in the Platonic corpus being inside citations from Spartans. From its beginning, etymology is therefore cast as something that is foreign and decidedly non- Attic. Plato is here the Athenian, and Democritus the stranger who arrived to Athens as a newcomer whom nobody knew.1 The Cratylus is the only Platonic text that explicitly deals with etymology, even though it does not name it. The history of its reception thematizes the difficulties between philosophy and etymology; although originally written with clearly comical and satirical intent, it was taken seriously as linguistic work, first inspiring Stoic grammar of language, which then in turn allowed a reinterpretation of the Cratylus during Mid- dle Platonism along linguistic lines, glossing over its comical intent – a comical intent 1. DK 165 B116 = T D1: ἦλθον γὰρ εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ οὔ τίς ἔγνωκεν. – “For I came to Ath- ens and no one knew me.” that attempts to ridicule the etumon, and, by extension, the work of the “laughing philosopher.” In spite of this attempt at ridicule, the Cratylus manages to formulate a set of phono- logical and morphological transformations that will turn out to be the foundations for formal research into grammar and, eventually, linguistics. At the same time, it appears that Socrates – refusing to take up either the conventionalist or the naturalist position toward language – formulates instead a fundamental distrust of language as the prop- erly philosophical position. In the Fourth Example we inspect the trajectory of two related derivatives of etumos, the verb (ex)etazein and the noun exetasis. Exetasis is tightly connected to the Socratic method as displayed in the early dialogues, the incessant questioning of oneself and of others. It is a technique of the care of the self, which basically checks the consistency between someone’s words and someone’s actions, that is, the truth of someone’s words as reflection of the reality of someone’s actions. Again there is not a question of alētheia, in which the subject observes his own behavior and describes it truthfully, but rather of eteē as a correct correspondence between word and deed. In a development by now familiar to us, exetasis as philosophical term falls into dis- use already in later Platonic texts and disappears nearly completely after him. The only residue can be found in the Rhetoric to Alexander, first thought to be a work of Aristotle but later ascribed to Anaximenes, where the eidos exetastikon is presented as a separate mode of rhetorical investigation, a mode that is absent from the more widely known Rhetorics of Aristotle. Socratic exetasis is here weaponized in order to ferret out contra- dictions within the character of one’s opponent in court, disjunctions between speech and act. As a type of investigation that is always mixes with other rhetorical modes, it plays a constant role in any piece of oratory while at the same time becoming unrecog- nizable as an individual type. Our final and Fifth Example reconnects several threads relating to eteos, etumos, and etētumos. By inspecting Foucault’s late work on the care of the self, we can trace the slow work of undoing the philosophical emphasis on alētheia, and the rediscovery of etumos logos, “true discourse,” as a key concept in relation to the care of the self. Nietzsche’s early influence on Foucault, which appears in his genealogical method (which is essen- tially paradigmatic in nature), the concern for the Socratic technique of self-investigation, and his incessant attempts to shift away from grand metaphysical frameworks all attest to a different conceptualization of truth, as often as it may have been rejected ever preface since Democritus. With Foucault we therefore see, for the first time, a rigorous attempt to refound a philosophical practice based on eteē. We conclude by surveying two strategies through which the rejection of etymology has taken shape in contemporary philosophical discourse, and the failures of those strategies. The first is a strategy of introducing “etymological irreducibility” in philosophical discourse, the usage of writing techniques that obstruct the normal function- ing of etymology in a text, such as neologisms and typographical interventions. We will inspect several instances, namely Heidegger’s kzomil, Seyn, and Sein, and the generalized irreducibility of Derrida’s différance, which itself irremediably complicates Heidegger’s own attempts at reaching a “halting point.” The second strategy is a complete evacuation of the concept of truth from philosophy; that philosophy itself cannot be true. This strategy inevitably leads to an internal contradiction, as philosophy cannot but proceed on the basis of “true examples,” whose truth can only be verified through the philosophy that depends on it. Both Derrida’s complication of Heidegger and the internal tension of the work of Badiou thus seem to signal the inseparability of etymology from philosophy, the necessity of their parasitic relation. We then end with a brief outline of what the affirmation of this relation could look like, not as an etymology of words but as an etymology of sentences – an etics.

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