Poiēsis (p. 10)
In this page, Heidegger uses the verb "to occasion" (aitia in Greek) instead of "cause". Quoting Plato, every occasion can be described as poiēsis or bringing-forth.
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In this page, Heidegger uses the verb "to occasion" (aitia in Greek) instead of "cause". Quoting Plato, every occasion can be described as poiēsis or bringing-forth.
Last updated
basis of a look at what the Greeks experienced in being responsible, in aitia, we now give this verb “to occasion” a more inclusive meaning, so that it now is the name for the essence of causality thought as the Greeks thought it. The common and narrower meaning of “occasion” in contrast is nothing more than striking against and releasing, and means a kind of secondary cause within the whole of causality.
But in what, then, does the playing in unison of the four ways of occasioning play? They let what is not yet present arrive into presencing. Accordingly, they are unifiedly ruled over by a bringing that brings what presences into appearance. Plato tells us what this bringing is in a sentence from the Symposium (205b): hē gar toi ek tou mē onton eis to on ionti hotо̄ioun aitia pasa esii poiēsis. “Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from that which is not presencing is poiēsis, is bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen].”
It is of utmost importance that we think bringing-forth in its full scope and at the same time in the sense in which the Greeks thought it. Not only handcraft manufacture, not only artistic and poetical bringing into appearance and concrete imagery, is a bringing-forth, poiēsis. Physis also, the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing-forth, poiēsis. Physis is, indeed poiēsis in the highest sense. For what presences by means of physis has the bursting open belonging to bringing-forth, e.g., the bursting of a blossom into bloom, in itself (en heautо̄i). In contrast, what is brought forth by the artisan or the artist, e.g.,