Doxa

In the originary inception, the Greeks were seeing things for the first time.  They were in the process of creating opinions about things.  This creation of opinions is also the creation of doxaAlong some pathways or other, and n some grounds or other, we arrive at a view about the thing. We construct an opinion for ourselves about it. Thus it can happen that the view that we adopt has no support in the thing itself. It is then a mere view, an assumption. We assume a thing to be thus or thus.…Doxa, as what is assumed to be thus or thus, is opinion. (109).  Doxal knowledge is public knowledge in that already circulating.  The Greeks were in the process of starting the circulation.

The linking mechanism for Aristotle is found easily in a proposition: “This is writing.”  What makes the binary occur, what make the proposition available for logic, is the “is” linking the subject and predicate. This “is” acts as a linking device—a copula—that links two things together.  “The grass is green,” links the concept (essence), “grass,” with its trait, “green.” Since grass can die and turn brown, the trait, “green,” is merely an accidental attribute. This is the structure of the assertion (true/false and binary logic).

The importance of the copulaThe “is” serves as the copula, as the “little connecting word” (Kant) in the assertion. The assertion contains the “is.” But because the assertion, logos as kategoria, has become the court of justice over Being, the assertion determines Being on the basis of the “is” that is proper to assertion. (216) is found in its capacity to link what is gathered and does not need to be forced into an assertion. Rather than using the copula to assert a truth statement (pure reason), the inceptive moment uses the copula to link doxa as what seems (towards practical reason).

So instead of falling back on the literate methods of defining things by their essence,What is really at issue is an essential clarification of the essence of Being as regards its essential involvement with the essence of language. (57) which excludes accidents, Heidegger’s alternative path does not prescribe the movement from distortion to undistortedness.This happening of the transformation of unconcealment, by way of distortion, to undistortedness and from this to correctness, must be seen together with the transformation of phusis into idea, of logos as gathering into logos as assertion. (206)