These are Martin Heidegger’s famous words of advice from the first part of his 1951/2 lecture course, entitled ‘Was Heist Denken?’ (‘What is Called Thinking?’ or ‘What Calls for Thinking?’).
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The question is; ‘who is reading Aristotle today?’
In modern metaphysics, which has created a monstrous pseudo-Aristotle in a frenzy of hotch-potch frankenstein barbarity, there can be found (of late) a hesitant but renewed interest, albeit in stupendously altered form, in what is perhaps a rather anachronistic pursuit; the ‘science of being qua being’.
This pursuit has seen a renewed study of Aristotle and his Metaphysics; a book comprised of subject material which, it appears, the author could not delegate into any of his other books. Strange as it may seem, Aristotle’s actual ‘metaphysics’, as far as I am concerned, are to be found not primarily in the book ostensively concerned with that topic (and named as such), but actually in his Physics. 
I ask again; ‘who is reading Aristotle today?’
What is really being studied in this so-called ‘science of being’, I suspect, is something of an a-historical travesty; decked out (cloaked) in replica greek paraphernalia; produced on mass by a legion of new-age essentialists who snigger at Davidson’s “Quinean orthodoxy”, and who respond to the name ‘Heidegger’ as a rabbi would to the non-euphemised equivalent of the incitation; “kindly partake in homo-erotic interspecial intercourse whilst milk-bathing”. 
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It is in any case, to return to Aristotle, doubly strange to find, in Michael J. Loux 'Metaphysics : A Contemporary Introduction’ (to specify an example) seemingly no references to the Physics whatever. The kind of thinking which is taking place beneath the facade of this ‘science of being’, seems to me to have, if not a tenuous, then at the least a highly problematic relation with the thinkers whose projects it claims to be resurrecting. What is the point, I might ask, in taking up the pretense to be resurrecting Aristotle if, at every second point of objection to historical veracity, one responds with the following or similar;
“Well really, what does it matter?”
What strikes me is the seeming lack of appreciation for the historical antecedence and lineage of a given conceptual tool-kit (which is NOT an objection in itself - rather the blindness to this fact, and not its consequences or lack thereof - is what is deserving of objection). What is always most disturbing in a philosophical discourse is what is passed over in silence.
For Heidegger, to give an example, it is ‘spirit’ (Geist) which receives this treatment.
In Levinas, simularly, it is the a-historicity of the Other.
In Sartre, it might be contended, it is the role of Alexander Kojeve’s over-emphasisation of Hegel’s humanism that speaks most tellingly.
The list goes on.
What is supremely ironic flows on from Heidegger’s famous advice;
The renewed interest in this frankenstein Aristotle (or ‘frankenstotle’, as I have affectionately named him), is almost the perfect counterpoint to Heidegger’s request, viewed within the context of the history of philosophy in the 20th century. We must remember, in particular, that what has fueled this renewal, this rebirth, has been the vindication of the pursuit of ‘metaphysics’ first hinted at by Quine in his Two Dogma’s of Empiricism - the final nail, history tells us, in the coffin of Rudolph Carnap’s project to outlaw what he conceived of as ‘metaphysics’ - once and for all.
This, the very same Rudolph Carnap who studied Sein und Zeit with his comrades in Vienna in the late 20’s/early 30’s, and who, resolutely, did not approve of what he thought was taking place. In Nietzsche’s terms, we might say, Carnap went for a long time with no greater desire than to suck Heidegger’s blood. 
It is a beautiful and multilayered irony then that Carnap, who set out to end what he considered to be metaphysics (i.e. Heidegger - an irony in itself, but I digress), was eventually thwarted by Quine, the arch empiricist, whose work led indirectly to the resurrection of metaphysics in a respectable form (namely through the influential work of Saul Kripke); a resurrection which heeds in complete and unknowing ignorance the call of Heidegger to ‘go back to the Greeks’, but which does so in such a way that, we might imagine, both Carnap and Heidegger would have been allied in objection to. 
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It is not to be forgotten, (one must admit), of course, that several widely different things hide beneath the various uses of the word ‘metaphysics’ - this much ought to be evident enough just from this post. The metaphysics which lives today is not, strictly speaking, the metaphysics of the logical positivists, nor does it really touch on the metaphysics of the grand narratives of the continental tradition. It is rather an entirely new historical bastard, of questionable pedigree, which remembers neither its mother nor father and which, instead, seems destined to a rather strange and, perhaps, perilous position in the continuing dialogue of history and philosophy.
As far as I am concerned though, it is not so much the case that we should wish to see Frankenstotle exterminated…
… but rather, the more interesting question; is he genuinely alive?
An open question, which brings us back to our first;
[size=150]Who is reading Aristotle today?[/size]
Regards,
James
Rudolph Carnap and his wife, Ina, in Prague, 1933. A photo which inspires me in many different ways.
), entitled to our fair share of bullshit opinions, especially as relates to our choice of reading. It is certainly not any more ‘churlish’ than that. 