Heidegger introduces the new terms by asking about the unity of the four causes, the unity of the four modes of active letting. He begins his account of the unity by placing the letting in a new light: the four causes let what is not yet present come into presence. The idea, in more traditional terms, is that the four causes let what does not yet exist come into existence. Here we encounter a kind of contradiction, for is it possible to let something that does not exist come into existence? Is it possible to nurture something so that it comes to be? At first view, that is not possible: only what already exists can be nurtured, and so nothing can be nurtured from nonbeing to being. One thing can be nurtured to give birth to another, such as seeds can be nurtured to bear crops, but nothing can be nurtured to give birth to itself. A thing can be nurtured so as to develop to a more perfect stage, but then it must already exist in some less perfect way. In other words, letting presupposes something already there to be let; and so existence is presupposed by letting and cannot follow from it. Thus if “letting” means to let into being, then the letting must be reinterpreted away from nurturing and toward producing. That is precisely the course Heidegger seems to pursue when he says, “Accordingly, the four causes are ruled over, through and through, and in an integral way, by a bringing, one which brings about the presence of something” (FT, 12/10). The last phrase, if taken in its more colloquial sense, could also be translated as follows: “one which produces the existence of something.” Thus Heidegger is here interpreting the “letting” of the four causes as a bringing, a bringing about, a producing. Indeed, Heidegger says explicitly that this bringing is the dominant character; it holds sway over the four causes and integrates them into a single causal nexus. The character of “bringing something about” thus has an ascendancy over the “letting” and determines it. The letting is to be understood as a bringing about or a producing, rather than vice versa.
The sense of the bringing as a producing is reinforced by Heidegger’s appeal to Plato in this context. Heidegger cites a passage from the Symposium in which Plato gives the name ποίησις (poiesis) to any causal action by which something comes into being from nonbeing. That is to say, the bringing now at issue, the dominant character of the causality of the four causes, is poiesis. And poiesis precisely means making or producing; poiesis is the bringing into being of what was previously not in being. Heidegger’s own rendering of the word poiesis here is Her-vor-bringen. Translated quite literally, Heidegger’s term simply means “bringing-forth.” Yet, in the context, it is clear that what is meant here is “bringing forth into being,” causing to pass from nonbeing to being, or, in other words, “making,” “producing.” In fact, Heidegger’s term Her-vor-bringen, “bringing-forth,” in its more colloquial sense, does mean simply “producing.” And, in another place, Heidegger himself asserts this sense to be the predominant one: “Bringing-forth today means the making and fabricating of an individual object” (GP, 85/76).
The two new terms that characterize the causality of the four causes, “bringing” (or, more specifically, “bringing forth”) and poiesis, thus seem to go back on what was said about the four causes as modes of nurturing. Instead of assisting something to give birth or to develop, it now seems that the four causes produce the existence of something out of its previous nonexistence. The four causes bring it about that what they cause exists in the first place, and they do not merely nurture something along by gearing into it, by going with the thing’s own flow. The four causes apparently cause the existence of the thing and first produce its “flow.” Thus the causality of the four causes cannot be a matter of “gearing into,” since there is nothing to gear into until the four causes have brought it forth. It seems that the thing “owes everything” to the four causes, is produced by them, and is not merely abetted or encouraged. In other words, Heidegger’s current discussion implies an understanding of causality as imposing, as bringing about or effecting the existence of the caused thing.
On account of this impression, i.e., the implication that the causality of the four causes is a producing, a bringing about, an imposing, Heidegger immediately goes on to say that “everything depends” on our thinking of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. Everything depends on this, for otherwise we would indeed be misled into thinking of ancient causality as effecting and imposing. What then is the proper sense of poiesis? According to Heidegger, it does not merely refer to handcraft manufacture or to the artistic and poetic production of appearances and images. On the contrary, nature, too, is poiesis; in fact, nature is even the paradigm case of poiesis: “Φύσις [physis, ‘nature’], too, self-emergence, is a bringing-forth, poiesis. Physis is even poiesis in the highest sense” (FT, 12/10).
How can nature be poiesis in the highest sense, the paradigm of bringing-forth or production? It can be the paradigm only if production does in fact primarily mean nurture. Production is then not equivalent to effecting, and so the terms “bringing-forth” and poiesis do not retract the notion of causality as nurturing or rousing. Let us try to make that clear.
We begin with the way Heidegger distinguishes nature from manufacture: “For what comes to be φύσει [physei, ‘naturally’] has the source of the bringing-forth, e.g., the source of the blooming of the blossom, in itself” (FT, 12/10). On the other hand, what is brought forth by craft has the source of the bringing forth not in itself but in another, in the artisan.
Heidegger’s term I have rendered in a preliminary and neutral way as “source” is der Aufbruch. This German term is an excellent candidate to translate κίνησαν, Aristotle’s word for the cause that is the source of [38] the motion, the cause that sets the motion going, the cause that was later named — and understood as — the efficient cause. Heidegger’s term has a wide range of meanings, but two basic senses are relevant here: “setting out on one’s way” and “blossoming out.” It refers then to a kind of setting out that is precisely a blossoming out. The term thus names not only the source — the setting out — but also the way that is set out upon, namely the process of blossoming or, more generally, growth. Thus the term specifies what sort of cause this source is and how it stands at the head of the motion.
In the first place, if the motion is a blossoming, then the source is certainly not an efficient cause, since blossoming cannot be imposed upon anything by an outside agent, cannot be forced upon a passive matter by an efficient cause. Nothing can make a bud blossom if it does not have it in itself to blossom. A bud can only blossom out naturally, which is to say that the source of the blossoming must lie within the bud; the blossoming has to be a self-emergence. The cause that is the source of a natural motion is then nature itself, the natural tendency of the bud to blossom out, its own directedness to a certain end, its own pregnancy, its own “flow” in a certain direction. What sort of cause is this? A directedness or a tendency is not an imposition; this cause has rather to be understood in the context of nurture. That is to say, this source is a participant in a process of nurture.
To make that explicit, let us look more closely at what does the nurturing in a natural process and what gets nurtured. Let us think of a bud as pregnant with a blossom, as naturally directed to that end. The potential of the bud is not an efficient cause; on the contrary, the potential is a deficient cause. That is, it requires certain conditions in order to come to fruition. The bud will not blossom by itself. Nor can it be forced; it must be allowed to grow, it must be “actively let.” To let a bud grow is to provide it with the required nourishment, the favorable conditions; it is then up to the bud to take advantage of these conditions. Now, these conditions and nutrients are also nature; they are, let us say, material nature, such as earth, light, water, and warmth. These conditions are precisely nutrients, i.e., nurturers, and not imposers; they cannot force growth. Natural conditions cannot make an artificial bud grow. The conditions merely gear into the thing’s own flow, into its own nature, its inborn propensity toward motion in a certain direction. Conversely, to grow, to be nurtured, is to take up these conditions in an active way; to grow is to allow the conditions of growth to be effective as nutrients. Accordingly, the process of growth and the process of nurturing are mutually founding and are intertwined: they each let the other be.
Thus the source of a blossoming movement is nature, and the conditions that let the movement occur are also nature. In the process of [39] growing or blossoming there is an interplay between the source and the conditions, a cooperation or joining together of the forces of nature. If we call the source the cause that was later understood as the efficient cause, then the conditions, taken in a broad sense to include not only material nature but the natural end as well, coincide with the other three causes. Thus all four causes are nature, and all four causes cooperate in producing the blossom. In other words, in bringing forth the blossom, in letting it come forth, the four causes are unified. They are unified as nature, as aspects of the one nature, and unified as cooperating forces, as joining together in a common project. In bringing forth a blossom, the four causes form a single causal nexus, and the forces of nature are unified. That is to say, as poiesis, as bringing something forth, physis manifests the unity of the four causes. The four causes play together, i.e., get unified, in a special way when it is a case of something coming forth naturally.
Thus the question of the unity of the four causes, the question with which Heidegger had initiated the present discussion, leads to physis as poiesis. The four causes are most one, their forces are most joined together into a single combined force, their forces are most concentrated, in the case of something produced naturally in the manner indicated: i.e., when the production is growth, when the source of the movement is natural (internal to the thing moved) and the external conditions that nurture it are also natural. Presumably, it is this concentration of forces that makes natural poiesis “poiesis in the highest sense,” as Heidegger claims. Indeed Heidegger does say that physis is the highest form of poiesis “since” what comes forth by nature has the source of the coming-forth in itself. But Heidegger leaves us on our own to draw out this “since.” How does that make physis poiesis in the highest sense? In other words, what sort of productive forces are being marshalled together here? In what sense is nature the most forceful form of production?
Nature is certainly not the most forceful, if force is taken in the usual sense, i.e., as imposition. A laser beam can impose the form of a flower, by, let us say, etching it into a piece of glass, more forcefully than nature can bring forth a blossom from a bud. The darling buds of May are liable to be shaken, which is to say that they are tender and, in Shakespeare’s sonnet, easily “untrimmed,” denuded. Nature is not a concentration of the forces of imposition; what is brought forth by nature is not imposed at all. On the contrary, nature’s way of bringing forth is to nurture. The causal nexus in the case of nature is a nurturing nexus. Nature is a concentration of nurturing forces. So then we see how physis can be poiesis in the highest sense, how nature can be the highest form of production: only if production means nurture.
That is of course precisely what we have been trying to show: for Heidegger ancient causality is nurture, and the paradigm of production [40] is growth, not imposition. Heidegger employed two further terms to characterize the causality of the four causes, the terms “bringing-forth” (or “production”) and poiesis (“making” or “production”), and these seemed to imply a notion of imposition. But, according to Heidegger, “everything depends” on thinking of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. We see now that that sense is physis, and this term in the list of characterizations restores the notion of nurture. If bringing-forth and poiesis are thought as physis, as nature, then production does indeed mean nurture. To bring forth does therefore not mean to bring into being, to impose existence; it means to produce the way nature produces, namely by helping along, by gearing into an already existing tendency in a certain direction. To bring forth thus means to abet, not to create ex nihilo. That is the conclusion we reach if we think of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. That is to say, all of the terms — without exception — in Heidegger’s list of characterizations of ancient causality do point in the same direction, the direction of nurture rather than imposition.
Referências:
GP:
FT (Questão da Técnica):