Augen Weil Wir Sehen Können
Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 54 (Parmenides), p. 217:
“Wir sehen nicht, weil wir Augen haben, sondern wir haben Augen, weil wir ‘sehen’ können.”
“We do not see because we have eyes; we have eyes because we can ‘see’.” (My translation.)
Notice how Heidegger uses the verb “sehen” (to see) twice, the first time without quotation marks, the second time with quotation marks. He emphatically shifts from seeing to ‘seeing’, that is: from seeing with our physical eyes to ‘seeing’—seeing, one may add, with the Eye of the Soul, the ὄμμα τῆς ψυχῆς (homma tês psuchês).
Heidegger explicitly mentions the Eye of the Soul on the next page (p. 218, ὄμμα τῆς ψυχῆς)—but, peculiarly, he does so without mentioning Plato, from whom he definitely borrowed the expression (Politeia 533D: τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄμμα). Heidegger here suppressed Plato’s name so he could claim that the ὄμμα τῆς ψυχῆς was not some idiosyncrasy unique to Plato’s philosophy, but belonged to “the Greeks” (“die Griechen”, p. 218) in some general sense—and therefore was a trait that belonged to ancient Greek philosophy in general, including Parmenides’ poem.
There is some ground for Heidegger’s claim. This will be the subject of an upcoming post.