Meditations on the Philosophy of History

In spite (or because) of the infinity of (the voice, of the boundless mystery it carries and exhales, of its disembodied traversing and joining, sayings follow barely traced courses. They travel along fragile lines of memory, often discontinuous bridges, transpositions into notational forms. They travel alone, exposed to corruption, consuming friction repetition--their beginning and final destination often lost to those who listen to them and send them past. In spite of the power of memory and its arts, there are sayings and stories handed down to us in fragments, like decapitated Nike and disfigured Dionysos. There are poems reaching us, race of diggers and preservers, through somebody else's reminiscence, recovery, or loving quotation. In turn, our receiving and sending (stretching) forth, our being thus traversed, shares something with the destiny of these sayings and sculpted deities--being sent, crossing and (un)covering distance, in the fragmented continuity of dialogues, or what remains of them. The present essay is devoted to a meditation on the question of temporality and history in its epistemologico-metaphysical implications. It is developed mainly by reference to Aristotle, after Heidegger