The wonders of the philosopher and the citizen: Plato, Aristotle, and Heidegger (Martin Heidegger)

In this dissertation I explore Heidegger's interpretation of Platonic and Aristotelian wonder or thaumazein in a lecture course that he offered at the University of Marburg in the winter semester of 1924--25 entitled Platon: Sophistes. I contend that Heidegger appropriates the aspects of Platonic and Aristotelian wonder that privilege the bios theoretikos and systematically ignores the aspects of Aristotelian wonder which celebrate the bias politikos . Before turning to Heidegger's lecture course, I provide an extensive analysis of both Plato's account of thaumazein ( Theaetetus, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Phaedo) and Aristotle's treatment of thaumazein (Metaphysics, Poetics, and Rhetoric).