The Review of Metaphysics 66 (September 2012): 31–59. Copyright © 2012 by The Review of Metaphysics. PHRONESIS VS. SOPHIA: ON HEIDEGGER’S AMBIVALENT ARISTOTELIANISM PANAGIOTIS THANASSAS THE ISSUE, THE SACHE, around which an interpretative dialogue between Aristotle and Heidegger can be carried out has been recognized and confirmed in its importance by both Heidegger himself and numerous scholars in the last decades: it is the relation between theory and praxis, and respectively the relation between sofi/a and fro/nhsiv. There is no need to argue here for the importance of this relationship in the context of Aristotelian philosophy; but the subject is also crucial for the philosophy of Heidegger, insofar as this philosophy is from the outset an attempt to overcome an established understanding of philosophy as a theoretical activity isolated from life and the world of pra/ttein. Already in his first series of university lec- tures in 1919 at the University of Freiburg, Heidegger would identify as the main task of his philosophical engagement the demonstration (and later on the challenge) of what he will call “primacy” or “total regime of the theoretical element” (Generalherrschaft des Theoretischen). 1 Because of this regime, the main (and ultimately the sole) topic of philosophy, life itself, remains vague and is bypassed. Heidegger seeks at this time—and here all scholars are in agreement—a genuine form of life that goes beyond the traditional Aristotelian opposition between “theory” and “praxis.” Faced with this opposition and wanting to undermine it, Heidegger obviously has to challenge Aristotle, and especially Nicomachean Ethics, the consti- tutive text of this opposition. This confrontation will mark Heidegger’s philosophy throughout the 1920s. Another point of consensus among scholars is that this confrontation does not amount to a passive adoption of Aristotelian positions, distinctions and evaluations, but is a Correspondence to: Panagiotis Thanassas, AUTH – Dept. of Philosophy, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE. 1 The most detailed critical discussion of this primacy is found in M. Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975–present), vol. 56/57: 84–94 (hereafter, the Gesamtausgabe will be abbreviated “GA”). See also G. Figal, “Heidegger als Aristoteliker,” in Heidegger-Jahrbuch 3: Heidegger und Aristoteles (Freiburg/München: Alber, 2007), 57–8.