Truth be told : Homer, Plato, and Heidegger

The question that I want to ask concerns what Aristotle called the "κίνησις του βιου," the basic movement of life. More precisely, I want to ask how we might speak of this movement without losing its elemental unity and its dynamic character. An assumption that I will make, but not defend, is that the language of philosophy"”that is, the language of the concept"”is poor at following this movement since such language aims at capturing and grasping this movement. But I want to suggest that one finds an interesting answer to this question of the proper way of speaking of this movement of life when one turns to Heidegger's reading of Homer, since in Homer's language Heidegger finds a way of following this movement, this movement of all appearance, that is closed to the less agile, conceptual language of philosophy. What Homer offers that is foreclosed to our philosophical habits"”habits that are amplified by the habits of understanding characterizing modernity"”is a way of speaking of the real struggle defining this movement of life; namely, that life both shows and hides itself in its movement.