TIME, ETERNITY AND 'THE AGE'
'That which always is, αει'. In the standard Liddel and Scott classical Greek dictionary αει is given as an adverb meaning 'ever, always, for ever.' But it also means 'for the time being' as in ο αει κρατων - the current ruler. Heidegger follows the passage I've just quoted by saying 'The Being which in Greek understanding is genuine Being is the world, the αει.' So αει somehow combines the notions of 'time' and 'world', and what always is and what currently is. In the Christian doxology - 'Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, both now and ever and to the ages of ages Amen', the word translated 'ever' or 'forever' is αει. Ages of ages is τους αιωνας των αιωνων. This 'ages of ages' may be taken to refer to Eternity, but we normally think of Eternity - Latin aeternitas - as singular. Here we have a plurality of ages, and indeed we have a plurality of ages nesting inside each other rather like the wheels within wheels of the vision of Ezekiel. I'm indulging myself here rather than paraphrasing Heidegger but I think it is relevant. His best known book is called Being and Time and the title immediately evokes the problem of how something that always 'is' (Being) can relate to time. And a starting point for such consideration could be the αιων which Heidegger also conflates with the world, dasein being 'being in the world'.
The age, the αιων, is a chunk of time that has a shape to it. The shape, the form, means that, in addition to being a succession of events and therefore plural, it is also singular. A lifetime, which has a beginning, a middle and an end, is an age. It has a shape and that shape could be called its being, what 'it' - the lifetime - 'is', and in that shape, all the events resonate and have their significance, their being, in relation to the whole, the whole being determined, shaped, by death.
The age, or αιων that particularly preoccupies Heidegger, is the age of Western philosophy which he believes began with 'the Greeks' and ended with Nietzsche. It therefore has a shape and because it has come to an end its shape can be discerned and in Heidegger's understanding the clue to discerning that shape is found in the concept of Being, inseparable as we have seen from the concept of Time. We've seen that in the Nicomachaean Ethics, Aristotle has said that σοφια is concerned with 'things of the most exalted nature', things that are 'rare, marvellous, difficult and even superhuman.' But the most exalted, rare, marvellous, difficult and even superhuman thing of all is Being itself, the fact that things are, ultimately the foundation on which we are all standing. This most fundamental of all things may, when perceived by the νους, the Intelligence, prove to be eternal and unchanging. But we have also just learned from Aristotle that this νους, direct perception of Being, is outside language, outside λογος and hence inaccessible to us. We, as the ζωον λογον εχον, the living thing that possesses (or is possessed by) the word, can only aspire to σοφια, which is νους, our direct perception of truth, tempered by επιστημη, which is verbal knowledge.
The sense of wonder, which Aristotle says is the foundation of all philosophy and which is essentially wonder at being, at the fact that things are, is a human experience - human being is the being that is capable of posing the question of Being - and that human experience of Being changes from age to age and the principle agents of that change are the philosophers. Within the grand αιων that stretches between 'the Greeks' and Nietzsche, all sorts of minor αιωνα, ages, have occurred, given voice by the philosophers, but they were all determined within a framework which was first outlined by Plato and Aristotle (it is important to note that in Heidegger's view the philosophers don't create anything, they say what they are told to say by the world, by αει, by Being). Heidegger calls this overall framework 'metaphysics'. But why has it come to an end with Nietzsche? Because Nietzsche finally blurted out what it was all about, what was the fundamental driving force underneath it all, namely, the Will to Power, the will to dominate, to master the earth, to master beings. And with that the whole gorgeous crystal structure of σοφια - not to mention νους - shatters and we're left with nothing but τεχνη επιστημη and φρονησις.