MARTIN
I-IEIDEGGER
O N T H E B E I N G A N D C O N C E P T I O N OF ~ Y Z [ Z I N A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS B, 1"
"Translator's Introduction" The following is the English translation of Martin Heidegger's " V o m Wesen und Begriff der (/)15(x~9.Aristoteles' Physik B, 1", the text of his Freiburg seminar "[Jber die ~t~cx~ bei Aristoteles" held in the first trimester of 1940. The work was first published in 1958 along with an Italian translation in Il Pensiero, volume III, numbers 2 and 3 (pp. 131-156, 265-289) under the editorship of G. Guzzoni. In 1960 the German and Italian texts were published as a separate fascicle in the series Testi Filosoflci. In 1967 the German text was republished with slight orthographical changes i n Headege,er s Wegmarken (pp. 309-371)9 A year later a French translation appeared in Martin Heidegger, Questions II, edited by Jean Beaufret and others (Paris : Gallimard). The present translation is made from the Wegmarken text, which has been checked against the original Italian publication. (The Wegmarken pagination appears in brackets in the English text.) Where Heidegger gives a translation of the Greek without providing the original text, I have referred to the Greek for a confirmation of my rendering of Heidegger. The essay is mainly a translation (hence already an interpretation) of and running commentary on Physics B, 1, with the exception of 193 b 9 - - 12 (8~3 Ks[ ~vacrw... ~vOpoarro~). In a forthcoming article in Man and World I will analyze in detail the argument and the significance of the essay. Now I wish merely to indicate some pecularities of my translation9 The numbers refer to the Wegmarken pagination. (1) Wesen and its forms. I translate das Sein as "Being" and das Seien& as % being" or "beings." However, at the suggestion of the editors of this journal and in accordance with Heidegger's stricture against translating das Wesen as "essence," I have rendered that latter word also as "Being."
* On lhe Beingand ConceptionofgOdo~ in Arislotle's PhysicsB, 1. Copyright 9 1976 in the English translation by Thomas J. Sheehan. Printed here by special arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 219
MARTIN HEIDEGGER Exceptions : on pp. 340, 341, 345, and 351, das Wesen is translated as "presence," on pp. 370 and 371 as "becoming-present" and "way of becoming-present," and on p. 311 as "essence." Das Wesen des Seins has been translated as "Being as such" on p. 314 and as "the way Being becomes present" on p. 370. Wesen eines Seins (p. 328) has become "there is g i v e n . . . a mode of Being." Das Wesen der o~cr& is sometimes "what and how OU(T~(~ ' ' is."
In three places (pp. 364, 368, and 370) the word Unwesen appears and is translated simply as "non-Being." Das Wesen alles Unwesens (p. 368) has become "the way all such non-Being becomes present." The adverb wesentlich is translated usually as "basically" or "fundamentally," rarely as "essentially," and only once as "of the essence" (p. 317). The archaic verb wesen is translated "to become present." (2) Anwesen and its forms. Das Anwesen is always translated as "beingpresent" except on p. 330 where it has the special meaning "one's present holdings." The verb anwesen is translated "to become present," rarely "to be present." Die Anwesung is translated as "becoming-present" and only once (reluctantly) as "coming to presence" (p. 371, last sentence). In one instance (p. 340) a hendiadys was required : die Anwesung in die Unverborgene is translated as "becoming present, coming into the unhidden." The phrase in die Anwesung (pp. 319, 361,363) is translated as "into presence." Abwesung is translated as "becoming-absent" and abwesen as "to become absent." (3) Bewegthe#. This word appears already in Sein und ge# (e.g., pp. 134, 374 f.) and in Hdzwege. The translation "agitation" is entirely misleading. 1 Richardson's "movedness" is excellent if somewhat awkward. Perhaps more awkward is "being-moved," but I have used it here both to show that Bewegtbe# is das Wesen der Bewegung (p. 313) and because Heidegger equally uses t~ewegtsein (p. 314 : "Being-moved") for this concept. (4) Heidegger translates dpx ~ by Ausgang und Verfiigung or variations thereof, This presents considerable difficulty for English translation. Was ist das - - die Philosophie ? (p. 25; English translation, p. 81) as well as the present text suggests the twofold meaning, "source and domination." After carefully considering many helpful suggestions I have settled on "origin and ordering," although I have no illusions of pleasing everyone thereby. Heidegger expresses the relation between dPX~ and t~A~?by the felicitous play on words, die Verfiigung - - das Verfiigliche. To bring that out, I translate das Verfiigliche as "the order-able". 220
~ Y Z I Z IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS (5) Some others. Verfassung has been translated as "form" rather than "structure." Eignung and Geeignetheit (Heidegger's translations of 86va/zt~) have become, generally, "appropriation" and "appropriateness," and das Geeignete (ra 8vvd~E0is translated "the appropriated." The choice of words here obviously suggests the connection between 8u'v~/z~s-and Ereignis. (6) All parentheses in the translation are Heidegger's. However, brackets in the translation represent later interpolations which Heidegger made in his own 1939 text and which appear in the German as : / . . . / . The following are exceptions : (i) If brackets enclose German words, they are my interpolations for sake of clarity. (ii) I f brackets appear within parentheses, they are Heidegger's. (iii) In one instance (I9. 349 ad initium) I print Heidegger's confusing parentheses within brackets just as they appear in Wegmarken. No one knows better than the translator that translation is always risky business, ever bordering on the possibility of betrayal. Goethe wrote Streckfuss in 1827, " I f the translator has really understood his author, he will be able to evoke in his mind not only what the author has done, but also what he wanted and ought to have done. That at least is the line I have always taken in translation . . . . " Not feeling quite up to Goethe's abilities, I have tried to stay as close as possible to the German without, in the process, grinding out "translationese." I earnestly welcome any corrections and suggestions that will improve both meaning and style. I freely acknowledge debts of gratitude to many people for their help in this translation : to the editors of Man and World for securing permission for this publication and for their many helpful suggestions; to Professor Frank Capuzzi for reading and helping improve an earlier draft; and above all to Professor William J. Richardson, S. J., for first opening up this text to me a dozen years ago. Thomas J. Sheehan Loyola University of Chicago *
:g
#
[p. 309] The Romans translated WJ~ts by the word natura. Nalura comes from nasci, "to be born, to o r i g i n a t e . . . " as in the Greek root TEv-. Natura means "that which lets something originate from itself." Since those times "nature" has become the basic word that designates fundamental relations that Western historical man has to beings, both to himself and to beings other than himself. This fact is shown by a rough list of dichotomies that have become prevalent : nature and grace (i.e., super221
MARTIN HEIDEGGER nature), nature and art, nature and history, nature and spirit. But we likewise speak of the "nature" of spirit, the "nature" of history, and the "nature" of man. By that last phrase we mean not just man's body or even the species "man," but man's whole "Being." Therefore generally when we speak of the "nature of things," we mean whatthings are in their "possibility" and how they are, regardless of whether and to what degree they "actually" are. In Christian thought, man's "natural state" means what is bestowed upon him in creation and turned over to his freedom. Left to itself, this "nature" brings about, through the passions, the total destruction of man. For that reason "nature" must be held down. It is in a certain sense that which should not be. In another interpretation, it is precisely the unleashing of the drives and passions that is natural for man. According to Nietzsche, homo naturae is that man who makes the "body" his key to the interpretation of the world and who thus secures a new and harmonious relation to the "sensible" in general, to the "elements" (fire, water, earth, light), to the passions and drives and whatever is conditioned by them. And at the same time, in virtue of this new relation he brings "the elemental" into his power [310] and by this power makes himself capable of the mastery of the world in the sense of a systematic world-domination. And finally "nature" becomes the word for what is not only above everything "elemental" and everything human, but even above the gods. Thus H61derlin says in the hymn, "As when upon a day of r e s t . . . " (third verse) :
Now breaks the day! I yearned for it and saw it come. And my word for what I saw shall be the Holy. For nature herself, who is older than the ages And above the gods of East and West, Has awakened with the clang of a warrior's arms. And from aether on high to abyss below By unswerving law as once from frightful Chaos born, She feels herself again renewed, The Inspirer, the All-creating. (Here "nature" becomes the name for that which is above the gods and "older than the ages" in which beings always come to be. "Nature" becomes t h e w o r d for "Being" : Being is prior to all beings, for they owe what they are to Being. And the gods likewise : to the degree that they are, and however they are, they too all stand under "Being.") H e r e the whole of beings is not misinterpreted "naturalistically" and 222
qoYZIZ
IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS
reduced to "nature" in the sense of matter endowed with force, nor is this whole "mystically" obscured and dissolved into indeterminacy. Whatever range has been attributed to the word "nature" in the various ages of Western history, in each case the word contains an interpretation of beings as a whole, even when "nature" seems to be meant as only one term in a dichotomy. In all such dichotomies, "nature" is not just one of two equal terms but essentially holds the position of priority, inasmuch as the other terms are always and primarily differentiated by contrast with - - and therefore are determined by - - nalure. (For example, when "nature" on the one hand is taken superficially as "stuff, . . . . matter," "basic element," or the unformed, [311] then "spirit" is taken correspondingly as the " n o n material," the "spiritual," the "creative," or that which gives form.) [But the perspective within which the distinction itself is made is "Being."] Therefore in our thinking, even the distinction between nature and history must be pushed back into the underlying area which sustains the dichotomy, the area where nature and history have their Being. Even if we disregard or leave open the question about whether and how "history" is grounded in "nature," even if we understand history in terms of human "subjectivity" and conceive of history as "spirit" and therefore let nature be determined by spirit, even then we are basically s t i l l and already thinking about the sub/'ectum , the ;:rro~ELizEvov , and therefore about 9d~,~. The impossibility of getting around 96cr~ is shown in the name we use to designate the kind of knowledge which, up until now, Western man has had about beings as a whole. The systematic articulation of the truth, at any given time, "about" beings as a whole is called "metaphysics." It makes no difference whether or not this metaphysics is given expression in propositions, whether or not the expressions are formed into an explicit system. Metaphysics is that knowledge wherein Western historical man preserves the truth of his relations to beings as a whole and the truth about those beings themselves. In a quite basic sense, meta-physics is "physics," i.e., knowledge of 9t~,~ At first blush our question about the Being and conception of ~p6~tv might seem to be simply an inquiry, out of curiosity, into the origin of past and present interpretations of "nature." But if we consider that this fundamental word of Western metaphysics harbors within itself decisions about the truth of beings; if we recall that today the truth about beings as a whole has become entirely questionable; moreover, if we suspect that the essence of truth therefore remains thoroughly in dispute; and finally if we know 223
MARTIN HEIDEGGER that all this is grounded in the history of the interpretations of the Being of ~0~5cr~9,then we stand outside the [312] merely historical interests that philosophy might have in the "history of a concept." Then we experience, although from afar, the nearness of future decisions. [For the world is shifting out of joint if indeed it ever was in joint - - and the question arises whether modern man's planning, even if it be world-wide, can ever create a world order.] The first explanation of the Being of ~0FV~s-where the way of questioning effected a coherence of thought comes down to us from the time when Greek philosophy reached its fulfillment. It stems from Aristotle and is preserved in his ~vcr~c~ d~Kpdacr~ (Lectures g i v e n - or better, "Lectures heard" - - on rp~ms).
Aristotle's P by s i c s is the hidden, and therefore never adequately studied,foundational book of Western philosophy. Probably the eight books of the Physics were not projected as a unity and did not come into existence all at once. Such questions have no importance here. In general it makes little sense to say that the Physics precedes the Metaphysics, because metaphysics is just as much "physics" as physics is "metaphysics." For reasons based on the work itself, as well as on historical grounds, we can take it that around 347 B.C. (Plato's death) the second book was already composed. (Cf. also Jaeger, Aristotle : Fundamentals of the History of his Development, p. 296, originally published in 1923. For all its erudition, this book has the single fault of thinking through Aristotle's philosophy in a modern scholastic neo-Kantian manner that is entirely foreign to Greek thought. Much of Jaeger's Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles, 1912, is more accurate because less concerned with " co n tent. " ) But even so, this first thoughtful and unified conceptualization of ~v~L~ is already the last echo of the original (and thus supreme) thoughtful pr~ection of the Being of ~t~a~s- as this is still preserved for us in the fragments of Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. [313] In Book Two, chapter one, of the eight books of the Physics (Physics B, 1, 192 b 8 - - 1 9 3 b 21), Aristotle gives the interpretation of ~0~ms- that sustains and guides all succeeding interpretations of the Being of "nature." Here too are hidden the roots of that later determination of the Being of nature wherein it is distinguished from spirit and determined through the "Spirit." In saying this we mean to intimate that the differentiation of "nature and spirit" is simply foreign to the Greeks. 224
q~YZIZ IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS Before we follow the individual steps of Aristotle's determination of the Being of ~&rL~, let us look at two sentences that Aristotle pronounces in the first and introductory book (A).
~tx~v ~ vTroK~ffOco T~ cpvffE~"
~rav'ra
~wa" K~vovtzEv~'
E~va~~'
ov ~'~K
"But from the outset it should be (a settled issue) for us that those things that have their Being from 9tI~,s-, whether all of them or some of them [those not in rest], are moving beings (i.e., determined by being-moved). But this is evident from an immediate "leading towards" (which leads towards these beings and over and beyond them to their 'Being')." (A, 2, 185 a 12 ft.) Here Aristotle explicitly emphasizes what he perceives to be decisive for the projection of the Being ofcpgcr~;, namely, ~c~'v~cr~;,the state of being-moved. And therefore the key issue in the question about "physics" becomes that of defining the Being of movement. For us today it is merely a truism to say that the processes of nature are processes of movement I in fact, it is a tautology. We have no inkling of the importance of Aristotle's sentences just cited, nor of his interpretation of ~tlcr~;, unless we know that what we take for a truism was for the first time brought into Western man's formative vision of Being by and for Aristotle. Certainly the Greeks before Aristotle had already experienced the fact that sky and sea, plants and animals are in movement, and certainly thinkers before him had already attempted to say what movement was. But it was Aristotle who first [314] attained - thus, first c r e a t e d - that level of questioning where (movement is not considered as something merely given along with other things, but rather where) Being-moved is explicitly questioned and understood as the basic mode of Being. (But this means that defining Being as such is impossible without a fundamental insight into being-moved as such. O f course that is not at all to say that Being is understood"as-movement" [or as rest], for such thinking would be.foreign to the Greeks and, in fact, absolutely unphilosophical [inasmuch as being-moved is not "Nothing," and only Being, as presence, rules over Nothing and over beings and their modes].) According to Aristotle, the fact that everything which has its Being from 9~ is in motion or at rest is evident : ~Aov ~K rr ~rrayo~yr We usually translate the word ~rravcoy~ as "induction" and, taken literally, the translation is almost adequate. But with regard to the issue, i.e., as an interpretation, it is totally erroneous. 'ETraTcoy~i does not mean running through individual facts and series of facts in order to conclude from their similar 225
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R properties to something c o m m o n and "general." "E1rayoJT~ means "leading towards" that which comes into view insofar as we have previously looked away, over and beyondindividual beings. At what ? At Being. For example, only if we already have treeness in view can we identify individual trees. 'E1myoJT~ is seeing and making visible what already stands in view - - for example, treeness. 'E1raTcoy~ is "constituting" in the double sense of, first, bringing something up into view and then likewise establishing what has been seen. ' / ~ a y c 0 y ~ is what immediately becomes suspect to the man caught up in scientific thinking and mostly remains foreig n to him. He sees in it an inadmissible petitio principii, i.e., an "offense" against "empirical thinking," whereas the petere principium, the reaching out to the supporting ground, is the only move that philosophy makes. It is the "offensive" that breaks open the territory within whose borders science can first settle down. [315] If we directly experience and intend those beings which are from qodm;, then we already have in view both the being that is moved and its state of being-moved. But what stands in view here is not yet "constituted" as what it is and how it is present. Therefore the question about qodq~; must inquire into the being-moved of these beings and try to see what q0~;a~; is in relation to that. But first, in order to establish clearly the direction of our inquiry, we must delineate within the whole of beings that region which we can say comprises beings that are because they are determined by ~ c r ~ , namely, r~z ~cr~L dvra. Physics B, 1 begins with this delimination. (In the following pages we give a "translation" which is divided into appropriate sections. Since this "translation" is already the proper interpretation, only an explanation of the "translation" is called for. The "translation" is certainly not a "carrying over" of the Greek words into the proper force and weight of our language. It is not intended to replace the Greek but only to place us into the Greek and in so doing to disappear into it. That is why it lacks all the character and fullness which come from the depths of our own language, and why i t is neither pleasing nor "polished.") I. " O f beings (as a whole) some are from ~v'a~, whereas some are by other 'causes.' From ~z~a~, as we say, are animals as well as their members (parts), likewise plants and the simple elements of bodies, like earth and fire and water and air." (192 b 8 - - 11) The other beings, which are not yet expressly named, are by other "causes," but the first group, the ones named, are by ~tla~. Thus from the outset q0t~cr~ is taken as cause (a'Ir~ov, aZrga) in the sense of "original 226
q)YXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS thing" ["Ur-sache"]. The word and concept "cause" makes us think almost spontaneously o f "causality" [KausaZitdt], the manner and mode in which one thing "acts o n " armther. A'*'rtou, for which Aristotle will soon introduce a sharper definition, here means : what is responsible for the fact that a being is that which it is. This [316] responsibility does not have the character of causation in the s'ense of a "causally" efficient actualizing. Thus, for example, spatiality belongs to the very thingness of materiality, but space does not efficiently cause matter. Cause [Ur-sache] must be understood here Iiterally as the source [Ur-tiimIiche] which makes up the thingness o f a thing. Causality is only a derivative way of being a cause. By simply mentioning animals, plants, earth, fire, water, and air, Aristotle points to the region in which the question about q06r has to be lodged. II. "But all those which have been named appear as beings that are set in contrast with those which have not, from ~0tIcrLs',composed themselves into a standing and constancy," (192 b 12-13)
Zvv~rdJra is used here for 6ura (Cf. 193 a 36, ro~ ~ e ~ ~vw~ral~E'vo~. From this we infer what "Being" meant for the Greeks. They address themselves tO beings as the "constant" [das "St;in@']. The "constant" has a twofold meaning : on the one hand, that which, of itself, stands on its own, that which stands-"forth"; and at the same time, the constant means the enduring, the lasting. We would not at all be thinking like the Greeks if we were to conceive of the constant as that which "stands against" in the sense of the 0b-jective. "Standing against" is the "translation" of the word "object." But a being can be experienced as object only where man has become the subject, the one who experiences his basic relation to beings as the o b j e c t i f i c a t i o n - understood as m a s t e r y - o f what encounters him. For the Greeks man is never subject, and therefore non-human beings can never have the character of object(standing against). ~b~a,2 is what is responsible for the fact that the constant has an individualized standing-on-its-own. ~ c r ~ is clearly delineated in the following sentence. III. "Indeed each of these beings [that are what they are and how they are from ~6r has in itself the originating ordering (d~pX~) of its beingmoved and standing still (rest), where being-moved and rest are meant sometimes with regard to place, [317] sometimes with regard to growth and diminution, other times with regard to alteration (change)." (192 b 13-15) Here in place of a ;%or and ca~'r& we find explicitly the word dpX~. Usually the Greeks hear two meanings in this word. On the one hand, 4pX~ means that from which something takes its origin and beginning; on the other it 227
MARTIN HEIDEGGER signifies what, as this origin and beginning, likewise keeps rein over, i.e., restrains and therefore dominates, the other thing that emerges from it. 'Apx~j means at one and the same time beginning and domination. O n a broader and therefore lower scale we can say : origin and ordering. In order to express the unity that oscillates between the two, we can translate dpx ~ as originating ordering and ordering origin. The unity of these two is of the essence. And this concept of dpX~j gives a more definite content to the w o r d at%~ov (cause) used above. (Probably the concept dpXr~ is not an "archaic" concept, but one subsequently read back into the origins of Greek philosophy first by Aristotle and then later by the "doxographers.") ~PFa~; is gPX~,that is, the origin and ordering of being-moved and resting, specifically in a moving being that has this dt0X~ in itself. We do not say "in its self" because we want to indicate that this kind of being does not have the dpX~ "for itself" in an explicitly conscious way, because it does not "possess .... itself" as a self at all. Plants and animals are in the state of beingmoved even when they stand still and rest. Rest is a kind of movement; only what can move can rest. It is absurd to speak of the number 3 as "resting." Because plants and animals are in movement regardless of whether they rest or move, for that reason they not only are in movement but have their Being as being-moved. That means : they are not primarily beings for themselves and among other beings, and then occasionally also slip into states of movement. Rather, they are beings only insofar as they have the abode and the footing of their Being in being-moved. However, their Being-moved is such [318] that the dpx~, the origin and ordering of their being-moved, rules from within those beings themselves. Here where he defines ~ m ~ as apX~ K~V~WECO~Aristotle does not neglect to point out various kinds of movement : growth and diminution, alteration and change of place (transport). These kinds are only enumerated, that is, they are not differentiated according to an explicitly mentioned viewpoint, nor are they grounded in any such differentiation (cf. Physics E 1, 224 b 35 - - 225 b 9). The simple enumeration is not even complete. In fact the kind o f movement that is not mentioned is exactly the one that will be decisive for determining the Being of 90F~. Nevertheless, naming the kinds of movement at this point has its own significance. It indicates that Aristotle understands ~'v~7~,9, being-moved, in a very broad sense - - but not " b r o a d " in the sense of "extended," "approximate" and superficial, but "broad" in the sense of the essential, the fullness that is foundational. Today, with the predominance of the mechanistic thinking of the modern natural sciences, we are inclined to hold that the basic form of movement is 228
~ Y Z I Z IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS being-moved in the sense of motion from one position in space to another, and to "explain" every m o v i n g being in terms of that. This kind of beingmoved K~v~la~ ' Karet' rowov, ' being-moved with regard to place or location I is for Aristotle only one kind of being-moved a m o n g others, but it is in no way distinguished as movement doure and simple. What is more, we should note that in a certain sense what Aristotle means by "change of place" is something different from the modern conception of the change of location of some mass in space. T&ro~ is the ~ro~3, the place where a determined body belongs. What is fiery belongs above, what is earthly belongs below. The places themselves - - above, below (heaven, earth) - - are special : through them are determined distances and relations, i.e., what we call "space," something for which the Greeks had neither a word nor a concept. For us today space is not determined through [319] place, but rather all places, as constellations of points, are determined by infinite space that is everywhere homogeneous and nowhere distinctive. When being-moved is taken as change of place, there is a corresponding kind of rest, namely, remaining in the same place. But something that continues to occupy the same place and so is not moved in the sense of change o f place, can nonetheless be in the process of being-moved. For example, a plant that is rooted "in place" grows (increases) or withers (decreases) - a ~ ' ~ / ~ and c?~[a~. A n d conversely, something which moves insofar as it changes its place can still "rest" by remaining as it was constituted. The running fox is at rest in that it keeps the same color; this is the rest of nonalteration, rest without 3]k~odcor Or something can be moved in the sense of withering and at the same time be moved in yet another way, namely, by being altered : O n the withering tree the leaves dry up, the green becomes yellow. The tree that is moved in this twofold sense of qoO[r and g ~ o d m r is simultaneously at rest insofar as it is the tree that stands there. If we perceive all these overlapping "appearances" as types of movement, we gain an insight into their basic character, which Aristotle fixes in the word and the concept lZera~o~. Every instance of being-moved is a change from something (~'K r~vo~) to something ( ~ rL). When we speak of a change in the weather, a change in mood, what we have in mind is an "alteration." We also speak of "exchange points" where commercial goods change hands in business transactions. But the essential core of what the Greeks meant in thinking t z E r ~ o ~ is had only by observing that in a change [Umsch/ag] something heretofore hidden and absent comes into appearance. ("Aus-schlag": the breaking out of, e.g., a blossom, "Durchschlag": penetration or break through.) -
-
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MARTIN HEIDEGGER (We of today have to do two things : first, free ourselves from the view that m o v e m e n t is first and above all change of place, and second, learn to see h o w for the Greeks m o v e m e n t as a mode of Being has the character of emerging into presence.) [320] qStScrt; is dPX~ K~v~r origin and ordering of change, such that each thing that changes has this ordering within itself. At the very beginning of the chapter, beings from q0t~r were contrasted with other beings, but the latter were not expressly named and characterized. There now follows an explicit and definite, but likewise curiously narrow, delineation : IV. " H o w e v e r , a couch (bedstead) and a robe and if there is any other kind (of such things), i n @ r as it is had and held in accordance with its corresponding statement (e.g., as a robe) and inasmuch as it comes from a producing know-how, (such a thing) has absolutely no impulse to change arising from itself. However, insofar as such things (at a given time) may already be made of stone or of earth or of a mixture of these, they do have in themselves an impulse to change, but they have it only to that extent." (192 b 16-20) In opposition to beings like "plants," animals, earth, and air, Aristotle now sets beings like bedsteads, robes, shields, wagons, ships, and houses. The former are "growing things" ["Gewiichse"] in the same broad sense that we use in speaking of a ,field under growth." The latter are "artifacts" (Trowv'/zevc,),in German, Gemi#hte, although this last term must be stripped of any derogatory connotations. The contrast is meant to further highlight the proper characteristics of ~b~crE~dvra and q~6crLr, and it achieves this end only by staying within our guiding perspective, namely, that we are asking about moving beings and their being-moved and about the dpx ~ of the latter. But are bedsteads and garments, shields and houses moving things? Indeed they are, but we meet them mostly in that kind of m o v e m e n t which typifies things at rest and therefore is hard to perceive. Their "rest" is characterized as having-been-completed, having-been-produced, and, on the basis of these determinations, as standing-"forth" and lying present before us. Today we easily overlook this special kind of rest and so too the b e i n g - m o v e d that corresponds to it, or at [321] least we do not take it basically enough as the proper and distinguishing characteristic of the Being of these beings, because under the spell of man's modern way of Being, we are addicted to thinking of beings as objects and allowing the Being of beings to be exhausted in the objectivity of the object. But for Aristotle, the issue here is to show that artifacts are what they are and how they are 230
OYXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS precisely in the being-moved of production and thus in the rest of havingbeen-produced. He wants to show above all that this being-moved has another d~px~ and that beings which are moved in this other way are related to their dpx ~ in a different manner. (There is no reason to read dpx ~ in place of dp/~ in this text as Simplicius does, for dpi,~, "impulse," elucidates the Being Of dpx ~ quite welL) The dpx ~ of artifacts is TE'Xv~l. This word does not mean"technique"in the sense of methods and acts of production, nor does it mean "art" in the wider sense of ability to produce something. Rather, ra'xv~ is a form of knowledge; it means k n o w - h o w in, i.e., familiarity with, that which grounds every act of making and producing. It means knowing what the production of, e.g., a bedstead must come to, where it must achieve its end and be completed. In Greek, this "end" is called rFAov. That whereat an act of producing "ceases" is the table as finished - - but finished precisely as table, as what a table is and h o w a table looks. The E/'So; must stand in view beforehand, and this previously beheld appearance, egSo~ orpoe~pErdv, is the end, r4Aov, that aboutwhich rJXU~7has its know-how. Only.for this reason does rJXV~I also come to be defined as the kind of procedure and the way of acting which we call "technique." But again, the Being of rc'xv~1 is not movement in the sense of the activity of manipulating things; rather, it is k n o w - h o w in ~tealing with things. A n d rFAo~is not "goal" nor "purpose," but "end" in the sense of the finite perfectedness that determines the Being of something; and only for that reason can it be taken as a goal and posited as a purpose. However, the rg),o;, the previously seen appearance of the bedstead, is what is k n o w n by the person with the know-how, and it exists in him. Only in this way is it the origin of the idea of the thing and the ordering of its manufacture. [322] The EgSo,in itself is not the dPX~ of the artifact. Rather, the E~'8o~ 7rpo~tperdv, i.e., the wpo~,'pea~;, i.e., the rE'Xv~, is the artifact's ~PX~: " In the case of artifacts, therefore, the dpx ~ of their being-moved and thus of the rest which characterizes their being-completed and being-made is not in the artifacts themselves but in another, in the &pX~rr the one who controls the r~Xwl as dPX~" This would seem to complete the contrast of artifacts with the ~5~c~ 8,r~, for these bear their name precisely because they have the ~PX~ of their being-moved not in another being but in themselves (to the degree they are themselves). But according to Aristotle's explanation, the difference between artifacts and growing things is not at all so simple. Even the structure of the section we are considering gives a hint : ~/ray - 8F "insofar as artifacts are seen in this w a y . . , insofar as they are seen in another way . . . . " The wo~ov'l~v&can be looked at from two points of view. 231
MARTIN HEIDEGGER On the one hand we look at the produced thing insofar as it is had and held in whatever statement we make about it : the Ka-r~WopLa. Here we run across a use of this w o r d which goes back before it was stabilized as a philosophical "term." It was Aristotle, in fact, who stablized the term, but he did so on the basis of the c o m m o n usage which is operative here. We translate KaTWoP& as a "statement about something" [_/tnsprecbung], but even then we do not at all capture the full Greek meaning. Ka~c&-@opefie,v means to accuse someone to his face in the @opd, the open court, of being "the very one who . . . . " From that comes the broader meaning : to speak about something as this or that, so that in and through our speaking the thing we speak about is put forth into the public view, into the open, as manifest. Kar~yop& is the naming of what something is : house, tree, sky, sea, hard, red, healthy. The philosophical "term" "category," on the other hand, means a special kind of speaking-about. We are able to speak about a present thing as a house or a tree only insofar as we have already beforehand wordlessly addressed what we e n c o u n t e r i.e., have brought it into our open field of "vision" - - as something standing-on-its-own, a thing. Likewise, [323] a garment can be spoken of as "red" only if from the outset and without words it has already been addressed in terms of something like quality. Standing-on-its-own ("sub-stance") and quality ("of-whatsort-hess") and the like make up the Being (beingness) of beings. The "categories," therefore, are special statements about t h i n g s - ~cct~-977opgcLt in an emphatic sense - - for they sustain all c o m m o n and everyday statements about things. These "categories" underlie the ordinary statements about things which are developed into assertions, "judgments." A n d conversely only because of this development can the "categories" be discovered by using the assertion, the )idyo~, as a clue; consequently Kant has to "deduce" the table of categories from the table of/udgments. Therefore, knowledge of the categories as determinations of the Being of beings - - what people call metaphysics - - i s , in a fundamental sense, knowledge of 2td7o~- i.e., "logic." Thus metaphysics receives this name at the stage where it comes to the ful! (as full as is possible for it) consciousnessof itself in Hegel. [The Science of Logic is absolute knowledge of the knowable as something known or thought. (In modern philosophy, the state-of-being-thought is beingness or Being.)] In the text we are considering, Ka-r~iyopga is used in a pre-terminological sense. Inasmuch as something produced - - e.g., the bedstead - - is brought into the perspective opened up by ordinary statement and naming, we take 232
#YZIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS that being according to its appearance as something of use. In that capacity it does not have the dpX~ K~V~EOO~in itself. On the other hand, we can take this very same being, the bedstead, as something made out of wood, hence as a piece of wood. As wood, it is part of a treetrunk, a growing thing. This tree has the dpX4/ K~v~eec~ in itself. The bedstead, on the other hand, is not w o o d as such, but only wooden, made oul of wood. Only what is something other than w o o d can be "wooden." That is why we never call a treetrunk " w o o d e n , " but we do say that a person's bearing is "wooden," and in German one can say that an apple is " w o o d e n . " What the bedstead is when taken according to the Kar~lyop&, namely, a usable thing that looks thus and so, has no absolutely necessary relation to wood. It could [324] just as well be made out of stone or steel. Its woodenness is ~vtz~e~lK6~ , that is to say : in reference to what the bed "really" and properly is, woodenness appears on~ incidentally. Insofar - - but on~ insofar - - as it is just wood, a bedstead certainly does have the dpXr? K~v~creoJ~ in itself, for w o o d is what-hasgrown of a growing thing. O n the basis of this contrast between artifacts and growing things Aristotle can summarize what has been said up to now and so establish the first sketch of the Being of ~t~cr~: V. "Accordingly, qvgr is something like origin and ordering and therefore source of the self-moving and resting of something in which it priorly (~rr6) exercises originating and ordering power (~pXe~) primarily in itself and from itself and towards itself and so never i n such a way that the dpx~) would appear (in the being) only incidentally." (192 b 20 - - 23) Here, simply and almost severely, Aristotle draws the outline of the Being of ~ogaL~: it is not just the origin and ordering of the being-moved of a moving being, but belongs to this moving being itself in such a way that this being, in itself and from itself and towards itself, orders its own beingmoved. Hence tile c[px~ is not like the starting-point of a push, which pushes the thing away and leaves it to itself. Rather, something that is determinedby~Bcrt~not only stays with itself in its being-moved but precisely goes back into itself even as it unfolds and expands in accordance with the being-moved (the change). We can clarify the state of Being that is meant here by the example of " g r o w i n g things" i n the narrower sense ("plants"). While the "plant" sprouts, emerges, and extends itself into the open, it simultaneously goes back into its roots in that it fixes them in the closed and so takes its stand. The act of self-unfolding emergence is inherently a going-back-into-itself. 233
MARTIN HEIDEGGER This mode of Being is qo6e~. But it must not be thought of as a kind of built-in " m o t o r " which drives something, nor as an "organizer" present somewhere directing the thing. [325] Nonetheless we might be tempted to fall back on the idea that beings determined by ~06eL~ could be a kind that make themselves. So easily and spontaneously does this idea suggest itself that it has become normative for the interpretation of living nature in particular, as is shown by the fact that ever since the reign of modern thinking, a living being has been understood as an "organism." N o doubt a lot of time has yet to pass before we learn to see that the idea of "organism" and of the "organic" is a purely modern, mechanistic-technological concept according to which " g r o w i n g things" are interpreted as artifacts that make themselves. Even the word and concept "plant" takes that which grows as something "planted," something sown and cultivated. A n d it is part of the essential illogicality of language that in German we nonetheless speak of greenhouses as GewiichshSusern (houses for what grows) instead o f Pflanzenhausern (houses for what has been planted). In the case of all artifacts, however, the origin of the making is "outside" the thing made. Seen from the viewpoint of the artifact, the ?*PX~ always and only appears as something in addition. In order to avoid misunderstanding q)tla~ as a kind of self-producing and the qOV~EL"ours" merely as a special kind of artifact, Aristotle clarifies the *caO" afird by adding Kal t*~ ~ r a evtxfie~,?Kds. The Kal here has the meaning of "and that is to say . . . . " This phrase seeks to ward off an error, and Aristotle explains its meaning by an example : VI. "But I add the phrase 'not like something appearing in addition' because a man, entirely by himself, might become the (originating and ordering) source of 'health' for himself, and at the same time he could be a doctor. H e h a s the medical k n o w - h o w in himself, but not insofar as he regains his health. Rather in this case, being a doctor and regaining health happen to have come together in one and the same man. But for that very reason the two also remain separated from each other, each on its own." (192 b 23-27) In other contexts as well Aristotle, a doctor's son, likes to use examples drawn from medical " r r p a ~ . " [326] Here he gives us the case of a. doctor w h o treats himself and thereby regains his health. T w o kinds of being-moved are interwoven here in a peculiar way: ~drpeve~, the praticing of medicine as a reXV ... ' % and fiy[avae~, the regaining of health as . .~ovcn~. In this case of a doctor who treats himself, both movements are in one and the same being, in this specific man. The same holds for the respective ~pX~j of each of the 234
9 YXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS two "movements." The " d o c t o r " has the 6PX~ of regaining his health dv ~avr~, in himself, but not KaO' afirdv, not according to himself, not insofar as he is a doctor. The origin and ordering of regaining health is not being-a-doctor but being-a-man, and this only insofar as the man is a ~ o v , a living being that has life only in that it "is a body." As we too say, the healthy "nature," capable of resistance, is the real origin and ordering of regaining health. Without this 8PX~, all medical practice is in vain. But on the other hand, the doctor has the dPX~ o f practicing medicine in himself : being-a-doctor is the origin and ordering of the treatment. But this dpx~, namely, this know-how-and-previe~ (rgXv~l) of what health is and what pertains to keeping and regaining it (the Et'So~ rgl~ fiyLe[a~) - - this 6PX~ is not in the man qua man but is something in addition, attained by him only through studying and learning. Consequently, in relation to regaining health, the r~Xv~I itself is always and only something that can appear in addition. Doctors and the practice of medicine do not grow as do trees. O f course we do speak of a " b o r n " doctor, and we mean that a man brings with him the talent for recognizing diseases and treating the sick. But these talents are never, in the manner of q~75~,~, the aPX~ for being a doctor, inasmuch as they do not unfold from out of themselves towards the end of being a doctor. Nevertheless the following objection could be raised at this point. Say that two doctors suffer from the same disease under the same conditions and that each one treats himself. However, between the two cases of illness there lies a period of [327] 500 years, during which the "progress" of modern medicine has taken place. The doctor of today has at his disposal a "better" technique and he regains his health, whereas the one who lived earlier dies of the disease. So the dPX~ of the cure of today's doctor is precisely the rE'XV~I. There is, however, something further to consider here. For one thing, the fact of not dying, in the sense of prolonging one's life, is not yet necessarily the recovery of health. The fact that men live longer today is no p r o o f that they are healther; one m i g h t even conclude to the contrary. But even supposing that the modern doctor, beneficiary of the progress of medicine, not only escapes death for a while but also recovers his health, even then the art of medicine has only supported and guided q06~,~ better. Tgxv~1 can only co-operate with cpd~ts-, can more or less expedite the cure; but as 7e'Xv~ it can never replace q0tla,s- and in its stead become itself the 8PX~ of health as such. That could only happen if life as such were to become a "technically" producible artifact. At that very moment, however, there would also no longer be such a thing as health, any more than there would be birth and 235
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R death. Sometimes it seems as if modern man rushes headlong towards this goal of producing himself technologically. When he achieves this , man will have blown himself up, i.e., his Being as subjectivity, into the sky where the simply meaningless is valued as the one and only "meaning" and where preserving this value appears as the human "domination" of the globe. "Subjectivity" is not overcome in this way but only "tranquillized" in the "eternal progress" of a Chinese-like "constancy" [Konstanz]. This is the most extreme inversion of what ~vaL~-ov~a " ' ' is. Aristotle also uses this example, in which two different kinds of beingmoved interweave, as an occasion for determining more clearly the mode and manner in which the rrowv'~e~,a (artifacts) stand in relation to their &PX~" VII. " A n d the same holds for everything else that belongs among things made. That is to say, none of them has in itself the origin and ordering of its being made. [328] Rather, some have their dpX~ in another being and thus have it from the outside, as for example a house and anything else made by hand. Others, however, do indeed have the dpX ~ in themselves, but not inasmuch as they are themselves. To this latter group belodg all things which can be 'causes' for themselves in an incidental way." (192 b 27 - - 32) The house has the origin and ordering of its being a house, i.e., a construction, in the constructor's prior intention to build, which is given concrete form in the architect's blueprint. This b l u e p r i n t - in Greek terms, the house's appearance as seen beforehand or in a word, the ~8~a - - orders each step of the actual constructing and governs the choice and use of materials. Even when the house "is standing," it stands on the foundation that has been laid for it; but it never stands from out of the foundation itself, but always as a mere construction. As long as it stands there - - in Greek terms, as long as it stands forth into the open and u n h i d d e n - the house, due to its way of standing, can neve~ put itself back into its dPX~" It will never take root in the earth but will always and only remain placed on it, built on it. But what if, for example, someone were to hit himself in the eye and injure it by a clumsy movement of his own hand ? Certainly both the injury and the movement of the hand are dv ravr~, . . . . m"" the same being. However, they do not belong together but simply have fallen together, come together " " " avv,~E~Ko;' , incidentally. Therefore, i n determining the Being of the 9var dvra, it is not enough to simply say that they have the apx ~ of their: beingmoved in themselves. Rather, we are required to add this special determination : in themselves, specifically inasmuch as they are themselves and are in and with [bei] themselves. 236
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[This word "specifically" is not a restriction but a requirement that we look into the broad area where there is given, without being caused, a mode of Being which is denied to every'rE'%m7 because the latter renounces any claim to knowing and grounding truth as such.] Aristotle concludes the first stage of his characterization of the Being of g)~o-t~ by what seems to be only a superficial [329] clarification of the meaning of the concepts and expressions that cluster around the Being and concept and word W3o't~. VIII. " ~ c r t ~ , therefore, is what has been said. Everything which possesses that kind of origin and ordering 'has' ~0t~c~t~.And all these things are (have Being) of the sort called beingness. ~t~crt~ is always such as lies present of itself, and is always in a thing that lies present in this way (constituting its lying present). 'In accordance with ~6e,s,' however, are these things as well as everything that belongs to these things in themselves of themselves, as e.g. it belongs to fire 'to be borne upwards. In point of fact this (being borne upwards) is not q0~e~, neither does it possess ~v%t~, but it certainly is from ~0~et~ and in accordance with ~pv*~. So now what ~gt~t~ is has been settled, as well as what is meant by from q~v~t~, and m accordance with ~pv~L~. (192 b 32 - - 193 a 2) It may strike the reader that even now we continue to leave the basic word q0v'~t~ untranslated. In place of it we do not say natura or nature because these names are too ambiguous and overburdened, and in general because they receive their validity as titles only by virtue of a properly directed interpretation of ~6et~. In fact, we do not even have a word that would be appropriate for naming and thinking the Being of ~pt~tf as we have thus far explained it. (We are tempted to say "emergence" [Aufgang], hut without intermediate steps we cannot give the word the fullness and definiteness it requires.) But the chief reason for continuing to use the untranslated and perhaps untranslatable word ~otSet~lies in the fact that everything said up to this point towards the clarification of its Being is only prologue. In fact, up until n o w we do not even know what method of reflection and inquiry is already at work when we ask about ~pg~t~ as we have been doing. And these things Aristotle tells us only n o w in the passage we have just read, a text that establishes with extreme succinctness the horizon within which the explanation moves, both the preceding part and especially that which is to follow. The decisive sentence reads : Kal g~rw ~rdvra r ~ r a o~3~/a, "and all t h e s e - viz., beings from ~ptS~t~- have Being of the sort called beingness." This expression "beingness," which hardly sounds elegant in ordinary language, [330] is the only adequate translation for o~egct. Granted, eventhis expression 237
MARTIN HEIDEGGER says very little, in fact, almost nothing, but that is precisely its advantage. We avoid the usual and familiar " t r a n s l a t i o n s " - i.e., i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s - of o~e[a as "substance" and "essence." qbtI~,~ is o~3~[~z, beingness - - that which distinguishes a being as such; in a word : Being. The word o3cr& was not originally a philosophical "expression" any more than was the word Kar~lTop[a , which we have already explained. The word ove~a' ' was first coined as a "term" by Aristotle. This coining consists in the fact that Aristotle thoughtfully pulls out a decisive element from the content of the word and holds on to it firmly and clearly. A n d nonetheless, at the time of Aristotle and even later, the word still retained its c o m m o n meaning whereby it signified house and home, possessions, capabilities, we might also say "one's present holdings," "real estate," that which lies present. We must think in terms of this meaning to be sure that we get the denotative force of ove~a as a basic philosophical word. And then too we immediately see how simple and obvious is the explanatory phrase that Aristotle adds after the word ove~a' ' in the text above : wroKr162 ydp r~ Ka'~ ~v vrroKetbtevo2, ecrrtv 9v~t~ ~e*, "for at all times 9v~t~ is like lying-present and 'in' a lying-present." Someone may want to object that our translation here is "false." Aristotle's sentence does not say 15rroKe~rOat 7dp rt, lying-present [Vorliegen] but rather "something which lies present" [ein Vorliegendes]. But here we must pay strict attention to what the sentence is supposed to explain : namely, to what extent ~0tJCts- is ovctot' ' and thus has the character of beingness (Being). That requires of us (as is so often the case with the philosophical use of the Greek language, but too little noticed by later thinkers) that we adequately understand the participle /;rroKE~'~Evov in a way that corresponds with ra av. Ta *v can mean the being, i.e., this definite being itself; but it can also mean that which G that which has Being. Correspondingly,/27roKEd>EVOV can mean "that which lies present," but it can also mean "something distinguished by lying-present," and so it can mean the very lying-present itself. [331] (The unusually rich and manifold forms of the participle in the Greek language - - the truly philosophical l a n g u a g e - are no mere accident, but their meaning has hardly yet been recognized.) In accordance with the explanation of o?ocr[ct through 3rroKr the beingness of beings means for the Greeks the same as to be present : to lie "there" and "in front o f . . . . " In this connection let us recall that towards the beginning of this chapter at 192 b 13 (and later at 193 a 36) Aristotle says o v w r (those constant things that have taken a stand) instead of r& 6vra. Accordingly, "to be" means the same as "to stand on its own." r
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qaYZIZ IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS But "to stand" is quite the opposite of "to lie." Yes, that is true if we take each of them separately. But if we take "to stand" and "to lie" in terms of what they share in common, then each manifests itself precisely through its opposite. Only what stands can fall and thus lie, and only what lies can be put upright and so stand. The Greeks understand Being sometimes as "to stand on its own" (~rdaram~, substantia) and sometimes as "to lie present" (~roKdg.evov , subjectum), but both have equal weight, for in each case the Greeks have one and the same thing in view : being-present of itself, becoming-present. The decisive principle which guides Aristotle's interpretanon of ~vmf declares that q0vm~must be understood as ova~a, a manner and mode of becoming-present. Now it has already been established through ~rrayco7~ that ~tlee~ 6vra are Kwov'tzeva , that is to say : beings from ~v~L~ are in the state of being-moved. Accordingly, it is now a question of understanding being-moved as a manner and mode of Being, i.e., of becoming-present. Only when this is accomplished can we understand ~ a ~ in its Being as the origin and ordering of the being-moved of what move, from out of itself and toward, itself. Thus it is basically clear that the question about the ~0tlet~ of the cptI~E~ dvra is not a search for the ontic properties present in beings of this sort, but rather an inquiry into the Being of those beings, from which Being it is determined in advance how in general the beings of such a Being can have properties. [332] The next section forms the transition to a new approach in determining the Being of ~ptlm~, and it shows how decisively Aristotle's explanation of ~ v ' ~ up to this point has meanwhile broadened explicitly into a reflection based on fundamental principles, and it shows how necessary this reflection is for the task confronting us. IX. "But it is ridiculous to want to prove that cp~a~; is, for this (Being as ~06m~) appears of itself, because [not "that"] beings of this type show up everywhere among beings. But demonstrating something which appears of itself (and especially) a proof via something which refuses to appear - - this is the action of a man who cannot distinguish (from each other) that which by itself is familiar to all knowledge from that which by itself is not. But that this can happen (i.e., such an inability to make the distinction) is not outside the realm of possibility. For through a sequence of reflections a man born blind might perhaps attempt to acquire some knowledge about colors. O f necessity in this case, such people arrive at an assertion about the nominal meanings of the words for colors, but by these means they never perceive the least thing about colors themselves." (193 a 3-9) 239
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R "But it is ridiculous to attempt to prove that ~ o ~ is." But why ? Shouldn't we take seriously some such procedure? Without a prior p r o o f that something like cpF~t~ "is," all explanations about 90tI~ remain pointless. So let us try such a proof. But in that case we have to suppose that 90t~cr~9is nob, or at least that it is not yet proven in its Being and as Being. Therefore in the course of our demonstration we may not allow ourselves to refer to it. But if we take this restriction seriously, how could we ever find or point to something like 90tScret 6~ra, growing things--animals, for e x a m p l e I t h e very things by means of which the Being of ~0tI~t~ is supposed to be proven ? Such a procedure is impossible because it must already refer to the Being of 90Fcrt~, [333] and exactly for that reason this kind of proof is always superfluous. Already by its first step it attests of itself that its project is unnecessary. In fact the whole undertaking is ridiculous.. The Being of 5ot~L~ and ~06crt~ as Being remain unprovable because ~0~9 does not need a proof, for wherever a being from 90t~cTt9 stands in the open, ~0F~L9 has already shown itself and stands in view. Regarding those who demand and attempt such a proof, one can at best draw their attention to the fact that they do not see that which they already see, that they have no eye for what already stands in view for them. To be sure, this eye - - which is not simply for what one sees but for what one already has in view when he sees what he sees - - this eye does not belong to everyone. This eye has the ability to differentiate what appears by itself and comes into the open according to its own Being, from what does not appear by itself. That which appears in a d v a n c e - - a s 9~tI~t~ does in the q0zJcr~t &'r~,as history does in all historical occure'nces,as art does in all artworks, as "life" does in all living things - - that which already stands in view is seen with the greatest difficulty, is grasped very seldomly, is almost always falsified into a mere addendum, and for these reasons simply overlooked. O f course not everyone needs to explicitly hold in view what is already seen in all we experience, but only those who make a claim to deciding, or even to asking, about nature, history, art, men, the whole of beings. Certainly not everyone who by action or thought finds himself in these regions of beings needs to consider explicitly what is already seen. But of course neither may he overlook it or toss it off as insignificant, as something merely "abstract" that is, if he really wants to stand where he stands. That which appears in advance, the Being (at a given time) of a being, is not something abstracted from beings later on, something depleted and thinned out, finally no more than a vapor, [334] nor is it something that becomes accessible to the thinker only through a "reflection" on himself. -
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~YZIZ IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS O n the contrary, the way to what is already seen but not yet understood, much less conceptualized , is that leading-towards which we already mentioned, the ~7rayo3y~. This is what makes us see ahead into the distance, into what we ourselves are not and least of all could ever be, into something far off which nevertheless is most near, nearer than everything that lies in our hand or resounds in our ear or lies before our eyes. In order not to overlook that which is nearest yet likewise farthest, ,we must stand above the obvious and the "factual." Differentiating between what appears of itself and what does not appear of itself is a Kpgv.e~in the genuinely Greek sense : separating out what is superior from what is inferior. T h r o u g h this "critical" ability for the differentiating which is always decision, man is no longer just stupified by what troubles and preoccupies him, but is placed out beyond that, into relation to Being. In the real sense of the word, he becomes ex-sistent, he ex-sists instead of merely "living" and snatching at "reality" in the so-called "concern for real life," where "reality" is only a refuge in the long-standing flight from Being. According to Aristotle, whoever cannot make such a distinction lives like a man born blind who works at making colors accessible to himself by reasoning about the names he has heard them called. He picks a way that can never bring him to his goal, because the only road which leads there is "seeing," and it is surely denied to the blind. Just as there are people blind to colors, so there are people blind to ~afa~. And if we recall that ~vv'cL~has been defined as only one kind of o~r (beingness), then those blind to q0tIets" are only one type of people blind to Being. Presumably those blind to Being far outnumber those blind to color, and what is more, the power o f their blindness is even stronger and more obstinate for they are less obvious and mostly g o unrecognized. As a consequence they even pass for the only ones who really see. [335] But obviously our relation to that which in advance appears o f itself and eludes all plans for p r o o f must be hard to hold on to in its originality and truth. Otherwise Aristotle would n o t need to explicitly remind us of it nor attack this blindness to Being. A n d our relation to Being is hard to hold on to because it seems to be made easy for us by our c o m m o n comportment towards beings - - so easy, in fact, that our relation to Being looks like it could be supplanted by this comportment and be nothing else but this comportment. Aristotle's remarks on the desire to prove that q o ~ "shows up" plays a special role within the whole of his exposition, and we immediately see that role from the following passage : 241
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R X. "But for some thinkers q~t~at;, and so too the beingness of beings from ~03(n;, appears to be that which is already and primarily present in each thing, but in itself lacking all form. In this view the q~tI~L; of the bedstead is the wood, that of the statue is the bronze. According to Antiphon's explanation, this is shown in the following way : If one buries a bedstead in the earth and if the decay goes so far that a sprout comes up, then what is generated (from this sprout) is not a bedstead but wood. Consequently something which has been brought about in accordance with rules and k n o w - h o w [e.g., the bedstead made out of wood] is certainly something in existence, but only insofar as it has appeared incidentally, The beingness, however, lies in that (the q~3cn;) which abides through it all, holding itself together throughout everything it "undergoes." Furthermore, if any one of these [wood, bronze] has already undergone the same process [of having been brought into a form] with respect to yet another - - as have bronze and gold with respect to water, or bones and wood with respect to earth, or similarly anything else among all other beings - - then it is precisely the latter (water, earth) that are q ~ t ; and therefore the beingness of the former (as beings)." (193 a 9 - - 21) [336] From a superficial point of view, it now seems that Aristotle moves from clarifying the correct attitude for defining q~a,; as a mode of Being over to characterizing the opinion of other thinkers with regard to qo~cn;. But his purpose here is not just to also mention other views for the sake of some sort of scholarly completeness. N o r does he mean to simply reject them in order to fashion a contrasting background for his own interpretation. Aristotle's intention is to explain Antiphon's interpretation of q~cns- in the light of his own formulation of the question, and thus for the first time to put Antiphon's interpretation on the 0n/y road that can lead to an adequate definition of the Being of 9~cr,; as Aristotle envisions it. Up to n o w we only know this much about the matter : cp&n; is ovcna; ' the Being of a being, specifically of those beings which have been seen in advance to have the character of ~avov't~eva,beings in movement. More clearly:9~cn; is the origin and ordering (dPX~) of the being-moved of something which moves on its own. I f q0gcn; is o3cr[a, a mode of Being, then the correct definition of the Being of q06a~; depends on two things : first of all we must get an adequately original grasp of o~cr[a as Being; secondly and in line with the former, we must interpret what it is, in the light of a given conception of Being, that encounters us as a being from option;. Now, the Greeks understand o3cr[a as constant becoming-present. They give no reasons for this interpretation of Being any more than they question the basis of its truth. For in the first 242
q)YXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS origin of thought the fact that the Being of beings is grasped at all is more important than the question of its ground. But h o w does the Sophist Antiphon, who comes from the Eleatic school, interpret qv~r in the light of the conception of Being as constant becomingpresent ? H e says : on~ earth, water, air, and fire truly are in accordance with ~t~a~;. With that, however, there occurs a distinction of the greatest moment : what always seems to be more than mere (pure) e a r t h - e.g., the wood "shaped" out of earth and even more so [337] the bedstead fashioned from the wood - - all this " m o r e " is in fact less being, for this " m o r e " has the character of articulating, impressing, fitting and forming, in short, the character of ~vOtzd;. But such things change, are inconstant and transitory. From wood there can be made equally a table and a shield and a ship, and in turn the wood itself is only something formed out of earth. The earth is what truly perdures throughout, whereas the changes of ~vO#d; happen to it only n o w and again. Real being is r3 ~pp~Oix~rov 7rp~rov, that which first and of itself is unformed and constantly present throughout the changes of shape and form that it undergoes. From the theses of Antiphon it becomes clear that bedsteads, statues, robes, and gowns are only inasmuch as they are wood, iron, and the like, i.e., only inasmuch as they consist of something more constant. The most constant, however, are earth, water, fire, and air - the "elements." But if the "elemental" has the most Being, then this interpretation ofq0t~r as the primary formless which sustains everything that is formed implies that a decision has likewise been made about the interpretation of every "being," and that ~06r as conceived here, is equated with Being as such. But this means that Being as o3r constant becoming-present, is given a fixed and very specific direction. According to this definition of Being, all things, whether growing things or artifacts, never truly a r e and yet they are not nothing; hence they are non-being, not fully sufficing for beingness. In contrast with these non-beings, only the "elemental" qualifies as Being. The following section gives an insight into the importance of the interpretation of ~ t ; ~ presently under discussion, i.e., as the 7rp&rov dppgOt*~rov KaO' lavrdv (that which first and in itself is unformed). XI. "Therefore different people say that fire or earth or air or water or some of these ("elements") or all of them are 99t~r itself and therefore the Being of beings as a whole. For what each of them [338] has accepted in advance (zSwd) as being present in this way, whether it is one or many, that he declares to be the whole of beingness as such, whereas all the rest are taken as modifications or dispositions of real beings or 243
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R as the part into which they can be separated (and thus the connections into which they can be analyzed). ~ An so it is declared that each of those (which in the various cases constitute ~0~;)stays with itself and remains the same (i.e., they do not have any change by which they might go out of themselves), whereas other beings come to be and pass away 'endlessly.' " (193 a 21 - - 28) Here Aristotle summarizes the distinction between cpgm; as the "elemental," taken as the only and authentic being (the ~rp~rov dpp~Otl.~arov KaO' a~r6), and non-beings (TrdOrl, ~ e ~ , 3mO~aE~, ~vOIJ.6~) by once again introducing the opinions of other teachers and by making clear reference to Democritus. [From the viewpoint of the history of Being, the basis of "materialism" as a metaphysical stance becomes apparent here.] But more important is the last sentence of the section, where Aristotle thinks out and defines this distinction even more precisely by formulating it in terms of the contrast between d{Stov andywdlZEVov dweLpd~c~. We usually think of this contrast as that of the "eternal" vs. the "temporal." In those terms, what is present primarily and without form is the "eternal," whereas all ~vOtzdg, as change, is the "temporal." Nothing could be clearer than this distinction. Yey one ignores the fact that this understanding of the distinction between eternity and temporality erroneously reads back into the Greek interpretation of "beings" what are only "Hellenistic" and "Christian" and generally "modern" ideas. The "eternal" is taken as what endures without limit, with neither beginning nor end, whereas the "temporal" is limited duration. The viewpoint that guides this distinction is based on duration. Certainly the Greeks are acquainted also with this distinction with regard to beings, but they always think out the difference on the basis of their understanding of Being. And this is quite distorted by the "Christian" distinction. [339] Already just from the Greek words for these concepts it is clear that the opposition of d/Stay and 7wd~,evov dTre~pdK~; can not refer to what limitlessly endures vs. what is limited, for in the text the so-called temporal means limitless coming-to-be and passing away. What is opposed to the d[Smv, the "eternal" as supposedly "limitless," is also a limitless: dlre~pov (~re'pa~). Now how is all this supposed to hit upon the decisive contrast in terms of which authentic "Being" is defined ? The socalled eternal is in Greek dgS~ov - - degSLov; and de[ means not only "all the time" and "incessant," but first of all "at any given time." J &d fiaa&E~eov = the one who is ruler at the time - - not the "eternal ruler. ''a With the word de[ what one has in view is "being there for a while," specifically in the sense of becoming-present. The dgS,ov is something which becomes present of 244
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itself without other assistance, and for that reason perhaps something constantly present. Here we are thinking not with regard to "duration" b u t with regard to becoming-present. That is the clue for correctly interpreting the opposite concept, y~vdl~evov &rre~pdm~. In Greek thought, what comes to be and passes away is that which is sometimes present, other times absent - without limit. But ~re'pctf in Greek philosophy is not limit in the sense of the outer boundary, the point where something ends. Limit is always that which limits, determines, gives footing and stability, that by which and in which something begins and is. Whatever is present and absent without limit has of itself no becoming-present, and it deteriorates into instability. The distinction between real beings and non-beings does not consist in the fact that real beings perdure without restriction whereas non-beings always have their duration broken off. With regard to duration both could be either restricted or unrestricted. The decisive factor is rather that real beings become present of themselves and for that reason are encountered as what is always already present --/moKe@evov ~rpGorov. Non-beings on the other hand are sometimes present, sometimes absent, because they become present 0n~ on the basis of something that is already present; that is, along with it they make their appearance or [340] remain absent. Beings (in the sense of the "e!emental") are "always 'there'," non-beings are "always gone" - - w h e r e "there" and "gone" are understood on the basis of becoming-present and not with regard to mere "duration." The later distinction between aeternitas and sempiternitas would come the closest to the Greek distinction we have just clarified. Aeternitas is the nunc stans, sempiternitas is the nunc fluens. But even here the original presence of Being, as the Greeks experienced it, has already vanished. The distinction intends, if not the mode of mere duration, at least only that of change. What "stays" is the unchanging, what flows is the "fleeting," the changing. But both are equally understood in terms of something that continues without interruption. For the Greeks, however, "Being" means becoming present, coming into the unbidden. What is decisive is not the duration and extent of the becomingpresent but rather whether the becoming-present is given into the unhidden and simple and thus withdrawn into the hidden and inexhausted, or whether becoming-present is distorted (~be~8o~) into mere "it looks like," into "mereaJoJoearance," instead of being maintained in m#distortedness (d-rpgKEm). Only by seeing the opposition of unhiddenness and seeming can we adequately know what o73~& is for the Greeks. Such knowledge is the condition for understanding at all Aristotle's interpretation of ~pt~cr~; in particular it determines whether we can follow the progression of the new approach, 245
MARTIN HEIDEGGER which now follows, towards the conclusive definition of the Being of /
qovat~. Before attempting that, we must recall, in its simple coherence, what we have seen up to this point. According to dTraycoy~,beings from 9tlaL~ are in the state of being-moved. But q~et; itself is the &PX~,the origin and ordering, of being-moved. From thatwe easily conclude that the character ofcptSr as origin and ordering will be adequately defined only when we achieve a fundamental insight into that for whichqo~a~ is the origin and over w/aichit is the ordering power : KgmWts-. [341]. Aristotle lets us see this connection with perfect clarity at the beginning of Book III of the Physics, in the first three chapters of which he gives the crucial interpretation of the Being of Kgvtzat;.
Erret 8 ~ ~vcr,~ tzev earw ~pX~7 mv~aeoo~ Ka, l~raSoa~7~, , 8, t*eOoSo~ r 7rEp'~96aegJ~ dare, 8d I~r7 kavOdmv rg dart KgvW,~" &ayKa~ov yap ayvOOVlZE'wT~ ~r~7~ @voegaOaL K~I r@ c?6atv. (200 b 1 2 - 1 5 ) - "But n o w because ~Sa,~ is the origin and ordering of being-moved, and thus of the change that breaks forth, and because our procedure inquires into ~0~at~ (1~0o8o~: the step-by-step inquiry that pursues the subject matter, not our later " m e t h o d " in the sense of the manner and mode of the i,~0o3o~), in no way must we allow what ~[v~/a,; is (in its very Being) to remain in hiddenness; for if it (K[v~r were to remain unfamiliar, 9wt; too would necessarily remain in unfamiliarity." [Compare the expresssion yvdap,>ov at B, 1,193 a 6, supra, where it was a question of blindness with regard to Being and presence.] But in our present context we are only concerned with a first sketch of the basic outline of the Being of qov'~t~. Then in section X V to follow (193 b 7), the Being of the ~[v~at; proper t O 96at; is finally grasped, but it is not properly developed. Rather there it is only differentiated from the other area of beings, the being-moved and the rest of "artifacts." q)6at; is the origin and ordering of the being-moved(~gv~la~; ) of a moving being (~wOV'l~VOV), and more precisely it is so K~O" a3ra ~ea'~ F~7 ~ar& ~vp,fie~6~. A being from 9tSars, in itself from itself and unto itself, is such an origin and ordering of the being-moved of the moving being it is : moved of itself and never incidentally. Thus the characteristic of standing of and by itself must be accorded in a special way to beings from c?t~at~. A being from 9t~crt~ is o~a[a, beingness, in the sense of the German Liegenschaften, something present of itself. And for that reason, some thinkers are overwhelmed and deceived by what merely seems to be the case ( 8 o ~ ) , 246
9 YZI.~ IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS namely, that in general the Being of 9~g,~ consists simply in the "unformed" which is primarily present, [342] the ~rpGzov dLpp~Otz,grov, and as such rules (3~dpxov) normatively over the Being of all "beings" - - if we can still call them that. Aristotle does not formally reject this way of conceiving ~0v~t~. But the word 8oKr hints at such a rejection. We would do well to consider right now why the interpretation of q 0 ~ as put forth by Antiphon must necessarily remain inadequate : (1) Antiphon's doctrine does not consider the fact that beings from ~0gr are in the state of being-moved, that is to say, that being-moved coconstitutes the Being of these beings. On the contrary, according to his understanding of 9dm; given in sections X and XI, all character of movement, all alteration and changing circumstantiality (tJvOp.6;) devolves into something only incidentally attaching to beings. Movement is inconstant and therefore non-being. (2) Beingness is indeed conceived as constancy, but one-sidedly in favor of that which always-already-underlies. Thus, (3) the other essential moment of o3~[a is omitted : becoming-present, which is the decisive factor for the Greek conception of Being. We attempt to bring out in a word what is most proper to Being by saying "becomingpresent" [Anwesung] instead of "presentness" [Anwesenheit]. What we mean here is not mere presence at hand, and certainly not something which is exhausted merely in constancy; rather : becoming-present in the sense of coming forth into the unhidden, placing itself into the open. One does not get at the meaning of becoming-present by referring to mere duration. (4) But the interpretation of 9t~,~ given by Antiphon and others understands the Being of the ~ e ~ dvr~ via a reference to "beings" (the "elemental"). This procedure of explaining Being through beings instead of "understanding" beings from Being results only in the aforementioned misunderstanding of the character of m'v~/cr,~ and the one-sided interpretation of o~egc,. Accordingly, because Antiphon's doctrine in no way reaches the proper area for thinking about Being, [343] Aristotle obviously must reject this conception of 9 v ' ~ as he makes the transition to his own special interpretation of ~0tle,~. We read : XII. "Therefore in one way ~0tlcr~ is spoken of as follows : it is that which primarily and in advance underlies each single thing as "the order-able" for beings which have in themselves the origin and ordering of being-moved and thus of change. But in the other way, [ q 0 t ~ is spoken of] as the placing into the form, i.e., as the appearance, (namely, that) which shows itself for the statement about it." (193 a 28-31) 247
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R We read and we are astonished, for the sentence begins with oily, "therefore." The transition expresses no rejection of the aforementioned doctrine. On the contrary, the doctrine is obviously taken over, albeit with the stricture that in it we find only E~9 rpd~o~, one way of understanding the Being of c/)~r namely as 3At) ("matter"). ~'Erepo; rp&ro;, the other way, which Aristotle developes in the following sections, conceives of 90~r as i~opqo~ ("form"). In this distinction of gA~?- - Ixopqs~ (matter and form) we recognize very easily the distinction that was previously discussed : wp&rov dpp~Otz~crrou, that which is primarily unformed, and ~vOt~d;, form. But Aristotle does not simply replace Antiphon's distinction with that of 3A~? and l~Opq~. Antiphon considered ~vOlzd; (form) as something unstable that happens to attach itself incidentally to what alone is stable, to what is unformed (matter); but for Aristotle, according to the thesis we have just read, t, o p ~ too has the honor of determining the Being of ~tIcr~;. Both interpretations of ~0t~r are given equal rank, and that offers the possibility of constructing a double concept of q0~Scr~;.But in line with that, the first task incumbent upon us is to show that t~opq)~ particularly characterizes the Being o f q0w~;. ' This is the way it seems at first glance, but in fact everything shapes up quite differently. The v"Rr~--i, opqo~ distinction is not simply another formula for
--
Rather it lifts the question of qot~cr~ onto an entirely new level where precisely the unasked question about the K/v~W~;-character of [344] 906~; gets answered, and where 906r for the first time is adequately conceived as o3r a mode of becoming-present. This likewise implies that, despite appearances to the contrary, the aforementioned theory of Antiphon is rejected with the sharpest kind of refutation. We can see all this with sufficient clarity only if we understand the now emerging distinction of/;Ag/-- i, opq)~ in an Aristotelian - - i.e., Greek - - sense and do not lose the understanding again right away. We are constantly on the verge of losing it because the distinction of "matter" and " f o r m " is a c o m m o n road which Western thinking has traveled for centuries now. The distinction of content and form passes for the most obvious of all things obvious. Therefore, why shouldn't the Greeks too have already thought according to this " s c h e m a " ? "Y'A~) txop~o~ was translated by the Romans as materia and forma. With the interpretation implied in this translation the distinction was carried over into the Middle Ages and modern times. Kant understands it as the distinction between "matter" and " f o r m , " which he explains as the distinction between the "determinable" and its "determination." (Cf. The Critique of Pure Reason, -
248
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~YXIZ IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS " T h e Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection," A 266 = B 322). With that we reach the point farthest removed from Aristotle's Greek distinction. "Yh~? in the ordinary sense means "forest," "copse," the "woods" in which the hunter hunts. But it likewise means the woods which yield wood as construction material. From that, 6'k~/comes to mean material for any and every kind of building and "production." By having recourse to the "original" meaning of words (as we love to do !) we are supposed to have demonstrated that ~2t~? means the same as "material." Yes, except that on closer inspection only the crucial question now obtrudes for the first time. If ~7/means "material" for "production," then the definition of the Being of this so-called material depends on the interpretation of "production." But surely /~opW~ does not mean "production." Rather, it means "shape," and the shape is precisely the "form" into which the "material" is brought by imprinting and molding, i.e., by the act of "forming." [345] Yes, except that fortunately Aristotle himself tells us how he thinks ixop~, and he does so in the very sentence that introduces this concept which is so crucial for his ~p~cn~-interpretation : ~ /,opw / Kcd r3 ~8o~ r3 ~,~-~ ra~ aoyo~: "vop~, and that means ra ~,ao_~which is in accordance with t ,, ~the ~o7o~. Mopcp~ must be understood from ~"t~og , and r must be t "~ O understood in relation to )toyo~. But ~t8 ~ (which Plato also expressed as ~SEct) and aoyo~ name concepts which, under under the titles ld_a and "ratio,' (reason), indicate basic positions taken by Western man which are just as equivocal and just as removed from the Greek origin as are "matter" and "form." Nonetheless we must try to reach the original. R[8o~ means the appearance of a thing and of a being in general, but appearance in the sense of the aspect, the "looks," the view, 18~a, which it offers and only can offer because the being has been put forth into this appearance and, standing in it, becomes present of i t s e l f - in a word, is. 'ISF~ is "the seen," but not in the sense that it becomes such only through man's seeing. Rather, gS&Lis what something visible offers to the seeing , it is that which offers a view, the sightable. But Plato, overwhelmed as it were by the Being of dSos', understood it in turn as something present for itself and therefore as something common (Ko~vdv) to,the individual "beings" which "stand in such an appearance.!' Thereby individuals, as subordinate to the gSE'a which is the real being, were displaced into the role of non-beings. As against that, Aristotle demands that we see that the individual beings in any given instanc%(,his ~house here and that mountain there) are not non-beings at all, but are indeed beings insofar as they put themselves forth 249
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R into the appearance of house and mountain and so first place this appearance into presence. In other words, dSo~ is genuinely understood as dSo~ only when it appears within the horizon of the immediate statement about the being, ELSO~r6 Kar& r3v A@OV. The statement in each case immediately addresses a this and a that as this and that, i.e., as having such and such an appearance. The clue by which we can understand dSo~ and so also [346] /,op9~~ is ~67o~. Therefore in interpreting the up-coming definition of the Being of btopq0~ as alSo,,we must watch whether and to what extent Aristotle himself follows this clue. Leaping ahead we can say :/.,.,op~ is "appearance," more exactly, the act of standing in and placing itself into the appearance, in general : placing into the appearance. Therefore in what follows when we speak simply of "appearance," we always have in mind the appearance as (and insofar as) it gives itself forth into the given being at the time (for example, the "appearance .... table" in this table here). We call it the "being at the time" because as an individual it "spends time" in the appearance and preserves the "time" (the becoming-present) of this appearance, 4 and by preserving the appearance it stands forth in it and out of it - - that is, for the Greeks, it is. By translating t, o p ~ as placing into the appearance, we mean to express chiefly two things which are equal in the Greek word but thoroughly lacking in our word "form." First, placing into the appearance is a mode of becoming present, o~(r[cz.Mopcp~ is not an ontic property present in matter, but a mode of Being. Secondly, "placing into the appearance" is being-moved, ~c/v~(r~, which "moment" is radically lacking in the concept of form. But this reference to the Greek way of understanding what/zop99 ~ means in no way constitutes a demonstration of what Aristotle has undertaken to show, namely, that W5r itself, according to the second way of speaking, is / z o p ~ . This demonstration, which takes up the rest of the chapter, goes through various stages in such a way that each stage lifts the task of the demonstration one level higher. The demonstration begins in this way : XlII. "Just as we (loosely) call by the name rdXV~1 those things which are produced in accordance with such a know-how, as well as those which belong to this kind of being, so also we (loosely) call by the name q)tla~ those things which are in accordance with cptf(r,~ and hence belong to beings of this kind. But on the other hand, just as we would [347] never say that something behaves (and is present) in accordance with rdxvvl, or that re'xv ~ is present, if something is a bedstead only in terms of appropriateness (SvvdlzEL) but in fact does not have the appearance of the bedstead at all, so neither would we proceed that way in speaking about what composes itself into a stand 250
9 YZIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS from q)gatf. For what is flesh and bone only in terms of appropriateness does not have the q~tIcr~ which belongs to it until it attains the appearance in accordance with the statement, that which we delineate when we say what flesh or bone is; nor is (something which is merely appropriate) already a being from q)gcrt~.' (193 a 31 - - b 3) H o w are these sentences supposed to prove that/,op~r~ co-constitutes the Being of q~Sm~?Nothing at all is said about t, op~o~. On the contrary, Aristotle begins the demonstration in a wholly extrinsic way with a reference to a way of speaking, one in fact which we still use. For example, we may say of a painting by Van Gogh, "That is art," or, when we see a bird of prey circling above the forest, "That's nature." In such "linguistic usage" we take a being that, correctly considered, is something by virtue of and on the basis of art, and we call that very thing itself "art." For after all, the painting is not art but a work of art, and the bird of prey is not nature but a natural being. Yet this manner of speaking reveals something basic. When do w e say so emphatically, "That is art"? N o t when some piece of canvas just hangs there smeared with dabs of color, not even when we have just some "painting" or other in front of us, but only when the being that encounters us steps forth pre-eminently into the appearance of a work of art, when the being is insofar as it places itself into such an appearance. A n d the same holds when one says, "That is nature" - - ~ v ' ~ s ' . Therefore, this kind of speech we are discussing testifies that we find what is q,Jmf-like only where we run across a placing into the appearance, i.e., only where there is t, opcp~. Thus t*opcp~ constitutes the Being of 90TSmf, or at least c0-constitutes it. [348] Yet the demonstration that such is the case is supported only by our way of speaking. A n d Aristotle gives here a splendid, if questionable, example befitting a philosophy based simply on "linguistic usage." That's what someone might say if he were ignorant o f what the Greek A@or and A&/ew mean. But we need only recall the Greek definition of man's Being as ~,ov A@ov ~'Xov in order to find the direction our thinking must take if it is to grasp the Being ofAdyo~. We can - - in fact, we must - - translate gvOpco~ro~ : ~+ov aayov a'xovas : " m a n is the living being to w h o m the word belongs." Instead o f " w o r d " we can even say "language," provided that we think the nature o f language adequately and originally, viz., from the Being o f )tdyo~ correctly understood. The determination of the Being of man that became c o m m o n through the "definition" homo : animal rationale, "man, the rational animal," does not mean that man "'has" the "faculty of speech'" as one property among others, but that the distinguishing characteristic o f the Being of man is that he has, and holds himself in, A@o~. 251
MARTIN HEIDEGGER ,
What does ~oyo; mean. In the language of Greek mathematics the word ")l@o;" means the same as "relation" and "proportion." Or we say "analogy," taken as "correspondence," and by that we mean a definite kind of relation, a relation o f relations; but with the word "correspondence" we do not think of language and speech. Linguistic usage in mathematics, and partially in philosophy, holds on to something of the original meaning of A@o;. Adyo; belongs to h@E~v, which means and is the same as our word "to collect" or "to gather" (as in "to gather grapes or grain at the harvest"). But still, nothing is yet gained by establishing that A@E~v means " t o collect." Despite correct reference to root-meanings, one can still misconstrue the genuine content of the Greek word and understand the concept of A67o~ incorrectly in accordance with the meaning that has been prevalent up until now. [349] " T o collect," to gather, means : to bring various dispersed things together into a unity, and at the same time to bring this unity forth and hand it over (rrapd). Into what ? Into the unhiddenness of becoming-present [ (~rapov~& -----o73cr[a(d,Trovcr&)].A@e~v means to bring together into a unity and to bring forth this unity as gathered, i.e., above all as becoming present; thus it means the same as to reveal what was formerly hidden, to let it be manifest in its becoming-present. Thus according to Aristotle the Being of an assertion is c~rcdcpa~,aL;,letting what and how a being is be seen from the being itself. He also calls this rg 8rl~oz3v, the act of revealing. Aristotle does not thereby give a special "theory" of)~dyo;, but only preserves what the Greeks always recognized as the essence of Ae'yE~v.Fragment 93 of Heraclitus shows this magnificently : d ~va{:, off ro. ix~vrE . . ~ov . E~rt . ro Iv A~A99o~, oiJre )te'ye~ o~re ~p6~-~ asia&~,>dm- The philologists (e.g., Diels, Snell) translate : " T h e lord whose oracle is at Delphi says nothing, does not speak and does not conceal, but gives a sign." This translation deprives Heraclitus' saying of its basic content and its authentic Heracleitian tension and resistance. O6rE A@e,, oh're Kpv'cr'ret: here the word A@etv is the opposite of Kp,g~retv, to conceal, and for that reason we must translate it as " t o unconceal," i.e., to reveal. The oracle does not directly unconceal nor does it simply conceal, but it points out. That means : it unconceals while it conceals, and it conceals while it unconceals. [For how this ~@e~v is related to)ldyo~ and for what)l@o~ means to Heraclitus, cf. fragments 1 and 2 and others.] In the Greek definition of the Being of man, A@e~v and hd7os mean that relation on the basis of which alone what is present gathers itself as such around man and for man. A n d only because man is insofar as h e relates to beings as beings, unconcealing and concealing them, can he and must he 252
#YXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS have the " w o r d , " i.e., speak of the Being of beings. But the words that language uses are only fragments which have precipitated out of the word, [350] and from them man can never find his way to beings or find the path back to them, unless it be on the basis of)tey,tv. Ofitself;~r has nothing to do with speech and language. Nonetheless,/fthe Greeks conceive of speaking as ?t~'yEtv,then this implies an interpretation of theBeing of word and speech so unique that no later "philosophy of language" can ever begin to imagine its as yet unplumbed depths. O n l y when language has been debased to a means of commerce and organization, as it has been among us, does thought rooted in language appear to be a mere "philosophy of words," no longer adequate to the "pressing realities of life." This judgment is only an admission that we ourselves no longer have the power to trust that the word is the basic foundation of all relations t o b e i n g s as such. But why do we lose ourselves in this wide-ranging digression into an explanation of the Being of Adyo; when the question is about the Being of , ? It is so as to make clear that when Aristotle appeals to Ar162 qovm;. he is not relying extraneously on some "linguistic usage" but is thinking out of the original and basic relation to beings. So this seemingly superficial beginning to the demonstration regains its proper i m p o r t : if beings which have in themselves the origin and ordering of their being-moved are experienced by means of Ady~,v, then as a result/zopg~ ~ itself and not just ~A~/-not to mention ~pp~Olz,r reveals itself as the qo~at;-character of these beings. T o be sure, Aristotle does not show this directly but rather in a way that clarifies the concept which is opposed tol~opcp~ and which has gone unexplained until now : v")t~/. We do not say, " T h a t is 9fiat; when only flesh and bones are present. They are to a living being what wood is to a bedstead : mere "matter." So does ~)t~/then mean " m a t t e r " ? But let's ask again : What does "matter" mean ? Does it just mean "raw material"? No, Aristotle characterizes ~I~/as r~ 8vvdtze~. Av'val~t~ means the capacity, or better, the appropriateness for . . . . The w o o d present in the w o r k s h o p [351] is in a state of appropriateness for a "table." But it isn't just any w o o d that has the character of appropriateness for a table, but only this wood, selected and cut to order. But the selection and cut, i.e., the very character of appropriation, is decided in terms of the "production" of "what is to be produced." But "to produce" means, both in Greek and in the original sense of the German Herstellen, toplace something, as finished and as looking thus and so,forth, into presence. "]")L~?is that which is appropriate and orderable, that which, like flesh and bones, belongs to a being that has in itself the origin and ordering of its being-moved. But only in being placed into 253
MARTIN HEIDEGGER the appearance is a being what it is in the given case and how it is. So then Aristotle can continue : XIV. " F o r that reason (then), 9~r would be, in another way, the placing into the appearance for those beings which have in themselves the origin and ordering of their being-moved. O f course, the placing and the appearance are not something standing on their own; rather, they can be pointed out by the statement only in a given being. That, however, which takes its stand from these (i.e., from "the order-able" and from the placing) is certainly not ~0~5r itself, although it is a being from 9~cr~; - - as, for example, a man." (193 b 3-6) These sentences do not simply recapitulate the thesis which has already been proven, namely, that cpFcr~; can be talked about in two ways. Much more important is the emphasis given to the decisive thought that q0v'~c;, spoken of in two ways, is not a being but a mode of Being. Therefore Aristotle again presses home the point : the appearance and the placing into the appearance must not be taken Platonically as standing apart unto themselves, but rather as the Being in which an individual being stands at the m o m e n t - for example, this man here. T o be sure, this individual being is from ;')U? and /,opq0~j,butfor that very reason it is a being and not a mode of Bez~g,not q0v'eL~as are i , o p ~ and g)~/ in their inherent togetherness. In other words, it now becomes clear to what extent Aristotle's [352] distinction of fi'A~/and/,op~0~ is not simply another formula for Antiphon's distinction of 3,ppgOtz~crrov and ~vOIxd;.Although these latter terms mean to define~0~r only designate a b e i n g - the constant as distinct from the inconstant. But they do not grasp, much less conceptualize, 906cr~; as Being, i.e., as what makes up the constancy or standing-on-its-own of 99~r 61,rot. This Being can only be understood if we use ~dyo; as our clue. But the statement shows that the appearance and the placing into the appearance are primary, and from them what we call fi'2i~is then defined as "the order-able." But as a result of this, a broader issue likewise gets decided, and that requires the next step in the demonstration that q0v'r is/*opq~. Although v~'/~?and/zopq~} both constitute the Being 0 f q0v~r~;, they do not carry equal weight. Mopqo~ has priority. In this way we express the fact that the course of the demonstration as carried out so far now lifts the task of the demonstration one level higher. And Aristotle loses no time in saying so. XV. " W h a t is more, this (namely, b~Opq)~as the placing into the appearance) is q0fir to a greater degreethan the "order-able" is. For each individual is said to be [a real being] when it 'is' in the mode of having-itself-inthe-end rather than when it is (only) in the state of appropriateness f o r . . . 2' (193 b 6-8) 254
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Why is it that t~opg~l is q0ga,s" not only on a par with fiA~/but "to a greaIer degree" ? Because we speak of something as really existing only when it is in the mode of ~vre~e'Xe,a. Accordingly, ixopcp~I must somehow in itself have the character of &rcAdxe,a. To what degree that is true, Aristotle does not explain here. Neither does he explain what dvrEAe'Xeta means. The name, coined by Aristotle himself, is the basic word of his thinking, and it embodies that knowledge of Being which brings Greek philosophy to its fulfillment. ""EvreAe'XeLa" comprises that basic notion of Western metaphysics in whose changes of meaning we can best estimate, and indeed must see, the distance between original Greek thought [353] and the metaphysics that followed. But at first it is not clear why Aristotle introduces dvreAdXeta here in order to ground the fact that and the degree to which t, oOq)~ is t, SXaov ~ o ~ . Only one thing do we see clearly: Aristotle again appeals to 2t@ew, the statement, in order to show us where we can see the true Being of a being. But we can clear up the initially obscure grounding of the proof by clearing up beforehand what it is that is to begrounded. What is the meaning of the new assertion which overrides the previously equal status of ~),/and I*opq~ by maintaining that / x o p ~ is ~ ; to agreater degree ? Earlier we came upon the crucial guiding principle: 9~v%~;iso3~&, a kind of beingness or becoming-present. Therefore, the proposition to be grounded maintains that/,op~0~ fulfills what beingness is more than ~I)~? does. Earlier still it was established that qovr ovra" are ~wov'tzeva, their Being is being-moved. N o w we have to grasp being-moved as o~r that is, we must say what being-movedis. Only in this way do we clarifywhat ~0gr is as &PX~Kcv~r and only from the thus clarified Being of ~vgr will we see why/,opq)~ more fulfills what o3r is and therefore why it is 9)zIr to a greater degree. What is being-moved, taken as the Being or becoming-present of a moving being ? Aristotle gives the answer in Physics /', 1-3. It would be presumptuous to attempt in a few sentences a fundamental insight into Aristotle's interpretation of being-moved, the most difficult thing that Western metaphysics has had to ponder in the course of its history. Still we must try to do so, at least to a degree that will allow us to follow the demonstration of the /xop99~-character of 9~6~ns-. The reason for the difficulty in Aristotle's definition of what being-moved is lies in the strange simplicity of the basic insight. It is a simplicity that we seldom achieve because as yet we hardly do better than surmise the Greek concept of Being, and likewise, in reflecting on the Greek experience of being-moved, we forget the crucial thing, namely, that the Greeks conceive of being-moved in terms of rest. [354] At this point we must distinguish between being-moved and movement, 255
MARTIN H E I D E G G E R as well as between stillness and rest. Being-moved means the Being from which movement and rest are determined. Rest, then, is the "stopping" (lm6r162 Meta. O 6, 1048 b 26) of movement. The lack of movement is computed as its limiting case (=0). But the rest that we think of as the opposite of movement also has its Being as being-moved. The purest manifestation of being-moved is to be sought where rest does not mean the breaking off and stopping of movement, but rather where being-moved gathers itself up into standing still, and where this ingathering, far from excluding being-moved, includes and for the first time discloses it. For example:g;08 ~ a Kcd &bpaKe(Meta06, 1048 b 23): "Someone sees,andwhile seeing he has also and above all (precisely) already seen." The movement of seeing and inspecting what is around one is truly the highest state of beingmoved only in the stillness of (simple) seeing, gathered into itself. Such seeing is the rdAo;, the end where the movement of seeing first gathers itself up and essentially is being-moved. ("End" is not the result of stopping the movemenL but is the beginning of being-moved as the ingathering and storing up of movement.) Thus the being-moved of a movement consists above all in the fact that the movement of a moving being gathers itself into its end, re'Ao~,and as so gathered in the end, "has'itself: ~v rdAe~ ~"Xe~,~vre~'X~ , having-itself-in-the-end. Instead of the word dvre2te'Xem, which he himself coined, Aristotle also uses the word dve'pye~c~. Here, in place of re'Ao;, there stands 6'pyov, the work in the sense of what is to be produced and what has been pro-duced. In Greek thought dvr means "standing in the work," where "work" means that which stands fully in the "end." But in turn the "fully-ended or fulfilled" [das "Vollendete"] does not means "the concluded," any more than rd~o; means "conclusion." Rather, in Greek thought re'Ao~ and ~'pyov are defined by e~o~;'~ they name the manner and mode in which something stands "finally and finitely" ["endlich"] in the appearance. From being-moved, understood as dvreAE'XeCa,we must now try to understand, the movement of what moves as one mode [355] of Being, namely, that of a K,vov'~.evov. Relying on an example can make the direction of our basic insight more secure. And following Aristotle's approach we choose our example from the field of "production," the "making" of an artifact. Let's take the case of a table coming into existence. Here we obviously find movements. But Aristotle does not mean the "movements" performed by the carpenter in handling his tools and the wood. Rather, in the generation of the table, he is thinking precisely of the movement of this generation itself and as such. Iggv~r is Fr the change of something into something, 256
9 YNIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS such that in the change the very act of change itself breaks out into the open, i.e., comes into appearance along with the changing thing. The order-able w o o d in the workshop changes into a table. What sort of Being does this change have ? The thing that changes is the wood that is present here, not just any wood but this wood which has been appropriated. But "appropriated for" already means : cut to order for the appearance "table," hence for that wherein the generation of the table - - the m o v e m e n t - - comes to its end. The change of the appropriated wood into a table consists in the fact that the very appropriation of the appropriated emerges more fully into view and reaches its fulfillment in the appearance of a table and thus comes to stand in the table which has been pro-duced, placed forth, i.e., into the unhidden. In the rest that goes with this standing (of what has taken its stand), the emerging appropriation (8~vap.~) of the appropriated (3vvdtze~) gathers itself up and "has" itself (gXE,) as in its end (re';~o;). Therefore Aristotle says (Physics /', 1, 201 b 4f.), r} ro~ 8vvaro~ ~ 8vvargv evrJteXEm W~v~Oav g;r~ K~v~cr~ . . . Earw . . : The having-itself-in-the-end of the appropriated as appropriated (i.e., in its appropriation) is clearly (the Being of) being-moved." But generation is this kind of generation - - i.e., Kgv~?et~in the narrower sense of that which is distinguished from rest - - only insofar as the appropriated has notyet brought its appropriation into the end, and so is d-re)~d~, that is, only insofar as the standing-in-the-work is not yet in its end. Accordingly Aristotle says (Physics/', 2, 201 b 31f.), ~ rE Kgv~?~ ~ve'pTE~a Izev r~ etva~ 8oKe~, are2tr/~ 8e : " M o v e m e n t does appear as [356] something like standing-in-the-work, but as not yet having come into its end." But therefore having-itself-in-the-end (dvre~te'Xe~a) is what being-moved is (that is, it is the Being of a moving being), because this stillness most perfectly fulfills what o73e[ct is : the becoming-present in the appearance, constantly and of itself. Aristotle says this in his own way in a sentence which we take from the treatise which deals explicitly with &reke'Xe~ (Meta. O, 8, 1049 b 5) : qo~vepgv8r~ ~rpdrEpov dve'yeta 8vvdtzec6~ d~rtv : "Manifestly standingin-the-work is prior to appropriateness for . . . . " In this sentence Aristotle's thinking, and par@assu Greek thinking, reaches its peak. But if we translate it in the usual way, it reads : "Clearly actuality is prior to potentiality." 'Rve'pyEm, standing-in-the-work in the sense of coming into the appearance and being present, was translated by the Romans as actu;, and being present, was translated by the Romans as actus, and so with one blow the Greek world was toppled. From actus, agere (to do) came actualita;, "actuality." fl tlvct/zL; became potentia, the ability and potential which something has. Thus 257
MARTIN HEIDEGGER the assertion, "Clearly actuality is prior to potentiality" seems to be evidently in error, for the contrary is more plausible. Surely in order that something be "actual" and be able to be "actual," it must first be possible. Thus, potentiality is prior to actuality. But by reasoning this way, we are not thinking either with Aristotle or with the Greeks in general. Certainly 8v'vatzt~ also means "ability" and it can be used as the word for " p o w e r , " but when Aristotle uses 8v'va/,~ as the opposite concept to ~vrE~tE'Xem and ~ve'pyEta, he takes the word into his thought (as he did analogously with Kar~?yop[a and o~e&) as the name for an essential and fundamental concept for beingness, o~3e&. We already translated 8~va/zt~ as appropriation and appropriateness f o r . . . , but even here the danger persists that we will not think consistently enough in the Greek manner, that we will shrink from the hard w o r k of getting clear about the meaning of appropriation for . . . as that manner of emergence which, while still holding itself back and within itself, comes forth into the appearance [357] wherein the appropriation is fulfilled, dv'vc~/xt~ is a mode of becoming-present. But Aristotle says, dve'pyete (~vre)te'Xem) is 7rpdrepov, "prior" to 8v'valzt~ , "prior," namely, with regard to o ~ [ a (Cf. Meta O, 8,1049 b 10,11). 'Eve'pycta more originally fulfills what pure becoming-present is insofar as it means the having-itself-in-the-end such as has left behind all the "not-yet-ness" of appropriation f o r . . . , or better, has precisely brought it forth along with it into the realization of the fulfilled [voll-"endeten"] appearance. The basic thesis that Aristotle has put forth concerning the hierarchy of ~vre~tE'Xeta and 8v'valzt~ can be expressed briefly t to a * as follows : evre)~eXem is O'UO'6tI .... greater degree" than 8vva/x~ is. 'Evre~e'Xem fulfills the conditions of Being, as constantly and of itself becoming present, more fundamentally than 8v'vcc/,~ does. In Physics B, 1, 193 b 6-8 Aristotle says, " W h a t is more, this (namely, / , o p ~ ) is ~6etf more than ~2t~ is. For each individual is spoken of [as a real being] when it 'is' in the mode of having-itself-in-the-end rather than when it is (only) in appropriateness for . . . . " It is still unclear to what degree the second sentence can serve to ground the assertion that / , o p ~ is not just another rp&ro~ set on a par with ~I2t~,but rather is ~g~t~ to a greater degree than ~2t~/is. M o p ~ is the placing into the appearance, that is, it is ~[v~et~ itself, the change of the appropriated, i.e., the breaking out of the appropriation. But the Being of ~ [ v ~ / ~ is ~:vre~e'Xet~ , which for its part fulfills what ot~cr& is to a greater degree and more originally than 8~VC~lZt~ does. The determination of the Being of ~0t~c~tsis ruled by the guiding principle : ~gcrt~ is a kind of ovate' ' . Therefore, because t, op~gl is fundamentally ~vre2t~'Xe~a, and thus is ot}c~& to a greater degree, then likewise tzop?)~ in itself is/,~2~)tov ~da'ts'. 258
qOYXIX IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS The placing into the appearance more fulfills what qvgcr~;is : the Being of the /
KI:,PO~Is
r
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K ~ O :~ O,t)TO.
Therefore, now more than ever we need a correct insight into the kind of priority that i~opq)~ has over ~A~7,because along with its priority, the very Being proper to l~Op~ is still more clearly revealed. And that means that the task of grasping q~dats- as tzopqg~ has inevitably moved up to a new level. Therefore, as we take the step into that next level, we must have clearly [358] in.view what we saw in the previous level. Mopqo~ is ~0vcrt~ " " to a greater degree," but not because it supposedly is " f o r m " which has subordinate to it a "matter" which it molds. Rather, as the placing into the appearance, it surpasses "the order-able" (g;~7) because it is the becoming-present o f the appropriation of the appropriated, and consequently, in terms of becomingpresent, is more original. But that granted, what n o w is the perspective within which theBeing of i~ot9~ is still more clearly revealed ?The following sentence establishes that perspective : XVI. "Moreover, a man is generated from a man, but not a bedstead from a bedstead." (193 b 8-9) Is this sentence anything more than an empty truism? Yes, certainly. Even the transition word, 4'm, "moreover," indicates the relation to what went before and at the same time points to an "advance." "Er~ y[vEra~: we should translate it more strongly : "Moreover, in the area we are talking about, what is at stake is generation (7E'VECrL;),and generation is different in the cases of men and of bedsteads, qov~eL"ovra" and rrom~tzeva,' g r o w i n g things' and 'artifacts.' " (Here where we are dealing with ye'ver man is taken only as a ~ov, a "living being.") In other words, izop~o~ as placing into the appearance is only now explicitly grasped as ydve~r~. But ydv~r is that kind of being-moved which Aristotle omitted when he listed the types of movement in his introductory characterization o f K[v~/cr~; as tzer~o)~, because to it he reserved the task of marking out the Being of q0v(rL~ as/*opg~7. T w o kinds of generation are set over against each other. A n d from the way the two are sharply distinguished we have a g o o d opportunity to discern the Being of generation. For, the crucial characteristic of t, op~o~ as beingm o v e d - namely, ~v'r~Ae'XEW~-was certainly brought to our attention with regard to the generation of a table. But at the same time we have unwittingly carried over what was said about the generation of an artifact into the question of the / z o p ~ that goes with q~da~. But then isn't q~cr~ t
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MARTIN H E I D E G G E R misunderstood as some sort of self-making artifact? Or is this [359] not a misunderstanding at all but the only possible interpretation of 9v'cr,r, namely as a kind of r~'X~'~ ? That almost seems to be the case, because modern metaphysics, in the impressive terms of, for example, Kant, conceives of "nature" as a "technique" such that this "technique" which makes up the Being of nature provides the metaphysical ground for the possibility, or even the necessity, of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology. Be that as it may, Aristotle's seemingly all-too-obvious statement about the difference between the generation of a man and the generation of a table forces us into some crucial reflections in which we will have to clarify what role is assigned to the contrast of growing things with artifacts which has been operative from the very beginning of the chapter and has run through the whole explanation. When Aristotle again and again characterizes growing things by way of analogy with artifacts, does this mean that he already understands the 9fi~r~ ;~vr~ as self-making artifacts ? No, quite the contrary, he conceives of 9v%Ls" as self-production. But isn't "production" the same as "making"? It is for us so long as we wander thoughtlessly among worn-out ideas instead of holding on to what was already pointed out. But what if we should find our way back to the realm of Being as understood by.the Greeks ? Then we see that making, 7ro[~Tcr,~,is one kind of production, whereas " g r o w i n g " (the going back into itself and emerging out of itself), 90For,r, is another. Here "to pro-duce" cannot mean "to make" but rather : to place something into the unhiddenness of the appearance, to allow something to become present, hence, the becoming-present itself. From this notion of pro-duction we define the Being of generation and of its various modes. Instead of "generation" we should have to say "derivation, ''~ which is not to be taken in its usual sense but rather as meaning : to derive from one appearance that appearance into which a pro-duced thing (whatever it be at the time) is placed and thus is. N o w there are different kinds of such "derivation." Something that is generated (say, a table) can be derived from one appearance (that of "table") and placed forth into the same kind of appearance without the first appearance, from which [360] the table is derived, itself performing the placing into the appearance. The first appearance or r "table" remains only a wapdSE~ytza , something which certainly shows up in the production but does nothing more than that and therefore requires something else which can place the order-able wood, appropriated for appearing as a table, into that appearance. In those cases where the appearance merely shows up, and in showing up only guides a know-how in its producing 260
~YXI27 IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS and plays an accompanying role rather than actually performing the production - - there production is a making. This "showing u p " is already one kind of becoming-present, but it is not the only kind. It is also possible that the appearance - - without showing up as a ~rapdS~ytza in/he proper sense, namely in and for a re'xv71 - - can directly present itself as that which takes over the placing [Slellen] into itself. The appearance places itself forth. Here we have the placing [Ges/ellung] of an appearance. And in thus placing itself forth it places itself into itself, that is, it itself produces something with the same appearance. This is/zopg0~} as qvt~ot~. And we can easily see that a ~ o v (an animal) does not " m a k e " itself and its kind, because its appearance is not and never can be merely a criterion or paradigm according to which something is produced from a ~2t~/. Rather, the appearance is that-which-becomes-present itself, it is the self-placing appearance which alone in each case orders up the order-able and places it as appropriated into the appropriation. In y~vE~s" as placing, production is entirely the becoming-present of the appearance itself without the importation of outside help - - w h i c h is the case with all "making." That which produces itself, i.e., places itself into the appearance, needs no fabrication. If it did, that would mean that an animal could not reproduce itself without mastering the science of its own zoology. All this declares that f~opqo~ - - not only more than v"A~l, but in fact alone and completely - - is qoFcrt;. And this is exactly what that apparent truism would have us understand. But as soon as it becomes clear that 90zIr is ye'vecn;, its state of beingm o v e d requires a definition, one which from every point of view is undeniably unique. Therefore we need to take the next step. [361] XVII. "Furthermore, q~6r which is spoken of as 9,dver i.e., as the deriving and placing of something into Being, is (nothing less than) being-on-the-way towards qo6r (And this), of course, not as the practice of medicine is said to be the way not towards the art of medicine but towards health. For whereas the practice of medicine necessarily comes from the art of medicine, it is not directed towards this art (as its end). But ~06cn; is not related to q0~5~,; in this way (namely, as medicine is to health). Rather, a being from and in the manner of 90~5~ goes from something towards something insofar as that being is determined by q0t;e~; (in the being-moved of this going). But "towards what" does it go forth in the manner of q0tIc~; ? N o t towards that " f r o m which" (it is derived at the time) but rather towards that as which it is generated at the time." ( 19 3 b 12-18) Characterized as vE'vEr in the previous section, 9~tJcn; is now understood as determined by dSd;. We translate gS~; right off with "way," and we think 261
MARTIN HEIDEGGER o f this as a stretch lying between the starting point and the goal. But the inner meaning of " w a y " must be looked for in another perspective. A way leads through an area; it opens itself up and opens up the area. A way is therefore the same as the process of passage from one thing to another. It is way as being-on-the-way. I f we are to define the yE'vecr,;-character of 9 ~ ; more exactly, we have to clarify the being-moved of this kind of movement. The beingmoved of movement is ~ve'pye,a dre)t~;, the standing-in-the-work which has not yet come into its end. But according to what we said earlier, ~pyov, work, means neither making nor the artifact made, but that which is to be produced, that which is to be brought into presence. In itself ~ve'pye,ct drE)t~; is already a being-on-the-way which as such and as a process places forth what is to be pro-duced. The being-on-the-way in 96r is izopqv~ (placing). Now, the previous section pointed out that from which/,opqv~ as placing is on the way : the appearance of the ~0tIee, av is what places itself forth in the placing. But yet to be determined is the "whereunto" of the process, or better, the meaning of gSd; which results from the definition of the "whereunto." [362] q ) ~ is d86; ~K WS~Eos; el~ q ~ w , the being-on-the-way of a self-placing thing towards itself as what is to be pro-duced, and this in such a way that the placing is itself wholly of a kind with the self-placing thing which is to be pro-duced. What could be more obvious than the opinion that 96~s" is therefore a kind of self-making, hence a re'Xv~, the only difference being that the end of this making has the character of 9flat; ? A n d we do know of such a re'Xv~1. "IarptK~, the art of medicine, has its re'ko; as ~y[e~a, a qvgcr~s--like condition. 'IarprK~ is d86; EI~ 9~ew. But just when the road seems open to an analogy between 9g~s- and larptK~, the basic difference between the two ways o f generating a 9~rr av comes to light. 'IarpL~r as aaa & ~0v'aw is a being-on-the-way toward something that precisely is not garp,~, not the art of medicine itself, i.e., not a re'Xw?. "Iarp,K~ would have to be aa& & larO,~v in order to be at all analogous to 9v'a,9. But if it were, it would no longer be garo~}, because practising medicine has as its end the state of health and that alone. Even if a doctor practises medicine in order to attain a higher degree of the re'Xv~l, he does so only that he might all the more reach the r&o~ of restoring health - - provided, of course that he is a real doctor and not some shrewd "businessman." The renewed attempt to clarify the Being of 9ficrt~ by analogy with re'xw1 fails from every conceivablepoint of view. That means : we must understand the Being of 9 ~ 5 ~ entirely from itself, and we should not detract from the 262
~YEI27 IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS astonishing fact of q~6at; as gSg; ~ov'cre~os"~gs"q~ffacvby overhasty analogies and explanations. But even when we have given up pressing the analogy to r one last tempting "explanation" now urges itself upon us. As q~vcr~r ' o8o; ' ' ~ 9~t~r isn't ~0gr a constant circling back upon itself? But this will not do either. As on the way to q0~r q06~; certainly does not fall back on whatever it came forth from. That which is generated never places itself back into that from which it [363] comes, precisely because the essence of generation is the placing into the appearance. I f the placing lets the self-placing appearance become present, and if the appearance is present each time only in an individual "this" which has such an appearance, then to that extent, that into which the generation places the appearance must surely always be another being than the "from which." Certainly ~gr ~{86; El; q0~r is a mode of coming forth into presence in which the "from which," the "to which" and the " h o w " remain the same. ~bgr is a "going" in the sense of a going-forth towards a going-forth, and so it is a going back into itself, i.e., towards itself as always going forth. The merely spatial image of a circle is fundamentally inadequate because this going-forth which goes back into itself precisely lets something go forth from which and to which the going-forth is on the way. This Being of q06r as y&eat; is fulfilled only by the kind of being-moved that t, opq~ is. Therefore the decisive sentence, the one towards which the whole meditation has been moving, says succinctly : XVIII. "And so this, the placing into the appearance, is ~6~;." (193 b 18) In the placing, as the ~vr arr characteristic of 7e'vr162 only the E18o;, the appearance, is present as the "whence," the "whereunto" and the " h o w " of the being-on-the-way. So Fopw} is not only 9 ~ ; "to a greater degree" than ~2~/ is, and still less can it be put mere~ on a par with ;IA~/ so that the definition of the Being of 9~5r would rest with two rp&ro, of equal weight and Antiphon's doctrine would be entitled to equal authority next to Aristotle's. Antiphon's doctrine now gets its stiffest rejection with the sentence, Mop99~l,and it alone, fulfills the Being of 9vr But in the transition to his own interpretation (193 a 28, &~ I~& o~v rp&rov o6r~o; ~6~; Myrrhs,, section XII), Aristotle did, after all, take over the doctrine of Antiphon. H o w can that fact he reconciled with the sentence we have just reached, which allows one and only one rp&ro; ? To understand that, we must know to what extent [364] Aristotle's acceptance of Antiphon's doctrine constitutes the sharpest rejection of it. The most dras{ic way to reject a ~r
t
t
,,
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MARTIN HEIDEGGER proposition is not to dismiss it rudely as disproven and merely brush it aside, but on the contrary to take it over and work it into a fundamental and grounded connection with one's own argument - - that is, to take it over and work in as the non-Being which necessarily belongs to the Being [Unwesen... Wesen]. For if it is possible at all to have two rp~TroL of the interpretation of ~0~m~ with regard to/,op90 ~ and ~)t~/with the result that 62t~/ can be mistakenly interpreted as the formless which is constantly present, then the reason must lie in the Being of 9~t;m~, a n d that now means : in t~opq~ itself. Aristotle refers to this reason in the following passage, where his interpretation of ~0t~c,~ reaches its conclusion. X I X . "However, the placing into the appearance - - and therefore 90~r~ as well - - is spoken of in two ways, for 'privation' too is something like appearance." (193 b 18-20) The reason why it is possible to look at q~t~aL~from two points of view and to speak of it in two ways lies in the fact that tJopq~ in itself - - and consequently 9015~ as well - - i s twofoM. The sentence that asserts the twofoldness of ~06a~ is grounded in the remark following it : " f o r 'privation' too is something like appearance." As a word, a concept, an "issue," ar~pTlcr~ is introduced in this chapter just as bruskly as was ~vr~)t~'X~cabefore it, probably because it has as decisive a significance in Aristotle's thought as does ~vr~)t~'X~La. (On arE'p~lm~, cf. Physics A, 7 and 8, although there too it is not explained.) To interpret this last section of Aristotle's reading of ~0~a,~, we must answer four questions : 1. What does arFpla~ mean ? 2. H o w is are'p~/c~ related to izopq~ such that the former can clarify the twofoldness o f the latter ? [365] 3. In what sense, then, is the Being o f 90va~ , twofold ? 4. What consequence does the twofoldness of 90~5a~ have for the final definition of the Being of ~0~Sm~? 1. What does ~r~'p~la~ mean>. Literally translated, ~r~p~lcr~' means "deprivation," but that does not help us much. O n the contrary, this meaning of the word can even bar the way to understanding the issue if, as always in such cases, we lack a prior familiarity with and knowledge of the area where the word arises as a name for the issue at stake. The area is shown us by the statement that a-rep~w~ too is something like e~$o~. But we know that the ~8o~, specifically the atSo~ Kara r~v ~oTov, characterizes izopwi, 264
o~YZIZ IN A R I S T O T L E ' S PHYSICS which in turn fulfills the Being of ~w~;' as ow~a' ' ro~ KL~OVbCE~OV"•aO' auto i.e., of~0~r as K~'mTr The Being o f K[m?cn; is ~,reAE'Xe~a. That is enough to let us know that we can adequately understand the Being of r162 only within the area of and on the basis of the Greek interpretation of Being. The Romans translated r162 as forivatio. This word is taken as a kind of negatio. But negation can be understood as a mode of denial, of "saying no." Thus r162 belongs in the area of "saying" and "talking about" - the Kar~?yop& in the fire-terminological sense that we noted earlier. Even Aristotle seems to understand trE'p~?r as a kind of saying. As p r o o f of this we offer a text from the treatise ITep'~ yeudeeco; Kal cpOopS; (A 3, 318 b 16s a text which is appropriate for clarifying the sentence we are discussing from the Physics while offering us in addition a concrete example of a O'TEp~O'LS'.
r~ tt~t, Oep~ou Kar~yop~a rtf ~ca't et8 ~, r Se r162
(r~'ep~(~tf.
. . . . Warm' is something like a statement and therefore, properly speaking, an appearance, but 'cold' on the other hand is a arep~a~." " Here " w a r m " and "cold" are opposed to each other as Kar*lyop[a r ~ versus ardpwa~. But observe carefully that Aristotle says : ~ar~lyopga r ~ . " W a r m " is a statement only in a certain s e n s e - in fact, the word is written in quotation marks. Hence, saying that something is " w a r m " is [366] an attribution, saying something t0 something, whereas are'p~Ten~ in a certain sense is a denial, saying something away from something. But to what extent is "cold" a denial ? I n saying "The water is cold," we attribute something to the being, yes, but in such a way that, in the very attribution, " w a r m " is denied of the water. But what is at stake in this distinction of warm and cold is not the distinction of attribution and denial but rather that which is attributable or deniable in accordance with its d 8 o f . A n d therefore the chapter's concluding sentence, which is supposed to ground the twofoldness o f / x o o ~ and therefore of 99w~; by reference to r162 says : ~a~ yap ~rep~r e~8og rrco; e~r~u. " F o r privation too, i.e., denial or saying-away, is a kind of appearance." In the coldness something appears and becomes present, something, therefore, that we "sense." In this "sensed something" which becomes present, something likewise becomes absent, indeed in such a way that we sense what becomes present in a special way precisely because of the becoming absent. In r162 "privation," it is a matter of "taking something away" by a kind of saying-it-away. Z're'p~?r certainly refers to an "away," but always and above all it means that something falls away, has gone away, 265
MARTIN HEIDEGGER remains away, becomes absent. If we bear in mind that ofic~[a, beingness, means becoming-present, then we need no more long explanations to establish where cxrE'p~gc,~;as becoming-absent belongs. A n d yet right here we reach a danger point i n our comprehension. We could make matters easy for ourselves by taking crrE'p~r (becomingabsent) merely as the opposite of becoming-present. But ar~'p~/cr~; is not simply absentness [Abwesenheit]. Rather, as becoming-absent ar~'p~/r is precisely ~ r ~ ' p ~ for becoming-present. What then is crrr (Cf. Aristotle's Mela. A, 22, 1022 b 22 ft.). When we say today, for example, " M y bicycle is gone!" we do not mean simply that it is somewhere else; we mean that it is missing. When something is missing, the missing thing is gone, to be sure, but the goneness itself, the lack itself, is what irritates and upsets us, and the "lack" can do this only if the lack itself is "there," i.e., constitutes a mode of Being. Zre'p~/~t~ as becoming-absent is not simply absentness, but rather [367] is a becoming-present, the kind in which the becoming-absent (but not the absent thing)becomes present. ~rFp~l~ is dSo~, but dSd~ rrco~, an appearance and becoming-present of sorts. Today we are all-too inclined to reduce something like this becoming-present-by-becoming-absent to a facile dialectical play of concepts rather than holding on to the wonder of it. For in ~re'p~/~ is hidden the Being of c p ~ . T o see that we must first answer the next question. 2. H o w is ere'p~TeL; related to/~opw} ? The placing into the appearance is Klv~?e~9,a change from something to something, a change which in itself is the "breaking out" of something. When wine becomes sour and turns to vinegar, it does not become nothing. When we say, "It's turned to vinegar," we mean to indicate that it came to "nothing," i.e., to what we had not expected. In the "vinegar i' lies the non-appearance, the becoming-absent, of the wine. MoOg0~ as 9e&ee~v is dSdv, the being-on-the-way of a " n o t y e t " to a "no more." The placing into the appearance always lets something become present in such a way that in the becoming-present a becomingabsent simultaneously becomes present. While the blossom "buds forth" (qoFe~), the leaves that prepared for the blossom fall off. The fruit comes to light when the blossom disappears. The placing into the appearance, the ixop~?, has a erep~m~-character, and that now means : t, o1~o~? is 8tXn39, twofold in itself, the becoming-present of a becoming-absent. Consequently the third question has already found its answer. 3. In what sense is the Being of ~0v~" twofold.~ As ~0weco~"o8o~' ' e~' q~w~v," 9vc~~ " is a kind of ~rep' ' ~ a , a kind of ovr ' ' Specifically it is production of itself f r o m out of itself unto itself. Nonetheless in Being as being-on-thet
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q~YXIX IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS way, each being that is pro-duced or put forth (excluding artifacts) is also put away, as the blossom is put away by the fruit. But in this putting away, the placing into the appearance --~06at~ - - d o e s not cease to be. On the contrary, the plant in the form of fruit goes back into its seed, whose Being is nothing else but a going-forth into the appearance, d86~ q0tI(xeeovd~ q0tIatv. With its very coming-to-life every living thing also begins to die already, and conversely, dying is but a [368] mode of living, because only a living being has the ability to die. Indeed, dying can be the highest "act" of life. qSt~at~ is the self-productive putting-away of itself, and therefore it possesses the unique quality of delivering over to itself that which through it alone is transformed from something order-able (e.g., water, light, air)into something appropriated for it alone (for example, into nutriment and so into sap or bones). One can take this "appropriated" for itself as the "order-able" and consider this "order-able" as "material," and therefore take q~vot~" as mere "change of material." One can further reduce the material to what is most basically present in it, and take this as the constant, indeed the most constant, and therefore in a certain sense what is most in Being - - and then declare this to be 9~t~at~.Looked at in this way, cpfiat~ offers the double possibility of being spoken of according to matter and form. This double way of speaking ofq~gat~ has its basis in the original twofoldness of qgFat~. More precisely it is grounded in a ministerpretation of 8vvdbtat ;~'v, which changes this from "the appropriated" to something merely "order-able" and "on hand." The doctrine of Antiphon and of his successors, who have continued in an unbroken line down to now, seizes upon the most extreme non-Being [Unwesen] of ~t;o-t9 and inflates it into the real and only Being. Such inflation is in fact the way all such non-Being becomes present. 4. What is the consequence of the twofoldness of q~Fat9 for the final definition of the Being of ~6ac9 ? Answer : the simplicity of that Being. If we keep the whole in mind, then we have conceptualized two definitions of the Being of q)t~at~. The one takes ~t~at~ as apXr . }. ~r162. . roy. ~r KaO' ab-r6, the origin and ordering of the being-moved of what moves of itself. The other takes ~ovat; ' as t, opq~rl, which means as 7EVEGt;, which means as ~tWw*~.If we think both definitions into a unity, then from the viewpoint of the first definition, 9dais- is nothing other than dPx'q 9 ~aEcs~, which is precisely what the second definition says : qowt~" is q~var " ' ~ qov~tv, o8o~ 96G~; is itself the origin and ordering of itself. From the viewpoint of the second definition, 9tIat; is the tzopg~ dPXgl; , the placing in which the origin places itself into the ordering process and [369] as that which orders the placing into the appearance. Mopqo~ is the Being of ~vat~ as o~pX.q, and e~pX~I /
,
/
~
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MARTIN HEIDEGGER is the Being of q0v'r as i~opcp~, insofar as the uniqueness of/,opg0~ consists in the fact that in it the dSo~ of itself and as such brings itself into presence. Unlike re'XVrl, it does not first require a supervening ~rog~/crt~which takes just something lying around (e.g., wood) and brings it into the appearance of "table." Such a product never is on-the-way from itself and never can be on-the-way to a table. ~ t ~ on the other hand is the becoming-present of the becoming-absent of itself, which is on-the-way from itself and unto itself. As such a becomingabsent ~ 0 ~ is always a going-back-into-itself, and yet this going-back is only the dSd~ of a going-forth. But here in the Physics Aristotle conceives o f ~ e c 9 as the beingness (ofxda) of a particular (and in itself limited) region of beings, things that grow as distinct from things made. With regard to their way of Being, these beings stem precisely from q 0 ~ , of which Aristotle therefore says : & 7dp r~ 7e'vo~ ro~ ~uro~ ~ 99~o~, " ' ~ is one branch of Being [among others] for (the many-branched tree of) beings." Aristotle says this in a treatise which later, in the definitive ordering of his writings by the Peripatetic school, was put with those treatises which have since borne the name t*~r& r& qovcn~:d,writings which in fact belong to the cpvcrtKd although they are not counted with them. The sentence we just read comes from chapter three of the treatise that is now called Book F' (IV) of the Metaphysics, and the information it gives about ~ogr is identical with the guiding principle put forth in Physics, Book B, chapter one, which we have just interpreted : q a ~ is one kind of ogJe&. But that same treatise of the Metaphysics says exactly the opposite in its first chapter : o3crga(the Being of beings as such in totality) is 9 ~ ; rt~, something like 9~6cr~s-.But Aristotle is far from meaning to say that Being as such is, properly speaking, that kind of q0dr which a bit later he explicitly characterizes as only one branch of Being [370] among others. Rather, this barely expressed assertion that or162 is 9 ~ ; is an echo of the great origin of Greek philosophy, the first origin of Western philosophy. In this origin Being was thought as 9~r such that the 9v'r which Aristotle conceptualized can only be a late derivative of the original ~gcr,;. And a much weaker, much harder-to-hear echo of the original 96e~; which was projected as the Being of beings still remains for us when we speak of the "nature" of things, the nature of the "state," and the "nature" of man, by which we do not mean the natural "foundations" (thought of as physical, chemical, and biological) but rather the Being and becoming-present of beings, pure and simple. But how should we think q)~r in the way it was originally thought ? 268
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-&re there still traces of its projection in the fragments of the original thinkers ? In fact there arc, and not just traces, for everything they said that we can still understand speaks only of 9v'~,~, provided we have the correct ear for it. The indirect witness to that is the non-Being [Umvesen] of the historical interpretation of original Greek thinking as a "philosophy of nature" in the sense of a "primitive .... chemistry," an interpretation that has come to be prevalent for some time now. Let us leave this non-Being to its own ruin. In conclusion let us give thought to the saying of a thinker from those times of origin, one who speaks direc@ o f 9~v~,~ " and who means by it (cf. Fragment 1) the Being of beings as such in totality. Fragment 123 of Heraclitus (taken from Porphyry) says : 9 ~ , ~ Kpv%rr 9 ~ , "Being loves to hide itself." What does that mean ? It has been suggested, and still is suggested, that this fragment means that Being is difl%ult to get at and requires great efforts to bc brought out of its hiding place and, as it were, purged of its self-hiding. But it is the opposite that is needed. Self-hiding belongs to the pre-dilcction of Being, that is, it belongs to that wherein Being has secured its way of becoming present. And the way Being becomes present is to unconceal itself, to emerge, to come out into the unhiddcn [371] 9 ~ , ~ . Only that which in its very Being unconccals and must unconccal itself, can love to conceal itsel6 Only what is unconcealing can bc concealing. And therefore the Kpv'rrre~Oa, of 9 ~ J ~ is not to be overcome, not to be stripped from WJ~,~. Rather the task is the much more difficult one of allowing to 9 ~ , ~ , i n all the purity of its becoming-present, the ~pv~rE~Oa~ that belongs to it. Being is the self-concealing revealing, 9 ~ , ~ in the original sense. Selfrevealing is the coming-forth into unhiddcnncss, and that means : preserving unhiddenncss as such in its becoming-present. Unhiddenness is called --A~0e~a. Truth, as we translate this word, is of the origin, that is, in its Being it is not a characteristic of human knowing and asserting, still less is it a mere value or an "idea" that man (although he really doesn't know why) is supposed to strive to realize. Rather, truth as self-revealing belongs to Being itself. ~ b ~ is c~?t~0em, unconcealment, and therefore Kp~rrre~Oa~ 9,;~. -
-
[Because qvtIr in the sense of the Physics is one kind of ogmga, and because itself stems in its essence from q0vr as originally projected, therefore c~A~}0e~ccbelongs to Being and therefore coming to presence into the open of the gSda (Plato) and of the also; ~ar& "rgv 2t@ov (Aristotle) is revealed as one characteristic of ogmga; therefore for Aristotle the Being of ~[m?r as ~vre)te'Xe~a and dv~'pye~ct becomes something visible.]
ovr
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1 Cf. Poetry, Language, ThougbL trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York : Harper and Row, 1971), p. 48. o Heidegger's periphrastic translation of 3~dOea~ is based on Aristotle's definition of that word in MetaphysicsA 19, 1022 b 1 ft. (Translator's note.) a Cf. Herdotus IX, 116, "...because the Persians consider all Asia to belong to them, and to their king for the time being [roO age[flacnaedovrosj." The Persian Wars, transl. George Rawlinson (New York : The Modern Library, 1942), p. 712. (Translator's note.) 4 "Das Jeweilige heisst so, weil es als Geeinzeltes im Anssehen verweilt und dessen Weite (Anwesung) verwahrt..." etc. Perhaps : "The being that whiles is so called because it whiles as an individual in the appearance and guards its whiling (coming to presence)...." (Translator's note.) 5 "Statt Entstehung miissten wit sagen Ent-stellung...." The usual meaning of "Entstellung" is "deformation," but Heidegger's hyphenization (de-formation) and subsequent explanation gives it a new meaning : taking the form or appearancefrom (de-) a like form or appearance. This is captured somewhat by the English "derivation." (Translator's note.)
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