7

The Conception of Eternal Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX and Its Legacy in Obstructing the Understanding of Human Life

The WS1924/25 Seminar on the Ontology of the Middle Ages

IN THE WINTER SEMESTER OF 1924/25, HEIDEGGER GAVE his well-known lecture course on Plato’s Sophist that also included an extensive reading of Book VI of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. If this course has been published for some time and much discussed, a seminar that Heidegger gave during the same semester remains completely unknown. The existence of the seminar has of course been noted before in lists of Heidegger’s courses and seminars where its topic is identified, as it is in the notes preserved by Helene Weiss, as the ontology of the Middle Ages and, more specifically, the “little Summa” of Thomas Aquinas. The seminar opens with a wide-ranging discussion of medieval ontology before focusing on the first book of the Summa contra Gentiles (the “little Summa” as contrasted to the Summa Theologiae), more specifically, chapters 10–15 (though more chapters are assigned to be read). But the title of the seminar hides its real concern, one that is clearly indicated by a note that accompanies the seminar’s turn to the Summa, when Heidegger clarifies that his interest is not in theology but in its ontological foundations: “We will take the Middle Ages back to the Greeks and thereby bring the Greeks to discussion. Systematic discussion of Greek philosophy” (WMA, 4). The reading of the Summa in the first few classes of the seminar will both provoke and give way to this systematic discussion of Greek philosophy for the remaining and larger part of the seminar, the turning-point being Thomas’s reference to Aristotle’s conception of time in the Summa I.15. Furthermore, the systematic discussion will take the specific form of a detailed, if partial, reading of Book IX of Aristotle’s Metaphysics not paralleled elsewhere. This discussion of Aristotle is in turn meant to explain medieval ontology and, specifically, show the limitations it inherited from Aristotle. The main limitation, and therefore the main thesis of the seminar, is expressed clearly and succinctly in a note appended to the first class, which provides an anticipatory overview:

We will see that the entire ontology that seeks to determine the being of God is not up to the task, since the ontology of the Greeks is an ontology of the world, so that therefore in medieval theological speculation the being of God is understood according to a conception of being that actually determines the being of the world. We will at the same time ask how the being of human beings is ontologically determined. This orientation toward the fundamental foundations of medieval ontology is in the end sustained by purely phenomenological considerations that have as their genuine aim an ontology of Dasein. (WMA, 4.2)

We can recognize here the thesis already introduced in the earlier course of 1923/24 and that will be defended at length only here. This precis also indicates that the goal of the systematic discussion of Greek philosophy, and of Aristotle’s metaphysics in particular, is to show that Greek ontology is an ontology of the world: a view already presupposed by the claim we have encountered in earlier seminars that the Greeks understood being as being-produced. We also see that what such an ontology, whether in its original Greek or derived medieval form, will prove inadequate to determining is not only the being of God, but what truly interests Heidegger: our being.

These introductory observations should already give a sense of the great significance of the seminar. Fortunately, therefore, the notes that have come down to us among the papers of Helene Weiss are far superior to the notes of Elli Bondi for the 1923/24 seminar. They are in contrast extraordinarily detailed, so much so that one is sometimes left wondering how so much could possibly have been covered in one class. Furthermore, several hands are involved, with the main notes (presumably by Weiss herself) frequently supplemented with those of other students, including Bondi.¹ The everchanging handwriting can be nearly indecipherable at times, with a few words impossible to make out; there is also an unreadable shorthand that randomly, but fortunately very seldomly, rears its ugly head. Very nearly all of the notes can be deciphered, however, and they provide a very comprehensive and detailed record of the seminar. Classes are dated and were all held on Mondays in November, January, and February, for a total of ten classes. No classes are recorded in December, and we know why: Heidegger was on a lecture tour during the first two weeks in December before the Christmas break, reading in several cities his talk “Being-There and Being-True according to Aristotle (Interpretation of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics)” (Dasein und Wahrsein nach Aristoteles [Interpretation von Buch VI der Nikomachischen Ethik]).² This lecture as delivered was clearly informed by the present seminar since in it Heidegger, according to an auditor’s transcript, repeated his thesis that medieval theology attempted to determine the being of God through a concept of being the Greeks derived from the world. He observed, “We are faced with the immense task of creating an ontology of Dasein in contrast to the ontology of the world.”³ The draft of this lecture published in the Gesamtausgabe (GA80.1) and written well before the 1924/25 seminar contains no trace of this thesis nor this claim, which shows that Heidegger in delivering the lecture revised it on the basis of the present seminar.

The seminar begins on November 3 by noting the history of the terms “ontology” and “metaphysics.” The first is not coined until after Descartes; the second is originally an editorial term used by Andronicus of Rhodes to designate the treatises following the “physical” ones in his edition of Aristotle’s writings. Aristotle’s own term for what we call “ontology” or “metaphysics” today is “first philosophy” (πρώτη φιλοσοφία), but also “theological science” (θεολογικὴ ἐπιστήμη). The ambiguity is captured in the following description of the theme of Aristotle’s science: “Beings in their being; the genuine being is its theme” (WMA, 1). We already see here the inseparability from theology that will characterize medieval ontology. But perhaps the most important point made at the start of the seminar—most important for its overall thesis—is that Andronicus was already guilty of a fundamental misunderstanding in separating a set of treatises from the “physical” ones as coming “after the physics.” The reason given is the following: “for also in the physics, the being of nature as being, thus also ontology. In any case the concrete basis of the ontological tradition still clearer” (WMA, 1). One could defend Andronicus by responding that he is simply following Aristotle’s own distinction between “first philosophy” and “natural philosophy.” But we have already seen Heidegger insist in other seminars that the Physics is a work of ontology, indeed the fundamental text of the ontological tradition. This is because, as the cited passage indicates, it is in the Physics that we see examined the concrete phenomenon, in other words, beings in motion, from which all of the fundamental concepts of ontology are derived. The misunderstanding is the failure to see that all ontology is grounded in the analysis of a particular kind of being and is inseparable from this analysis. The seminar therefore proceeds to raise the question that, while claimed here to be fundamental, has never before been explicitly raised: “which being to take as the foundation for an ontology” (WMA, 1). In an ontology of the world (which is what we have in the Physics) there is also “there next to it [daneben] a distinctive being, the existence of human beings. Also there can we pose the question of being” (WMA, 1). Here we already have the central issue of the seminar: in an ontology derived from the being of the world, the being of human beings is left to the side; and yet can we not also make this distinctive being of human beings the ground of our ontology? Indeed, that we should do so is suggested by the next point: “The determination of the world is carried out in the existence of a human being as a way of being, so that this being has an exceptional position” (WMA, 1). We can recognize here what in Being and Time Heidegger will call the “ontic-ontological priority” of Dasein (SZ, 13). An ontology of the world is in the end grounded not on the world, but on that being to whose being it belongs to carry out an ontology of the world. Therefore, rather than uncritically projecting the concept of being we derive from the being of the world onto human being, we must explicitly raise the question: “Which is the meaning of being that holds as much for the being of the world as for the being of Dasein?” (WMA, 2). A supplement to the protocol for the first class (referred to as such in the notes) adds the important point that an ontology of history is possible only hand in hand with an ontology of Dasein (WMA, 4).

Heidegger proceeds to suggest that medieval ontology is itself based on a certain conception of the being of human beings: faith. “Faith [Glauben] as a determination of the being of human beings such that they are determined not as knower but as actor. The privation thereof: sinner” (WMA, 2). Theology is to serve faith in making what I believe transparent (durchsichtig) for my faith (WMA, 2): for example, by further clarifying the mystery of the trinity through philosophical means. What follows in the notes is a quick run-though of different figures, texts, and concepts of medieval theology/philosophy along with references to general secondary sources.⁴ But two things in this survey are worth highlighting as supporting the point concerning the foundational determination of the human being as believer. First, citing Augustine’s famous “Credo ut intellegam” (I believe so that I can understand), Heidegger suggests that “Augustine’s personal experience” was rather “intelligo ut credam” (I understand so that I may believe) (WMA, 2). Secondly, Heidegger cites the subtitle of one of the writings of Anselm of Canterbury: “fides quaerens intellectum [Einsicht]” (faith seeking understanding [insight]). Here we have succinctly expressed what we could call, using Heidegger’s later terminology, the existentiell basis of medieval ontology.

Citing the specific example of Descartes, who is described as basing his entire theory of knowledge on the “res cogitans a Deo creatum” (thinking thing created by God) without inquiring any further into the being of this being,⁵ Heidegger makes the general claim that medieval ontology continues to have an invisible effect on modern philosophy (WMA, 3). Yet the way in which this ontology understands the meaning of being is suited neither to the being of human beings, whether as believer or thinker, nor to the being of God. This meaning of being that guides medieval ontology “is taken from the Greeks who provide no ontology of Dasein, rather: ontology of the world. Therefore, the ontological concepts used by the Middle Ages are inadequate to the being that is its object” (WMA, 4). If Heidegger on November 10 turns to Book I of the Summa contra Gentiles, it is because he claims to find there “the genuine theme of medieval theology”: not only the being of God, but the task of demonstrating the existence of God. We see that the question of existence is focused on the goal of demonstrating the “being-at-hand” (Vorhandensein) of God. We are meant to see, of course, that the task of demonstrating God’s existence is guided by a conception of being derived from the being of the world, or rather the being of things within the world, as what is at hand.

Given the intention of further exposing the conception of being operative in medieval ontology, Heidegger’s reading of the Summa begins with the chapter of Book I that first addresses the question of God’s existence: chapter 10. This chapter addresses the view of those who say that God’s being (esse) cannot be demonstrated because it is per se notum, self-evident. Thomas outlines several arguments in support of this view and Heidegger reviews all of them. Heidegger also draws attention, however, to what he describes as an assumption presupposed by the arguments that is self-evident for Scholastic philosophy and never challenged by Thomas himself: that Deus est suum esse, that God is his own being (or that the essence of God, what God is, is to be). This assumption is most clearly the basis of the so-called ontological argument for God’s existence first introduced by Anselm and summarized by Thomas as the first argument for God’s existence being self-evident: by “God” we understand that than which nothing greater can be conceived; if God existed only in the intellect (in intellectu), something greater than God could be conceived, since what exists in both the intellect and in reality (in re) is greater than what exists only in the intellect; therefore, the very meaning of the name “God” requires that God exist in reality, since otherwise God would not be that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Heidegger also draws particular attention to the second argument Thomas reviews because it brings out particularly clearly the implied understanding of being in the assumption that Deus est suum esse. This argument goes as follows: what cannot be conceived as not being is greater than what can be conceived as not being; therefore, if God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God cannot be conceived of as not being. Heidegger comments: “Therefore, the being whose being is supposed to be demonstrated from being thought, is determined in advance as always-being (Immer-Sein)” (WMA, 6). This determination of being is derived from the Greek distinction between “being eternally” (ἀεί ὄν) and “admitting of being otherwise” (ἐνδεχόμενον ἄλλως ἔχειν). Heidegger notes that the “eternal” (ἀεί) “does not need to be God,” but the transfer of this determination of being to God is already motivated by Aristotle, developed by Neoplatonism, and transmitted to the Middles Ages by Dionysius Aeropagite. Heidegger finds the same idea in the next argument Thomas reviews: identity statements are self-evident, and “God exists” is an identity statement. The two remaining arguments are that God must be self-evident as our natural end (an idea Heidegger traces back to the Stoics) and that God must be self-evident as the cause of all knowing (an idea Heidegger attributes to the Neoplatonists and Augustine).

Thomas’s reply in chapter 11 to the arguments that God’s existence does not need to be demonstrated because it is self-evident is, as Heidegger notes, to distinguish between what is per se notum simpliciter and what is per se notum quoad nos, what is self-evident simply speaking and what is self-evident in relation to us. What are nota simpliciter, in the order of the things themselves, are the most general determinations of beings; what is nota in relation to us are “beings as we immediately see them (color, weight, etc.).” Heidegger notes the origin of this distinction in the Aristotelian distinction between “well-known in relation to us” (γνώριμον πρὸς ἡμάς) and “well-known absolutely” (γνώριμον ἁπλῶς), citing the Posterior Analytics I.2 71b33–72a5.⁶ What Thomas’s reply shows, according to Heidegger, is that his opponents “have not considered what sense of knowledge is intended in the proof” (WMA, 7).

What follows in the notes is what the notes themselves describe as an “insertion” (Einschiebung) meant to clarify key Latin terms. But in the course of this clarification, we have a very important comment on the Greek conception of ousia, a conception that is clearly still at work in the proofs for God’s existence. The passage merits being cited in full:

The οὐσία of the stool for the Greeks is that the stool is there, finished at hand [fertig vorhanden]. In contrast, that it is for sitting, for enjoying, this is for the Greeks κατὰ συμβεβηκός [accidental]. Therefore, use is something the Greek also saw, but he determines the meaning of being in terms of being present. The κατὰ συμβεβηκός is so little the genuine being that it is even determined as not-being. Metaph. E. Through this conception of being, natural-being [Natur-Sein] acquired historically the priority: because it is already there, always already there. Res, Forma, Essentia = natura. Being-used [das Gebrauchtsein] is ontologically not primary. (WMA, 8–9)

We can see the connection here with something Heidegger brought to our attention in his reading of the middle chapters of Physics II: it is in the discussion of tuchê and thus of a form of accidental being that we find in Aristotle a reflection on the being and temporality of Dasein as a historical being. But in Book E of the Metaphysics, Aristotle argues that accidental being cannot be an object of science, including the science of being qua being. Nevertheless, the claims above are surprising in a couple of respects. First, while Aristotle locates tuchê in the realm of final causation, the final cause is certainly not itself an accidental cause. On the contrary, the final cause is not only one of four causes but arguably the most important one in explaining the others: only in understanding what the stool is for can I understand why it has the form it has, why its matter is what it is, and why the furniture maker made it. What the stool is for is thus essential to its being. So how could one maintain that the stool’s use, what it is for, is considered accidental to its being by the Greeks (Aristotle!)? In the case of a living thing Aristotle would arguably even maintain that what it is for, its ergon, is its ousia. One could claim that Aristotle identified a thing’s being with its being-at-hand only if one thought that he identified ousia with the hupokeimenon and thus with matter. But this is precisely the understanding of ousia Aristotle rejects in Metaphysics Ζ.3, as Heidegger well knows. The other surprising claim above is that in Metaphysics Ε, the “accidental” (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) is determined as not-being. What we actually read there, after Aristotle observes that Plato was in a way (1026b14; τρόπον τινά) correct to assign the sophist to not-being, is that “the accidental appears to be something close to not-being” (1026b21; ἐγγυς τὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) It is a statement that hardly counts as the determination of accidental being as not-being. In short, neither does Aristotle identify being-used with accidental being nor does he identify accidental being with not-being. So even if we grant that the concept of being operative in the medieval proofs for God’s existence is being-at-hand, we will need much more convincing that such a concept is the “Greek,” much less “Aristotelian,” one.

In the next class of November 17, Heidegger appears to attempt to provide further support for his thesis. Already at the end of the previous class, he noted that in production (Herstellen) the form has the priority, so that it comes even to be identified with the essence of a thing. Now he adds that the form specifies a determinate matter; if the saw is to saw wood, it must be made out of something harder than wood. It is this unified composite that is then ousia. But is not the form here itself determined by the use? Does not the saw have the form it has because of what it is for? These are my questions. Heidegger, according to the notes, has only the following to say: first, that “‘Availability’ [Verfügbarkeit] is only a determinate formulation of presence [Anwesenheit]” (WMA, 9). This again is an odd claim. One might agree that in order to be available or usable, a thing must be present, but does that warrant reducing being-used to being-present, treating the former as only a specific formulation of the latter? Heidegger returns to the example of the stool: imagining someone saying, “It is because I can use the stool that it is,” Heidegger retorts that “that would be spoken completely ontically and not ontologically” (WMA, 9). Again, it is hard to see the justification for this claim. A specific use of the stool might be merely “ontic” and even “accidental,” but the claim that for the stool to be is for it to be used or, in Aristotelian terms, that the stool’s being for sitting is what it is, appears an ontological claim. One cannot but sense a certain violence in Heidegger’s determination to reduce the “Greek conception of being” to presence-at-hand.

Heidegger now continues the reading of the Summa contra Gentiles by turning to chapters 14 and 15. Yet chapter 14, which concerns the proof for God’s existence via remotionis, is only briefly summarized: “All the ontological characteristics of the beings of the world are removed in speech from him [ihm abgesprochen], in a certain way indeed attributed to him in speech in eminentia” (WMA, 10). Though no more is said here before turning to the next chapter, it is not hard to divine what Heidegger would say about this argument: whether they are denied God or attributed to God in an eminent sense, it is through the ontological characteristics of the beings of the world that God’s being is understood here. Much more attention will be given to chapter 15. Indeed, it is this chapter that will provoke the discussion of Aristotelian ontology that will dominate the seminar after November and thereby a turn away from the reading of the Summa itself. The topic of chapter 15 is the eternity of God (Quod Deus sit aeternus), a topic that will require a focus on conceptions of motion and of time that go back to Aristotle. Indeed, the first thing Heidegger does is translate the terms “motus” and “mutatio” in Thomas’s text back to the Greek kinêsis and metabolê. He then notes that the eternity of God is derived from God’s immutability: “For everything that begins to be or ceases to be undergoes this through some motion [motus] or change [mutatio]. But it is evident that God is completely immutable. God is therefore eternal, lacking beginning and end” (ScG I.15.2; my translation). But how is eternity understood here? In the cited passage, eternity is understood as lacking beginning or end. But Heidegger claims that this is not the essential determination of eternity, but a purely accidental one. The essential determination he finds in the next section of the chapter (sec. 3): what is eternal lacks beginning or end because its “ratio” is “totum esse suum simul habens” (possessing all its being simultaneously). There is no succession in eternity; it is, as Heidegger observes, “at once complete” (mit einem Mal ganz; WMA, 11).

Heidegger cites the Summa Theologiae, Part I, question 10, “On the eternity of God,” article one, “Eternity.” But he also notes that Thomas’s essential definition of eternity comes from Boethius: Book 5, chapter 6 of the De Consolatione philosophiae. There we find the following definition of “aeternitas” that Heidegger cites: “Eternity is the all-at-once, perfect, endless possession of life” (Aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio). Heidegger is struck here by the reference to life, as we should be too: “Why precisely vita?”, he asks (WMA, 11). While Heidegger has claimed that God lacks any potential “because God is eternal, is always already there [immer schon da ist], is never not, is, in other words, actus purus,” the eternity of which Boethius speaks and which Thomas attributes to God is not an eternity of presence-at-hand but an eternity of life. “Aeternitas” as Boethius defines it is a mode of living and inconceivable in separation from life. Boethius in turn derives this necessary connection of the temporality of eternity to life from Plotinus.⁷ Heidegger’s only answer here to his own question of “Why precisely vita?” is the following: “As actus, operatio [written above the former: ἐνέργεια], ζωή, πρακτική” (WMA, 11). We see here terms that Aristotle attributes to his own prime mover whose being is activity and precisely the activity of living. But then is being-present-at-hand really the operative conception of being here?

A brief digression from the seminar is warranted at this point to draw attention to an important discussion by Thomas that Heidegger does not refer to but that is found in the article from the Summa Theologiae he cites. There Thomas considers the objection, made against Boethius’s definition, that the term “vita” does not belong in a definition of eternity. The reason given is the following: eternity means some duration, but duration qualifies being rather than life; therefore, being (esse) should be substituted for “life” in the definition. If Thomas understood being as presence-at-hand and eternity as the permanence of such presence-at-hand, would he not have simply agreed with the objection? But consider instead his reply: “that which is truly eternal is not simply being [ens], but living [vivens], and living itself is extended to operation [operatio], but not being. Now the protraction [protensio] of duration seems to belong to operation rather than to being, so that time is the number of motion” (ST I, q. 10, a. 1, ad 2). Thomas makes perfectly clear his own view that eternity can characterize only what is living, not what simply is, that only living, not being, can be an operation (operatio), and that the duration that defines eternity is the duration of an operation. This is something we need to keep in mind as we follow Heidegger’s argument in the seminar.

Returning to the seminar, Heidegger next observes that to say that God is “eternal” in the sense just described, that is, a sense that rules out succession, is to say that God cannot be measured by time. Aquinas makes precisely this argument in section 3 of chapter 15: because, as Aristotle says in the Physics, time is the measure of motion (tempus est numerus motus) and God is completely without motion, God cannot be measured by time (Tempore igitur non mensuratur). As Heidegger notes, Thomas’s reference is to Aristotle’s definition of time as “the number of motion with regard to the prior and the posterior” (Physics 219b1–2; ἀριθμός κινήσεως κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον). As Heidegger further notes, time is number for Aristotle in the sense of what is numbered; Heidegger also claims, more controversially, that what is numbered or counted is the now. As something moves, it is now here and now here and now here, and so on; the succession of “nows” (“with regard to the prior and the posterior”) is what is counted in the motion and thus constitutes time. Heidegger in this context claims that Plato identified time with the heavens and that such an identification is natural given that the motion of shadows and the sun is what is counted when time is counted and that they point to the heavens.

The crucial point that Heidegger makes in this context is that Thomas, following Boethius, determines eternity more sharply than does Aristotle in making it succession-free, all-at-once, and therefore not measurable by time. Heidegger refers to the opposition in the Summa Theologiae between time as the “numeration of prior and posterior” (numeratio prioris et posterioris) and eternity as the “apprehension of uniformity” (apprehensio uniformitatis). Interestingly, what we find in the seminar notes is “apprehension of the uniformity of permanence” (apprehensio uniformitatis permanentiae), but “permanentiae” is not in Thomas’s text. Likewise, we find a little later in the notes the identification of aeternitas with mensura permanentiae, even though this phrase is found in neither of the texts from the two Summas under discussion. Indeed, in article 2 of question 10 in the Summa Theologiae, when Thomas has to answer the objection that God cannot be eternal because eternity is a measure and God cannot be measured, Thomas’s reply is not that eternity is a “measure of permanence,” but rather that it is not a measure at all and that God is not measured by it: any talk of “measure” here is only from our deficient perspective (non dicitur Deus aeternus, quasi sit aliquo modo mensuratus, sed accipitur ibi ratio mensurae secundum apprehensionem nostram tantum).

Heidegger does note, however, that if eternity is not succession, it also is not a “constant now” (ständiges Jetzt) or sempiternitas. I cannot even say “now” of the eternal (WMA, 13). If I can be said to “measure” eternity at all, then, it is only from the perspective of time: what I am really measuring is the succession of nows throughout eternity, not eternity itself. Then Heidegger explains what he sees as the motivation for this sharper determination of eternity: “If he remained with the concept of eternity as sempiternitas, something would still be attributed to God that is also attributed to the being of the world. This does not suffice for the being of that which is the causa prima of being. Therefore this sharper concept of eternity” (WMA, 13). But does this not then show that the being of God is not interpreted according to a concept of being derived from the being of the world? Heidegger’s answer: this concept of eternity is won negatively. This point is further specified in the following important passage: “First of all the concept of eternity is here won objectively following the guideline of worldly being, not that of Dasein, life—ζωή. To open the possibility of determining, against the time in which the world is, the time in which Dasein is: which determination as Dasein is indeed the genuine ground, also in need of a remotion” (WMA, 13). The first claim we have already found reason to doubt: the being of life appears to be precisely the guideline for the concept of eternity in Thomas and Boethius, going back to Plotinus. Yet Heidegger attempts to support his thesis in two major ways. First, reminding us of Thomas’s argument basing the eternity of God on God’s immutability, Heidegger comments: “From the fact that the ontological determination [Seinsfeststellung] of aeternitas follows upon the first one of immobilitas, one sees that the concept of aeternitas is still determined from the perspective of world-time” (WMA, 14). The point is that it is from the perspective of motion and of time as the measure of motion that motion and therefore time are denied to God. Because immobilitas is a negative concept, so ultimately is the eternity derived from it. It is worth noting here that one of the objections to Boethius’s definition of eternity that Thomas must answer in Summa Theologiae is the inclusion of the negative term “interminabilis”: a negation is an imperfection and therefore cannot belong to God. Thomas’s reply is that the negation does not belong to God’s being, but rather to our limited perspective. He would presumably respond to Heidegger’s claim as follows: that we must approach God’s being through motion and time and their negation, as what is most known to us, does not mean that we are confined to this perspective and that our understanding of being does not transcend it. Heidegger in turn would presumably respond that our own Dasein, and the being of life, is known to us and yet that God’s being is not interpreted from the perspective of this our being. And yet is it not? Here we must consider a crucial passage from what is labelled in the seminar notes a supplement taken from the protocol of [Walter] Bröcker. The passage appears to look back to chapter 14 of the Summa contra Gentiles and thus the proof for God’s existence via remotionis: “The ground for the via remotionis is provided by the being of the world and the time in which the world is, and this despite the fact that the being of human Dasein provides the genuine ground for the determination of God’s being, to the extent, namely, that God is a vivens. The reason for this is that the being of life itself was explicated with the means of an ontology of the world, so that time, in the sense of the time that Dasein is, could not at all provide the ground for the discussion of eternity” (WMA, 14). Heidegger grants that the characterization of God as living shows that the being of human Dasein, not the being of the world, provides the genuine ground for the determination of God’s being. But now the thesis takes a different form: yes, the being of life was the ground, but life itself was explicated—presumably by the Greeks and, following them, by the philosophers of the Middle Ages—with concepts taken from an ontology of the world. What could this mean? We have already had an indication of what Heidegger means here in earlier seminars going back to the SS1921 seminar on De Anima: the being of life is interpreted as motion and the being of motion is itself understood from the being of the world. In other words, the ontology of the world in the Physics is the genuine ground for the ontology of life in De Anima, not the other way around. We will see, therefore, that it is very important for Heidegger in this seminar to show that the fundamental ontological concepts in terms of which life, human life, and divine life are determined are all derived from the being of kinêsis: the motion of things within the world. Specifically, we will see Heidegger defend at length, when he turns to Aristotle, something we have seen him suggest repeatedly in earlier seminars: that the fundamental ontological concepts of energeia and dunamis are derived from the phenomenon of kinêsis and not vice versa.

The next class of November 24 begins with Heidegger assigning Metaphysics Θ and Λ (chap. 6, 7, 9, 10) to be read. He also makes clear that he expects to win from these texts an orientation for the determinations about essentia in chapters 21–27 of the little Summa. Yet while Heidegger claims that “the principal interest of our reflections [lies] in these chapters,” and while he will assign them to be read at the end of the class of January 12, the interpretation of the Aristotelian texts will prevent him from ever turning to these chapters in the seminar. But before turning to the Aristotelian texts that will occupy the seminar after the Christmas break, Heidegger devotes this final class of the year to the attempts in the Middle Ages to reconcile Aristotle’s doctrine of the eternity of the world with the doctrine of creation. This discussion is itself preceded in the class by an aside that merits being cited here for its inherent interest: “Additionally, just to point to a great difficulty that cannot be solved here: what is counted in the now, the present [anwesende] Here, is designated by ourselves the Gegenwärtige, not in the sense of the temporal, but as Präsenz, as presence [Anwesenheit], not as Präsens. Thus the spatial [das Ortliche] and the temporal are fully implicated in each other. Important for the problem of time and space. What is the ground of this implication that expresses itself in our language, and with justice?” (WMA, 15). We ourselves cannot pursue this difficulty here, but it is an important reminder of Heidegger’s own preoccupation with the problem of time during this period.⁸

Moving on to the main topic of the class, Heidegger observes that for Aristotle there can be no creation because every “change” (μεταβολή) presupposes that there is something that underlies it. Medieval theology is therefore faced with the task of attempting to reconcile the doctrine of creation with Aristotle’s view of the eternity of the world, given that it takes all of its foundations from him. Heidegger notes that Averroes, in faithfully commenting on Aristotle, joined him in defending the eternity of the world, as did Siger of Brabant. This radical Aristotelianism that defended the eternity of the world was eventually condemned by the Church. Thomas for his part argued against Averroism, not only with regard to the eternity of the world but also on the unity of the intellect (the latter debate, Heidegger observes, provoked by Aristotle’s doctrine of nous). Yet while Thomas in his early Commentary on the Sentences sharply rejected Aristotle’s opinion on the eternity of the world (calling it “false and heretical,” in fact⁹), in the later Summas he attempts a reconciliation between Aristotle’s view and the Book of Genesis.

Apart from the difficulty of being at odds with the doctrine of creation, the view that the world is eternal poses another problem for Thomas: it would make it more difficult to prove God’s existence. Heidegger cites here the following passage from the Summa Theologiae (ST I, q. 46, a. 1, ad 6): “The world leads more clearly to a knowledge of the divine power of creation if it did not always exist than if it always existed. All that which did not always exist must clearly have a cause; but this is not as clear in the case of what always existed” (my translation). As Heidegger comments, “The proof of God’s existence is harder when the world is infinite than when it is finite” (WMA, 17). But what Heidegger especially wants to bring to our attention is that we find the opposite assumption in Aristotle: it is from the eternity of the world alone that Aristotle can demonstrate the existence of a first mover (πρῶτον κινοῦν). Contrary to the assumption of an entire tradition stretching from Thomas to Brentano, therefore, what Aristotle wants is “something completely different from proving God’s existence” (WMA, 18). What Thomas wishes to show in his attempt at reconciliation, according to Heidegger, is that Aristotle says nothing against the possibility of creation; he went only as far as conducting his proof of God’s existence on the basis of motion, but this says nothing against the other possibility of proving the existence of a creator on the basis of the finitude of the world. Heidegger then returns to chapter 15 of the Summa and cites the following passage: “Aristotle shows the everlastingness [sempiternitas] of motion from the everlastingness of time, from which he further shows the everlastingness of the moving substance. . . . But if this everlastingness of time and motion is negated, there still remains a reason for [remanet ratio ad] the everlastingness of the moving substance” (6). As Heidegger notes, Thomas is much more careful here than he is in the Commentary on the Sentences: I still have reason for reaching Aristotle’s conclusion, he suggests, even if I do not share his assumption of the eternity of time and motion.

To explain what is observed in the first part of the passage cited from the Summa, that is, that Aristotle demonstrates the everlastingness of motion from the everlastingness of time (and how is the latter demonstrated?), Heidegger turns now to the Physics, specifically 251b10ff. As Heidegger notes, Aristotle in this passage attributes to Plato the view that time came into being because the heavens came into being; this view was adopted by Neoplatonism and Augustine. Augustine further explains (Confessions Book XI, chap. 30) that with God before the creation of the world there was no time, only eternity. The passage from the Physics, however, begins with Aristotle’s question of how there can be a “before” and an “after” (and therefore a before time and an after time) without time (Heidegger refers here to a claim by Hermman Lotze that time “has two arms”). Aristotle goes on to argue, after presenting the position of Plato, that we cannot conceive of time without the “now” and that the now is always a middle point between a before and an after, between a time that has elapsed and a time yet to come; since there thus must be time on both sides of every now (Lotze’s “two arms”), there cannot be a first or last now and time must be eternal. Quoting the first part of this argument, “If it is impossible for time to be or to be known without the ‘now’” (Εἰ οὖν ἀδύνατὸν ἐστι καὶ εἶναι καὶ νοῆσαι χρόνον ἅνευ τοῦ νῦν), Heidegger insists that “knowing” (νοῆσαι) here is a speaking (εἰπεῖν): indeed a counting, but counting is itself a form of speaking as “taking apart: expressing one thing as not another” (WMA, 20). Heidegger cites 219a26–29 in support, where Aristotle observes that we claim time to exist when the soul speaks of the “now” as two (καὶ δύο εἴπῃ ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ νῦν). Heidegger next turns to Aristotle’s claim, as part of the above argument, that “nothing is to be grasped in time besides the now” (251b24–25; οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔστι λαβεῖν ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ παρὰ τὸ νῦν), which he claims can be understood in two ways: “nothing of time itself is to be grasped apart from the ‘now’” or “nothing is to be grasped as existing in time apart from the ‘now.’” Heidegger defends the second reading, dismissing the first as not good Greek, though he sees the result as being the same in either case: “Nothing that is measured with the ‘now’ can be grasped outside of the ‘now’” (WMA, 21).

Heidegger responds to Aristotle’s argument by asking, “What if there were no movement in the world?” and citing 219a4–6: “Even if there were darkness and we could experience nothing through the body, there would be some motion in the soul, so that directly with it time will appear to have elapsed” (my translation) Heidegger comments, “Aristotle left matters standing here, he did not go any further. This is a valuable indication of the inner sense: that I find in myself something like an occurrence [Vorkommnis] and with this as a μεταβολή also time. (Precisely when there is only the motion that we call life, then is time there)” (WMA, 21). Noting that the passage has been taken to show that time for Aristotle is something subjective, Heidegger dismisses this as a misunderstanding. The psuchê is not a subject but “that which constitutes the being-present [Gegenwärtigsein] of what is living. Therefore, there is also in the case of this being that lives μεταβολή, and thus time—further one cannot go here” (WMA, 22). Yet the question that remains, Heidegger notes, is “What is it with time [itself]?” If Aristotle did not go further than this reference to the soul, neither, Heidegger points out, did Augustine. Heidegger proceeds to claim that Aristotle’s supposed demonstration of the eternity of time is not really a demonstration, but simply an analysis of time as he understands it. In Thomas, in contrast, we have a demonstration indeed, and a “completely naïve” one, of the existence of God from the existence of the world. With this, the last class of the year comes to an end.

The class of January 12 returns to the question of time with the observation that, on the one hand, time exists in a relation with being and being with motion, while on the other hand, it exists in a relation with nous and the psuchê. But then we have the important claim that the fundamental determination of God in medieval ontology is “Deus aeternus” and that therefore the primary ontological assertion about the being of God is that it belongs to the essence of God to exist. What does it mean to say that this is the fundamental determination? It means that “it is from there that the verum bonum of God is first to be determined and his being as vita”; it is from there that the relation of God with the world in creation and with the human soul in faith is to be understood; it is from there that religious experience in general and the doctrine of grace is to be understood (WMA, 23). This seems an extraordinary and questionable claim. Is the eternity of God really the foundation of all of these other determinations? And note in particular how the determination of God as alive is taken to be secondary to and derivative of the determination of God as eternal, even though we have seen that the determination of God as eternal seems to be impossible without the prior determination of God as alive. This is a doubt that we will need to keep in mind as we see where Heidegger goes from here.

To show that existence belongs to God’s essence requires showing that there is no composition in God and therefore no matter or potentia, that God is actus purus. Heidegger notes that we have here translations of dunamis and energeia and that the kinêsis on which time depends is itself defined in terms of these two categories. “We want to get behind” the relations between all of these different Latin and Greek terms, Heidegger observes (WMA, 24). It is with this observation that the seminar turns to a primary focus on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and in particular on the book dedicated to being in the sense of dunamis and energeia: Book Θ (IX). Heidegger notes that this is one sense of being among the four which Aristotle distinguishes: (1) being in the sense of the categories (τὸ ὄν τῶν κατηγορίων), (2) accidental being (τὸ ὄν κατὰ συμβεβηκός), (3) being in the sense of dunamis and energeia, and (4) being in the sense of truth (τὸ ὄν ὡς ἀληθές). Heidegger briefly comments on each of these, but especially worth noting here is what he says about the fourth sense. Noting that in Book Ε.4 this sense of being is “dismissed” (1027b34; ἀφετέον) from the science of being while in Θ.10 it is discussed as “being in the most proper sense” (1051b1; κυριώτατα ὄν), Heidegger asks: “What is the only case in which one can see that unconcealment is a characteristic of being itself?” His answer: “Only on the basis of the Greek meaning of being: being = presence [Anwesenheit]. Only when being is understood as being-present is unconcealment a determination that makes the presence into a genuine one” (WMA, 25). And the fundamental mode of this unconcealment, Heidegger adds, is speaking (λέγειν).

Heidegger now starts right away into a discussion of Book Θ and thus of the sense of being that he clearly sees as especially determinative for the medieval conception of the eternity of God and therefore for medieval ontology. He first comments on Aristotle’s crucial qualification at the start of the book that he will first discuss the sense of dunamis that is spoken malista kuriôs, “though not the most useful for what we want now” (1045b25–1046a1). Heidegger interprets the important Greek phrase as meaning “most common, dominant (in a quantitative sense)” (WMA, 25). The “most common” sense of both dunamis and energeia is that related to motion (κατὰ κίνησιν). To this Aristotle contrasts a sense that goes beyond that relative to motion (ἐπὶ πλέον). Heidegger comments, “ἐπὶ πλέον: goes beyond beings insofar as they are moved. The theme is a scientific, philosophical, ontological concept of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια” (WMA, 25). On this basis Heidegger divides the book between chapters 1–5 dedicated to “the popular concept of δύναμις” and 6–9 dedicated to both concepts of dunamis and energeia. He also comments briefly on Aristotle’s following programmatic claim: “But speaking about that [presumably, dunamis relative to motion], in the discriminations [διορισμοῖς, in which Heidegger emphasizes Auseinandernehmen] concerning energeia we will provide clarification also regarding the others [περὶ τῶν ἄλλων]” (1046a2–4). Heidegger takes the plural at the end as referring to both dunamis and energeia and perhaps even entelecheia (which we find mentioned at 1045b35 and which will be related to ἐνέργεια at 1050a20–23). The first ontological determination of dunamis (in the popular sense) is as a principle of change (ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς) or, as Heidegger puts it, “That from out of which a change as change [Umschlag] exists in another or in itself as other [ᾗ ἄλλο, with Heidegger claiming that a preceding ἐν αὐτῷ is implied]” (WMA, 26). Here the class ends with chapters 21–27 of the Summa contra Gentiles being assigned, as noted above.

The class of January 19 does not continue right away with the reading of Book Θ. Instead, there is a lengthy discussion of accidental being, one that further defends the thesis already advanced that the Greeks understood being simply as a being-present-at-hand to which something like being-used-for-such-and-such is purely accidental. Heidegger notes that if we understand sumbebêkos as what accompanies ousia without being itself ousia, then all of the categories other than ousia would be kata sumbebêkos (WMA, 26). What he does not note is that in this case being in the sense of the categories, which is the object of the science of being qua being, would mostly coincide with accidental being, which is excluded from this science. But then Heidegger gives what he characterizes as a “formal” determination of the sumbebêkos: “something that is in addition there with something that itself is already there, and indeed is there with it in the sense of a perimeter that makes possible a determinate variation” (WMA, 26). What then is “there already” as that which the sumbebêkos accompanies? What is the genuine, nonaccidental being? This is, Heidegger continues, “the εἶδος, the look [Aussehen], what shows itself: thus the being of the table is this look: it presents itself as table” (WMA, 27). The eidos is there for everyone: it is what everyone sees in the thing, what everyone says of the thing. Now Heidegger makes the crucial point that picks up what was said earlier in the seminar: “What, however, does not belong to the genuine being is the here and now, color, and so forth. This indicates that the being of these objects overall is not immediately considered with regard to the hinc et nunc, but rather with regard to factically-being-at-hand: to be there in its being as table” (WMA, 27). A thing’s genuine being is its being-at-hand in a general way for everyone, offering the same look to everyone. Variations in time and place, color, and indeed in the use each person makes of it, are only there with the look in which the thing is genuinely present-at-hand. Thus, Heidegger continues, “From here it becomes understandable that everything that otherwise accompanies the table, precisely what for us is characteristic, that it stands here and is useful for this and that, that precisely all of these moments do not constitute for the Greeks being-present [Anwesendsein]. General, average, and indifferent manner of being-at-hand” (WMA, 27). Here again we must wonder how this claim about “the Greeks” could be true of the Greek whose work is being read in this seminar. How could it be said that for Aristotle what something is for falls outside of its genuine being and is only there with it as something “accidental”? It could be that what Heidegger is speaking of here is not the use that defines the thing, that determines its eidos, but rather the particular use that you or I make of it here and now. This is indeed the implication when Heidegger immediately adds to the above the comment that the question of individuation fell completely outside of the ontological horizon of the Greeks, though the things that we appeal to in attempting to explain individuation were known to them, as the introduction of “accidental being” (ὄν κατὰ συμβεβηκός) shows. But even if this is so, it is not at all clear that this implies a reduction of being to mere being-present-at-hand. Such a reduction is made implausible by Aristotle’s introduction of the sense of being that will become the focus of this seminar: being in the sense of dunamis and energeia. Both the determination of a thing in terms of its function (ἔργον) and the determination of its being as energeia are at least not obviously reducible to a conception of being as being-present-at-hand.

In an aside, Heidegger mentions the different use of the phrase kata sumbebêkos in the De Anima:¹⁰ different because qualifying perception rather than beings in the world. What I see is strictly speaking a color, for example, white or green: this is the specific object of the sense of sight (ἴδια). That the white thing I see is the son of Diares or the green thing a fern is something I see only kata sumbebêkos. Heidegger notes that “for perception in factical life it is precisely the fern that is nearest, the pure αἰσθητὰ ἴδια [unique perceptibles] are not to be found in natural, immediate dealings” (WMA, 29). That the “unique perceptibles,” color, sound, and so forth, are nevertheless given priority over natural perception is due, Heidegger claims, to the priority granted eidos and hupokeimenon in the broadest sense. Yet one must ask if Aristotle is really committed to the first priority here. His point is simply that each sense has its distinctive object and that it only coincidentally perceives anything distinct from this object; this does not require one to deny that what I naturally and immediately perceive is the son of Diares and not some isolated color white. In other words, the question concerns only the specific contribution that sight makes to this perception.

What follows in the notes is what is labelled a discussion relating to the protocol. Given the content of the discussion, the protocol must be that for the preceding class. The focus is clearly Heidegger’s claim in the preceding class that the fundamental determination of God in medieval ontology is “Deus aeternus” and that it is only from this determination that God’s relation to human beings is understood. This is now further explicated, and also stated more critically, in a passage that, given its central importance for the main thesis of the seminar, needs to be cited in full. “The being of God is explicated in Thomas without any primary consideration of the human being’s ontological relation to God; oriented by ontological concepts that are won from an ontology of the world; in relation to the consideration of nature; completely alien to the religious relationship of human beings; but in such a way that these categories belatedly influence the relationship of human beings, so that then grace is determined as a natural process: infusio causaliter” (WMA, 29). We here have some further clarification of the claims made in the previous class. To determine God’s being as eternity is to determine God’s being in terms of ontological concepts derived from an ontology of the world, specifically, the concepts of actus and potentia, energeia and dunamis. Thus, the being of God is determined completely independently of the human relationship with God and human religious experience. Instead, this relationship and experience is itself interpreted belatedly in terms of the concepts foreign to this experience that were used to determine God’s being, so that grace, for example, comes to be interpreted as a natural process taking place in the world, as a kinêsis. But what is the alternative to this approach? In what immediately follows, the alternative is located in the Reformation.

What opposes this is precisely the Reformation; for the Reformationists, the human being has, purely methodologically, priority in being [seinsmäßig] to God. (This does not mean that the being of God would be determined by the being of human beings, but rather:) Purely methodologically: human beings, with regard to their specific existence, are the only point from which one can say anything here about God. Precisely when one understands human existence, and precisely to the degree to which one understands it, the possibility will grow (and I emphasize again: purely methodologically) of winning a genuine understanding of the being of God. Thus a methodological question, but one that, like every such question, is grounded in (a question of) existence: that determines the priority of the interpretation of human being before nature and all the determinations and fundamental concepts derived from the being of nature. (WMA, 29–30)

One cannot help but be reminded of the ontic-ontological priority that in Being and Time will be granted Dasein in addressing the question of Being. The key point there and here is the same: because any ontology of the world is grounded in the existence of Dasein, it is methodologically questionable to begin with such an ontology and then belatedly apply the concepts derived from the being of the world back to the understanding of the being of Dasein (and its relationship with God). Rather, the methodological starting point should be the being of Dasein itself. What is striking here is that Heidegger finds the model for such a reversal of methodological priority in the Reformation. We saw that the Reformation was lurking in the background in the earlier seminar on the Physics of 1923/24. But here its importance as a counter to medieval ontology, and presumably also to the Aristotelianism that determines it, is fully explicit.

But what is the evidence that the methodological starting point in medieval ontology and in Thomas actually is what Heidegger claims it to be? Heidegger would reply that the evidence can be found in the very structure of the Summa contra Gentiles, where the starting point is God as first mover, God as prima causa, God as the being that always exists and never did not exist. It is this determination that in turn requires the coincidence of essence and existence in God. The crucial point is this: where does the doctrine that God’s essence is his existence come from? “Not from religious motives, but from ontological determinations that fundamentally concern a completely different kind of being” (WMA, 30). There is nothing in our relation to God in religious experience that could ever lead us to the conclusion that God’s existence is his essence. Instead, this determination is motivated by ontological concepts originally derived from a kind of being completely other than the being of God and our own being.

After a reiteration of the point that being in the sense of the categories is determined by logos but that being in the sense of truth is only secondarily related to logos, we finally return to Metaphysics Θ. We are reminded that the book first addresses the everyday sense of dunamis that relates it to what is in motion, though Aristotle seeks to grasp this sense scientifically and ontologically. As a “principle of change” (ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς), the dunamis is there for and before the metabolê (and Heidegger claims that here this term is understood very formally as any kind of alteration or change). In explaining why he is emphasizing this point, Heidegger provides a hint as to how he understands the structure of the book as a whole: “we will later need to articulate more sharply the relation between this natural concept of δύναμις and the specifically ontological fundamental category of δύναμει” (WMA, 31). If the primary sense of this natural concept of dunamis is “the principle of change in something else or itself qua other,” Heidegger now turns to the second sense. This other sense is the dunamis pathein (1046a11–12), the power of undergoing something or, as Heidegger puts it, “the from-out-of-where in that with which something happens” (WMA, 32). Heidegger gives the example of a book with fine green binding that, left in the sun, fades. What is it in this being (the book) that from out of itself makes possible the change of fading? It is, Heidegger responds, color. Thus, “possibility is a positive determination. This ἀρχή is something that the being brings from out of itself and with itself.” Heidegger now asks and answers an important question: why in this example is the most immediate archê not the sun? “It is characteristic that Aristotle does not set out from the sun. The dunamis παθητική is what is phenomenally nearest, that is the first thing I see: here something is happening. For this the possibility of being-so must already be there, that it can be” (WMA, 32). This appears to be why Heidegger insists that the archê metabolês (pathêtikês) at issue at 1046a11–15 is not the archê metablêtikê to which line 1046a14–15 nevertheless refers: the latter is, in the case of our example, the sun, what we would call the “efficient cause” of the change, whereas the former is in the book as that to which something happens (where this happening can be understood positively or privatively as a hexis apatheias; for the latter, imagine in our example a bookbinding with a special green dye that resisted fading under the sun).

Commenting next on Aristotle’s characterization of these different dunameis as all being “in relation to the same form” (πρὸς τὸ αὐτὸ εἶδος), Heidegger notes that the pros ti here is an analogical structure. Since this structure is explained by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ (IV) in connection with being according to the categories, Heidegger now turns to that text. As he notes, the contrast there is between pros ti and kata tinos, where the latter has the character of a genus, a species. A human being and a horse are called “animals” according to a common notion. A human being and a color, however, are not said to be according to one common notion of “being.” Instead, the relation between the different categories is that they are all related to a primary sense, which is ousia: all the other categories refer to ousia as the qualities or quantities or relations, and so on, of ousia. The important point that Heidegger makes here is that this analogical structure appears again with being in the sense of dunamis and energeia (WMA, 34). The senses of dunamis relative to motion are related analogically in the sense of all referring back to the primary sense of “principle of change in another or in itself qua other.” We will see (though Heidegger does not mention this here) that when we turn to the different senses of energeia in chapter 6, they too will turn out to be related analogically (though whether through the same kind of analogy remains to be seen).

Before the class ends, Heidegger points to a problem that he claims remains unresolved to the present day: what is the relation between the formal determination of dunamis as an archê metabolês and the concrete dunameis of doing and undergoing? He cites the claim at 1046a15 that the logos of the first dunamis “is in” (ἔνεστι) the concrete dunameis (so Heidegger: Aristotle actually writes “in the ὅροις” of the other δύναμεις, as Heidegger himself later notes; WMA, 37). He asks: “but how is it in?” (WMA, 33). This is presumably related to the problem Heidegger raised in discussing accidental being: what is the relation between the eidos known in logos and the “here and now”? The class ends with Heidegger assigning for the next class chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 of Θ, asking that 3 and 4 be left out (WMA, 34).

The class of January 26 begins with a reminder that what the first dunamis has in common with the others has the character of analogy; they are all related to the same eidos where this term cannot mean species or genus (WMA, 34). But what Heidegger now focuses on in continuing with chapter 1 is the characterization of the first dunamis as a principle of change “in another” (ἐν ἄλλῳ). Why “in another”? Heidegger asks (WMA, 35). The phenomenon that is in view here, Heidegger responds, is “alteration” (ἀλλοίωσις), movement in place (φορά) not being at all under consideration in this chapter. Alteration has the character of reciprocity (Gegenseitigkeit), of being both a “doing” and an “undergoing.” Heidegger notes that such reciprocity does not characterize the relation between first unmoved mover and what it moves. This implies that this movement cannot be understood as an alteration.

The important thesis that Heidegger wishes to defend next is that it is from the discovery of the phenomenon of metabolê that Aristotle arrives at his determination of being in terms of the categories. We assert of a metabolê that “it changes over” (es schlägt um), though the more careful assertion, in the sense of prejudicing nothing, would be “transformation is there” (Wechsel ist da). In our natural tendency of speaking, of course, we are not so careful, but say, if not “this changes over,” at least “it changes over”: we thus address something as underlying the change, as hupokeimenon. Heidegger here cites Physics 225a6–7, “What I call hupokeimenon is what is disclosed in an assertion” (καταφάσει δηλούμενον), and comments, “An important connection for the ὄν οf the categories; we have seen: they are determinations of being in the surrounding world [Umwelt]; here is revealed more precisely: Aristotle won them in the context of his discovery of the phenomenon of motion. He has something about which he makes something evident: the κινούμενον in the broadest sense” (WMA, 35). The hupokeimenon further admits here of two possibilities: the “it” that changes over is either (1) the ti, the this, or (2) the pathos, something in the ti. In the first case we have generation and perishing, but even these are not from “not-being” or into “not-being” simply speaking: “every becoming is a becoming out of something else” (WMA, 36). If the notebook is made out of the paper, the paper was previously not a notebook, but not thereby “nothing.” But Heidegger pursues the other possibility here, saying that the nearest determination of pathos (which Heidegger suggests translating as “condition” [Zuständlichkeit]), its primary category, is quality (the ποῖόν). This quality is correlate to a sense and, as we have seen, each sense has its own particular object (as color for sight). This restricts the field of a metabolê: the color green cannot change over into something hard, but only into another color. The unity that delimits the change has the character of a genos (in this case “color”) and the plurality this unity encompasses is not an indifferent one but one defined by opposites (ἐναντία). In the case of color, light and dark, white and black, are the outer limits (ἄκρα) and “gray” is the middle (μεταξύ). This lying against each other and concerning each other is the structure of alteration.

What follows is some line-by-line commentary on the text of chapter 1, starting at 1046a15. Much is very brief and cryptic, but the comment on lines nineteen to twenty merits our special attention. Aristotle claims that in one sense the dunamis of doing (ποιεῖν) and that of undergoing (παθεῖν) are the same and explains: “For it is capable [δύνατον] by itself possessing the capability of undergoing [δύναμις τοῦ παθεῖν] and through the other by it [τῷ ἄλλο ὑπ᾽αὐτοῦ].” It is not at all clear what kind of unity of the two powers is being expressed here. This is typically taken in a very weak sense: the unity is simply the one change that results from both the active power in the one thing and the passive power in the other; so, for example, the power to heat and the power to be heated are united in the one change of heating they both make possible.¹¹ Yet there is obviously no reference to the change itself in Aristotle’s explanation cited above: it speaks only of something being dunaton in having the power to be acted upon and in something else having the power to be acted upon by it. That Heidegger sees a stronger unity in Aristotle’s explanation is clear from his comment: “the being-related to each other is comprehended in such a way that it stretches itself in both directions in relation to one and the same thing. Aristotle knows an example for this: food nourishes, but only in so far as it is consumed, its ποιεῖν is its being-consumed, therefore also a πασχεῖν” (WMA, 37–38). On Heidegger’s reading, the unity here is the very strong one of something having the power to act only in having the power to be acted upon, a unity in which doing (ποιεῖν) and undergoing (παθεῖν) themselves are one and not simply as two sides of the same motion.

Turning to the lines in which Aristotle speaks of the way in which the active and passive powers are different, Heidegger notes the characterization of matter as a principle at line twenty-three and observes that this characterization is by no means self-evident and was not known to Aristotle’s predecessors: if Thales saw water as a principle, it was not because he saw it as matter (WMA, 38). Heidegger also suggests that, in the structure of an alteration, what plays the role of matter is the genos within which the alteration takes place: like color in the case of a change of color. Turning to Aristotle’s mention of the art of building as an example of an active power existing in the doer (along with “heating”), Heidegger makes a comment important for the broad thesis we have seen him maintain in several seminars with regard to the importance of poiêsis in Aristotle’s thought: “The example of οἰκοδόμησις [housebuilding] shows: Aristotle does not hang on so strongly to φυσικὴ μεταβολή (fading of color), but also τέχνη” (WMA, 38). And a little later: “Not only the φύσει ὄντα, but also a κίνησις for which τέχνη is constitutive. Therefore, δύναμις in the same sense, but in different regions of being” (WMA, 39). That a natural dunamis should be a dunamis in the same sense as an art Heidegger must consider to be strong support in favor of the thesis that the being of nature is interpreted from the perspective of poiêsis. But Heidegger also notes and puzzles over the priority given poiêsis over paschein: “Why does ποίησις have priority over πάσχειν? Why is it precisely in the direction of ποίησις that πρώτη δύναμις is spoken of? Peculiar priority of the positive categories, of making, lighting, warming?” (WMA, 38) There is no attempt to answer this question at the moment.

Heidegger now moves on to the second chapter, in which Aristotle distinguishes between powers with logos (μετὰ λόγου) and powers without (ἄλογοι). Since the technai are explicitly identified as principles of change with logos, it would appear that we have here after all a distinction between natural powers (clearly ἄλογοι) and the powers possessed by the arts. Yet the sense of dunamis is described as the same in both cases: a principle of change in another or in itself qua other. Heidegger notes that the guideline for the chapter is the logos, the key characteristic of which is here stated at 1046b8–9: “The same λόγος reveals [δηλοῖ] the thing [πρᾶγμα] and its privation [στέρησιν].” Suggesting as usual that logos is a way of letting-see (Sehenlassen), Heidegger gives an at first surprising example to illustrate Aristotle’s claim: in “white,” color is also intended. Heidegger explains that this does not mean that “color” is explicitly intended. Instead, the meaning is that when I see white, I hold myself in the field of what is colored and in such a way that I ward off (abwehren) the other colors. But what I ward off is seen with the white I see; warding-off is itself a letting-see, a δηλοῦν. “In the horizon of explicit addressing, and insofar as the one is addressed here, the other is there with it according to possibility” (WMA, 39–40). When the doctor gives the diagnosis of “healthy,” he does so within the entire horizon of all possible ways of being unhealthy. Because the other is thus always there with what is addressed, we have the possibility here of “more or less,” hitting the target or missing it, and thus better or less good (εὖ). The logos thus creates a playing field for poiêsis. Only within this field can I choose what to do, can I, for example, choose the means of healing the patient. I make my own the field disclosed by the diagnosis and act within it. The principle here of speaking and the principle of the movement are the same. Heidegger notes that such a principle of both speaking and acting, as well as of the other possibilities of being for a living being, is the soul (ψυχή). Aristotle thus himself says that the logos exists in the soul which is also the principle of movement (1046b20–21; λόγος . . . ἐν ψύχῃ ἥ ἔχει κινήσεως ἀρχήν).

Despite the indication of a new class (February 9), the discussion as reported in the notes appears to continue without a break. The reference to the soul as principle of movement and of logos leads the discussion to the phenomenon of proairesis (translated here “Entschluß,” “decision”). Recall that in the seminar of WS1922/23, Heidegger identified proairesis with the principle that is human being and indeed with the fundamental phenomenon that characterizes human being. As also noted there, one of the essential aspects of proairesis is orexis (desire). In the present seminar, Heidegger claims that while the means chosen for obtaining the end of orexis may be mistaken, orexis itself cannot err since it is not directed toward the alêthes. It indeed intends something, is directed toward something, and therefore must itself be open for something, but it is not itself disclosive (WMA, 42). Its guidance must be assumed by either aisthêsis or nous. Here Heidegger returns to the problem that was a focus of the WS1922/23 seminar: the unity of orexis and nous. “The phenomenon of ὄρεξις αἴσθησις, or νοῦς, as ἀρχή causes Aristotle very great difficulties. He did not get through them. With his starting point there is perhaps no way of arriving at the phenomenon. De Anima Γ 9, 10. The reason why the relation between ὄρεξις and νοῦς is important for Aristotle, and for the Greek position in general, is that for the Greeks νοῦς is what is decisive ontologically, what has absolute priority, and because there is the difficulty here that νοῦς nevertheless is not able by itself alone to be the ἀρχή of κίνησις” (WMA, 42). When intending something theoretically, nous cannot move anything; it also cannot move anything when opposed by orexis. To be a principle of movement, “νοῦς must be μετὰ ὀρέξεως” (WMA, 42). On the other hand, orexis purely by itself cannot move anything, so that it too can move only with nous. Heidegger emphasizes the unity here in further observing that there is no movement even when both desire and thought are present if the object of desire is contemplated only theoretically: the thinking must be carried out through the motivation of the object of desire as an object of desire (WMA, 43). The crucial point is that the soul must be the principle of both praxis and logos, orexis and nous, in its unity as one and the same being. This brief excursus on De Anima III ends with the intriguing, but unfortunately not further developed, comment that what Aristotle seeks here is essentially something fundamentally different (different, presumably, from an account of how the being of the soul in its unity is a principle of both thought and desire): “the winning of the concept of φαντασία in the completely broad and fundamental sense that Aristotle wins here” (WMA, 43).

Returning to Metaphysics Θ.2, Heidegger focuses on the sentence at 1046b21–22: “So that it [the soul] will move both from the same principle, linking them together in relation to the same thing [πρὸς τἀυτὸ συνάψασα].” Heidegger interprets the “linking together” (συνάπτειν) as that which characterizes the “syllogism” and thus as taking place in reasoning and considering (Überlegen). The “two” that are moved and linked together in relation to one thing are opposites such as good and bad action. Heidegger furthermore takes the movement in question here as desire and as potential: the soul will be able to move both. “The soul will be able to direct itself [aussein] toward both (toward good and bad), but not ἅμα, not simultaneously, as chapter 5 explicitly says. In relation to both exists the possibility of self-motion, so that the ψυχή can lay hold of both in relation to the same and in the sense of λογίζεσθαι” (WMA, 43). What the sentence therefore expresses, according to Heidegger, is again the unity of the soul as the principle of desire and speech. The “same principle” from out of which the soul can move both opposite actions in the form of either/or is the soul itself.

Turning next to chapter 5, Heidegger asks how it differs from chapter 2 (given that the distinction between “rational” and “non-rational” δύναμεις is discussed in both). Heidegger’s immediate answer is that chapter 5 is no longer concerned simply with the different types of dunamis, but rather with the genuine being of dunamis, with what it is. “The theme here: the way in which δύναμις is and can be” (WMA, 44). He further articulates this into two questions: (1) the origin (Herkunft) of dunamis, how it comes into being; (2) how it then is as this existing thing (Daseiendes). Significantly, Heidegger summarizes in concluding that chapter 5 is concerned with the being of dunamis “in the sense of real being-present-at-hand as δύναμις” (WMA, 44). One must wonder why it is being assumed here that the being of dunamis has the sense of a being-present-at-hand.

Significantly, Heidegger now insists on a fundamental contrast between chapters 5 and 6: the basis of consideration is completely different. In chapter 6 the consideration begins with energeia, which Heidegger describes as “Aristotle’s fundamental ontological concept, his genuine discovery” (WMA, 44). From this concept we arrive at dunamis in this fundamental ontological sense, dunamis as being (Sein). Until then, dunamis is treated as one being (Seiendes) among others; the question of chapter 5 is thus the being-at-hand of a dunamis (1048a12; ὡς δύναται ὑπάρχῃ). “In chapter 6 in contrast δύναμις as a character of being, as a way of being-at-hand for beings, as a possible character of being-at-hand. Methodologically a complete break: something completely new begins here” (WMA, 45). In summation, we can say that the first two chapters of Book Θ address the kinds of dunamis, chapter 5 (recall that Heidegger has skipped 3 and 4) addresses the being of dunamis, and with chapter 6 we have a turn to the question of the dunamis of being.¹²

Heidegger now cites a sentence from chapter 6 in which he finds the distinction he is making (between the starting points of chapters 5 and 6) “completely clear, as if held out in full view.” This is the sentence in which Aristotle writes: “ἐνέργεια is the being-present of a thing [ὑπάρχειν τὸ πρᾶγμα], but not in the way in which we say δύναμει” (1048a30–32). Energeia and dunamis are here two ways of being present. Heidegger also finds significant the use here of the dative dunamei and contrasts it with δυνατόν in chapter 5, 1048a13. The Hermes statue is present dunamei in the wood, in contrast to the kind of being present that is energeia. Like other interpreters, Heidegger sees the dative as signalling a shift to an ontological sense of dunamis: being dunamei. To his credit, however, he notes that dunatos is also used in chapter 6 (1048a34) and wonders if it is the same as the dunaton in chapter 5. How much of a shift in meaning has there really been?¹³

Heidegger now turns suddenly to the second half of chapter 6 and the distinction Aristotle makes there between energeia and kinêsis. This move ahead, however, is explained and justified. Heidegger asserts that the notion of telos is built right into the notion of energeia and that this is made explicit in Aristotle’s distinction between energeia as possessing, and kinêsis as not possessing, its end within itself. He thus claims that “we must understand the chapter backwards” (WMA, 46), that is, starting from the second half. Heidegger now proceeds to summarize the argument of this second half. A motion reaches its end only when it comes to an end, that is, only when it no longer exists as a motion. When the end of building a house is reached, the motion of building stops. Motion thus has a limit (πέρας) and is, as long as it exists, incomplete (ἀτελές). Heidegger presents the latter claim as evidence that it is senseless to translate telos as “goal” (WMA, 46): saying that motion is ateles obviously cannot mean that it is “goalless.” In the case of an activity like seeing, in contrast, it is only when I have seen, when I have brought something into view, that I first genuinely see. Energeia is accordingly “the kind of comportment of a being that first truly is when it has come to an end. Ἐνέργεια is the completing [Vollziehen] of the τέλος, the completing of completing” (WMA, 46).

Heidegger now asks how the present passage compares to the definition of motion as a type of energeia in Physics Γ.1–3. Is there not a contradiction between the claim that energeia is not a kinêsis and the definition of kinêsis in terms of energeia? Heidegger denies this. First, he insists that what energeia is opposed to in Θ.6 is motions and not motion as such. Heidegger thus appears to understand the argument as being that the way of being-present that is energeia is not a motion; an argument he takes to leave open the possibility that it may be motion in a more fundamental sense. This is a crucial point for Heidegger’s interpretation, given his determination to make kinêsis fundamental and thus to weaken the opposition between it and energeia. Heidegger also makes the point that in the Physics, energeia is the fundamental category by which a motion is made comprehensible as such. Specifically, energeia serves to bring out the presence of not-yet-being-complete. The point Heidegger appears to be getting at is this: if energeia must be distinguished from motions, that is because it is the being of motion, the presence of what is yet incomplete, indeed, one could say: the completeness of the incomplete, so that it is in itself the completeness of completeness. If motion is an incomplete energeia, Heidegger seems to think that he can treat energeia itself as a complete motion. This is especially clear in one of the statements with which he concludes this class: “ὁρᾶν [seeing] is the presence of that which is complete [fertig], and that in its being complete [Fertigsein] still becomes [noch wird]” (WMA, 47).

The class ends in proposing for next time not only the reading of chapters 7 and 8, but also a discussion of the meaning of “analogy” (ἀνάλογον) as opposed to “definition” (ὅρος) in chapter 6 (that is, Aristotle’s claim that there can be no definition of energeia because it has different meanings that are related analogously), and a clarification of the meaning of dunatos at 1048a34. This last point shows that Heidegger is truly troubled by this occurrence of dunatos instead of the dative dunamei; unfortunately, the projected clarification will never be provided, at least as far as the student notes record. The first part of the notes for the next class of February 16 is labelled “In connection to Elli’s report.” This might mean that Elli presented her notes for the previous class and that this led to further discussion of what was covered in that class. What follows indeed covers the same ground as in the previous class, but now providing important detail and clarification. The first topic reviewed is the unity of thought and desire, now expressed with the claim that phronêsis is what it is through orexis and vice versa. The critique of Aristotle for failing to solve the difficulty that lies in this circle is now even more explicit: “The difficulty that lies in this circle can be resolved only from the being of human beings. More precisely: Aristotle himself knew no way out because he did not examine πρᾶξις any further with regard to its ontological structure or, rather, because he saw the highest form of πρᾶξις in θεωρεῖν, because he therefore wins the determination of the highest form of πρᾶξις from the ἀεί. He therefore does not have the ontological basis for making the being of human beings itself into a problem” (WMA, 47–48). Here a central thesis of the seminar is clearly stated: Aristotle was prevented from understanding the unity of thought and desire in the being of human beings because he interpreted this being in terms of a conception of being derived from the being of the world: being as eternal presence-at-hand. From the perspective of such a conception of being, it would appear that the most genuine praxis is one in which there is no motion. But such a conception of praxis could only obstruct the understanding of human being as the unity of thought and desire.

We now return briefly to Θ.6 and the characterization of kinêsis there as ἀτελές, interpreted as follows: “Motion necessarily transcends itself in that whereby it becomes complete. . . . It is that which it can be precisely in its no-longer-being” (WMA, 48). Then follow some rather obscure comments on the characterization of the prime mover in Metaphysics Λ as moving as an object of love (1072b3; κινεῖ δὲ ὡς ἐρώμενον). The connection with the above is that the prime mover is said here to move as an object of both thought and desire (1072a26; κινεῖ δὲ ὧδε τὸ ὀρεκτὸν καὶ τὸ νοητόν). Heidegger claims that, while the description of the prime mover as “being loved” is in some sense a comparison (ὡς), it still has its basis in the phenomenon itself. The phenomenon here is motion in the broadest sense, one that includes the motion of life itself (Heidegger insists that the motion of “loving” here is not to be identified with movement in place, phora). It is from such a broad conception alone that we can understand “how Aristotle in De Anima Γ.9 can postulate κρίνειν and κινεῖν as the fundamental determinations of the being of what is living. κινεῖν has indeed this completely broad sense, as also in Plato ζωή, κίνησις, νοῦς are identical” (WMA, 49).

We now return to the problem of the relation between energeia and kinêsis in the definition of motion in the Physics. The genuine structural moment of energeia, Heidegger asserts, is “the being-complete of something” (das Fertig-sein von etwas); energeia is thereby both a limit (πέρας) and a principle (ἀρχή), indeed, Heidegger suggests, “principle as such.” But then how can this concept be used to determine kinêsis when all kinêsis is incomplete? Citing the definition of motion at Physics 201a10–11, Heidegger suggests that energeia expresses the presence, the being-there of what is only dunamei. A crucial passage that expresses clearly his interpretation is the following: “Through the determination of κίνησις through ἐνέργεια, Aristotle wishes precisely to grasp being-underway itself [Unterwegs-Sein]. The essential thing to see is: ἐνέργεια of a δύναμει. To grasp precisely the underway in its There [Da]. The τέλος that lies in the determination ἐνέργεια means having-come-about [das Zustande gekommen sein], the There, the presence [Anwesenheit] of something and indeed the presence of a δύναμει ὄν” (WMA, 50). But if energeia has in itself the character of completion, it would seem that, even when it expresses the presence or being-there of motion, it does not in itself have the structure of motion. In other words, the concept energeia is used in the definition of motion to express that aspect of motion that is not in motion: that is, its being-present or being-there. Heidegger continues: “In this moment of the There (τέλος) there lies in ἐνέργεια something that is not to be found only in motion [was nicht nur an der Bewegung ist]” (WMA, 50). Yet Heidegger has not forgotten his thesis that Aristotle’s fundamental ontological concepts are derived from the being of things in motion within the world. He must therefore immediately add this crucial claim on which, arguably, his entire interpretation depends: “But this ἐνέργεια concept is taken from [geschöpft] movement. Only then transferred as a fundamental concept to every existing thing” (WMA, 50). This claim would seem to be contradicted both by the opposition Aristotle defends between energeia and kinêsis in Metaphysics Θ.6 and by the definition of motion in the Physics as an incomplete energeia: a definition that appears to make energeia and not kinêsis the primary concept. We will therefore need to be attentive to how Heidegger tries to reconcile his thesis with Aristotle’s explicit claims.

Inserted at this point into the Weiss notes, and on two separate unnumbered pages, are additional notes described as being from the protocol of (Hans) Jonas. These notes cover the above reading of the definition of motion in Physics Γ.1 and thus provide further details on Heidegger’s interpretation. One thing these notes add is discussion of the “referring” (Verweisen) or from/to character of what is dunamei. Reference is made to Aristotle’s claim that the same thing can be both dunamei and entelecheiai, “though not at the same time [ἅμα] or not in relation to the same thing” (201a19–21). Despite the “not” that precedes it, the “ἅμα” is treated by the discussion in the notes as a positive relation between what is dunamei and what is entelecheiai: with some justification, given Aristotle’s “or not in relation to the same thing” and his immediately following example of something that is actually hot and potentially cold and presumably at the same time. The important comment is the following: “We are dealing with a fundamental way of encountering (Begegnischarakter) on the part of a being that always encounters us simultaneously [gleichzeitig] as being present itself and as referring in its being [Verweisendsein] to something else which it is not and which is not at all there yet: in the form of from/to.” Something that is dunaton in this way has a twofold relation to the corresponding entelecheia. First, it relates to it as that to which it refers, that is, the way the buildable wood relates to the house that is built. The dunaton comes to a stand, comes into its genuine There, with that which is in entelecheia. However, the wood is no longer buildable as a house once the house has been built; the wood is present in the house only in the way in which we say that the house is wooden. The buildable as such is no longer there. If the house, then, is the entelecheia to which the buildable refers, it cannot be the entelecheia of the buildable qua buildable. “There remains then the other possibility, that not what is referred to, but rather the character of being-referring [Verweisend-sein] itself, the δυνατὸν εἶναι, comes into its own as the how of the givenness of what encounters, and this is what the ᾗ τοιοῦτον means. . . .” In short, what can be present at hand in relation to what exists potentially is not only that for which it has the potential, that to which it refers as potential, but also this being-potential, being-referring itself. Motion is the way in which being-potential in its very being-potential encounters us. So what is dunaton does not simply have some general reference to some other thing that stands against it: rather, this reference has itself the reality of a determinate metabolê that, with its structure of from/to, has a determinate magnitude and span. Energeia here does not simply put an end to the dunamei on, but rather brings it as such into its own and enables us to address it as such. Jonas’s notes conclude with this important claim: “So is κίνησις presence [Anwesenheit] of the Underway, and precisely in so far as it is present as such is it ἀτελής. It comprises the peculiar being-there, being-complete of what precisely is not complete as long as it is there.”

If we return to the Weiss notes, the seminar now turns to Metaphysics Θ.7 and 8. The discussion addresses chapter 8 first, observing of chapter 7 only that its discussion of dunamis differs from that of the earlier chapters in that the dunamis it discusses is not a being (ein Seiendes), but a way of being (ein Sein) (WMA, 51). It is first important to note that Heidegger sees the distinction between motions and energeiai defended at the end of chapter 6 as repeated in chapter 8, though with different terminology. First, at 1050a21–23 the term energeia is connected to the other term entelecheia: Heidegger understands the latter as “the being of a being that has its being-complete in itself” and gives the example: “The being of sight is genuinely there and complete in seeing” (WMA, 50). We also have introduced at 1050a24 the term eschaton (ultimate), which Heidegger takes as another concept for telos. Finally, Heidegger signals as important line 1050a27 where Aristotle, after claiming that an activity like seeing has no product, adds that “nevertheless there is no less of a τέλος within it”: Heidegger takes this as meant to show, in response to a possible objection, that “in seeing there is something complete (ein Fertig) precisely as in an ordinary ποίησις” (WMA, 50). It is not hard to see why Heidegger signals this as important: it allows him to emphasize the continuity between poiêsis and an activity like seeing and indeed to maintain the paradigmatic status of poiêsis: seeing too has a finished product but contains this finished product within itself.

The overall argument of chapter 8 is that energeia is prior to dunamis. Heidegger suggests from the very outset that the target of this argument is Plato (WMA, 51). Plato would not only hold that dunamis is prior: he defines being as dunamis in the Sophist.¹⁴ Heidegger therefore sees the chapter as ending with a swipe against Plato and the Sophist in particular when Aristotle writes, “And if there are such natures and substances as the ideas are said to be by those who deal in theories, there would be something much more knowing than knowledge itself and something more in motion than motion. For the former are rather energeiai while latter are the dunameis of those” (1050b34–1051a2). As Heidegger notes, Plato’s Ideas are here assumed to be dunameis: the Idea of knowledge is, as what can make something know, the potency for knowledge; the Idea of motion is, as what can make something move, the potency for motion. But in this case, what would be prior in being, given Aristotle’s argument in the chapter, are not the Ideas but what is actively knowing or actively moving. The implication is that defining being as dunamis is unacceptable: being must rather be defined as what the dunamis is for and therefore what is prior to the dunamis, namely, energeia.

In chapter 8, Aristotle argues for the priority of energeia in three senses: in logos and in ousia, but also in time. Focusing first on priority in time, Heidegger notes something that he has already drawn our attention to: the peculiar way in which time and space appear to go together. Before and after express both a temporal and a spatial relation. This is because in the cases of both space and time there is an archê in relation to which it is possible to be nearer or further. Heidegger here cites Metaphysics Δ.11, where Aristotle writes that, there being in each genus a first principle, “prior” and “posterior” can be said in accordance with being nearer to or further away from this archê (1018b9–14). In the same chapter the principle in the case of time is identified as the “now”; what is “prior in time” or “earlier” is what is furthest from the now. In another page of supplementary notes by Hans Jonas, an important difference between space and time is noted: in the case of space what is prior is what is closest to the starting point, while in the case of time what is prior is what is furthest from the principle (the now). But why should this be? Why should it not be the case in time as well that what is prior is what is closest to our present? Heidegger suggests that the reason is that the reference point is not our time but something else: “The explanation could lie in the fact that for the Greeks (as also for us) the determination of time is not arrived at from the respective now of our being-there [Dasein], but rather with an orientation toward the αἴδιον, determined as it were from behind in a univocal sense of direction.” This suggestion seems more than a suggestion as it is indeed indispensable to the central thesis of the seminar: the guideline for the interpretation of being and time is not, for the Greeks (and for we later Greeks), our being and time.

If we return to the main notes, we see Heidegger seeking to win an orientation for determining the “before/after” (Vor-Nach). He distinguishes between the question of the substantive meaning of these determinations in each case and the formal meaning that applies to every before/after. The supplemental notes of Jonas further develop the first question as asking which determinate sense of before/after is substantively first. Specifically, if counting is ordered through space and time,¹⁵ in which of the two is the before/after originally to be found? According to these same notes, Heidegger answers that the primary location of the before/after must be that in which is found a sense of direction (Richtungssinn): this characterizes first time and then space. But Heidegger notes that an orientation toward space-time together is what is closest at hand (when, for example, we are copying a series), though not therefore what is primary. Heidegger indeed makes a crucial point that further explains what we have seen him maintain above: even though the starting point toward which we orient “before” and “after” exists in relation to us, this orientation toward my own being is not explicitly there in my natural comportment. In natural comportment I take this determinate object before me as what is first and the relation to myself is left implicit (WMA, 52). The point again is that we derive the meaning of being, and specifically here the meaning of “before” and “after” in being, from the being of those things in the world on which we are focused in our natural comportment. Heidegger thus concludes the following: “This is to be emphasized [namely, the immediate orientation toward space/time together], in order then to hold on to the peculiar temporal orientation that is thereby given: worldly time [die weltliche Zeit]. Worldly time is then the guideline of the orientation. Otherwise difficult: which temporal orientation toward myself is the guideline for the spatial orientation? We must hold on to space and time as the nearest [nächste] orientation; nothing is thereby said about whether they are the first in the sense of the substantively primary” (WMA, 53). Heidegger now notes that Aristotle himself builds up the before and after in the following order: they are found in (1) extension (μέγεθος), then (2) in motion (κίνησις), and then (3) in time (χρόνος). Referring to De gener. corrupt., Heidegger notes that megethos here has a very broad sense: span or dimension. He also notes that the definition of time is based on the noted order: motion is motion along a certain stretch, so that the before and after in motion presupposes that in place, and time is what is counted in such motion, so that the before and after in time presupposes that in motion. Heidegger notes in conclusion that all this remains difficult for us on account of the lack of a clearly grounded formal ontology. The class ends with the announcement that the next and final class will include a report on the knowledge of God and analogy in Duns Scotus and will also return to Thomas.

The final class is dated February 23 and begins, as is often the case, with supplements to the protocol of the previous class. But in this case the supplements are very substantial: two pages of notes before we get to the presentation on Duns Scotus. The first concerns the description of the dunamei on as the matter of an eidos. Heidegger makes the point that the concept of eidos did not develop in this context; the concept that is correlative to matter is the narrower one of “shape” (WMA, 53; μορφή). We have seen Heidegger in the seminars suggest a different context for the development of the concept of eidos: the look that something presents as we address it in speech. But the more important point that Heidegger makes here is that the concepts of “matter” (ὕλη), “shape” (μορφή), and “form” (εἶδος) coincide, as the analysis of motion shows, with those of dunamis and energeia. He also draws attention to the importance of the biological context: things that exist by nature arise from their parents that must already be in energeia, must be already there (WMA, 54).

We also now learn that Heidegger sees a distinction between an ontic and an ontological account of dunamis and energeia within Θ.8 itself. Where he makes the division, however, is rather surprising. He finds the ontic sense introduced at the beginning of the chapter in lines 1049b5–10: Aristotle here identifies dunamis with any principle of motion and rest, including the dunamis addressed in chapters 1–5 as a principle of motion in something other or in itself qua other, but now also including phusis as a principle of motion in itself as itself (9–10; ἀρχὴ γὰρ κινητική, ἀλλ᾽οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἀλλ᾽ἐν αὐτῷ ᾗ αὐτό). The ontological interpretation is said to begin, not with the argument that energeia is prior to dunamis in being as its telos, as we might expect, but rather with the priority labelled “more ruling” (κυριωτέρως) at 1050b6: the priority of eternal substances to perishable substances. This latter priority would appear to be purely ontic. Yet it is not hard to see why Heidegger insists that the interpretation here is ontological: he finds in it what he understands to be the Greek identification of being with eternal being. Heidegger draws attention to the passage in which Aristotle dismisses the fear of the natural philosophers that the sun, the stars, and the whole heavens should come to a standstill (1050b23; οὐ φόβερον μή ποτε στῇ) by insisting that they are eternally active (1050b22; ἀεὶ ἐνεργεῖ).¹⁶ Referring to the anxiety (Angst) expressed here, Heidegger first sees in it the positive phenomenon of a wish that the heavens should always be, but then corrects himself (the correction is presented as such in the notes) by saying that “wish” is too psychological of an expression and wrongly suggests an occasional or one-time act. Instead,

This anxiety [μή ποτε στῇ] is nothing momentary, but constitutive for Dasein itself, for the way in which human beings are in the world and how they see the world. In the natural conceptualization [Erfassung] and natural having, they have the world as something that always is and should always be. The wish and the anxiety is nothing other than being in the world [Dasein in der Welt] itself. Thus the eternal being of the world is a completely immediate, but indeed not explicit, ontological presupposition for the Greek interpretation of being. Naturally this is not an interpretation to arrive at from this passage alone, but it is an important witness for what one can substantively take out of the entire structure of ontology. (WMA, 55)

Here we have as clearly expressed as we could want the central thesis of the seminar.

Some very important structural claims are also made about Aristotle’s Metaphysics. First, we have a return to the rejection of Paul Natorp’s reading of the structure of Book Z in the SS1921 seminar. Recall that Natorp separated chapters 7–9 from the rest because they dealt with motion, natural becoming and production, whereas the rest of the Book deals with ousia. Heidegger again rejects this reading, noting that “With more careful consideration it becomes evident that οὐσία is substantively and tightly connected with δύναμις, ἐνέργεια and κίνησις” (WMA, 54). Indeed, the crucial new point that Heidegger adds here is that these chapters of Book Z provide the foundation for the subsequent interpretation of ousia as energeia (WMA, 54). Indeed, Heidegger finds this quite explicit in the following passage from Θ.8: “For it was said in the discourses concerning ousia that everything that becomes becomes something from something and by something, and that this latter is the same in εἶδος. Therefore, it also seems impossible to be a builder without building anything or a lyre player without playing the lyre” (1049b27–31). The priority of activity (ἐνέργεια) is here derived from the account of becoming in the central chapters of Book Z. Thus, Heidegger asserts that “ἐνέργεια is the genuine determination of the πρώτον presented as οὐσία in Book 7” (WMA, 54). This is indeed the other important structural point: “Book Θ gives the genuine interpretation of the οὐσία dealt with in Z: οὐσία is here interpreted as ἐνέργεια” (WMA, 54).

The other points made in reviewing the protocol concern the relation between Aristotle and Plato. Heidegger draws attention to what he calls a “remarkable sentence”: Aristotle’s claim at 1050b8–9 that “every dunamis is simultaneously of the negation [ἅμα τῆς ἀντιφάσεως].” Heidegger notes the contrast with the claim in chapter 3 that only rational dunameis are of opposites (1046b5; τῶν ἐναντίων). So there is obviously a difference in meaning between the key terms here. Heidegger explains that enantion refers to contraries within a genus, while antiphasis expresses simple negation (WMA, 54). Yet according to Heidegger, the terminology is completely different in Plato; in moving from Plato to Aristotle, the terminology is turned on its head. When Plato in the Sophist says that kinêsis and stasis are enantiôtata (250a8–9; most opposed), he means that the one is the negation of the other and thus what Aristotle means by antiphasis. In contrast, what Aristotle calls enantion Plato calls heteron (other). Unfortunately, no more is said on the significance of these terminological differences.

Heidegger also returns to the fundamental difference between Aristotle and Plato with regard to dunamis. The following sentence is cited, again from Θ.8: “That which is not capable of being present [ὑπάρχειν] will not be present to anything, while everything that is capable admits of not being active” (1050b9–11). Heidegger comments: “This sentence would make no sense understood platonically since Plato did not know energeia. Aristotle is therefore here in the sharpest opposition to Plato; and this has nothing to do with a theory of Ideas, as one commonly assumes” (WMA, 55). The fundamental opposition between Plato and Aristotle is not that the former “separated” the Ideas and the latter did not, but rather that the former understood being as dunamis whereas the latter identified being with energeia. The usual account of the opposition between Plato and Aristotle in terms of the separation of Ideas ignores completely the fundamental difference in their conceptions of being.

Now we finally arrive at the presentation on Duns Scotus by someone named Rohder. The topic of the presentation is the question of the knowledge of God. But this question is addressed in the closest connection with the fundamental ontological question: is there a concept of being that is common to God and creatures? The textual focus is Scotus’ Commentary on the Sentences, Book 1, Distinctio 8 dedicated to the simplicity of God. Specifically, the presentation focuses on question three of this Distinctio: whether it is compatible with the simplicity of God that he should exist in a genus (Utrum Deus sit in genere). On the one side is the view that there is no univocal concept of being we can apply to both God and creatures (and therefore no common genus to which both finite and infinite being belong). On the other side is the view that there is and that God therefore can exist in a genus. Scotus’s own view is something in-between: that there is a common, univocal concept of being for God and human beings, but that it is not common in the sense of a genus. The notes describe Heidegger as intervening at this point to note that the Middles Ages feared the doctrine of the univocity of being as leading to pantheism: if God and creatures are both being in the same sense, then does that not make God identical with creatures? Heidegger observes that such a result follows only if the univocal concept of being is understood not as a formal concept, but as a substantive concept (so that things of which the same concept of being is predicated are the same being). Such an identification, or rather confusion, of a formal concept of being with a material, substantive concept Heidegger traces back to Plato who did not at all work out the possible distinctions (WMA, 56).

Now the presentation turns to Distinctio III, questions 1 and 2: Whether God can be naturally known by the wanderer (Utrum Deus sit naturaliter cognoscibilis a viatore? As the notes exclaim, the wanderer is the human being!); Whether God is the first thing naturally known in our current state (Utrum Deus sit primum cognitum naturaliter pro statu isto?). The discussion of this text provides further clarity on what it means to say that a concept is univocal: when a concept cannot be asserted and denied of the same thing without contradiction, it is univocal. Heidegger again intervenes to explain that where one cannot distinguish between different respects in which something is A and not-A, where a concept cannot at the same time be understood in a different sense, we have a univocal concept (WMA, 57). Furthermore, a concept is univocal when it can serve as the middle term in a syllogism. To give my own example here: from the fact that only trees have bark and that a dog has a bark, it does not follow that a dog is a tree, for the reason that the middle term here, “bark,” is equivocal. In sum, a univocatio is an addressing of different things as one and the same. But now we have a crucial distinction. In the realm of beings, this univocatio takes the form of a genus: for example, both a human being and a horse are animals. But the univocatio can extend beyond beings and in this case, it does not take the form of a genus. We have here an ontological univocatio and this is the kind of univocatio at play when we say that God and creatures have the same being. What is addressed here as being the same are not different beings (God, after all, is not just one being among others), but different being (verschiedenes Sein): the being of created beings and the being of God. This, we are told, is a univocity in a stronger sense than in the case of a genus (WMA, 58).

The univocity of being is further explained through a distinction between a certain concept and a doubtful concept. The example is given of a blind person holding two books: he can be certain they are both books while remaining in doubt about which is Aristotle’s Metaphysics and which is the Hebrew Pentateuch. In the same way, one can be in doubt about the distinction between created and uncreated being and still be certain that both are being. (Heidegger notes here that it is characteristic of Scotus that he should take the concept as a substitute for being and derive his demonstrations for the question of being from purely conceptual relations.) The very fact that the concept of being should be applied differently to finite and infinite being shows that it is contained in both and therefore univocal (WMA, 59).

If being were only analogous, its concept would not be found in natural understanding. A univocal belief is at our disposal because it is taken from created things as a ratio formalis ens perfectum (which Heidegger claims to be nothing more than the Platonic Idea as what most genuinely is in beings) and then traced back to an ens perfectissimum. “In the leap from what is created to what is uncreated, the highest within created things is taken only to demonstrate the meaning [of being] in relation to it” (WMA, 59). Claiming that this is the motivation for determining human being through nous, Heidegger notes that Thomas’s determination of God as intellectus does not arise from a concrete experience, but only from a rigid orientation toward Aristotle. In contrast, Scotus emphasizes the will. The motivation in Scotus’ case is a theologia practica that seeks the knowledge of God not primarily in knowing, but in acting (Handeln). While Thomas exhibits that excess of speculation that he inherited, Scotus penetrates into concrete experiences. After him the possibilities of rational knowledge become more modest, leading to Ockham’s fides. Importantly, Heidegger sees Scotus as preparing the way for Luther, even if what Luther intends is fundamentally different.¹⁷

Now follows a passage in the notes that merits being cited in full because it summarizes clearly and distinctly the fundamental argument of the seminar:

The fundamental problem of the univocatio and analogy in the knowledge of God: Scholasticism was faced with the task of putting the knowledge of the being of God and of created being (ens infinitum and ens finitum) on a common basis. In this difficulty Scholasticism found a way out in the adoption of Greek ontology. For what was dealt with there with regard to this opposition did not fall under this opposition, for the being that was assigned to the ἀεὶ ὄν (which is in no way God) was itself determined as the ultimate and genuine being of the world. Therefore, in this homogenous ontological region within which Greek ontology moves, the difficulty does not exist at all. For Scholasticism this means that, as a result of this adoption, it succeeded neither in grasping the being of human beings in an ontologically fundamental way nor in formulating the question of the specificity [Bestimmbarkeit] of God. (WMA, 60)

In a marginal note, Metaphysics Θ.8 is identified as decisive in this regard for medieval ontology: in characterizing eternal being as truly being and as energeia, it shows eternal being to belong to the being of the world itself. In adopting this Greek “world” ontology as the common basis on which to know both the being of God and the being of creatures (humans in particular), medieval ontology was fated to fail to grasp the being of either. What, after all, does a conception of being as what is present and of what is truly being as what is truly (that is, eternally) present have to do with the distinctive being of human beings or of the God prayed to by human beings? The problem of the univocity of being between God and human beings was solved at the cost of levelling the being of both to a completely indifferent and homogenous sense of being characteristic of the objects we encounter as present-at-hand within the world.

If the Greeks did not have the problem of how there can be a common sense of being shared by both God and creatures, they had a parallel if different problem: the problem that has been given the name of “ontotheology,” the problem of the relation between being as such and the highest, most genuine being. Significantly, Heidegger claims that Aristotle overcame this problem “in a certain sense” through his interpretation of being as energeia. Ousia as the primary sense of being is itself interpreted as energeia, while the eternal being is interpreted as being in energeia. “So that in fact the ontological questioning of Aristotle concentrates itself in a unified way in the concept of ἐνέργεια” (WMA, 61). But Heidegger adds that what is thereby lost or retreats into the background is the ontic questioning that serves as the basis of this ontological questioning and is still prevalent in the Physics: the questioning of beings in motion. Thus, Heidegger asserts that Aristotle’s questioning “is dissolved into pure ontology, so that the concrete basis, the κινούμενον in its exemplary role, disappeared for him, and the task presented itself of determining in a unified way the being of the ἀεὶ ὄν, of the ἀκίνητα (mathematical object) and of the κινούμενα” (WMA, 61). Here we should note that this charge is based on two assumptions that are at least open to being challenged: (1) that energeia was for Aristotle “a purely formal ontological category” rather than grounded in the concrete activity of living in all its forms, itself experienced as different from motion; (2) that things in motion were the sole concrete basis of Aristotle’s ontology. These assumptions pervade all of the seminars that we have been examining and that remain to be examined.¹⁸

Heidegger now claims that it is not enough to become clear about the Aristotelian basis of medieval theology: we also needed to understand the concrete problems and the fundamental life experiences that motivated the Middle Ages to adopt Greek ontology in the way they did (WMA, 61–62). These motivations of course made the adoption also a transformation. Heidegger notes that the concept of energeia is more central in Aristotle than in medieval ontology and that indeed practically nothing remains of this concept in the notion of actus purus. The following puzzling claim is made: “Actus purus as ἐνέργεια would mean: the being of God is itself there in knowledge, which would be meaningless for medieval speculation” (WMA, 62). The point appears to be that energeia means “activity” and, specifically in the case of the unmoved mover, “thinking”: this is what is lost in the notion of actus purus. To interpret actus purus back into energeia would be to conceive of the medieval God as existing in and as understanding.¹⁹ One must wonder here if the aspect of energeia that is lost in the notion of actus purus is not precisely the aspect that is an interpretation of the being of human beings rather than of the being of the world; all of the examples of energeia as opposed to kinêsis that Aristotle provides in Metaphysics Θ.6 are activities of human beings, or at least, of living beings. But Heidegger does not consider this possibility here. Instead, he insists, in closing, that the notion of actus purus itself is foreign to the content of Christian faith. Nevertheless, the personal relation to God, and the original relation of faith as an access to God, continue to play a methodological role in medieval theology and anthropology (despite the adopted Greek ontology) and come fully to the fore in Luther. As was already suggested in the earlier seminar, Protestantism for Heidegger is an attempt to regain the personal relation to God at the heart of Christian faith against the adopted Greek ontology that obstructs it.²⁰ It is Luther against Aristotle, or at least against Aristotelianism; one must again wonder where Aristotle, with his interpretation of being as energeia, is left standing here.

The seminar thus comes to an end, at least as far as the notes report. One can see that the final class returns to the specific themes raised in the first class: specifically, the tension between the determination of the being of human beings as faith, with the priority this determination gives to acting over knowing, and a world-ontology that prioritizes theoretical contemplation—an ontology that, as formalized, leaves behind its own concrete basis in the experience of things in motion. The seminar thereby achieves, despite all the evident loose ends, a certain closure, ending with the thesis with which it began, a thesis that can also be summarized somewhat schematically as follows: from the concrete interpretation of beings in motion in the Physics, an ontology is abstracted and formalized that is then applied indifferently to all beings, including divine being and our own being. It is this homogenous ontology that medieval theology adopts to resolve a speculative problem, even though it is at odds with its experience of the being of human beings and the being of God in Christian faith. As is well known, Heidegger’s own analysis of human being in Being and Time appropriates this Christian experience, as the very language of that analysis shows (“fallenness,” “guilt,” “conscience,” and so on) But Being and Time is at least as indebted to Aristotle as it is to Luther. Indeed, in the next seminar we will examine, one from 1928 that thus postdates Being and Time, Heidegger will return to what we have seen him characterize as the ontic basis of Aristotle’s ontology in the Physics in order to seek there in the account of the being of motion an account of our being. If Aristotle’s ontology was really only an ontology of the world, if Aristotle’s conception of being was completely derived from the being of the world, it is hard to see how it could have been the resource it clearly was, and that the seminar of 1928 will confirm it to be, for Heidegger’s own analysis of Dasein; instead, it would have proved only an obstacle to such an analysis, just as it was for the Middle Ages. We have seen that Metaphysics Θ, even on Heidegger’s own reading, points to something beyond the narrow ontology of things produced and present-at-hand to which Heidegger confines the influence of Aristotle on the tradition. Heidegger, unlike Luther at times,²¹ is therefore most certainly not done with Aristotle.