3

The Being of Human Life from De Anima to the Nicomachean Ethics

The Seminar of WS1922/23

THE SEMINAR OF 1922/23¹ IS CLEARLY A CONTINUATION of the reading of Aristotle and of the project of developing an ontology of life that motivates this reading. It was initiated in the seminar of SS1921, even if held more than a year later and after the intervening lecture course of SS1922. The latter course represents, in the context of the seminars that preceded and succeeded it, a digression, if a very important one: it focuses on texts, specifically, the initial chapters of the Metaphysics and the Physics, not considered in the two seminars and inaugurates an interpretation of the Physics as Aristotle’s foundational ontological text that will be pursued in later seminars. The 1922/23 seminar, in contrast, continues the reading of De Anima and of Metaphysics VII begun in 1921 and transitions to a reading of Nicomachean Ethics (NE) VI, thereby bringing about a shift in focus from the ontology of life to the ontology of human life without yet completely abandoning the former. If the continuation of this seminar into the summer of 1923, to be presented and discussed in the next chapter, focuses entirely on the dianoetic virtues of Nicomachean Ethics VI, as a continuation of the previous semester it still interprets these virtues within the context of an ontology of life: a context that will be absent from Heidegger’s later analysis of these virtues, especially in the 1924/25 course on Plato’s Sophist. Apart from representing an important transitional phase in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle and in his own ontological project, the seminar is also extraordinarily rich in content and ambitious in scope—something demonstrated not only by the need, apparently not foreseen or planned, to extend the seminar another semester (a unique occurrence, to my knowledge, among Heidegger’s seminars and courses),² but also by what will be seen to be Heidegger’s decision to add to the winter seminar itself an extra four hours.

Given what will be the seminar’s focus on human life and on the virtues that represent our way of being in a world and having/unconcealing a world, it is not surprising that the first class, not dated but presumably held on November 2, 1922,³ should draw attention to our hermeneutical situation, understood as the position, direction, and scope of our “view” (Blickstand, Blickrichtung, Blickweite). As we read in the Weiss transcript, “For a philosophical interpretation, it is necessary that as much light is shed on the situation as on that which needs to be illuminated” (WPIA, 1). Applied to the reading of Aristotle, this is also the imperative, insisted on already in the SS1921 seminar, of interpreting his account of being along with how he understands his access to being: ontology and logic. Heidegger indicates that the relation between the meaning of being and how we access being is too close for the question of the nature of knowledge in Aristotle to be simply one of epistemology. In claiming that the important issues have been completely covered over since Aristotle, something for which Aristotle himself is not blameless, Heidegger explains his intense engagement with Aristotle: “It is important to understand that Western philosophy has not gotten beyond Aristotle—or what is more: it does not even understand him anymore. The helplessness is clearest in Hegelian dialectic” (WPIA, 1–2).⁴ As Heidegger goes on to say, we can succeed in interpreting the problem of knowledge only if ontology is understood. But this requires a radical questioning that is “phenomenological” in not being bound to any theory, including any theory of knowledge. Significantly, Heidegger also maintains that “radical philosophy is eo ipso historical” (WPIA, 2; see also Becker II, 3). Philosophy that is not historical is philosophy that is not clear about the situation and direction of its own questioning and therefore can never attain a more original or fundamental level of questioning. To read Aristotle is to position ourselves in the tradition that has covered up the unity he saw of ontology and logic, of the meaning of being and the access to being, but also to give ourselves the chance of recovering this more originary phenomenon. Thus the point is that we can illuminate the phenomenon only by illuminating our own inescapably historical situation.

The Becker notes also record an indication of where the more originary phenomenon is to be found: “An understanding of Aristotelian ontology and logic must commence with the ‘Physics’” (Becker II, 2). This rather extraordinary claim already indicates the central role that the Physics will play in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, not only in the seminars from the 1920s considered in the present book, but throughout the subsequent three decades. No explanation of the claim is provided here; it will emerge only when we see Heidegger in later seminars turn to the Physics not only for Aristotle’s account of the being of motion, but also for an account of the motion of being itself and of our own motion in understanding being.

Already in this first class, Heidegger introduces the topic of the dianoetic virtues in NE VI, but in connection with the concept of logos as a way in which life has itself. In explaining the dia-noia, the perceiving that sees-through, in the dianoetic virtues, Heidegger refers to 13 where Aristotle first distinguishes between the dianoetic and moral virtues by distinguishing between two parts of the soul: one that does not have logos and one that does (the dianoetic virtues belonging exclusively to the latter). Yet Heidegger suggests that this Platonic distinction is for Aristotle only the starting point and does not suffice. Aristotle does indeed suggest that this is an account of the soul found in the “exoteric logoi” (1102a26–27). If there is always some question as to what “exoteric logoi” refer to here, Heidegger understands the phrase as a reference to “the interpretation that life always has of itself” (WPIA, 2; also Becker II, 4), something Aristotle views positively, as he should, since it is what prevents philosophy from being an invented task and makes of it instead the carrying out of what is already alive in life itself. Philosophy seeks only to radicalize the interpretation that life as such always has of itself. In this context Heidegger will claim life to be distinguished by what he will later see as the distinctive characteristic of Dasein: “Life tends toward being. Life is a being that is concerned with being” (WPIA, 3; Leben tendiert auf Sein. Leben ist ein Seiendes, dem es ankommt auf Sein).⁵ It is in this context of a concern for being that characterizes the being of life as such, of life as existing always in an interpretation of its own being, that logos as representing a certain access to being is to be understood. Heidegger runs through a quick history of the concept of logos to show how it became alienated from this its original ground: interpreted by the Stoics as pneuma, taken up as such by Philo, mixed with the Old Testament, and made to mean wisdom itself, the Logos.⁶ What Heidegger asserts to be the fundamental perspective from which logos, and presumably therefore also the dianoetic virtues, are to be understood is organic life. What is distinctive of a human being is a particular kind of life: the practical life (ζώη τίς πρακτική).

Heidegger will also say here that what is distinctive of a human being is the logismos (WPIA, 4), but that itself is presumably understood as a mode of life. That Heidegger uses the term logismos to characterize what is distinctive of a human being is significant since, grounding logos in the concern for being distinctive of life as such, he appears to understand logos more broadly than logismos and thus more broadly than as a distinctive characteristic of human life. He identifies aisthêsis, and more specifically touch, with the “urphenomenon” of life, in which the power of self-nourishment (the τρέπτικον) is given (here we see the eclipse of plants that were still an object of interpretation in the 1921 seminar). Perceptiveness (Sinnlichkeit) has the character of relating to something, going toward something, apprehending it in a bodily way, thus being essential to what Heidegger characterizes as constitutive of life as such: the having of an environment (Umwelt), being-there-with (Mitdasein). Heidegger can therefore say that “bees, ants have a certain capability of circumspection [Umsichtsfähigkeit] (φρόνησις)” (WPIA, 4)⁷—and so, we can add, a certain logos. This is perhaps why Heidegger insists that the Platonic distinction between logon echon and alogon was for Aristotle only a starting point. Logos is said to have an intentional character of expressing (aussprechen) and addressing (besprechen), but as such it is to be understood in the context of that having of world that defines life. What distinguishes logismos from logos and makes it truly constitutive of human being is that it is a Besprechungszusammenhang, a relation between logoi that address something and a speaking with one another (WPIA, 4). The point to emphasize here is the way in which Heidegger is interpreting what is distinctive of human beings not in opposition to, but on the basis of, an interpretation of life as such, as a particular modification of life. Life as such is concerned with being, life as such exists in an interpretation of its being: the human logismos is only a certain modality of this, a particular type of practical life.

Now Heidegger returns to NE VI and Aristotle’s further division in chapter 2 of the part of the soul that has logos, a division according to its objects: the logistikon in relation to the things whose origins change and the epistêmikon in relation to things whose origins do not. Noting Aristotle’s claim that for each of these parts we must look for the “best ἕξις” (1139a15–16), Heidegger claims that hexis determines the being of the soul and is to be understood as an aptitude, a readiness, a being-capable. Citing the expression “he is such a man that he can do that,” Heidegger states, “Through the fact that he can is he” (WPIA, 5). Because the being of the soul is being-capable, each part of the soul has its distinctive and best capability or hexis. Heidegger also claims, citing the work of Carl Prantl (1852) in support (see especially 9ff.), that there are only two dianoetic virtues, one for each part of the soul possessing logos, despite the initial assumption at the beginning of chapter 3 that there are five. Heidegger furthermore cites Aristotle’s own claim that each virtue’s job is truth (ἀλήθεια τὸ ἔργον) (1139b12).

This claim serves Heidegger’s purpose of grounding the dianoetic virtues in the phenomenon of life. For what is alêtheia here? Heidegger insists that it is not a property of logos in the sense of a proposition. Furthermore, noting that for Aristotle alêtheia is one of the major senses of being (along with being in the sense of the categories, accidental being, and being in the sense of dunamis and energeia), he claims that it can have nothing to do here with validity or correspondence (WPIA, 5). Instead, it is to be understood privatively as un-concealment, as a bringing out of concealment, a no-longer-being-concealed. But truth thus understood characterizes the having of an environing world, the access to beings within the world, that characterizes life as such. Heidegger therefore draws attention to the “peculiar relation” that the noein characterizing both of the dia-noetic virtues has with aisthêsis. In noein is to be found that “going toward” (das Zugehen auf) that has been seen to characterize the perception distinctive of life. The point here is to emphasize the continuity, rather than to reduce noein to aisthêsis nor accordingly to reduce the capability distinctive of human life to the capability distinctive of life as such. Heidegger does this even in his choice of how to translate the two terms: noein is “vernehmendes Vermeinen,” “perceiving supposing,” while aisthêsis is “vermeinendes Vernehmen,” “supposing perceiving” (WPIA, 5). As this first class ends, the guiding perspective of “organic life” has been maintained.

The class of November 9 begins with Heidegger challenging the division between philosophical disciplines. He has not only chosen to interpret Aristotle’s ontology and logic together, but also will interpret the Nicomachean Ethics as an entry point (Eingang) into ontological investigation. Furthermore, noting that physics for Aristotle is not first philosophy because it concerns a particular domain of beings, Heidegger asserts, “We count Aristotle’s physics as ontology” (WPIA, 6). What justifies this refusal to separate the philosophical disciplines? Heidegger, in himself raising this question, proceeds to make a series of remarks that provide at least some preliminary answers. He begins by noting that an ontological investigation takes the meaning of being from a particular region of beings it considers paradigmatic. We therefore cannot separate the study of being from the study of a particular domain of being, especially if the latter guides the former. We cannot interpret Aristotle, Heidegger continues, without asking the following questions: “Which sphere of being is it that provides Aristotle with the meaning of being? In which fundamental experiences are beings experienced? What is the manner of explication of that which is experienced? What is the categorial structure? Does the consideration remain in the domain of the fundamental experiences or does a translation occur into other domains through formalization?” (WPIA, 7). The latter questions show why it is necessary to interpret Aristotle’s ontology with his logic and with his account of how being is accessed and explicated. But what of the choice to enter ontological investigation through the door of the Nicomachean Ethics? For Aristotle, investigation takes the form of theôrein, “theoretical knowing.” We cannot undertake an ontological investigation without getting clear on the manner of being of investigation itself understood as theôrein. But the context in which theôrein is to be interpreted is the Ethics. It is important to note that the Ethics is here in some way taking the place that De Anima had in the SS1921 course. There we could interpret being only through an ontology of life; here we can interpret being only by way of an interpretation of the particular manner of living that is the investigation of being. If Heidegger now in the seminar turns to the second chapter of NE VI, it is because, as he tells us, this chapter is concerned with the soul and introduces the dianoetic virtues in the context of a division between different parts of the soul, that is, different capabilities of the soul. Furthermore, as we will see, this reading of the Nicomachean Ethics will return us to the study of De Anima where it left off in SS1921.

Heidegger devotes the rest of the class to a reading of NE VI.2. Some of the ground already covered in the first class is covered again, but with more attention paid to the details of the text and in particular the meaning of the key Greek terms. I will highlight here what appear to me to be the key moves. First, while Heidegger insists that logos has “nothing to do with being ‘rational,’” he now refers to the Politics (1253a9ff.), where having logos is claimed to be distinctive of the living being that is a human being, distinguished from the signifying (σημαίνειν) found even in animals. Heidegger explains the distinction by claiming that sêmainein lacks the being-direct-toward (Darauf-gerichtet-sein) that constitutes the intentional character of logos as aussprechen and besprechen. “Animals cry out, give thereby a σημαῖον of pain, without being directed toward it” (WPIA, 8). Thus we have, in comparison to the first class, a much more definitive demarcation between a human being’s way of being in the world and that of other livings things.⁸ There is another important shift, if not change, along these lines. In the previous class, Heidegger characterized phronêsis as a kind of perception, aisthêsis tis, but now he acknowledges that this appears to be contradicted by Aristotle’s claim in VI.2 that “perception is not the principle of any action” (1139a19; ἡ αἴσθησις οὐδεμίας ἀρχὴ πράξεως). Given that phronêsis is clearly a principle of action, it just as clearly cannot be, according to what Aristotle claims here, a kind of perception. But Heidegger insists that the apparent contradiction disappears if we interpret the claim at 1139a19 as follows: “Only insofar as αἴσθησις alone is the κύριον ζωῆς [what decisively rules life], there where it alone constitutes the illumination of one’s dealings [Umgangserhellung], there can getting-around [das Umgehen] itself never have the character of action (thus the animals that have only αἴσθησις have no πρᾶξις)” (WPIA, 10). Here again we have a clearer demarcation between humans and animals: the latter, in having only perception, are not capable of action nor therefore can be said to have phronêsis, at least strictly speaking. But the “only” here also emphasizes continuity: animals do get around in illuminated dealings, do go toward things and away from things, and phronêsis is a mode of the aisthêsis they have, if also more.

Also worth noting are Heidegger’s interpretations of two key passages in NE VI.2, interpretations that will be developed further in the following class. In the first passage, already cited earlier, Aristotle distinguishes between the two parts of the soul to which the different dianoetic virtues correspond: “And let us set down as two the parts that have λόγος, one with which we contemplate the kinds of beings whose principles [ἀρχαί] cannot be otherwise [μή ἐνδέχονται ἄλλως ἔχειν], one with which we contemplate what can be otherwise [τὰ ἐνδεχόμενα]” (1139a6–8). Heidegger insists that, even if this is not so clear grammatically, the second ἐνδεχόμενα must refer back to and qualify ἀρχαί (WPIA, 10). What this means is that the part of the soul of which phronêsis is the best hexis has as its objects not simply things that admit of being otherwise, but things whose very principles admit of being otherwise. In other words, and with words that will make the significance to Heidegger even clearer, things whose very being is movement. The importance for Heidegger becomes clear when he adds that the failure to see this has resulted in false conceptions of the dianoetic virtues.

The other passage is the following: “The principle of praxis is proairesis—in the sense of that from which the movement originates, but not in the sense of that for the sake of which [οὗ ἕνεκα]—of proairesis itself [the principle is] orexis and the logos for the sake of something [λόγος ὁ ἕνεκά τινός]” (1139a31–33). Here Heidegger insists that the ho heneka tinos is not the telos, not the end, but the means, the by-which, the whole context of that which is to be produced (bewerkstelligen) in the completion of an action. The significance of this is made clear in the following claim: “προαίρεσις has as its genuine field of objects not the goal, but the situation. (The original motif of Bedeutsamkeit [significance]). Therefore the λόγος of προαίρεσις and the ὄρεξις goes toward not the τέλος, but that which is to be produced [das zu Bewerkstelligen] (καιρός)” (WPIA, 11). So what is chosen and desired is what is to be produced in the specific situation and at the apt moment, as opposed to any goal or end. Heidegger can therefore immediately add that “πρᾶξις is a determinate ποιεῖν” (WPIA, 11). That Aristotle himself will sharply distinguish between the two and use this distinction as the basis for distinguishing phronêsis from technê does not concern Heidegger here. This will prove the beginning of an assimilation of action to production in Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle and a focus on the concrete situation of action against any talk of goals (or the good!).

Picking up on a claim in this class that the practical alêtheia that agrees with “right desire” (1139a30) is to be understood not as something besides the pragma, but as this pragma itself as illuminated and unconcealed (WPIA, 10), Heidegger begins the next class of November 16 with the following interpretation: the ergon (the work) of dianoia (thought) is to put being as unconcealed at our disposal so that this unconcealment can in turn provide the space in which the object of desire can show itself and come to language (WPIA, 11). Heidegger then proceeds to provide a specific interpretation of this space, this field of objects, in which proairesis as desiring nous or dianoetic desire is operative (1139b4–5). Because he comments in detail on 1139a33–b4, I first provide the passage in as neutral a translation as possible, indicating in italics the parts of the text Heidegger ignored in his otherwise very detailed commentary; these omissions will prove significant:

Therefore neither without intuition [νοῦς] and [καὶ] thought [διανοία] nor without a disposition of character [ἠθική ἕξις] can there be choice [προαίρεσις]. For good action and its opposite in action cannot exist without thought and character. Thought itself does not move anything, except the one that is for-the-sake-of-something [ἡ ἕνεκα του] and practical. For this rules even [καὶ] the productive [thinking]. For the producer [ποιών] produces something for the sake of something, and what is produced [τὸ ποιητόν] is not an end strictly speaking [τέλος ἁπλῶς], but what is done [τὸ πρακτόν] [is]. For good action [εὐπραξία] is the end, and desire is of this. (1139a33–b4)

Wanting to emphasize the intuitive character of choice corresponding to alêtheia as what is illuminated or unconcealed, Heidegger insists that the first kai is explicative: “intuition and indeed [und zwar] thought.” Significantly, he also takes the claim that thought does not itself move anything, only practical thought does, as meaning that thought is originally practical: “theoretical” thought is thought that has lost the possibility of action (WPIA, 12; Die διανοια θεωρητικη ist eine solche, die das πραττεῖν [schon] verloren hat).

Most significant, however, is what Heidegger does with the example of productive thinking in the passage. I say “example” because the second kai I translate as “even” above makes clear both that productive thinking is only one illustration of the more general point Aristotle has made and that it is not his main focus of interest here. But Heidegger’s commentary intentionally ignores this kai; he will proceed to speak as if productive thinking were all that was at issue here. Heidegger does interpret the terms poiôn and poiêton more broadly than does my translation above, translating them as “he who carries something out” (der etwas verrichtet) and “what can be carried out” (das Verrichtbare, das Ausführbare). But this simply allows him to interpret all action according to what Aristotle says about the poiôn and the poiêton. Heidegger of course notes Aristotle’s assertion that the poiêton is not a telos absolutely speaking, but how does he interpret it? He first insists that telos has nothing to do with an end or a goal. It is to be understood as the opposite of apeiron, the unlimited or indefinite. It is an end in the sense of what completes something, gives it determinacy, indeed gives it being, as opposed to what is open-ended, incomplete, indeterminate.

Heidegger claims the notion of telos to be ontological, seeing it as characterizing beings in general and living things in particular: “Beings in their being come to an end, achieve something. Every living thing has in itself a τέλος, an end” (WPIA, 12). The telos is therefore, Heidegger claims, an originary phenomenon (Urphänomen) in Aristotle and has nothing to do with teleology. In this case, it would seem that the poiêton, the produced, cannot be paradigmatic for what counts as being since it, Aristotle insists, is not a telos strictly speaking. But Heidegger has a way of avoiding this result. The house, Heidegger explains, is not a telos absolutely speaking (ἁπλῶς) because it is for something (dwelling) and for someone. But this is simply to say that it is significant (bedeutsam), and its being is a being-significant. The house is not a telos haplôs because in its very being it belongs to a wider context of significance (Bedeutsamkeitszusammenhang). The implication is that this wider context, within which things that are strictly speaking not ends can be significant, is itself the end that defines and determines the being of that living thing that in making choices both desires and thinks, that is, the human being. Heidegger comments on the sentence in which Aristotle, after characterizing proairesis as being-thinking-desire or as desiring-thought, adds that “such a principle is the human being” (1139b5; ἡ τοιαυτὴ ἄρχη ἄνθρωπος): “It [προαίρεσις] is the fundamental phenomenon that characterizes overall the being of man. In no other ζῳόν is there such a thing. Something to hold onto for later!” (WPIA, 13). We have here a first attempt to demarcate the being of humans from the being of other living things, which will be held onto and further developed in what follows. But Heidegger here notes the important implication of this characterization of human being: human being is movement, and the end toward which this movement is directed is the field of what is to be carried out and taken care of. “The being of humans is movement [Bewegung]) and the object [das Worauf] of this movement is the προαιρετόν” (WPIA, 13). Heidegger identifies the proaireton, the object of choice, with the poiêtikon: “We encounter here a peculiar objecthood [Gegenständlichkeit]: what is to be taken care of, what concerns one (in the sense of arranging [Ausrichten], carrying out [Verrichten], finishing [Erledigen])” (WPIA, 13). The implication is that this is the field of beings determinative for Aristotle’s interpretation of the being of man.

What is striking, however, is what Heidegger leaves out of his reading and is italicized in the translation above. After saying that the poiêtikon, which he has introduced only as an illustrative example, is not a telos haplôs, Aristotle immediately adds that the prakton (what is to be done), which is his main focus here, is a telos haplôs. He explains: good action, unlike what is produced, is its own end. In sum, Aristotle distinguishes between what is produced and what is done, claiming that the latter is a telos strictly speaking and specifying that good action is a telos. Heidegger passes over all of this in silence, even though it is arguably what is most important to Aristotle. This is not merely an accidental oversight: Heidegger would not be able to draw from the poiôn-poiêtikon relation conclusions about human being if this relation were only one desiring-thinking relation among others, and not even the highest, because neither the activity of producing nor the product are ends in themselves in the way that good action is. Furthermore, recall that Heidegger already claimed in the previous class that praxis (doing) is a determinate poiein (producing): a claim that requires the present oversight in the reading of VI.2.

Heidegger next reminds his students how all of the above serves the goal of the seminar: “Our goal: to understand Aristotelian ontology, and for that it is necessary to ask how beings are there for Aristotle, from out of which domain they emerge for him” (WPIA, 14). This is not simply a matter of understanding Aristotle. Heidegger immediately adds that phenomenology grasps beings as the where-with (Womit) of dealings (Umgang). This does not prejudice knowing them since they can be first grasped only within this context of dealings. Significantly, Heidegger notes that beings already appear here in terms of the dunamis/energeia distinction, that is, as what can be grasped, dealt with, actualized. Specifically, they appear as beings whose archai admit of being otherwise (recall Heidegger’s earlier emphasis on this point), and further, “as beings having the character of concern [Besorgen] (ποιήσις πρᾶφις, θεωρία), beings coming to be, in the future, etc.” (WPIA, 14). I can uncover what it means for a being to be only when I have seen how it presents itself in these dealings, and the dianoetic virtues are ways of illuminating these dealings (ἀληθεύειν). “This,” Heidegger adds, “is the clarification of the hermeneutical situation” (WPIA, 15): ours, but presumably Aristotle’s as well.

This reference to the hermeneutical situation leads Heidegger to make some remarks on the nature of interpretation. A genuine interpretation must get clear about what it is inquiring into and from where it is inquiring. “Reading into” (das “Hineinsehen”) cannot be objected to here because seeing something in an interpretation depends on the questions I pose to the object. There is therefore nothing to object to in the “history of problems” of the Marburg school, even if there is some justification to the critique that they read Kant into Plato. What is decisive is being clear about the motivation of one’s questioning (where it is coming from) and ensuring that the questioning is appropriate to the specific domain of the object in question. Every naïve history of philosophy also interprets, but its questions are primitive and confused, that is, not philosophical.

Here again we should note, though Heidegger himself does not do so explicitly, that we have a kind of double hermeneutical situation. In interpreting 
Aristotle’s text, we need to be clear about the motivation and the direction of the questions we bring to it, but we also need to uncover from where and in what manner Aristotle himself is interpreting the phenomena, in this case, the dianoetic virtues. As we have already seen Heidegger suggest, Aristotle approaches and interprets the dianoetic virtues from within a certain conception of the phenomenon of life. Heidegger now asks the crucial question: “How does Aristotle understand life, so that he comes to see within in it a phenomenon such as ἀληθεύειν?” (WPIA, 16), that is, that phenomenon of “uncovering” or “disclosing” of which all of the dianoetic virtues are different modes? Does he interpret life as arising from nature (φύσις)? Or does he see life as adding new structures to nature? Or is life what is original for him (das Urspüngliche)? We must, Heidegger adds, both (1) see the concrete forms of the phenomena in question here (ποίησις, πράξις, ἀληθεύειν, and so forth), but also (2) the objective field (Gegenstandsfeld) in which they stand. The former goal will take us further into NE VI, but the second requires us to turn first to De Anima. Only a reading of that text will enable us to see how Aristotle understands the objective field in which the dianoetic virtues have their home, which is to say, life itself.

If the turn to De Anima is thus justified, what remains surprising is Heidegger’s choice of which part of De Anima to turn to: De Anima Γ.9. Heidegger’s explanation is that “only here in Aristotle is life grasped in its unity” (WPIA, 17). Yet in this chapter, Aristotle is turning to the kind or part of soul that causes movement from place to place, after having discussed the other kinds or parts: that which causes nutrition and reproduction, that which causes perception, and that which causes understanding. It is a part not to be found in plants and not even to be found in all animals. This chapter is therefore a very strange choice for discovering how Aristotle understands life in its unity. At the very least, Heidegger will need to interpret the text against Aristotle’s explicit intention. Perhaps this is why he prefaced his turn to the De Anima with the reflections on the nature of interpretation: “reading into” is acceptable if this allows us to grasp the phenomenon of life and grasp it even as Aristotle himself understood it without full awareness.

But how can Heidegger even pretend that the chapter is about life as such? The answer lies in his interpretation of the phrase used to describe the kind of soul at issue: kinêsis kata topon (432a17). Insisting that topos be understood very concretely as “situation” (Gelegenheit, Lage), Heidegger interprets as follows: “Going from place to place, moving around in one’s dealings [Umgang], for example, movement for the sake of procuring nourishment. Therefore, a concrete going toward something in order to take care of something [besorgen]” (WPIA, 17). The kinêsis kata topon is nothing other than the movement within which can take place that uncovering of a context of dealings that Heidegger spoke of in speaking of proairesis. But what Heidegger finds here is not simply the way of being in the world that characterizes human beings (as the principle of proairesis), but the way of being in the world that characterizes all living beings. Thus, immediately after the above interpretation of kinêsis kata topon, Heidegger observes: “Therefore for each living being is its world there” (WPIA, 17). Ignoring for the moment, at least as far as the transcripts reveal, the distinction Aristotle makes at the beginning of the chapter between the discriminative faculty of the soul (τῷ τε κριτικῷ) (432a16), whose function is perception and thought, and the part that causes movement in place,⁹ Heidegger proceeds to characterize having a world as involving a krinein that is not “judgment,” but rather that selecting, drawing-out (abheben, herausfassen) that already characterizes perception.

It is in this context that we find the explanation for Heidegger’s earlier claim that Aristotle was not satisfied with Plato’s distinction between alogon and logon echon: a claim he makes again in this class, finding the distinction inherited from Plato in the Magna Moralia (1182a24) and adding: “Aristotle in general determines the being of the soul (das Seelische) anew against Plato and all previous philosophy” (WPIA, 16). The textual support, though not cited as such in the transcript, is found in De Anima Γ.9 where Aristotle explicitly claims that the Platonic distinction is insufficient and as one reason notes that “one could not easily set down [the perceptive part of the soul (τὸ αἰσθητικόν)] as being either ἄλογον or λόγον ἔχον” (432a30–31). This means that one could not so easily distinguish humans from other animals as the logon echon versus the alogon, even if a particular kind of logos is distinctive of human being. Discriminating going-around in one’s surroundings, having a world (topos) in this movement, characterizes the being of all living things. That Heidegger should give as his example of kinêsis kata topon procuring nourishment, the most basic function of life, is not accidental. Furthermore, Heidegger appeals to a passage from De motu animalium that is reproduced in full in the transcript at the end of the notes for this class. It is worth, therefore, reproducing the passage here: “For all living things [τὰ ζῷα] both move and are moved [κινεῖ καὶ κινεὶται] for the sake of something [ἕνεκά τινος], so that this is for them the limit [πέρας] of all movement: the for-the-sake-of-which [τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα]. We see that what moves the living thing are thought and imagination and choice [προαίρεσις] and wish and desire. But all of these can be taken back to thought and desire. For perception and imagination occupy the same place as thought. For all of these are discriminating, but they differ according to the distinctions spoken of elsewhere” (700b16–21; emphasis in transcript).

This passage clearly serves two purposes. First, by being read with De Anima Γ.9, it makes it easier to see the latter as concerned with the movement that characterizes all living things, rather than with a particular kind of movement that characterizes only some animals (as for plants, if they are overlooked here by Heidegger, so are they by Aristotle in De motu). Secondly, the refence in the passage to the “for-the-sake-of” and to proairesis makes the connection between De Anima Γ.9 and ΝΕ VI.2, a relation that Heidegger at the end of the class maintains to be a close one (engen Bezug) (WPIA, 18). Indeed, recall that what Heidegger found in NE VI.2 is a characterization of human being as movement (Bewegung). The turn to De Anima Γ.9 is clearly motivated by the conviction that we cannot understand the specific movement that is the human being nor the specific forms of alêtheuein that characterize this movement (the dianoetic virtues), without an understanding of the movement that characterizes life as such.

The class of November 23 begins with Heidegger claiming that, in order to get clear on the kind of being alêtheuein has, we must see how Aristotle determines the being of the soul. “What meaning does ἀληθεύειν have, with respect to its being, within life?” (WPIA, 19; my emphasis). To answer this question, we must turn to De Anima Γ.9 because it deals with the movement (Bewegung) of the living thing as a movement within its world (κάτα τόπον). But Heidegger first recalls the determination of the soul in Book II as the eidos and the ousia of living things, insisting on the correlation with logos (made explicit by Aristotle in the phrase οὐσία ἡ κατὰ τὸν λόγον at 412b10–11): the soul is determined according to how it shows itself (eidos) and how it is had, possessed (ousia) in being spoken of and addressed (WPIA, 19–20). Only then does Heidegger turn back to Γ.9, this time noting Aristotle’s opening distinction between two ways in which the soul can be: (1) krinein, that is, being confronted with something, having something lie over against it (ἀντικείμενον), having a world; and (2) moving within the world, taking its place within the world, the kinêsis kata topon. That Heidegger understands this movement as a “relating oneself to a world” is made clear when he insists that being at rest (στάσις, ἠρεμεῖν) is one way in which this movement takes place. In case students still doubt the need to work through this difficult Aristotelian text, Heidegger observes: “These are completely fundamental things that only Aristotle saw and philosophically formulated. Before him they were never so seen and later were lost again” (WPIA, 20).

Heidegger’s detailed reading of Γ.9 continues. A crucial point is how he interprets Aristotle’s question at 432a19 concerning the part of the soul that causes movement: “what then is it of the soul (τί ποτέ ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς)?” This is normally taken to be the question of where it belongs or where it is to be located in the soul. Yet Heidegger reformulates the question as follows: “What does the κινοῦν signify for the ontological constitution of the living thing?” (WPIA, 21). This question assumes that at issue is the ontological constitution of the living thing as such and that movement is central to this constitution. In support of Heidegger, it can be said that Aristotle does proceed to mention the possibility that the answer to his question is “the whole soul” (432a20; πᾶσα ἡ ψυχή). Yet the possibility that the faculty of motion is to be located in a specific part of the soul, separable either in extension or account, is also considered. Furthermore, even if the faculty of motion were to be located in the whole soul, it would still be one faculty among others, distinct from the discriminating faculties of perception and thought. But as we have seen, what matters to Heidegger is to bring out of the text, or “read into” it, an account of the movement that constitutes the very being of living things. Though he notes Aristotle’s question of whether the faculty of motion is a separate part of the soul (χωριστόν), he interprets the question as “whether something has the fundamental function of independently [eigenständig] constituting the being of life” (WPIA, 21). Thus the question is in either case whether and how movement constitutes the being of life.

The expression chôriston logôi (separable in account) sends Heidegger on an important tangent. He interprets the phrase as meaning “independent with regard to how it appears” (Ansehen), with the justification that eidos is always the correlate of logos. Referring back to the claim at 413b29 that the perceiving and opining parts of the soul differ in logos, he interprets this to mean that they differ phenomenally. This leads to an assertion of the importance of the general principle that Aristotle articulates at the very start of Book II, chapter 2: in order to arrive at what is clear and better known according to logos, we need to start with what is unclear but most manifest (413a11; ἐκ τῶν ἀσαφῶν μὲν φανερωτέρων δὲ). The point Heidegger apparently wishes to make is that we must begin with how life presents itself phenomenally, which is in an indistinct, undifferentiated way, before seeking to grasp it according to the distinct ways in which it appears to logos. Significantly, Heidegger here reintroduces plants into the discussion, saying of them exactly what he had in SS1921: “The original phenomenon: plants grow in all directions. This is the first thing that presents itself phenomenally. Here the primitive direction is given for that which emerges and defines itself in ontology. For us today it is difficult to see this primitiveness” (WPIA, 22). Starting with this phenomenon, what needs to be articulated is the why that explains it and this why is the soul characterized as archê in this same chapter. Though this is not said here explicitly, one must ask if the movement thematized in Γ.9 is the principle that explains even this primitive phenomenon of the plant growing in different directions.

Returning to Γ.9, Heidegger continues his reading by commenting on Aristotle’s question of whether the faculty of motion, if a part of the soul, is a distinct one beyond the parts we are accustomed to speak of and that have been said, or “some one of these” (432a22; τούτων ἕν τι). Heidegger claims that the latter is the right option as the faculty of motion will be located in nous and orexis (desire) (WPIA, 23).¹⁰ But this is to say that it will be located in proairesis since Heidegger proceeds to quote Aristotle’s claim in Γ.10 that if nous and orexis both cause movement, it must be according to something common to both (433a22; κατὰ κοινὸν εἶδος). What is common to both, Heidegger asserts, is proairesis. If this is not fully explicit here, it is in another text he cites from De motu animalium: “choice is common to thought and desire” (700b23; ἡ δὲ προαίρεσις κοινὸν διανοίας καὶ ὁρέξεως). But in locating the faculty of movement in proairesis, are we not reducing the movement that constitutes the being of life to the movement distinctive of the being of humans? After all, Heidegger here again claims: “προαίρεσις is ἀρχή and indeed of man” (WPIA, 23). Heidegger does not address this question here, but what he does do is end the class with an account, not of proairesis as the unity of two specific forms of alêtheuein (nous and orexis), but of alêtheuein as such that clearly makes it constitutive of all life. This part of the transcript is worth quoting in full: “ἀληθεῦειν itself is something that in a determinate way is ontologically, or with respect to being, constitutive for living things. Living things have their environing world that is there for them. . . . For living things something is always already there as uncovered. World is there insofar as the living being is itself something that draws out [abhebt]. Only a determinate region of the world is drawn out; the rest is dark. Life has in itself this meaning: that it in moving along makes what was previously hidden visible, makes it available [verfügbar] in its being” (WPIA, 23–24; this set of claims is recorded almost identically in Becker II, 9). The question that remains is what modification this alêtheuein, which characterizes the being in the world of all life, undergoes in becoming the proairesis that is the distinctive principle of human beings.

The opening of the November 30 class gives important indications regarding the direction of Heidegger’s interpretation. He tells his students that among the different forms of alêtheuein, scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) will be his special focus. Why? Because we will need to consider the concrete presentation of epistêmê in the Physics in order to explain how Aristotle understands the being of motion (Bewegung). Only from the perspective of this understanding does it become possible to understand De Anima “in a genuine sense” (WPIA, 24). If, as we have seen, what emerges as the being of humans in De Anima is a certain type of movement, then the turn to the account of movement in the Physics becomes necessary to understand genuinely what is presented in De Anima. We could say that scientific knowledge can understand itself as a certain type of movement only by making movement as such its object in the Physics. In general, the ontology of life is only a first step toward the ontology of movement. The claim, in the version recorded by Becker, is that “κίνησις is the primary phenomenon; first by way of a detour through physics is De Anima to be understood” (Becker II, 9). Therefore, though Heidegger will pursue in this class his reading of De Anima, he insists that the present interpretation is a preliminary one aiming only to appropriate the perspectives in which beings as beings present themselves to Aristotle and to explain why, in this context, the being of living beings in particular becomes a question for him.

Heidegger returns to Γ.9 and the kinêsis kata topon which he has characterized as Umgang. How does the “beingness” (Seinshaftigkeit) of living things come into question here? Heidegger looks for Aristotle’s understanding of the being of living things in the unity of nous and orexis, in what is common to both. Again he cites De motu 700b23 as evidence that Aristotle was himself concerned with this unity as well as the passage in Γ.10 where Aristotle writes, “What causes motion is one, the desirable [τὸ ὀρεκτικόν]. For if two, thought and desire, caused motion, they would cause motion according to some common form [κοινόν τι εἶδος]” (433a21–22). Heidegger insists that the “if” is not counterfactual because it is possible that both are indeed the cause of motion (WPIA, 25; Becker II, 9; für möglich gehalten).¹¹ The problem is that Aristotle appears immediately to reject this possibility in observing that thought cannot move anything without desire while desire can move us against reason (433a25; παρὰ τὸν λογισμόν). Yet Heidegger is not denying that desire is being given a certain priority by Aristotle. On the contrary, he concludes that “the fundamental character of the ζῴον is ὄρεξις. With its being is its world there, and indeed as something out toward which the ζῷον exists. Νοῦς is only the distinguishable moment [abhebbare Moment] that characterizes for the ζῷον the being-there [Dasein] that is in some way illuminated” (WPIA, 25; see also Becker II, 10). Desire is the way in which the living thing is in its world and has its world; thought only characterizes the aspect of being, uncovered and illuminated, entailed by its being there in the world. Heidegger in this context criticizes Brentano for maintaining that representations ground the other acts of the soul, a view that makes the noêton (the intelligible) the foundation of the orekton (the desirable)—a view that misses the “original Aristotle” (WPIA, 25). Something that supports the foundational, and therefore difficult to grasp, role played by orexis is a striking confusion Heidegger notes in the texts. If we look at W. D. Ross’s edition of De Anima for Oxford Classical Texts, we find the part that causes motion called the orekton (the desired object) at 433a18–19, the orektikon (the desirable) at 433a21, and orexis at 433b1. If we look at the textual apparatus, we also see great disagreement between the manuscripts on which term to read where. As Heidegger notes, “this lack of agreement testifies to the difficulty of the problem” (WPIA, 24). Indeed, if Heidegger is right in seeing in orexis the fundamental characteristic of the living thing as being in and having its world, this confusion becomes explicable: on this fundamental ontological level, the three phenomena of having a world (orexis), of world (orektikon, possibility) and of objects encountered within the world (orekton, the actual) constitute a unitary phenomenon. The difficulty from which the confusion of terms arises may thus be the difficulty of grasping this unitary phenomenon.

In granting this priority to desire, Heidegger has not abandoned his effort to locate the being of living things in the unity of desire and thought. Therefore, immediately after the claim that orexis is what is originary, he adds: “but not purely in itself, it itself is in turn only a moment that does not grasp the being of the ζῴον [the living being]” (WPIA, 25). As evidence that Aristotle did not fully and purely grasp what is truly originary here, Heidegger cites the fact that already in Aristotle are to be found the motives for the priority given later to nous over orexis (as already noted in Brentano).¹² Recall Heidegger’s observation at the start of the seminar that Aristotle is not entirely blameless for the later restriction of the question of the nature of knowledge to epistemology. But if both nous and orexis are only moments of a more original and unitary phenomenon, what is this phenomenon? Heidegger does not leave us guessing. Both nous and orexis are only “categorial interpretations” of movement (κίνησις) in the specific determination of poiein or, as is significantly added in brackets, “of πρᾶξις in the wider sense” (WPIA, 26).¹³ We see once more the movement that is life identified with a productive movement of bringing things about, dealing with and taking care of things; and so too we see poiêsis not only not being distinguished from praxis, but encompassing it as the broader term. If we have any doubts about this, Heidegger continues: “ποιήσις is the genuine concretion of κίνησις and ὄρεξις. As ποιοῦν the ζῷον lives in care, in being out toward something [Aussein auf etwas]” (WPIA, 26). Heidegger adds that contemplative activity (θεωρεῖν) is only a modification of this movement as a no-longer-needing-to-care, as a now-only-looking-at—what the Becker transcript describes as “the purest κίνησις” (Becker II, 11). The important conclusion is that “κίνησις is the fundamental phenomenon because it is the beingness [Seinshaftigkeit] of the living thing” (WPIA, 27). But this movement is itself understood entirely from the perspective of productive comportment.

As has already been noted, it seems odd to seek an account of the being of all living things as such in the account of kinêsis kata topon in De Anima Γ.9 as arising from the unity of nous and orexis (even with Heidegger’s qualification that nous is to be understood broadly as any kind of Vermeinen).¹⁴ It must strike one as even odder to see in the dianoetic virtues of NE VI the different modes of this movement that characterizes all life. Yet referring now to the list of the five dianoetic virtues (at the start of VI.3) by which the soul alêtheuei through affirming and denying, Heidegger characterizes them as “ways of being of a living being” (Weisen des Seins eines Lebewesen). One gets the impression that no matter how much Heidegger may continue speaking of das Lebewesen here, what he really has in focus is human being. Nevertheless, the equation we find in the transcript is the following: “living = being in a world” (WPIA, 28; Am Leben sein = in einer Welt sein).

In this context, Heidegger makes a claim of great importance for explaining why he is treating the ontology of life as foundational for ontology as such: the world encounters the living being in the way that accords with the manner of being of this living being. What the world “is” depends on how the living being that has the world itself “is.” In the words of the transcript, “All ontological distinctions grow out of a determinate ontology of life. With the transformation of the beingness of the living being, the being of its world is also transformed. As its world encounters it, so is the living thing” (WPIA, 27). As an illustration, Heidegger claims that the distinction between practical and theoretical nous-orexis is an ontological distinction grounded in the ontology of life, determining how the world is encountered in each case: as prakton or purely as an eidos. Again one must wonder if we are really dealing with an ontology of life rather than an ontology of human life. In any case, even if the focus is increasingly on the latter, Heidegger evidently wants to preserve the connection with the former. Theoretical nous-orexis is only a modification of the practical, and the practical can be understood broadly enough to apply at least to all animals (plants remain a problem): every animal is “out toward” its world in such a way as to exist in a relation of pursuit and avoidance to what it encounters within the world (ὄρεξις), and for every animal this object of positive or negative desire, as well as the world within which alone something can be desirable, must be in some way disclosed (νοῦς). The class ends with Heidegger noting a certain indecisiveness on Aristotle’s part concerning the relative priority of nous and orexis. Γ.10 begins with the following sentence: “It seems that these two are the cause of motion, either ὄρεξις or νοῦς” (433a9). Heidegger comments on the oddness of this “either-or” (ἢ . . . ἢ): is it an aporetic “either-or,” even if what follows seems to settle in some way for both? He notes that we find the same “either-or” in the Nicomachean Ethics: proairêsis is either (ἢ) “desiring thought” (ὀρεκτιὸς νοῦς) or (ἢ) “thinking desire” (ὄρεξις διανοητική) (1139b4–5). Presumably, Heidegger sees this indecisiveness as arising from a failure to grasp fully and purely the underlying movement that defines life as such.

The class of December 7 turns without explanation to De Anima II.12 and is dedicated entirely to a reading of the first few lines of this chapter. As Heidegger himself notes, this chapter seeks to explain in what way perception receives its object. A central point is that perception is affected (πάσχειν) by its object in the form of receiving it (δέχεσθαι). As Heidegger notes, plants are capable of being affected by an object, but this being-affected is not perceiving because it is not a receiving (WPIA, 28; see 424a32–b3). To explain the nature of this receiving, Aristotle uses the famous example of the ring being imprinted upon the piece of wax:

In general we need to grasp with regard to all perception that perception is what is capable of receiving [δεκτικόν] the perceptible forms without the matter, as the wax receives the imprint [σημεῖον] of the ring without the iron and gold; it takes on [λαμβάνει] the gold or bronze imprint, but not insofar as it is gold or bronze. In a similar way, the perception of each thing is affected by the thing possessing color or taste or sound, but not in so far as it is said to be each of these things [ἑκάστον ἐκείνων], but in so far as it is of such a kind [τοιονδί], and according to the λόγος. (424a17–24)

One thing Heidegger’s reading does is emphasize the perspective of logos, even to the point of claiming that a legesthai is to be inserted after toiondi: “not in so far as it is said to be each of these things, but in so far it is said to be of such a kind.” Even his insistence on interpreting hekaston etymologically (from ἕκας), as what is separated and furthest, has the point of making it what is separated and furthest from the perspective of logos: “the furthest individual,” as Becker has it (Becker II, 12). As for the final logos in the cited passage, Heidegger notes Aristotle’s characterization of ais-thêsis a few lines later as logos tis (424a27–28). Heidegger translates logos here as “ein Anspruch” (“a claim”), but he notes that the tis is important in qualifying the logos in question as being “something like” an Ansprechen (WPIA, 29). What he takes to be indicated here is the intentionality of perception. But Aristotle proceeds to note that this intentionality, this logos, can be destroyed, or rather dissolved (λύεται), by an excess in the object of perception: an extremely loud sound can destroy one’s hearing, an extremely bright light one’s vision, and so forth. Heidegger makes the observation that in these cases there is a being-affected, but no perception because no receiving of the object. Furthermore, a crucial though parenthetical remark reminds us of Heidegger’s interpretation of SS1921: “(Opposition γένεσις σωτηρία)” (WPIA, 29). Recall Heidegger’s observation in the interpretation of De Anima II.5 that perception is not altered, does not become something else, in being affected by its object; instead it is preserved, saved in its being in being affected and, we can now add, in being affected in the special mode of receiving. Aristotle’s examples of how the logos of perception can be dissolved by an extreme in the object of perception are examples of how, when perception undergoes a real alteration, a genesis, there is no perception because no sôtêria, no preserving or saving of perception in the reception of its object. Now we have the further specification that what is preserved or saved here is a logos where logos cannot mean merely “relation” because the destruction of the sense by the sensible object is still a relation. Instead, since it is an extreme that destroys the logos, the latter notion is tied to that of proportion, measure (mesotês). What Aristotle is seeking to grasp, according to Heidegger, is the intentionality that is the ontological determination of life: all living things are in their very being directed toward something (WPIA, 30). Commenting on 424a30–31, where Aristotle says that the logos is dissolved to the extent that the kinêsis is stronger than the sense, Heidegger insists that by kinêsis Aristotle here means poiêsis: the sensible object produces something in the sense. Once again we see the determination to interpret as poiêsis the movement that defines life as such.

The next class, December 14, returns to the general problem of the ontology of life. Given his eventual abandonment of the concept life and of any talk of an ontology of life, it is significant that Heidegger here insists that the concept is not to be dispensed with (nicht abzuschaffen), however historically loaded it may be. The goal is to arrive at its origin, creating the possibility of seeing the object life ontologically.¹⁵ That the focus here is on human life becomes clear when we read in the transcript: “Life = the kind of being of human existence [menschlichen Daseins]” (WPIA, 31). Likewise, after claiming that psychology and the theory of knowledge bar access to the phenomenon of life by focusing on experiences (Erlebnisse) and that Aristotle knew nothing of the latter but understood phenomena like nous and aisthêsis as ways of being,¹⁶ Heidegger continues: “ἀληθεύειν is no form of experience, no act of consciousness, but a way of being, and indeed an exceptional way of being, and indeed of the being of man” (WPIA, 31). Yet if the focus is thus on human life, it is still on human life: in other words, Heidegger is still choosing to interpret human being by way of an interpretation of the being of life: he refuses to dispense with the latter concept.

After claiming that even phenomenology is not up to the task of uncovering the phenomena here because it remains too much in the tradition of psychology and the theory of knowledge, Heidegger characterizes the task of genuine phenomenology as that of accessing “primitive Dasein” through a “destruction” that itself must be guided by a sense of the being of what is being accessed here. What is the sense of being that must guide us here? “Genuine being is neither that of the subject nor that of the object, but precisely the being of the living being in dealing with its world. (Facticity) It is in this way that phenomenology in its results arrives at realism” (WPIA, 32). Arriving at realism is precisely the motive for returning to Aristotle. Heidegger characterizes it as a “detour” (Umweg), but a necessary one given our inability to free ourselves of all the conceptual baggage we carry today. That philosophy has become difficult is only a sign of its failure in relation to the problem of facticity. By “ontology of facticity” Heidegger means an ontology between subjectivity and objectivity: “A world is in the being of a life” (WPIA, 33). Note that here facticity is a characteristic of the human being only as a living being.

Heidegger also makes a methodological point regarding the return to Aristotle. “A critique of Aristotle is not a critique of his philosophy, but a critique of the use of Aristotelian categories in which we live without having appropriated them in an original way, without having grasped them in relation to his situation, not ours” (WPIA, 33). But what is Aristotle’s situation? How does he experience the being of living things? “Aristotle saw this being of life in an originary way and with a view to what he characterized as φύσις, not in isolation. . . . φύσις on its side is interpreted from the perspective of determinate ways of being of human life (ποιήσις)” (WPIA, 33). Here we have a clear statement of the thesis that has been guiding Heidegger’s reading: the being of life is interpreted in terms of the being of movement which equals the being of nature, and the latter is interpreted from the perspective of the productive movement that is a determinate way of being of human life. This thesis of course requires us to read De Anima, the Physics, and the Ethics together, just as Heidegger does.

With the claim that aisthêsis is a way of being “in which the world is there in a determinate way for the living being,” Heidegger returns to the account of aisthêsis in De Anima II.12, and in particular to its characterization as a logos tis. But this leads immediately to a detour through another text. To understand the relation between aisthêsis and logos, we need to get clear on the meaning of the latter notion and in particular to see that the fundamental function of logos, in both its theoretical and broader sense, is dêloun (to make manifest). For this purpose, Heidegger turns to the initial chapters of the Peri hermêneias.¹⁷ Despite the claim that dêloun also characterizes logos in the broadest sense, what Heidegger focuses on and stresses in the Peri hermêneias is the characterization of theoretical logos as apophantikos as opposed to merely sêmantikos. What is decisive in legein, per this characterization, is “that it [legein] relates itself to the object, to being, [that] in dealing with being [it] wants to illuminate it” (WPIA, 34): an alêtheuein that, as Heidegger notes, always brings with it the possibility and the danger of concealment (ψεύδεσθαι). But after this brief excursus, Heidegger returns to De Anima with the important claim that the alêtheuein of perception and thought is much more originary than that of speaking (WPIA, 35). Aisthêsis is a krinein and belongs to the discriminative part of the soul because out of the multiplicity of what is given to the living thing in its world, it lifts out something (abheben) and brings it to view in itself; presumably, this is what first makes it possible to address something in speech. If perception is a logos tis, this is because it itself carries out the original function of logos, namely dêloun, but at a much more fundamental level than theoretical assertion.

We next get an explanation of why Heidegger has maintained that De Anima can be understood only through the Physics. Noting the central importance of the notions of paschein, dunamis, and energeia in accounting for the being of aisthêsis, Heidegger claims that these notions become understandable only through an interpretation of the Physics. Therefore, we can arrive at a genuine interpretation of De Anima only after knowledge of the Physics. For now, before turning to the Physics, we can consider only the descriptive function of these notions. And these are not the only key notions. Another one to which Heidegger now turns, claiming it to have special significance for the being of life, is mesotês (mean).

Heidegger notes that prior to Aristotle mesotês had been associated with health. But he refuses to take it as a purely medical concept signifying the balance between contrary forces in the body. Instead, he equates the healthy human being with the genuine human being, thereby making mesotês an ontological concept (WPIA, 36). Heidegger further notes that this concept entails the concepts of contraries and negation so central to Aristotle’s account of kinêsis (again we see the Physics in the background). He then cites two passages to show how perception itself is understood in terms of these concepts: “for all perception appears to be of one contrariety (πᾶσα γὰρ αἴσθησις μιᾶς ἐναντιώσεως εἶναι δοκεῖ), as sight is of white and black, hearing of high and low, taste of bitter and sweet” (422b23–25); “perception is a kind of mean between contraries in the perceptible objects” (424a4–5; ὡς τῆς αἰσθήσεως οἱον μεσότητος τινος οὖσης τῆς ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς ἐναντιώσεως). Then citing a claim in Book I to the effect that perceiving one contrary suffices to discern (κρίνειν) the other (411a3–4), Heidegger concludes that it is as a mesotês that perception can be kritikon (WPIA, 37). The goal of all of this is to understand the way in which the living thing is situated in its world: situated in the middle between contraries, it can reveal and discern the objects it encounters within this field of contraries.

The class of December 21, the last of the year, begins as did the previous one with general remarks on the goal of the seminar. Just as he began the previous class by asserting that life is not a concept to be dispensed with, so here he asserts that “life is the decisive concept of being” (WPIA, 37). At the same time he tells us that “facticity” is his terminology “for the way of being of human existence” (my emphasis), even though he immediately proceeds to characterize it as a relation between life and its world; Becker records him as saying simply that “life is the being of humans” (Becker II, 15). Philosophy’s relation to this facticity, Heidegger continues, is not an external one and not a problem of the theory of knowledge, since facticity lives constantly in an interpretation of itself and thereby always lives with a piece of history. The goal is to access this facticity by breaking through the historical interpretations that have encumbered it. Ontology and logic should not be seen as limping behind the sciences but as having the goal of opening their eyes to the things themselves through the positive construction of the way of being of their specific field of beings. In this context Heidegger explains once more the motivation for returning to Aristotle: “Aristotle was truly serious about seeing and explaining what was seen” (WPIA, 38). If some have claimed that Christian psychology went further and deeper than the Greek (Heidegger cites Dilthey here), the important insights in Paul and Augustine were rooted in faith: “From a philosophical perspective, they remain behind Aristotle. Aristotle [was] never again reached” (WPIA, 39; cf. Becker II, 17).¹⁸ This is why we investigate Aristotle with regard to his ontology, which is to say, with regard to the field of being that was paradigmatic for him and how he explained it. “What does it mean for Aristotle that life relates itself to a world?” (WPIA, 39) As we have seen, Aristotle interprets this relation as alêtheuein and interprets the latter as a way of being of the soul. But now Heidegger adds that Aristotle originally won the concept of alêtheuein from aisthêsis, so that his treatment of the latter is of fundamental significance. We thus return to De Anima and the account of aisthêsis found there.¹⁹

What Heidegger notes now is what he calls the broadest determination of aisthêsis, that is, as an alloiôsis (alteration). But he insists on the lesson of his careful reading of De Anima II.5 in SS1921: if alloiôsis is the traditional concept in terms of which aisthêsis was understood before Aristotle, Aristotle himself recognizes that it only appears to be a kind of alloiôsis (δοκεῖ γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις τις εἶναι) and that both this term and paschein are not the proper terms here (κυρίοις ὀνόμασιν) that can really express what they intend. Perception is not affected in the sense of being actually altered or transformed, but only in the sense of receiving (δέχεσθαι) the form. Sharply distinguishing this peculiar form of paschein is the task, Heidegger notes, of II.5 and II.12.

The notion of dechesthai receives a further determination through that of krinein and the latter, as we saw in the preceding class, through the notion of the middle-point (μέσον). Summing up all of these determinations, Heidegger points out that they are not additive; all express the same phenomenon (WPIA, 41). This includes the determination not much discussed yet: that aisthêsis is a dunamei on, a being in capability, which Heidegger interprets as meaning that it is “a determinate can, related to what stands against it (Gegenhafte). Not empty possibility, but determinate positive disposition. There is a reference there to that which it can” (WPIA, 41).²⁰ Heidegger also makes reference to the fact that the dechesthai is one that becomes what it perceives and thus is as the world is.

A final observation to end the class brings back into the picture the paradigm of productive comportment or poiêsis. Asking the question of whether bodies without soul will be affected by sensible objects like sounds and odors, Aristotle uses for “affect” the Greek verb poiein (424b14). Heidegger’s comment is simple and emphatic: “ποιεῖν = production of, making into something” (WPIA, 41; herstellen von, zu etwas machen). This leaves us wondering, of course, how the action of a sensible object on another body, especially in the case of a sensible object acting on a perceptive body, can be understood according to the model of producing and making. But as we have seen, Heidegger is determined to interpret the kinêsis underlying all of the determinations of aisthêsis above as a poiêsis.

The class of January 4, 1923, opens with a distinction Heidegger already implied in his earlier account of the relation between De Anima and the Physics, that is, what he here characterizes as a distinction between two levels of ontological consideration: (1) description of the Aristotelian ontological categories, and (2) their interpretation. As he has already suggested, he is here leaving the second aside, even if he acknowledges that the two levels cannot be completely separated, and presumably because he is focusing on De Anima and the Ethics and not yet turning to the Physics.

The specific task of the present class is to discuss the following two theses (and presumably to show that they are not as incompatible as they might appear): (1) the genuine bearer of being-true is the judgement, and (2) perception, insofar as it carries out a determinate way of knowing, can also in a certain way be characterized as true. Regarding the first thesis, Heidegger notes that Aristotle was the first to arrive at the fundamental insight that it is the logos that is true or false. The logos in question here, as was noted in the preceding class through the citation of the Peri hermêneias, is the logos apophantikos the speaking that discloses by affirming or denying something of something. Such a logos involves a dianoiein, a thinking of something as something and thus a combination (σύνθεσις) and division (διαίρεσις) in thought. But Heidegger insists on the point that this speaking and thinking are just a way of developing, carrying out (Vollzugsweise) how we see the thing itself and therefore a way of carrying out nous and aisthêsis (WPIA, 43; Heidegger joins the two here with the claim νοῦς αἴσθησις τίς). But in this case perception is alêthes (disclosive) in a more original way than logos. Both theses need to be rejected or fundamentally revised: the second thesis should be that perception is originally true, and the first should be that logos is only derivatively a bearer of truth and falsehood (cf. Becker II, 19–20). That the relation of logos to truth is derivative allows Heidegger to maintain that alêtheuein is an ontological determination that defines the way of being of living things (WPIA, 44; des Lebenden). But this seems to have the strange implication that our way of being as humans is derivative, since the class concludes with the claim that in the being of humans as logon echon everything is so thoroughly determined by dianoia that any “simple grasping” (schlichtes Erfassen) can be brought about only artificially (künstlich). In other words, all of our alêtheuein is a dia-noiein. Indeed, though Heidegger does not note this here, recall that all of the dianoetic virtues (even nous!) are described by Aristotle as an “ἀληθεύειν τῷ καταφάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι,” an “unconcealing through asserting or denying” (NE 1139b15).

The next class, January 11, pursues the theme of human nous by turning to the account of nous as a faculty of the soul in De Anima III.4. The account of nous is not confined to this chapter, which describes a nous whose nature is nothing other than a being-capable (429a22; ὅτι δυνατός), but continues into chapter 5 with the introduction of a distinct productive nous (ποιητικόν) whose essence is pure activity (430a18; τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια). Surprisingly, despite what we would assume to be Heidegger’s interest in a nous that is productive in the sense of producing all things (430a15; τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν), given the paradigmatic status he grants poiêsis, and despite his claim reported in the transcript that chapter five represents “a higher stage of interpretation” than chapter 4 (WPIA, 44), he will not turn to it after interpreting chapter 4, turning instead to Metaphysics VII.²¹ It is the latter text that then becomes the exclusive focus of the seminar until the end of the semester and for reasons that have yet to be seen.

In interpreting chapter 4, Heidegger cites A. Torstrik’s important edition of De Anima and judges probable its thesis of two different redactions of the text toward the start of the chapter, though this thesis appears to play no role in Heidegger’s own reading.²² One thing Heidegger stresses as important and that supports a thesis of the preceding class is Aristotle’s description of nous as that “by which the soul thinks and supposes” (429a23; ᾡ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή). Commenting on the first verb in this sentence, Heidegger reasserts his position of the previous class: “The genuine being of the νοῦς of the soul is διανοεῖν. The human νοῦς is addressing (Ansprechen), taking-for (Dafürhalten)” (WPIA, 45). If alêtheuein is “preserving something as disclosed, bringing it into possession” (corresponding to a conception of being as what is had [Sein als Bestiz, οὐσία]), this occurs in human life only in the form of taking something as something. This of course introduces the possibility of mistaking and this is what Heidegger takes to be the significance of the second verb. Hupolêpsis is the kind of thinking that admits the possibility, containing it in itself, of supposing something to be what it is not. Epistêmê and phronêsis are of course distinct from hupolêpsis in not admitting this possibility of error (Aristotle makes precisely this distinction at NE VI.3, 1139b16–18) and Heidegger characterizes this distinction as one concerning the relational sense and character of completion of life itself (Bezugssinn und Vollzugscharakter des Lebens) (on all the above cf. Becker II, 21–22).

It is therefore precisely with a reference to the discussion of the dianoetic virtues as ways of alêtheuein in NE VI that the next class of January 24 begins before turning back to De Anima III.4. Noting that to these different ways of alêtheuein corresponds, on the side of the world, a distinction between eternal being and what can be otherwise, and asking from what fundamental insight this distinction is won, Heidegger insists that a substantially appropriate access to De Anima is possible only on the basis of that epistêmê that is the genuine ontology of the Physics (WPIA, 46; Becker II, 23–24).

Turning back to De Anima III.4, Heidegger emphasizes the characterization of nous as having no other nature than being dunatos and thus, on his interpretation, as a determinate Can (ein bestimmtes Kann), not a merely logical possibility. The field of this “Can” (sein Kannbereich) is the unrestricted one of all beings (any being can in principle be an object of thought). But what kind of dunamis is this? To have this unrestricted field it must be a pure receptivity. It cannot have any energeia, any proper activity, that would hinder it and close it off to the other; it must indeed be capable of becoming all things. Why then does Aristotle characterize this nous as apathes, as incapable of being affected? Precisely as pure receptivity, it cannot be in any way changed or altered by its object. It is a capability so pure, we could say, as to be impassive, unlike the capability of perception which, as embodied in an actual sense organ, can be affected. Thus, Heidegger notes that being apathes, rather than the opposite of being dunatos, is “a determinate way [of being] of δύναμις” (WPIA, 48). Heidegger at this point tells his students to consult Metaphysics Θ and Δ.12. While there is no explicit reference in the transcript, Heidegger has in mind Aristotle’s listing of the “disposition of not being affected” (1046a13; ἡ δ᾽ἕξις ἀπαθείας) or “those dispositions according to which things are not affected” (1019a26–27; ὅσαι ἕξεις καθ᾽ἃς ἀπαθῆ ὅλως) as one of the senses of dunamis. The notion of dunamis that proves essential for understanding the being of nous leads Heidegger to make a crucial observation regarding Aristotle’s ontology: “δύναμις and ἐνέργεια are the fundamental ontological categories on the basis of which the other categories on their side are first understandable in their ontological origin” (WPIA, 47). Any reader of De Anima can see that Heidegger is right: the central role in accounting for the being of the soul and its parts is played by the dunamis/energeia distinction and not by categories such as substance (including its different senses of form, matter, and compound) and quality, which appear to be of little explicative power here. Furthermore, in a passage from De Anima not cited by Heidegger, Aristotle tells us as much: “For while the one and being are said in many ways, the chief [kuriôs] way is entelecheia” (412b8–9).

Now Heidegger turns to another passage that introduces the other key ontological category, that of energeia: “For when it becomes each thing in the way the knower who is said [λέγεται] to be actively knowing [ὁ κατ᾽ἐνέργειαν] does so (this occurs when he is capable of becoming active [ἐνεργεῖν] through himself), it is even then still in capability [δυνάμει] in a way, though not in the same way as before learning and discovering. And then it is able to think through itself” (429b5–9). Heidegger’s interpretation of this passage is brief and not very controversial, except on one point. He insists that legetai be read as the middle voice, not as the passive: the knower who is actively knowing becomes each thing by appropriating it in speaking for himself (WPIA, 48). This odd reading can only have the purpose of insisting on the discursive character of the knowing in question here, on the noein being a dia-noein.

Heidegger moves immediately ahead to the next lines (429b10–20) because they address the object of nous and, according to Heidegger, we cannot understand the pure activity of nous without understanding the kind of being possessed by its object. In these lines Aristotle distinguishes between magnitude and being a magnitude (τὸ μεγέθει εἶναι), water and being water, flesh and being flesh. The former refers to things in matter and are the objects of perception, the latter refer to the essence (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) separated from the matter and are the objects of nous. What can surprise in Heidegger’s commentary is his focus on the word pragma in the following line: “In general then, as things are separate from matter [χωριστὰ τὰ πράγματα τῆς ὑλῆς], so also the things concerning νοῦς” (429b21–22).

Why this focus? The commentary that follows provides the answer: by linking pragma to praxis and identifying the latter with a form of poiêsis, Heidegger can suggest that the objects of nous are interpreted from the perspective of productive comportment, in which case the being of the motion that is noein is itself interpreted in terms of productive comportment, indeed as only a modification of it (as Heidegger earlier claimed that theoretical thought is only a modification of practical thought as a “no-longer-being-concerned-with”). Accordingly, this is what we read in the transcript: “πρᾶγμα from πρᾶξις in the broad sense of κίνησις, of ποίησις, it is what is produced [das Hergestellte], the object of some kind of dealings [das Worauf irgend eines Umgangs]. πρᾶγμα is not the Kantian [that is, the Kantian sense of practical], but ποίησις is a κίνησις whose τέλος is released [freigegeben] through itself: that with which I am dealing is released, produced, brought into its being” (WPIA, 49; cf. Becker II, 25). The point of the second sentence is apparently the following: as produced, the object that is the end of poiêsis is allowed to stand on its own, released from the movement of poiêsis itself. You do not continue building the house once it is built; the house now stands on its own, released from the activity of building. What Heidegger wishes to suggest is that it is the paradigm of productive activity that leads to a conception of beings as standing on their own and thus being capable of being objects of theoretical thought. It is therefore significant that in this context he refers to the use of the term pragmata at Metaphysics Θ.10 1051b2, 5, where it signifies the things themselves which, being combined and divided, are true or false and therefore are in the ruling sense (1051b1–2; τὸ δὲ κυριώτατα ὂν ἀληθὲς ἢ ψεῦδος). But it must be noted here that Heidegger’s claim that pragma is not the “practical” in the Kantian sense only distracts from the fact that on his interpretation it is also not the “practical” in the Aristotelian sense. This is because what distinguishes praxis from poiêsis for Aristotle, as he says explicitly in NE VI but which Heidegger ignores (1139b1–4), is precisely the fact that the former is its own telos, so that—using Heidegger’s language—its telos cannot be freed from the activity and made to stand on its own independently of the activity. Heidegger’s interpretation of pragma exclusively in terms of poiêsis disassociates it completely from the practical in Aristotle’s sense (praxis). As Aristotle says, as clearly and as emphatically as one could desire, “For neither is action [πρᾶξις] production [ποίησις] nor is production [ποίησις] action [πρᾶξις]” (1140a5–6). We can only guess what Heidegger would make of this claim since, as we will see, when in the summer continuation of the seminar he turns to a detailed reading of the text in which it occurs, he simply skips over it. Presumably he would claim that praxis is still interpreted from the perspective of poiêsis as what is not separated from its end. But what would be the justification for such a claim? Is not the opposite equally possible and indeed more plausible, that poiêsis is interpreted in terms of praxis as a deficient mode of praxis precisely for having its end fall outside of it? This is a question that must be kept in mind if we wish to think along with Heidegger’s seminar.

Heidegger’s reading of De Anima ends here, not only in the context of the present seminar but in the context of his overall engagement with Aristotle. The reading of the fourth chapter of Book 3 has shifted attention from the interpretation of the being of thought, as a movement characterizing the being of human life, to the interpretation of the being of the objects of thought. In terms of texts considered, this means a shift from De Anima to the Metaphysics and, since the distinctive being of the objects of thought was identified in the former with essence (τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι), to chapters 1–6 of Metaphysics VII in particular. According to Heidegger, this book along with the other central books of the Metaphysics had reached a level of investigation never to be reached again (WPIA, 49). We were of course led to expect that an examination of Aristotle’s ontology, especially in the Physics but presumably also in the Metaphysics, would provide a more genuine access to De Anima and would thus motivate a return to it. But this return never takes place, neither in this seminar nor elsewhere.²³ After dedicating the rest of this semester to a reading of Metaphysics VII, Heidegger will return, in the summer continuation of the seminar, to the different forms of alêtheuein exclusively within the context of the Nicomachean Ethics and with more of a focus on distinctively human being.

The next class of February 1 begins right away with the first chapter of Metaphysics VII. The focus is on the first few lines of the first chapter (1028a10–31), in which Aristotle distinguishes between the different senses of being according to the categories and argues that ousia is the primary and unqualified sense (1028a30–31; τὸ πρώτως ὄν καὶ οὐ τὶ ὂν ἀλλ᾽ὂν ἁπλῶς ἡ οὐσία ἂν εἴη). Yet Heidegger interrupts the reading of these lines just as it commences with a turn to the last chapter of Metaphysics VII, that is, chapter 17. The reason is clear and important. In this final chapter Aristotle approaches the question of what ousia is from the perspective of searching (ζητεῖν): the ousia of a human being, what a human being is, for example, is what we are looking for when we ask, “Why is this living thing a human being?” Likewise, the ousia of a house, what a house is, is what we are looking for when we ask, “Why are these bricks or these pieces of wood a house?” Though Heidegger recognizes (WPIA, 50) that chapter 17 is described by Aristotle as a new starting point vis-à-vis the inquiry carried out in the preceding chapters (1041a6–7; πάλλιν ἄλλην οἷον ἀρχὴν ποιησάμενοι), he still insists that it only makes more concrete and explicit the method pursued in the entire book: inquiring into ousia in searching for the first cause of being (1041b28; αἴτιον πρῶτον τοῦ εἶναι). Why is this important to Heidegger? By interpreting the activity of searching as a mode of that concern and dealing that characterizes life in its facticity, that is, as the mode of freeing itself from practical concern and practical searching in just seeking, Heidegger can maintain that even in Metaphysics VII being is interpreted from the perspective of practical, specifically productive comportment. The following passage from the transcript makes this motivation perfectly clear:

Searching is in itself a being-occupied, being-concerned with something; it is a way in which being concerned [Sorgendsein] expresses itself in a completely fundamental manner. Searching is the expression of not having. Not having = defect. Negation does not belong here; it is a positive character of the being of life and constitutive for that which we designate facticity. Searching can be determined in a way analogous to knowing (questioning is the care of knowing), that is, from the dealings and being-concerned of life as such. All dealings have a certain sight [Sicht]. This phenomenon prior to everything theoretical. Looking-after [Hinsehen] itself, this vision [Sichtigkeit], can become independent; knowing is a distinctive way of the dealings that characterize self-comportment. The questioning that lies in every pre-theoretical searching also has the possibility of becoming independent: posing a problem, setting oneself a task for this searching. (WPIA, 51; cf. Becker II, 26)

It is from the standpoint of searching as thus understood and, as chapter 17 also makes clear, in the manner of addressing something as something (dianoein!), that Aristotle sets about interpreting ousia in Metaphysics VII. As Heidegger has insisted from the beginning, we cannot separate how Aristotle interprets being from how he accesses it. “He takes asking about the ‘why’ as the mode of access in which οὐσία shows itself as that which is asked about” (WPIA, 52). This manner of searching already determines how what is searched for will show itself. “In the question the thing itself that I must go after must become already visible” (WPIA, 52).

When Heidegger returns to chapter 1, he sticks to a close paraphrase of the initial lines. But the central points that receive emphasis are: (1) the fact that the different senses of being are accessed by way of different ways of speaking (λέγειν); (2) the characterization of the primary sense of being, that is, ousia, in terms of the word pephukos (1028a23)²⁴ as that which has come to be from itself and is what it is from itself, in other words, naturally; and (3) the identification of ousia with the singular or individual (the kath’hekaston) at 1028a27 (WPIA, 53).

In the next class of February 8, after noting that the first point listed above leaves unclarified the connection between ousia and logos or how logos is determinative for the sphere of being, Heidegger continues his reading of VII.1 where he left off, turning now to 1028a31–32 and Aristotle’s account of the different senses in which ousia is first among the categories. But we see in Heidegger’s interpretation of these lines the full significance of his earlier appeal to chapter 17. Aristotle claims that ousia is first in three ways: in logos, in knowledge (γνώσει), and in time (χρόνῳ). But Heidegger comments, “All three perspectives grow out of a fundamental perspective that itself is not at all expressed. Three perspectives of a determinate phenomenon” (WPIA, 55). What is this hidden perspective? Precisely the determinate phenomenon Heidegger identified in chapter 17: our practical dealings with things (Umgang) that involve familiarity with them, being able to address them as this or that, and critical moments of decision (now this, now that). From the perspective of these dealings when they have been modified into the theoretical comportment of merely searching, what is in the primary sense will be sought in what is first in logos, in knowledge, and in time. For this reason, it is not accidental, Heidegger insists, that when Aristotle proceeds to speak of the need to investigate what ousia is, he uses the word theôrêteon (to be contemplated) instead of skepteon (to be examined) (1028b7). We cannot understand the account of ousia without a consideration of the theoretical mode of living that seeks it. This is indeed a mode of living: “to win a direct apprehension [Annehmung] of the substantive content and genuinely be, genuinely live in this apprehension” (WPIA, 55). Heidegger also notes that the philosophically radical formulation of the question of being in the first chapter, tis hê ousia, is to be contrasted with the much less radical approach presented in the second chapter: asking what concrete ousiai there are, whether one or many, and so forth. The aim of the radical questioning, as Heidegger notes in commenting on the aim of outlining (ὑποτυπωσαμένοις) at 1028b31, is for ousia to acquire sharp and determinate contours.

Now Heidegger turns to chapter 3 (a couple of classes earlier he already dismissed the second chapter as “not important” [WPIA, 50] and we have seen why). Heidegger draws attention to how the investigation of ousia in this chapter starts with how it is spoken of (1028b33; Λέγεται) and thus it begins with language use. Here we see again how logos plays a leading role in the explication of the concept of being: an orientation that, if going back to Parmenides, is taken further by Aristotle in a way that becomes decisive for the whole of Western philosophy (WPIA, 55–56). Indeed, Heidegger claims that Aristotle knows exactly what he is doing:

Language use is the factical being-interpreted in which life stands with regard to its world. The determinate tradition I have grown into is the interpretation in which I myself exist, from out of which I myself pose the questions that I myself have. Aristotle is therefore more radical than the apparent radicalism of Descartes: he does not begin with nothing. Philosophical problems do not come out of nothing. Clear consciousness of this (Met A 1, 2).²⁵ Know that one cannot begin with nothing because everyone lives in a determinate interpretation. (WPIA, 56)

If Aristotle takes language as his guideline in the search for what ousia is, this is because it is in language that the life of which theoretical searching is a modification already interprets itself. Such a search cannot start from nothing because it must always start with life and therefore with how life interprets itself and its world. Descartes’s radicalism is only apparent because it ignores its own roots.

Aristotle lists four ways in which ousia is said: as essence (τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι), as universal, as genus, and as underlying subject (ὑποκείμενον). Aristotle decides to explore the fourth first because, as Heidegger explains, it corresponds to the priority in logos ousia was claimed to have in the first chapter: the hupokeimenon is that about which other things are said but which is not itself said of anything else. But this fourth way immediately turns out to be itself spoken of in three ways! These are form, matter, and the composite of the two. How, Heidegger asks, does Aristotle suddenly come upon these notions? In exploring the sense of hupokeimenon as that of which everything else is said, Aristotle looks for some concrete being to correspond to it, and what he finds in the tradition within which he lives is being as produced and therefore as a compound of matter and form. “What is addressed here is the being itself as produced [das Hergestellte]. Being = being produced out of something. That is the substantive content of the being itself, has nothing to do with λόγος itself, is only a possible object of λόγος. It is the common one (won and taken from the tradition)” (WPIA, 57). As Heidegger notes a little later, the Greeks always asked about being in the sense of that out of which something is; thus, Thales could take water to be ousia (WPIA, 61). But if the ontological concepts here are taken from the tradition, Aristotle is the first and only one to take them fully seriously and give them a radical interpretation (WPIA, 58). “But these concepts acquire their genuine meaning first in the Aristotelian ontology. Namely, from the perspective of κινήσις or φύσις (itself determined as ποίησις)” (WPIA, 57–58). Here again we have Heidegger’s thesis that poiêsis is the guiding perspective in Aristotle’s (and indeed the Greek) interpretation of being. This perspective leads to the identification of being with being-produced. But note how this thesis requires Heidegger to claim, as he does here, that the Greeks understood phusis itself as poiêsis. This is the culmination of what we have seen to be Heidegger’s determination to interpret the movement of life itself as poiêsis. This ground of the form-matter distinction, Heidegger goes on to observe, was lost after Aristotle, already with Neoplatonism and Scholasticism. For us to recover this ground is to become aware of our own very different situation: “Examination of the Greek ὑλή-εἶδος problem not merely historical so that it no longer concerns us; rather, precisely in traveling back to its origin and uncovering the Greek way of having the world, we note that the world is different for us, how we stand in the world” (WPIA, 60). Recall that the seminar began with Heidegger insisting on the importance of being clear about our own hermeneutical situation, but we can do so by recovering Aristotle’s own different situation. Heidegger immediately adds that “there is no timeless problem, each is situated in its time” (WPIA, 61).

As Heidegger notes, Aristotle finds the interpretation of ousia as hupokeimenon “insufficient” (1029a9; οὐ γὰρ ἱκανόν). The reason is that, among the three ways in which hupokeimenon is spoken, the one that most strictly responds to the criterion of underlying everything else and having everything else spoken of it is matter; but matter is no determinate thing, nothing I can point to and say “this here.” Matter is in itself actively nothing (ἐνέργειᾳ) but is only in potency (δύναμει). Yet Heidegger notes that this being in potency and therefore this being-deprived of active being belongs for Aristotle to the very structure of being. “This στέρησις belongs to the fundamental character of beings. In nuce, the whole of Hegelian dialectic in this ontological consideration” (WPIA, 59). If the identification of ousia with matter by way of its meaning of hupokeimenon is insufficient, the very fact that such an identification initially recommends itself shows that it is not simply to be rejected. As in Hegelian dialectic (whose motor is this not-yet-what-it-can-be), we cannot fully understand being without its deprivation. Furthermore, Heidegger notes that if being dunamei and energeiai emerges as the fundamental sense of being here, it is for the same reason that the form-matter distinction imposes itself: the fundamental phenomenon in view is what is in motion, the kinoumena (WPIA, 61).

Heidegger also insists that the stated insufficiency is a phenomenological one: the formal analysis of the hupokeimenon is not adequate to how ousia shows itself. This leads to another important observation regarding Aristotle’s method: “Without beings themselves as they give themselves to me I cannot construct an ontology. This is precisely the completely fundamental different starting point in contrast to Plato” (WPIA, 59). Heidegger accordingly sees the methodological principle with which Aristotle concludes chapter 3 as an attack against Plato: we must begin with what is badly known but more apparent (1029b3–12). This means beginning with sensible substances and taking from them our criteria for what counts as an ousia: being an identifiable “this” and existing separately. This was not Plato’s starting point and Heidegger here cites with approval Nietzsche’s characterization of Plato as “a coward before reality” (WPIA, 60; Becker II, 29).

For the next class, February 9, Heidegger continues his reading of Metaphysics VII.3, now turning to Aristotle’s decision, after the disqualification of matter as ousia, to set aside the compound with the justification that it is “posterior and clear” (1029a31–32; ὑστέρα γὰρ καὶ δήλη). It is clear as what I address in speech, Heidegger explains, and posterior in being genuinely grasped only after the form that makes it what it is. But Heidegger adds, surprisingly and importantly, that the compound is posterior in another perspective (presumably again hidden and implicit): because it “results from a making” (WPIA, 63), it is posterior in the order of production (WPIA, 64). From this, Heidegger thinks he can draw the following conclusion: “Therefore, existing things are seen poetically [that is, in terms of poiêsis], it is without discussion clear that this is what the existing things are. Here the evidence that our interpretation of Aristotelian ontology is correct” (WPIA, 63). The claim of “evidence,” however, is problematic because the presumed evidence is not Aristotle’s description of the compound as posterior (ὑστέρα), but Heidegger’s claim that it is so in a sense additional to that explicit in the text (that is, the sense of being posterior in the order of grasping and explaining). Is not Heidegger reading into the text the claim that the compound is posterior in the sense of resulting from a making and then taking this as “evidence” supporting his thesis that the Greeks interpreted being from the perspective of production? In any case, we see again how important this thesis is to Heidegger and it will be asserted even more emphatically later in the class.

While the compound is clear and even the matter is in a way clear (1029a32; φανερὰ δε πως καὶ ἡ ὕλη), Aristotle’s inquiry into ousia requires him to turn to the form (εἶδος) even though (or rather because) it is “the most perplexing” (1029a33; ἀπορωτάτη). Heidegger expectedly explains the perplexity in terms of a conception of being as what is produced and thus had: both the materials and the products are things I can have in hand, whereas the form is much harder to grasp (WPIA, 64). Heidegger’s reading of the final lines of chapter 3 notes the communis opinio that is by no means an arbitrary starting point to Aristotle’s inquiry: “Some of the sensibles are agreed [ὁμολογοῦνται] to be ousiai, so that it is necessary to inquire first into these” (1029a33–34). Heidegger also sees a more specific critique of Plato in the claim that in actions we must start with what is good to each in aiming to make what is good overall good to each (1029b6–7; τὰ ὅλως ἀγαθὰ ἑκάστῳ ἀγαθἀ): “there is no good in itself” (WPIA, 65; Becker II, 30).

Heidegger then turns to chapter 4, where Aristotle pursues the inquiry into eidos by way of returning to the other, but presumably equivalent, way in which ousia is said to be spoken of at the start of chapter 3: as to ti ên einai (the what-it-was-be), normally translated as “essence.”²⁶ Connecting the two notions, Heidegger describes to ti ên einai as the formal cause. But in asking about the sense of cause, Heidegger again tries to make poiêsis the ruling perspective of interpretation: “The original ‘why’ is the ‘why’ of ποίησις. The sickness looking in such a way [So-Aussehen] is why the doctor proceeds in such and such a fashion” (WPIA, 66). The example of the doctor provides a transition to the explanation of the part of Aristotle’s formulation that most needs one: the past tense ên (was). Heidegger cites F. A. Trendelenburg’s explanation of the ên as already signifying in Plato’s Phaedo what is prior according to nature (rather than what is prior for us). It is worth saying something about Trendelenburg’s reading because it certainly lends support to Heidegger’s thesis regarding the paradigmatic role played by poiêsis. Trendelenburg takes the ên to signify a “productive and preceding ground” and finds this meaning in the claim in the Phaedo that Anaxagoras needed to say not only if the earth is flat or round, but why it was better for it to be this way and not otherwise (97e3; ὅτι αὐτὴν ἄμεινον ἦν τοιαύτην εἶναι). Citing this passage, Trendelenburg comments, “The ground thereby expresses itself in the imperfect as the ideal prius” (1846, 37–38). But it is in an earlier study, not containing the reference to the Phaedo and also cited by Heidegger (Becker II, 25, 32), that Trendelenburg expresses his interpretation most clearly and in a way most in tune with Heidegger’s own position.

We saw above that τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι belongs to artistic production as it does to the production of nature. In artistic production, the original in the spirit of the artist is before the image found with and in the material, the concept is before the representation. . . . This being of the concept before existence is in our view expressed through the ἦν of τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι and the same acquires at the same time thereby the meaning of what should be. The concept in itself is characterized as the Was (τὸ τὶ ἦν) in contrast to the Is (τὸ τὶ ἐστὶ); therein lies the transformation that takes place when the concept materializes itself in the appearance. (1828, 479–80; my translation)

The ên in Trendelenburg’s interpretation thus expresses a priority in nature that is clearly modelled on a priority in production.

But there is one point on which Heidegger takes issue with Trendelenburg’s interpretation as well as that of H. Bonitz. Both scholars draw attention to the close relation between the formulations to ti ên einai and to ti esti (the what-is-it). That there is such a relation is obvious, but what exactly is its nature? As Heidegger notes, both Bonitz (see 1842, 14, and 1849, 312) and Trendelenburg²⁷ take the ti esti along with the dative construction, to eikeinôi einai (the being for it), as the broader, more abstract concept, while to ti ên einai expresses the application of this broader concept to the individual. This of course makes of the latter the secondary and derivative notion. The transcript makes clear Heidegger’s rejection of this approach: “Heidegger on the contrary wishes to proceed from the full expression. The τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι is the primary expression, the dative infinitive is a shorthand and to be understood only from the former” (WPIA, 67). In support, Heidegger cites 1031b6–7: “For there is knowledge of each whenever we know what it was for it to be [τὸ τὶ ἦν ἐκείνῳ εἶναι].” This shows that when in the same chapter we have expressions such as “to be for a human being” (1031a21; τὸ ἀνθρώπῳ εἶναι) or “to be for the good” (1031b8; τὸ ἀγαθῷ εἶναι), we are dealing with only a shorthand that leaves out the “what it was” (τὶ ἦν). What is clearly important for Heidegger is making the ên essential to the concept of being at issue here, rather than merely a derivative application to the individual of a more general and fundamental concept. If the ên in turn can be understood only as the prior in production, then this means that being itself is understood in terms of poiêsis. “With the τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι we hit upon what is essential” (WPIA, 67; cf Becker II, 32).

Next Heidegger turns to what he characterizes as “a fundamental problem never again so radically posed”: “how must λέγειν be constituted that it might provide access to what I designate as οὐσία or as τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι, insofar as the latter can with justification be addressed as the explication of οὐσία?” (WPIA, 68). Aristotle’s determination is that a thing’s ti ên einai is what it is said to be according to itself (1029b14; ὃ λέγεται καθ᾽αὑτό). But a second determination is that only that logos can be of the ti ên einai of a thing that says that thing without containing it as part of the logos (1029b19–20; ἐν ᾧ ἄρα μὴ ἐνέστι λόγῳ αὐτο, λέγοντι αὐτο). Heidegger remarks that this is “a completely exceptional λόγος” (WPIA, 68) that Aristotle was the first to see: one that, in contrast to every other mode of access, must proceed free of any “fore-having” (Vorhabe) and thus grasp the meaning of being completely purely and without any expectation (Anspruch).²⁸

The class of February 15 begins with noting again that the ontological task is determined by the phenomenon of logos; the whole problem of ousia arises in relation to the question “what is it” (τί ἐστι) in speaking (λέγειν). In then reviewing the reading of VII.3 from the preceding class, Heidegger makes explicit the implicit interpretation of being he is reading into Aristotle’s text. To what understanding of being does the identification of ousia with hupokeimenon prove inadequate? The explicit answer in the text is as follows: to an understanding of being as existing separately and as a determinate “this.” But from where does this understanding of being arise? From what fundamental experience? Heidegger’s answer: from the experience of production in which what is produced is freed from the activity of producing and allowed to stand on its own as something with a determinate form. Thus, we read in the transcript that “a fundamental experience of what genuinely is lies at the basis here. It is not made explicit here. Our interpretation, however, must return to it and bring it out in going right through the text. This fundamental experience is for Aristotle: being = being-produced [Hergestelltsein], this is always a determinate thing, a this-here. Having at one’s disposal. So is also the οὐρανός there, nature, and so forth” (WPIA, 69). We have seen Heidegger repeatedly attempt to read such a fundamental experience into the text because, as he acknowledges, it is not explicitly articulated there and indeed cannot be: “At the basis of every philosophy lie originally fundamental experiences that are not to be grasped through reflection, about which it is not at all possible to inquire formally” (WPIA, 70). As Heidegger already claimed early in the seminar, “reading into” is not an objection here: we must go beyond the text to be interpreted in order to recover the fundamental experience from which it draws its meaning. Heidegger therefore continues: “The proposition ‘being = being-produced’ is not found in Aristotle. For him it is not explicit. Interpretation needs a leap forward [Vorsprung], goes further than the thing to be interpreted itself” (WPIA, 69–70).

Even if we agree with this methodological principle, however, this does not guarantee that Heidegger has identified the right fundamental experience, that he has not imposed on, rather than drawn out of, the text a fundamental experience that differs from the one originally at the basis of Aristotle’s ontology.²⁹ We must, therefore, remain attentive to indications in Aristotle’s text of a different experience, and a different guiding paradigm, than that of poiêsis. Becker records Heidegger as adding to the above claim about interpretation: “The philological in interpretation is not unnecessary, but secondary” (Becker II, 34; my emphasis). We have seen Heidegger repeatedly pass over and ignore Aristotle’s quite explicit and emphatic assertion of a dichotomy between praxis and poiêsis in his determination to assimilate the former to the latter. Even if we claim that nevertheless one concept is more fundamental than the other and provides the key to understanding the other, it is by no means a priori evident that this more fundamental concept should be poiêsis. As was already asked above, why should we think that an activity that has its telos outside itself provides the paradigm for understanding an activity that is its own telos rather than vice versa? Note the claim in the passage above that even the being of the heavens and of nature itself is to be understood in terms of the equation being = being-produced, presumably because their being is understood negatively as a not-needing-to-be-produced (as Heidegger will claim in the next class). But why rule out that the self-motion of the heavens and of nature is itself the paradigm for what requires being moved by something else, that is, what is produced—that, in short, nature is the paradigm for technê rather than vice versa? And if being is understood as a separate and determinate this-here, why could not the model be the living organism existing of and through itself, given form by its own function and aim, rather than a product such as a house? Despite what Trendelenburg claims, it is not so obvious that the “what-it-was-to-be-a-house” existing in the spirit of the builder is a better explanation of the notion of to ti ên einai than the “what-it-was-to-be-a-horse” existing in and through the individual horse itself. Indeed, if a thing’s ti ên einai is “what it is said to be according to itself,” can the house, which is what it is only according to the idea existing in the mind of the builder, really be the paradigmatic example? That Aristotle’s own example in VII.3 is “your essence,” that is, the essence of human being, is surely significant. All these questions are raised here because, to repeat what was already claimed above, they must be kept in mind if we want to think with Heidegger’s seminar rather than merely repeat it.

If in chapter 3 the hupokeimenon proved inadequate to the meaning of being as experienced in the Grunderfahrung (fundamental experience), Heidegger sees chapter 4 as further drawing out the implications of this meaning of being and thus of the Grunderfahrung. What led to the identification of ousia with hupokeimenon in chapter three was interpreting being from the perspective of logos as a saying of something of something. In chapter 4, in contrast, “being is not determined from the perspective of λόγος but is object-free [Gegenstandsfrei]. Tendency toward object-free being” (WPIA, 70). The odd expression “object-free” presumably means that we are no longer interpreting being as an object about which one says this or that. It is also not quite exact to say that this object-free being is not determined from the perspective of logos since, as we saw Heidegger argue in the last class, what we have in chapter 4 is instead the introduction of “a truly exceptional” logos: one that, instead of assuming an object about which it says this or that, is able to access being as such (WPIA, 71). Heidegger traces this attempt to address being as such in a distinctive form of speech from Parmenides to Hegel to Husserl. It is therefore only all the more surprising that he sees it as depending on the fundamental Greek experience of being as being-produced (WPIA, 71). What is the connection between seeking an object-free, presuppositionless access to being as such and productive comportment? The answer is indicated in the following two points recorded in the transcript: “I. I take something as something: from this pre-conception [Vorgrifflichkeit] I approach the things. The genuine logos must be free of pre-conceiving. II. The logos must also be free of fore-having [vorhabefrei]. This concerns the content of the fundamental experience. I should not take the objective as this or that, not in a determinate What. Instead the λόγος must receive beings themselves [das Seiende selbst]. One must let beings encounter us from themselves” (WPIA, 71; cf. Becker II, 36).³⁰ One sees here the usual interpretative strategy: it is because I normally experience beings only within the context of my practical and productive activities, and therefore as conceptualized and possessed in advance by my needs and goals, that I then develop the aim of receiving the beings themselves free of all pre-conceptualization and prepossession. The goal of contemplating beings in themselves develops out of a fundamental experience in which beings are encountered only as things to be dealt with and produced. The fundamental experience within which being is interpreted is in a way simply the experience that defines life as such. Thus, we continue to read in the transcript: “The life of living things grows within a determinate world and thus in a determinate fore-having: much is handed down to it, undiscussed. The world appears thus: this leads to much talk, without this ‘having’ itself coming up for discussion. But here we are concerned precisely with bringing being itself into view, freeing ourselves from what has been handed down, from pre-conception and fore-having” (WPIA, 71–72). One must wonder in this case what is especially Greek about the Greek fundamental experience of being. To interpret being initially within productive comportment understood broadly as our dealings with beings (Umgang) would seem to be something that characterizes life as such or, most narrowly, human life and not Greek life.

What presents itself in the logos that addresses the kath’hauto, the being according to itself, is to ti ên einai. To arrive at a better understanding of both this logos and what presents itself in it, and under the significant heading of “formal indication” (formale Anzeige), Heidegger adopts the negative approach of identifying two false ways of understanding and addressing the kath’hauto. He is following Aristotle, who himself takes this approach in what is unfortunately a notoriously difficult and ambiguous text open to the most conflicting interpretations (where even the Greek text is in dispute given the decisive role played by that feature most vulnerable to error in manuscript transmission: the Greek dative).³¹ I will first give the most neutral translation possible of the passage, based on what I take to be the Greek text Heidegger is reading, that of Bonitz.³² “For not what is in this way according to itself: (1) as the surface is white, for being a surface is not being white. But neither (2) the compound ‘being a white surface.’ Why? Because it is there in addition. [οὐ γὰρ τὸ οὕτως καθ᾽αὑτὸ ὡς ἐπιφανεία λευκόν, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τὸ ἐπιφανείᾳ εἶναι τὸ λευκῷ εἶναι. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν, τὸ ἐπιφανείᾳ λευκῇ. διὰ τί; ὅτι πρόσεστιν αὐτό]” (1029b16–19). The obscurity of this text is met with a corresponding obscurity in Heidegger’s interpretation, at least as preserved in the transcript (one can imagine that the students were struggling to follow along!). But what can be made out is the following. On the first option Aristotle rejects as an improper understanding of the kath’hauto, Heidegger comments as follows: “Every surface is colored. λευκόν [white] is a determination that applies to the surface, but not to being a surface. The beingness [Seinshaftigkeit] is missed, but the what-character is reached. The surface addressed with regard to its being white” (WPIA, 72). The point appears to be that in this case something is said about what the surface is, in other words, that it is white, but in a way that misses the being of a surface. Of the second rejected option, Heidegger says, “Here the surface itself is intended but addressed as white: not the pure What. In the address ἐπιφανεία λευκή [white surface] the being-that-there is indeed reached, but not the What. . . . A completely determinate white surface. Therefore, not the surface in its What. The What is missing” (WPIA, 72). In this case, the being of the surface is preserved because it is not reduced to or identified with anything else, but nothing is said about what a surface is. Whether or not such an interpretation of the passage is tenable—one can add it to the list of other conflicting interpretations—the point Heidegger wishes to make seems clear: the “what-it-was-to-be” which a thing is said to be in virtue of itself can be identified neither with a pure “what” nor with a determinate being. Accordingly, the logos of to ti ên einai is one that says the being itself in virtue of itself without simply saying what it is (the surface is white) and without simply addressing it in addition to something else (white surface). This conclusion is clearly expressed in the transcript: “To the genuine καθ᾽αὑτό belong both: the beingness as well as the pure What, both = the what-how-being as such. οὐσία, however, means what lies before both moments. Before the division between both moments” (WPIA, 73; see the diagram in Becker II, 37). What is sought, according to Heidegger, is neither a logos that says what the surface is, nor a logos that refers to the surface, but a logos of surface itself.

This explains the importance Heidegger gives to the following line: “For the what-it-was-to be [τὶ ἦν εἶναι] is the very thing that is a ‘this’ [ὅπερ γὰρ τόδε τι ἐστὶ τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι]” (1030a3). Heidegger lists this as a third “formal indication” after (1) the characterization of to ti ên einai as what is said in virtue of itself and (2) the ways of access (including the description of the false ways interpreted above). This third indication is a positive determination and means “what is always this there [Was je immer Dieses da]. The ὃπερ important: always what in itself is as this there. Therefore, we have now in the expression ὅπερ γὰρ τόδε τι both things required: the what and the beingness [Seinshaftigkeit]. As such is τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι now determined and only of this can there be a ὁρισμός” (WPIA, 73). Now we can better understand the above interpretation: in saying “the surface is white,” what I miss is the very thing that is this surface; in saying “white surface,” what I miss is what the surface is. What is needed is a logos that can say “what it was to be a surface” in the sense of what and how this surface here is. This logos is the horismos.

At the start of the next and final class of the semester, dated February 19, Heidegger, after reiterating the final conclusions of the preceding class, turns to an interpretation of the horismos. Α horismos carries out a horizein (a delimiting) in two senses: it shuts out (aussperren) all with-respect-to” (das Rücksichtliche), in-relation-to, and it shuts in pure what-being and the very thing that is a this (WPIA, 74). But it might seem that a horismos that thus shuts out all with-respect-to would not differ at all from naming: that, for example, the logos of surface would simply be the name “surface.” Heidegger must explain, therefore, the difference between horismos and onoma (name) (WPIA, 75). The crucial difference is that logos contributes to alêtheuein, whereas “naming does not allow the object to be seen in what it is. Does not at all have the tendency toward this. Its way of access is a completely different one. Naming merely addresses the object, wishes to let it be as something taken care of, in its concealment” (WPIA, 75; cf. Becker II, 38–41). As Heidegger notes, Aristotle is himself concerned with this distinction when he asserts that the name Iliad is not a horismos (1030a7–9) and later explains why: the horsimos must be of something that is one (ἕν) in a way the collection of words that comprises the Iliad is not (1030b8–10). In insisting that making manifest is not the original function of the name, that its function instead presupposes and lies within that being-informed (Bescheidwissen) that is already present with being and living, Heidegger takes aim at Husserl’s interpretation of naming as a knowing (Kennen) and, in general, his understanding of language as rooted in knowledge (Erkenntis) and thus as a phenomenon of logic (the error Heidegger claims to lie at the ground of the fourth of the Logical Investigations) (WPIA, 76).³³

Heidegger next turns to Aristotle’s claim that the ti ên einai will not pertain to anything that is not the eidos of a genos (1030a11–12). Surprisingly perhaps, Heidegger maintains that here we have just another formulation of the hoper tode it: the hoper, the what it is, is the genos, whereas the tode ti, the this here, is the eidos. But the important interpretative move is Heidegger’s insistence that Aristotle’s claim “naturally hangs together with the determination of being as being-produced” (WPIA, 77; cf. Becker II, 42). How so? The genos is not what something becomes, but what it was before becoming this thing here,³⁴ before acquiring this particular look or identity (Aussehen). It is a certain provenance from which the thing comes to have this particular look. Thus, “the being is what it was and was what it is” (WPIA, 76). But Heidegger finds it clear that this conception of being is derived from poiêsis. The “what it was to be” of a thing is identified with having a determinate look from out of a certain provenance because the thing is understood as what is finished, completed (Fertiggemachtes), and so, Heidegger claims, “sees the Greek the world”—again one must wonder why the “Greek” in particular (WPIA, 77). And again, Heidegger claims that theoretical contemplation (θεωρεῖν) is simply a modification of the movement of poiêsis occurring when the seeing of the eidos already present in poiêsis is made independent, freed from practical dealings.

Most significant, however, is Heidegger’s attempt to show how the determination of being as being-produced is simply translated to nature (φύσις). He cites as evidence of such a translation the following passage from later in Book VII: “For the sperm produces in the way that things from τέχνη do, for it possesses the εἶδος in potency [(δύναμει] and that from which the sperm comes is in a way homonymous” (1034a33–b1). The comparison of course tells us nothing about which has ontological priority here, technê or phusis, where this of course differs from explanatory or heuristic priority. Heidegger’s own interpretation is in any case clear when he proceeds to interpret the aei (what is eternally) as “what does not need to be produced” (WPIA, 77). The circular motion of the heavens does not need to be produced because it is already and always finished, completed (immer fertig). Heidegger also claims that the fundamental distinction between what admits of being otherwise and what does not, the distinction seen to lie at the basis of the account of the dianoetic virtues, is “only understandable from the fundamental consideration of being as being-produced” (WPIA, 78). Without this perspective it becomes incomprehensible why epistêmê must have as its object that which cannot be otherwise. Whether this is in fact incomprehensible without the understanding of being as being-produced is again something worth asking.

This last point recalls the dianoetic virtues that were left behind some classes ago. Thus, after some brief discussion of the meaning of the dative in to eikeinôi einai that connects it to productive comportment—“Der Dativ der eigentliche Womit des Umgangs” (WPIA, 78; see also Becker II, 43)—Heidegger in closing the seminar brings them back into view and the fundamental phenomenon they express: that we live in the manner of alêtheuein and thus always find ourselves in the midst of what has been illuminated. The seminar ends with a quotation of the first line of the Metaphysics which, we are told, is to be understood in the above sense: “all human beings by nature desire to know.” But all of this only reminds us of the need to return to the interpretation of NE VI where epistêmê and the other dianoetic virtues are interpreted as forms of alêtheuein. This is presumably why Heidegger decided to continue the seminar into the summer with precisely this text and this topic as the focus.³⁵

This rich and wide-ranging seminar must have been a very rewarding experience for the students, and can continue to be one for us today, both as a model of how to engage philosophically with ancient Greek texts and as a model of how to do philosophy. Perhaps its greatest value lies in its methodological point: that we cannot interpret the meaning of being except by way of interpreting that kind of being that is concerned with being: life. In other words, we cannot engage in the living activity of doing ontology—because ontology is a form of living carried out in a particular situation—without reflecting on the ontology of life. This methodological conviction leads to an unusual and arguably very productive juxtaposition of texts in the reading of Aristotle: the account of the dianoetic virtues in NE VI as ways of alêtheuein is read together with the account of life as a movement that reveals the beings it moves toward and the world in which it encounters them, in De Anima, the latter in turn read with the account of being in Metaphysics VII. This juxtaposition makes each text appear in a different light and, even if one disagrees with the interpretations that result, the juxtaposition is by no means arbitrary. The dianoetic virtues are defined as dispositions by which the soul unconceals, and it is hardly misguided to claim that they therefore cannot be understood without understanding the nature of the soul. The account of nous in particular requires a reference to its object, which is the being of a thing or “what it was for it to be.” It is hardly misguided to claim that therefore one cannot understand this account of nous without considering the account of this type of being in Metaphysics VII. These connections are all justifiable if one reads the texts philosophically and they are philosophically productive, providing compelling interpretations of key Aristotelian concepts that revive them from their traditional ossification. The refusal to respect that separation of philosophical disciplines that still rules both the study of Aristotle and the study of philosophy itself today is a central way in which Heidegger “destroys” the tradition in seeking to return to Aristotle’s phenomenological insights.

In addition to this approach and the specific insights it yields, this seminar has also brought into sharp relief a consistent and strong thesis guiding Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle: that the being of life is interpreted as productive movement along with an interpretation of being itself as being-produced. Heidegger’s detailed readings of the Aristotelian texts, while seeking and arguably finding some support there for his thesis, have also given us opportunities to question it. Before moving on to the summer continuation of the seminar, we should briefly reflect on what might be lost or obstructed by this thesis. First, one must wonder if the insight from the SS1921 seminar that life is characterized by a completely distinctive form of movement, even if there are brief and passing allusions to this insight in the present seminar, has not been lost. At the same time that Heidegger continues here to interpret the human dispositions of unconcealing a world in the context of the being of life, he begins to interpret the being of life in terms of what is arguably the distinctively human way of being in the world that is poiêsis, with the seemingly inevitable result that the phenomenon of life comes to be eclipsed by that of human life.³⁶ Indeed, as we have seen, nature itself is interpreted in terms of poiêsis.³⁷ What then becomes of an understanding of life as such or of nature as such? Do we not have here the beginning of what is arguably the eclipse of both the phenomenon of life and that of nature in Being and Time, with its focus on Dasein’s practical dealings in a world of equipment?³⁸ Secondly, and within the context of human life now, do we not see the loss of any notion of praxis as distinct from poiêsis, of activity, and especially ethical activity, as distinct from producing and using objects? And if we lose the corresponding distinction between phronêsis and technê, what becomes of the virtues as conditions and indeed essential components of a good human life: one that is its own telos rather than directed toward something outside itself?

In all of the above, Heidegger claims to be following Aristotle, to be retrieving Aristotle’s “fundamental experience.” But Aristotle sharply distinguishes phusis from technê and arguably gives the former priority in his interpretation of being. Aristotle sharply distinguishes energeia from kinêsis and interprets life in its various forms in terms of the former rather than the latter. And Aristotle sharply distinguishes praxis from poiêsis and makes only the former the key concept of his ethics. Or so one could object. The point here, however, is not to make objections, but to show that Heidegger’s interpretation is just that, an interpretation, which as such can and should be challenged, and not just as a reading of Aristotle, but, even more importantly, as an account of the phenomena that Aristotle, according to Heidegger himself, saw so clearly. The point is to keep reading Aristotle with Heidegger, but not through Heidegger.