6

Aristotle’s Opposition between Natural and Accidental Being and Its Consequences for the Understanding of Time

The WS1923/24 Seminar on Book II of the Physics

FOR REASONS ALREADY INDICATED IN PREVIOUS CHAPTERS AND reasons having to do with Heidegger’s search for an ontology of motion in Aristotle, the Physics came to occupy a central position in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle. The unpublished seminar of 1923/24 is therefore neither the first nor the last of Heidegger’s attempts to come to terms with this text. What singles out this seminar and constitutes its importance is its focus on Book II. The SS1922 course focused in its second half on Physics I. The SS1924 course will focus in its latter half on Physics III, and this will also be the focus of the SS1928 seminar. The attention paid to these two books is perfectly understandable given Heidegger’s interest at the time: it is in Book I that we find Aristotle’s critique of Eleaticism, that is, of an ontology that relegated motion to non-being, and it is in Book III that we find Aristotle’s own positive account of the being of motion. During the 1920s, Heidegger will interpret Book II only in the 1923/24 seminar.¹ He will not turn to this book again until the 1939 essay “Vom Wesen und Begriff der Φύσις, Aristoteles, Physik B, 1,” published in Wegmarken (WB), and it, as the title indicates, is confined to the book’s first chapter.² As the title also indicates, Book II is dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of nature (φύσις): precisely the phenomenon that must be saved against the Eleatics and that requires an interpretation of the being of motion. We have seen Heidegger in earlier seminars address in passing the notion of phusis and with the suggestion that it is interpreted from the perspective of an understanding of being as being-produced (Hergestelltsein). It is only in the 1923/24 seminar that he addresses directly during this period Aristotle’s own account of phusis and thus carries out a central part of the study of the Physics projected in the 1922 Natorp Bericht.

The 1923/24 seminar prepares the way for the much more ambitious seminar of 1924/25, to be discussed in the next chapter. If that later seminar was listed as being on the ontology of the Middle Ages, Heidegger described, in a September 27, 1923, letter to Karl Löwith, the theme of the earlier 1923/24 seminar itself as being Aristotle and the Middle Ages (Denker 2017, 105); he noted that the exact content would depend on the “library situation [Bibliotheksverhältnissen].” Though focused on Physics II, the 1923/24 seminar contains multiple references to works of medieval philosophy, especially toward its end, and thereby introduces the interpretation of medieval philosophy that will be taken up in earnest in 1924/25. In that later seminar, however, Heidegger will turn away from the Physics and focus on the Metaphysics. In both seminars taken together, we have a reading of Aristotle’s ontology in dialogue with its appropriation by medieval philosophy.

Unfortunately, given its importance, the 1923/24 seminar is especially difficult to reconstruct. This is because what is preserved among the Helene Weiss papers are simply notes (Notizen) attributed to Elli (Elizabeth) Bondi.³ These indeed are only notes and not any kind of transcript or protocol that would reproduce in detail the content and argument of each class. Unlike transcripts for other seminars preserved among the papers of Helene Weiss, the Bondi notes contain no dates for individual classes. Roman numerals appear to refer to different classes and they will be taken to do so in our reconstruction, though in this case only nine classes are recorded: a low number for a winter semester seminar. The notes also often lack specific references to the parts of Aristotle’s text being discussed and interpreted. Even given these limitations, however, it is still possible to reconstruct the main content of the seminar, since it is still possible to determine which specific texts are being discussed and what interpretation is being advanced. It is just that more work will be required in supplementing the sparse notes.

We see Weiss supplementing her notes with those of other students, including Bondi, in other seminars. What is unique in this case is that apparently all the notes are taken by Bondi. Was Weiss herself not able to attend the seminar? Her possible absence is made especially puzzling by the fact that the book she would come to write on Aristotle (Weiss 1942), a book clearly and explicitly indebted to Heidegger, is dedicated to a topic that Heidegger discusses only here among his seminars on the Physics: causality and chance in chapters 4–6 of Book II. Heidegger would recommend Weiss’s book as “the only book that contributes anything proper with regard to Aristotle’s Physics and perhaps with regard to Aristotle as a whole” (GA83, 609). On the other hand, an odd feature of Weiss’s book is that it never gets to the detailed interpretation of Physics II.4–6, postponing this to a later study that never appeared, and instead provides only the preliminary work she judged necessary for such an interpretation.⁴ It therefore cannot help us in reconstructing the argument of the present seminar, whether or not she was present.

The notes reveal, without making explicit, that the seminar began with the first chapter of Book I before turning to Book II. In this introductory chapter, Aristotle tells us that the study of nature, like any other study, must concern itself with principles (ἀρχαί). With this claim in mind, the seminar states that phusis is itself the principle at issue here. But the discussion focuses on the other claim Aristotle makes in chapter 1: that to arrive at the archê, which is most knowable in itself as the principle that makes possible the knowledge of what depends on it, we must begin with what is most knowable to us. Furthermore, Aristotle claims that what is most knowable to us is what is general and undifferentiated: things taken as a whole (καθόλου) prior to their differentiation. Aristotle gives the example (184b3–5), cited and discussed in the seminar, of a child calling all men “father” before distinguishing between them (Aristotle includes in the example calling all women “mother,” but only the father example is cited in the notes). As we read in the notes, “The horizon of meaning ‘father’ is for the child undetermined, and equally undetermined is that which it expresses. The child is animated by language: language has the aptitude of leaving one’s world in indeterminacy” (WP, 1). Quoting Aristotle’s claim that a name “signifies some whole and in an indeterminate manner” (184b2; ὅλον γάρ τι καὶ ἀδιορίστως σημαίνει), Heidegger comments: “It lies in the character of a name not to delimit what is named” (WP, 1). “Father” in its indeterminacy is the child’s archê; from this confused archê one must proceed to the archê in its explicitness and specificity. The child illustrates the movement of all science: only from taking as our starting point, as the archê most knowable to us, the indeterminate whole with which the world in language presents us, can we make any progress toward knowledge of the determinate archê that is most knowable in nature.⁵

In turning to Book II, Heidegger emphasizes what we could call the phenomenological character of Aristotle’s method. While Aristotle musters all of the conceptual material handed down to him by the tradition, he seeks to determine how it measures up to the subject matter as it shows itself. “One must know critically what one can see and what one cannot see: and what one can only see” (WP, 2). Others indeed saw what Aristotle sees, but Aristotle is able to explain what he sees unencumbered (unbelastet) and more adequately. And Aristotle tells us right away in Book II what he sees when he looks at nature: something that has within itself a principle of motion and rest (192b13–14) or, as Heidegger puts it picking up on Aristotle’s use of the word “impulse” (ὁρμή) at 192b18, that which is in such a way that “it in itself breaks out [aufbricht] into motion and into rest” (WP, 2). Heidegger adds that rest is only a deprivation (στέρησις) of motion. He then turns his focus to Aristotle’s description of what is natural as a hupokeimenon, that is, as what underlies: “All these things [that is, things that are natural in possessing a principle of motion and rest in themselves] are ousia. For it is some hupokeimenon and phusis is always in hupokeimenon” (192b33–34). What Heidegger insists on is that hupokeimenon exists in a relation with logos: it “underlies” as that about which we speak, whether as subject (for example, the sheet of which we predicate “white”) or as the whole that we address (for example, “the white sheet”). Concrete existence (Dasein) is characterized as hupokeimenon, Heidegger claims, because speaking (λέγειν) is the type of dealing with things (Umgang) that is singled out. But Heidegger also notes that what is spoken about must be already there (schon da) prior to the speaking: the hupokeimenon must be huparchon, what obtains as something already there. We thus see Heidegger already seeking to uncover what he takes to be the conception of being presupposed by Aristotle’s account of phusis. The class ends with discussion of Aristotle’s claim that it would be absurd to seek to prove that nature exists and that, in general, one needs to distinguish between what requires proof and what does not (193a3–6). Heidegger explains this claim by referring to the distinction in the Prior Analytics between the question of whether something is and the question of what something is; in the case of some things, such as nature, the first question does not need to be asked.

The next class begins with the observation that after first contrasting what exists by nature with the products of technê, Aristotle turns to considering nature in itself. Noting again Aristotle’s claim that the existence of nature does not require proof, Heidegger also now draws attention to Aristotle’s description of the demand for such a proof as being “ridiculous” (193a3; γελοῖον). It would be ridiculous, Heidegger explains, because “such a thing would mean stepping outside of our natural existence” (WP, 3). That a world is there cannot be for us something surprising or strange. Nevertheless, thinking of Aristotle’s claim at 193a4–6 that to demonstrate what is apparent by means of what is not apparent is the mark of someone incapable of distinguishing between what is “knowable through itself” (δι᾽αὑτὸ γνώριμον) and what is not, Heidegger observes that familiarity (Vertrautheit) with the world is something we may not yet have.⁶ We can remove ourselves from our original seeing in such a way that beings are no longer there for us; or we seek a new access through continued use of the old categories. Being in the world requires training (bedarf der Ausbildung).

The rather terse and disconnected notes that follow show the seminar progressing through the first chapter of Book II. Aristotle first considers the view of some that the phusis of things that exist by nature (φύσει) is their “first constituent” (193a10; πρῶτον ἐνυπάρχον), so that wood is the nature of the bed, and bronze is the nature of the statue. Aristotle cites the argument of Antiphon that if you planted a wooden bed and the wood had the power to sprout, what would come up out of the soil would be wood and not a bed, thus showing that the bed is an incidental arrangement while the wood is the real nature. In commenting on this passage, Heidegger refers to Antiphon’s περὶ ἀληθείας (“On Truth”) as edited by H. Diels (1959, 346–355) and also draws attention to the phrase meant to support the wood being the bed’s true nature: “it remains while undergoing these things continuously” (193a16–17; διαμένει ταῦτα πάσχουσα συνεχῶς), or, as Heidegger paraphrases, “it is already there, incessantly there as that which it is” (WP, 3). Heidegger also notes that here “matter” (ὕλη) has a double sense: it is a determinate content and at the same time a way of being; we cannot, for example, simply say that bronze is matter, since it exists as matter only in relation to the statue and not in relation to the earth out of which it itself is made.

When Aristotle proceeds to note that this understanding of phusis is what leads to the identification of the nature of things with one or some or all of the elements (earth, water, air, and fire) (193a17–23), Heidegger asks how this category of element comes to be a fundamental concept in our understanding of beings. Response: “Fundamental aspect: that out of which one makes something” (WP, 4). Here again Heidegger is emphasizing the perspective of production. Thus, we also read in the notes, “Bone has produced itself [hat sich hergestellt] out of earth” (WP, 4). Recall that in previous seminars Heidegger has already suggested an identification of nature with self-production (Sich-Herstellen). If what exists by nature is what produces itself, then we could be led to identify its nature with that out of which it produces itself, where this is something that remains. Heidegger claims that genuine being is thus identified with what persists throughout change (Eigentliches Sein: Beharren im Wechsel). Heidegger draws attention to Aristotle’s observation that those who identify nature with an element see the latter as eternal (193a26; ἀΐδιον). Asking “Why is the ἀεί being?” or why is “absolutely being” identified with “always being,” Heidegger suggests the following response: I am always already in the world and the world, nature, is always already there for me. On the other hand, Heidegger notes that the ontological presupposition for an object of concern (Besorgbares) is that it can be otherwise; only for epistêmê does eternal being come explicitly into view. In our dealing with and producing things, they become other than what they were, but on the implicit basis of what was already there and what remains; this implicit basis in turn becomes explicit only as an object of knowledge. Heidegger comments: “Originally both are there for me [that is, what can be otherwise and what is eternal]: how this is so requires a specific explanation that is not to be found in the Greeks” (WP, 4). Of course, Heidegger recognizes that here, as in Metaphysics VII.3 to which he also refers, matter is found to be an insufficient determination of being: it has “a fundamental meaning, taken as a necessary, but not as a sufficient determination of being” (WP, 4). But it nevertheless reveals in its very insufficiency how being is being understood here.

In the next class, Heidegger continues in chapter 1 to Aristotle’s discussion of the other view that identifies the nature of a thing with its form. Of special importance for Heidegger, and apparently the first thing he cites, is Aristotle’s claim that the form “is not separable except in account” (193b4–5; εἶδος οὐ χωριστὸν ὂν ἀλλ᾽ἢ κατὰ τὸν λόγον). Heidegger interprets this as meaning that the form stands on its own (eigenständig) only as an object of speaking (λέγειν), and he concludes that “the λόγος is the sole and decisive way of gaining access to the εἶδος” (WP, 5). Heidegger also notes Aristotle’s immediately following claim that the compound of matter and form, the sunolon, is not nature, but is that which exists by nature; it is not, as Heidegger explains, a “determination of being” (Seinsbestimmung), but the “unified there” that lies before the possible determinations. But the most important comment Heidegger makes in this class, and perhaps in the seminar as a whole, concerns Aristotle’s argument that the form is nature more than matter because each thing is said to be what it is when it is in entelecheia, rather than when it is in dunamis (193b7–8). Heidegger rightly focuses on the term entelecheia as being the key determination of being here. He makes the connection we would expect from previous seminars with telos in the sense of being-complete (Fertig-Sein), though significantly now also adding the Latin terms finis and perfectio, thereby preparing us for the appropriation of the Greek determination in medieval ontology. But here Heidegger adds another and even more important element to his interpretation of entelecheia: though he notes that this is “Aristotle’s word,” he adds that it is very similar to a word already found in Plato: endeleches, which means “persisting,” “lasting,” or “enduring” (fortdauernd). This similarity seems purely superficial. The main difference between the two words, namely, the letters tau and delta, is not a trivial one, but points to completely different roots: Heidegger himself, as we have seen, connects entelecheia to telos, and he also notes that endeleches is derived from dolichos: a racecourse or a length. How then could these two words have any similarity of meaning? Yet this is exactly what Heidegger maintains, going so far as to suggest that “Aristotle turned the δ into a τ because it fit better his conceptual structure” (WP, 5). The suggestion is that Aristotle retained the meaning of endeleches, changing only the one letter to bring it into relation with his central concept of telos. On this interpretation, the word entelecheia itself has the fundamental meaning of what endures, what persists, what is constant.

Heidegger’s interpretation is not original. In the seminar, he cites its source: an 1873 study by G. Teichmüller (see especially 111, 113). Why Heidegger adopts this interpretation is clear in the conclusion that he reaches: “ἐντελέχεια is abidingness [die Ständigkeit]. The always-being-there [Immer-Da-Sein]. Genuine being [Eigentliches Sein]. What has come to a stand [zustande gekommen ist], what is there as produced [als hergestellter da ist]. What is not in need of being-produced. The phenomenon of motion is the genuine ground. From there δύναμις; from it first ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια” (WP, 5). We see first that the derivation of entelecheia from endeleches enables Heidegger to interpret it from the perspective of production: what is there as that from out of which things are produced, and which therefore does not itself need to be produced, constantly abides, is always there (endeleches) and therefore is given the determination of entelecheia. In other words, this is the interpretation of entelecheia Heidegger needs to bring it into line with his thesis that the Greeks, Aristotle included, understood being as being-produced. Secondly, this interpretation enables Heidegger to make not only production, but the phenomenon of motion in general the ground from which all of Aristotle’s ontological determinations are derived. What is in entelecheia is what has come to a stand and no longer moves. There can be no notion of what persists, of what is constantly and always, without the phenomenon of motion. This Heidegger also gets from Teichmüller. Since Teichmüller understands endelecheia with a delta as having the sense of continuity in time, of uninterrupted persistence (Fortdauern) in time (Teichmüller 1873, 106–107), in deriving from it entelecheia with a tau he understands the latter as “a motion that persists without stopping” (Teichmüller, 120). On this basis, Teichmüller explicitly defends the thesis, so crucial to Heidegger’s own reading, that entelecheia and energeia (with the latter term being interpreted in terms of the former, which Teichmüller takes to be the suggestion of Metaphysics 1050a22 and 1047a30: 114–115) are both derived from the phenomenon of motion. One thing we learn from the present seminar is the importance of Teichmüller for Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s ontology of motion. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that one cannot fully understand Heidegger’s Aristotle without reading Teichmüller’s.

This is not the place to debate whether or not the Teichmüller/Heidegger interpretation of entelecheia is defensible overall. But it is the place to note that this interpretation not only is not suggested by the passage Heidegger is commenting on (193b6–8), but it appears at odds with its context. As Heidegger himself notes, the identification of nature which what persists and is eternally there results from identifying nature with matter. But in the passage in question, matter is said to be less phusis than form because a thing is what it is when it is in entelecheia, and its matter is not what a thing is in entelecheia. In other words, entelecheia is here contrasted with what persists and remains constant in natural things, that is, their matter. It may of course be the case that the form also persists and remains the same in another sense (that is, when contrasted with accidental properties). But this is not at all the characteristic of the form that Aristotle emphasizes here. What he emphasizes instead is the characteristic form has of being that toward which a natural thing tends (εἰς ὅ, 193b18), that is, of being its telos. This means that the sense of entelecheia operative here is that of “possessing-the-end,” with “end” in the sense of that toward which a natural thing tends, not in the sense of completion. There is no hint of any connection between entelecheia and “abidingness” and “always-being-there”; on the contrary, these notions are associated in context with phusis in the sense of matter.⁷

Continuing the reading of II.1, Heidegger turns to Aristotle’s description of phusis in the sense of becoming as being a path toward phusis (193b12–13; ἔτι δ᾽ἡ φύσις ἡ λεγομενή ὡς γένεσις ὁδός ἐστιν εἰς φύσιν). Aristotle’s example is the natural process by which a human being comes to be from a human being (193b12; γίγνεταἰ γὰρ ἐξ ἀνθρώπου ἄνθρωπος). As Heidegger notes, this is a “determinately exceptional way of becoming” (WP, 5). Aristotle emphasizes this by immediately contrasting the becoming of nature with the art of healing (ἡ ἰάτρευσις), a contrast Heidegger explains as that between two different ways of being as represented by the natural process of becoming healthy and the art of healing. The difference, as Aristotle explains it, is that the art of healing does not lead to itself, but to health: that from which it begins is not the same as that toward which it moves. The point appears to be that in contrast, nature as a process leads toward itself, not toward something distinct from itself; thus Heidegger comments that phusis “is the kind of being that is in such a way that it becomes in itself” (WP, 6).

Given this explicit contrast between natural becoming and an art like medicine, we must be surprised to see Heidegger conclude from his reading of this passage that “the fundamental movement and guideline is ποιήσις (paradigm)” (WP, 6). How can poiêsis be the paradigm for the interpretation of phusis when Aristotle explicitly contrasts the two? Heidegger finds the justification for this claim in what Aristotle proceeds to say: that natural becoming grows (φύεται) toward and into form, so that from natural becoming as a movement toward phusis we can conclude that “the form is nature” (193b18; ἡ ἄρα μορφὴ φύσις). This conclusion is highlighted with an exclamation mark in the notes for the seminar. It is presumably in this identification of nature with form that Heidegger sees the paradigm of poiêsis at work. It is therefore all the more important to note that Aristotle arrives at this identification by contrasting nature with poiêsis. It is the natural process of growing that leads Aristotle to this identification. This suggests that the paradigm here is not the doctor looking to the form of health in healing the patient, but the fetus growing into a human being. Significantly, Heidegger refers his students to Book VI, chapter 3, of the Nicomachean Ethics. Presumably what he has in mind is the account there of poiêsis and the form of knowing that guides it: technê. But again, he forgets the opposition there between poiêsis and praxis. The distinctive and exceptional becoming of nature, as a becoming in and toward itself, certainly has more in common with praxis, as an action that is its own end, than it does with poiêsis, whose end is distinct from itself. Indeed, that poiêsis does not aim at itself but at something distinct from itself is what leads Aristotle to contrast it here with phusis.⁸

Heidegger next notes Aristotle’s claim that the form is spoken of in two senses “since the privation too is in a way form” (193b19–20; καὶ γὰρ ἡ στέρησις εἶδός πως ἐστιν). Heidegger gives the example of wine vinegar as a being that is not that which it should be, whose form is therefore a privation.⁹ He also notes that sterêsis is the root of Hegel’s concept of negation (WP, 6). At this point the class turns to chapter 3, skipping the second chapter. It is in chapter 3 that Aristotle introduces and distinguishes between the four types of cause, with the justification that “we do not think we know each thing before we grasp the ‘why’ with regard to each” (194b18–19; Εἰδέναι οὐ πρότερον οἰόμεθα ἕκαστον πρὶν ἂν λάβωμεν τὸ διὰ τί περὶ ἕκαστον). Referring to the first book of the Metaphysics, Heidegger suggests that this “why” (διὰ τί) has its origin in the why of circumspection (Warum der Umsicht), in how we address things in our everyday dealing with them. From this determinate basis the causes are later all emptied, formalized, and generalized. Heidegger makes a specific point of noting that the so-called formal cause is supposed to determine a being in its determinate being (in other words, there is nothing “formal” about it!)—something later overlooked, including by Kant. The implicit orientation of the seminar toward later medieval ontology is exposed by Heidegger’s use of the Latin terms in listing the four types of causes: causa materialis, causa formalis, causa efficiens, and causa finalis.

This orientation becomes explicit at the beginning of the next class when Heidegger claims that the being of nature (as determined here by Aristotle) was simply transferred to the being of God in the proofs for God’s existence. The being of God is thus given the same meaning as the being of nature. “The whole of ontology is uprooted from this its origin (the incompatibility of the theological categories with religious experience; taken up again with Melanchthon)” (WP, 7). We have in a nutshell the thesis that will be taken up and defended in the 1924/25 seminar on medieval ontology: the ontological categories applied to God, because derived from an interpretation of the being of nature, of the world, are incompatible with our religious experience of God, and this is what the Protestantism of Melanchthon and Luther was reacting against.

Here Heidegger returns to Physics II.3 with the goal of determining why there are precisely these four types of causes. Again, the goal is a “return to the motivations in the non-theoretical” (WP, 7). Toward this end Heidegger emphasizes the literal sense of the phrase dia ti: through what, by way of what? The dia expresses a stretch, a way. Asking “By way of what?” is being on the way of knowing. Heidegger claims, in this context, that “there is for human beings in their concrete existence no pure νοεῖν” (WP, 7), which is why our thinking is characterized by Aristotle as a dia-noein (the reference here is to De Anima III.7; see especially the reference to the διανοητικὴ ψυχή at 431a14). Heidegger even claims that the logos is not that immediate addressing described in Metaphysics VII.4 (that is, the λόγος of the essence that says what something is according to itself), but rather a saying something of something (κατάφασις – ἀποφάσις). In asking “by way of what,” our relation to what is there is not one of immediate grasping or seeing, but one of being on the way toward it. But in being on the way, what am I on the way toward? What do I come to see in carrying out a knowing determination of something? Nothing other than the archê: that from which or through which the thing itself is what it is.

More specifically, the dia ti is interpreted here as that which is responsible for something: aitia. The distinction between the four causes arises from the different ways in which we speak of the aitia. Heidegger here remarks on something usually not noted: that Aristotle at 195a3 concludes only that “the causes are more or less spoken of in so many ways [Τὰ μὲν οὖν αἴτια σχεδὸν τοσαυταχῶς λέγεται].” The qualification here shows that Aristotle “is not pretending to provide a classification” (WP, 8). We then have in the notes the most laconic summary possible of the passage at 195a3–15, which I will try to fill in: “(1) one in relation to many [one thing can have several causes, given the different senses of ‘cause’]; (2) one in relation to the other [two things can cause each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, again in different senses]; (3) being-there and not-being-there [the same thing can cause opposite results through its presence or absence]” (WP, 8). Aristotle’s use of the words parousia and apousia to speak of the presence and absence of the cause (195a13–14) elicits from Heidegger the comment that parousia and genuine being are here identified: confirmation for Heidegger of his central thesis that being meant “presence” for the Greeks. That Heidegger is looking ahead to medieval ontology is again indicated by his sudden remark here that Thomas sought to make the existence of created things understandable through Aristotle’s account of the causes. Heidegger also suggests that it is only being ens perfectum that distinguishes God’s being from that of creatures; a reference in the notes to the notion of “concursus Dei” might also be meant to remind us of the theological doctrine according to which acts of nature parallel acts of God. Heidegger also suggests that the purely formal ontological determinations of the Metaphysics (ὄν ᾗ ὄν) have a concrete origin, specifically the phenomenon of movement. The notion of aitia itself as cause is arrived at through the formalization of the concrete phenomenon of guilt or responsibility. The problem is that these formalized concepts are then applied to all beings as beings, God included, despite their origin in the experience of a very determinate field of beings.

Heidegger then briefly reviews the passage at 195a3–16, noting the introductory “it follows” (συμβαίνει) at 195a4, as signaling the step toward the articulation of what was implied earlier, and the repetition of the phrase “but not in the same manner” (195a7, 10; ἀλλ᾽οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον) in speaking of the causality of the different causes. He also corrects (WP, 9), in line with recent editions, Bekker’s reading of “τόπους” at line 195a15 in favor of “τρόπους”: “All of the causes mentioned now fall into four ways that are the most apparent.” Heidegger notes in addition that chapter 3 makes a schematic impression in relation to the rest of the Physics; indeed, it simply repeats the entry on aitia in the second chapter of Metaphysics Δ. He then turns to commenting on 195a15–26. The spare notes do not give us much idea of his reading except for his insistence that the passage provides no analysis of how the “four ways” emerge.¹⁰

This latter point is important in explaining why Heidegger now turns to Metaphysics I.3–7 for an understanding of the coming-to-be (γένεσις) of the causes. The following general observation with which he introduces his discussion is key: “The nature of the critique [that is, Aristotle’s critique of his predecessors in these chapters] shows that he believes himself to have a basis for these 4 [kinds of cause] in the phenomenon of κίνησις” (WP, 9). Recall Heidegger’s earlier claim that it is from the phenomenon of movement that the purely formal ontological determinations are derived. Making the general point that both to carry out the critique and to show the genesis of the four causes requires a prior orientation, Heidegger seeks to determine what is at issue for Aristotle in his critique and on what grounds he comes to see the four causes. Given an orientation toward beings as “consisting of something,” at first only the material cause was recognized. But as Aristotle says, thinkers were eventually led further by the subject itself (984a18). “Theory made them blind to the phenomena. But they were compelled by the truth itself” (WP, 10). But what truth? What is the “matter itself” that compelled them and serves as the basis for Aristotle’s own articulation of the four causes? Noting that the good is seen as an end for movement and that the eidos, as what I hold before me in advance (what I have in view), is given first place by Aristotle among the causes (983a29; τὸ διὰ τὶ πρῶτον), Heidegger quickly reaches what is for him the important conclusion: that not only movement, but production is the basis on which Aristotle arrives at his four causes. The notes are very clear on this point: “Basis: beings as having been produced and in that way being there”; “All 4 αἰτία from the fundamental experience of producing [Herstellen], being-produced [Hergestelltsein]—a ground that Aristotle did not see in this explicitness and also did not need to see” (WP, 10).¹¹ Even allowing for the fragmentary and laconic nature of the notes, this momentous conclusion appears to be reached much too quickly. Indeed, here as elsewhere, one gets the impression of a thesis already decided in advance and seeking only quick and superficial confirmation. Note also that the thesis can be confirmed only by leaving the Physics. Why cannot the fundamental experience here be that of natural growth (φύεσθαι), in short, of nature (φύσις)? As we have seen, it is by appealing to the movement of natural growth that Aristotle himself in the Physics justifies the identification of nature with form.

The next class begins with some observations on the term archê. Insisting that it is a determination of being, Heidegger makes the following two points: aitia is the form that the archê takes in knowing that grasps and grounds; the archê can also be the principle of knowing itself as a movement. That Heidegger is here commenting on the first chapter of Metaphysics Δ dedicated to the notion of archê becomes clear when he cites the following passage from it: “It is common to all principles to be the first thing from which a thing either is or becomes or is known” (1013a17–19; πασῶν μὲν οὐν κοινὸν τῶν ἀρχῶν τὸ πρῶτον εἶναι ὅθεν ἢ ἐστιν ἢ γίγνεται ἢ γιγνώσκεται). A principle is that from which the thing itself in its coming to be and being as well as our knowledge of it originate. He also cites Aristotle’s claim in the same chapter that “all causes are principles” (1013a17; παντὰ γὰρ τὰ αἴτια ἀρχαί). Heidegger makes the important comment, given what we have seen to be his overall thesis, that aitia is “a way in which ἀρχή is objective, is functional for grasping—producing” (WP, 11–12). The point is that it is only in grasping and producing something that I understand the origin of its being as its cause. In other words, why would I understand a thing’s origin as what is responsible for it except on the basis of my experience of my own responsibility for grasping and producing it? Though Heidegger does not say so explicitly here, the same experience can be seen as the basis for the identification of a thing’s eidos with what it was to be (τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι): an identification Heidegger draws attention to here. As Heidegger notes, “That which it was is what it is in a genuine sense (it does not leave what it was behind itself)” (WP, 12).

The class now turns to chapter 4 and Aristotle’s discussion of the sense in which tuchê (luck) and to automaton (chance) are also causes. The goal is to bring into view the specific being within which these causes are to be found. With the notion of tuchê, Heidegger adds, Aristotle is entering a completely peculiar region of beings, though one that he still seeks to explain in terms of the causes he has already conceptualized. What then is the specific region of beings into which the notion of tuchê leads us? One opposed to what is “always or for the most part” (ἀεὶ καὶ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ): opposed, in other words, to a region of beings determined according to a certain temporality. Tuchê is to be found in being as interpreted according to a different temporality: that of the “sometimes, once in a while.” Then follow in the notes a series of claims of great importance that therefore need to be all cited and commented on.

First we read: “Never again such an original account of temporality—Bergson is the first to attempt it Temps et durée” (WP, 12). We have seen Heidegger claim in several contexts that the Greeks understood being as what is always present, and they thus interpreted it through a specific conception of time (what we could call the “ever-now”). In his discussion of luck and chance, Aristotle must discuss the temporality of the “sometimes, once in a while,” which is clearly the temporality of finite human existence itself and human action. Where else in the history of metaphysics, with its focus on what is always, or at least for the most part, do we find such a detailed analysis of this other temporality? If Heidegger mentions Henri Bergson here as the first to attempt such an analysis after Aristotle, this is because for Bergson it is “duration,” as distinct from the mathematical time of natural science, that preserves contingency and liberty against determinism (see Bergson 1889, especially chap. 3). With the notion of duration, Bergson, like Aristotle, is attempting to explain the temporality of contingent events and human action. And yet the next sentence in the notes, of which the subject appears to be Bergson rather than Aristotle, identifies a limitation: “Did not win the genuine ground because seen not historically but biologically.” It is indeed in the phenomenon of life that Bergson finds time as duration. In contrast, the guideline for Aristotle’s account of tuchê is action with a history: going to the market for this or that reason. Furthermore, while his account of to automaton extends it beyond human action, his examples for this broader term still relate to historical (or we could say “narrative”) action: the examples of acting apo tou automatou are, in the case of a living thing, the horse running “spontaneously” to where it is saved (197b15–16; ὅτι ἐσωθή μὲν ἐλθών), and, in the case of an inanimate thing, the tripod falling on its feet “so that it serves as a seat” (197b16-18). While life is the central phenomenon here for Aristotle (more on this below), his perspective certainly does not appear to be narrowly biological; he instead emphasizes the narrative of life and therefore its historical character: going to the market, being saved, serving as a seat (inanimate things too have a history in the role they play within life). According to Heidegger’s objection, then, Bergson would appear to fall short of Aristotle’s perspective and only Heidegger would carry on the work of Aristotle in taking historical being as his guideline in Being and Time. Our temporality is rooted not only in our being alive, but in our having a history.

Heidegger continues with a critique of Aristotle specifically: “In Aristotle time is oriented toward motion and number.” What Heidegger has in mind here is of course Aristotle’s definition of time as “the number of motion with respect to before and after” (219b1–2); precisely the scientific “time” to which Bergson opposes the intuition of duration. In the next line we have a succinct critique of this definition of time: “With the orientation toward the ἀριθμός he covers up again.” If we understand number as the co-presence of equal units, we can understand why Heidegger would think that a definition of time in terms of number more covers up than explicates the phenomenon of temporality. Bergson makes a similar critique of the Aristotelian definition. But in a parenthesis we have what appears to be the most important critique: Aristotle “does not yet distinguish between the movement of φύσις and that of, say, a προαίρεσις.” The justification for this claim can be found in the fact that, while Aristotle explains tuchê as occurring in the realm of human choice (thus the translation “luck” suggested above), he extends to automaton to the whole of nature (thus “chance” broadly speaking) without suggesting a fundamental or radical difference between the two notions on account of their different applications. As we will see, to automaton includes tuchê as the broader phenomenon. The movement and temporality that characterizes human decision is not distinguished fundamentally from the movement and temporality that characterizes nature. This supports Heidegger’s general thesis that the Greeks derived their understanding of both being and time from the world and then applied it to human existence itself: something that will be inherited by medieval ontology. Thus, in the next line we read: “What is at issue is the determinate being of living, there where an always-being and mostly-being are (in the world).” The final note for this class expresses emphatically and clearly the contrast between the being and temporality of (human) life and the being and temporality of the world: “The ἀεί [always] and the ἐπὶ τὸ πόλυ [for the most part] do not come into consideration for being in the sense of προαίρεσις—sometimes I go to the market, sometimes I want that and that, sometimes something else (historical being).” Aristotle must of course see this in his discussion of tuchê, as Heidegger suggests by using Aristotle’s own example. Yet the claim is that Aristotle still covers up this temporality through his definition of time as number and the exclusive orientation of his scientific inquiry toward what is always or most often the case.¹²

In the next class, Heidegger provides a detailed breakdown of chapter 4, in which Aristotle describes different responses to the phenomena of tuchê and to automaton. Heidegger’s outline is as follows:

1. “The Ancients did not take seriously the talk about τύχη” (WP, 13). This is because they thought that what was attributed to luck and chance could be traced back to determinate causes. “For,” as Aristotle writes, “they say that nothing comes to be through luck” (196a1; οὐδὲν γὰρ δὴ γίγνεσθαι ἀπὸ τύχης φασίν).

2. “They talk about it [luck], but they do not deal with it explicitly, do not investigate it” (WP, 13). This is presumably a reference to 196a8–24, where Aristotle describes those who speak of things as happening by luck or chance even though they do not appear to think that luck or chance exist, or at least do not go into the matter.

3. “Bad theories” (WP, 13). This is presumably a reference to 196a24–196b5, where Aristotle describes those who do acknowledge the existence of chance but ascribe it only to heavenly phenomena (where it least belongs, in Aristotle’s view).

4. “θεῖον καὶ δαιμόνιον (cannot be further questioned)” (WP, 13). This is a reference to Aristotle’s description of “those to whom luck appears to be a cause, but to be inapparent [ἄδηλος] to human reasoning as being something divine and most mysterious [δαιμονιώτερον]” (196b5–7).

Thus Heidegger finds in Aristotle’s catalogue of views the full range of possible responses to the phenomenon of tuchê: denial, acceptance without explanation, bad explanation, and the claim that it is unexplainable. Heidegger’s own remark here is that “inquiring into the obvious [Selbstverständlichkeiten] is what is hardest” (WP, 13).

It is in chapter 5 that Aristotle provides his own positive account of the phenomenon by, as Heidegger says, giving “an indication of the being for which such a thing as τύχη exists. (I go to the market)” (WP, 13). Noting the example of going to the market that Aristotle himself will use in this chapter, Heidegger indicates the being in question: our own being as a being concerned. Aristotle himself locates tuchê in a subclass of what is “for something” (196b17; ἕνεκά του): namely, what comes about according to a decision or choice (196b18; κατὰ προαίρεσιν). Aristotle gives the example of someone who wishes to collect money and goes by luck to where he is able to collect the money, for example, the market. What makes this a case of luck is not that the person went to the market with no purpose, but that he went with another purpose (196b34–35; οὐ τούτου ἕνεκα) than collecting the money. He would have chosen to go there to collect the money if he had known that the money could be collected there; but in fact, he chose to go there for another purpose (to see a spectacle, for example) and was just lucky to be able to collect the money as well. The important general point is that tuchê is to be found only in the context of human deliberation and choice. Heidegger’s comment merits being cited in full: “The being to whom something happens exists by chance [zufällig]. It is a being κατὰ προαίρεσιν: human being, a being of the character of Dasein, a being-concerned [ein Besorgen]. A being that can be also otherwise: the being of being-concerned. It can also be otherwise than it is right now. It has a certain outbreak of possibilities. Also the οὗ ἕνεκα can be otherwise, can be carried out or not. The whole concrete being of a human being is a ἕνεκά τινος” (WP, 13). One can see why Heidegger is drawn to Aristotle’s account of tuchê. Aristotle identifies a cause that, unlike the four causes outlined in chapter 3, is distinctive of the being of human beings. The other cause, to automaton, will be described in chapter 6 as extending to other living things and even (though arguably less so) to inanimate things. Tuchê, however, is to be found only in that being whose being is characterized by “choice” (προαίρεσις): Dasein. Furthermore, as already noted, tuchê shows human existence to be characterized by a distinctive temporality to be contrasted with the “always” and “for the most part.”

It is to this last point that Heidegger draws our attention in his next comment on the text: “Aristotle determines this being [the being of human beings] as παρά: there along with” (WP, 13). Heidegger is here referring to Aristotle’s observation that what is for the sake of something can be found even “in things outside what is necessary and for the most part” (196b20; ἐν τοῖς παρὰ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον καὶ τὸ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ). I translate “παρά” here as “outside,” but it is significant that Heidegger translates it as “mit dabei,” emphasizing that what is “outside” is also there with what it is outside of. Thus, in the continuation of the notes we read: “It has the ἀεί and the ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ there with it (next to it)” (WP, 13). Heidegger’s insistence on this point is presumably intended to show that in understanding our temporality as para what is always or for the most part, Aristotle is still understanding it only in relation to, and indeed in dependence on, what is always or for the most part. Even an understanding of our being and temporality as para that of the world is still guided by the understanding of the latter. This appears to be the explanation of Heidegger’s next move. He connects the term para with the verb sumbainein, “to happen” in the sense of “coincide,” thus noting that the sense of being at issue here is “coincidental” or “accidental” being (συμβεβηκός). This, Heidegger suggests, is the region of being to which both poiêsis and praxis belong. But Heidegger now refers to Metaphysics VI (E), chapter 2, where Aristotle argues that what exists coincidentally or accidentally, as existing neither always nor for the most part, cannot be an object of science (and therefore is also not to be studied by the science of being qua being). Heidegger even alludes to a passage of Nicomachean Ethics VI that he discussed in the SS1923 seminar (though there is no explicit reference in the present notes) in which Aristotle says that in the case of things capable of being otherwise we cannot know, when they exit our contemplation, whether they exist or not (1139b21–22). This explains the common supposition that we can be said to know only what cannot be otherwise. What Heidegger clearly wants to bring to our attention is that our own being, characterized as it is by luck and accident, cannot be an object of science for Aristotle. Whatever insight Aristotle has into our distinctive being and temporality is not amenable to his conception of science. This is why Heidegger here speaks of “the task of arriving at a radical conception of science” (WP, 14).

At this point the notes make it difficult to follow the progression of the seminar. Heidegger will turn to the next chapter (6) at the start of the next class, which is not, however, reported until page eighteen of the notes. Before then we have the following outline, mysteriously within square brackets and also contained within a larger square:

1. History of the literature [on] the relations between Aristotle and the Middle Ages.

2. De Malo

3. Scientia (theology as science)

4. The concept of God in Duns Scotus (WP, 14)

It is not possible to determine what this outline refers to. These topics are not addressed in the notes that follow and, as already noted, they are separated from these notes through brackets and a square. Are they the outline for a future class that was never given? In any case, they clearly anticipate Heidegger’s turn to the relation between Aristotle and medieval ontology in the WS1924/25 seminar to be discussed in the next chapter. We can also guess that the goal of going through the items in the cited outline would be to show in medieval ontology the same tension as in Aristotle between human experience and theology as a science.

What follows the outline and precedes the turn to chapter 6 is a discussion of the terms aitia and archê focused on Book Δ of the Metaphysics. The first point we read in the notes concerns the “extension of the concept of αἰτίον beyond the original being in which it was originally experienced. Broadening of the category of αἰτίον—the being of nature is also seen in the sense of producing-making” (WP, 14). Here we have again the claim that the notion of cause has its origin in the activity of production and from there is extended to nature. But then we have a claim that is seemingly in tension with this one, namely, that “for the winning of these categories no selected region of being is paradigmatic—passing over without any sharp distinction: averageness” (WP, 14). The explanation appears to be that no region of being is explicitly taken to be the paradigm; rather, the categories arise from a being-in-the-world characterized by indeterminacy and averageness, where all beings are treated indiscriminately. Generally, the common ground for being in the sense of the categories (being as expressed in logos) as well as of being in the sense of dunamis and energeia is “being-there [Dasein]—here in the world—there with the being of life” (WP, 14).

The above appears to have no direct connection with the discussion of tuchê. What follows (after a dividing line in the notes) seems to have more of a connection in explaining how it is possible in Aristotle’s view to have a science of becoming. What becomes, arises, and perishes admits of determination and therefore of being an object of knowledge because it is a peras or “limit”; and what makes it a peras is having a beginning (ἀρχή) and an end (τέλος). Heidegger refers to Metaphysics Δ.17, presumably (though this is not specified in the notes) because Aristotle there lists “the for-the-sake-of-which” (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα) as one of the meanings of peras (1022a8). The point Heidegger apparently wishes to make is that Aristotle in his account of becoming is guided by an understanding of being. “Because being is such, therefore is becoming something so and so constituted” (WP, 15). We are then given the example of a sperm enclosing the dunamis within itself: the point of the example is obscure, but we can guess it to be that the kind of power that the sperm has is defined by the kind of being it will become. Heidegger will continue to make precisely this point, but with technê this time as his example of becoming: “The τέχνη (itself a γένεσις) is such because the being, what it will produce and conserve, the εἶδος, is such” (WP, 15). That technê is here taken as the model for all being, including the natural growth of the embryo, is indicated by the obscure phrase that precedes the quoted sentence: “All being in the as-what-character of being-produced” (WP, 15). Furthermore, after claiming that “the εἶδος is the αἰτία of dealing so and so,” Heidegger adds, “As αἰτία in turn the ἀρχή of τέχνη and φύσις, of any γένεσις” (WP, 15). The talk of archê and aitia is motivated, Heidegger is suggesting, by the need to give becoming a limit, an end in being. This point is explicated in the notes that follow, which are therefore of great importance: “The ἀρχή is therefore ἀρχή because the εἶδος of beings is the αἰτία of dealing with them so-and-so in bringing them into being. That which is brought into being is the τέλος, the end. Every κίνησις has its τέλος. The τέλος is (as εἶδος) ἀρχή of the κίνησις and the αἰτία of its being constituted in such and such a way. The κίνησις that always has its τέλος in itself is the one that is most complete. Φύσις always has ἀρχή and τέλος in itself. Not τέχνη” (WP, 15). The telos is the archê that gives a movement its limit, its determinacy, indeed its being. This is why a movement that contains its telos within itself is more complete, more perfect, more fully realized than one that does not. Here, it is important to note, Heidegger recognizes that technê is not such a movement. Building or healing do not have their ends in themselves, but rather outside themselves, that is, in the house that is built or in the health that is produced. Phusis, in contrast, contains its end within itself. We have already seen Aristotle contrast nature with the art of healing precisely in this way at 193b12–18, along with Heidegger’s comment that nature “is the kind of being that is in such a way that it becomes in itself” (WP, 6). The art of healing has not itself but rather health as its end, whereas a human being generates a human being. One could also cite here (though Heidegger does not) Aristotle’s description of phusis at Metaphysics IX.8 as “a principle of motion, but not in something else, but in itself as itself” (1049b9–10; ἀρχή γὰρ κινητική, άλλ᾽οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἀλλ᾽ ἐν αὐτῷ ᾗ αὐτό).

This again raises the question of why Heidegger insists that productive movement, rather than the more perfect movement of nature, is for Aristotle paradigmatic. The reasoning appears to be the following: we see in production that movement is given its being by the end that is its principle (the movement exists for the sake of this end); it is only on this basis that we then look for a movement that is more perfect in being its own end, and more perfect in more closely approximating the determinacy of being. On this view, it is not the case that nature is a fundamentally different kind of movement from production; instead, it is a more perfect productive movement in being a self-production. The guiding phenomenon here is movement, but both the central significance and the being of movement are taken from production. This is how we can understand the lines that follow in the notes: “The fundamental perspective of being as being-produced conditions the fundamental significance of κίνησις. For every (produced) being is produced either through τέχνη or φύσει. Τέχνη and φύσις, however, are both (categorial) κινήσεις. That overall the question can be about the greater or lesser perfection [Vollendung] of the movement (τελειότερον), lies in the ontological starting-point. The greater perfection is always with a view to what is brought into being (τέλος the end); what has resulted, what was yielded, what has come into being” (WP, 15). We take from production an identification of being with a movement’s end that is its principle and completes it; we then judge the greater or lesser perfection of a movement, that is, its greater or lesser being, according to its completeness, that is, according to the extent to which it contains its own end.

Heidegger next seeks a more precise determination of the notions of archê and aitia in order to uncover the motivations for ontological inquiry, as well as for physics and ethics. What exactly are we searching for and why when we search for the principles and causes? Heidegger returns here to Metaphysics Δ (V).1, the chapter on archê, and Aristotle’s claim there that “all of the causes are principles” (1013a17; πάντα τὰ αἴτια ἀρχαί). Heidegger insists that this does not mean simply that the aitiai are a sub-class of archai, included within it as a more restricted field encompassed by a broader one. “Rather: the ‘why,’ in its character as the ‘why’ of something happening in such and such a way, must precisely in this its distinctive trait of being a ‘why’ become ἀρχή of κίνησις, ἀρχή of εἶναι and γένεσθαι or γνῶναι” (WP, 16). Consider an example: why do I build a house in the way I do? The answer lies in the principle of its coming to be, that is, its end (I build the house in this way because it is supposed to serve this end), in the principle of its being what it is (the form of a house), and in the principle of its being known (its account or definition). This suggests an answer to the question with which Heidegger begins this discussion: the motivations for ontological inquiry are to be found in everyday dealings. It is in asking myself why I deal with things in the way I do that I come to seek the principle of their being and their being-known. In case we think that this origin in practical dealings is incompatible with theoretical contemplation, Heidegger adds, “The temporalizing [Zeitigung] of pure looking-at and of tarrying with that which is looked at constitutes ipso facto the meaning of the why” (WP, 16). There is a “why” here as much as in the case of building a house, but here the “why” is to be found in the act of contemplating itself. Heidegger then quotes Metaphysics Γ.2, 1003b17–19, where the philosopher who studies “being insofar as being” (ὄν ᾗ ὄν) is described as seeking to know the causes and principles of ousia. That being and its causes and principles must be disclosed to a pure contemplating appears to explain the next citation in the notes: Metaphysics Δ (V).7 is cited on being in the sense of truth. “Being and the ‘is’ signify that it is true, not-being that it is not true but false” (1017a31–32; τὸ εἶναι σημαίνει καὶ τὸ ἐστιν ὅτι ἀληθές, τὸ δὲ μὴ εἶναι ὅτι οὐκ ἀληθὲς ἀλλὰ ψεῦδος). Heidegger comments, “Here it becomes clear to me: ἀληθές has nothing to do with judgment, there is absolutely no talk of judgment here, it is not the judgment that is true or false, but beings are unconcealed, are there, or are concealed, not there, something deceptive has pushed its way before them” (WP, 16).

The next two pages of the notes, seventeen to eighteen, offer nothing more than a list of Ancient Greek vocabulary with clearly Heideggerian definitions. Elli Bondi was clearly working hard on her Heideggerian Greek! This list tells us nothing about the seminar and is clearly tacked onto the notes for the preceding class. We will pass it over here and move on to the notes for the next class that returns to the reading of the Physics.

The notes indicate that the class now turned to chapter 6 of Physics II and thus to Aristotle’s discussion of to automaton. Unfortunately, the notes become even terser than before. If Heidegger gave chapter 6 as detailed a reading as he did chapter 5, the notes do not reflect it. One very important claim Heidegger defended, however, is preserved. Aristotle begins chapter 6 by claiming that to automaton differs from tuchê in being the broader notion that includes it, but extends beyond it (197a36–197b1; it is ἐπὶ πλεῖον). The reason is that only beings capable of acting (197b6; πρᾶξαι) can do something apo tuchês. “For this reason, neither what is inanimate nor animal nor child does anything ἀπὸ τύχης, because it does not have προαίρεσις” (197b7–8). In contrast, to automaton extends beyond deliberative action, applying also to other animals and many of the inanimate things (197b14–15; τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῷοις καὶ πολλοῖς τῶν ἀψύχων). Here we need to recall Aristotle’s claim in chapter 5 that both tuchê and to automaton are to be found only in things that come to be for the sake of something (196b29–33; ἄμφω ἐν τοῖς ἕνεκά τού ἐστιν). Therefore, if to automaton can be extended to other animals and even lifeless things, it is only to the extent that they too come to be for the sake of something. Aristotle already noted, again in chapter 5, that what exist for the sake of something are not only the things done through thought (ἀπὸ διανοίας), but also those that come about through nature (196b21–22; ἀπὸ φύσεως). It is easiest to see how living things act for the sake of something since, as Heidegger notes in clearly recalling his reading of De Anima, every living thing (ζῷον) is characterized by the powers of discriminating and moving (κρίνειν, κίνειν).

But in what sense can inanimate things, lacking these capacities, be acting for the sake of something? It is in response to this implicit question that Heidegger makes the important claim recorded in the notes: “The ζῷον is the bridge for the οὑ ἕκεκα in φύσις” (WP, 19). It is by way of living things that the “for-the-sake-of” can be extended beyond rational decision to nature as a whole. It is unfortunate that Heidegger, as we will see, skips chapter 8, because there Aristotle gives the examples of birds building their nests, spiders making their webs, and plants growing their leaves and sending their roots down, in each case without art or deliberation (199a21; οὔτε τέχνῃ οὔτε ζητήσαντα οὔτε βουλευσάμενα ποιεῖ). Aristotle will therefore claim that it is absurd to deny that something is happening for the sake of something just because we do not see the moving cause deliberating (199b26–28). Heidegger’s suggestion can also explain Aristotle’s otherwise bizarre examples in chapter 6 of inanimate objects acting spontaneously. One we have already mentioned above: the tripod happening to fall in such a way that it can be sat on (197b16–18). There are two striking things about this example: first, the inanimate object chosen is an artificial object; second, the end it happens to serve (that of being sat on) is one that could never be the tripod’s own. The end here is that of an animate thing (recall that the person in Aristotle’s example of tuchê, though it was luck that he collected the money because he went to the market with another end, could in principle have gone to the market with the end of collecting the money). A little later Aristotle gives another example: a rock falling and by chance striking someone (197b30–32). Here at least the inanimate object is not an artificial one, but Aristotle makes explicit that the end the falling rock happens to serve is not a natural end that could ever be its own when he says that someone would have had to throw the rock for it to strike the other person’s head not by accident. If inanimate things can do things spontaneously or by chance because they belong to the class of things that come to be for the sake of something, the only ends Aristotle speaks of in his examples of such things are ends that can exist only for animate or deliberative beings. This, then, appears to confirm Heidegger’s point.

The example Heidegger goes on to give of something existing for the sake of something in nature is a cat coming to be from a cat (interestingly substituting Aristotle’s example of a human being generating a human being). Heidegger notes that in this case (1) that from which the motion (of generation) originates, (2) the nature of what is generated, and (3) that for the sake of which the generation occurs are all the same being: the cat! The cat is source of motion, form, and final cause. Now before the notes turn to chapter 7, we have the most bizarre and seemingly inconsequential interpolation in square brackets: “[Duns Scotus seeks to grasp the esse of the actus purus in a different way through the experiences of repentance]” (WP, 19). We are here again reminded that the seminar is looking ahead to medieval ontology. But what this comment refers to and what could possibly be its specific relevance to the surrounding context is something I leave for a cleverer reader to decipher.

Heidegger describes chapter 7 as transitional, taking up what has gone before and preparing for what follows. It indeed recapitulates the distinction between the four kinds of causes, but also relates them all to the phenomenon of motion. As Heidegger states, the topic of the chapter is “beings as κινούμενον. What exists in being moved has as such a fourfold multiplicity of structures” (WP, 19). There are even references in this chapter to what causes motion without being itself moved (198a29, 198b1–2). This is presumably why the notes mention a study of the second half of chapter 6 of Metaphysics Λ (XII), the chapter introducing the unmoved mover, “for the summer.”¹³ We next have repeated a thesis we have seen present throughout the seminar, that is, that the guideline for understanding phusis as a principle of movement is poiêsis. But now we have an explanation: “(The becoming and coming-to-be that is present in ποίησις.) That is what is immediately apparent, what lies nearest to hand” (WP, 19). The explanation is thus that it is in production that the phenomenon of movement is nearest at hand; the structure it reveals there is then projected onto nature.

At this point the notes turn to chapter 9, though they will return briefly to chapter 7. What is skipped over entirely, at least as far as we can tell from the notes, is chapter 8. This is puzzling given that it is in this chapter, as already noted, that Aristotle defends his view that nature itself acts for the sake of something and does so by appealing to the directedness of animal life. One of Aristotle’s arguments should have been especially appealing to Heidegger: that just as art acts for the sake of something, so does nature too act for the sake of something (199a8–12). He also would have liked the comparison of nature to a doctor healing himself (199b30–32). These passages could have been used to support his thesis that nature is interpreted according to the paradigm of poiêsis.¹⁴ On the other hand, chapter 8 also emphasizes the difference between phusis and technê, the former acting of itself without deliberation. For these reasons, we would very much have liked to know what Heidegger would have made of this chapter.

Aristotle begins chapter 9 by asking whether what is “of necessity” (ἐξ ἀνάγκης) is such “hypothetically” (ἐξ ὑποθέσεως) or “simply” (ἁπλῶς, 199b34–35). As an example of treating necessity as “simple,” Aristotle describes someone who supposes that the wall of a house necessarily comes to be because heavy things like stones are of necessity carried downward while lighter things like wood are necessarily drawn upward. While not denying the existence of this simple necessity, Aristotle in the chapter argues that it cannot explain the existence of the wall; such an explanation must treat necessity as hypothetical: the stones and the wood are necessary given the end of providing shelter. The house could not exist without stones and wood, but its cause is the end of providing shelter that itself makes the stones and the wood necessary. Aristotle also gives the example of the saw: given the end of sawing for which the saw is made, it is necessarily made of iron. So the “hypothesis” takes this form: if there is to be a saw or a house with this end, then such and such material is necessary. Aristotle’s main point is that what is necessary (the matter) exists for the sake of the end and not vice versa, so that it is the end that is the cause and the principle of explanation.

The notes for the seminar again do not provide us with a detailed reading, but we can identify some points. Heidegger discussed the distinction between “simple” and “hypothetical” necessity as one between a necessity existing “in itself” and a necessity existing “with a view toward the whole that is to be produced” (WP, 20). Speaking of the example of the saw, he claimed that both the iron of which it is made and the wood that is to be sawed must be already there in a similar sense: “each there in determinate possibilities—referring.” Heidegger also gave importance to the fact that Aristotle in the chapter, instead of simply saying that they are matter, says that the stones, wood, iron, and so forth are not why the house, saw, and so on come to be (διά τι), except as matter (ὡς ὕλη). Heidegger’s point seems to be to emphasize that “matter” here is a function always served by something determinate and “nothing unformed in some undefined sense (empty materia!)” (WP, 20). But the notes for chapter 9 begin with a little diagram that identifies both the archê and telos of a movement with what limit it on opposite ends (πέρας), archê clearly being understood here as “that from out of which.” We then have added to, or perhaps correcting, the word peras the term horismos: the principle and the end are what set boundaries to a movement and thereby make it determinable and definable. What gives the movement being and determinacy here is “produced being, having come to an end” (WP, 20). And again we have a comment that looks forward to the appropriation of these Aristotelian concepts by medieval ontology: “In MA [Middle Ages] formalized, uprooted. Fluctuating function” (WP, 20).

It is presumably the notion of limit that returns us to chapter 7. Heidegger draws attention to Aristotle’s talk there of an “ultimate why” (198a16; τὸ διὰ τί ἔσχατον) and notes that the ultimate causes are also principles of knowing and have, according to the substantive character of each, different determinations. He also draws attention to Aristotle’s claim that the physicist in appealing to all four causes will assign the “why” in a way proper to physics (198a23; τὸ διὰ τὶ ἀποδώσει φυσικῶς) and comments: “provided from out of the thing itself (to the extent that he, the assigner, can proceed within the relevant way of being)” (WP, 20). Heidegger also notes Aristotle’s assertion of the identity of form and end in the chapter (198a25–26; Τὸ μὲν γὰρ τί ἐστι καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα ἕν ἐστι).

These seemingly random observations end in the notes with a reference to the unmoved mover (κινοῦν ἀκίνητον). As we have already noted, Aristotle does indeed refer to an unmoved mover in chapter 7. The notes have already made a reference to the account of the unmoved mover in Metaphysics XII and now we have a specific allusion to the claim there that the unmoved mover moves as an object of desire (ὡς ὀρεκτόν), as loved (ὡς ἐρώμενον).¹⁵ This last term is connected to the notion of erôs in Plato, which is described as “the fundamental phenomenon from which is read off here” (WP, 21).¹⁶ The notes end by suggesting a relation between all of the above and Duns Scotus, thus again pointing forward to medieval ontology and the seminar that will end up being delivered in WS1924/25.¹⁷ It is also worth noting that the specific topic cited for the relation is “ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια,” though unfortunately no more is said.

Given the fragmentary character of Elli Bondi’s notes, we must assume that much of Heidegger’s reading of Physics II has been lost. Nevertheless, a number of important things have been preserved. One is a reading of Aristotle’s account of tuchê that finds there genuine insight into the distinctive temporality of human praxis, even if on Heidegger’s view the insight is ultimately sacrificed to a conception of science incompatible with it. Indeed, only in this seminar do we find this part of the reading of the Physics Heidegger projected in the Natorp Bericht. His proposal there merits being quoted in full so we can see the extent to which the present seminar fulfills its promise: “However, the Book [that is, Book II of the Physics] is also (ch. 4–6) of decisive significance in relation to the problem of facticity as such. It is shown how Aristotle explains ontologically, under the headings of τύχη, αὐτόματον . . . , the ‘historical’ movedness [Bewegtheit] of factical life, the movedness of that to which ‘something daily happens and can happen.’ These ontological analyses are to the present day not only unsurpassed, but not even understood and evaluated as such” (GA62, 395). We have seen that the same claim is made in the present seminar for the importance of Aristotle’s analysis. And however stingy Bondi’s notes may be, we still get here some of the detailed reading of this analysis only projected in the Bericht. Note also that Aristotle is credited in the Bericht with an ontological explanation of the historical movedness of factical life: this confirms the suggestion made above that the seminar’s critique of seeing the phenomenon biologically and not historically applies more to Bergson than to Aristotle.

Furthermore, the present seminar not only reveals the continued importance of the thesis that the movement of nature is being interpreted from the perspective of the movement of production, but also shows Heidegger attempting to support the thesis in a variety of ways: through an interpretation of entelecheia that derives it from the term endeleches meaning “what persists or endures” (an interpretation that also revealed Heidegger’s debt to the Aristotelian scholar G. Teichmüller); through an interpretation of archê and telos as what give movement its being in limiting it, for which the paradigm is the finished product produced out of a material that is already there; with an account of the four causes as having their origin, prior to being formalized, in the concrete context of productive dealing-with-things. We have also seen the phenomenon of life continue to play an important role in Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, this time as a bridge between human art acting for the sake of something and Aristotle’s view that nature itself acts for the sake of something. Finally, all the references to medieval ontology have shown the seminar to be preparing the groundwork for the seminar on that topic to be held the following year: a seminar that will seek to show the limitations and the negative historical influence of the world-ontology found in the Physics. That later seminar will further shed light on what was at issue in the present seminar. It is to that later seminar that we now turn.