8

Aristotle’s Ontology of Motion and the Being of Human Life as Absolute Motion

The SS1928 Seminar on Book 3 of the Physics

THE DATE OF THE 1928 SEMINAR IS ITSELF significant in showing that Heidegger’s engagement with Aristotle’s Physics continued after the publication of Being and Time and was therefore not merely a preparation for that work. The seminar’s focus on the account of motion in the Physics is new among the seminars we have considered here, but not new in the context of Heidegger’s other courses: this was already the focus of the latter part of the SS1924 course on the Fundamental Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Yet if Heidegger returns to this text after Being and Time, it is because that work has led him to seek in the Physics something that he had not sought several years earlier. That something is an analysis of what he now calls “absolute motion” and identifies with the motion of Dasein itself: “absolute” because not the motion of a being nor the being of motion. This is the motion that first makes possible an understanding of beings in their being, a motion whose temporality precedes and grounds the being-in-time that characterizes beings as such. It is not hard to see how a reading of the Physics through this lens continues the reflection left incomplete in Being and Time. It is indeed striking that the “destruction” of Aristotle’s treatise of time that Heidegger projected for the second part of Being and Time (SZ, 40) and to some extent carried out in the SS1927 course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA24), is followed by a rather positive appropriation of Aristotle’s account of motion in Physics III (specifically, chapters 1 and 2), even if one that obviously goes well beyond Aristotle’s own intentions.¹

Our procedure in reconstructing the argument of this seminar must differ from that in previous chapters for the reason that in this case Heidegger’s own notes (though very brief and cryptic) and student protocols have been published in volume 83 of the Gesamtausgabe (though not yet translated into English). The notes of Helene Weiss were not, however, included or even consulted for this publication. If we compare the Weiss notes to the published protocols, the former are indeed often inferior, being briefer, fragmentary, and unclear. Indeed, Weiss was evidently absent for the first few classes and therefore relied for these on other notes and the protocols themselves. But she tells us that she was present for the five classes in July and her notes for these are therefore not only independent of the published protocols, but also as detailed or even more so. Finally, and most importantly, Weiss records a very important and substantial class as the final session that is completely missing from the published protocols. The editor of the Gesamtausgabe volume, clearly not having consulted the Weiss notes, is not even aware of the existence of this final class.²

The account of the seminar in the present chapter will follow and reproduce as much as possible the Weiss notes, given that they are otherwise not available, and will of course rely on them entirely in reconstructing the final class (in which, importantly, Heidegger turns to Metaphysics IX.6 for an understanding of the temporality of “absolute motion”).³ Yet, especially where the Weiss notes are unclear or incomplete, I will draw on the published protocols and in every case make clear what these protocols add to the Weiss notes. The result will be the most complete and detail account of this important seminar currently possible.

The opening class of May 14 introduces the theme of the seminar. Motion (κίνησις) is dealt with in the Physics because the theme of this text is nature (φύσις), which is a principle (ἀρχή) of motion (200b12–13). Other topics dealt with in this text, that is, place, the void, time, and the infinite, are dealt with because, as essential a priori moments of motion as such (200b20–21), their analysis is demanded by the analysis of motion. The published protocol of Toni Rübesamen adds the point that phusis is not a being on the basis of which motion is first possible. Phusis must rather be understood as a way of being and thus ontologically. Therefore, “‘Motion’ is a way of being, not a property that appears in a being. That is the presupposition for comprehending the ἀεὶ ὄν” (GA83, 227). This last point anticipates a central thesis of the seminar: that it is only because motion is a way of being that being-motionless can also be a way of being. In other words, being eternal can say something not only about how long a being lasts, but about what kind of a being it is. But if motion is a way of being, this is because phusis as the principle of motion is itself a way of being: namely, that way of being that determines the being of those beings capable of moving from out of themselves. In short, the opening of the seminar is meant to leave no doubts about Heidegger’s intention of reading the Physics from a strictly ontological perspective. As we have seen Heidegger maintain in previous seminars, the Physics is a work of ontology, not the ontic study of the properties of a determinate class of beings (see also GA18, 284, 291).⁴

The next move of the seminar, indicated by Weiss (WP3, 1) and further elaborated upon by the published protocol, is accordingly to note an important parallel between being and motion: neither is a genus existing beyond the particular ways of being or of being in motion. Specifically, just as there are different ways of being corresponding to the different categories, so there are different ways of being in motion corresponding to different categories. As both Weiss (WP3, 1) and the published protocol note (GA83, 230), the only sense in which being is something common (κοινόν) for Aristotle is the sense of pros hen (in relation to one): being in the sense of the other categories all relate to the primary sense, which is being in the category of “substance.” Motion simply follows being here, both in the diversity of senses and in their pros hen relation. Heidegger is commenting on Aristotle’s claim that “there is no motion beyond the things themselves” (200b32–33; οὐκ ἔστι δὲ κίνησις παρὰ τὰ πράγματα). According to Heidegger, the specific target of this claim is Plato in the Sophist 254 (see also GA18, 288). This is where the Visitor speaks of motion (κίνησις), rest (στάσις), and being (τὸ ὄν) as “the greatest among the genera” (254d4–5; μέγιστα τῶν γενῶν). None of these is for Aristotle a “genus” given the different senses of being. The published protocol notes that the senses of being are not even limited to the categories, but also include being in the sense of truth, accidental being, and being in the sense of dunamis and entelecheia (GA83, 229). This comment is instigated by lines 200b26–28, where Aristotle lists the latter sense of being along with the categories: and of course, it is being in the sense of dunamis and entelecheia that will prove essential to defining motion across (not above!) the categories.

Another line that receives attention in this first class is 200b28–29, where Aristotle introduces the pros ti relation as characterizing motion: as he claims immediately before the sentence cited above, the mover is always the mover of a moved and the moved is always moved by a mover (200b31–32). This is why, as the Weiss notes specify (WP3, 1), motion, as a from-to, is in every category characterized by stretch and extension (Spannung, Dehnung). This is presumably a reference to Aristotle’s claim that motion is also among the things that are “continuous” (200b16–17; δοκεῖ ἡ κίνησις εἶναι τῶν συνεχῶν), a claim explicitly cited and discussed in the published protocol (GA83, 228).

For the next class of May 21, Weiss marks her notes as being from the protocol of Simon Moser (WP3, 1) and this is the protocol published in GA83. The notes and the protocol therefore parallel each other very closely, though they are not identical in wording. They show the class to have focused on Aristotle’s claim at 201a3 that each of the categories is “split” (διχῶς ὑπάρχει πᾶσιν). But Heidegger’s central argument is that the way in which the category of ousia is split or divided is fundamentally different from that in which the other categories are.⁵ Ousia, as Aristotle says, is divided into “shape” (μορφή) and “privation” (στέρησις) (201a4–5). The former term, we are told, does not mean shape in a spatial sense, but rather everything that constitutes the “thisness” (Diesheit) of a thing as its essential characteristics. The latter term means the not-being-present-at-hand of a determinate nature in a determinate thing present-at-hand. It has a twofold relation to the character ousia has of being a tode ti (“this thing here”): (1) what is “robbed” (Beraubung) of something through sterêsis is a tode ti; (2) in being robbed of something, this thing is not determined in a universally negative way, but rather as being robbed of a determinate particular content (WP3, 2). Sterêsis or “privation” here has an immanent tendency toward a positive content that we express in the words “not yet.” Heidegger now notes an important contrast between this conception of sterêsis and that defined at the outset of Metaphysics Δ.22: the latter refers to the lack of something a thing by nature should have (1022b22–23; ἔχῃ τι τῶν πεφυκότων ἔχεσθαι). Here in contrast, sterêsis is understood as dunamis: what a thing lacks in the sense of not yet having it. The split here approaches the opposition of contradiction, as between, for example, what is a table and what is not a table. But what-is-not-a-table in the sense of not-yet-a-table is already a determinate piece of wood.

The spilt or double-structure that characterizes the other categories, in contrast, does not have the character of contradiction, but rather the character of opposition between contraries, as, for example, between white and black in the category of quality. What is found between these contraries are not isolated moments, but a stream of shades of color flowing into each other. This double structure of the categories conditions the motion or change that is to be found only within the categories: as Aristotle says, there are as many forms of motion or change as there are forms of being (201a8–9; ὥστε κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς ἔστιν εἴδη τοσαῦτα ὅσα τοῦ ὄντος). This is why all change has the structure of “from something toward something” (ἐκ τινος εἰς τι). The moment of retaining the “from what” in anticipating the “toward what” that essentially characterizes motion is grounded in megethos, “magnitude” or “extension,” which Heidegger expresses with the German word “Dehnung.” Thus we read at Physics Δ.11 219a11–12 that “motion follows magnitude” (ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ μεγέθει ἡ κίνησις). The crucial point is that the possibility of this magnitude and of the motion that follows it lies in the double structure of the categories themselves. Heidegger speaks here of a peculiar “relation of tension” (Spannungsverhältnis) in the categories (GA83, 233). We are also reminded that what we have here is the pros ti relation we have seen to characterize motion; so now we see that motion has this structure because being in the sense of the categories has this structure. But there is something strange here, as Heidegger notes: the pros ti relation is itself one of the categories (see Categories, 1b26). “Therefore strange: a specific category is needed to clarify the structure of the other categories” (WP3, 3; cf. GA18, 324, 389–390).

This inner structure is itself grounded in the split that cuts across all categories and that Aristotle refers to at 201a9–10 between dunamis and entelecheia. The contradictory opposition between not being a table and being a table is a split between not-yet-being-a-table, that is, potentially being a table, and actually being a table; the “stretch,” “span,” or “tension” between contraries that exists in the other categories is also grounded on the split between dunamis and entelecheia, for example, from being potentially white to being actually white and spanning all the gradations between. In the published protocol the importance of this close relation between being in the sense of the categories and being in the sense of dunamis and entelecheia, a relation in which the latter grounds the inner structure of the former, is given special emphasis, with Heidegger observing that “this is all the more important, given that Aristotle himself, while frequently enumerating the different regions of being, never in the writings that have been handed down to us discusses thematically the inner relation between the four horizons of being” (GA83, 234).

This is why motion, as existing in each of the categories, can be explained in its being only in terms of dunamis and energeia. Such an explanation is precisely what Aristotle offers when he defines motion as “the entelecheia of what exists in dunamis insofar as it is such” (201a10–11; ἡ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος ἐντελέχεια, ᾑ τοιοῦτον), which on Heidegger’s translation and interpretation becomes “the exceptional presence of what exists according to readiness with regard to its determinate readiness to become this or that” (WP3, 4; die ausgezeichnete Anwesenheit des der Bereitschaft nach Seiendem hinsichtlich seiner best. Bereitschaft, das und das zu werden.). How are the key terms being understood in this translation? Heidegger understands entelecheia as meaning “the being of a being that maintains itself in its completeness (perfection)” (WP3, 4). Even though according to the published protocol Heidegger acknowledges that Aristotle uses this term interchangeably with the term energeia (GA83, 234), he still implies a distinction in interpreting energeia as “the being of a being that is understood as in the process of becoming complete [Fertigwerden] (WP3, 4). This interpretation of course appears to identify energeia in some way with motion. We have already seen Heidegger in the 1924/25 seminar insist on some such identification and he will continue to do so here: an identification that requires distinguishing energeia from entelecheia despite Aristotle’s own “promiscuous” use of the terms.⁶

Heidegger’s translation of the definition of motion also implies what he goes on to assert: the terms dunamis and entelecheia are not to be understand as meaning “possibility” (Möglichkeit) and “actuality” (Wirklichkeit) in the modern sense. “Possibility” in the modern sense refers to something that is not present at hand but could be present at hand without contradiction, whereas actuality means being-present-at-hand itself. Heidegger does not, however, reject the translations “Möglichkeit” and “Wirklichkeit” but continues to use them. According to the published protocol, he even defended the translation “Wirklichkeit” as “correct” as long as one understands the word in its original relation to wirken (GA83, 234): it should no longer surprise that Heidegger should want to retain a connection between Aristotle’s fundamental ontological concept and the notion of “working” or, more specifically, “producing.” Furthermore, Heidegger does not himself disassociate the concepts of dunamis and entelecheia from the meaning of presence-at-hand. On the contrary, he distinguishes them from the modern senses of “possibility” and “actuality” only in insisting that both are modes of being-present-at-hand (WP3, 4). This assumption—for that is all it can be called here—will be seen to guide Heidegger’s entire reading. He goes on to claim, somewhat surprisingly given his reading of Metaphysics Θ in the 1924/25 seminar, that, while in Metaphysics Δ.12 dunamis and energeia have the purely ontic meanings of “capability” (Vermögen) and “activity” (Tätigkeit), in Metaphysics Θ they are given an ontological meaning as two modes of being-present (Anwesendsein) that Heidegger translates as “being serviceable” (Dienlichsein) and “being actual” (Wirklichsein) (WP3, 4). This is surprising because in 1924/25 Heidegger sees the shift from the ontic to the ontological meaning as taking place within Metaphysics Θ itself between chapters 1–5 and chapter 6.⁷ But the important point to note here is the identification of the ontological meaning with presence.

One must wonder how the first of three questions Heidegger proceeds to enumerate as constituting the task facing us has not already been answered: “What does the definition mean as a whole and what does ἐντελέχεια mean within it? What kind of being does this actuality, this exceptional presence of the possible have?” (WP3, 4). Is this really an open question in the seminar? Has it not already been decided that the entelecheia of the dunaton expresses the latter’s distinctive way of being-present, of being-at-hand? It will be important to remain attentive to what else the seminar will have to say (and to argue) on this point. The next question might also be surprising for what it assumes: “How can the definition, evidently won from τέχνη, be explained with regard to the φύσει ὄντα?” (WP3, 4). We of course have seen Heidegger insist repeatedly in earlier seminars that Aristotle interprets nature, and indeed being as such, from the perspective of production. We have also noted the questionableness of such a claim. But Heidegger presumably sees himself as justified here in his assumption by the fact that Aristotle himself proceeds immediately to explain his definition of motion with the example of housebuilding (201a18; οἰκοδόμησις): an example that the notes of Weiss do not discuss, but that is addressed at some length in the published protocol (GA83, 235–236). But that the definition can be most easily explained with an example taken from the realm of technê does not show that it is derived from technê. It is quite possible that what allows technê to perform this heuristic function is its derivative character vis-à-vis nature. Significantly, Heidegger himself noted in the margins of the published protocol Aristotle’s claim at Physics 194a21 that “art [τέχνη] imitates nature [φύσις]” (GA83, 236), not the other way around. Did Heidegger cite this passage under the impression that it somehow supports his interpretation or as a possible objection that needed to be addressed? It is unfortunately impossible to know. But we ourselves should hesitate to assume that Aristotle interpreted the being of nature from the perspective of technical production rather than the other way around.

The third question Heidegger enumerates is also surprising, but in this case because it seems to have an obvious answer: “How can the essence of motion be realized in local motion when one disregards that for φόρα [that is, the Greek conception of movement in place] a determinate direction, above and under, are given, that is, when one understands motion in the modern sense?” (WP3, 4). The obvious answer seems to be that Aristotle’s account of the nature of motion is incompatible with the modern conception of motion, which disregards precisely what Aristotle considers essential conditions of motion. But we will need to see what the seminar will have to say on this point.

The next class of June 4 picks up on the earlier claim of an opposition between Aristotle and Plato on the notion of kinêsis by dedicating itself to a report (Referat) on the account of kinêsis in Plato’s Sophist. The Weiss notes here, while capturing the essential points, are very brief and therefore need to be supplemented by the much more detailed published protocol attributed to Paul Jacoby. The protocol shows Heidegger explaining how the notion of “communion” (κοινωνία) arises in Plato’s dialogue in the context of attempting to show the communion between being and not-being, that is, how “what is” in a sense is not and “what is not” in a sense is. He also notes how being is explicitly defined as the power of communing (δύναμις κοινωνίας) with other beings through acting upon (ποιεῖν) or being acted upon (παθεῖν) by them (GA83, 238).⁸ But what is essential in the context of the present seminar is what Weiss explicitly identifies as essential (WP3, 5; das Wesentliche): why are kinêsis and stasis included by Plato among the highest genera of being and thereby assigned a universal power of communion with all other beings? As Heidegger notes, Aristotle in contrast sees motion as characterizing that specific region of being he calls phusis. The crucial answer is that Plato is led here by the very being of the soul, specifically in its character of possessing logos. The soul itself in speaking and thinking is movement: specifically, the movement Aristotle calls orexis and that we have seen receive so much discussion from Heidegger in earlier seminars. This is why the Visitor objects to the “friends of the forms” that if they exclude motion and change from genuine being, they will also have to exclude life and intelligence (248e7–249a2). On the other hand, in thinking and addressing something as something, the soul relates itself to an object that must itself not be in motion, that must be eternally (ἀεὶ ὄν). To be an object of knowledge a being must remain what it is, must not change; in other words, it must be characterized by stasis. As the Weiss notes state (WP3, 5), Plato includes kinêsis and stasis among the highest genera of being because he “has in view λόγος (γιγνώσκειν, φρόνησις, ζωή, ψυχή) and the ὄν as λέγομενον.” But this means—and this is clearly what Heidegger wants to draw our attention to—that without the introduction of kinêsis and stasis as capable of universal participation, we could not understand the very being of the soul in its relation to being. This is why Heidegger claims that what lies behind all of the discussion of “communion” (κοινωνία) is the problem of transcendence (WP3, 5; cf. GA83, 239–240). It is striking that Heidegger, after having drawn attention to Aristotle’s critique of Plato for treating kinêsis as a genus beyond the things themselves, now makes us see the other side: that Plato is motivated, as is Aristotle himself, by the need to understand the being of the soul itself (as orexis) in its relation to being. They both see in their own ways that Dasein is motion and that being itself can be understood only from the perspective of such motion. The crucial point is therefore the one stated most succinctly by Weiss: “the whole problem of being is rolled up in Dasein” (WP3, 5; see also GA83, 240).

For the next two classes of June 11 and June 18, the Weiss notes are terribly disappointing: for whatever reason, they consist of only a few lines listing key terms and concepts discussed in the two sessions. Fortunately, extensive protocols for both classes are published in GA83 and we can use them to reproduce what Weiss misses. According to the published protocol attributed to Liselotte Richter, the June 11 class was a discussion of Sein und Zeit, prompted by the question of the relation between thinking and being (characterized by Plato as a communion between kinêsis and stasis) raised in the previous class. This is a relation that was already thought by Parmenides as a relation of belonging in his saying that “the same is thinking and being” (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι). The position on the relation defended in the class is the one defended in Being and Time (see SZ, 230): “From here it follows that there can indeed exist beings without a subject, but that there can be no being without the subject’s understanding of being” (GA83, 241). Interestingly, however, though Heidegger does not cite Aristotle’s argument against the Megarians in Metaphysics Θ.3 that without the notion of dunamis we lose the independence of the external world and fall into Protagorean relativism, since nothing perceptible would exist outside of being actually perceived (see 1047a4–7), he makes essentially the same argument in claiming that what characterizes a being is “the possibility of being encountered” (241; die Möglichkeit des Antreffbarseins) and that this possibility is not lost in the absence of a knowing subject. In contrast, what characterizes the being of beings is not simply the possibility of being understood; being is to be found only in the understanding of being. Heidegger therefore concludes that “in this sense all ontology is idealism” (241).

Then discussion turns to the relation between being and time (241–242). That being must be understood in terms of time is shown not only by Heidegger’s own demonstration that the original structure of our Dasein is temporality (Zeitlichkeit), but even by the Greek interpretation of being as presence and Aristotle’s supposed identification of what is real in time with the “now” (in contrast to what is no longer and what is not yet). Then there is discussion of the need to ground the interpretation of being in an existential analysis of Dasein, here described as a grounding in “my own exemplary Dasein as characterized by these phenomena [death, conscience, and so forth]” (242), with Heidegger’s explicit recognition of a hermeneutical circle here (243). Significantly, Heidegger admits that the Greeks were already aware of such a need. (Did we not just see in the previous class that Plato’s ontology arises out of the need to account for the being of the soul?) But Heidegger observes: “Antiquity indeed recognized Dasein as the basis for the examination of being, as the saying of Parmenides or the dialogues of Plato show, but here the concept of existence is still not adequately interpreted ontologically” (242). What the Greeks miss in particular is that the essence of Dasein lies in its historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), which in turn is to be interpreted as temporality. Without recognizing this they cannot even raise the question of the relation between being and time. The most important contribution of this class for the theme of the seminar comes at the end, when Heidegger distinguishes between two ways of comprehending Aristotle’s interpretation of motion: (1) as interpreting motion as a relation to time of what is ontically in motion; or (2) as interpreting it as a character of being from the perspective of time (243–244; als eines Seinscharakteres aus der Zeit). The time in question in this latter case is not the time within which motion occurs, but the temporality of motion itself (and if motion defines our being, the temporality of our being as such). It is clearly this latter approach that Heidegger is taking in his reading of Aristotle’s text. What does this text tells us about the motion and temporality of being itself?

The topic of the June 18 class, again as reported by Liselotte Richter, is the existentiell function of genuine philosophizing. This discussion is clearly instigated by Heidegger’s claim in the preceding class that the analysis of Dasein must proceed by way of “my own exemplary Dasein,” which is of course the Dasein of a philosopher. Recall what the term existentiell means in Being and Time: “Existence is decided only by each particular Dasein itself in the form of seizing or evading. The question of existence is always to be brought into the clear only through existing itself. The understanding of oneself that leads here is what we name existentiell” (SZ, 12; my translation) In the seminar, Heidegger identifies the philosopher with the type of Dasein that freely chooses to make his own existence transparent and to assume this existence. This self-appropriation of one’s own existence is a possibility of Dasein, and the philosopher is the one who realizes this possibility. “The philosopher is characterized by the faith, the inner trust, that his own existence can lay hold of itself. This faith presents itself here as fidelity to oneself (Treue zu sich selbst)” (244). Heidegger goes on to describe such existence as free both from any external bond and from the need to determine others through persuasion; in a marginal note, Heidegger refers to the necessity and superfluity of philosophical critique and Auseinandersetzung, as well as to the “esoteric character of philosophy” (244). But then we arguably have here the choice not only of philosophical existence as such, but of a particular kind of philosophical existence. What is most striking, however, is the evident implication: an ontology must be grounded not only in the ontic/ontological priority of Dasein as that kind of being concerned with its own being, but in a particular ideal of Dasein, which is to say, in the existentiell priority of that kind of Dasein that seizes upon its own existence and seeks to make it transparent.

After the digression of the last two classes that veered away from Aristotle’s text in pursuing questions raised by Heidegger’s own analysis of Dasein in Being and Time, the class of June 25 returns to Aristotle’s account of motion. Here Weiss claims to follow the protocol of Ernst Fuchs, which is the protocol published in GA83. Oddly, however, Weiss misdates the class to July 2 (WP3, 5), despite dating the next class as July 2 (WP3, 7). Weiss only reproduces in a fragmentary fashion what is to be found in the protocol. In this class we have a somewhat different translation of Aristotle’s definition of motion: “The completeness [Fertigkeit] of what is suitable in its suitability for [des Geeigneten in seiner Eignung zu]” (WP3, 5). In case we think that Heidegger has retracted his identification of entelecheia with presence, he immediately adds that it would be “more precise” (genauer) to say: “The presence [Anwesenheit] of. . . .” Yet in attempting to understand what kind of presence motion is, the class will focus on a text that challenges the identification of this presence with what is present-at-hand.⁹ The importance of this text cannot be exaggerated, as in this way it challenges the interpretation of ancient ontology we have seen Heidegger defend in previous seminars, as Heidegger himself recognizes when in response to the passage he exclaims, “Breach in ancient ontology!” (WP3, 7).

Before turning to Heidegger’s reading, let us review the passage itself at 201a31–b3. Aristotle is arguing that for bronze, being bronze (τὸ χαλκῷ εἶναι; Heidegger would say: being present at hand as bronze) and being potential (τὸ δύναμει τινι [εἶναι]; for example, potentially a statue) cannot be the same thing (οὐ ταὐτόν) since the entelecheia of the potential (for example, to be a statue) as such is motion, whereas the entelecheia of the bronze as bronze is not motion. Aristotle defends this position by appealing to contraries in the passage that is summarized and discussed in the class: “For being capable of being healthy [τὸ δυνάσθαι ὑγιαίνειν] and being capable of being sick [τὸ δυνάσθαι κάμνειν] are different—otherwise being healthy and being sick would be the same thing—but what underlies these contraries [τὸ ὑποκείμενον] and is healthy and is sick, whether this be moisture or the blood, is the same and one” (201a35–b3). The implication Heidegger draws from this passage is that the being of what is potentially (τὸ δύναμει ὄν) must be distinguished from the being of what is present-at-hand (what lies there before and remains the same in undergoing contraries). But that is not all: there is an even more radical implication that again Heidegger draws: that ousia as the presence of what is present-at-hand (the ὑποκείμενον) is not the primary conception of being for Aristotle, but is grounded (WP3, 7; fundiert) in a distinct and prior conception of being as the being of what is potential/ready-for/suitable (δύναμει ὄν). It is this implication that Heidegger sees as a “breach in ancient ontology” (see GA83, 247).¹⁰

To understand both implications, we need to look at how Heidegger interprets Aristotle’s definition of motion; and for this we must rely on the published protocol. A piece of bronze is just something that lies around and its being thus present-at-hand is clearly not motion. But the bronze is also suitable for (geeignet zu) a statue or a plaque. When the sculptor takes the piece of bronze that is lying around and starts forming it into a statue or a plaque, the suitability of the bronze becomes present in its suitability. This presence of what is suitable in its suitability is motion (GA83, 245–246). This motion comes to an end with the finished statue or plaque; in the finished product the bronze is no longer present in its suitability as “suitable for,” but is present as a statue or a plaque. As Heidegger emphasizes, and as the translation “suitable for” makes explicit, what is dunaton always has a reference to something else; motion is the presence of this “referring” as such. When the bronze is in the process of becoming a statue, its reference to the statue as “suitability for a statue” is present in its referring. But if this is what motion is, then the finished product in which it comes to an end must be characterized as rest (die Ruhe). In other words, if motion is the presence of what is suitable in its suitability for, that is, in its referring, then the “referred,” that in which the referring comes to an end, has the character of rest. Indeed, in contrast to dunamei on, whose presence as such is motion, the presence of what is present-at-hand, the hupokeimenon, is rest. The piece of bronze lying around, before its suitability-for is made present as such and when merely present-at-hand, is at rest. The finished statue, as finished and now simply present-at-hand, is also at rest. As both Weiss and the published protocol record, “Rest is oriented to motion both forwards and backwards” (WP3, 7; GA83, 249). But this shows us that the presence of the dunamei on (which equals motion) is not only different from the presence of the hupokeimenon, but that it has ontological priority: since rest is only the privation of motion, being-present-at-hand is only the privation of being dunamei.¹¹ In short, the being of dunamis as dunamis not only cannot be identified with being-present-at-hand, but represents a more fundamental conception of being. It is worth remembering that on Heidegger’s analysis in Being and Time, Dasein is a “being-possible” to be distinguished ontologically from what is merely present-at-hand. Did not Aristotle then grasp this distinction in his definition of motion, despite Heidegger’s thesis about the Greeks understanding being as presence?

Such a possibility is only further suggested by Heidegger’s comment on Aristotle’s characterization of motion as an “incomplete activity” (201b31–32; ἐνέργεια ἀτελές): in the example of housebuilding, the telos is the finished house, so the that process of building the house, as long as it lasts, must be lacking the telos, ateles. Heidegger’s comment is to see expressed here a mode of being that according to its very essence is always underway (WP3, 7; GA83, 249; unterwegs). In Being and Time, Heidegger claimed that Dasein “is always in some way directed and underway [unterwegs]; standing still and remaining are only limit cases of this directed ‘underway’” (SZ, 79). In the specification that the being-underway made present in motion has the structure of a “from-to” we can even glimpse the temporality of Dasein that Heidegger claims the Greeks failed to grasp: the ecstatic unity of future, past, and present (see especially SZ, 365).¹²

So do we then have here a “breach in ancient ontology”? Interestingly, while this phrase is followed by an exclamation mark in the Weiss notes, it is followed by a question mark in the published protocol. If it is a question, Heidegger’s answer is by no means clear. What follows in the published protocol (and not found in the Weiss notes) is Heidegger’s usual account of how interpreting being from the perspective of logos and thus as on legomenon leads to its identification with the hupokeimenon: what already lies there for a logos as what the logos is about (GA83, 247). We further have the claim that this on legomenon is itself interpreted from the perspective of technê as on poioumenon and only from this perspective can then be identified with what does not need to be produced because always already present-at-hand. All this is simply a rehash of that account of ancient ontology we have seen Heidegger present many times in earlier seminars. But does or does not Aristotle’s account of the being of motion as not a being-present-at-hand represent a breach in this account? For the answer to this question, we must wait a couple of classes.

Starting with the class of July 2 and for all of the remaining classes in July, the Weiss notes will prove much more valuable than they have been until now. This is because, as already noted, Weiss tells us that she herself heard (selbst gehört) the classes in July (WP3, 7). Thus the notes for these classes do not refer to the protocols and presumably are independent of them. This means that they can add something to what we find in the protocols; and, as already noted, in the case of the final class, for which the protocol is missing, they are our only source. We first have confirmed in the class what was implied in the previous class: rest is, in the words of Weiss, only “a limit-case [Grenzfall] of motion” (WP3, 7), or, in the fuller statement of the published protocol (by Richard Haug), “rest is thus a no-longer and a not-yet of motion and therefore is explained from motion” (GA83, 249). This would seem to be a positive answer to the question with which the class opens according to the published protocol: the question of “whether the essence of the ὑποκείμενον as what is simply present-at-hand can be determined through motion” (GA83, 249). But the positive answer is not explicit in either set of notes. In any case, a crucial point added now is that the concept of motion, and that of rest as its limit-case, is not to be restricted to the sphere of technê: the bronze is at rest within the mountain not only relative to its possible manipulation to produce a statue, but also relative to an earthquake (WP3, 7). But recall that, if Heidegger does not think that Aristotle’s definition of motion is restricted to technical production, he clearly believes that it is extended from there to natural motion.

Another crucial point concerns the notion of hupokeimenon itself. Heidegger argues that this term does not in fact express a particular way of being (Seinsweise) and is not a strict ontological concept. Instead it is characterized as a “functional concept” (WP3, 8; Funktionsbegriff) or “relational concept” (GA83, 250; Verhältnisbegriff). Heidegger supports this by listing the different significations the term hupokeimenon can have (and therefore, presumably, the different ways of being it can refer to): (1) that which lies at the basis for speaking (the ti of a logos, which is always a logos tinos); (2) that which lies at the basis of the properties that are expressed in speech (ausgesagten Eigenschaften; the qualification is found only in Weiss and is important in making the contrast between points one and two clear: the whiteness of something can be a hupokeimenon in sense one as that about which I am speaking, while what underlies the whiteness as a property is a hupokeimenon in a different sense); (3) that which is there for me to make use of in technical production. Heidegger’s point is that the only thing in common to these different senses is a relation: one thing underlying another. The important implication appears to be that we should stop seeing the notion of hupokeimenon as expressing a particular conception of being, that we should consider it ontologically neutral. But has not Heidegger himself been guilty of treating the hupokeimenon as a strict ontological concept? And if we stop doing so, does this not mean that the hupokeimenon does not in fact express a conception of being distinct from being dunamei on because it does not express a conception of being at all? Unfortunately, these questions are not pursued as the class turns to chapter 2 of Physics Γ.

This chapter is described as Aristotle’s positive Auseinandersetzung with his predecessors. “Positive” because he shows the extent to which what they said was grounded in the phenomenon of motion and uses the insufficiency of what they said to better reveal the phenomenon. The task of this chapter is therefore not antiquarian or historical, but genuinely philosophical. Aristotle’s predecessors tried to explain motion by identifying it with not-being or otherness or unequalness (201b20–21; ἑτερότητα καὶ ἀνισότητα καἰ τὸ μὴ ὄν φάσκοντες εἶναι κίνησιν). As Weiss succinctly expresses the point, all of these concepts apply to motion in some way and reveal its structure, but from any and all of them no motion necessarily results (WP3, 8). What moves is not what it was before; motion upsets equilibrium; motion involves something becoming other than it was. Aristotle also explains that his predecessors reached for these concepts in response to motion appearing to be something indeterminate or unbounded (201b24–25; ἀοριστόν τι δοκεῖ εἶναι ἡ κίνησις). But even if these concepts capture something true about motion, motion no more necessarily results from them than it does from their opposites.¹³ Take perhaps the most promising candidate: otherness. As Weiss notes, the mere fact of A being other than B does not produce any motion or transition between them. Heidegger refers at this point to Simplicius’s later interpretation of heterotês (otherness) as heteroiôsis,¹⁴ “othering” or becoming-other (Anderswerden), and notes that this latter concept does hit upon the phenomenon of motion.¹⁵ “Being-other” is a purely formal category, whereas “becoming-other” is the concrete phenomenon. The class ends by adding to this distinction another between heteroiôsis, translated as Änderung, and alloiôsis, translated as Veränderung: the difference is that in the latter case, but not in the former, something identical remains throughout the change. The example given of the former is a color changing, whereas the example given of the latter is a person changing. Though this is not said in either set of notes, this distinction appears to correspond to the first two senses of hupokeimenon noted earlier.

The next class of July 9 is of great importance since here, after the questions and doubts of the previous classes, Heidegger defends forcefully and at length the thesis that Aristotle’s definition of motion does not after all represent a new conception of being, but simply applies to motion, and the things of nature characterized by motion, the traditional conception of being as presence. If the text earlier suggested a “breach in ancient ontology,” Heidegger now firmly and completely closes the breach. In making his argument, Heidegger significantly focuses on the characterization of motion as an energeia, rather than its characterization as an entelecheia. He connects the former term to the term ergon, the finished product, what is complete (Fertigsein). Aristotle’s definition of motion thus defines it as the being-in-ergon, that is, the being-finished, the being-complete of the dunamei on qua dunaton. But what does this mean? The dunaton that is in motion qua dunaton is precisely as such and always incomplete, unfinished. To emphasize this point, Heidegger begins the class with discussion of why Aristotle’s predecessors characterized motion as not-being and of the extent to which they were justified in doing so. What is in motion is at each moment other than it was; it is there and also not there (WP3, 9). It is precisely this indeterminacy of motion, recognized, as we have seen, by Aristotle himself when he describes motion as appearing aoriston, that Aristotle tries to capture with the notion of dunamis (WP3, 9). Motion is what occurs (sich ereignet) when a dunamis, a certain aptitude or capability, announces itself as such. But the question is: what kind of being does a dunamis have in thus announcing itself? Aristotle uses the word energeia. But the problem, as we have seen, is that the reference this word contains to the ergon as what is complete or finished seems especially unsuited to expressing the being of what is necessarily and essentially incomplete.

With this preparation, Heidegger’s main argument can now be simply stated. That the complete should equal the being of the incomplete (WP3, 11; daß das Fertige gleich dem Sein des Unfertigen) is absurd. Imagine translating the definition of motion as follows: “The being-complete [and here we can reintroduce the word ἐντελέχεια] of what is incomplete insofar as it remains incomplete.” What could be more absurd? Therefore, the being of the ergon that is applied to motion in defining it as an energeia is not being-complete, but simply being-present.¹⁶ What the definition of motion is defining it as is not the completeness of dunamis as dunamis—an absurdity—but the presence of dunamis as dunamis.¹⁷ The introduction of the way of being of the ergon into the interpretation of the being of motion is possible, Heidegger says, only on the assumption that the way of being of the ergon is understood as being-present (Anwesendsein). It is by way of this argument that Heidegger can conclude that “Aristotle seeks, not another concept of being, but simply to clarify this conception in relation to what is in motion and thus to a determinate region” (WP3, 11). In the published protocol, Heidegger makes perfectly clear just how important this conclusion is to him: “The assumption on which our entire interpretation depends is that energeia and being in general signify for Aristotle presence [Anwesenheit]” (GA83, 254). The envisioned “breach in ancient ontology” threatened a breach in the interpretation of Aristotle, and indeed of the Greeks in general, that Heidegger had been developing for years. The breach, then, had to be closed.

To say that Heidegger needed his conclusion is not to say that he lacked a strong argument. Indeed, Heidegger’s argument can be seen as a challenge to which any serious reader of Aristotle must respond: is it possible to understand the definition of motion without understanding the key terms energeia and entelecheia as meaning “presence”? If we emphasize in the term entelecheia the idea of “possessing the end” and thus the sense of “completeness,” we have the seeming absurdity Heidegger notes of defining motion as the completeness of what remains incomplete. If we pursue another route Heidegger does not pursue here, that is, understanding energeia as being-at-work or being-active, then we have a definition that appears circular in defining motion as the activity or the being-active of what is dunaton as such.¹⁸ All depends on how we understand the distinction we have seen Aristotle defend in Metaphysics Θ.6 between energeia and kinêsis: is there a way of understanding this distinction that does not involve identifying energeia with a mode of presence? And is there a way of understanding the characterization of motion as indeterminate to the point of appearing like not-being without assuming, as Heidegger claims is assumed here, a conception of being as “what is always itself and unchanged” (WP3, 9). None of these are easy questions, but Heidegger, whether we agree with him or not, shows them to be unavoidable.

Heidegger’s reading might seem to be brought into question by what is apparently his own suggestion, which Weiss quotes citing Moser as the source, that the term energeia is dispensable in the definition of motion (WP3, 10). The reason given is that in the phrase “being potential qua potential” (δυνάμει ὄν ᾗ δυνάμει), the “qua” (ᾗ), or “insofar as,” already expresses the fact that in motion the dunamei on announces itself as such. So the suggestion is that the dunamei on as dunamei on is already motion; in other words, for it to be as dunamei on is already for it to be in motion. The addition “the energeia of” therefore appears superfluous. Weiss does not record, however, Heidegger’s response to this suggestion. Does he end up defending it or does he reject it? For the answer we must consult the published protocol. There Heidegger is recorded as saying that the suggestion is “in a certain way correct” (GA83, 253): if the dunamei on announces itself as such in motion, the term energeia adds nothing to this self-announcement (Bekundung). However, he goes to add that the term is indispensable for expressing the kind of being (Seinscharakter) that belongs to this self-announcement. And what kind of being is that? Presence, of course. So while the term energeia is not needed to express the self-announcement in motion of the dunamei on as such, it is needed to express that the mode of being belonging to this self-announcement is presence (254).

Heidegger in this context considers a possible objection: if the word energeia simply means presence, why use this word at all rather than the word ousia (which for Heidegger also means “presence”)? Heidegger’s answer is that energeia is not simply ousia, but is a determinate modification of ousia (WP3, 10), namely, the one suited to indetermination (254; auf die Unbestimmtheit zugeschnitten). We can thus reformulate the question above: does energeia signify simply a specific mode of presence or does it signify an altogether different conception of being? In defending the former alternative, Heidegger will need to explain what specific mode this is and how it differs from other modes of presence. Heidegger also adds the crucial point that to understand being as presence is to understand it in relation to time. Not only the terms energeia and dunamis, but “the derivative German terms ‘Möglichkeit’ and ‘Wirklichkeit,’ and the even much less original ‘potency’ and ‘act,’ are understandable in their innermost core and relation only from time” (WP3, 11–12).

Heidegger now announces, though only in the Weiss transcript (12), that he wishes to clarify this problematic “independently of the text” (frei vom Text). Before doing so, however, Heidegger addresses a possible objection to the claim that the notion of heterotês does not suffice to explain motion. Weiss, unlike the published protocol, clearly marks this as a digression or “interpolation” (WP3, 12; Einschaltung): in the proposition that A is other than B, do we not have a transition (Übergang) from A to B and therefore motion? Heidegger replies that the transition or movement here is not in the relation between A and B itself, but in my grasping of the relation. It is my thought that moves from A to B in grasping their otherness.¹⁹ So Heidegger again insists that being-in-motion has a completely different ontological character than being-other.

Now Heidegger for the rest of the class addresses a series of fundamental questions and in doing so, as he has indicated, leaves Aristotle’s text behind. He raises the first question by way of noting that modern physics can do nothing with Aristotle’s definition of motion. This is in part due to the rejection in modern physics, already noted earlier, of the theory of place (τόπος) that appears tied up with Aristotle’s understanding of motion: that is, Aristotle’s commitment to the existence of fixed places, of an absolute “above” and “below” where the light and the heavy respectively belong (WP3, 13). One question Heidegger raises and again leaves open, therefore, is whether Aristotle’s definition of motion must fall with his conception of place (GA83, 256). But the more important reason why modern physics can do nothing with Aristotle’s definition is that, while it must presuppose a pre-ontological understanding of motion in order to talk about motions at all, it does not, like Aristotle in his definition, seek to transform this pre-ontological understanding into an ontological concept. But now Heidegger asks the crucial question: if the ontic experience of things in motion is grounded in an ontological understanding of motion, what is the latter itself grounded in and how is it possible? One might think that this too or especially is a question to be left open for now given its obvious difficulty. But, surprisingly, Heidegger immediately gives an emphatic and clear answer as his own! Since Weiss is especially clear and succinct here, I will cite her: “Now I maintain: that the comprehension of motion is possible only when the understanding of motion, indeed the understanding of being, has itself the character of motion. Understanding is perhaps the fundamental motion [Urbewegung] itself, and only if it is motion can there be comprehension of motion and experience of things in motion” (WP3, 13). This will indeed become the central thesis of the seminar and will be further explained and defended in subsequent classes. There can be no understanding of things in motion, or of what it means for them to be in motion and in time, without Dasein itself being characterized in its very being by motion and temporality. The protocol helpfully makes explicit what is being rejected in this claim, namely, that the ontological comprehension of motion is grounded in a “resting,” “timeless I” (GA83, 256).

The current class ends with Heidegger raising another problem. The above explanation of the being of motion has made use of the notion of “self-announcing” (Bekundung). But it seems that in understanding motion as that in which what is suitable-for or capable announces itself as such, we are simply describing how what is in motion is grasped (Bewegte als Erfaßtes), rather than addressing its being-in-itself (WP3, 14; An-Sich-Sein). We could sum up this objection in saying that Bekundung does not seem to be an ontological concept but to express only a relation to our own grasping and knowing. Heidegger postpones addressing this question/objection until later when he will argue, in brief, that something can be-in-itself only in announcing itself as such.

The next class of July 16 is dedicated entirely to the nature and priority of what Heidegger has called the “original movement.” Heidegger restates his thesis of the previous class, but now even more emphatically: “My claim: Not only the understanding of κίνησις, in the ontic as well as the ontological sense, but also the understanding of being in its articulation as ἐνέργεια, that is, also as οὐσία, is grounded in the original movement” (WP3, 15). Then follows a diagram in which ousia, energeia, kinêsis, and kinêsis (yes, twice: in ontic and ontological senses), are shown arising out of kinêsis. Heidegger continues: “This motion here [arrow pointing to the last-mentioned kinêsis in the diagram] cannot be identical with those [arrow pointing to kinêsis in the ontic and kinêsis in the ontological sense]. This κίνησις cannot be clarified in terms of determinate acts of movement, but [is] original movement [Urbewegung], which itself first grants the possibility of understanding the others as ways of being. We can call it, in a certain sense, absolute motion” (WP3, 15). It is thus here that Heidegger first introduces the notion of “absolute motion”: “absolute” presumably because not the motion of things in motion nor even the motion that is the being of a certain class of beings (for example, natural beings or living beings).

But Heidegger first sets about clarifying his notion of “absolute motion” by distinguishing it from what this term might mean in the context of modern physics. In this context the problem is entirely one of measuring motion; motion is deemed “relative” in the sense that “for a possible measurement, one being is seen as in motion relative to another that is at rest and that in its turn can be regarded as also in motion relative to the first [taken to be] at rest” (WP3, 15). If there is anything that from this perspective could count as absolute motion, it would be the system of local motion as a whole; but because this system coincides with space itself, one could not even call it absolute motion (WP3, 16–17). This, at least, is the argument Weiss records. The published protocol by Hans Reiner records something seemingly quite different, even opposite: “In the meantime one can talk even physically of absolute motion when the limits of space coincide with those of the system” (GA83, 258). The argument there, instead, is that such a characterization of motion as absolute, resulting as it does only from the perspective of the relativity of motion with regard to measurement, tells us nothing about the essence of being moved as such, no more than does the notion of relativity itself (258; cf. GA18, 293–294). Weiss records this last argument, but as a response to a different interpretation of absolute motion: it seems that Reiner has conflated the two interpretations. The other interpretation Weiss records is that being-in-motion itself, as characterizing an entire world system that includes the growth of plants and the life of animals, is not relative to anything, is independent of measurement, and in this sense “absolute.” It is of this interpretation of absolute motion that Weiss records the objection that it tells us nothing about the essence of being moved (WP3, 16). In any case, the crucial point is the one again recorded by Weiss: “When we said that the original motion, the ur-motion, is in a certain sense absolute, we understand ‘absolute’ completely differently” (WP3, 17).

We turn to Heidegger’s own perspective when he asserts that kinêsis is a “way of being” (Weise des Seins). Indeed, “The Aristotelian interpretation of being, which has its result in the elaboration of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια as fundamental concepts of being, bears a relation to κίνησις” (WP3, 17). Heidegger’s stated aim is to make clear this relation that remains obscure. He notes that while the modern notion of “reality” (Wirklichkeit) is commonly taken to correspond to Aristotle’s notion of energeia, the former unlike the latter has lost all relation to the problem of kinêsis. If for Aristotle energeia refers to a thing’s being-present-at-hand-for itself, it also has a clear connection to motion, while the question of the reality of beings is discussed today only in terms of the independence from the knowing subject (WP3, 18). Furthermore, and more essentially, what “being” means here when we speak of something being-in-itself is left completely unquestioned. Indeed, it is because the understanding of being is not even raised as a question that its relation to motion is left hidden.

Heidegger therefore proceeds to give his own analysis of “what lies in a being’s being-at-hand-in-itself” (WP3, 18). He uses the example of a stool. The essence of a stool is to be a thing of use or a kind of equipment. But what interests Heidegger here is the mode in which it exists (modus existendi). How does the stool exist before I use it? It exists in the mode of resting, is Heidegger’s reply. It rests in the sense of being unmoved, but not in the sense of being free of motion. Its rest is understood in relation to its being moved: it is at rest (1) in not yet being used and (2) in having been produced and now finished. Heidegger further notes that in being used, the stool can be damaged (as only objects of use can be damaged) and therefore require being produced anew. The point that Heidegger wishes to emphasize is that the resting which is the stool’s mode of existing “in itself” can be understood only relative to motion. Furthermore, the stool has the peculiarity that it rests even in being used, unlike the knife. But this means that rest is here the stool’s mode of being used, that is, being in motion.

Because the stool rests in “standing there,” Heidegger turns to the question of how the standing of a human being differs from the standing of a stool (or, switching now the example, the standing of an inkwell). In standing, I “touch” the floor, the floor is unconcealed to me, not as data of touch, but as grass, pebbles, and so on. In contrast, the plate on which the inkwell stands is not there for it. But what Heidegger in general wishes to show is that in the resting of the object of use, a diversity of ways of being is revealed to us that is simply ignored by theories about what exists in itself. And, indeed, Heidegger maintains that in use the being-in-itself of something announces itself in a much more fundamental way than it does for a simple grasping (WP3, 20). It is here that we have the answer to the earlier objection that talk about how something announces itself (Bekundung) tells us nothing about its being-in-itself. The class ends with an important observation recorded only by Weiss: “See how the full comprehension of reality on the one hand leads to kinêsis, on the other hand how the possibility of understanding such being-at-hand-in-movement leads back to original motion” (WP3, 20–21). Significantly, this observation is followed by a reference: “in connection to this, cf. Metaph. Θ6.” This, recall, is the chapter in which Aristotle defends a distinction between kinêsis as incomplete and energeia as complete because possessing its own end. Is Heidegger suggesting some kind of comparison between absolute motion and the completeness of energeia? As we will see, it is to this chapter that Heidegger turns for the last class. Finally, we should note that in the published protocol, though not in the notes of Weiss, “absolute motion” is explicitly identified with “the motion of Dasein itself” (GA83, 261). That is the phenomenon we are dealing with here.

The class of July 23 began, according to Weiss, with a clarification being made to the beginning of the protocol for the previous class. The clarification concerns a point that seems already clear enough in Weiss’s own notes for the preceding class: “‘Absolute motion’ is a presupposition, not only for the understanding of motion, but for the understanding of being overall” (WP3, 21). So it is emphasized that the understanding of motion at issue here is an ontological one. More important, I believe, is a stated aim of the discussion to follow, which only Weiss records: “We will need to ask: what is the metaphysical significance of ἐνέργεια and δύναμις in Aristotle? To be examined is the extent to which motion is taken to be the way of being of determinate beings, or whether in a broader sense, though indeed understood latently and indeterminately” (WP3, 21). If we seem to have left the text of the Physics behind, it is because what Heidegger seeks is precisely this latent and indeterminate broader understanding of motion nowhere explicit in what Aristotle says.

Now the class, as Weiss informs us, simply continued the discussion of the previous class, asking in what way the resting of the stool is understood by us in our dealings with it. The fundamental way in which we understand ontologically the character of rest of things and have it manifestly present is in letting them “be,” in letting them “rest in themselves,” leaving them to themselves (auf sich beruhen lassen).²⁰ This “letting” or “leaving” is a fundamental form of existing that concerns all beings, including those that announce themselves as “being-in-themselves.” Indeed, what Heidegger is trying to show is that we can experience something as existing in itself only in letting it be, in leaving it to itself. Since this leaving or letting is as a way of existing clearly a motion, we can see that Heidegger is supporting here his thesis that only the motion of our existing, what he has called “absolute motion,” makes it possible to experience the stool as being at rest or in motion. Heidegger tries to makes this phenomenon clearer through a counterfactual: if the grasping subject were a camera that only “sees” and copies (what was earlier referred to as a static and timeless “I”), it would never be able to grasp the being-in-itself of the stool (WP3, 22).²¹ He can even claim, therefore, that the God of the Scholastics, understood as absolute “intuitus,” would not be able to see the world (where “world” is being understood here as the being-in-itself of the things we encounter and deal with). To understand the being-in-itself or the “rest” of the stool, it is not enough simply to see it: I must leave it to itself as something produced or as something useful for such and such and waiting to be used or even as something in use but remaining itself in this use. “In order to be able to ‘let it rest by itself,’ such a being must be in some way ‘willed’ (in a completely broad sense), that is, is possible only within a needing [Bedürfen]” (WP3, 23). Heidegger can therefore characterize as a fundamental error (Grundirrtum) the idea that all manners of comporting myself toward beings that involve taking an interest in them or having something to do with them are “subjective.” “Much more the contrary: in doing, in letting-rest-in-itself, herein does the reality of beings announce itself” (WP3, 23). Heidegger observes that it is therefore no accident that the Greek word signifying “being”, that is, ousia, also meant “household goods.”

Having thus taken the understanding of being back to Dasein “that necessarily moves itself” (WP3, 24), Heidegger considers an objection: this might be all well and true in relation to beings that are moved or unmoved, but what of beings that are immoveable, that in principle cannot be in motion, such as spatial relations, relations between numbers and, in general, mathematical objects? Surely, they presuppose for the understanding not a subject in motion but a motionless subject! After suggesting that in any case number is not really without motion (and referring to the relation between number and time in Kant’s schematism), Heidegger proceeds to give a general and fundamental response to this objection. He does so by examining the relation between what is moved, what is unmoved, and what is motionless. What is unmoved is characterized by a privation relative to what is moved: that is, it lacks something that it could have and even should have. Heidegger speaks here of a debitum (WP3, 25): motion is “owed” to the moveable thing that is not in motion. But how does what is motionless relate to motion? The motionless cannot be said to lack or be deprived of motion, to be owed motion, because it has no possibility of being in motion. Yet, as the very term “motionless” indicates, motion is denied it in some sense. In what sense?

Heidegger suggests an important difference in kind between the claim that something is unmoved and the claim that it is motionless. The former is an ontic claim distinguishing, within the region of beings capable of motion, those that currently are not in motion from those that are. The latter claim, in contrast, is an ontological or pre-ontological claim about the way of being of an entire class of beings. But this leads Heidegger to suggest that “motionless” might also be a privation: not an ontic privation as in the case of moveable beings currently deprived of motion, but an ontological privation. But, Heidegger asks, in this case what is the debitum? (WP3, 26) What is being motionless as a way of being deprived of and what is it owed? When we can answer this question, Heidegger concludes, we will see that even the understanding of what is motionless is oriented toward motion.

If the class ends with this question left open, the answer is quite evident if we have been following the argument: what the motionless as a way of being is deprived of, what it is “‘owed,” is the motion that is the way of being of Dasein itself. The debitum is Dasein! With this answer we see indeed that even the motionless can be understood only in relation to what Heidegger has called absolute motion. That this is indeed what Heidegger is suggesting is explicit in his own notes for the seminar, in a passage that is therefore worth citing here. Referring to the ontological privation that characterizes the motionless, Heidegger writes: “This lack in relation to which debitum? In relation to the debitum that lies in Dasein, that it qua freely existing temporality should understand all beings essentially from out of movedness [wesenhaft aus Bewegtheit verstehen]. Being means temporality, movedness. As long as there exists this debitum for the understanding of being, we have precisely the possibility to uncover from out of it and in it the kind of being that essentially does not have the character of being in the sense of being-in-motion” (GA83, 18–19). In short, Dasein’s own being-in-motion is what enables it to understand, by way of privation, a way of being that lacks the character of being-in-motion.

With this class, the published protocols come to an end. But it should be clear, contra the assertion of the editor of GA83, that the seminar could not have come to an end here. The reason is not so much that fundamental questions that have been raised have been left unanswered—that in itself would not be surprising—but that there has been no return to Aristotle. Having discussed the problem of motion independently of Aristotle’s text for several classes now, the debitum Heidegger clearly owes his students is to return to Aristotle and with the specific aim of determining whether the notion of “absolute motion” that has been developed is anywhere to be found in Aristotle, even if only implicitly. Furthermore, the clear candidate to be interrogated here is the fundamental ontological concept of energeia that we have seen play such a central role in Aristotle’s understanding of motion. And the natural place to turn for further consideration of this concept, and in search of a notion of “absolute motion,” would be Metaphysics Θ.6 especially (as we have seen Weiss already indicate). Fortunately, Weiss did record a final class on July 25, explicitly recorded as the final class (Schlußsitzung), in which Heidegger returns to Aristotle and precisely to Θ.6, with Weiss herself giving a presentation on this text.

The class begins with the clarification that leaving-to-rest-in-itself (Auf-sich-beruhen-lassen) is not to be identified with being at rest in a factual sense. Even what is in motion can as such be left to rest in itself. It does not need to be at rest in order for us to leave it resting in itself (WP3, 27). Even in using the stool, we are letting it rest in itself in the sense of letting it be what it is. But clarification of this point is tied up with the problem of the extent to which motionlessness is perhaps a privation in a peculiarly ontological-transcendental sense. This problem, raised in the last class, remains the concern here.

Yet instead of pursuing this problem further “independently of the text,” Heidegger now returns to Aristotle and turns to the task that the seminar must at least attempt before coming to an end: “to see whether it suffices to remain with Aristotle’s phenomenon of motion, or whether he himself is driven beyond the concept of motion in the Physics” (WP3, 27; my emphasis). In considering this last possibility, Heidegger goes beyond the Physics in turning to Metaphysics Θ, entrusting Weiss herself with a presentation on this book, the focus being on chapter 6 (WP3, 28; “Nun kam mein Referat: Met. Θ”). Importantly, Weiss separates this reference to her presentation from the notes that follow with a line running the width of the page: this is presumably to make clear that the notes that follow are not on her presentation (why, after all, would she take notes on her own presentation?), but on the subsequent discussion led by Heidegger.

Before Heidegger turns to chapter 6, there is what is described in the notes as a brief recollection of Θ.10 (“recollection” because Weiss failed to address this chapter in her presentation?): the chapter in which Aristotle turns to being in the sense of truth. This recollection prompts a discussion that appears a digression, an appearance that is reinforced by the fact that it ends in the notes with the following sentence: “And now [finally!] to Θ.6.”²² The discussion first addresses the Scholastic omne ens est verum, said to go back to Aristotle’s claim in De Anima that “the soul is in a way all things” (ἡ ψυχή τὰ ὄντα πῶς ἐστιν) and to persist in Hegel’s identification of substance with subject (WP3, 28). How does Scholasticism arrive at this claim? The first answer is that it arrives at it through the notion of creation (Geschaffensein): “because all being as created is the object of the intuitus Dei, it is verum” (28). It is also bonum. But if God created all things, is he not the cause also of evil? The Scholastics avoid this conclusion, according to Heidegger, by maintaining that, while human freedom is a gift of God, “Human beings have on the basis of this gift an entirely other causality that, when in play, eliminates [ausschaltet] its cause, God, in its causal character” (WP3, 28). If this is not simply a digression having nothing to do with the argument of the seminar as a whole, it may be that Heidegger wishes us to recognize in this “entirely other causality” an insight into the distinctive being-in-motion of Dasein.²³ But now Heidegger adds that the appeal to creation is in fact not necessary here: simply being an object for God (that is, even if not created by God) suffices for being verum and bonum. Indeed, that such an appeal to a creator God is not necessary here is shown by the fact that Aristotle already treated on (being) and hen (one) as fundamental characteristics and that Plato brought on into relation with agathon.

This last point now leads to a very surprising claim, especially surprising given Heidegger’s interpretation of Metaphysics Θ in the earlier 1924/25 seminar. There, recall, Heidegger insisted on Aristotle’s opposition to Plato in this book, especially in chapter 8 where Aristotle, after arguing for the priority of energeia in time, account, and ousia over dunamis, criticizes the Platonic Ideas for being nothing but dunamis and thus inverting this priority. But now Heidegger is reported to have asserted the following: “Book Θ in the end joins Plato again (as is ultimately the case with all philosophy): the priority of ἐνέργεια is fundamentally the same as the ἐπέκεινα of the Ideas. (So that Jaeger’s thesis of Aristotle’s development is false also for this reason; for Met. Θ belongs to the late period in which Aristotle is supposed to have overcome Platonism)” (WP3, 29). Unfortunately, no further explanation is given of this startling claim. Yet one can guess that what Heidegger sees now that he perhaps did not see in 1924/25 is the following: while the Ideas are indeed only dunameis, in recognizing the existence beyond them of a good that is the origin of both their existence and their being-known, Plato is anticipating the priority of energeia in Aristotle; or, stated the other way around, the notion of energeia would be only Aristotle’s interpretation of the idea of the good in Plato. To see that this is not an outrageous suggestion consider that when Aristotle in NE X.6 describes the energeia of nous as exceeding everything else “in power and honor” (1178a1–2; δυνάμει καὶ τιμιότητι . . . πάντων ὑπερέχει), he appears to be borrowing the language by which Plato describes the good as “beyond being in honor and power” (509b9–10; ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος).²⁴

Now we finally turn to Θ.6 and, as we could expect, the focus of the discussion is the last half of the chapter in which Aristotle argues for the distinction between energeia and kinêsis. Yet Heidegger notes that it is the notion of praxis that is the focus of this section (being indeed the term first introduced at 1048b18). Significantly, he refers to praxis as itself a kind of motion and sees the passage as distinguishing it from the kind of motion that is poiêsis. As the passage proceeds, this distinction is formulated as one between energeia and kinêsis as such. Heidegger observes that Aristotle here, as often in central passages, is remarkably vague in his terminology and that this has its grounds. Heidegger also notes that Aristotle’s examples can be problematic: he gives walking (βάδισις) as an example of an incomplete motion, but is it really the case that the recuperation (Erholung) at which walking aims is to be found only when the walking comes to an end rather than in and throughout the walking? (WP3, 30).

But putting aside the ambiguous terminology and the problematic examples, what is the distinction Aristotle is trying to make, a distinction that, according to Heidegger, concerns purely existential concepts (Existenzbegriffe)? As we have already seen in the context of the 1924/25 seminar, Aristotle’s fundamental distinction is between, on the one hand, an activity that is its own end, always therefore in possession of its end, and in possessing its end does not have to come to an end, and, on the other hand, a motion whose end is distinct from itself, which therefore is never in possession of its end as long as it exists, and in arriving at its end must come to an end. An example of the former would be seeing, while an example of the latter (and clearer than the walking example) would be building a house: the end of building a house is the built house, but the house does not yet exist at any point during the process of building and puts an end to this process when it does exist; in contrast, there is no product of seeing, but the end of seeing is seeing itself and therefore is achieved as soon as, and for as long as, the seeing exists. Recall that Aristotle uses temporal tenses to explain the distinction further: while in the case of a kinêsis the present and perfect tenses exclude each other, for example, one cannot be building the house and have built the house at the same time, in the case of a praxis or energeia they apply simultaneously, for example, I can still be seeing in having seen. But if this is how Aristotle expresses the distinction, how does Heidegger interpret it? Weiss captures Heidegger’s interpretation in the following notes that need to be cited in full: “Having been completed (Fertig geworden sein): only then genuinely being. The perfect first constitutes the genuine presence of πρᾶξις. Rebound [Rückschlag] of becoming-complete upon action itself. This [action] does not thereby cease, but first becomes genuine. In contrast, ποίησις must come to an end. Aristotle wants to say: here a κίνησις that does not need to be interpreted from the ἔργον, but ἔργον is the seeing itself. With becoming-complete I first come genuinely into the work” (WP3, 30). The first thing to note is that this is indeed an interpretation and not a simple paraphrase. The second thing to note is that the distinction between praxis and poiêsis is here interpreted entirely from the perspective of poiêsis. If poiêsis is a motion incomplete in moving toward an end or a product distinct from itself and needing to be interpreted from the perspective of this end or product, praxis is a motion onto which being-complete has been read back: a motion that has been made itself the product. The final thing to note is the assumption that praxis or energeia is a mode of presence: not the presence of what is incomplete as such, but a presence constituted by the “perfect.”

A possible problem with this interpretation is exposed most clearly by the claim that “the perfect first constitutes the genuine presence of πρᾶξις.” This is because the “perfect” by itself would appear to constitute the presence of the product as such, for example, of the house that has been built. This is why Aristotle himself is careful to claim that what characterizes energeia in contrast to kinêsis is not the perfect tense as such, but the simultaneity of perfect and present tenses—“has seen and sees simultaneously the same” (1048b33–34; ἑώρακε δὲ καὶ ὁρᾷ ἅμα τὸ αὐτό). One must therefore wonder if Heidegger has truly captured the distinctive being and temporality of energeia in simply identifying it with a motion that has been interpreted as a completed product and whose temporality is therefore simply the same as that of the completed product.²⁵

Instead of saying more, Heidegger now turns to some short remarks on dunamis. The distinction is again made between ontic dunamis understood as a capability or power (Vermögen, ein seiendes Können) and an ontological dunamis which is in Latin possibilitas (WP3, 30–31). Heidegger then notes that the first type of dunamis can also be a dunamis in the second sense (presumably because if I have the power to run, my running is possible). But this second sense has the character of a negation, represents a privation in relation to the concept of being, while this is not the case with the first sense (especially if this first sense is understood as a power of choice [Wahl] with possibilities open to it). It is hard to see where, if anywhere, Heidegger is going with these brief remarks, except to return again to the notion of an ontological privation, this time by way of the notion of dunamis.

Indeed, the next words in the notes are the following: “We say: motionlessness is the ontological privation. This implies: all being must then be understood from motion. We then have the possibility that a certain [kind of] being will be interpreted transcendentally-metaphysically as motionless” (WP3, 31). But in this repetition of what was stated earlier we still have no explicit statement of what the debitum of this ontological privation is, though we have seen Heidegger confirm in his own notes that it is the absolute being-in-motion of Dasein itself. And what of Aristotle? Does this concept of motion appear in him or not? The only answer we get is in the final two sentences of Weiss’s notes, explicitly marked by her as “the close of the seminar”: “This concept of motion, which is a transcendental-ontological one, hangs together with time. It shines through in this highly noteworthy chapter 6 in this peculiar perfect: ἑώρακε etc.” (WP3, 31). The suggestion, then, is that not only what Heidegger has called the “absolute motion” of Dasein itself, but also the distinctive temporality of this motion shines through in the praxis analyzed in Metaphysics Θ.6 and its distinctive perfect tense. If only we were told more! We have seen that Heidegger’s account of the distinctiveness of praxis and of its perfect tense seems far from adequate. His own acknowledgement in the closing words that the perfect tense of praxis is “peculiar” suggests that more needs to be said here.

Yet something needs to be noted about this important second half of Θ.6, though not explicitly noted by Heidegger, that shows that Heidegger is not wrong to seek in it something corresponding to his own conception of the absolute motion of Dasein itself: not only does Aristotle speak of praxis synonymously with energeia, but all of his examples of energeia in contrast to kinêsis are ways of being of Dasein: not only seeing, but thinking, living, and living well. It indeed cannot surprise us enough that Aristotle, in the only place in which he attempts to explain his fundamental ontological concept of energeia, turns to praxis and our own way of being.²⁶ Heidegger, if perhaps not surprised, at least sees this and begins to think through its implications. But if something obstructs his penetrating further into the being of this “peculiar” activity and its “peculiar” temporality, it is, as we have seen, a continued commitment to interpreting Aristotle’s ontology from the perspective of the motion of production. Here in this final class he almost breaks through this assumption in reading Θ.6, just as earlier in the seminar he recognized a possible “breach in ancient ontology”: but in both cases he steps back and returns to his guiding thesis concerning the Greek interpretation of being.