“2. Accessing the Being of Life” in “Human Life in Motion” | Open Indiana

HEIDEGGER’S FIRST SEMINAR DEVOTED TO ARISTOTLE WAS TAUGHT from May 14 to July 26, 1921. At first glance it might appear to be of no great significance; described as “for beginners,”¹ it did not offer a detailed interpretation of Aristotle’s De Anima as a whole, but instead read rather quickly through selected texts from that work as well as Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Furthermore, the two transcripts we possess, those of Helene Weiss² and Oskar Becker,³ are less transcripts than incomplete and often cryptic notes. Despite this initial appearance, however, the seminar is in fact of extraordinary importance, offering a coherent, philosophically motivated reading of Aristotle that can be reconstructed in some detail by reading the Weiss and Becker transcripts together to remedy their fortunately nonparallel lacunae. The seminar both initiates Heidegger’s engagement with Aristotle and explains why this engagement will prove so extensive and intense by making clear what Heidegger sought, and to some extent found, in Aristotle: not only an ontology of life, but indications of how the phenomenon of life is to be accessed at all and how its being is to be understood in advance. Indeed, the decision of the seminar to read Aristotle’s Metaphysics and De Anima together, already in itself a philosophical decision of great importance, anticipates the central project of Being and Time: it raises the question of being in and through an interpretation of the being of life. What later seminars on Aristotle will add on the way to Being and Time are a turn to interpreting being in terms of motion, and thus a shift of focus from the Metaphysics to the Physics, and a turn from life to human life, and thus a shift from De Anima to the Nicomachean Ethics. But none of this trajectory can be fully understood without the starting point provided by the 1921 seminar. Furthermore, precisely on account of the mentioned later shifts in focus, the 1921 seminar and the subsequent unpublished seminar to be discussed in the next chapter are our only records of Heidegger’s reading of De Anima. They are also our only indication of what a Heideggerian philosophy of life might have looked like before the decisive turn to Dasein.⁴ By the time Heidegger writes his proposal for the anticipated book on Aristotle a year later in the fall of 1922,⁵ De Anima has receded into the background in favor of that ontology of human life Heidegger finds in the Nicomachean Ethics. Heidegger will return to the question of life after Being and Time in the 1929/30 Basic Concepts of Metaphysics but arguably too late. By then he can interpret the being of life only negatively through the analysis of Dasein in Being and Time. He admits to failing to provide in the later course precisely what was sought in the early study of De Anima and the Physics: an account of the specific motion that defines the being of living things.⁶ Yet one of the students of the SS1921 seminar, Hans Jonas,⁷ will, unlike Heidegger, make the philosophy of life his focus (Jonas 2001), and it is hard not to think that the seminar provided some sort of impetus along this path. In short, the seminar finds Heidegger taking the first crucial steps on the philosophical path that will reach some sort of conclusion by the end of the decade, as well as exploring a path from which he will turn away, and doing so with the philosopher who will prove his constant companion—no matter who else, be it Plato, Kant, or Hegel, occasionally joins them.

I do not want to suggest, however, that the only thing to be gained from the study of the 1921 seminar is a better understanding and critical appraisal of Heidegger’s thought. Precisely because his goal is not a historically accurate reading of Aristotle’s text, but the development of an ontology of life, Heidegger can help us discover, as he helped his students discover, certain philosophical possibilities in the text that a less philosophically motivated reading might miss. We see already in the 1921 seminar what his students in this period remarked on: his ability to make Aristotle speak to us as a contemporary. This does not mean that Heidegger exhibits a cavalier attitude toward the text and makes it say whatever he wants it to say. On the contrary, this seminar, like the others to be explored in subsequent chapters, is entirely focused on the Greek text and treats it with a care and fidelity that would not shame a philologist. There is no so-called hermeneutical violence here. On the contrary, one can see instances in the present seminar where a self-correction in Heidegger’s understanding of the Aristotelian text leads his thought in an unexpected direction. We do not see Heidegger imposing on the text a preestablished ontology of life; we see instead an ontology of life emerging from Heidegger’s dialogue with the text, a dialogue in which Aristotle’s voice is always heard and respected.

In the opening class, the focus is placed right away on the relation between Aristotle’s “psychology” and his philosophy. Is “psychology” to be understood here as simply one science among others, or is it a philosophical inquiry, inseparable from and built into Aristotle’s philosophy as such? And in the latter case, must not its mode of access to its object (life) differ from that of the individual sciences to their objects? Heidegger finds the answers to both questions in Aristotle’s own introduction to the inquiry that will constitute De Anima:

“Taking knowledge to be among the noble and honorable things, one is more noble and honorable than the other either on account of its precision [κατ᾽ἀκρίβειαν] or on account of being about better and more remarkable things. For both of these reasons we could reasonably rank the inquiry into the soul in the first rank, for the knowledge [γνῶσις] of the soul appears to contribute things of great importance toward all truth [πρὸς ἀλήθειαν ἅπασαν], especially toward nature, for it is, as it were, a principle of living things” (402a1–7).⁸ The claim that knowledge of the soul contributes much of importance to all truth answers the first question: inquiry into the soul is not just one science among others, but plays a central role in all philosophy. The justification given for this claim is also significant: the soul is a principle of living things and, it is implied, understanding living things is indispensable to understanding nature especially, but also being as a whole (“all truth”). The second question is answered by the claim that inquiry into the soul is nobler and more honorable than other inquiries on account of its greater precision (akribeia). Its method, therefore, cannot be equated with that of the sciences but must be in some sense stricter. In the seminar, Heidegger connects this with the status of the soul as a principle: “For since the soul is ἀρχή, so that the other sciences refer to it, it must also in terms of method be especially strict” (WDA, 1). The soul, in short, as contributing to the understanding of being as a whole, is a principle prior to the sciences that study parts of being and therefore demands a different method of access, and a stricter one in the sense of more originary and allowing fewer assumptions (assumptions allowed in the case of the sciences, as Heidegger notes [Becker I, 1]). From the outset, then, what Heidegger seeks, and at least to some extent finds, in Aristotle is made perfectly clear: not only an ontology of life, but an ontology in which the inquiry into life plays a central role, as well as a methodological reflection on how the first principle that is the soul is to be accessed with the requisite strictness.⁹

In the next class of May 24, Heidegger develops the above points in reading further into the first chapter of Book 1 of De Anima. He addresses first Aristotle’s distinction between three different forms of theoretical positioning: that of the “physicist,” that of the mathematician, and that of the philosopher (or dialectician). Aristotle argues that the physicist must examine both form and matter, whereas the mathematician deals in abstraction with functions and affections (ἔργα καὶ πάθη) that are not separable from bodies, and the primary philosopher deals with those that are separable (403b9–16). But there are two points that Heidegger insists on and that support the conclusions of the first class. First, he insists that the fundamental starting point of Aristotle’s study of nature is biology (WDA, 2), or that his “physics” is to be understood from the perspective of biology (Becker I, 2). This supports Aristotle’s claim, noted in the first class, that the knowledge of the soul makes a great contribution to nature. But of even greater importance is Heidegger’s claim that while Aristotle’s metaphysics or ontology seeks to liberate itself from a determinate region of being in striving for a truly universal examination of all beings as beings, this tendency toward a consideration of the meaning of being is still “determined from the perspective of the concrete; i.e., the ‘biological’; ‘formed’” (Becker I, 2). Thus we have the justification for Aristotle’s claim that the study of the soul contributes to “all truth.” The universal consideration of all beings as beings is carried out from the perspective of an interpretation of life, and this is why, Heidegger suggests, all being is interpreted in terms of the key biological concept of form.¹⁰

Suggesting that this perspective is not limited to Aristotle, Heidegger refers to Plato’s Phaedrus (249e4 and 247d3) for the view that essential to the being of the soul is a relation to being itself interpreted as form. That he refers also to the demiurge of the Timaeus is connected to his suggestion that the technitês who forms matter also plays a fundamental role in Aristotelian, and presumably Greek, ontology (Becker I, 2). What is left unclear here is the relation between the biological perspective and the “technical” perspective. This is especially important as Heidegger’s later reading of Aristotle will completely ignore the former in favor of the latter, with the result that his own account of Dasein in Being and Time will take as its guideline the workplace, home to things like hammers, and not nature, much less living nature.¹¹ Note that the same problem is raised by Heidegger’s reference to Plato. In the Phaedrus, there is no mention of a demiurge nor any talk of the soul producing something by looking to the Forms; being and our relation to being is understood exclusively from the perspective of the self-motion of the soul. To what extent is it legitimate, then, to impose on the Phaedrus the very different perspective of a “creator of the universe” found in the Timaeus? Aristotle himself, of course, takes most of his examples from the field of technical production, but as Heidegger himself will note in this same class, “One should also not hold so firmly onto Aristotle’s examples. These are only illustrative. His concern is something else” (Becker I, 4).

This last claim is made in the context of asserting that Aristotle should not be interpreted as a “realist” in contrast to an “idealist,” an assertion itself made when the seminar turns to a consideration of the account of ousia in Metaphysics Z (VII). The reason for this turn, already suggested by what has come before, is made fully explicit when Heidegger notes: “The question regarding the methodological access to the object soul is for us {a central point} of the treatise” (WDA, 3). This confirms that the inquiry into the soul belongs to philosophy since, as Heidegger also notes, method plays “a much greater role in philosophy than in other sciences [that is, the ‘individual sciences’]” (WDA, 3); “In philosophy it is nothing secondary” (Becker I, 4). It is the problem of the access to the soul that requires a consideration of Metaphysics VII (Becker I, 3). Why? Because this problem of access is the problem of definition. Without understanding what definition means for Aristotle we cannot understand how exactly he is accessing the soul in defining it. It might seem that this would require a turn to Aristotle’s logical works. But as Heidegger makes clear, the problem of definition is not for him a problem of logic. In claiming that the problem of definition is neglected in contemporary philosophy, Heidegger cites as an exception the book of Heinrich Rickert, Zur Lehre von der Definition (1888) (2nd ed. 1915, 3rd ed. 1929). But Heidegger asserts that Rickert’s approach is completely inadequate because it treats the problem of definition merely as a problem internal to formal logic (WDA, 3). For Heidegger the question of the meaning of definition is inseparable from the question of the meaning of the being of the object of definition, that is, it is an ontological question. In the case of Aristotle, what is defined is the ousia of a thing, so that we cannot determine what meaning definition has for Aristotle without determining what meaning ousia has for him: thus the turn to Metaphysics VII.

In turning to the problem of ousia, Heidegger first protests against the translation “substance” for reasons that will become clear as he proceeds. If Aristotle claims bodies to be most evidently ousia (1028b8ff), Heidegger notes that they do not exhaust for him the meaning of ousia: this is presumably why Heidegger rejects the characterization of Aristotle as a “realist.” Instead, noting Aristotle’s own characterization of his approach to the problem of ousia and definition with the word λογικῶς,¹² Heidegger claims that Aristotle understands the phenomenon from the perspective of λέγειν understood as “asserting” (WDA, 3). “The determination of something through something in the assertion is Aristotle’s fundamental phenomenon from which he develops everything” (Becker I, 5). More succinctly and specifically stated in the Weiss transcript, “Λέγειν is the fundamental phenomenon from which Aristotle arrives at οὐσία” (WDA, 4). What understanding of ousia is determined by this approach through the phenomenon of asserting? In asserting, that about which the assertion is made is intended in itself (καθ᾽αὑτό) (Becker I, 5). Furthermore, that about which the assertion is made must be had in advance (WDA, 4). With this last point Heidegger skips ahead to chapter 17 of Metaphysics VII. As he notes, that chapter proclaims a new start in the inquiry into ousia by identifying ousia with aitia (cause) and archê (principle). Ousia is to be understood not as a component or element of a thing, but as the answer to the question why a thing is what it is. Yet as Heidegger notes, Aristotle claims that the question of why something is what it is cannot be the question of why it is itself, but must always take the form of asking why one thing belongs to another. But this has the paradoxical result that that about which I make the assertion, to the extent that I intend it in itself, must remain hidden. Both the question and the assertion require that I take the “what” apart and that “I free myself from the mere making-present [Vergegenwärtigung]” (WDA, 4). Indeed, that about which the assertion is made and which is not itself being inquired into is identified with the matter (ὑλή). I can ask why a human being is a human being only in first taking the phenomenon apart into form and matter and then asking why this form belongs to this matter, where what I am asking about must as such and in itself remain hidden.

Heidegger is following Aristotle’s text closely¹³ and it is worth quoting the relevant passage cited in the seminar: “That which is sought is most hidden [λανθάνει μάλιστα] in those things that are not said according to each other [κατ᾽ἀλλήλων], for example, when what a human being is is sought through speaking simply [ἁπλῶς], but not through determining that this is that [ὅτι τάδε τόδε]. Yet it is necessary to search through dismembering [δεῖ διαρθρώσαντας ζητεῖν]” (1041a32–1041b3). If I ask simply “What is a human being?”—if I seek to determine what a human being is through itself—what I am seeking remains so hidden as to appear to be nothing (1041b3; μηθὲν ζητεῖν). I must instead take the phenomenon apart, dismember it, and ask, “Why is this body a human being, what makes this matter into a human being?” I can then answer the question with the ousia understood as the cause of this matter being a human being. But in this questioning and answering through distinguishing and dismembering, how do I have or know the phenomenon itself in its unity? Heidegger will cite the crucial passage in which Aristotle says: “It is evident that with regard to simple things [ἐπὶ τῶν ἁπλῶν] there is no searching or teaching [ζήτησις οὐδὲ δίδαξις], but another way of searching such things [ἕτερος τρόπος τῆς ζητήσεως]” (1041b9–11). Even if Aristotle is referring here to things that are absolutely simple, that is, immaterial, which is not clear, the point is that even a human being is one despite the fact that it can be articulated into this body and a form. What then is the “other way” of accessing this hidden unity?

Heidegger notes that here in chapter 17, as throughout Book Ζ after the rejection of matter as a candidate for ousia, the ousia predicated of each thing is identified with its to ti ên einai “what it was for it to be.” Heidegger also notes that in chapters 4 and 6 of Book Ζ, Aristotle makes a very strong connection between the to ti ên einai and the hekaston, the each-it. Significantly, Heidegger emphatically rejects Paul Natorp’s understanding of the hekaston as the individual. The reason appears to be that an individual must have an identity, must be something, must be a what; but then, as distinguished from the ousia and the to ti ên einai, the hekaston cannot be an individual. We are therefore told that Heidegger, in order to get rid of the “was” in the German word “Etwas,” made up the term “das Etliche” to translate hekaston (WDA, 4; Becker I, 9). The result of insisting that the hekaston, of which the form or essence is predicated, is not in itself an “individual” is an emphasis on the unity of the hekaston and the to ti ên einai. In separation from the latter, the former is not even something. We return to the question, then, of how, in asserting that this is a human being because this form belongs to this body, we have that of which this is being asserted. As Heidegger notes in citing the relevant passage, Aristotle explicitly acknowledges that the being of that which is inquired into must be had in advance: “Since it is necessary to have being and for it to obtain [ἐπεὶ δὲ δεῖ ἔχειν τε καὶ ὑπάρχειν τὸ εἶναι], it is clear that one seeks that on account of which the matter is something” (1041b4–5). The question is again precisely how being is had here.

Heidegger claims in this context that one of phenomenology’s major contributions to philosophy was precisely the introduction of the proposition “Being must be had” (WDA, 5). That, however, the manner of this having was identified with intuition, so that being is had in the sense of “intuitively given,” represents for Heidegger a “great danger” (WDA, 5). This is because talk of intuition is a dead-end, not leading us any further into the problem. And this, as Heidegger is again at pains to note, is a philosophical problem. Being is “had” simply in living; it is also “had,” though in different ways according to the differences in the being of their objects, by the sciences and, Heidegger adds, “in the natural sciences a way of having completely different from that in the human sciences” (WDA, 5). But neither factical life nor any of the individual sciences explicitly address as a problem the nature of this having and its different modes in the different cases. “In contrast, in philosophy it is precisely the meaning of the having of an object that must be dealt with. The meaning of having becomes itself conscious; one does not only live in it. But this formal determination remains empty as long as what should be had remains undetermined” (Becker I, 11). Thus again, in reflecting on what kind of access we have to the being of the soul, Aristotle is inquiring into the soul philosophically; furthermore, and for this reason, we cannot understand Aristotle’s account of the being of the soul without examining how he understands being as such and how this understanding determines its mode of access. The class therefore ends with Heidegger issuing a warning against the danger of not keeping sufficiently distinct the meaning of philosophy and the meaning of science.

Before turning to the next class, we must return to something found at the beginning of the class that I initially skipped for the sake of clarity of presentation. The class opened with a student presentation on Paul Natorp’s thesis on the structure of Metaphysics VII. This thesis, which involves a radical restructuring of the Book as we have it, is in outline as follows (presented on page two of WDA): Natorp saw Book Ζeta as consisting of two treatises: (1) chapters 1–6, 10–14; (2) chapters 17, 7–9, 15–16. This is because Natorp sees chapter 17 as a transition from a discussion of the cause of being to a discussion of the cause of becoming. This is why chapters 7–9, with their focus on genesis, or becoming, are separated from 1–6 and assigned to a separate treatise beginning with 17.¹⁴ After outlining the student presentation and thus Natorp’s thesis, the Weiss transcript notes, “Heidegger holds Natorp’s division to be doubtlessly correct” (2). That is to say, Heidegger during this class of May 24 subscribed unreservedly to Natorp’s division of Metaphysics VII into a treatise on being and a treatise on becoming. Yet on the transcript, next to the cited claim, we have the simple but emphatic correction in pencil: “Nein!” We not only know that this is a later correction but can date it precisely to June 14. This is because, in the transcript for the class held on that date, we are told that Heidegger changed his mind and no longer subscribed to Natorp’s thesis. We will see the reason for the change when we get to that class. Let it here only be noted that this change of mind mid-course will prove to be nothing short of momentous. It will prove the first step toward Heidegger’s identification of Aristotle’s ontology with an ontology of becoming and his insistence that it is the Physics, not the Metaphysics, that is the foundational text for Aristotle’s ontology.¹⁵

First, however, we must turn to the next class, that of June 7. Here the focus will continue to be on the meaning of being and the problem of definition in Metaphysics VII. The class begins with Heidegger again insisting that the problem of being and the problem of definition are not to be understood in a logical sense in Aristotle. The question of whether one defines something in terms of the genus proximus and the differentia specifica is of purely secondary importance to Aristotle (WDA, 6; Becker I, 12). Rickert is again criticized, now for confining himself to this secondary question. Heidegger therefore asserts that Aristotle’s horismos does not mean the same as our “definition.” The students are furthermore reminded of the reason for this discussion of the horismos in an ontological sense: “Important: how is the problem of the soul grasped and what does it have to do with philosophy” (WDA, 6). Heidegger also suggests that the question of how something is grasped does not arise either when one confines oneself to a determinate mode of being and living or in the context of an “objective science,” since in both there is an identification of the concept that grasps with the object that is grasped (something that we can imagine is especially the case when the object grasped is the soul), an identification that prevents one from reflecting on the kind of grasping and how it determines the object. Yet Heidegger also notes that Aristotle is aware of how the kind of grasping determines the object as, for example, in Metaphysics VIII.3, where Aristotle notes that it is how the stone is positioned that makes it a threshold and how the letters are juxtaposed that makes them a syllable. This is of key importance for the problem of the horismos of the soul.

But why horismos? “How does Aristotle, in the attempt to work out the meaning of beings, suddenly light upon the definition?” Heidegger insists that the horismos is a logos not in the sense of “concept,” but in the sense of an asserting; the connection to legein, he asserts, “remains alive throughout” (Becker I, 13). So we return to the claim that legein in the sense of asserting is Aristotle’s guideline in interpreting being. Heidegger finds this made perfectly explicit in Aristotle’s famous doctrine: “being is said, is asserted in many different ways” (τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς) and has a different meaning in each of these different ways of asserting. To use my own examples, “Socrates is a human being,” “Socrates is five feet tall,” “Socrates is white” are all different kinds of asserting and being is understood in the “is” differently in each case. Heidegger notes that “in modern logic the copula is mostly neglected” (Becker I, 13). This is presumably because the copula is treated as an empty connecter given content only by the subject and the predicate it connects. Heidegger in contrast insists that “it is from the ‘is’ of the assertion that subject and predicate first actually receive their meaning” (Becker I, 13). In the above examples, the “is” is understood as “is-quantified” or “is-qualified” or “is-essentially.” It is from here, from one’s implicit understanding of the being that is being asserted, that the predicate is understood as a quantity or a quality or an essence.¹⁶ If this is so, we clearly see that Aristotle understands the meaning of being through the assertion, through how being is understood in the “is” present explicitly or implicitly in every case of asserting something of something.

The class so far has only recapitulated, if also somewhat expanded on, what was argued in the prior class. Now, however, the class turns to a focused interpretation of the initial chapters of Metaphysics VII where the formal meaning of ousia is worked out and, Heidegger insists again, from the perspective of legein (WDA, 6–7). On Heidegger’s account, chapter 1 develops the meaning of ousia formally from asserting. When we get to chapter 3, “matter” appears to satisfy best this formal meaning of ousia, but Aristotle proceeds so radically that he rejects “matter” and instead identifies ousia with what is grasped in the horismos, namely, to ti ên einai: what something is said to be, what it was for it to be. Significantly, Heidegger stresses the verbal einai and relates it to “the dynamic of the assertion” (Becker I, 14; see also Becker I, 20: “The ‘εἶναι’ should not be suppressed; it is had in a determinate λέγειν.”). All this is said as a preliminary overview. Heidegger then focuses on the development of the formal meaning of ousia in chapter 1. In all asserting something of something, there must lie before me a “this-here” (τόδε το) of which I take cognizance: this is the hekaston that Heidegger again translates as “das Etliche” noting that it need not be something concrete but could be something abstract like a theoretical proposition (Becker I, 15). After all, if I assert “The proposition ‘God exists’ is false,” I must take cognizance of the proposition as some-this-here. What I take cognizance of here is also what I grasp and thus a “what.” As Heidegger notes, Aristotle argues that ousia as the “what” I intend or grasp in taking cognizance of “this-here” is first or primary (πρῶτον) in three senses (1028a31–33): in Heidegger’s summation,

It is the “first”: in the first place “λόγῳ,” that is, in relation to the meaning of asserting. In other words, in each making of an assertion a “what” is intended.

In the second place: “γνώσει,” that is, in relation to knowing. In other words, as science and investigation, as that which is of interest.

In the third place: “χρόνῳ,” that is, according to time: what always and overall is known first. (Becker I, 16).

The important point Heidegger makes here is that this account of ousia in chapter 1 is purely formal, describing the characteristics it has purely as a subject of assertion. He quotes the following conclusion: “ὥστε τὸ πρώτως ὂν καὶ οὐ τὶ ὄν αλλ᾽ὄν ἁπλῶς ἡ οὐσία ἂν εἴη” (1028a30–31), “So that ousia would be what is primarily and is not something, but is simply” (Becker I, 16; emphasis in original). Thus, concludes Heidegger, in chapter 1 is “οὐσία therefore neither substance nor a conceptual being etc. Its meaning simply in asserting” (WDA, 6).

The goal of chapters 2 and 3 is therefore to determine what concrete objects correspond to the formally characterized ousia of chapter 1. Chapter 2, according to Heidegger, is historical in orientation, and it is only in chapter 3 that the historically derived concepts of ousia are critically examined to determine if they meet the formal demands of chapter 1. The four concepts considered are the following:

1. τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, the is-meaning

2. τὸ καθόλου, the universal

3. τὸ γένος, the genus

4. τὸ ὑποκείμενον, the subject (substrate) (Becker I, 15)

Concepts two and three drop away as not meeting the formal demands.¹⁷ Aristotle turns to the hupokeimenon that appears best to meet the formal demands as that about which an assertion is made. But this does not suffice, as Aristotle says (1029a9; οὐ γὰρ ἱκανον), since the ultimate hupokeimenon is matter (ὕλη), and matter, as completely undetermined, cannot stand on its own but is always relative to form. Since the formal consideration of ousia thus results in an understanding of ousia that does not suffice, Heidegger, significantly, claims that it is to be understood only as a “formal indication” (WDA, 8; Becker I, 17).¹⁸

The next class of June 14 begins with the important self-correction already indicated above. After warning against interpreting Aristotle through the philosophical tradition determined by him or through Kantian transcendental philosophy (Becker I, 18; Natorp is specifically mentioned), Heidegger apparently announced to his students that he no longer subscribed to Natorp’s thesis concerning the division of Metaphysics VII (WDA, 8);¹⁹ thus we have the explanation for why Weiss herself or another student went back to the claim in the first class that Heidegger subscribed to Natorp’s thesis and wrote “Nein!” in the margin. We are not told the reason for the change of mind, but we are given an indication of what it means: “Chapter 10 cannot follow 6. 7–9 constitute precisely the kernel for the conceptual context of οὐσία” (WDA, 8). In other words, Heidegger, rather than seeing chapters 7–9 as a digression into physics and thus into a reflection on becoming, now sees them as central to working out the meaning of ousia and thus as central to Aristotle’s ontology. Why Heidegger now holds this view will become apparent in what follows.

A hint is already found in Heidegger’s proceeding to claim that “The τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι is an εἶδος with regard to becoming, a καθόλου [universal] with regard to what has become” (WDA, 9). The point here appears to be the following: in the process of becoming something, which is a process of being formed, the “what-it-was-to-be” of the thing in the process of becoming is the particular form it is acquiring; once the thing has become, however, its “what-it-was-to-be” appears as a universal it shares with other things of the same form. In other words, it is only from the perspective of becoming that to ti ên einai can appear and be grasped as the concrete individual as opposed to a universal. The point is especially clear in another transcript attributed to Elizabeth (Elli) Bondi that Weiss adds as a supplement: “The fundamental character of things in γένεσις: that they have a form. When the form has come to be, it is universal. (καθόλου and γένος enter the scene first here.) The actual problem is the problem of philosophical knowing” (WDA, 9). The chapters 7–9 that examine form from the perspective of becoming, which Natorp wished to excise and assign to a different study, prove central to the account of to ti ên einai as ousia since, as Heidegger notes, whatever is to count as ousia must be a “‘this-here” (τόδε τι). A later supplement in the Becker transcript will add the important point that, if the horismos in Aristotle is in the end directed toward the katholou, the universal, it is so “only in a derivative sense, from out of γένεσις. For the εἶδος is developed from out of becoming” (23).

Heidegger turns now to a critique of the Marburg school precisely on the point of the relation between individual and universal. The Marburg school charges Aristotle with misunderstanding Plato by failing to see that the Platonic Ideas are related among themselves in a dynamic process of mutual determination and as such comprehend the individual. This charge, which Heidegger ironically equates with the charge that Aristotle failed to understand Plato in terms of seventeenth-century natural science,²⁰ entirely misses the problem Aristotle was concerned with, which is as follows: “How can one make an assertion about essence in relation to an ἕκαστον (τόδε τι), this here?” (Becker I, 19). And recall that Heidegger already critiqued Natorp for interpreting the hekaston as the “individual.” Aristotle’s problem is not the Marburg problem of the relation between the universal and the logical individual, that is, the individual as the object of logical determinations. As Heidegger notes, the Marburg school has no place for the human sciences because the individual that concerns it is not the historical individual. In contrast, Aristotle’s problem is how to experience the singular formed individual and is free of any theory (Becker I, 20). The Marburg school “come at the singular phenomenon with a theory, while Aristotle is more radical and asks: how do I experience the singular? That is his central question” (WDA, 9). And what makes this question so difficult is that the hekaston is not necessarily always experienced as having the same meaning; “For is the meaning of ἕκαστον always the same?” (WDA, 9). Heidegger has already drawn our attention to the different ways of having in the “having of being” according to the objects in question; “For is the ἕκαστον the same in geometry, biology, and history?” (Becker I, 22). Significantly, in the Weiss transcript it is noted that “Aristotle too did not solve the question of how to grasp the singular” (WDA, 9). And yet, chapters 7–9 are where Aristotle addresses the problem of ousia in its concreteness. “In chapters 7.8.9 is shown the origin of the Aristotelian formation of concepts. Our up to now formal account receives here its concrete significance” (WDA, 9; same point in Becker I, 24). Natorp’s division of Metaphysics VII separates the formal account from the chapters that alone give it its concrete significance; as noted in Becker (24), he fails to understand the context. Put bluntly, there can be no comprehension of being without examination of becoming, no grasp of the “essence” without experience of the formed singular.

What is promised now is therefore a detailed interpretation of chapters 7–9.²¹ Yet if the seminar did indeed pursue such a detailed interpretation, both transcripts record little of it: only a few sentences confined to chapter 7 are to be found in each, with Becker appending a list of quotations. The next class turns away from the Metaphysics and back to De Anima. Yet some key points emerge regarding Metaphysics VII.7–9 that further clarify the importance Heidegger assigns to these chapters. Heidegger addresses the distinction in chapter 7 (1032a12–13) between three forms of becoming: by nature (φύσει), by production (τέχνῃ), and by chance (ἀπ᾽αὐτομάτου or τύχῃ). Productive and natural becoming are set against each other as subject-oriented (selbstliche), that is, “related to the one who makes,” versus objective performance, respectively. The Weiss transcript, however, significantly characterizes productive becoming (ποίησις) as the “starting-point” (WDA, 10).

The reason may become clear through another distinction in chapter 7 to which Heidegger draws our attention, that is, the three moments that characterize each form of becoming: out of, through and to something (1032a13–14; ἔκ τινος, ὑπό τινος, τί). While Aristotle himself first describes natural becoming, claiming in its case that “through or by which” something becomes is a nature, that which it becomes is a nature, and that “from which” it becomes is matter (1032a15–26), Heidegger according to the Becker transcript skipped straight ahead to “making” or production and in particular to Aristotle’s claim that “the things that come from technê are those the eidos of which is in the soul” (1032a32–1032b1; ἀπὸ τέχνης δὲ γίγνεται ὅσων τὸ εἶδος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ). If the builder forms the bricks into a house, it is by starting with the form of a house in his soul and carrying out the process of formation according to this paradigm; likewise, if the doctor produces health in the patient, it is by looking to the form of health in his soul and reasoning from there. Thus, if in one sense the “from which” is matter, in another sense the starting-point (ἀρχή) of production is the form, that is, the form in the soul of the maker. But since Heidegger himself notes the importance of Aristotle’s suggestion that the art (τέχνη) of medicine is to be identified with the form of health in the soul, and the art of building is to be identified with the form of the house in the soul (1032b13–14), it turns out that all three moments of becoming can be identified with form: the bricks acquire the form of a house through the form of a house (which equals the art of building) and from the form of a house existing in the soul of the builder. Note that the form in each case is singular and that universals play no role in this process. All the focus is on the formation of the hekaston.

Heidegger also claims that it is in the context of this account of making that the meaning of the mysterious expression to ti ên einai, with the emphasis on the “what it was to be,” becomes clear (Becker I, 25). The form of the house is its “what it was to be” in the sense of what it was determined to be in the soul of the builder prior to being built. The past tense “was” expresses the archê, the starting-point of becoming. But if Heidegger did indeed claim that production comes first even though it comes second after natural becoming in the order of Aristotle’s presentation, this is presumably because he thinks that natural becoming is interpreted in terms of these concepts that become fully clear only in the context of production. The last passage Becker cites in his transcript is Aristotle’s oft-repeated principle that “man generates man” (ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ).²² Here we see the account of making applied to natural becoming: something with a human form is produced by something with a human form (the father) and from the human form in him. But note the important consequence: if production is indeed paradigmatic for the understanding of natural becoming, then the presence of the form in the soul and thus the being of the soul itself become likewise paradigmatic.

This June 14 class began with a claim that perhaps only now receives its clarification: not every determination of what something is a determination of meaning (WDA, 9). As Aristotle says, when I assert that this poem by Homer is the Iliad, I am not defining it or determining its meaning: I am simply assigning a word to what is not even a meaning, but only a collection of words.²³ If in contrast I assert that Socrates is a “rational animal,” I am determining his meaning in that my logos expresses his to ti ên einai. We therefore have the following statement in the Weiss transcript: “Only that determination of what something is in which the determining and the determined ‘what’ are identical is also a determination of meaning”²⁴ (WDA, 9; compare Becker I, 22). In a logos of to ti ên einai, the logos and to ti ên einai, “what it is said to be” and “what it was for it to be” are the same. It would seem that we cannot understand the being of nature without understanding the being of the soul that is grasping and asserting; we cannot understand the being of natural objects without understanding the form in the soul and the form that is the soul. It is therefore natural for Heidegger to turn immediately back to De Anima in the next class.

The class of July 5, of great importance due to the examination it provides of the initial account of the soul in De Anima, is completely missing from the Becker transcript and is preserved only by Weiss. We must assume that Becker simply missed the class, since his transcript picks up again with the next class of July 19, though in increasingly laconic fashion; perhaps the Metaphysics interested him much more than De Anima. In any case, following the Weiss transcript we see that Heidegger returned to the problem with which the seminar opened: how is the psychical to be grasped, how is any object to be grasped as such (WDA, 11)? Heidegger refers to Aristotle’s description of his goal in De Anima I.1 as being that of contemplating and knowing the ousia of the soul (402a7–8). But now Heidegger can add that this search proceeds “according to a completely determinate concept of οὐσία,” precisely the one that emerged from the reading of chapters 7–9 of Metaphysics VII: ousia as it appears in becoming (γένεσις), whether natural or productive, that is, as eidos. But more specifically, eidos in the definition of the soul is interpreted as entelecheia (ἐντελέχεια). Heidegger notes that Aristotle in De Anima II.1 will distinguish between two kinds of entelecheia (412a9–10, 22–23): one like possessing knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and the other like exercising this knowledge (θεωρεῖν). Because we do not cease to live when we are sleeping and not exercising the powers that define our soul (not only the power of knowing but also those of perceiving and locomotion), Aristotle defines the soul as the first kind of entelecheia. Crucial here, however, is Heidegger’s observation that the concept of entelecheia, as that which reaches its end, as that which is effected and made actual, itself arises from the perspective of becoming found in chapters 7–9 of Metaphysics VII: “Genuine being is becoming and working. The concept is therefore related to the effected reality [das Wirkliches] as what is becoming” (WDA, 11). Note in particular the identification of “genuine being” with becoming. This is the important result of Heidegger’s rejection of Natorp’s thesis separating a treatise on becoming from a treatise on being in Metaphysics VII. It is this identification that will guide all his subsequent reading of Aristotle and make the Physics for him the fundamental text of Aristotelian ontology. And yet the concept of entelecheia appears to introduce something new not found in the account of ousia in Metaphysics VII, where indeed the term does not appear. Heidegger apparently recognizes this since, while referring to a text of De Anima where Aristotle equates the ousia of the soul with its to ti ên einai and explicitly says that ousia here is understood kata ton logon (412b10–11), he is reported to have asserted that “being here stands alone, {not} in relation to the assertion—Entelechy constitutes being itself; the soul itself is characterized as entelechy” (WDA, 11). So if the account of ousia in the Metaphysics leads us back to the soul, is it the case that grasping the being of the soul requires a different conception of being? This is left unclarified here.

Turning to Book II, Heidegger suggests a contrast between chapter 1, concerned with living things (and thus the soul as their ousia), and chapter 2, concerned with the distinction between living and nonliving things through life²⁵ and thus with the soul as a principle (ἀρχή).²⁶ This leads Heidegger to ask if the question of why something is (its αἰτία) is the same as the question of what it is. He turns to the right place for the answer: Metaphysics VII.17. There, as was already noted earlier in the seminar, Aristotle’s new beginning in the examination of ousia is precisely to consider it as an aitia. To ask what a human being is is to ask why this body is a human being; to ask what a living thing is is to ask why this body is living rather than nonliving. Significantly, Heidegger now relates this identification of ousia and eidos with aitia to production: “The εἶδος is held in view in ποίησις and therefore is an αἰτίον” (WDA, 11). Everything is being interpreted here, Heidegger suggests, from the perspective of the producer who has in his soul the form that will make these bricks a house (their ousia) and will explain why they are a house (their aitia).

Heidegger then considers another contrast between the first two chapters. The first chapter aims to provide a most general account of what the soul is (κοινότατος λόγος, 412a5), defining it only in outline (413a9–10; Τύπῳ μὲν οὖν ταύτῃ διωρίσθω καὶ ὑπογεγράφθω περὶ ψυχῆς). Heidegger observes that this “speaking in outline” is always for Aristotle “an anticipatory indication, a sign” (WDA, 11). In the second chapter, Aristotle takes another approach, starting with concrete phenomena that, if unclarified, yet jump out at one. The reference is to the first line of the chapter where Aristotle describes himself as starting from what is both unclear and most evident (ἐκ τῶν ἀσαφῶν μὲν φανερωτέρων δὲ, 413a11). What Aristotle takes to be most evident here in the sense of immediately striking one, jumping out at one, is the distinction between living and nonliving nature. And what is the difference that strikes us? Heidegger suggests that the most evident distinction between nonliving and living is that the former moves of itself in only one direction (like the rock falling) whereas the latter moves of itself in multiple directions. “Plants grow in different directions (here the fundamental meaning of everything biological, even if completely primitively)” (WDA, 12).²⁷ And things that move in different directions have their principle of movement (ἀρχή) in themselves; this principle is life (ζωή).

Yet the second chapter also insists that there are different ways of living: that which we find in the plant, which is nutrition, but also perception, movement, and understanding (νοῦς). In referring to these, Heidegger insists on two notable points. First, he insists that these ways of living are ways of being, citing in support the following line: “Living is being for living things, and of this the soul is cause and principle” (Τὸ δὲ ζῆν τοῖς ζῶσι τὸ εἶναι ἐστιν, αἴτιον δὲ καὶ ἀρχή τούτων ἡ ψυχή, 415b13–14). This passage remains of central importance to Heidegger in insisting that the soul for Aristotle is not a being, but a principle of being for certain kinds of beings and that therefore what De Anima aims at is an ontology of life. Another point that Heidegger makes is that all of the ways of life are movements, and not only the way specifically designated “movement” (which is a specific kind of movement, that is, movement from one place to another). The implication is that the being of living things is movement, which accords with Heidegger’s earlier claim that genuine being is becoming.

The most basic way of living, and thus the most fundamental capability of the soul, is the nutritive (τρεπτικὸν); “the plant has its genuine living in nourishing itself” (WDA, 12). In contrast, what is proper in constituting an animal is aisthêsis.²⁸ In this context, Heidegger claims that Henri Bergson is alone among the moderns to recognize that “perception” is an inadequate, because much too narrow, expression for aisthanesthai, which should be understood as “full living.”²⁹ If the focus of Heidegger’s reading in this seminar will indeed be aisthanesthai, that is presumably because he finds only there the full phenomenon of living in comparison to which the basic phenomenon of life in the plant is lacking. But Heidegger first draws attention to the problem, recognized by Aristotle as such, of providing a general logos of the soul given the fundamentally different ways of living, of finding one meaning that can correspond to the multiplicity of particular ways of being (ἴδια). The relevant passage in Aristotle is the following: “It is evident that there will be one logos of the soul in the same way there is of figure. For as in that case there is no figure beyond the triangle and the other figures that follow upon it, neither is there a soul beyond the [particular] ones mentioned. There would be a common logos concerning figures that would harmonize [ἐφαρμόσει] with all of them, but will not be peculiar to any one of them. The same is the case concerning the souls that have been mentioned” (414b20–25). Heidegger notes that we have no term for this “harmonizing” that first makes possible a koinos logos. But whatever koinos logos is possible here requires that one first give a specific account of each way of living or soul and recognize that there is no life or soul beyond these specific ones. Thus, Heidegger sees the result of the examination as being that “one cannot speculate about the soul in a general way, but rather in the case of each what is most its own is its logos; its οἰκείον” (WDA, 13). Indeed, Heidegger claims that for Aristotle in this context “general talk makes no sense” (WDA, 13), thinking presumably of Aristotle’s claim at 414b25 that a koinos logos here would be “ridiculous” (γελοῖον), though wrongly locating it in chapter 4 rather than 3. But then how is one to work out the oikeios logos for each way of living?

The answer Heidegger finds in chapter 3 is that the faculty in each case must be grasped both in and through its exercise (Vollziehen). For example, the faculty of perceiving (αἰσθητικὸν) can be grasped only in and through the process of actually perceiving (αἰσθάνεσθαι). Here Heidegger states an important principle using terms central to the account of the soul’s being in De Anima: “Prior to the δύναμις³⁰ is the ἐνέργεια, the carrying out, putting to work, the actual performance” (WDA, 13). But prior to this activity or performance itself is its object, what lies against it (ἀντικείμενα), and both the object and the relation to it will be different in the case of each way of living. Heidegger is faithfully describing here the method outlined in chapter 3 and followed by Aristotle in the rest of De Anima: the activity (nourishing, perceiving, thinking) will be explained in relation to its object (food, particular sensibles, universals) and then the faculty or power in terms of the activity.

The class of July 19 begins with Heidegger noting that, given what Aristotle says in De Anima II.3, the koinotatos logos of chapter 1 would be “ridiculous” without a specific account of each of the modes of living distinguished in chapter 2. For a concrete examination of these different modes to do justice to each, the “soul” will need to be understood as broadly as possible. Then Heidegger identifies such a broad understanding by claiming that in concrete examinations “the fundamental representation of self-moving must be held onto; it is everywhere in the phenomenon of life” (WDA, 13). Recall that, according to what Heidegger has already maintained, the different modes of living are modes of being and modes of movement. Now he suggests that what is common to all the modes of living as movements is self-movement. But this raises the question of how the self is to be understood.

We now have what is unquestionably one of the most important moments of the seminar and one that shows a direct link from De Anima to Being and Time. Heidegger observes that it has often been noted as a peculiar fact that we do not find in Aristotle the “I,” and thus the “self,” that is the focus of contemporary psychology. Heidegger then surprisingly retorts that on closer inspection the “I” is in fact to be found everywhere in Aristotle (implied: where even contemporary psychology does not see it), “but only in the guise of δύναμις—the I-can and it-can, a form of objecthood (Gegenständlichkeit), therefore, that has as a fundamental determination that it can” (WDA, 13). If the plant can of itself grow in different directions, can of itself nourish itself, the self that defines it as a living thing is nothing other than this “it-can.” The Becker transcript, though very laconic at this point of the seminar, provides the crucial observation that the “I” and the “it” are not fundamentally distinguished (Becker I, 27). Because Heidegger is offering “an indication of the objecthood of all modes of living” (and recall that an “indication” is all a koinos logos can be), whether it is an “I” or an “it” that “can” is not at issue. What defines all life is the “can”; the being of life, which is being the self of self-movement, is dunamis. The direct line here is to the central thesis of Being and Time: the being of Dasein is possibility; Dasein is a being-possible.³¹ Yet here in 1921 all life, not just human life, is a “self” in the sense of a being-possible, or better, a being-capable.³² When Heidegger after Being and Time returns to the general phenomenon of life in the 1929/30 course on The Basic Concepts of Metaphysics, he must, interpreting the phenomenon from the perspective of Dasein, deny that an animal is really a “self” (plants are ignored entirely).³³ Then the distinction between the I-can and the it-can becomes of paramount importance, with the notion of self restricted to the I.

Even in 1921, we see Heidegger moving in this direction because he continues as follows: “It is from this perspective that we must understand δύναμις–ἐντελέχεια and working–suffering; everything from the perspective of the I-can of the νοῦς; how far the remaining concrete determinations of life (beyond human νοῦς) play a role here would need to be examined more closely.”³⁴ Now we see that the fundamental ontological concepts are to be interpreted from the perspective, not of the indifferently I- or it-can of life, but from the I-can of human nous (the distinctly human mode of living), just as in Being and Time the question of the meaning of being will be addressed by way of an analysis of the distinctly human mode of being, Dasein. What role the concrete determinations of nonhuman modes of living could play in the understanding of these ontological concepts would need to be examined more closely. Yet one looks in vain for such a close examination elsewhere in Heidegger’s work; what little there is is here in this seminar where he acknowledges, as we have seen, the central importance of the biological perspective for Aristotle. It is therefore hard not to feel that this class of July 19 is a watershed moment.

If Heidegger returns to the problem of how there can remain a general concept among the particular modes of life and of how the koinotatos logos relates to these idiai (WDA, 14), his goal appears to be to show the methodological priority of human life. Heidegger observes that what allows an account to harmonize with all of the different idiai is that there is a determinate order among them and indeed a hierarchical order. In the order of nutritive faculty, perceptive faculty, faculty of movement, and noetic faculty, each is the condition of possibility for that which follows it (there can be no power of perceiving without the power of self-nourishing) and a surplus in relation to that which precedes it. This is the basis of the figure analogy in chapter 3: though trilateral and quadrilateral are different figures with different accounts, the latter contains the former. Heidegger notes that the relations in the case of the different figures are not really the same as in the case of the different souls, but that Aristotle is concerned here only with the general relations of in-one-another and after-one-another. Then he makes the crucial point toward which all of this has presumably been heading: “What he [Aristotle] actually has in mind is the human being in which all capabilities are concretely present” (WDA, 14). If what makes possible a general account that harmonizes with all the different modes of life is the hierarchical order among them, and if human life stands at the top of this hierarchy, including all the lower forms within it, then the general account can only be given from the perspective of human life. There can be no ontology of life as such except by way of an ontology of human life. Again, the repercussions for Heidegger’s subsequent trajectory are clear.

In turning to chapter 4, Heidegger refers to Aristotle’s characterization of the most natural function of living things (415a26; φυσικώτατον), that is, reproduction, as “producing another like itself” (τὸ ποιῆσαι ἕτερον οἷον αὐτό, 415a28), and, noting that the “like” here refers to the eidos, sees further confirmation that ousia acquires the meaning of eidos in relation to becoming (γένεσις) and in this case natural becoming (WDA, 14; Becker I, 27). He also draws attention to the presence in this chapter of something else already addressed in the seminar: the identification of a thing’s ousia with its aition. Aristotle explicitly says that “the cause of being to all is the ousia” (τὸ γὰρ αἰτίον τοῦ εἶναι πᾶσιν ἡ οὐσία, 415b12–13), so that the soul is not only the ousia of living things but the cause of their being equals living. The point Heidegger insists on is that the “being” of which ousia is the cause is not simply being-there or existing, but being-there-in-such-and-such-a-way (WDA, 15; Sodasein). Yet what Heidegger seems most intent on showing is how the identification of ousia with aition leads to—when the latter is understood as that-for-the-sake-of-which, the telos—the interpretation of being as entelecheia.

Immediately following the passage just discussed, we have this other crucial passage that Heidegger cites and comments on: “Furthermore, the logos of what is dunamei is the entelecheia [ἔτι τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος λόγος ἡ ἐντελέχεια]. It is clear that the soul is a cause as that-for-the-sake-of-which [οὗ ἕνεκεν]: for as nous produces for the sake of something, so does nature in the same way [τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον], and this is its telos” (415b14–17). There are a number of points to address here. First, while Heidegger claims that logos is the horismos in the sense of “the assertion that directs itself toward the οὐσία” (WDA, 15), it is also clearly, as entelecheia, the ousia itself of what is potentially.³⁵ Recall Heidegger’s earlier contention that in the case of a horismos, the determining and what is determined are the same. Secondly, note how production and therefore human nous serves as the model for understanding natural becoming, just as Heidegger has been suggesting. Finally, Heidegger clearly wants us to see the connection between the conception of the soul as aition in the sense of telos and the interpretation of its being as entelecheia. The connection is made clear when Heidegger defines entelecheia in contrast to the term often considered synonymous with it, energeia, and in the following words: “ἐνέργεια is being-in-action, but ἐντελέχεια being-in-action with a goal and already possessing this goal” (WDA, 15). Heidegger clearly interprets entelecheia as “having-the-telos-in-itself.” The connection is between the characterization of the soul as the telos of living things and the interpretation of the being of life as “being or possessing its own end” or, as the Becker transcript puts it, “being with itself” (Becker I, 28). “Life is life in the genuine sense as ἐντελέχεια” (WDA, 15). But here we need to note something of crucial importance if we are to understand what follows in the seminar: there appears to be an evident contradiction, or at least tension, between this characterization of the being of life and the earlier characterization of the being of life as self-movement in multiple directions. In the latter case, life is not with itself, does not possess its own end, but is always moving outside of itself. As we will see, Heidegger will find the solution in Aristotle’s text with the notion of life as a peculiar kind of motion that, rather than being characterized by alteration and becoming-other, is characterized by self-maintenance and self-preservation: a motion that, unlike the building of a house, is its own end.

This notion is found in Aristotle’s general account of aisthêsis in De Anima II.5. It is to precisely this chapter that Heidegger now turns.³⁶ As Heidegger notes, aisthêsis, which, recall, is a way of living, is characterized here as a paschein, as undergoing or suffering something, as a being-affected, and therefore as a kind of alteration (ἀλλοίωσις). When I perceive something, my dunamis of perception is affected by something other, even if, on Aristotle’s account, it becomes like the object, takes on its quality, through the actual activity of perception. But according to the Weiss transcript, Heidegger immediately referred his students to the end of the chapter, exclaiming it to be worthy of note (WDA, 16). Why? Because what Aristotle says there about paschein and alloiousthai is that we apply these terms to perception as if they were the proper ones (ὡς κυρίοις ὀνόμασιν), only for want of a better, more accurate term (418a1–3). What then is misleading about them? Aristotle notes in the chapter that in what we usually call alteration, something is destroyed and replaced with something new. So, for example, if a leaf changes color, the former green color is destroyed and replaced by a red color. But perceiving, and indeed life in general, is not that kind of alteration. In perceiving, far from the faculty of sense being “altered” in the sense of ceasing to be what it was and becoming something else, it is instead preserved and indeed fulfilled as such. As Heidegger notes, Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of paschein: (1) one that is a kind of “destruction” (φθορά τις), and (2) one that is a “saving” or preservation (σωτηρὶα).³⁷ Aristotle’s claim is that aisthêsis is only the second kind. Heidegger himself in this class, however, appears to think that it is both kinds, explaining as follows: “Regarding (1) When one thing is worked upon by something different, it is no longer what it was. (2) It is at the same time something that has suffered and experienced; the ὁμοίον remains” (WDA, 15).

One can see what Heidegger is doing here: he is trying to understand the movement that characterizes aisthêsis and life in general as one through which one both ceases to be what one was and remains like one was. This would certainly make the movement distinctive. And yet Aristotle’s position is more radical and Heidegger’s “at the same time” (zugleich) is arguably a misinterpretation: in the passage in question Aristotle states that paschein is not simple (haploun) and then uses a men/de construction (on the one hand/on the other hand) to distinguish between what are two different senses of paschein: one that destroys and one that preserves. It is therefore not at all suggested that what “suffers” suffers in both senses at once, as Heidegger’s “zugleich” appears to assume.³⁸ The “alteration” that characterizes life is radically other than alteration in the usual sense; it is not in any sense a being-destroyed or becoming-other, but is entirely and only a “being-saved” and “preserved.” If the object of perception affects my faculty of perception, it does not change it but lets it come into its own, fulfills and preserves it as such. The wood is destroyed by the fire, but my faculty of sight is not destroyed by the object of sight. On the contrary, it first becomes fully what it is through this object. So too life in general: if it is movement, it is not movement toward something it is not, but a movement in which what is moved is maintained as such, a movement that possesses its end rather than moving toward an end outside it. If Heidegger in fact does not see here how radical Aristotle’s position is, he will correct himself in the next class, which therefore will represent a proper culmination to the whole seminar. The present class concludes by noting Aristotle’s distinction between two kinds of dunamei on: with the example of knowledge, (1) belonging to the genus capable of acquiring knowledge and (2) possessing knowledge without exercising it (WDA, 16).

This brings us to the class of July 26, the final one. It begins with Heidegger insisting again that aisthêsis is a determinate mode of living, which is itself a determinate mode of being. The problem of aisthêsis is therefore not a problem for the theory of knowledge (WDA, 16). This is the insight that Heidegger earlier attributed to Bergson alone among the moderns; indeed, he notes that “all this has been lost in the modern concept of sense impression!” (Becker I, 29). Next Heidegger repeats the “genuine determinations” of aisthêsis already noted in the previous class: (1) that it is a “being capable” (δύναμει ὄν), and (2) that it is a “receiving” (δέχεσθαι). Now he adds a third: that it is a logos. Heidegger is referring to two passages: aisthêsis is characterized by Aristotle as a logos tis at 424a28 and as a logos at 424a30. Here we have the same double sense we saw in the statement that the logos of what is dunamei is the entelecheia. Heidegger claims that the meaning of logos in the claim that aisthêsis is a logos is “relation” (Verhätnis), but also notes that logos means the saying of a relation, asserting something of something (WDA, 16). Logos is again the saying and what is said. Heidegger then sets the agenda for the rest of the class, and thus for the rest of the seminar, by proposing that the three determinations of aisthêsis be grasped more sharply.

Speaking of the first determination, dunamei on, Heidegger identifies it with the “it-can” seen earlier as constituting the objecthood of all life, though Heidegger here, at least according to the Weiss transcription, claims that it “characterizes most specifically αἴσθησις,” perhaps having in mind the earlier identification of perceiving with full living. He further notes that this determination refers aisthêsis to energeia as the working-out of the “it-can.” Finally, he claims that there is thereby in the “it-can” a reference to kinêsis because this latter is “itself a determinate ἐνέργεια” (WDA, 16). Heidegger is referring here to Aristotle’s claim that kinêsis is an energeia tis, namely, an incomplete one.³⁹ And Heidegger interprets as follows: “A happening that has not yet arrived at the goal” (Becker I, 29). But note a problem here: that the “it-can” of aisthêsis is referred to energeia as what “works it out” does not at all imply that it is referred to that incomplete type of energeia that is kinêsis. Indeed, the term entelecheia, which Heidegger himself has interpreted as “possessing-the-goal” and thus “being-complete,” implies that the energeia of perceiving is not incomplete and therefore not a kinêsis. But Heidegger does not pursue this alternative of distinguishing between motion as incomplete energeia and complete energeia. Instead, keeping his focus on kinêsis and noting how it “hangs together” with the second determination, paschein, Heidegger will focus most of his attention, and apparently the rest of the seminar, on this second determination in order to find a notion of complete motion, that is, a type of motion that comes back to oneself rather than going out to something else. This will prove the crucial ontological result of the seminar and one whose importance for Heidegger’s later trajectory cannot be overestimated.

Heidegger’s next move is indeed to treat kinêsis as the broader category under which are to be classified both paschein and energeia. He does this by translating kinêsis as “Geschehen” (happening) and then interpreting paschein as “Geschehen mit,” as in “something is happening with me,” and energeia as a “Geschehen von,” as in “the happening of something” (WDA, 16). Heidegger further strengthens the role of kinêsis as the dominant perspective through what must be described as a peculiar interpretation of the Aristotelian account of how perception works. According to Aristotle, my faculty of perception is unlike the perceived object before the act of perception but becomes like it when the perception has taken place, as the wax takes on the form of the ring impressed upon it. Heidegger’s interpretation is that they are unalike before the perception in the sense that one is in motion (the object, presumably?) while the other is unmoved (the faculty?), and they are alike after the perception in the sense that both then are in motion (WDA, 17). The Becker transcript gives the following example: “a ball A moves towards a ball B that is at rest, strikes it, and now they are both moving” (Becker I, 29); an odd example, to say the least, for how a perceptible object causes perception and certainly not Aristotelian! What Heidegger goes on to say suggests a further complexity. During the perceiving, the “happening with” and the “happening of” are presumably both motions, but in a different “what,” whereas afterwards they are in the same “what” (WDA, 17). If we put all of this together, we have something like the following: before the act of perceiving, that “with which something will happen” is unmoved and that “of which the perception will be the happening” is in motion; during the perceiving, both what has something happen with it and what the happening is of are in motion, but each motion is in a different “what,” that is, is in something defined differently; after the perceiving, the motions are in the same “what” because both have reached their telos, which is the same. However one interprets the details, what is clear is that Heidegger’s account so far makes perception into a motion of the incomplete kind. It is evident that the above account applies equally well to the process of building a house: before the process of building, the bricks that will have something happen with them are unmoved and the builder is in motion; during the process of building, both the bricks and the builder are in motion but the two motions are in a different “what”; after the process of building, the two motions are in the same “what,” that is, their telos is the same, which is in this case the built house.

But if Heidegger interprets aisthêsis, and therefore living, entirely within the perspective of kinêsis, he goes on to recognize, following Aristotle himself, that the kinêsis in this case must be of a very peculiar kind and not like the transformation of bricks into a house nor like any other alteration. Indeed, the “happening with” in this case cannot really be an alteration at all in the sense of becoming other than it was. For Heidegger notes that paschein is itself determined as “destruction” (φθορά) and “preservation” (σωτηρία), but only as one or the other in each case, not both. In a turning point of great importance, Heidegger corrects the mistake he apparently made in the previous class, that is, the mistake of thinking that a paschein can be both a destroying and a saving “at the same time.” He instead asserts: “These determinations do not like the first apply to every πάσχειν, but rather identify two different modes of πάσχειν” (WDA, 17). Aisthêsis, Heidegger recognizes, is only the second kind of paschein, the one characterized by “preservation.” But what does this mean? Heidegger comments that in the case of aisthêsis, “the happening-with must be a peculiar one and that with which something happens must be in such a way that it first comes to itself” (WDA, 17). Aisthêsis, understood as a mode of living and being, is a happening in which that with which something happens is not altered and does not become other than it was in the happening, but on the contrary comes to itself and saves itself—a peculiar motion indeed that preserves rather than alters, that brings something to itself rather than away from itself. It is so peculiar that Heidegger, noting that Aristotle says only that aisthêsis appears to be an alteration (416b35), affirms emphatically: “πάσχειν is no ἀλλοιώσις” (WDA, 17). The transcripts seem to have Heidegger explaining this statement with the example “what thinks thinks.”⁴⁰ The point would be that in undergoing thinking the thinker does not change or alter, but first comes to himself as a thinker. In making this point, Heidegger refers to and comments on a passage worth citing here in full: “In the case of something learning and acquiring knowledge from being potential [ἐκ δυνάμει ὄντος] and under the action of what is actual [ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐντελεχείᾳ ὄντος] and teaching, either we should not speak of being affected [πάσχειν] at all, as has been said, or of two types of alteration [ἀλλοιώσις], transformation toward privative conditions and transformation toward positive dispositions and nature [τὴν τε ἐπὶ τὰς στερητικὰς διαθέσεις μεταβολὴν καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ τὰς ἕξεις καὶ τὴν φύσιν]” (417b12–16). In addition to an alteration that deprives something of what it originally had (which of course is what we normally understand by alteration), we have an “alteration” that returns it to its positive disposition and nature. Heidegger provides this important comment: “thus a becoming-other in which that with which something happens comes to itself” (WDA, 17). In this way, we have a motion that is not incomplete, a motion in which what is being moved is not moving toward something it has yet to become and that it can become only by ceasing to be what it is. We have a motion in which what is moved comes to itself and is fully what it is: motion as entelecheia.

Following what he earlier described as Aristotle’s method of explaining the dunamis in terms of the corresponding energeia and the energeia in terms of its object (the ἀντικείμενον), Heidegger now turns to Aristotle’s account of the object of perception (the αἰσθητόν) in De Anima II.6. He notes Aristotle’s distinctions between different kinds of perceptible objects: (1) proper sensibles (kath’hauta) are distinguished between those peculiar to each sense (idia), such as color and sound, and those common (koina) to different senses, such as motion; (2) in contrast we have “accidental” sensibles (sumbebêkos) that are things like humans and dogs. Heidegger does not, however, pursue these distinctions, at least from what the transcripts reveal. Instead, he makes a crucial general point about the object of perception. As that which activates the power of sensation, the dunamei on, the perceptible object (αἰσθητόν) produces the perception, is a poiêtikon. But Heidegger notes that it is “a peculiar ποιητικόν” (WDA, 18) in that, in producing the perception, it preserves rather than alters or changes the faculty of perception. Normally, production involves a change or transformation in that which is acted upon, as the bricks are transformed into a house. But the mode of living that is aisthêsis is not that kind of production: the perceptible object does not change or alter the perceiver but, on the contrary, preserves the perceiver as such. Here we have again the important ontological result of the present seminar. If Heidegger interprets, or sees Aristotle as interpreting, the mode of being that is living as a movement, he also recognizes, or sees Aristotle as recognizing, that it is a very peculiar kind of movement, that is, a movement in which the living thing is preserved rather than altered. It is a movement that possesses its end within itself rather than moving toward something outside itself. Now Heidegger recognizes that if living is interpreted more specifically in terms of production, this is again a very peculiar kind of production and for the same reason: it preserves rather than changes that which it acts upon.

Heidegger concludes the seminar by turning to De Anima II.12, in which Aristotle, after having in the intervening chapters discussed the different senses individually, returns to his general account of perception. Since this is the chapter in which Aristotle characterizes aisthêsis as a logos tis (424a27–28), Heidegger now further considers this third general determination of aisthêsis that expresses its character as a relation. The problem raised by chapter 12 is how exactly to understand this relation given that also nonperceiving living things (plants) and nonliving things are affected by perceptible objects. A plant is affected by the sunlight without perceiving it; air can “smell” in an objective sense without subjectively perceiving smell. Heidegger, noting the use of the verb lambanei in Aristotle’s comparison of perception to how the piece of wax takes on the “sign” of the ring without the gold or bronze (424a20), suggests that the dechesthai that characterizes aisthêsis is not a simple receiving (Aufnehmen), but a taking (Annehmen) that retains what it takes.⁴¹ This reinforces the point that aisthêsis is not to be understood as the suffering of a change or as an alteration, but as a conservation in which both perceiver and the perceived are conserved. That Heidegger wishes to make precisely this point is indicated by the fact that he refers once again to the end of chapter 5, where Aristotle notes that it is necessary to use the terms paschein and alloiousthai in relation to perception as if they were the proper terms and only for want of anything better (418a2–3).

With this point the seminar comes to an end. Indeed, the last page that is preserved of the Weiss transcript ends midsentence, though fortunately the sentence is completed in the Becker transcript. The last words in Weiss are “the δέχεσθαι is not,” and the last sentence of Becker is “On ch. 12. δέχεσθαι here not receiving [Aufnehmen], rather instead taking [Annheman] (λαμβάνειν), also in the sense of φθορά (no receiving in the above sense and retaining!).” (WDA, 18; Becker I, 31) Given that the sentence broken off in the Weiss transcript is the last sentence of Becker’s, we can assume that no more than a page is missing from Weiss and that even that page may have contained no more than the remainder of the sentence. In other words, we can be confident that we have a full representation of the seminar.

What I hope the above reconstruction has shown is that, however fragmentary and laconic the Weiss and Becker transcripts may be, they together give evidence of an extraordinarily substantive and important seminar with a clear goal, a clear structure, and a cogent reading both of Aristotle and of the being of life. The goal is to arrive at an account of the being of life which, if we are attentive to the problem of how to access this phenomenon, that is, of how its being is to be “had” in advance, will contribute to the interpretation of being as such (all of “nature”). The result arrived at is an understanding of being as becoming and of the being of life as a peculiar kind of becoming. Though the seminar does not state this result directly, one can summarize and synthesize what has been seen in the course of the seminar as follows: Life is a self-movement in multiple directions that in this exercise of its “it-can” never leaves itself nor becomes other than itself, being always, in its very being, in possession of its end (entelecheia). Two points are to be noted about this result. First, if there is a direct line between this understanding of the being of life and the analysis of the being of Dasein in Being and Time, as subsequent seminars will further show, one must ask what is lost in the later move of focusing on human life (the life of nous) and interpreting all life from that perspective. This move is certainly anticipated in the present seminar, and one could argue that it is already taking place here, but the basic phenomenon of life as manifest in plants and more fully in aisthêsis is still held in view here. Secondly, we see Heidegger here make a fateful decision in his reading of Aristotle that he will never go back on: instead of seeing Aristotle as distinguishing the being of life from movement with the concepts of entelecheia and energeia, Heidegger sees the latter concepts as only expressing peculiar kinds of movement. Instead of holding that the being of life is neither movement nor a form of production, Heidegger insists that it is both, though of a peculiar kind.

Aristotle himself will sharply distinguish between kinêsis and energeia, most clearly and directly in Metaphysics IX.6, though even the claim in De Anima, explained in the Physics, that kinêsis is an incomplete energeia suggests that there can be no such thing as a complete motion: a motion that were complete would not be a motion but something else, that is, energeia.⁴² Furthermore, in Book I of De Anima, a book which Heidegger’s reading skips over, Aristotle argues at length that it is not only untrue, but impossible that motion belongs to the soul (405b31–406a3; οὐ μόνον ψεῦδός . . . ἀλλ᾽ἕν τι τῶν ἀδυνάτων τὸ ὑπάρχειν αὐτῃ κίνησιν). His most significant argument in the present context is that motion is “ecstatic” in the sense of taking what is moved out of its present state or being (see Physics 222b16; εἰ πᾶσα κίνησις ἔκστατις ἐστι), so that if movement belongs to the soul’s being, the soul would constantly step out of its own being (406b15–16; ἡ ψυχὴ ἐξίσταιτ᾽ ἂν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας). Nevertheless, and even when he is forced to address Aristotle’s distinction between kinêsis and energeia in subsequent seminars, Heidegger’s interpretative strategy is always the same: to attempt to show that kinêsis is still the overarching concept and the dominating perspective.

This is not just a decision about how to interpret Aristotle. Heidegger’s own project is to combat the traditional identification of being with static presence by recovering the “motility” of being, and he is drawn to Aristotle’s texts because that is what he finds there. In the context of this seminar, the conception of being as motion, and thus an opportunity for “destroying” the tradition, is what he finds in Metaphysics VII.7–9 and in De Anima. The question is whether this is indeed what Aristotle offers as an alternative to a conception of being as presence. The one thing that is clear is that, if this is the first seminar Heidegger dedicates to the reading of Aristotle, it already shows just how philosophically productive this reading proves.

Human Life in Motion