PATHMARKS


not explain here. Neither does he explain what ἐντελέχεια means. This term, coined by Aristotle himself, is the fundamental word of his thinking, and it embodies that knowledge of being that brings Greek philosophy to its fulfillment. "Ἐντελέχεια" comprises the basic concept of Western metaphysics in whose changes of meaning we can best estimate, and indeed must see, the distance between Greek thought in the beginning [353 {GA 9 283}] and the metaphysics that followed. But at first it is not clear why Aristotle introduces ἐντελέχεια here in order to ground the fact that and the degree to which μορφή is μαλλον φύσις. Only one thing do we see clearly: Aristotle again appeals to λέγειν, to the addressing of things, in order to show where the proper being of a being can be glimpsed. But we can clear up the initially obscure grounding of the proof by clearing up bεforehand what is to be grounded. What is the meaning of the new claim that overrides the previously equal status of ὕλη and μορφή by maintaining that μορφή is φύσις to a greater degree? Earlier we came upon the crucial guiding principle: φύσις is οὐσία, a kind of beingness or presencing. Therefore, the proposition to be grounded maintains that μορφή fulfills what beingness is more than ὕλη does. Earlier still it was established that φύσει ὄντα are κινούμενα: their being is movedness.

We now have to grasp movedness as οὐσία i.e., we must say what movedness is. Only in this way do we clarify what φύσις is as ἀρχή κινήσεως, and only from the thus clarified essence of φύσις will we see why μορφή more fulfills what οὐσία is and therefore why it is φύσις to a greater degree.

What is movedness, taken as the being - i.e., the presencing - of a moving being? Aristotle gives the answer in Physics Γ 1-3. It would be presumptuous to try to capture in a few sentences an essential insight into Aristotle's interpretation of movedness, the most difficult thing Western metaphysics has had to ponder in the course of its history. Still we must try to do so, at least to a degree that will allow us to follow the demonstration of the μορφή-character of φύσις. The reason for the difficulty in Aristotle's definition of the essence [of movedness] lies in the strange simplicity of the essential insight. It is a simplicity we seldom achieve because even now we hardly have an inkling of the Greek concept of being, and likewise, in reflecting on the Greek experience of movedness, we forget what is decisive, namely, that the Greeks conceive of movedness in terms of rest. [354] At this point we must distinguish between movedness and movement, as well as between rest and repose. Movedness means the essence from which both movement and rest are determined. Rest is then the "cessation" (παύεσθαι, Metaphysics Θ 6, 1048b26) of movement. The lack of movement can be calculated as its limit-case (= o). But in fact even rest, which we thus take to


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Martin Heidegger (GA 9) On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις in Aristotle's Physics B, I