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Consideration of Definition [13–15]

by movement? What view of movement did he hold as opposed to the Platonic or modern conceptions? Rather, this concept interests us in its conceptuality.

1. We must, therefore, ask what is meant by the concept of movement, in the sense of that which is concretely experienced in the concept as it is meant. What did Aristotle have in mind when he thought of movement? Which moving phenomena did he have in view? Which sense of being did he mean in speaking of a moving being? We do not ask these questions with the aim of gaining knowledge of a conceptual content, but rather we ask how the matter meant is experienced, and, therefore, how:

2. That which is originally seen is primarily addressed. How does Aristotle take the phenomenon of movement? Does he clarify movement by way of concepts or theories that are already available, and that, perhaps Platonistically, lead him to say that movement is a transition from a nonbeing to a being? Or is it that those determinations that arise for him lie in the phenomenon itself? In what way is a phenomenon like movement addressed so as to accord with the guiding claim of the matter seen?

3. How is the phenomenon thus seen unfolded more precisely; into what sort of conceptuality is it, as it were, spoken? What claim of intelligibility is demanded of that which is thus seen? This leads to the question concerning the originality of the explication: Is the explication proposed to the phenomenon, or is it measured by the phenomenon?

These three aspects point to conceptuality without exhausting it, (1) therefore the basic experience in which I make the concrete character accessible to myself. This basic experience is primarily not theoretical, but instead lies in the commerce of life with its world, (2) the guiding claim, and (3) the specific character of intelligibility, the specific tendency toward intelligibility.

We will interrogate Aristotle’s basic concepts from these three points of view. We will see whether the matters meant by these basic concepts are thereby genuinely understood. The purpose of focusing on conceptuality is to notice that in conceptuality what constitutes the fulfillment of the questioning and determining of all scientific research is set in motion. It is not a matter of cognizance but of understanding. You have a genuine task to carry out: not of philosophizing but rather of becoming attentive, from where you are situated, to the conceptuality of a science, to really come to grips with it, and to pursue it in such a way that the research fulfillment of conceptuality becomes vital. It is not a matter of studying all of the scientific theories that periodically appear! By paying attention to the proper fulfillment of a specific science, you attain a legitimate, proper, and serious relation to the matter of your science. Not in such a way that you can apply Aristotelian concepts, but rather in doing for your science what Aristotle did in his place and in the context of his research, namely, to see and to determine the matters with the same originality and legitimacy. I simply have the task of providing the opportunity for Aristotle to put the matter before you.

Thus if we interrogate Aristotle’s basic concepts according to their conceptuality,


Martin Heidegger (GA 18) Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy

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