have my being-in-the-world. I have at the same time a determination of my being, a mode of my being. This phenomenon is nothing other than what we mean when we say, asking, “How is it going?” Ἡδονή is no so-called pleasure, but a determination of being in itself as living. To this extent, we can successfully follow out ἡδονή as a basic determination.
Aristotle clarifies ἡδονή in Book 10, Chapter 3, by way of comparison with αἴσθησις: δοκεῖ κεῖ γὰρ ἡ μὲν ὅρασις καθ’ ὁντινοῦν χρόνον τελεία εἶναι (οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐνδεὴς οὐδενὸς ὃ εἰς ὕστερον γενόμενον τελειώσει αὐτῆς τὸ εἶδος).331 The “seeing,” “having-in-view,” “active looking-toward,” is in itself “completed,” τέλειον; which means that there is nothing “that could still be added in order to make seeing more complete in what it is.” Rather, it is always the case that if I see, seeing is there in itself all at once. This has to do with the fact that seeing is nothing other than a currently-actuated mode of being-present-in-the-world in the mode of having-the-world.
τοιούτῳ δ᾽ ἔοικεν καὶ ἡ ἡδονή. ὅλον γάρ τι ἐστίν, καὶ κατ’ οὐδένα χρόνον λάβοι τις ἂν ἡδονὴν ἧς ἐπὶ πλείω χρόνον γινομένης τελειωθήσεται τὸ εἶδος. Διόπερ οὐδὲ κίνησις ἐστίν. ἐν χρόνῳ γὰρ πᾶσα κίνησις καὶ τέλους τινός, οἷον ἡ οἰκοδομική. τελεία ὅταν ποιήσῃ οὗ ἐφίεται.332 It is in itself completed, has no movement; its way of being is not such that it would only reach completion in the course of a definite period of time. A house is completed due to the fact that it has its determinate time in its being-produced, due to the fact that it passes through time by way of a movement; it was, at one point, not yet at the end—ἀτελής.333 By contrast, ἡδονή is just like αἴσθησις ἐν τῷ νῦν,334 it is what it is “in the moment,” μὴ ἐν χρόνῳ,335 “not in time” in the sense of a determinate span. It does not first come to being-completed within time. This character, that it is no κίνησις, characterizes it as a determination of the presentness of being-there as such. In Chapter 11 of the Rhetoric (A), Aristotle says that ἡδονή is κίνησις, κίνησίς τις 336 (just like φρόνησις above, in the case of animals),337 insofar as it also has the determination of πάθος, the determination of the being-taken-at-the-moment. Therein lies the determination of the change from . . . to. . . . In relation to this, ἡδονή is also in a certain sense a κίνησις, μεταβολή. However, ἡδονή itself is not a mode of being that appears occasionally, which could also occur along with another mode of comportment; ἡδονή is in itself already there with being as living. It is not something like a possibility in the particular dealing itself; it is no ἕξις of αἴσθησις such that because of my seeing in the right way and my seeing the fitting object, ἡδονή occurs through the
331. Eth. Nic. Κ 3, 1174 a 13 sqq.
332. Eth. Nic. Κ 3, 1174 a 16 sqq.
333. Eth. Nic. Κ 3, 1174 a 26.
334. Eth. Nic. Κ 3, 1174 b 9.
335. Eth. Nic. Κ 3, 1174 b 8.
336. Rhet. Α 11, 1369 b 33: εἶναι τὴν ἡδονὴν κίνησίν τινα.
337. See p. 235.