ON THE ESSENCE AND CONCEPT OF Φύσις
difference between the generation of a human being and the generation of a table forces us into some crucial reflections in which we will have to clarify what role is assigned to the contrast of growing things with artifacts that has been operative from the very beginning of the chapter and has run through the whole explanation.
When Aristotle time and again characterizes growing things by way of analogy with artifacts, does this mean he already understands the φύσει ὄντα as self-making artifacts? No, quite the contrary, he conceives of φύσις as self-production. But is not "production" the same as "making"? It is for us so long as we wander thoughtlessly among worn-out ideas instead of holding on to what was already pointed out. But what if we should find our way back to the realm of being as understood by the Greeks? Then we see that making, ποίησις, is one kind of production, whereas "growing" (the going back into itself and emerging out of itself), φύσις, is another. Here "to pro-duce" cannot mean "to make" but rather: to place something into the unhiddenness of its appearance; to let something become present; presencing. From this notion of pro-duction the essence of generation [Ent-stehen] and of its various kinds may be determined. Instead of "generation" we should have to say "derivation" [Ent-stellung], which is not to be taken in its usual sense but rather as meaning: to derive from one appearance that appearance into which something pro-duced (in any given instance) is placed and thus is. Now there are different kinds of such "derivation." Something generated (say, a table) can be derived from one appearance (the appearance of "table") and placed forth into the same kind of appearance without the first appearance, from which [360 {GA 9: 290}] the table is derived, itself performing the placing into the appearance. The first appearance (εἶδος), "table," remains only a παράδειγμα, something that certainly shows up in the production but does nothing more than that and therefore requires something else that can first place the orderable wood, as something appropriate for appearing as a table, into that appearance. In those cases where the appearance merely shows up, and in showing up only guides a know-how in the producing of it and plays an accompanying role rather than actually performing the production — there production is a making.
This way of showing up is certainly one kind of presencing, but it is not the only kind. It is also possible that an appearance — without showing up specifically as a παράδειγμα, namely, in and for a τέχνη — can directly present itself as what takes over the placing into itself. The appearance places itself forth. Here we have the placing of an appearance. And in thus placing itself forth it places itself into itself; i.e., it itself produces something with its kind of appearance. This is μορφή as φύσις. And we can easily see that a ζῷον (an
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