Unfolding the Manifold Senses of Being: Martin Heidegger’s 1930/31 Notes on Aristotle

Abstract

For Martin Heidegger’s quest to understand the meaning of being, Aristotle’s repeated claim that being “is spoken of in many ways” was both an inspiration and a provocation. Yet the places where Heidegger directly confronts and seeks to understand Aristotle’s claim are surprisingly few, with the most extensive and open-ended reflection now to be found in the recently published volume 91 of the Gesamtausgabe. Heidegger here, unlike too many others and himself elsewhere, does full justice to the radicality of Aristotle’s claim that refers not only to the different senses of being according to the categories (‘substance’, ‘quality’, ‘quantity’, etc.), but also to non-categorial senses (‘truth’, ‘accidental being’, ‘dunamis and energeia’) and sub-senses and refuses to reduce this plurality within plurality of senses to a unity. The Aristotle highlighted here is not the systematic but rather the ‘broken’ one. In the notes, Heidegger furthermore considers the possibility that this indeterminacy and darkness at the heart of Aristotle’s ontology, rather than a limitation due to an understanding of being as presence from the perspective of logos, reflects the indeterminacy and darkness at the heart of being itself. Heidegger’s ‘broken’ and even contradictory reading of Aristotle in these notes thus becomes his own attempt to think through the meaning of being in its withdrawal.

1. Introduction

Late in life, Heidegger often told the story that while still in high school he received as a gift Franz Brentano’s book on the multiple senses of being in Aristotle and that it was this book that set him on the path of the question of being he would pursue for the rest of his life. Yet Heidegger did not frequently address directly in his courses and seminars the problem of the relation between the different senses of being in Aristotle: (1) being according to the categories, itself having multiples senses such as quality and quantity, with substance the primary sense among these; (2) accidental being; (3) being as truth; (4) being in the sense of dunamis and energeia.1 Though one can find discussion of each of these senses of being in Heidegger’s work, rarely does he discuss the problem of their relation. One place where he addresses the problem is at the start of his SS1931 course on Metaphysics Θ: Vom Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft [3]. Even here he only raises the problem briefly after presenting the different senses, leaving open the question of what unifies this manifold (p. 47). In notes from the same period, however, recently published in GA91 [4]2 and contained in a folder with the heading “Aristotle: The Question of Being and ‘Metaphysics’–General”, Heidegger reflects on the problem in more depth than he arguably does anywhere else, in the process articulating both the unsurpassed radicality and the limits of Aristotle’s “being is said in many ways”.3 Heidegger recognizes that “being in the sense of dunamis and energeia” has some kind of special status among the senses of being and he seeks to understand its relation to what otherwise seems—and has certainly appeared to most commentators—to be the central sense of the categories and of ousia in particular. Being in the sense of dunamis and energeia is of course the topic of the 1930 course, but there Heidegger restricts himself to the first three chapters of Book Θ in which Aristotle discusses the sense of dunamis and energeia, which he declares not to be the most useful (οὐ μὴν χρησιμωτάτη) for what he currently seeks (presumably a distinct sense of being; 1045b36–1046a1): dunamis and energeia in relation to motion. The sense that is Aristotle’s true aim in the book and that he turns to only in chapter six is one that goes beyond (epi pleon) the relation to motion (1046a1). In the course Heidegger minimizes this epi pleon, just as he mostly ignores the latter half of Book Θ. In the contemporaneous notes, however, Heidegger reflects on this epi pleon and its relation to motion. A question that arises here and is addressed only in the notes is the following: does being in the sense of dunamis and energeia have some kind of priority among the senses of being, and does the sense of dunamis and energeia that goes beyond motion itself have the ultimate priority? Is there in the end some unity among the different senses of being? And can this unity be understood ‘analogically’? Or does Aristotle’s approach to being from the perspective of logos, of which ‘analogy’ is a form, lead to the unity of being remaining completely in the dark? And how is Heidegger’s own pursuit of the meaning of being to be understood in this context? That Aristotle is an indispensable dialogue partner for Heidegger on the question of being is made fully evident in these notes. Here I wish to identify and discuss the main questions and thoughts that emerge from this intense dialogue. Heidegger’s notes, rich and suggestive as they are, are just that: they are far from being conclusive or systematic. A recurring point on which he insists in the notes is the unsystematic character of Aristotle’s thought. So the goal here is not to arrive at answers, but rather to sketch the contours, and this means also the limits, of the questioning that emerges from this confrontation between two radically unsystematic thinkers.

2. Key Passages4

Before turning to Heidegger, we should consider and make some preliminary remarks on all the passages in which Aristotle describes the plurivocity of being. These passages are rarely all read and discussed together, but they need to be if we are to see the full scope of the problem.

(a) Met. Γ 2: “Being is spoken in many ways (πολλαχῶς), but in relation to one and some one nature (πρὸς ἓν καὶ μίαν τινὰ φύσιν) and not homonymously” (1003a33–34).

(b) Met. E 2: “But since being as spoken absolutely (τὸ ἁπλῶς λέγομενον) is said in many ways (πολλαχῶς), of which one was that according to the coincidental, another that as true, with not-being as false, beyond these (παρὰ ταῦτα) the forms (σχήματα) of the categories (such as the ‘what’, the ‘how-qualified’, the ‘how-much’, the ‘where’, the ‘when’, and if it signifies anything else in this way), and further beyond all of these (ἔτι παρὰ ταῦτα πάντα) the ‘in capacity’ (δυνάμει) and ‘in activity’ (ἐνεργείᾳ) …” (1026a33–b2).5

(c) Met. Θ 1: “About that which primarily is and towards which all the other categories of being are led back, i.e., ousia, we have spoken (for all the other beings are spoken of according to the account of ousia, the ‘how-much’, the ‘how-qualified’, and the other things said in this way; for all contain the account of ousia, as we said in the first discourses). Since being (τὸ ὄν) is spoken, on the one hand, according to the ‘what’ or the ‘how-qualified’ or the ‘how-much’ and, on the other hand, according to dunamis and entelecheia and the work (τὸ ἔργον), let us delimit dunamis and entelecheia, and first the dunamis spoken of most predominantly, though not the most useful for what we want now. For dunamis and energeia extend beyond (ἐπὶ πλέον) things spoken of only in relation to motion” (1045b27–1046a2).

(d) Met. Θ 6: “Since we have discussed the dunamis spoken of in relation to motion (κατὰ κίνησιν), let us also determine with regard to energeia what energeia is and what kind of thing. For the dunaton will also simultaneously become clear to those making distinctions [διαιροῦσιν], that we call dunaton not only that whose nature it is to move something else or be moved by something else either with or without qualification, but also in a different way (ἑτέρως), this being the reason why in inquiring we have discussed those also” (1048a25–30).

(e) “Not everything is said to be in energeia in the same way, other than through analogy (οὐ πάντα ὁμοίως ἀλλ᾽ἢ ἀνάλογον), as this is in this or in relation to this, so that is in that or in relation to that. For as motion is in relation to dunamis, so ousia is in relation to matter. In a different way (ἄλλως) the infinite and the void, and things like that …” (1048b6–10).

(f) “In the case of actions (πρᾶξις) which have a limit (πέρας) none is an end (τέλος), but they are towards an end. For example, [thinness] in the case of becoming thinner: when things are in the process of becoming thinner, they are in motion in this way, whereas that for the sake of which the motion exists does not obtain. This is not an action, or at least not a complete one (οὐ τελεία γε) because it is not an end. But in the other case, the end is present and the action, e.g., one sees <and has seen>, one thinks <and has thought> and understands and has already understood. But it is not the case that one is learning and has already learned or that one is being restored to health and has already been restored to health. One is living well and has already lived well, but furthermore one is actively being happy and has already been happy. Otherwise, it would be necessary to cease at some point, as when one is in the process of becoming thinner. Now this is not the case, but one is living and has already lived. Of these some are to be called motions, others activities (τὰς δὲ κινήσεις λέγειν, τὰς δ᾽ἐνέργείας)” (1048b18–28).

(g) Met. Θ 10: “Since being as well as not-being are spoken in one way according to the forms of the categories, in another way according to the dunamis or energeia of these or the opposites, in the most ruling way (τὸ κυριώτατα) being-true or -false …” (1051a34-b2).

(h) De Anima 412b8–9: “For if the one and being (τὸ εἶναι) are said in many ways (πλεοναχῶς), entelecheia is the most ruling way (τὸ κυρίως).”

The first thing we should note is just how radically fragmented the account of being offered in these passages is. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more anarchic ontology than the one Aristotle offers. It is not just that being is ‘said in many ways’, but that this ‘said-in-many-ways’ is itself said in many ways! First, being is said in many ways according to the categories. This multiplicity is to an extent unified by the fact that all the other categories refer to a primary category: ousia, though exactly what kind of unity this is is never explained (it is only illustrated by means of an analogy [!] with ‘health’).6 But being is said in many ways in another way according to which being according to the categories is itself only one way among four. In the case of these four senses of being, there is no attempt to find any kind of analogical unity. Heidegger, having noted the connectives ‘next’ (παρά) and ‘besides’ (ἔτι) in the lists of these senses in Met. E 2 and Δ 7, respectively (p. 67), exclaims: “Listing!” (“Aufreihung!!”, p. 75) (See also [3] (p. 13)). There are only two places where some kind of order or hierarchy in this list is suggested, though each gives primacy to a different sense of being. The first is the passage from Met. Θ 10 where being-true seems to be identified with the ‘most ruling’ way in which being is said. On the other hand, this sense of being as ‘true’ is in E 4 distinguished from the ruling senses (τὸ οὕτως ὄν ἕτερον ὂν τῶν κυρίως, 1027b31) and excluded from the study of being qua being because existing only in thought. Another one of the four senses, being in the sense of dunamis—energeia/entelecheia, is given priority in the passage from De Anima. One can also see this order suggested by the sequence of Met. ZHΘ that appears to culminate in Θ after the categorial sense of ousia has been discussed in the preceding books. But being in the sense of dunamis—energeia is itself yet again said in many ways. There are first senses of dunamis and energeia relative to motion and senses that go beyond motion. Within the senses relative to motion, there are four senses of dunamis (it too is spoken in many ways: “λέγεται πολλαχῶς ἡ δύναμις καὶ τὸ δύνασθαι, 1046a4–5) with a primary sense (πρὸς πρώτην μίαν λέγονται, ἥ ἐστιν ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς ἐν ἄλλῳ ἢ ᾗ ἄλλο, 1046a10–11, “principle of change in another or qua other”). In the case of the senses beyond motion, there are different senses of energeia unified only through analogy. The analogy in question here is apparently not of the ‘pros hen’ variety (all senses related to a primary instance) we have seen in the case of the categories and of dunamis relative to motion, but rather of the form, “As A is to B, so C is to D.”7 However, Θ6 concludes with a strict sense of energeia that distinguishes it most radically from motion and that would presumably have a certain priority.

The mere consideration of these texts, however we may in the end interpret them, should thus be sufficient to expose the gross distortion and simplification involved in the traditional attribution to Aristotle of a univocal and systematic ‘substance ontology’ (see [3], p. 45).8 Indeed, as we have seen, the two texts that give priority to one of the four senses of being do not give this priority to ousia.9 If the kuriôs language suggests hegemony within the anarchy of Aristotle’s listing of the four major senses of being, this hegemony is granted to each sense besides ‘substance’ and ‘accidental being’. In any case, whatever hegemony might exist within the anarchy is never explained or justified. What is thereby threatened is not only a substance ontology, but any ontology. As Pierre Aubenque has forcefully argued, given Aristotle’s own strong requirement that there is one science only for what is one in genus, the many senses of being (and Aubenque speaks here only of the senses according to the categories) render a “science of being” purely aspirational and in fact impossible.10

But the aporias that afflict such a science do not end here. The bewildering multiplicity of senses related to each other in a multiplicity of ways are senses of ‘being qua being’; besides having these universal senses, ‘being’ can also refer to the highest being that is in some sense ‘first’ among all beings and in this way ‘universal’ (καθόλου οὕτως ὅτι πρώτη, Met. E 1 1026a30–31); this is what makes Aristotle’s first philosophy also theo-logy. What the relation is between the four senses of being as such and divine being is another source of darkness.11 In the notes published in GA91, Heidegger does not address directly the problem of onto-theology that shaped the metaphysical tradition. Instead, his focus is on that disparity of senses of being within Aristotle’s ontology itself that the tradition covered up in reducing it to a ‘substance ontology’ (with God as the highest substance). Heidegger, as we will see, did not entirely escape the tendency to read Aristotle’s ontology as a substance onto-theology, but he arguably did more than anyone else since Aristotle himself to destroy all ontological solidification and simplification and uncover the ‘anarchy’ at the heart of Aristotle’s being, and indeed of being itself.

3. The Approach of the SS1931 Course

This is already clear from how Heidegger addresses and leaves open the problem of the multiple senses of being in Aristotle in the 1931 course:

We therefore do not know how on [being] as dunamis and energeia relates to the remaining senses and how it stands together with them in the unity of being. And precisely here we must be careful not to bring things into order artificially with the goal of constructing in the end a smooth ‘system’. Everything needs to be left open and questionable--and only in this way can we truly free and keep awake the unresolved inner questioning of Aristotle and thus that of ancient philosophizing and thus that of our own philosophizing.

[3] (p. 47)

Yet Heidegger in the remainder of the course does not pursue this unresolved questioning nor even keeps it awake. Instead, he not only focuses on the meaning of being as dunamis and energeia in abstraction from the other senses of being--something perfectly legitimate in a course focused on Metaphysics Θ--but he also reduces what we have seen to be the plurivocity within this one sense of being. This is because, while we have seen Aristotle distinguish between senses of dunamis and energeia relative to motion and senses that go beyond the relation to motion (ἐπὶ πλέον), Heidegger insists that the latter senses have motion in view. Thus he claims, inventing his own Greek not in Aristotle, that the dunamis and energeia not kata kinêsin (not ‘according or relative to motion’) are nevertheless kata kinêseôs: “said of motion” (pp. 53–54). Heidegger has a point here: what are kata kinêsin are the dunamis as the principle of motion and energeia as motion. But the dunamis and energeia that define the being of motion must have senses that are not relative to motion. In other words, if Aristotle in the Physics defines motion as the energeia of what is in dunamis qua such, these latter terms cannot have the meanings of ‘motion’ and ‘capacity for motion’ without making the definition viciously circular. They are said of motion, but for this very reason are not relative to motion.12

Despite the validity of this point, however, Heidegger’s restriction of the dunamis/energeia distinction to the perspective of motion is reductive. In turning to energeia epi pleon, are we not turning to a sense of being that, precisely in defining the motion that is distinct from it, is not relative to motion? In the SS1931 course, at least, this is not the step Heidegger takes. This is shown in his suggestion that a “more careful” (vorsichtiger) way of making the point that the essential meaning of dunamis and energeia is not kata kinêsin would be to say that it is not kata kinêsin monon, “not only in relation to motion” [3] (pp. 51–52). He further tries to support this by claiming that the definition of motion in Physics Γ 1–3 shows that the essential meaning of dunamis and energeia is won from kinêsis (p. 52), whereas it clearly shows the opposite: that the essential meaning of kinêsis is won from the notions of dunamis and energeia understood independently of kinêsis (if the definition is not to be circular). Later in the course Heidegger will even claim that the Megarians failed to understand the concept of energeia because they failed to see that “energeia qua energeia is energeia kata kinêsin” (p. 214).

The reductiveness of Heidegger’s interpretation is also shown in the fact that his reading of Book Θ covers only the first three chapters where motion and the capacity for motion are alone at issue. This is not simply a matter of running out of time.13 The sharp distinction Aristotle makes in Θ 6 between kinêsis and energeia as activity or praxis would be hard to reconcile with a reading of the dunamis/energeia sense of being entirely from within the perspective of motion (a reading that at one point equates them with “ways of being-in-motion [Weisen des In-Bewegung-seins],” p. 216).14 But why does Heidegger insist on this perspective? The motivation is quite clear in the course: only if dunamis and energeia are understood from the perspective of motion can they be said to be understood from the perspective of being-produced (Hergestelltsein, p. 224) and therefore within an understanding of being as presence-at-hand. Thus, on Heidegger’s reading, the whole question for Aristotle in Book Θ, and particularly in his debate with the Megarians in chapter three, is how dunamis and energeia can be present-at-hand (see pp. 167ff.). But to claim that the understanding of being at work in dunamis and energeia is presence-at-hand is to reduce this sense of being to that of substance: and substance specifically in the sense of hupokeimenon, “what lies there before us and persists”. Thus, while the course commences with an emphasis on the open and unresolved plurivocity of being in Aristotle, the reading of Book Θ it pursues seems rather to shut doors.15 We can expect that his contemporaneous notes are not so tidy and therefore can succeed better at keeping the question alive.

4. Aristotle’s Philosophy Not a System but an Outbreak of Existence

The notes indeed insist from the outset on the unsystematic Aristotle. In asking “Why Aristotle?”, Heidegger replies that this is not because he is ‘the greatest’ (all true philosophers are great and grounded in the same), but because he represents an “abandonment [Abbruch] of an unprecedented outbreak and opening of existence from out of Dasein” (p. 12). A little later this is further explained: “abandonment overall and individually. Like a grasping in the dark on the way towards a breakthrough in questioning about the on [‘being’] that suddenly comes to a standstill” (p. 13). The suggestion here is that something about existence broke through in Aristotle’s thought but then was abandoned by him after some groping in the dark and was completely suppressed by the later systematization of this thought. In this case, the goal of reading Aristotle is to retrieve and repeat the way of questioning he pursued at least partially, prior to the doctrines and teachings that would be imposed on it. The goal is a “confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with ancient philosophy in its genuine questioning; not some teaching or thesis. Why? Because this is what we most need” (p. 12). The “philosophical happening” that is Aristotle is later turned, in line with a false conception of science in the modern period, into theses and teachings uprooted from their ground of questioning and hardened and simplified until the original field of questioning is completely lost from view (p. 13).

The paradox of Aristotle’s philosophy for Heidegger is that, on the one hand, no philosophizing has been taken up later in such a hardened form and interpreted to such an extent as a fixed, unambiguous, clear system, while, on the other hand, “no philosophizing is so unfinished and everywhere stuck underway, so that all ways and beginnings remain lying apart. Not even Plato” (p. 14).16 One therefore finds in Aristotle “the sharpest and most impactful ‘expression’ of ancient philosophy, i.e., of genuine philosophizing as such” (p. 14). But the dominance of the ‘system’ has been such that “up to today [one has] hardly penetrated into the vitality and brokenness, promise [Ansatzfülle] of Aristotelian philosophy.” It is this “broken” Aristotle that Heidegger’s notes, with their own unfinished and unsystematic character, will help us recover.17

5. Onto-Logy: The Apollinian Versus the Dionysian in Aristotle

Heidegger nevertheless attributes here to Aristotle, as he does in the SS1931 course and elsewhere, a definite understanding of being: “Aristotle’s outline of being: ousia-parousia 1. presence [Anwesenheit], accessibility [Zugegenheit], being-finished [Fertigkeit], being-produced [Hergestelltheit].” (p. 7). Interestingly and unusually, however, Heidegger adds in the next line “Getanheit”: “being-done”. This suggests the perspective of praxis and not only poiêsis. Even more interestingly and unusually, Heidegger here interprets this conception of being as a triumph of the Apollinian over the Dionysian! The latter, we are told, steps back and the former freely holds sway and establishes itself. This is because philosophy is not “equal to” (gewachsen zu) the Dionysian. Why this is so is made clear in the following: “Why ‘being’ becomes all-powerful in the sense of ‘presence’ (‘Gegenwart’), so that ‘becoming’ is not being, with the result that an uprooted contradiction spreads itself. Not being equal to the question of being as a whole” (p. 8). Other notes make clear that the triumph of the Apollinian sense of being goes along with the dominance of logos: genuine being is understood as the about-which of an assertion (p. 57) and therefore as the is relating predicate and subject: this is what Heidegger calls the “ist-hafte Sein” (p. 60). “Das Istige” comes to dominance along with the dominance of logos (p. 61). This triumphant Apollinian sense of being is clearly what Aristotle calls being in the sense of the categories, or being according to the different forms of predication.

Therefore, when Heidegger considers the possibility that the four ‘folds’ of the manifold senses of being are not on the same level, but that one of them is the leading one (p. 76), he not surprisingly suggests that this leading sense of being is being in the sense of the categories and the primary sense in this manifold: ousia (though as we have seen, this is the sense that Aristotle never characterizes as ‘leading’, kuriôs). But in the notes, unlike in the courses where he also affirms the priority of the categorial sense of being, Heidegger also brings this claim into question: “For dunamis—energeia primarily in relation to ousia and katêgoriai, but in the sense of belonging to this fold? But at the same time, dunamis—energeia the overall radical interpretation of the on” (p. 76).18 The distinction between dunamis and energeia cuts across all the categories. But does this mean that these concepts belong to the categorial sense of being? Heidegger here recognizes that instead they constitute a more radical sense of being. This more radical sense would presumably correspond to the Dionysian sense of being suppressed by the Apollinian. But then was Aristotle’s thought really not “up to” this Dionysian sense?

Heidegger, in the notes, nevertheless continues his attempt, going back to 1922, to interpret the key terms entelecheia and energeia in terms of production and thus as expressing the same sense of being he finds in the categories: presence-at-hand: “Possessing being-finished, and thereby possessing the underway, the way” (Das Innehaben der Fertigkeit, innehaben damit den Hergang, Gang) and “the bringing-something-to-work that halts in the work, bringing-to” (das im Werk haltende Zu-Werk-bringen, Zu-bringen). Note how both formulations express movement, but with the end of making present. Heidegger asserts that in both cases we have “a holding retaining and thereby a holding-up, letting-be-present [ein haltendes Behalten und damit Vor-halten, Anwesend-sein-lassen]” (p. 19).19 The ergon in en-ergeia is interpreted as “what is worked [das Gearbeitete]: what is made [das Gemachte]” and associated with the meaning of ousia as “means [Vermögen], possessions and goods [Hab und Gut]” (p. 20).20

But here Heidegger cannot avoid explaining how nous is energeia in the above sense. Nous is an activity that, as we have seen, Aristotle distinguishes from motion and therefore also from production. But Heidegger must interpret it as follows: “simply bringing to a stand [das Zu-Stand-bringende schlechthin]; not simply activity, performance [Tätigkeit, Vollzug], but: constantly holding in position [ständig in Stand halten.]” (p. 21). While Heidegger refers in this context to the distinction between energeia and poiêsis in Θ6, he insists that it concerns only the ontic concept of the former, thus defusing any danger the distinction might pose to his account of Aristotle’s ontology. As we will see, however, this is by no means the consistent position of the notes.

6. Onto-Kinesy: The Turn to the Being of What Is Moved in Met. Θ

One note captures succinctly the tension we are already seeing in Heidegger’s account of Aristotle’s ontology: “’Ontology’: What belongs to it? Only [Met.] Z or also precisely Θ? What then does Onto-logy mean? Onto-kinesy! [Onto-kinesie]” (p. 7) Onto-logy refers to that Apollinian sense of categorial being that comes to dominate with the dominance of logos. This is the sole sense of being in discussion in Metaphysics Z. But Heidegger is here suggesting that if we include Book Θ and thus being in the sense of dunamis and energeia, we have not an onto-logy but an onto-kinesy, i.e., an account of being in which kinêsis rather than logos is the guiding perspective.21 This presumably would be a more Dionysian sense of being. If Heidegger takes Aristotle’s “guidelines” (Leitfäden) in the question about being (ὄν) to be logos and kinêsis (p. 93), it is not clear that the latter can be reduced to the former. Thus, at one point, speaking of analogy in the case of the categories and of ousia as the leading sense, Heidegger writes: “Why that and what does that mean? logos! Against that Θ: energeia (kinêsis). Or still logos? Qua alêtheia [‘truth’]! [cf.] Z, cap. 1” (65). Here we seem to have the suggestion that if we can connect being in the sense of energeia with being in the sense of truth, maybe logos can remain dominant. But the uncertainty is evident.

What these passages in any case suggest is that if logos is the guideline that leads to being in the sense of the categories, the turn to Θ and being in the sense of dunamis and energeia follows a different guideline: kinêsis. This is indeed the conclusion of another passage: “From where and how [comes] the pollachôs [‘in many ways’] in the wider meaning of the fourfold division?” (p. 69). While Heidegger considers the answer “from out of the whole of legein ta onta [‘to say the beings’] or legein ti kata tinos [‘to say something of something’] overall?”, he notes that with the introduction of the kinoumenon, of the thing in motion, “the principle of origin is not legein as such” (p. 69). If we can derive the multiplicity of categorial senses of being from ‘saying something of something’, the pollachôs of the four senses of being, of which the categorial sense is only one and which includes in addition the being of movement, does not appear to be thus derivable.22

This shift from ‘onto-logy’ to ‘onto-kinesy’, however, does not require Heidegger to see here a change in the meaning of being from presence, since he can continue to interpret movement, and the key terms of dunamis and energeia that define it, in terms of production. The model of production dominates when Heidegger distinguishes between the capability, the activity, and the work produced, with the point that the activity ceases when the work has been produced (pp. 33–34). It appears to be the latter, the produced work, that Heidegger identifies with what is not kata kinêsin (top of p. 34). But Aristotle himself, as we have seen, speaks of activity that does not have a product and that is not a kinêsis; a point seemingly ignored by Heidegger’s analysis here. Even when Heidegger uses the example of the capability of seeing, he identifies as the last stage in which this capability realizes (verwirklicht) itself as “that which in the realization is finally produced: ‘work’—‘result’” (das im Vollzug schließlich Hergestellte: ‘Werk’—Erfolg, p. 39).23

Heidegger therefore suggests that the dunamis kata kinêsin is the principle of movement, and that this principle is “what must be already present-at-hand—wherefrom—pro-duction” [was zuvor schon mit vorhanden sein muß—woher—Her-stellung, p. 44). He then suggests, as in the 1931 course, that it is the epi pleon that gets to the essence of movement: “first when dunamis [and] energeia epi pleon, not only quantitively, but otherwise: [belonging] to the essence of motion as such, thus ‘more’” (p. 44). Heidegger therefore claims in the notes as in the course that what is distinguished from dunamis kata kinêsin, i.e., dunamis related to motion, is kata kinêseôs, i.e., dunamis as constitutive of motion (p. 51).

But does not even this dunamis constitutive of motion point us beyond a conception of being as presence? On p. 50 Heidegger suggests that the phenomenon of dunamis indeed brings about a transformation of the meaning of being. It shows “yet-notness as essential character of being [Noch-Nichtheit als Wesenscharakter des Seins]” and thus leads to a fundamental experience of being that allows motion to be rather than letting it ‘bounce off’ static being-present and being-absent: “Not to, as it were, supplement the essence of being, but to place it at a fundamentally deeper level” (Das Wesen des Seins nicht etwa ergänzen, sondern von Grund aus tiefer legen, p. 50). However- and this is the key point—Heidegger claims that the presence-at-hand character of being is still maintained in the way dunamis is defined: “Nevertheless, presence-at-hand character maintained, since motion not inner happening, but primarily trans-posing, becoming-other (Gleichwohl Vorhandenheitscharakter durchgehalten, weil Bewegung nicht innere Geschichte, sondern primär Um-schlag, Anderswerden, p. 50). Presumably this means that it is defined in terms of that from which and that to which it occurs: each understood as something present-at-hand.24

We thus find in the notes themselves an attempt to force even what Heidegger calls ‘onto-kinesy’ back into an ontology of presence. The suggestion indeed appears to be that, rather than liberating the Dionysian, onto-kinesy represents the ultimate triumph of the Apollinian over the Dionysian. An ontology guided by the perspective of kinêsis, which Heidegger describes as “the deepest impetus of Aristotelian philosophy” (p. 96), is less a transformation of the Ancient conception of being, than its fulfillment (“eine gewisse Vollendung des antiken Seinsbegriffs,” p. 96).

We can therefore also see Heidegger in the notes seeking to force Book Θ into a conception of being as presence and thus back to the categorial sense. This is clear from his outline of what he characterizes as the “clear task”: from the clarification of the essence of kinêsis emerge the notions of dunamis and energeia; in light of this clarification, being as such and as a whole is interpreted as energeiai on [being in energeia]—nous; but because being is always already encountered within logos, it is also interpreted as ‘categories’ (κατηγορίαι) and ‘truth’ (ἀληθές, p. 96). It is this perspective of logos that leads to the understanding of being as presence and of time as the ‘now’.

Heidegger also turns to Physics Θ to find there an identification of being with constant presence. Citing the phrase “being remaining in itself and in the same” (259b26), he claims that this is a statement of what being should be. Citing then De gen. et corr. B 10 336b27 where Aristotle says that nature seeks the best in all things and that it is better to be than not to be, Heidegger asks, “And what does einai [‘to be’] mean? Constant standing in itself! [Beständige in sich ständige Standhaftigkeit!] Duration! Time! Tarrying-in-itself—diagôgê” (p. 97). He continues by citing Aristotle’s claim in Physics Θ that local motion is the first motion according to substance (κατ᾽οὐσίαν) because it least of all “departs from being” (τῆς οὐσίας ἐξίσταται) and alone “alters nothing of being” [οὐδὲν μεταβάλλει τοῦ εἶναι, 261a19–22).25 In changing color, for example, something departs from what it previously was; in contrast, it can move from one place to another while remaining the same. Heidegger comments: “The primacy of phora [‘local motion’] not ‘physical’, material and the like, but from the essence of being itself. ousia: constant presence of something that remains in itself [beständige Anwesenheit von etwas in sich Bleibenden]” (p. 98). The turn to motion thus only further entrenches, rather than breaching or transforming, the conception of being as constant presence. Specifically, by interpreting dunamis and energeia from the perspective of kinêsis and claiming that the latter is explained in terms of a conception of being as presence, Heidegger in the end collapses being in the sense of dunamis and energeia into being in the sense of the categories and in the sense of ousia in particular. He has tidied up the ‘brokenness’ of Aristotle.26

7. Transcendence and the ‘Epi Pleon’: The Energeia of Life as Beyond Motion

What we have found in the notes so far only supplements and confirms what Heidegger argues in the SS1931 course and elsewhere. However, we also see in the notes the epi pleon continuing to haunt Heidegger. This is because he himself cannot help but recognize that the epi pleon points away from kinêsis to a different sense of being, while at the same time not knowing what to make of this. The epi pleon is a kind of ontological excess that he cannot quite contain. In what follows I want to draw attention to these moments of doubt that the notes so valuably preserve for us.

Heidegger’s perplexity is explicit when at one point he asks: “How does it come to this epi pleon?” He also protests that the epi pleon is “ambiguous—Aristotle does not come through” (31). He does not explain what he takes to be the ambiguity, and the phrase presented no ambiguity in the SS1931 course. What Heidegger might be recognizing here is that with the epi pleon Aristotle is indeed trying to point to something beyond motion: as we have seen, in chapter 6 he explicitly distinguishes energeia in the sense of praxis (an example being noêsis) from kinêsis. It is in this significant context that Heidegger, at one point describing “metaphysics as meta of nature, but not beings as a whole: praxis etc.”, notes: “epi pleon-dunamis not only kata kinêsin (phora), but also noêsis etc.” (p. 10). With the epi pleon, we move from the capacity of moving to the capacity of thinking.

Regarding the dunamis kata kinêsin, Heidegger writes: “What is decisive is that the phenomenon itself points away from itself towards … We must grasp precisely this pointing in order to grasp the full phenomenon.” (p. 45). It is this that he sees as captured in the definition of dunamis kata kinêsin as “the principle of change in another or qua other (ἐν ἄλλῳ ἢ ᾗ ἄλλο).” But Heidegger then notes that this is no longer what is at issue starting with chapter 6.

NB: from cap. 6 no longer this, but heterôs [‘otherwise’, 1048a30]. The dunamis in itself (i.e., indeed with this pointing), but now the dunamis als dunamei [a32]: is it the exceptional dunamei or does this dunamei only become for the first time graspable through it and on the basis of what projection? No more kata kinêsin—but what else? (pp. 45–46).

Heidegger here, like many commentators on Book Θ, sees chapter 6 as transitioning from talk of dunamis in the nominative, understood as a capacity for motion, to the dative dunamei, often in English translated as potentially. What Heidegger is considering here is the possibility that Book Θ begins with dunamis in the sense of capacity for motion (and thus kata kinêsin) only because what really interests Aristotle here, i.e., being dunamei, can be first grasped in the capacity for motion, but extends beyond motion. We can see, however, that while Heidegger considers this possibility, he hesitates. What sense of dunamei is not relative to motion? The answer of course will depend on determining what sense of energeia is not relative to motion. This remains here for Heidegger an open question, whereas elsewhere and in the SS1931 course, he closes off the question by insisting that even the senses of dunamis and energeia not relative to motion are still understood in terms of motion.

A crucial point to note here is that the transition from Θ 1–5 to Θ 6 is a transition from dunamis and energeia as capacity for motion and motion to dunamis and energeia as senses of being. If the latter truly transcend the perspective of motion, then they represent a truly distinct sense of being that cannot be reduced to that of the categories. Therefore, another hesitation we see in the notes concerns whether being in the sense of dunamis and energeia can really be unified with the priority granted to ‘is’-being as Heidegger sees it in the categories. The following passage from the notes is in this regard of crucial importance: “Granted: if on = einai qua esti [‘is’] the ‘first’, how in its light on dunamei—energeiai? Or is there here yet another perspective? The kata sumbebêkos and alêthes [‘coincidental’ and ‘true’: the two other senses of being] are more easily oriented towards the esti, and from there we have a unified perspective for what is pollachôs” (p. 61). Here we see the crux of the problem. Heidegger believes here (and we must qualify ‘here’ because this is by no means always his view) that being in the sense of the ‘coincidental’ and being in the sense of ‘truth’ can be unified with being in the sense of the categories (forms of predication), thus providing for the many senses of being a unified perspective. But being in the sense of dunamis and energeia might offer yet another perspective on being that cannot be thus unified. Again, the question is left open: but the very fact that Heidegger leaves the question open is significant.

Pursuing the problem of the relation of dunamis—energeia to the categories, Heidegger cites the discussion in A. Trendelenburg [19] (pp. 152 ff.) (as usual, Heidegger ignores the work by Brentano on the topic that was supposedly of such great importance to him.) Trendelenburg raises the important question here: “If we ask how it should happen that such a second division [i.e., dunamis-energeia] could be added to the categories that however appear to exhaust beings, Aristotle never gives us in response an explicit answer” [Wenn wir fragen, wie es geschehe, dass zu den Kategorien, die doch das Seiende zu erschöpfen scheinen, eine solche zweite Theilung noch hinzutreten könne: so giebt uns darauf Aristoteles nirgends eine ausdrückliche Antwort] (p. 162). Tredelenburg’s own answer, in brief, is that the categories are real predicates that as such presuppose the copula and that dunamis and energeia are modal determinations of the copula. Such an interpretation, which clearly subordinates dunamis and energeia to categorial being and the copula, might appear welcome to Heidegger. Yet his verdict is that it is “[c]ompletely unAristotelian” (p. 82). Heidegger’s explanation is surprising and of great importance: “Here precisely energeia of the theion as presence [Gegenwart]. No sense in grasping this categorially. [Gar kein Sinn kategorial zu fassen]. energeia before every ‘category’. The most extreme finitude of the being of beings! Antiquity from out of presence [Antike von Gegenwart her]” (pp. 82–83). The expression here is clearly obscure. But the crucial point is that the energeia that characterizes the divine, which, recall, is a ‘thinking of thinking’, cannot be grasped in terms of the categories and is prior to any category. Heidegger makes two references to Plotinus in this context that may help clarify Heidegger’s point. The first is to Enneads VI, 1, 1, where Plotinus announces his view that the ten categories cannot apply equally to the first intelligible beings and to the secondary sensible beings; it indeed would be absurd to believe, he claims, that ousia can be said synonymously of both, since between what is prior and posterior there can be no common genus. The other reference is to VI, 3, 1, where Plotinus asserts that beings in the intelligible and sensible realms are not named univocally, but rather analogically and equivocally, as in an image. In both texts Plotinus is refuting the universal applicability of Aristotle’s categories and thus maintaining that there is a sense of being to which they do not apply. Heidegger’s suggestion is that this sense of being is energeia.

Yet the clearest sign that Heidegger in these notes is genuinely questioning and debating with himself is that he elsewhere nevertheless tries to reduce dunamis—energeia to a category: an attempt no more satisfying in my view than the ones by Apelt [20] (p. 165) and Maier [18] (pp. 329–30) he himself claims to be unsatisfying. He starts by asserting that “dunamis—energeia [are] referred to [bezogen auf] kinêsis” (p. 92). This assertion is already wrong since, as we have seen, it does not apply to the epi pleon sense, where the opposite is true: kinêsis is referred to dunamis—energeia. Heidegger then notes that ‘doing’ (ποιεῖν) and ‘undergoing’ (πάσχειν) are included among the categories. From this he concludes: “Therefore dunamis—energeia also a category (κίνησις category?)” (p. 92; note the contradiction with what we have seen him say on pp. 82–83).27 Note that if any sense of dunamis-energeia could be assimilated to the categories of doing and undergoing, it would be only that discussed in the preliminary chapters of Book Θ where dunamis is defined as the principle of change in something else or in itself qua other (or the principle of undergoing change by another or by itself qua other). The epi pleon senses are ignored completely. Heidegger continues that, because dunamis—energeia is the fundamental character of what is ‘perceptively’ present-at-hand, it is then read from the one category back into all the other categories. Thus, when he asks, “how does the original estin [‘is’] of the copula hang together with being qua dunamis—energeia?”, he again appeals to ‘presence’: “Presence of the resting or changing [des Ruhenden bzw. Metabolischen]” (p. 92). So here Heidegger makes hang together the two senses of being that he elsewhere doubts can hang together; and he can do so only by ignoring the sense of dunamis/energeia that is most important to Aristotle in Book Θ: the sense that transcends a relation to motion (and therefore rest).

Heidegger of course is not unaware of this sense of dunamis/energeia that transcends motion. We have seen him dance around it, as it were, and in a series of important notes he turns to the interpretation of the crucial Θ6 that is missing, perhaps intentionally so, from the SS1931 course. Though this is the chapter in which Aristotle turns to the epi pleon sense, Heidegger makes the surprising claim at the outset that what Aristotle missed is the phenomenon/problem of transcendence: “Aristotle in the ancient way sees everything ontically and does not find the way into the problematic of transcendence and indeed as genuinely happening—does not even look for it” (p. 84). Heidegger presumably feels the need to make this claim only because Aristotle might appear in Θ 6 to be finding his way into the problem of transcendence: not only because he is turning to a sense of energeia that transcends motion but also because what corresponds to this sense are practical activities such as seeing, thinking, living, living well, i.e., human existence. We will soon see that Heidegger himself is led to grant Aristotle the insight, however partial, into transcendence that he denies him in the cited passage.

Heidegger first notes that in chapter 6 dunamis and energeia are explained in relation to each other (he cites 1047a24 and 1048a31, b15) and that neither admits of a definition, horos (1048a36). Speaking then of the relation between dunamis and energeia, he makes the significant point that “this relational being (Verhältnishafte) is prior to all being of beings that we at first seek to establish on its own from the perspective of logos” (p. 85). The significance of this claim is that it appears to grant this sense of being a priority to that determined by logos: being in the sense of the categories. The fact that the epi pleon sense of dunamis/energeia is inaccessible to any horos already suggests this. Heidegger continues to make the justified observation “that also the two dunamis-concepts and correspondingly the two energeia-concepts [i.e., the concepts relative to motion and the epi pleon senses] are not explained in their mutual relation; that must remain dark, even if it—this unsaid—constitutes the driving force of the whole investigation” (p. 86). The crucial point here is that it indeed must remain dark, must remain unsaid, because no longer accessible to the logos of being.

Not surprisingly, Heidegger still insists that the “relation-being of both is centered in the phenomenon of motion!” (p. 86). And yet we see Heidegger take a step well beyond the SS1931 course when he acknowledges that during the discussion of dunamis and energeia in Θ6 something takes the place of motion. What? “Is it not now simply energeia that becomes what leads and rules?”(p. 86) This is a crucial admission: our understanding of energeia is no longer led by the phenomenon of motion; it is now energeia itself that leads. This is supported and presumably suggested by Aristotle’s opposition of energeia to kinêsis in Θ6.

It is in this way that Heidegger is led to see transcendence at play in the account of energeia as distinct from motion in Θ6, even if he still insists that it is not grasped as such.

That here nevertheless [i.e., despite the fact that transcendence, time cannot be seen here] transcendence—Dasein -, is at play becomes evident from the fact that the very discovery and clarification of pure energeia is oriented towards praxis, zôê [‘life’], eudaimonia [‘happiness’] and determinate human actions, seeing and the like, nous! (p. 86).28

What Heidegger now sees is that Θ6 shows the energeia that goes beyond motion to be human existence itself in its forms of acting: and not just seeing and thinking but living itself. If Heidegger sought to break away from the categorial sense of being oriented towards objects and arrive at a difference sense of being through the analysis of human existence, Aristotle appears to be doing this already in Metaphysics Θ.29 How, then, can Heidegger continue to maintain that Aristotle did not see or even seek the phenomenon of transcendence = Dasein? The answer is in the sentence that immediately follows the cited passage: “But this being (Dasein) is again, as it were, grasped from the outside [and thus as an object]: presence that carries the past within itself—not transcendental and genuinely temporal!” What Heidegger clearly has in mind here is Aristotle’s claim that energeia, unlike kinêsis, admits of the simultaneous use of present and past-perfect tenses: “I simultaneously see and have seen, etc.” In this claim Heidegger sees an interpretation of human existence again in terms of ‘presence’ understood as a completed (perfect tense) motion (present tense). It is easy to see how he could think that the model of production is still dominant here.30

However, one can and should question Heidegger’s interpretation of the “seeing and simultaneously [ἅμα καί] having seen.” When Heidegger writes that “The reality, ‘presence’ of seeing is in itself a having-seen and only through that” (p. 89), it is clear that he is interpreting the ‘having-seen’ as something that is present in the sense of having been finished, being complete. He can thus conclude: “NB: the most extreme attempt to grasp existence from the perspective of presence-at-hand, (better): from presence [Anwesenheit, Gegenwart aus]” (p. 89).31 But note that what is suppressed on this reading is precisely the dimension of energeia that makes it activity, praxis. Seeing is complete while ongoing and without finishing. An activity is not ‘present’ in the way a house is. As Aristotle says, it has no limit [πέρας]. It has this paradoxical character of being an ‘un-limited’ (ἀ-πεῖρον) that yet is always complete. Thinking is neither unfinished nor finished but can go on without limit while having attained at every moment its proper end. If we have a conception of presence here, it is a radically transformed one. It is not energeia that is being interpreted here in terms of presence, but the other way around.32

Yet we still find Heidegger attempting to treat dunamis and energeia even in Θ6 as modes of presence and doing so in the way he does in many other places: focusing on the word huparchein in Aristotle’s claim that “energeia is for the thing to obtain (huparchein to pragma) not in the way in which we say it to be dunamei” (1048a3032). From the use of the word huparchein here Heidegger infers that both energeia and dunamis are ways of being present. However, Aristotle is arguably using the word here in its emptiest, most formal sense possible with no ontological implications. Evidence is that we can paraphrase Aristotle’s point in the sentence without the word: “Energeia is for the thing to be in a different state from that which it is in when we say it is dunamei.” Or: “Being in energeia is for a thing different from being in dunamis.” Or: “Energeia is its not being as it is when it is dunamei.” Furthermore, we must remember that the whole point of Book Θ is that dunamis and energeia are their own distinct sense of being; they certainly do not need the utterly trivial word huparchein to determine their being.

The interest of the notes, however, is that Heidegger himself can be found bringing his reading into question. He himself claims that the contrast of energeia to dunamei huparchein does not provide us with a positive determination and recognizes the importance of the second half of Θ6 for providing such a positive determination. “Pay attention: how in ch. 6, especially 1048b 18 sqq., kinêsis/praxis plays a central role for the working out of energeia” (p. 89). This is the crucial point: it is praxis, not presence that defines the being of energeia. Heidegger continues: “kinêsis atelês [‘incomplete’ b29]: always dunamei within it and only to this extent kinêsis; energeia in contrast has sublated [aufgehoben] kinêsis within itself—hama kai [‘and simultaneously’] [cf. b 33]” (p. 89). This is again a crucial point: the simultaneity of present and perfect tenses in an energeia overcomes the incompatibility of these tenses that characterizes motion.

Yet we still see Heidegger struggling with the distinction between praxis and kinêsis. In a note on poiêsis and kinêsis, he distinguishes between two senses of ‘doing’ [‘Tun’]: (1) making [Machen], producing [Herstellen], with a look to the ‘result’ [Ergebnis]; (2) ‘activity’ as opposed to ‘undergoing‘ [πάσχειν], where the emphasis is not on the result, but on “the ‘egoistic’ grabbing-for-power [Nach-Macht-Ausgreifen], longing striking-out [auslangendes Verlangen], becoming-master [Herr-werden], forming mastery [Herr-schaft-Ausbilden]” (p. 107). Heidegger also formulates the two senses more succinctly: “Doing as becoming-master [Herr-werden] and producing [Herstellen]” (p. 107). It should be evident that neither of these two senses corresponds to what Aristotle calls praxis and treats as a sense of energeia in Θ 6. Even if, as Heidegger proceeds to claim, “producedness [Hergestelltheit] is the being of the sunolon” (p. 108), i.e., of the ‘compound’ which is one of the senses of categorial being = ousia, it most certainly is not the being of praxis. Ironically, while we have seen Heidegger say that we need to pay attention to the central role played by praxis in the understanding of energeia, he himself often, as in the passages just considered, does not pay attention to this.

But when he does pay attention, he cannot help but see the kinship between the epi pleon sense of energeia as praxis and his own account of transcendence as Dasein’s being. Thus, at one point he asserts that Aristotle does not simply allow what is moved as such to be a being; i.e., he does not simply reconcile the phenomenon of motion with a conception of being as static presence. Rather “he must at the same time grasp movedness [Bewegtheit] as being and from there allow the whole concept of being to transform itself and expand--energeia” (p. 95). As Heidegger proceeds to indicate, it is here in this Bewegtheit that we find the epi pleon of energeia and dunamis. What Heidegger refers to here with the term Bewegtheit is not motion nor even the being of motion. Instead, Bewegtheit is the term that Heidegger uses in Being and Time to characterizes Dasein’s own way of being and thus transcendence.33 Jacques Derrida in his course on Being and Time can therefore at one point observe: “I believe that the problem of Bewegtheit as non-Bewegung was the most important problem in the eyes of Heidegger himself” [23] (p. 211); [24] (p. 307). It is therefore highly significant that Heidegger should claim that Aristotle grasped this Bewegtheit in his notion of energeia.

Nevertheless, Heidegger reaches the following negative judgment on Θ: “Correspondingly, it never comes to grounding fundamentally the whole problematic of on from energeia—dunamis and newly forming it; different attempts remain standing next to each other and between on dunamei—energeia and the remaining pollachôs legomena [‘things spoken of in many ways’] there are only superficial connections” (p. 87). This is certainly how it appears. But Heidegger himself suggests that there is a new grounding of being in Θ. And might not this new grounding help us understand the unity between all the different senses of being? If the plurivocity of energeia itself does not allow it to be defined, Aristotle invites us to see the analogical relations. Heidegger himself speaks of the task: “Bringing to light the unspoken of [Met] Θ: to analogon sunoran [‘to see the analogous’ Θ 6, 1048a37]!” (p. 87). If we succeed in doing so, we might also be able to see how dunamis-energeia hang together with the other senses of being. But this requires keeping the different senses distinct and resisting, for example, the temptation to collapse the epi pleon sense of energeia with which Book Θ culminates into the categorical sense of being with which Book Z begins.

A few pages later, Heidegger reiterates his negative judgment:

But now Aristotle did not succeed in finding the transcendental ground for dunamis und energeia, as he did for the categories in logos—even though even this ground was not recognized as such. Therefore, the two ways of being, on of the categories and on dunamei energeiai, split apart, and above all there is no fundamental unfolding of the on of the katêgoriai from on dunamei—no way there is at all visible (p. 91).

Yet, as we have seen, Aristotle appears to find such a transcendental ground in praxis understood as the activities that define life, as Heidegger himself sometimes sees. Even in the present context, Heidegger makes a surprising concession: perhaps there could be “an elevation [Überhöhung] of both [being of the categories and being of dunamis/energeia] in on alêthes [being-true] Met. Θ 10” (p. 91). Heidegger indeed sometimes locates the highest sense of being that unifies all the other senses in being = truth and, in at least one extraordinary seminar from WS1942–43, sees this sense of being as inseparable from being as energeia = life.

8. The ‘Most Ruling’ Sense of Being: ‘Truth’ of Energeia

Despite the cited claim, one can find Heidegger in the notes also attempting to reduce the sense of being as on alêthes (‘being-true’) to the categorial sense of being. Heidegger notes that if being means “is-ness [Ist-haftigkeit]”, then propositional truth must belong to it: “Must not then precisely the on hôs alêthes (sunthesis) belong to this einai?” (p. 60). But as Heidegger himself immediately notes, Aristotle in Met. E 4 excludes this sense of truth from the study of being with the argument that the dividing and connecting that make a proposition true or false take place in thought rather than in the beings themselves. Heidegger furthermore must acknowledge that in Θ10 what is characterized as the dominant sense of being is the being-true of the simple, incomposite, which cannot be a connecting and dividing but only an immediate grasping, which cannot be an asserting or denying but only a saying. Yet Heidegger here insists that “the simple” is understood derivatively from the sunthesis of logos:

If the on of the categories is what is first [note that!] and accordingly the ‘is’ is what is decisive [das Maßgebende] for the whole problematic of being, then Θ10, the on alêthes as kuriôtaton, becomes for the first time understandable and necessary. But precisely here ‘being’ overturns itself [überschlägt sich] in the direction of pre-predication, of the haploun [‘simple’], to which antiquity is not adequate and can never be adequate [nicht gewachsen ist und nie gewachsen sein kann] because the hapla [‘the simple’: plural] are conceptually-philosophically derived from the suntheton [‘the composite’] of logos that decisively places itself before beings (p. 61).

In the context of the notes as a whole, this passage is surprisingly dogmatic in its assertion of the absolute priority of categorial being and its refusal to grant antiquity (and therefore Aristotle) any access to a more fundamental conception of being, despite Aristotle’s identification in Θ10 of the ruling sense of being with a being-true not accessible to logos and a being true of a ‘simple’ that, instead of being derived from logos, is identified with being in the sense of energeia. Let us quote the key passage as a reminder:

Or as the true is not the same regarding these things [the incomposite, ἀσύνθετα], nor is being, but this is what the true or the false is [in their case]: touching and saying [φάναι] true (for assertion [κατάφασις] and saying [φάσις] are not the same), not knowing is not touching (for there is no such thing as being deceived about the what-it-is [τί ἐστιν], except accidentally; likewise, there is no being deceived regarding the beings that are incomposite. And all of them are energeiai, not in dunamis … (1051b22–28)

The ruling sense of being as being-true is here clearly disassociated from logos, and thus the categorial sense of being, and identified with being in the sense of energeia. But this is seen by Heidegger himself. The best rebuttal to the claim cited above is Heidegger’s own interpretation of Θ10 in a seminar of 1942–43 (unpublished).34 There he recognizes that Aristotle only starts with the composite (σύνθετον) to work his way to the simple (ἁπλᾶ) which are prior: “Being-disclosing [Entbergendsein] alêtheuein [to ‘truth’: verb] in the realm of the hapla is without contradiction, is therefore the highest [das Hervorragendste], ta kuriôtata. In order to arrive at this highest form of disclosing Aristotle first introduced the difference of the being-disclosing that relates itself to the sun- [the ‘com’ of the ‘com-posite]” (p. 20). In addition, the major thesis of this seminar is that what provides positive and original content to the hapla and makes being-true the dominant sense of being is energeia as understood in Θ6.

A detailed discussion of the 1942–43 seminar is not possible here,35 but one cryptic note on Θ 10 in GA91 already anticipates Heidegger’s reading there. Citing the description of the alêthes on as kuriôtaton on, he first notes: “Simply most ruling being, that rules all being qua being—power-, has it in its power, holds everything under itself and precisely thereby lets it be in itself [Das schlechthin herrschendste Sein, das alles Sein qua Sein beherrscht—Macht-, dessen mächtig ist, alles unter sich hat und dabei doch gerade an ihm selbst sein läßt]” (p. 99). But the crucial point is what he does next: as in 1942–43, he identifies this dominant, all-powerful sense of being as being-true with the sense of being as energeia epi pleon introduced in Θ 6: “This alêthes on: noein as energeiai on” (94). Perhaps even more important is the question this insight raises “How [does] this rule the on of the categories [Dieses wie mächtig des ὄν der κατηγορίαι]? (p. 94) The ‘how’ here implies that indeed being as being-true as energeia rules over the being of the categories.36 Indeed, in the seminar of 1942–43, Heidegger cites in this context the passage from De Anima 412b8–9 in which the ‘ruling’ (κυρίως) sense of being is identified with entelecheia. We thus see Heidegger in the notes both attempting to subordinate being in the sense of ‘being-true’ to categorial being and recognizing that it cannot be thus subordinated.

9. Being as a Manifold That Cannot Be Unfolded: Or Welcoming the Darkness of Indeterminacy

The following passage expresses clearly and succinctly the critical assessment of Aristotle we have seen developing in the notes: “The pollachôs a major advance [Hauptvorstoß] by Aristotle, even though shown and posited merely phenomenologically, while not mastered. Why not?” (p. 67) The answer to the question of why not is then suggested by what Heidegger writes shortly afterwards:

This One (being) nothing in itself, but essences [west] precisely in self-folding self-division [in sich faltenden Sichverteilen]. Further Aristotle cannot go; here conceptualizing through logos and genos simply breaks down [versagt]—in particular no working out of transcendence. On the other hand, it is precisely this darkness that demands genuine questioning. This that essences [Wesende] in the unity of its essencing (Wesens; p. 68).

If Aristotle does not go further in the mastering of the pollachôs, this is because logos fails him here. But is not Aristotle aware of this? Is this not why he does not even try to unify the four major senses of being? As we have seen, Aristotle does sometimes appeal to ‘analogy’ and this could be seen as a failure to get beyond the perspective of logos. Heidegger at one point dismisses analogy as “only an embarassment [Verlegenheit], no solution, indeed not even the posing and working out of the question!”(p. 72; see also [3], p. 46).37 He also claims that “The ‘analogy’-problem in Aristotle is only the ‘logical’ form of the ungraspable transcendence problem in the sense of the question regarding the origin of the meaning of being” (p. 75). But Aristotle does not even speak of ‘analogy’ between the four major senses of being. And when he speaks of ‘analogy’ between the different categorial senses of being and between the different senses of dunamis and energeia, they are different kinds or senses of analogy! Furthermore, as Heidegger notes and sometimes protests, Aristotle does not explain the analogy in either case but presents it as something we must simply see. Here we arrive at the crucial point: it seems odd to object that Aristotle presents the pollachôs merely phenomenologically because no unified account can be given of the difference senses of being. How could he have gone further? What would ‘mastery’ mean here? Heidegger himself notes that Aristotle’s “major advance” is “not formal, a fundamental insight” (p. 71). Is this not an insight beyond logos? What more would Heidegger have?

Heidegger in fact recognizes in the notes that there are two possible explanations for “the obscurity of the pollachôs”: either (1) it shows the indeterminacy of the fundamental view Aristotle takes on being (ὄν) here or (2) it is testimony to a unity that is itself indeterminate (p. 69). In other words, the indeterminacy is either in Aristotle or in being itself. When the alternative is posed like this, it is hard to see why we would not choose the latter option. If Aristotle does not succeed in unifying the different senses of being, it is because they cannot be unified, it is because being itself is disparate. If Aristotle does not dispel the darkness, it is because darkness belongs to the essential happening of being itself. Heidegger himself claims to seek only “to seize precisely this darkness in all its forcefulness [Aufdringlichkeit] and make it current [zur Geltung bringen]” (p. 72).

We have also seen that, if Aristotle does not unify the different senses of being, he appears to give priority to senses of being that are not grounded in logos: being as energeia/entelecheia and being as the truth of incomposites that exist solely in energeia. In what is, therefore, a very important note, Heidegger himself appears to recognize this. First, he describes the task presented by the manifold senses of being as follows: “How can the problem of being be unfolded from there? To un-fold the folded in its fold, to bring the folding back to what precedes the folding” (Das Gefaltete in seiner Faltung ent-falten, auf Vorfaltiges Faltendes zurückzubringen, p. 68). But how is this to be done? Heidegger makes this important suggestion: “as soon as it [the pros hen relation in its two forms?] is set apart, it must lead to a more fundamental transcendental phenomenon than logos, and indeed with the guideline of energeia” (p. 68). But is this not arguably what Aristotle does with the turn to the energeia of existence in Θ6? Do we not have in Aristotle’s account of being an irreducible manifold that still finds some kind of unity in our own being? Does not the priority given to our way of being provide unity to the pollachôs without eliminating it? Significantly, when Heidegger addresses Aristotle’s claim that being (ὄν) is what is most said of all things (κατηγόρημα μάλιστα πάντων, Met. I 2 1053b19 f.), not as ousia, but as ‘“some nature” (φύσις τις), as “something common” (κοινόν τι, p. 74), he suggests that we understand the ‘commonness’ here as “division that is not split up (Unzerteilte Verteilung, p. 75).38 Here it is hard not to see Aristotle’s ontology more as a model for Heidegger’s questioning of being than as a limitation to be overcome.

When Heidegger writes that “the relation between on [tôn] katêgoriôn [‘being of the categories] and on dunamei—energeiai is dark” (p. 92), we must agree. When he furthermore suggests that the question must remain open “until an independent interpretation of dunamis and energeia is carried out” (p. 92), we must again agree. But as we have seen, and as Heidegger himself sometimes notes, Aristotle provides such an interpretation when he turns to the senses of dunamis and energeia that transcend the relation to motion (epi pleon). It is true that Aristotle’s interpretation by no means dispels the darkness. But can the darkness be dispelled? Should we want it dispelled?

10. Conclusions

Taken as a whole, the notes published in GA91 certainly do not provide us with a coherent interpretation of the manifold senses of being in Aristotle. But Heidegger makes it clear from the outset that it is not his goal to find a systematic teaching in Aristotle. On the contrary, the goal is to confront us with the disparity of this manifold, exploring the possibility of giving now this and now that sense of being priority over the others, and seeking a unity that always evades the grasp of logos. If Heidegger continues to attribute to Aristotle a conception of being as presence and being-produced that is to be identified, especially with being in the sense of the categories, he also notes how such a conception is problematized by being in the sense of dunamis and energeia. But we have also seen how one can go further than Heidegger here in finding in Aristotle a positive alternative conception of being in energeia as activity, along with a complementary conception of truth as distinct from propositional truth. To suggest such a reading is no more to systematize Aristotle than Heidegger does. What is most radical in Aristotle’s thought, as Heidegger appears to recognize at times, is his willingness to embrace the plurivocity of being without even attempting to reduce it to unity, allowing for at most analogical relations that never amount to a unitary definition or account. If Aristotle seeks what is most manifest according to nature, then what is most manifest, the phenomenon that cannot be denied, is precisely this irreducible plurivocity of being.39 It is ironically more Heidegger than Aristotle who seeks to unify the different senses of being, who seeks the sense of being. After all, what he describes Brentano’s book as having ignited in him is “the question about the simple [onefold] of the manifold in being” (“Frage nach dem Einfachen des Mannigfachen im Sein,” [2], p. 56). Yet, as we have seen, by the time of the notes of the 1930s, Heidegger is questioning the unification provided by Brentano and largely followed by himself in SS1926: a unification achieved through subordinating the other senses of being to the categorial sense and, specifically, ousia. Furthermore, we have seen him acknowledge the possibility that the indeterminacy in Aristotle’s account of the manifold senses of being could arise from the indeterminacy of being itself; that the darkness in Aristotle is a faithful reflection of the darkness at the heart of being itself, if being even has a ‘heart’. This contrasts with his suggestion at one point in the SS1931 course that the pollachôs is simply the decadence of being: “The pollachôs therefore as sign of disempowerment [Entmachtigung]: the essence decays [Das Wesen verwest], and it is for this reason that being stands in a ‘present-at-hand’ diversity [in einer ‘vorhandenen’ Vielfalt]; this remains not understood and not questioned as such” [3] (pp. 52–53). It could of course be a sign of the opposite: of the richness and power of being. In the end, perhaps the greatest affinity between Heidegger and Aristotle is the willingness of both to think their way through the darkness of being rather than hide it behind some simple theory. If Heidegger sometimes suggests that Aristotle’s pollachôs is only the start of his attempt to arrive at the meaning of being, he keeps returning to Aristotle because he can never leave this pollachôs behind. This is clear in the words with which Heidegger concludes his 1955 talk, “What is that—Philosophy?”:

Our conversation does not set itself the task of developing a fixed program. But it would like to try to make the participants ready for a gathering in which we are addressed by what we name the being of beings. While we name this, let us think of what Aristotle already said:

‘Being-in-being [Das seiend-Sein] comes to appearance in manifold ways.’

“Τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς.”

[25] (p. 26)