This paper presents a typology of human actions, based on Aristotle’s kinesis–energeia dichotomy and on a formal elaboration (with some refinement) of the Vendler–Kenny classificatory schemes for action types (or action verbs). The types introduced are defined throughout by inferential criteria, in terms of what here are referred to as “modal-temporal expressions” (‘MT-terms’). Examples of familiar categories analysed in this way are production and maintenance, but the procedure is meant to offer a basis for defining various other commonsense categories. (...) Among the more theoretical categories introduced are “Aristotelian projects”, i.e. actions defined in terms of Aristotle’s conceptions of movement/change, as well as “abstract projects”, in which the agent ensures that something changes from not being a fact to being a fact, and “conditional agency”, which involves actions that are to be performed when/if certain conditions come to be fulfilled. A category like “starting an action” is itself inferentially defined here in MT-terms, and so, inter alia, are proceeding with, finishing, stopping and interrupting an action. There is also a demonstration of how actions of one type may be converted into those of other types, where this is a matter of the way they are “seen” or described. There is also an implication to the effect that some of these distinctions may be useful for formulating certain critical insights regarding modern life. (shrink)

Kinesis versus logos in Leonardo Polo's philosophy. Kinesis and praxis are analogous concepts in Aristotle. Although Leonardo Polo's philosophy is right in pointing the differences between these concepts, the article demonstrates that beyond their opposition these terms refer to an analogous pros en: energeia. The author explains Leonardo Polo's necessity to point the difference and Aristotle's concern for poin-ting their similarity.

In this paper, I argue that the term kinêsis bears different connotations when associated with two different Plotinian hypostases in the Enneads: Intellect and Soul1. I propose an interpretation of this term as intellectual movement when it is associated with the Intellect and spatial movement when it is associated with the Soul.In the first section, I evaluate the meaning of kinêsis in reference to the hypostasis Intellect. In the second section, I turn to a critical examination of kinêsis associated with (...) the hypostasis Soul, emphasising the conceptual complexity of the term. I develop my interpretation on the distinction between kinêsis tês ousias and kinêsis pros ousias, translating the former as ‘movement of the hypostasis’ and the latter as ‘movement from the hypostasis.’ On this revised reading, I conclude that kinêsis in Plotinus is a context-dependent concept that alters its significance according to the hypostasis and introductory locution (‘tês’ or ‘pros’) with which it is associated. I conclude by linking Plotinian henology with Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines to illuminate an ongoing conversation between Plotinian metaphysics and Platonic and Aristotelian concepts of movement. (shrink)

Translated into Danish by Henrik Jøker Bjerre.

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, (...) on the other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

This article discusses Heidegger’s lecture course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, which focuses on Aristotle’s conception of the relationbetween the essence of man, logos, and the being of the world, kinesis. It is argued that the overall aim of Heidegger’s interpretation is to show that, on the one hand, it is Aristotle’s insight into the nature of logos that has made possible the great achievement of the Physics: the explication of being in terms of kinesis or movement; but that, (...) on the other hand, the concept of kinesis in its turn leads Aristotle to a notion of being as perfect presence, entelecheia, which proves to have problematic consequences for his concept of logos. Heidegger’s own project is then presented as a critical retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between logos and kinesis. (shrink)

I am grateful to the editors of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for inviting me to write a comment on Kathleen Gill’s ‘On the Metaphysical Distinction Between Processes and Events’. I readily concede that she is right in the central criticism she makes of my 1978 paper: that a properly metaphysical or ontological distinction between processes and events, if it is to be made at all, cannot be sustained on the basis of the informal linguistic criteria I offered in ‘Events, (...) Processes, and States.’ My main concern in that paper was to show that discussions of the Kenny-Vendler typology of activities, performances, and states had focused too narrowly on verb types, on adverbial phrases, on the domain of human action, and on English-language intuitions. Mine was one of several voices urging in the late 1970s that issues of tense logic and of the logic of verb types had to be placed in the broader context of verb aspect — a salient and pervasive structure in natural languages generally, and one that had been studied by philologists and linguists since the nineteenth century. Captivated, as I and others had become at the time, by evidence that the distinction between count nouns and mass nouns appears to be mirrored in verb predications, I went on to make some rather venturesome ‘ontological’ claims. It is satisfying, of course, that Gill accepts not only that there is ‘substantial evidence in favor of recognizing a grammatical distinction between the language of processes and [the language of] events’ but also that ‘similarities with count and mass expressions will allow us to apply techniques for han dling nominal expressions to verbal expressions’. It is more than satisfying that the phenomenon of verb aspect is now noticed and investigated by philosophers as well as by linguists. (shrink)

When we attend a dance performance we expect to see human beings performing various sorts of bodily movements. Movement is, uncontroversially, the primary medium of a dance. Our intuition, then, is to think that our response to and understanding of the dance must be connected in some way to this movement. Attempts to relate our understanding of a dance, specifically our grasping the meaning of a dance, to the medium of movement, through a movement-oriented response have taken the form of (...) theories that rely on a notion of kinesthetic response or kinesthetic empathy. My intentions in this essay are to show that the intuition that our understanding of a dance is kinesthetically based is correct and that how the kinesthetic brings us to understand the dance is different from the earlier empathy theories, in a number of important ways. But I will also argue that current analytic strategies will not suffice and that the full defense of kinesthetic understanding, as I will call it, will require a different manner of explaining and understanding of the activities of human beings. My own analysis will draw on a number of resources, primarily the case study of Alexander Technique, a body therapy that seems to give us access to the kinesthetic organization of our activities and the philosophical work of a number of people, centrally Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who argues strongly for the role movement plays in constituting our world. I will show how kinesthetic understanding, given the historical trajectories permitted by tradition and the mechanics of the human body, can bring dancers, choreographers, and critics to a point of intersection where they can experience and talk about dance in terms of its kinesthetic basis, and that without this intersection the kind of meaning in movement I am discussing cannot take place. They will miss the preferred intersection unless they achieve kinesthetic understanding. (shrink)

There is evidence in the early Vorlesungen to suggest that in Sein und Zeit Heidegger’s description of Dasein as Bewegung/Bewegtheit relies on his reading of Aristotle’s definition of motion, given specifically in the 1924 Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie. According to Heidegger, Aristotle identifies kinêsis with energeia and calls it ‘active potentiality’ (tätige Möglichkeit). In this essay, I show how Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s definition of motion sheds light on the arguments concerning being-towards-death (Sein zum Tode) in Sein und Zeit. I (...) argue that self-understanding is Dasein’s active potentiality, since this is its authentic being-towards-death. In turn, I assess Heidegger’s philological and philosophical justifications for collapsing the distinction between energeia and kinêsis in Aristotle, showing how Heidegger diverges from Aristotle’s doctrines. (shrink)

This paper explores the topic of movement in relation to the human being (anthropos). This topic will be presented from the point of view of phenomenology and related to the area of sport. Firstly, I shall briefly present a description of the human being as static, within which mechanistic, physical movement is ascribed to the body. Secondly, I shall present a different conception of the human being ? the human being as movement ? using a phenomenological approach to the human (...) being based on the early work of Martin Heidegger, and on the philosophy of Jan Pato?ka, highlighting some of their ideas most closely related to the existence of the human being and the exploration of the topic of human movement. I shall refer to this concept of the human being with a word that I have coined for the purpose, uniting the human being (anthropos) and movement (kinesis) ? kinanthropos. Finally, from this phenomenological account of movement, I shall suggest some indicators for the enrichment of our thinking about sport. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

In 'Metaphysics IX.6' (1048b 18-35) Aristotle presents a test to distinguish between "kinesis" and "energeia," based on relations between the perfective and the imperfective aspect of the verb. This passage has been interpreted as drawing a linguistic distinction between classes of verbs (e.g., stative verbs) by means of a linguistic criterion (Ackrill, Graham). But such an interpretation is in conflict with the text. Aristotle's test must, therefore, be understood as a metaphysical criterion between items in the world (rather than (...) lingual items) by means of a metaphysical criterion, exploiting properties of these items. These items are events, and 'Metaphysics IX.6' exhibits Aristotle's awareness to certain topics discussed in modern event ontology. (shrink)

The paper proposes a formal account of Aristotle's trichotomy of verbs, in terms of properties of their continuous tensings, into S(state)-verbs, K(kinesis)-verbs, and E-(energeia)-verbs. Within a Fregean tense framework in which predicates are relativized to times, an account of the continuous tenses is presented and a preliminary account of the trichotomy devised, which permits an illuminating analogy to be drawn between the temporal properties of E- and K-verbs and the spatial properties of stuffs and substances. This analogy is drawn (...) upon in constructing a sophisticated version of the preliminary theory accommodating more of the linguistic data. (shrink)

The essays in this volume treat a wide variety of fundamental topics and problems in ancient Greek philosophy. The scope of the section on pre-Socratic thought ranges over the views which these thinkers have on such areas of concern as religion, natural philosophy and science, cosmic periods, the nature of elements, theory of names, the concept of plurality, and the philosophy of mind. The essays dealing with the Platonic dialogues examine with unusual care a great number of central themes and (...) discuss them in considerable depth: problems in language and logic, myth, reason, hypothesis, eros, friendship, reason, morality, society, art, the nature of soul, and immortality. In addition, they offer fresh discussions on a number of basic morphological, methodological, and philological issues related to philosophical arguments and introduce new aspects for a critical reexamination of controversies surrounding the doctrines and the authenticity of certain Platonic works. The essays on the philosophy of Aristotle are closely reasoned analyses of such basic themes as the universality of the sensible, the nature of kinesis, the problem of future contingencies, the meaning of qualitative change, the doctrine of phantasia, the essence of intelligence, and the metaphysical foundations for the ethical life. The essays on post-Aristotelian developments in ancient philosophy offer challenging and well-documented discussions on topics in the history of ancient logic, categorical thought, the ethical doctrines of ancient Scepticism, epistemological issues in the physical theory of the Epicureans, and basic concepts in the metaphysics of the neo-platonists. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an ontological elucidation of change. In the first part, I examine two conceptions of change that can be found in Aristotle'sPhysicsand I hold that one of them is more basic than the other. In the second part, I offer an ontological model of change according to which a change is a kind of conjunction of states and times.According to Aristotle a change,metabolé,isfromsomethingtosomething else. He distinguishes three kinds of changes. One of them is what he calls (...) motion-kinesis-i.e., the transition from a positive termAto a negative termB.Motion in respect to quality is called alteration, in respect to quantity it is known either as increase or as decrease, and in respect to place it is designated by the name of locomotion. (shrink)

The article analyses in the general realm of perception a class of sensations which Husserl designates as kinaesthetic sensations. Deriving etymologically from kinesis and aisrhesis , the kinaesthetic sensations are bodily movements issued by the subject in its relationship with the manifesting objects. It is for this reason that the identification of the original place of the kinaesthetic sensations has to be searched in the presentation of the thing itself, namely in the presenting function. In every presentation of the (...) thing there are the real contents of sensation or the presenting contents which through an intentional act of apprehension let the things appear. However the presenting sensations alone are not able to present exclusively the things and necessarily refer to the kinaesthetic sensations. The latter in fact don't present the thing but are indispensable for the presentation. (shrink)

In this article, I present in a systematic way Aristotle’s understanding of movement (kinêsis) as efficient cause in the Generation of Animals. This aspect of movement is not disclosed in the approach to movement as an incomplete activity in contrast to energeia, which has been extensively discussed in the literature. I explain in which sense movement is the efficient cause of generation and how this movement is related to the other factors, in particular the source of movement, the seminal fluid, (...) pneuma, and the vital heat, as well as to the form and the soul. The role of movement as efficient cause of generation shows how, for Aristotle, form and soul are inseparable from matter and movement in nature. Explaining the role of movement as efficient cause of generation also helps to make sense of the multiplicity of factors involved in the efficient causality of generation. The key to articulating these factors with one another is the identity of form of the generative movement, which is specifically the same in the source, in the tools, and in the substance that is coming into being. (shrink)

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of (...) Heidegger's interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Aristotle's notion of potentiality as it applies to the beginning of life. Aristotle’s notion of natural kinēsis implies that we should not treat the entity at the beginning of embryonic development as human, or indeed as the same as the one that is born. This leads us to ask: When does the embryo turn into a human? Aristotle’s own answer to this question is very harsh. Bracketing the views that lead to this harsh answer, his (...) theory of kinēsis still gives us reason for searching for a replacement answer. Aristotle’s own work unfortunately gives us no help in finding this answer. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Diodorus Cronus reportedly denied that there are truths about present kinēsis (change or movement) but affirmed that there are truths about past kinēsis. Although scholars have argued that Diodorus's atomism about bodies, place, and time supports his rejection of present spatial movement of simple bodies, I argue that Diodorus rejected a broader range of present changes, including qualitative and existential change. I also argue that Diodorus rejected these three sorts of change not only for simples but also for complexes. Furthermore, (...) philosophers since antiquity have claimed that denying truths about present change is incompatible with accepting truths about past change, since each past truth about change corresponds to some present truth about change. I argue that this objection can be overcome. I conclude that Diodorus's arguments against present change are both broader and more successful than is usually maintained. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy by Myles F. BurnyeatAllison Piñeros Glasscock and Elizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BURNYEAT, Myles F. Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xii + 395 pp. Cloth, $120.00The eleven essays in this collection were originally published while Burnyeat was at All Souls College, Oxford (1996–2006) and during his subsequent retirement. Like volume 3 of the same series, (...) the collection was published posthumously, with editorial work undertaken by Carol Atack, Malcolm Schofield, and David Sedley. Part I contains seven essays on topics in ontology and epistemology; part II contains four essays on physics and optics. The figures examined include the usual suspects—Plato and Aristotle (plus an appearance by Aquinas)—but Burnyeat also draws our attention to some less appreciated accomplices to the ancient philosophical project: the Platonist commentator Numenius of Apamea, the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum, and Anaxarchus of Abdera, a follower of Democritus. The result is a collection that showcases one of Burnyeat's greatest strengths: his ability to identify the clues left for us in ancient texts and to produce from them compelling and exquisitely detailed accounts of what ancient philosophers were thinking and why.One of the final papers of the volume illustrates Burnyeat's detective acumen. "Archytas and optics" starts from the following question: Why is optics absent from the mathematical curriculum Plato sketches in the Republic? Burnyeat hypothesizes that if mathematical optics existed when the Republic was written, Plato likely excised it from the curriculum on the grounds that the discipline would lead the student to focus on visible things and their appearances. The bulk of the paper is devoted to establishing the antecedent of this conditional. Burnyeat argues that mathematical optics did exist at the time of the Republic's writing, and he posits the noncanonical Pythagorean Archytas as its founder. To recognize the significance of this lacuna in the Republic's curriculum and to provide a persuasive identification of the founder of an entire discipline is already to make a substantial contribution to scholarship. But how Burnyeat arrives at his central conclusion is equally impressive. He takes the reader on a tour of Aristotle, Plato, and Iamblichus, fragment 4 of Archytas, and the Apologia of Apuleius (whom readers might better recognize as the novelist responsible for The Golden [End Page 345] Ass). The result is not only an answer to the paper's central question, but a deeper understanding of the broader intellectual network in which canonical figures like Plato and Aristotle operated.No fragment is too small to catch Burnyeat's notice, nor is any line in a manuscript too faint. Part I of the collection includes Burnyeat's famous paper "Kinēsis vs. energeia: a much-read passage in (but not of) Aristotle's Metaphysics." The central argument is that Metaphysics 9.6.1048b18–35 is out of place. It was written by Aristotle for a different context and should not be printed in book 9. Because this article is so well known, I will not dwell on the details of the argument, but once again Burnyeat's methodology is worthy of comment. The first part of the paper offers a careful examination of the Metaphysics's manuscript tradition that attends both to what is present and to what is absent. For example, we learn that the focus passage is missing from an entire branch of the tradition, which Burnyeat suggests is the result of a learned excision. Later, Burnyeat develops a psychological sketch of the scribe of manuscript Ab beginning from the observation that a faint line is drawn through part of the focus passage. He argues that the scribe's motivation is not disapproval of the passage's contents but a desire to keep his text and commentary in sync. Observations like these provide the foundation for Burnyeat's thesis about the philosophical import of the focus passage, and they demonstrate that the physical record can be just as vital to reconstructions of ancient philosophy as the words that the record preserves.Occasionally, Burnyeat offers more direct admonitions to his readers about how to approach ancient philosophy. A key lesson... (shrink)

The differences between the theories of hearing held by Aristotle and by Alexander of Aphrodisias are explored. Alexander appears to have a more systematic approach which avoids the dilemma faced by Aristotle in deciding whether the hearing process constitutes a time-taking kinesis or an instantaneous energeia.

The essay shows how Heidegger's understanding of physis in Aristotle lays the foundation for his understanding of Ereignis. The essay draws on Heidegger's lecture courses, published and unpublished, particularly "On the Being and Conception of Physis." After introductory remarks on how Heidegger reads Aristotle "phenomenologically" in general, the essay focuses on how Heidegger reads physis as a mode of Being (ousia) by reading kinesis as a mode of Being, specifically as energeia ateles (incomplete Being). But energeia ateles is characterized (...) by Heidegger as Wiederholung (retrieve of possibility) and as Eignung (appropriation of dynamis for appearance). On the basis of that crucial reading of physis, the essay goes on to show how physis-as-dynamis is the foundation for Ereignis in Sein und Zeit through the radical transformation of Wiederholung in natural beings into resolve in Dasein. (shrink)

Both Heraclitus and Democritus, as the philosophers of historia peri phuseôs, consider nature and human character, habit, law and soul as interrelated emphasizing the links between phusis, kinesis, ethos, logos, kresis, nomos and daimon. On the one hand, Heraclitus’s principle of change (panta rhei) and his emphasis on the element of fire and cosmic motion ultimately dominate his ethics reinforcing his ideas of change, moderation, balance and justice, on the other, Democritus’s atomist description of phusis and motion underlies his (...) principle of moderation and his ideas of health and measured life. In this series, particularly referring to the main principles of motion, moderation and justice, I attempt to describe a coherent pre-Socratic ethical perspective based on the Heraclitean and Democritean fragments. I explore the connections between their physics and ethics also borrowing from Nietzsche’s lectures and writings on the Pre-Socratics. I redefine such Heraclitean and Democritean concepts as harmony, order, perfection, health, self-control, contentment, cheerfulness, concord, sound judgment, wisdom, measure and balance and discuss them under the principles of motion (phusis), moderation (sophrosyne) and justice. In doing so, I also expose the relevance of the Heraclitean notion of logos (interpreting it as the underlying categorical principle of transition between phusis and ethos) in bringing together these ideas and principles. Finally, based on this pre-Socratic Weltanschauung, I assess the possibility of a coherent picture of humanity, its nature and conduct as extending from or fitting into or extending-from-when-fitting-into the cosmos of moving forces and atoms. (shrink)

This article addresses recent science fiction films about the colonization of outer worlds, or space-steading, in the context of the longer colonial history of the frontier. Paying particular attention to Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014), Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005) and The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2005), I argue that colonizing outer space is not only a race to the new frontier, but that this takes place because technologies that picture space have quickened the pulse. Through its imagining of the end (...) of times as a reiteration of colonizing adventure, and the emptying of people from their place, the technology of film has itself produced the accident (Virilio, 2007) of an uninhabited earth. As suggested by the cinematically derived kinesis of wormholes, space wrinkles, and warp speeds, what might be left as a form of life is none other than film itself. The hyper-kinesis of film spectacle takes on a non-human life of its own, which, in science fiction film, constitutes a form of self-alienation, removing viewers from the places they actually inhabit and displacing the histories they unfold. In this way, I address what is truly cinematic about the film frontier traversed by the new space of uber-masculine adventurer-settlers. (shrink)

L'introduction par Aristote de la matière dans la théorie des contraires est une correction des modèles du devenir proposés par ses prédécesseurs : il est désormais possible de penser ensemble devenir et ordre. La matière récuse le dilemme de être et du non-être qui rendait impossible toute théorie de la génération. Cette introduction de la matière commande, à l'intérieur de la pensée d'Aristote, la distinction entre deux sortes de dynamis, et la distinction corrélative de deux sortes de moteurs : les (...) moteurs mus et immobiles. La matière est ainsi autant cause d'ordre que de contingence. The introduction of matter into the theory of contraries by Aristotle puts right earlier versions of kinèsis suggested by his predecessors : thinking kinèsis and order together is henceforth possible. Matter resolves the dilemma of being or not-being which was making any theory of generation impossible. That introduction of matter commands, in Aristotle's thinking, the distinction between two sorts of dynamis and the correlative distinction between two sorts of movers : the moved movers and the unchanging ones. Matter is thus as much cause of order as of contingency. (shrink)

Taking very seriously its anti-Parmenidean character, this essay locates a radically temporalized ontology at the heart of Aristotle’s Physics. We first concentrateon Aristotle’s discussion of kinêsis or ‘change’ as always between opposites, drawing the conclusion that the archai that govern and constitute a change, as opposites, cannot be present in the change itself. Thus, change is what it is by virtue of what is necessarily not present. We then draw the implications of this discussion for chronos or ‘time,’ defined in (...) Book IV of the Physics as “the number of change.” Here, we uncover the ecstatic present moment of natural, changing things, a present constituted by its past and future, which is to say by what is emphatically not present. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Basic Concepts of Aristotelian PhilosophyShawn LohtMartin Heidegger. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Translated by Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 279. Cloth, $39.95.Previously available as Volume 18 of the Gesamtausgabe [GA], this text contains a lecture course delivered by Heidegger at Marburg during the summer of 1924. Metcalf and Tanzer's translation is its first appearance in English. The editor (...) of this volume in the Gesamtausgabe reports that only a fraction of Heidegger's original course material survives in manuscript form. As a result, much of the text does not originate from Heidegger's own hand. The bulk of it represents a transcription of the lecture course based on multiple independently-recorded, complete sets of student notes in conjunction with Heidegger's extant course papers. However, the resulting text reads as continuously as Heidegger's other better-preserved lecture courses from the 1920s, and should be regarded as a legitimate source for studying early Heidegger. Only the reproduction of Heidegger's notes for the course appears in rough outline form, comprising approximately 50 pages, so readers should not anticipate a text consisting entirely of abbreviated sketches as one sees, for instance, in the recently translated Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy (GA 22).The content of the lecture course is not devoted to enumerating the basic Aristotelian concepts per se, but rather to accounting for the phenomenological dimensions of the Greek experience in which conceptuality as such could arise. However, Heidegger does treat most principal concepts of Aristotelian philosophy here, describing the ontological framework from which they originate and their interrelations with one another.Heidegger engages with Kant in the early sections of the course in order to locate the historical solidification of the concept as a guiding idea in philosophy, but he moves to Aristotle quickly on the premise that the decisive germ of conceptuality is exhibited in the Greek discovery of the significance of definitions. In the text that follows, Heidegger takes up central themes in Aristotle in order to unfold Greek being-in-the-world as occurring through language and, particularly, oral discourse. Strong focus is placed on Greek being-there in its everydayness as the hermeneutic for understanding conceptuality.Clear rudiments of the terminology of Being and Time emerge in the course of Heidegger's account of Aristotle. Themes appearing in that later work, including world, being-with-one-another, attunement, fear, and idle talk, inform Heidegger's reading of the Aristotelian account of human nature across the Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, De Anima, and Parts of Animals. Key Aristotelian terms Heidegger develops within this framework include 'prohairesis', 'hexis', 'pathos', and 'nous'. Early formulations of Heidegger's conceptions of logos and aletheia and their fundamental role in Greek experience also permeate his reading. Traces of Heidegger's more mature phenomenology are evident in the lecture course's late sections, in which he takes up the Aristotelian account of motion in the Physics. Here, Heidegger emphasizes the roles of nous as constitutive of the human agent's openness to the world and of kinesis as the fundamental mode in which beings come into view for the Greeks.Notable among the translation choices of Metcalf and Tanzer is their rendering of 'Dasein' and its variants. As they write in the Translators' Preface, Heidegger's use of this term in the lecture course reflects an understanding of Dasein in terms of its there-character. The result places less emphasis on the human subject as a dative agent of manifestation, as one sees in Being and Time, highlighting instead the manner in which Dasein finds itself in the world. This last is expressive of Heidegger's emphatic treatment in the course of conceptuality as tied up with human being-in-the-world.This text will be of vital interest to scholars interested in the genesis of Being and Time and Heidegger's early formulations of its central arguments in the 1920s. The text will also be an important addition to Heidegger's works on Aristotle available in English. The lecture course offers penetrating and incisive accounts of themes in Aristotle that Heidegger neglects or treats only briefly... (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiens, à travers Heidegger, que la notion de τὸ ἐξαίφνης dans le Parménide ne signifie pas l’éternité, ou une trace d’éternité dans le temps, mais implique plutôt une conception primordiale du temps. Dans la déduction numéro deux, la relation entre la stasis et la kinesis devient problématique à cause de la notion de τὸ νῦν. Cela conduit Parménide, dans la déduction numéro trois, à poser la notion de τὸ ἐξαίφνης pour résoudre cette relation problématique, ce qui implique une (...) conception primordiale du temps. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Doctrine of the Psyche as a Self-Moving Motion RAPHAEL DEMOS I WILLXSXTHEREADERto ignore for the time being what he has gleaned about the soul from the reading of the Phaedo and the Republic. In these dialogues Plato speaks of the soul sometimes as wholly rational, as having three parts, and so forth. But in these dialogues he is t~lklng of the human soul, which is a special case, (...) whereas in this essay I am de~Hng with the wider role and the concept of the soul as the efficient cause of motion, change, and all becoming everywhere in the cosmos. My cardinal texts in this exposition are the Sophist (246a-249d), the Phaedrus (245c, d), and a considerable portion of Laws, X. Consider the Phaedo, a dialogue with at least four motifs: it is a dramatic evocation of the last day in the life of Socrates, it is an argument for the immortality of the soul and for the reality of the world of ideas, it is a myth of the nether world, and finally, it is a theory of the cosmos as ruled by purpose--all in all, one of the great pieces of literature of the Western world. For the reader, it is an evocation of an attitude to life, based on Plato's conception of the soul--an attitude expressed in the famous phrase that the wise man spends his life meditating on death. As contrasted with what may be called his existential concern with the soul, in the other dialogues on which I will comment, Plato approaches the topic of the soul as part of his explanation of the cosmos. In these his attitude is objective and quasi-scientific. It is to this side of Plato's thought that I wish to call attention in this essay, where the establishment of the immortality of the soul is incidental to the more basic doctrine that the soul is an arche, a primary factor and an ontological principle. In the,Sophist, we find Plato playing the music of his philosophy in a new key. He refers to the "friends of the forms" as though he, himself, were an outsider looking in; then, too, he asserts that motion is really real in contrast to his derogatory references to motion in the Cratylus, the Phaedo, and the Republic.I In these (and other) dialogues, Plato contrasts change and changing things with the timeless forms in respect of reality: the former are said, at best, to be semi-real; only the latter are really real. But in the Sophist he changes his tune, arguing that total reality (~o ~v, to' ~a~rE~ By) includes both motion and rest (248e 8; 249d 3-4). What does he mean by these two words? That by 'rest' he means the realm of ideas is indicated (if not proved) by his references to the forms in the same context (247b 1But in the Theaeteius,he classifiesmotions in a semi-scientific fashion, leaving the impression on the reader that he regards motion as a reality. [133] 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 1-2; 249b, 10, c 1).2 As for motion, Plato makes it clear that the term covers not only (a) physical motion but also (b) life, (c) psyche, and (d) phronesis or naus (249b 5). All these are said to be forms of kinesis; how this is so--how life, soul, mason may be described as motions or changes--is a matter for later comment. What is more to the point is Plato's insistence that motion and what is moved are onta (beings, 249b 2, d 3). Plato uses change (metabol$) interchangeably with kinesis; anticipating the Phaedrus, I will include activity under change. And anticipating the Laws, I will characterize some of this activity as mental; indeed the Sophist, includes within change nous, phronesis, and episteme; that is to say, understanding (in the sense of an activity, 249a, b, c).s Plato offers various reasons in support of his contention that change is real. He may also be offering a special demonstration as follows. The philosopher who denies that change is real is engaged in a mental activity, in short... (shrink)

Los precedentes de la cibernética se encuentran claramente en Aristóteles, quien distingue entre operaciones vitales "praxis" y movimientos físicos "kinesis", y habla de la información como modificación de un estado de equilibrio y de la retroalimentaáón como el modo de controlar la información. Desde ahí se descubre que en Aristóteles el modelo morfotélico es superior al modelo hilemórfico.

Le premier chapitre d'une Phénoménologie de l'acte philosophique, que nous publions ici, met en lumière la structure onto-théo-logique de toute philosophie possible. II comporte les paragraphes suivants: 1. Existence et Pensée. – Une définition radicale de la pensée humaine présuppose une réflexion sur le Sum dans lequel s'enracine le Cogito. Cette première réflexion ne peut se faire que de manière spontanée et naïve. L'identité de l'existence et de la pensée n'est pas une possibilité humaine, mais oriente et fonde comme idéal (...) le mouvement philosophique. 2. Archè - ousia - telos. – L'essence de l'être humain est tendance et mouvement (kinèsis) d'une nature spéciale. 3. La destination (Bestimmung) de l'homme. – Par une réflexion transcendentale sur le dynamisme appétitif de l'homme on découvre la „position” ontologique d'une Fin absolue et infinie comme fondement a priori de toute vie humaine en tant qu'elle est besoin et désir. Les étappes de la voie qui conduit au Fondement ultime de la perfection humaine, sont les suivants : 1) l'accueil naïf de l'être qui se montre, 2) la perte de tous les étants dans le Néant, résultant dans une angoisse profonde, et 3) la découverte du Bien infini comme „Rien de tout cela”. 4. „Tune me chercherais pas, situne m'avais trouvé” (Pascal) ou: „Comment le Dieu arrive - t - il dans la philosophie?" (Heidegger). - En tant que recherche du pourquoi radical, la philosophie - et, plus fondamentalement, l'être humain comme être pensant et „logique” - ne peut s'effectuer qu'en affirmant a priori, dans tout ce qu'elle demande, dit, met en doute etc., le Fondement dernier et premier de toute vérité : la Vérité elle-même, qui, dès le début de la vie humaine et philosophique, se présente en s'absentant. 5. Unica demonstratio Dei. – La preuve métaphysique et la preuve anthropologique de l'existence de Dieu sont deux paraphrases radicalement identiques du mouvement de „fondation” qui est l'essence de l'être humain. Tous les arguments conduisant à l'affirmation philosophique de Dieu, ne composent en réalité qu'une seule démonstration, qui coïncide avec le tout de la philosophie. Pour acquérir une connaissance explicite de ce qu'est le Fondement radical, le philosophe doit rendre plus concret le contenu de la fondation transcendentale qui relie ce Fondement au fond de l'existence humaine. Dans ce but il parcourt et traverse les stades 1) de l'existence „économique” jouissant du cosmos (argument cosmologique ; cosmo -théo -logie) , 2) de l'existence sociale se découvrant a) obligée au respect et b) appelée à la communion fraternelle (socio-théo-logie), et 3) de l'ipséité qui fait l'expérience de soi-même comme don gratuit, – pour apprendre finalement que le cercle égologique englobant les étapes énumérées, est lui-même un don du Dieu donnant, qui - peut-être - va parler. 6. Vérité et apparence. – La philosophie est essentiellement une explicitation de la fondation originaire qui affirme Dieu-dans-le-monde ou le-monde-en-Dieu. A cause de la déviation historique de toute philosophie concrète, l'expérience de la recherche du vrai comporte aussi et d'abord une (re-) Conversion au véritable Fondement, qui est la fin et le début de tout penser. 7. Itinerarium mentis in Deum. – Une phénoménologie de l'acte philosophique doit surmonter les phénoménologies superficielles par une réflexion sur les différentes philosophies de notre passé, dans lesquelles elle reconnaît des „phénomènes” systématiques explicitant l'affirmation originaire de la Vérité elle-même. Pour préparer une méthodologie de cette phénoménologie méta-philosophique, une discussion avec le projet de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit hégélienne s'impose. Ce chapitre ne donne qu'une ébauche de quelques lignes directrices d'une telle méthodologie. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:POETRY AS THE NAMING OF THE GODS by Phyllis Zagano There have been many attempts to define poetry, and there is copious advice to would-be poets. Horace writes somewhere "Sit quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum" which can be comfortably rendered as "make anything at all, so long as it hangs together." The hanging together is the quality most writers point to as evidence of success: simply, it works. (...) What poetry does is the more complex question, since it is the understanding of its internal kinesis which allows for its definition. Essentially, it takes an object from objective reality (insofar as we can agree such exists) and creates an oxymoronic entity: a static consciousness. This is always seen in phenomenological terms, that is, it must be consciousness of something. The poet recognizes this in deference to the common consciousness and the common understanding of the everyday, by the use of metaphor, simile, and the other accouterments of the trade. Things must be as they appear, and they must be as they appear to some majority of the people, in order for the poet to argue his private vision with clarity. The analogy must have some common ground before it has meaning, before the "naming" takes place. For Martin Heidegger the activity of creating poetry, dichten, is not only an indispensable part of human life, it signals the humanness of the person. He has two principal essays on poetry which show how this activity ofdichten combines his concepts Dasein and Vorhandenheit (despite his later abandonment of Dasein for Lichtung). Heidegger's essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," seeks to determine what is common to poetry, that is, what constitutes its essence. 340 Phyllis Zagano341 Another ofhis essays, "What are Poets For?" begins where the first ends (with considerations of Friedrich Hölderlin's "Bread and Wine"). Each essay comments on specific poems and somewhat imperfectly attempts a poetic theory in consonance with the rest of Heidegger's work. Since "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry" concentrates more on poetic theory than "What are Poets For?," investigation of it will prove more helpful in understanding and appropriating Heidegger's contention that "The writing of poetry is the fundamental naming of the Gods____"· In his "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger calls language the "House of Being," while man is the "Shepherd of Being." This understanding ofthe function oflanguage and the methodweuse tocreateand recreate ourselves and our world recurs often in Heidegger's work. The essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," stands as a seeking after what is common to poetry and, while Heidegger recognizes that Hölderlin's work is "only one among many others" (p. 294) and therefore cannot be used as the sole criterion to determine what constitutes poetry, he says that if what we recognize as the "essence of poetry" is present in a universal concept, then it ought to be able to be extrapolated from Hölderlin's poetry as well as from that of any other poet. What constitutes the "essence" of poetry, Heidegger argues, ought to be equally valid in every poem, but it is perhaps well to remind him that what ought to be equally valid in every poem is only equally valid in every poem which "hangs together," that is, every poem which performs its function as poem. Such insistence is ofcourse mere definition of terms, but in this case, without prior argument on the metaphysics of art, it is necessary. In any event, Heidegger concludes that the essence of Hölderlin's poetry is the "essence ofpoetry" itself (p. 294), and that what is common to poetry is found in it. While some critics might argue that Heidegger makes too much of Hölderlin here, the more dangerous weakness in this method of argumentation is the possibility that an idiosyncrasy might be mistaken for an essential element or, more probably, that too much will be generalized from this particular example or set of examples. The trained literary critic can cast a cold eye on such magnification of a single poet as the presenter of both form and content for the meaning of the "essence of poetry." In fact, it... (shrink)

In addition to his artistic work, Paul Klee was a theoretician of the highest rank. Readings of his extensive writings evidence that he was a transformer of the immemorial eidetic concept of form toward its temporalization. As a standard he uses the mobility of nature and the cosmos, to which he anchors his generative concept of form. This essay concerns a reconstruction of some of his lines of argumentation from manuscripts that were not published during his lifetime. Among those are (...) the role of the point as the source of linear and chromatic expression, the relation between kinesis and stasis in the work, and the models with which he analyzes the role of the artist and his position in the world. Klee’s insights are fruitful not only for an understanding of his own work but also for a history of the concept of form in the twentieth century. (shrink)