Heidegger and Aristotle by Walter A. Brogan

Author:Walter A. Brogan [Brogan, Walter A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

104 • Heidegger and Aristotle

The difference between being and beings is operative in Aristotle’s philosophy and is really the horizon of his thought, but it is not so clearly demarcated (which is not to say it is confused). Therefore, it is often missed by commentators. Our confusion arises from thinking being and beings as separate and not thinking through the nature of the relationship. Part of the failure to think in terms of the ontological difference is that we have taken over our understanding of beings from techn¯e. But genesis is a natural coming forth that the craftsperson ignores or even violates. In techn¯e, the being character of beings is unimportant. But techn¯e depends on phu-

sis. Phusis is not a kind of self-making or technique. Rather, techn¯e and making imitate nature.

Aristotle distinguishes the “metabol¯e” of genesis from motion at Phys-

ics V 225 a 25f:

Therefore it is impossible for that which is not to move. This being the case, gene-

sis cannot be kin¯esis for it is that which is not which is generated. . . . So too, “perishing” is not a motion; for a motion has its contrary in either another motion or rest, whereas “perishing” ( pthora) is the enantion, the contrary of genesis. . . . it is a change which implies a relationship of contradiction ( antiphasin), not motion.

In order to understand what is involved in this distinction, and indeed the whole of Book V of the Physics that establishes this distinction, we need to consider what Aristotle means by metabol¯e. Change is a broader concept than kin¯esis. It includes genesis as well. “Every metabol¯e is (a transition) from something into something” (225 a1). Thus, genesis is a drawing away from something beyond and into something. That from which a being comes and that toward which it becomes are not the same. Otherwise there would be no change ( Physics 225 a2). In genesis, something other and separate comes into being. The difference between genesis and other kinds of motion (alteration, locomotion, etc.) is that motions are between contraries (e.g., hot and cold), whereas in genesis, the opposition of the ‘from which’

and the ‘into which’ is not between contraries but between contradictories.

In genesis, beings come to be from not-being and not-being comes to be from being. “Change from not-being-there to being-there, the relationship being that of contradiction, is genesis” ( Physics 225 a12).

Contradiction is at the heart of genesis. This relation between being and not-being is precisely what makes possible the being of natural beings. If metabol¯e, that is, genesis, were not able to hold together this radical opposition, then natural beings could not be. It was the apparently irreconcil-able split between being and not-being, the fact, for example, that they cannot be said together, that led to the denial of natural beings as illusion and deception. Aristotle achieved for Greek philosophy the insight into the the destructuring of the tradition • 105

horizon that makes it possible for natural beings to be. At the center of his understanding of the law of non-contradiction, he introduced time.

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