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Chapter Three THE DESTRUCTURING OF THE TRADITION Aristotle’s Confrontation with Antiphon Aristotle says: For those who wish to get clear of difficulties, it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie a knot which one does not know. (Met. 995 a26–30) Aristotle’s confrontation with Antiphon in Physics B1 raises the central questions that are involved in the meaning of phusis. It is only with an awareness of these difficulties that the breadth of Aristotle’s venture becomes evident. What is at stake are the method and task of Aristotle’s project . This task is twofold. On the one hand, phusis has to be understood ontologically, that is, in terms of ousia. This understanding of phusis is the originary grasp that permits us to see beings in their being. On the other hand, this understanding of beings in their very being is articulated and interpreted in such a way that phusis is taken as the arch¯e, the source and originating principle, of natural beings. Understanding and interpreting are two ways in which human beings express their way of being. These two ways cannot be split apart but must be understood in their togetherness. Human beings always already find themselves in an interpretation of beings , which presupposes that they have in advance an understanding of being. When Aristotle turns his attention to the opinion of his predecessors , he is bringing the interpretation of beings in Greek thought back to the understanding of being from which it emerged. Only such a method can avoid the easier road that forgets the origin and attempts to draw out of the interpretation itself, whether through criticism or homage, the basis for its understanding of being. This kind of approach could never achieve the kind of truth that is appropriate to the human being’s relationship to 58 Heidegger and Aristotle • natural beings because it has no access to what is essential. Aristotle compares such an approach to the attempts of the blind man to say something about colors. In his philosophical approach to the study of what is natural, Aristotle remains true to his method and maintains himself within the “twofold” of being and beings while thinking their sameness. The following passage from Aristotle mentions Antiphon’s interpretation of phusis that in one way appears to conform with his own, and in another way does not. Both Aristotle and Antiphon understand phusis as ousia. According to Heidegger, Aristotle, like his predecessors, understands and interprets ousia as enduring presencing. For Aristotle, all beings that are truly beings have ousia, enduring presencing, as their way of being. Inasmuch as Antiphon’s interpretation of phusis is in conformity with Aristotle’s, he agrees that natural beings are to the extent that they endure and sustain themselves in presence. Yet, the problematic but undeniable character of natural beings, according to Aristotle, is that this enduring presence is nevertheless kinetic, that is, movement belongs to their very nature as beings. Since Antiphon’s interpretation cannot reconcile this kinetic nature with the requirement that being must endure, he denies movement as the beingness of phusis, and in this regard disagrees with Aristotle . Antiphon, an Eleatic philosopher, denies the possibility of movement as belonging to the being of beings.1 Aristotle faces the central question posed by Antiphon’s views: movement implies nonbeing. But how can nonbeing be? In showing how nonbeing (change) is, Aristotle both accepts and refutes Antiphon’s doctrine. That is, his refutation achieves for Antiphon what Antiphon was looking for, but had fallen away from—the vision of the being of natural, changing beings as enduring presence. Thus, Aristotle says regarding his opponent Antiphon at Physics 193 a 9–28 (Heidegger’s translation): But for some (thinkers), phusis and therefore also the beingness of natural beings appears to be what first of all lies forth in the individual and lacks all composition (rhuthmos). According to this opinion, the phusis of the bedstead is the wood, that of the statue the bronze. Antiphon explains this in the following way: If one were to bury a bedstead in the ground and it were to decay to the extent that a sprout comes up, then what would be generated (out of this) would not be a bedstead but wood. Consequently, what has been carried through in a regulated and knowledgeable way (the forming of...

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