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The transition from the purely ethical to the ontological conception of phrone\sis can be accomplished by focusing on the ambiguity of the Greek terms to kath’ hekaston and to eschaton. While these terms clearly indicate that toward which phrone\sis is directed, precisely what they are meant to designate is less obvious. John Cooper suggests that in NE VI these terms always refer to particulars and never to individuals.1 We have seen, however, that this is not always the case: although both terms may refer to particulars, they also sometimes seem to point to the individual itself. That which presents itself to the judging subject is always already a determinate individual, no longer singular, but not yet particular. The tension of this no longer and not yet is at play in the semantic ambiguity of both to kath’ hekaston and to eschaton. This ambiguity haunts the Metaphysics throughout, finding its boldest expression in the conceptual gesture tode ti. In chapter 6 we argued that the ambiguity of the tode ti reflected the ontological structure of finite ousia itself. The tode ti, itself composite, points to the duality of the individual whose being is the dynamic identity of form and matter, energeia and dunamis, determinateness saturated with indeterminacy—praxis. To map the concepts to kath’ hekaston and to eschaton onto the ontological vocabulary of tode ti is not difficult. Aristotle himself deploys to kath’ hekaston throughout his ontological writings, and it seems fair to say that however one chooses to render to eschaton into English, the last ultimate for Aristotle’s ontological engagement with finite ousia, the point of its departure and the ultimate being with which it remains constantly concerned, is the concrete individual. To wrest these terms from their strictly ethical context is, however, slightly more challenging, for most often Aristotle seems to use the terms to refer not to the concrete being that confronts the phronimos but to the concrete situation 153 9 The Ethics of Ontology within and from which the phronimos must discern the proper thing to do. Yet there is something of a slippage in Aristotle’s own use of the terms, a shift that legitimizes the ontological approach to phrone\sis suggested here. Precisely where this slippage leads is suggested when Aristotle uses to kath’ hekaston in the singular in conjunction with the demonstrative todi to refer to the concrete being encountered by the phronimos.2 In such cases, it is not so much the situation as the very being itself that serves as the referent of the term. If to kath’ hekaston can be taken in this ontological sense to refer to the concrete individual , then perhaps phrone\sis can be given a new determination as a genuine form of ontological knowledge of the individual itself. When this slippage is combined with Aristotle’s use of the term praxis to designate the dynamic identity of ousia in the Metaphysics, and the suggestion in Metaphysics XIII.10 that there may be a peculiar sort of direct knowledge of the tode ti, the possibility that phrone\sis, whether Aristotle intended it or not, delineates this form of ontological knowledge gains credibility. The common tension found in the ethical terms to kath’ hekaston and to eschaton and the ontological term tode ti further establishes the connection between Aristotle’s ontological and ethical thinking. In fact, our investigation into the internal logic of phrone\sis suggests precisely why this tension between singularity and particularity emerges in such central concepts. The ambiguity of these terms is symptomatic of a thinking implicitly cognizant of its own finitude. The singular—itself autonomous, independent, Other—does not enter into appearance unaltered; it always already appears as individual. This individuality, however, is itself unstable, no longer singular, for it has entered the sphere of logos, but not yet particular, for it is never fully captured by the concept. The attempt to establish ontology as a rigorous episte\me\, to do away, once and for all, with the inherent ambiguity of individuality, is nothing more than a denial of the finitude of thinking itself. To substitute the security of particularity for the ambiguity of individuality is to take refuge in a delusion, for, to paraphrase Adorno, the individual does not go into its concepts without remainder.3 This remainder thwarts every attempt to assimilate the singularity of the individual in the name of stability. Ontology becomes ethical the moment it recognizes its own contingency. Responding to this recognition, the ethics of...

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