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true safekeeping, but it also provides an initial understanding of the basic characteristics of being that φρόνησις itself has. Φρόνησις is a ἕξις, i.e., a how of having available the true safekeeping of being. And as a ἕξις, it is a γινόμενον [a having-become of the soul], which temporalizes and unfolds itself in life itself as its own possibility, brings life into a particular state, and in a certain sense actually brings it about. Thus what shows itself in φρόνησις is a doubling of the point of view into which Aristotle placed the human being and the being of life and which became decisive within intellectual history for the fate of the categorial explication of the sense of the being of facticity. In circumspection, life is there for itself in the concrete how of the with-which of going about its dealings. However, and this is decisive, in Aristotle it is not on the basis of this phenomenon and not in a positive manner that the being of the with-which of dealings is ontologically defined. Rather, it is defined simply in a formal manner as capable of being otherwise than it is and thus not necessarily and always what it is. This ontological definition gets actualized through a negative comparison with another kind of being that is considered to be being in the authentic sense. In accord with its basic characteristics, this kind of being is for its part not arrived at through an explication of the being of human life as such. Rather, in its categorial structure, it springs from an ontological radicalization of the idea of beings that are moved, and this is carried out and actualized in a particular manner. It is the motion of production that is taken into forehaving as exemplary for these kinds of beings and for the possibility of bringing into relief their structural sense. Being is being-finished-and-ready, i.e., a kind of being in which motion has arrived at its end. The being of life is seen as movement running its course in this life, and indeed human life is in this movement when it has arrived at its end with regard to its ownmost possibility of motion, namely, that of pure and simple perceiving. This movement is in the ἕξις of σοφία. In accord with its intentional characteristics, pure understanding does not take into true safekeeping human life in the how of its factical being. Rather, σοφία does not in any sense have human life as its intentional toward-which. Human life is actually a being that is precisely insofar as it can in each case be otherwise. For Aristotle, the being of life must be looked at simply in terms of the pure temporalizing and unfolding of σοφία as such, and this is due to the authentic kind of movement available in σοφία. First, as pure and simple perceiving, νοῦς is in its genuine movement when it has given up all concern for gearing beings in certain directions and only perceives. Second, as this perceiving, it is a movement that, in having arrived at its end insofar as what it is able to perceive in a pure and simple manner now stands before its gaze, not only does not cease, but rather now—precisely as having arrived at its end—really is motion for the first time.

As a βάδισις εἰς [going toward], i.e., a being on the way to . . . [Unterwegssein zu], motion [Bewegung] is in accord with its sense motion that has not reached its toward-which. As a presently going toward . . . , it is, for example, learning, walking, or building a house. In accord with the basic character of having-gone,


Martin Heidegger - Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond