familiar.”51 When I learn something, I have something given in advance, and that which is given in advance is only known in the averageness of being-there; I am thereby oriented in a superficial way. By virtue of this process of learning, I am preparing the way for what can genuinely be known. “Just as in concern it is manifest that one advances from that which is initially encountered as good in each particular case to that which is genuinely good, and adopts this genuine good as the good for oneself, so is the relation between becoming-acquainted and being; that which is for the moment is known initially,” but “often vaguely (ἠρέμα).”52 I do not have the time, the occasion, to look with greater precision at the being that is there. This being that is there “has little or nothing at all of being.”53 It is so self-evidently there that I see beyond it; I do not notice it. Precisely in this not-being-noticed, the self-evidence of the being-there of the world shows itself. But I must proceed precisely from what is ungenuinely there to what is genuinely passed over in acquaintance. These principles are programmatically the genuine counter-thrust to Platonic philosophy. Aristotle says: I must have ground under my feet, a ground that is there in an immediate self-evidence, if I am to get at being. I cannot, in fantasy, hold myself to a definite concept of being and then speculate.
The methodological stance is already seen in principle at the outset of the Physics, which is one of Aristotle’s earliest investigations and seems to have been worked out at the time that he was still in the Academy, collaborating with Plato. That which is initially known, from which I proceed, is the καθόλου, “something that I have there in a general way.”54 I am superficially oriented in my surrounding world, without being able to give an immediate answer to the question regarding what that surrounding world is. Seeing genuine beings depends on the καθόλου.55 This can be seen in the relation between customary speaking and terminological usage. The word, as used in natural speaking, refers to a being that is there, enclosed within itself, and yet without this being that is addressed being set into its limits. If, on the contrary, the meaning and the word use are fulfilled in a λόγος that is ὁρισμός, then it takes that which is there in this manner apart into its moments, what constitutes the genuine “particularity” of such an object. Τὰ καθ᾿ ἕκαστα are those moments that bring me the initial, superficial thing meant in the requisite distance, so that I see it genuinely in its articulatedness. “Children (who, as such and in a fully distinctive sense, live in their world and possess it in an unarticulated
51. Met. Ζ 3, 1029 b 3 sqq.: ἡ γὰρ μάθησις οὕτω γίγνεται πᾶσι διὰ τῶν ἧττον γνωρίμων φύσει εἰς τὰ γνώριμα μᾶλλον.
52. Met. Ζ 3, 1029 b 5 sqq.: ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι τὸ ποιῆσαι ἐκ τῶν ἑκάστῳ ἀγαθῶν τὰ ὅλως ἀγαθὰ, οὕτως ἐκ τῶν αὐτῷ γνωριμωτέρων τὰ τῇ φύσει γνώριμα αὐτῷ γνώριμα. [ . . . ] πολλάκις ἠρέμα ἐστὶ γνώριμα.
53. Met. Ζ 3, 1029 b 9 sq.: μικρὸν ἢ οὐδὲν ἔχει τοῦ ὄντος.
54. Phys. Α 1, 184 a 23.
55. Phys. Α 1, 184 a 23 sq.: διὸ ἒκ τῶν καθόλου ἐπὶ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα δεῖ προϊέναι.