way) are accustomed to addressing all men as father and all women as mother; only later does διορίζειν occur to them.”56 For the child, the first and average interpretation of the being-there of humans is father and mother; this interpretation is immediately accessible. The child applies it to every man and woman. This indeterminacy of the usual gives the child, precisely, the possibility of being oriented to humans among the things that are there. One must proceed from here, from what is immediate, to see this ground explicitly. On the basis of this natural way of being in the everyday, arises the characteristic possibility of a peculiar speaking that addresses being-there in its genuine presence, in the character of its πέρας. It addresses it in such a way that being-there is addressed in its limitedness.
This addressing of being-there in its limitedness is a λόγος as ὁρισμός. For the Greeks, a limiting speaking means an addressing of genuine being-there. That having limits, limitedness, constitutes the genuine there-character, we see in Metaphysics Δ, Chapter 17: πέρας is the ἔσχατον, “the outermost aspect of what is there at the moment, outside of which, at first, nothing more of the matter encountered is to be found; and within which the whole of the beings encountered are to be seen.”57 This character of the πέρας is then determined, without qualification, as εἶδος. The having-of-limits is the genuine “look of a being that has any kind of range.”58 Πέρας is, however, not only εἶδος but also τέλος.59 Τέλος means “end” in the sense of “completedness,” not “aim” or even “purpose.” That is to say that completedness is a πέρας such that “movement and action go toward it”60—κίνησις and πρᾶξις, the being-occupied with something where a movement or action finds its end (no idea of a purpose!) There are, indeed, beings that have both of these limit-characters. The character of πέρας also has something to do with the οὗ ἕνεκα, the “for-the-sakeof-which.”61 The genuine, ultimate character of being in the εἶδος and τέλος is the character of the πέρας. For recognizing, limit is the having-of-limits only because it is the having-of-limits of the matter, the πρᾶγμα determined in its limits.62
From the above, we can infer the meaning, for Aristotle and the Greeks, of the maxim of theoretical research: μὴ εἰς ἄπειρον ἰέναι.63 Εἰς ἄπειρον ἰέναι is a going toward something that no longer is since it lacks limit. This maxim to
56. Phys. Α 1, 184 b 12 sqq.: τὰ παιδία τὸ μὲν πρῶτον προσαγορεύει πάντας τοὺς ἄνδρας πατέρας καὶ μητέρας τὰς γυναῖκας, ὕστερον δὲ διορίζει τούτων ἑκάτερον.
57. Met. Δ 17, 1022 a 4 sq.: τὸ ἔσχατον ἑκάστου καὶ οὗ ἔξω μηδὲν ἔστι λαβεῖν πρώτου, καὶ οὗ ἔσω πάντα πρώτου.
58. Met. Δ 17, 1022 a 6: εἶδος [ . . . ]ἔχοντος μέγεθος.
59. Ibid.
60. Met. Δ 17, 1022 a 7: ἐφ’ ὃ ἡ κίνησις καὶ ἡ πρᾶξις.
61. Met. Δ 17, 1022 a 8.
62. Met. Δ 17, 1022 a 9 sq.: τῆς γνώσεως γὰρ τοῦτο πέρας· εἰ δὲ τῆς γνώσεως, καὶ τοῦ πράγματος.
63. Phys. Θ 5, 256 a 29.