the determination of τέλος or τέλειον is already implict. The ability to have a being-possibility at one’s disposal means that a being that has an ἀρετή already has its end in this ἀρετή in a definite manner. The ἀρετή is a definite way of being, which in itself is directed to the τέλος, an ability to have at one’s disposal, an ability which need not explicitly reach its τέλος.82
5. The further determination is already indicated in this concept of ἀρετή as τελείωσις, insofar as there is a being which has its τέλος in the genuine sense, so that its τέλος “is at hand” in it, a being in which ὑπάρχει83 τέλος, so that it has its end in an initial mode. Ἔχειν is meant in an entirely distinctive sense. One speaks of “having” in a double sense: (a) as the happening of something, something happens in such and such a way, having this or that determination—“the table has a crack.” That which is had in this case is happening to a definite being. (b) “having” can mean a direct, explicit concern about something, having presently what is had, having to do with it. There are fully determinate gradations here. “The tree has blossoms.” This context of having is not strictly identical with the context of being that is brought to expression with “The table has a crack,” “The person has a toothache,” “The person has a case of boredom.” Also, this having is something different when we say, in an ordinary way, that this having and what is had are themselves conscious. “The person had the thought of running away.” This double meaning of having is to be kept in view, and the latter is meant when the discussion is, in this case, one of ὑπάρχειν τέλος σπουδαῖον.84 The τέλος is there “in a serious manner,” is had “in a serious manner,” by which it is not meant that someone is addressed as “serious,” σπουδαῖος, whenever they have an angry look. Σπουδαῖος designates the mode of being-there in which I am serious about a matter, that is, not making a game of it—being with a matter, taking it up in such a way that everything rides on it. The matter about which I am serious need not be something extraordinary. Indeed, the less extraordinary that about which one is serious is, the less possibility there is for deception about one’s seriousness. Σπουδαῖον is a determination of the how: a possibility of one’s being must be taken seriously.85
6. The sense in which the τέλειον is a being-character is only made genuinely clear in the further determination of the τέλειον. There is mention of a τελείως ἐφθάρθαι.86 Furthermore, the τελευτή, “death,” is designated as τέλος.87 What becomes visible in this carrying-over? We say of a human being: “He is finished, used up, entirely completed.” Here it means that he is no longer what he was earlier; the one that he genuinely was earlier is no longer there. Being-completed is being-gone-from-being-there. What is the sense of
82. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 20–23.
83. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 23.
84. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 23 sq.: ὑπάρχει τὸ τέλος σπουδαῖον.
85. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 23–25.
86. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 27.
87. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 28 sq.