the carrying-over when τελευτή is designated as τέλος? With death, life is at its end; death makes life complete in that it takes being away from the there, life disappears. With this carrying-over, τέλειον shows itself, τέλος as a character of being-there, insofar as τὸ τέλος, τέλειον, designates that being-there which we designate as no-longer-being-there, being-gone. Being-gone is a distinctive mode of being-there. Precisely in this carry-over from τέλος and τέλειον to death, the distinctive function of τέλειον shows itself to be the character of being-there in the distinctive possibility of disappearing.88
7. The determination of the τέλειον is assigned to οὗ ἕνεκα, οὗ χάριν; specifically, this is τέλειον when it is ἔσχατον.89 The οὗ ἕνεκα is that being which stands in a willing, with which I have to do willingly, that which I am after in a certain mode of ὄρεξις, characterized as the end, the ultimate, something that is ultimately τέλος. Οὗ ἕνεκα acquires the τέλος-character of the determination of ἔσχατον. Οὗ ἕνεκα is not aim, that toward which I am looking; that is σκοπός.90
8. In the conclusion of the chapter, Aristotle divides the various meanings into two different groups: (a) insofar as τέλος is genuinely asserted about something,91 then: (b) meanings that mean τέλος as τέλειον refer to τέλειον in sense ‘a.’92 Τέλειον is thus brought to the schema of categories. This points to the fact that, insofar as τέλειον allows such a division, it is in itself a fundamental being-character. Τέλειον shows itself to be a distinctive character of being in the sense of being-there. (On this point, see Nicomachean Ethics, Book Α, Chapter 5.)93
c) The τέλειον as Limit in the Sense of the Genuine There of a Being
To summarize, we must hold primarily in view the fact that τέλος has the determination of limit. This limit-character is to be apprehended as that beyond which there is nothing further, the end at which something stops. But here we must be careful. A path through a meadow stops at a garden fence. But the garden fence is not τέλειον. Being-the-path is not as such determined by the garden fence. That at which the path stops is itself a being which, in the same manner, is like that which stops at it. Presumably, τέλειον is not a being, or a piece of a being, whose end it constitutes. Rather, τέλειον is a way of being, a mode of being itself. Τέλειον is limit, but not as a being in relation to another being whose limit it is. In this sense, a thief is completed insofar as the limit is not outside of him. The how of his being, stealing itself, has come to its definite possibility. He is not a good thief for having come across a great stash of money. The τέλειον is a determination of the being of beings, and not some
88. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 25–29.
89. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 30.
90. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 29 sq.
91. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 30: τὰ μὲν οὖν καθ’ αὑτὰ λεγόμενα.
92. Met. Δ 16, 1022 a 1 sqq.: τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα [ . . . ] πρὸς τὰ πρώτως.
93. Met. Δ 16, 1021 b 30—1022 a 3.