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The question is whether, in addition—beside the ἔργον of the shoemaker, carpenter, etc.—there is yet another ἔργον of human beings that would be ἴδιον111 to human beings as human, “proper” to them. Aristotle answers this question decisively, not in the realm of fantasy, but in such a way as to open our eyes. It is a matter of seeing the ἴδιον, of “excluding,” ἀφορίζεσθαι,112 everything that human life shares with other living things. Thus all possible life is brought within the investigation’s field of vision. In the concrete presentation of the life of human beings, everything that is given as discoverable in other living things as well, is thereby removed.
The investigation’s field of vision is the being that is there in the sense of living. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ζῆν κοινὸν εἶναι φαίνεται καὶ τοῖς φυτοῖς, ζητεῖται δὲ τὸ ἴδιον. ἀφοριστέον ἄρα τὴν θρεπτικὴν καὶ αὐξητικὴν ζωὴν.113 “Living appears also to be shared with plants, but the ἴδιον is what is to be sought. Thus the mode of living that we designate as getting nourishment and growing is to be excluded [as a distinctive possibility of life].” In taking in nourishment, a living thing is in its world in an entirely definite mode. This being-in-the-world can refer back to the manner of bringing into the world, generating and bearing offspring. We have the specific expression “coming into the world.” Getting nourishment and growth are only definite being-possibilities of living, in which this basic possibility, the γεννᾶν, is developed. However, it is nothing specifically human.
In the being of human beings as being-in-the-world, we observe αἴσθησις.114 Animals perceive the world within definite limits; they are in the world in such a way that they have the surrounding world there; they have a definite orientation in it. Therefore, this being-oriented in the world, this somehow-having-itexplicitly-there, is not proper to human beings as such.
We must always have our view concretely directed upon human beings. Other ways of living are seen along with it. λείπεται δὴ πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος.115 Yet “there remains,” for human being, still another mode of beingin-the-world, which is to be in it in such a way as to be able to be concerned about something, and “the concern of a being that speaks.” The ἴδιον ἔργον, the genuine mode of human beings, is πρᾶξις, determined as a mode of being-inthe-world precisely through speaking, μετὰ λόγου,116 κατὰ λόγον.117
On the basis of the preceding, we know that it is a matter of what constitutes the genuine being-possibility. However, concern can be at rest; a human being can even sleep away his existence. It depends upon the genuine manner
111. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1097 b 34.
112. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1097 b 34 sq.: ἀφοριστέον.
113. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1097 b 33 sqq.
114. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1098 a 2: αἰσθητική τις.
115. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1098 a 3 sq.
116. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1098 a 14.
117. Eth. Nic. Α 6, 1098 a 7.