genuinely know”; προαίρεσις is directed at “what we know most of all” in the sense of cognition, what we have clearly reckoned about, what corresponds to the circumstances on which it depends.127
7. One can very well have the best view and yet come to, or be resolved to, a κακόν. Δόξα and προαίρεσις are distinguished in themselves. In the best case, being able to construct views about something and being able to be resolved in the right way are not conflated.128
Δόξα and προαίρεσις approach each other precisely when one takes δόξα in the narrow meaning of being directed at “that which can be otherwise,” the ἐνδεχόμενον ἄλλως, insofar as it is a συμφέρον. I can have a definite view about a matter in light of its conduciveness; I can be for maintaining that it is better than the others.
d) The Character of δόξα as the Orientedness of Average Being-with-One-Another-in-the-World
We want to gather the entire analysis together and orient it, with regard to its content, to the question that genuinely interests us: the peculiar phenomenon of being-oriented in the world, how human being-there initially has its world there in an average way, how orientedness is in the having-there of the world. What do we find in relation to this phenomenon of discoveredness on the basis of the analysis of δόξα?
Δόξα is the genuine discoveredness of being-with-one-another-in-theworld. The world is there for us as what-is-with-one-another in discoveredness, insofar as we live in δόξα. Living in a δόξα means having it with others. That others also have it belongs to opinion.
The next thing to notice is that the realm of δόξα is πάντα. Even in everydayness, being-oriented in the world is not only directed to πρακτά; discoveredness does not only exist with regard to πρακτά. I do not only know information about my concrete task, about what I have to do in my immediate surroundings. Instead, I also have a definite view of the way that the world and nature are, of that in which there are πρακτά—of the moon, of the stars, of what is ἀεί for the Greeks. Δόξα reaches out to the entire world; for the πρακτόν with which I deal is not a determinate realm of beings, but is that with which I have to do as beings, that which is itself in the world, in the being of nature. Thus there are determinate being-relations between the πρακτόν and nature, the ἀεὶ ὄν.
The manner and mode in which this world is possessed as uncovered to a certain degree is this being-for, maintaining that it is thus. In this being-for as
127. Eth. Nic. Γ 4, 1112 a 7 sq.: καὶ προαιρούμεθα μὲν ἃ μάλιστα ἴσμεν ἀγαθὰ ὄντα, δοξάζομεν δὲ ἃ οὐ πάνυ ἴσμεν.
128. Eth. Nic. Γ 4, 1112 a 8 sqq.: δοκοῦσί τε οὐχ οἱ αὐτοὶ προαιρεῖσθαί τε ἄριστα καὶ δοξάζειν, ἀλλ’ ἔνιοι δοξάζειν μὲν ἄμεινον, διὰ κακίαν δ’ αἱρεῖσθαί οὐχ ἃ δεῖ.