something we are posing here. We are striving to make intelligible some basic determinations of this being as being-in-movement, and thereby being-produced, having-become. More concretely, the context is one in which Aristotle attempts to unpack the characters-of-being-there, the type of presence and the type of being-produced, setting forth the characteristic being-aspects of being as living things in nature. For such a setting forth, the phenomenal fact of the matter that the Greeks designated as ψυχή must become visible—whether soul belongs to beings, i.e, what is in the world: φαινόμενον ψυχής. The structure of this consideration is oriented toward the question: what belongs to the right type of methodical treatment of the φύσει ὄντα? We will arrange the investigation into three parts:
1. we are considering the basis on which Aristotle investigates the characters-of-being-and-presence of the φύσει ὄντα, the field of what is known on the basis of which the unknown becomes intelligible. This field is the ἔργα τέχνης, what is there at one’s disposal, to hand, produced for definite action and treatment by another.
2. How do the φύσει γινόμενα, living nature, appear?
3. How did the ancient physiologists see the being of φύσει γινόμενα? The aim of the critical consideration of forerunners is to set forth their characteristic lapses, misguided searches.
Ad 1. We have begun with the first point, namely, presenting the ἔργα τέχνης to ourselves. In its primary deliberating, τέχνη provides that look which the thing to be produced should have, the ποιητέον, the working pace of producing. In the second cited passage,283 Aristotle makes the connection between the addressed look of production and the production itself explicit. The connection is constituted by a definite type of speaking; the λόγος is characterized by the ‘if-then’: if such and such is to be completed, then such and such must occur. Implicit in this ‘if-then,’ is the fact that a definite out-of-which of producing, a definite ὕλη, is required by the look of the thing to be produced. For the production of a shoe, I need this or that leather—the out-of-which of a coming into being, lasting. It is necessary that a such and such, a ὕλη, be procured, that such an out-of-which be present in advance, be at one’s disposal. The out-of-which of producing is itself there in this definite disposability. This disposability is indicated on the basis of what is to be there as completed. ἀνάγκη δὲ τοιάνδε τὴν ὕλην ὑπάρξαι, εἰ ἔσται οἰκία ἢ ἄλλο τι τέλος· καὶ γενέσθαι τε καὶ κινηθῆναι δεῖ τόδε πρῶτον, εἶτα τόδε, καὶ τοῦτον δὴ τὸν τρόπον ἐφεξῆς μέχρι τοῦ τέλους καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα γίνεται ἕκαστον καὶ ἔστιν.284 “It is necessary that a ὕλη, thus procured, be present if a house or another being is to be in its being-completed. And the coming to be and the being-moved [i.e., the working pace of producing] must be, first and foremost, the first step of working, must be this or that,
283. De part. an. Α 1, 639 b 26 sqq.
284. Ibid.