λόγος becomes such that it advances to the ἀρχαί. The concrete fulfillment of the ἕξις is ἐπιστήμη, and the “science” that has to do with the ἀρχαί is πρώτη φιλοσοφία, or more concisely: σοφία. A distinctive research that does not scrutinize beings as to their concrete determinations but rather sets forth the basic respects, is guided by the question: τί τὸ ὄν? “What are beings as beings? What is being?”
Such an ἀρχή-research as a possibility in being-there itself lies before us in that which we know as the Aristotelian Physics. In Book 3, Aristotle characterizes this research as μέθοδος περὶ φύσεως.1 The investigation is περὶ φύσεως, not περὶ τῶν φύσει ὄντων, not “about those beings that are determined by the way of being of φύσις,” but rather about φύσις itself, about the being of these beings. In order to understand the context of the Physics, by way of Aristotelian ontology, the following must be held to from the outset: research that treats of φύσις is nothing other than the obtaining of the primary categories that Aristotle subsequently develops in his ontology. Φύσις is characterized as ἀρχὴ κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς.2 It is appropriate to make use of the more precise expression, μεταβολή. If φύσις is to be clarified, then that of which it is ἀρχή must itself be clarified. “What movement itself is is not to be concealed.”3 Here Aristotle speaks from the recollection of the preceding books of the Physics, to which we must briefly orient ourselves, and whose context I am supplying.
At the moment that Aristotle begins the investigation of φύσις, he is already operating within a determinate interpretedness of nature. During the years of his studying and teaching, there were definite conceptions of nature known to him, which he believed did not hit upon the beings that they interpreted. If these beings are to be interpreted, it depends upon deconstructing the interpretedness that disguises them, exposing them in the way that they are themselves intended, even in earlier conceptions. In other words, the first step of such ἀρχή-research is critique, in the sense that what was always already interpreted, what was already seen in early conceptions, is to be brought to its genuine rightfulness, to transparency. Critique is nothing other than the bringing-to-itself of the past. Thus ἀρχή-research is at once research about access: it opens the path to what is intended.
Aristotle carries through this ἀρχή-research itself in Book 1 of his Physics. This critique appears immediately to be pressed into an entirely peculiar form, insofar as Aristotle discusses the question as to whether, in relation to these beings, there is one ἀρχή or several ἀρχαί. We must come to an understanding of what this question genuinely means. We will achieve some clarity if we present the first stage of the critique, the critical encounter with the Eleatics. This critique of the Eleatics is touched upon often enough. People have said
1. Phys. Γ 1, 200 b 13.
2. Phys. Γ 1, 200 b 12 sq.
3. Phys. Γ 1, 200 b 13 sq.: δεῖ μὴ λανθάνειν τί ἐστι κίνησις.