way, it is the possibility of the ‘warm.’ Only what is cold has the possibility of the warm, not what is hard or red. Only a definite, distinctive presence of a being has at the same time the possibility of the warm. The possibility is not just any arbitrary one, but rather one that has a definite direction. This fact of the matter is the condition of the possibility of there being something like movement, connections in nature, working in relation to one another. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether every moving thing is itself in movement, whether every being is also in itself δυνάμει, or whether there is a way of being that is excluded by every possibility, that simply is ἐνεργείᾳ: πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον,19 indeed “moving,” but itself “no possibility of being moved.”
201 a 27–b 15: more precise discussion of the definition of movement—this section is the most important.20
b) The Role of Fear in ἀρχή-Research
The ἀπορῆσαι of the ἀρχαί, going through the difficulties that the ancients had in opening up that region that they had constantly before their eyes without genuinely knowing it—Aristotle offers, in Chapter 8 of Book 9 of the Metaphysics, a peculiar remark, according to which the discussion of the ancients is, at its basis, guided by fear: διὸ αἰεὶ ἐνεργεῖ ἥλιος καὶ ἄστρα καὶ ὅλος ὁ οὐρανός, καὶ οὐ φοβερὸν μή ποτε στῇ, ὃ φοβοῦνται οἱ περὶ φύσεως.21 Those who previously discussed the being of nature, the being-there of the world, and determined the world accordingly, were genuinely guided and led in their framing of the question by φόβος, by “fear” in wanting what-is-there-alwaysthus, the constant rotation of the stars, what “for once stands still”—the discussion of the being of beings out of fear that it would, at some point, no longer be. By now, we have learned that fear as such is possible only insofar as the ἐλπὶς σωτηρίας is alive in it. Being-afraid is only possible in a still-holding-to another possibility, namely, that what is impending might stay away. The fear that, here, leads the analysis of being, lives from the hope or conviction that beings, genuinely speaking, may and should have to be being-there-always. For the fear of the disappearing-at-some-point-from-the-there presupposes the holding-fast to the sense of being as being-always-present. This sense of being is, therefore, implicitly at the basis of all of the ancients’ discussions—discussion that took place after setting forth definite ἀρχαί at any price. The interpretation of the ἀρχαί, and thereby of beings themselves, is conveyed in a determinate being familiar with the being-there of the world itself. The fear that it could disappear is eliminated in that being-there is conveyed in a determinate familiarity. What is genuinely threatening to being-there is thereby abolished. For this reason, the genuine possibility is διαγωγή,22 the “stay” in
19. Phys. Γ 1, 201 a 27: ἔστι γάρ τι κινοῦν καὶ ἀκίνητον.
20. See Hs. p. 366 f.
21. Met. Θ 8, 1050 b 22 sqq.
22. Eth. Nic. Κ 7, 1177 a 26 sq.: εὔλογον δὲ τοῖς εἰδόσι τῶν ζητούντων ἡδίω τὴν διαγωγὴν εἶναι.