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We use “presence” in this peculiarly indistinct way as praesens, which means both “spatial presence” and “now,” insofar as αἴσθησις is always in the now.

A being thus in the world is there and can, as δύναμις, at the same time be something usable. Δύναμις, ‘not yet,’ can mean: is usable for . . . , transformable into . . . This being that is there thus, as there completed and usable for . . . is characterized by the διχῶς as a being. It is for the most part, and on the average, not absolutely white or black, but rather for the most part things are encountered as being-there colored more or less black or white. Even a house is for the most part there in everydayness in such a way that something is lacking in it, characterized by στέρησις. Aristotle proceeds from this point in determining movement.

One must consider such a being: a piece of wood that lies at hand is there in a workshop with the cabinet-maker; as wood, it lies there with the determination of usability for . . . “Movement is ἐντελέχεια, presence of beings that are there as beings able to be there, indeed presence insofar as they can be there.”⁹² Movement is the presence of the ability-to-be-there as such. The wood can be a chest; it is now thought immediately and simply. This ability-to-be a chest is thought in this ability-to-be of the wood. Insofar as it is there, the wood is in movement. Insofar as the wood is there as being-able-to-be-a-chest in the genuine sense, there is movement. Whenever the cabinet-maker is at work on it, it is there in its ability-to-be. The ability-to-be is present in the being-at-work insofar as the cabinet-maker has it in hand. Accordingly, Aristotle can also define movement in what follows as ἐνέργεια. Ἐνέργεια as a mode of being-there means nothing other than the being-at-work of something. The wood as a thing lying there is there, and is at the same time usable for a chest. As wood, being there and being usable for . . . are not the same. Moreover, usability itself, as the being-character of beings that are there, does not yet characterize them as being found in movement. From this, one could infer that meaningfulness, as the determination of the beings that are there in the being of the world, is not genuinely apt here since usability is genuinely there only insofar as wood is at work. But this is a deception.

Closer consideration leads us to see that we have here come up against an aspect of the being-character of being-there that we have not noted. If the cabinet-maker is gone from the workshop, the chest that was begun lies there, and the wood is not at hand in movement, but it is also not how it was before the work—which is to say, merely δυνάμει in the first sense—rather it is at hand in rest. Rest is only an extreme case of movement. Resting is only possible for something that in itself has the being-determination of being in movement or being able to be in movement. We encounter many things of the world—most of those with which we have to do—for the most part as resting. I do not know

92. Phys. Γ 1, 201 a 10 sq.: ἡ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος ἐντελέχεια, ᾗ τοιοῦτον, κίνησίς ἐστιν.