things in an external way but determines what and how they are. To be sure, it is important to characterize objects of use in this way. But this still does not provide an answer to the question of the kind of presence possessed by such things. It is only preparation for this, i.e. for actually asking this question, and indeed it is only one specifically oriented preparation. This characterization contributes to our understanding of what and how a chair is, but it is incomplete. Indeed, something quite crucial is missing.
But what else are we supposed to discover about the chair, or more accurately, about its way of being, when it just stands there? That it has four legs? It could if necessary stand on three. And even if it had just two legs, in which case it would be lying on its side, it would still be a present chair, albeit a broken one. In fact. there are chairs with just one leg. We can say whether it has a back-rest or not, is upholstered or not, is high or low, comfortable or uncomfortable. But we are asking about its way of being simply as there to use, however it may be constructed and irrespective of whether it is standing or has fallen over. So it stands or lies. It does not. therefore, run about, thus it is not an animal or a human. But we are asking about what it is, not about what it is not. It stands, i.e. it rests. Now it is not a great piece of wisdom to establish this. And yet everywhere, and precisely where one cannot shout loudly enough that chairs and tables are things and not just representations in us, the much proclaimed 'being-initself' of such things has been stubbornly ignored. But what do we ourselves want with all this? What is obtained from this advice that the present chair rests? Just that the chair's 'resting', its 'standing', its 'having a stand', indicates the fact that it exists in movement. But we said that it rests and we placed particular emphasis on this. To be sure, but only something whose nature belongs in movement can rest. The number five does not and can never rest. This is not because it is constantly in movement, but because it cannot come into movement at all. Whatever rests is in movement, i.e. movability belongs to the being of that which rests. Thus one cannot, without going into the essence of movement and movability, problematize the being of the present chair which stands there. On the other hand, in problematizing the essence of movement, questioning comes into the proximity of the question of being. If we ask about the essence of movement, it is necessary to speak of being, even if not explicitly and thematically.
So it is with Aristotle, of whom we have already said that he grasped the problem of movement for the first time, albeit in such a way that he neither saw nor grasped its inner connection with the problem of being. But he understood that if being-in-movement is a determination of
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