58
Leading Question of Philosophy

Schwegler, however, Jaeger believes that Aristotle, despite this chapter's disconnectedness with the hook as a whole, himself added it as an appendix.


a) The rejection of Θ 10's placement in Θ and the traditional
interpretation of being-true as a problem of logic and
epistemology (Schwegler, Jaeger, Ross).
The erroneous interpretation of κυριώτατα resulting from
this interpretation


If, like Jaeger, one adopts Schwegler's view that a chapter on logic could not substantively belong in the Metaphysics, then for the sake of consistency one should not attribute the addition of this chapter to Aristotle himself, especially considering the manner in which Aristotle's chapters and books are composed and constructed. Jaeger's opinion becomes all the more curious when, to justify the rejection of Chapter 10's placement in Θ, he goes even further than Schwegler. Jaeger sees the main 'external' hindrance to accepting Chapter 10 in the fact that the ὄν ἀληθὲς not only supposedly relates to the principal theme, but that this ὄν is taken as κυριώτατα, i.e. that beings as being-true are understood as the most proper beings. 'To me this is very improbable, and it will strike everyone else likewise.' 'If anyone were to support the placement of Θ 10 on the ground that only here is the κυριώτατα ὄν attained, he would misunderstand the wording, and besides, he would be thinking in an un-Aristotelian way.22 Jaeger wants to say that whoever maintains that Aristotle in Θ 10 conceives being-true as the most proper being does not understand what κυριώτατα means, moreover has a concept of being quite foreign to Aristotle.

I maintain, by contrast, that anyone who conceives Θ 10 as belonging to Θ, and sees it as the genuine culmination of Θ and of Aristotle's Metaphysics, as such. thinks not just in properly Aristotelian terms, but simply in Greek terms. The fact that Aristotle closes with Θ 10, interpreting being-true as proper being, indicates that Greek metaphysics' fundamental conception of being here comes to its first and ultimate radical expression. Only someone who uncritically accepts long-standing traditional platitudes about Aristotle could regard this as un-Aristotelian.

Thus it is clear that the apparently eternal question concerning the placement or Chapter 10 in Book Θ can only be resolved by going into


22 Jaeger, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte, p. 52.


[81-83]


Martin Heidegger (GA 31) The Essence of Human Freedom