as thought. For all of these are discriminating, but they differ according to the distinctions spoken of elsewhere” (700b16–21; emphasis in transcript).
This passage clearly serves two purposes. First, by being read with De Anima Γ.9, it makes it easier to see the latter as concerned with the movement that characterizes all living things, rather than with a particular kind of movement that characterizes only some animals (as for plants, if they are overlooked here by Heidegger, so are they by Aristotle in De motu). Secondly, the refence in the passage to the “for-the-sake-of” and to proairesis makes the connection between De Anima Γ.9 and ΝΕ VI.2, a relation that Heidegger at the end of the class maintains to be a close one (engen Bezug) (WPIA, 18). Indeed, recall that what Heidegger found in NE VI.2 is a characterization of human being as movement (Bewegung). The turn to De Anima Γ.9 is clearly motivated by the conviction that we cannot understand the specific movement that is the human being nor the specific forms of alêtheuein that characterize this movement (the dianoetic virtues), without an understanding of the movement that characterizes life as such.
The class of November 23 begins with Heidegger claiming that, in order to get clear on the kind of being alêtheuein has, we must see how Aristotle determines the being of the soul. “What meaning does ἀληθεύειν have, with respect to its being, within life?” (WPIA, 19; my emphasis). To answer this question, we must turn to De Anima Γ.9 because it deals with the movement (Bewegung) of the living thing as a movement within its world (κάτα τόπον). But Heidegger first recalls the determination of the soul in Book II as the eidos and the ousia of living things, insisting on the correlation with logos (made explicit by Aristotle in the phrase οὐσία ἡ κατὰ τὸν λόγον at 412b10– 11): the soul is determined according to how it shows itself (eidos) and how it is had, possessed (ousia) in being spoken of and addressed (WPIA, 19–20). Only then does Heidegger turn back to Γ.9, this time noting Aristotle’s opening distinction between two ways in which the soul can be: (1) krinein, that is, being confronted with something, having something lie over against it (ἀντικείμενον), having a world; and (2) moving within the world, taking its place within the world, the kinêsis kata topon. That Heidegger understands this movement as a “relating oneself to a world” is made clear when he insists that being at rest (στάσις, ἠρεμεῖν) is one way in which this movement takes place. In case students still doubt the need to work through this difficult Aristotelian text, Heidegger observes: “These are completely fundamental things that only Aristotle saw and philosophically formulated. Before him they were never so seen and later were lost again” (WPIA, 20).