motion be realized in local motion when one disregards that for φόρα [that is, the Greek conception of movement in place] a determinate direction, above and under, are given, that is, when one understands motion in the modern sense?” (WP3, 4). The obvious answer seems to be that Aristotle’s account of the nature of motion is incompatible with the modern concep-tion of motion, which disregards precisely what Aristotle considers essen-tial conditions of motion. But we will need to see what the seminar will have to say on this point.
The next class of June 4 picks up on the earlier claim of an opposition between Aristotle and Plato on the notion of kinêsis by dedicating itself to a report (Referat) on the account of kinêsis in Plato’s Sophist. The Weiss notes here, while capturing the essential points, are very brief and therefore need to be supplemented by the much more detailed published protocol attributed to Paul Jacoby. The protocol shows Heidegger explaining how the notion of “communion” (κοινωνία) arises in Plato’s dialogue in the context of attempting to show the communion between being and not-being, that is, how “what is” in a sense is not and “what is not” in a sense is. He also notes how being is explicitly defined as the power of communing (δύναμις κοινωνίας) with other beings through acting upon (ποιεῖν) or being acted upon (παθεῖν) by them (GA83, 238).8 But what is essential in the context of the present seminar is what Weiss explicitly identifies as essential (WP3, 5; das Wesentliche): why are kinêsis and stasis included by Plato among the highest genera of being and thereby assigned a universal power of com-munion with all other beings? As Heidegger notes, Aristotle in contrast sees motion as characterizing that specific region of being he calls phusis. The crucial answer is that Plato is led here by the very being of the soul, specifically in its character of possessing logos. The soul itself in speaking and thinking is movement: specifically, the movement Aristotle calls orexis and that we have seen receive so much discussion from Heidegger in earlier seminars. This is why the Visitor objects to the “friends of the forms” that if they exclude motion and change from genuine being, they will also have to exclude life and intelligence (248e7–249a2). On the other hand, in thinking and addressing something as something, the soul relates itself to an object that must itself not be in motion, that must be eternally (ἀεὶ ὄν). To be an object of knowledge a being must remain what it is, must not change; in other words, it must be characterized by stasis. As the Weiss notes state (WP3, 5), Plato includes kinêsis and stasis among the highest genera of being because he “has in view λόγος (γιγνώσκειν, φρόνησις, ζωή, ψυχή) and the
8. The definition at Sophist 247e1–2 does not explicitly include the concept of koinônia but Heidegger adds it in citing the definition, presumably because he sees it as implied by the notions of acting upon and being acted upon.