such. When the bronze is in the process of becoming a statue, its reference to the statue as “suitability for a statue” is present in its referring. But if this is what motion is, then the finished product in which it comes to an end must be characterized as rest (die Ruhe). In other words, if motion is the presence of what is suitable in its suitability for, that is, in its referring, then the “referred,” that in which the referring comes to an end, has the character of rest. Indeed, in contrast to dunamei on, whose presence as such is motion, the presence of what is present-at-hand, the hupokeimenon, is rest. The piece of bronze lying around, before its suitability-for is made present as such and when merely present-at-hand, is at rest. The finished statue, as finished and now simply present-at-hand, is also at rest. As both Weiss and the published protocol record, “Rest is oriented to motion both forwards and backwards” (WP3, 7; GA83, 249). But this shows us that the presence of the dunamei on (which equals motion) is not only different from the pres-ence of the hupokeimenon, but that it has ontological priority: since rest is only the privation of motion, being-present-at-hand is only the privation of being dunamei.11 In short, the being of dunamis as dunamis not only can-not be identified with being-present-at-hand, but represents a more funda-mental conception of being. It is worth remembering that on Heidegger’s analysis in Being and Time, Dasein is a “being-possible” to be distinguished ontologically from what is merely present-at-hand. Did not Aristotle then grasp this distinction in his definition of motion, despite Heidegger’s thesis about the Greeks understanding being as presence?
Such a possibility is only further suggested by Heidegger’s comment on Aristotle’s characterization of motion as an “incomplete activity” (201b31–32; ἐνέργεια ἀτελές): in the example of housebuilding, the telos is the fin-ished house, so the that process of building the house, as long as it lasts, must be lacking the telos, ateles. Heidegger’s comment is to see expressed here a mode of being that according to its very essence is always underway (WP3, 7; GA83, 249; unterwegs). In Being and Time, Heidegger claimed that Dasein “is always in some way directed and underway [unterwegs]; stand-ing still and remaining are only limit cases of this directed ‘underway’” (SZ, 79). In the specification that the being-underway made present in motion has the structure of a “from-to” we can even glimpse the temporality of Dasein that Heidegger claims the Greeks failed to grasp: the ecstatic unity of future, past, and present (see especially SZ, 365).12
So do we then have here a “breach in ancient ontology”? Interestingly,
while this phrase is followed by an exclamation mark in the Weiss notes, it is
11. This point is also expressed clearly in Heidegger’s own notes: “Die ἐντελέχεια des ὑποκείμενον nur Grenzfall der ἐντελέχεια des δυνατόν. Was heißt hier Grenzfall? Warum dieser scheinbar das Erste? ‘Ruhe,’ Ansetzen beim Festen!” (GA83, 7).
12. This suggestion is explicit in Heidegger’s own notes: “Ἐντελέχεια: [die] Fertigkeit (Zukunft) eines Hergangs (Gewesenheit) in sich enthalten (Gegenwart)—Zeitlichkeit” (GA83, 4).