dunamis which is in Latin possibilitas (WP3, 30–31). Heidegger then notes that the first type of dunamis can also be a dunamis in the second sense (presumably because if I have the power to run, my running is possible). But this second sense has the character of a negation, represents a privation in relation to the concept of being, while this is not the case with the first sense (especially if this first sense is understood as a power of choice [Wahl] with possibilities open to it). It is hard to see where, if anywhere, Heidegger is going with these brief remarks, except to return again to the notion of an ontological privation, this time by way of the notion of dunamis.
Indeed, the next words in the notes are the following: “We say: motionlessness is the ontological privation. This implies: all being must then be understood from motion. We then have the possibility that a certain [kind of] being will be interpreted transcendentally-metaphysically as motionless” (WP3, 31). But in this repetition of what was stated earlier we still have no explicit statement of what the debitum of this ontological privation is, though we have seen Heidegger confirm in his own notes that it is the absolute being-in-motion of Dasein itself. And what of Aristotle? Does this concept of motion appear in him or not? The only answer we get is in the final two sentences of Weiss’s notes, explicitly marked by her as “the close of the seminar”: “This concept of motion, which is a transcendental-ontological one, hangs together with time. It shines through in this highly noteworthy chapter 6 in this peculiar perfect: ἑώρακε etc.” (WP3, 31). The suggestion, then, is that not only what Heidegger has called the “absolute motion” of Dasein itself, but also the distinctive temporality of this motion shines through in the praxis analyzed in Metaphysics Θ.6 and its distinctive perfect tense. If only we were told more! We have seen that Heidegger’s account of the distinctiveness of praxis and of its perfect tense seems far from adequate. His own acknowledgement in the closing words that the perfect tense of praxis is “peculiar” suggests that more needs to be said here.
Yet something needs to be noted about this important second half of Θ.6, though not explicitly noted by Heidegger, that shows that Heidegger is not wrong to seek in it something corresponding to his own conception of the absolute motion of Dasein itself: not only does Aristotle speak of praxis synonymously with energeia, but all of his examples of energeia in contrast to kinêsis are ways of being of Dasein: not only seeing, but thinking, living, and living well. It indeed cannot surprise us enough that Aristotle, in the only place in which he attempts to explain his fundamental ontological concept of energeia, turns to praxis and our own way of being.26 Heidegger,
26. It is clearly this surprise that motivated Burnyeat 2008 to attempt to show that the passage in Θ.6 did not originally belong there but was written for some ethical context. For a detailed refutation of Burnyeat’s argument that thus defends the ontological significance and place of the passage, see Gonzalez 2019a.