to it. Aristotle chooses these words to express the pure and simple having of something in itself (neither derived from nor veering off toward some other thing). That which we encounter in such a having is preeminently “near” with a nearness that [181] contains no distance. The nearness contains only the thing we meet in its own self and nothing else; in a radical sense there is nothing else but it, purely in itself.

Aristotle stays with the kind of access and uncovering that characterizes the act of touching, and he uses it to clarify the unique way in which the ἀσύνθετα are encountered. In doing so, of course, he does not at all mean that uncovering is an act of actual touching, as is shown by the word that follows, φάναι, which has the sense of δηλοῦν, showing. At 1052a1 Aristotle paraphrases it as νοεῖν, the act of intellectual apprehension. Correspondingly, 1051b25 paraphrases μὴ θιγγάνειν [not touching it] as ἀγνοεῖν [not knowing it]. And at 1052a2, the opposite of [intellectual] apprehension is ἄγνοια [not knowing], as contrasted with νοητικόν [knowable] at a3.

In De anima II 2, we find the words ἁφή . . . αἴσθησις, “touch” as one form of “sense perception.”⁴⁴ Moreover, at De anima II 424a1, we read that τὸ γὰρ αἰσθάνεσθαι πάσχειν τι ἐστίν [“Sense perception is some kind of receptivity.”] But here in Metaphysics V, νοεῖν, which is pure ἐνέργεια, is also called a πάσχειν.

Aristotle occasionally designates νοεῖν as an αἴσθησις, even though the senses play no role in it. The decisive point is that whatever is uncovered in αἴσθησις is had directly in itself. For that, Aristotle uses the flexible expression θιγγάνων [touching] for the ways [in which the] intellect functions. At Metaphysics XII 7, 1072b21 we find θιγγάνων καὶ νοῶν [touching and knowing].⁴⁵

If we want to determine the being of these beings by using uncovering as our clue, we can do so only by looking at how these beings are manifested of and by themselves in this uncovering which opens up entirely the beings it encounters. Our gaze is now directed exclusively to the thing to be understood, and not to any other thing that might make the determination possible. Rather, the gaze itself is pure uncovering in such a way that not only does it require no determining [of its

44. [GA 21 (p. 181.13) misreads “B 2” as “B 11,” and accents ἁφή incorrectly. The Greek text is found at 413b5: “The primary kind of perception, common to all [animals], is touch.”]

45. At Metaphysics XII 7, 1072b13, Aristotle also uses this expression “touch” for the way intellect functions in another very important context, a clarification that Hegel put at the end of his Encyclopaedia in order to document in a certain way that he was saying nothing different from what Aristotle says in that text. [See G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), ed. Friedhelm Nicolin and Otto Pöggeler (Hamburg: Felix Meiner), p. 463.]