PATHMARKS
This phrase seeks to ward off an error, and Aristotle explains its meaning by an example:
VI. "But I add the phrase 'not like something appearing in addition' because someone, entirely of and by himself, might become the (originating and ordering) source of 'health' for himself, and could at the same time be a doctor. He has the medical know-how in himself, but not insofar as he regains his health. Rather in this case, being a doctor and regaining health happen to have come together in one and the same person. But for this very reason the two also remain separated from each other, each on its own." (192 b23-27)
Aristotle, a doctor's son, likes to use examples drawn from medical "πρᾶξις," and he does so in other contexts as well. [326 {GA 9 256}] Here he gives us the case of a doctor who treats himself and thereby regains his health. Two kinds of movedness are interwoven here in a peculiar way: ιάτρεθσις, the practicing of medicine as a τέχνη, and ὑγίαισις, the regaining of health as "φύσις." In the present case, that of a doctor who treats himself, both movements are found in one and the same being, in this specific person. The same holds for the respective ἀρχή of each of the two "movements." The "doctor" has the ἀρχή of regaining his health ἐν ἑαυτῷ, in himself, but not καθ᾽ αὐτὸν, not according to himself, not insofar as he is a doctor. The origin and ordering of regaining health is not being a doctor but being human, and this only insofar as the human being is a ζῷον, a living being that lives only inasmuch as it "is a body" ["leibt"]. As even we say, a healthy "nature," capable of resistance, is the real origin and ordering of regaining health. Without this ἀρχή, all medical practice is in vain. But on the other hand, the doctor has the ἀρχή of practicing medicine in himself: being a doctor is the origin and ordering of the treatment. But this ἀρχή, namely, this know-how and antecedent view (τέχνη) of what health is and what pertains to keeping and regaining it (the εἶδος τῆς ὑγιείας) - this ἀρχή is not in the human being qua human but is something in addition, attained by someone only through studying and learning. Consequently, in relation to regaining health, τέχνη itself is always merely something that can appear in addition. Doctors and the practice of medicine do not grow the way trees do. Of course, we do speak of a "born" doctor, by which we mean that a person brings with him or her the talent for recognizing diseases and treating the sick. But these talents are never, in the manner of φύσις, the ἀρχή for being a doctor, inasmuch as they do not unfold from out of themselves toward the end of being a doctor.
Nonetheless, at this point the following objection could be raised. Say two doctors suffer from the same disease under the same conditions, and each one treats herself. However, between the two cases of illness there
196