ON THE ESSENCE AND CONCEPT OF Φύσις
the stricture that in it we find only εἰς τρόπος, one way of understanding the essence of φύσις, namely, as ὕλη ("matter"). Ἔτερος τρόπος, the other way, which Aristotle develops in the following sections, conceives of φύσις as μορφή ("form"). In this distinction between ὕλη and μορφή (matter and form) we quite easily recognize the distinction that we previously discussed: πρῶτον ἀρρύθμιστον, that which is primarily unstructured, and ῥυθμός, structure. But Aristotle does not simply replace Antiphon's distinction with that of ὕλη and μορφή. Antiphon considered ῥυθμός (structure) only as something unstable that happens to attach itself incidentally to what alone is stable, to what is unstructured (matter); but for Aristotle, according to the thesis we have just read, μορφή too has the distinction of determining the essence of φύσις. Both interpretations of φύσις are given equal rank, and this offers the possibility of constructing a double concept of φύσις. But in line with this, the first task incumbent upon us is to show that μορφή is the proper characteristic of the essence of φύσις.
This is the way it seems at first glance, but in fact everything shapes up quite differently. The ὕλη-μορφή distinction is not simply another formula for ἀρρύθμιστον-ῥυθμός. Rather, it lifts the question of φύσις onto an entirely new level where precisely the unasked question about the κίνησις-character of [344] φύσις gets answered, and where φύσις for the first time is adequately conceived as οὐσία, a kind of presencing. This likewise implies that, despite appearances to the contrary, the aforementioned theory of Antiphon is rejected with the sharpest kind of refutation. We can see all this with sufficient clarity only if we understand the now emerging distinction between ὕλη-μορφή, in an Aristotelian — i.e., Greek — sense and do not lose this understanding again right away. We are constantly on the verge of losing it because the distinction between "matter" and "form" is a common road that Western thinking has traveled for centuries now. The distinction between content and form passes for the most obvious of all things obvious. Therefore, why should not the Greeks, too, have already thought according to this "schema"? Ὕλη-μορφή, was translated by the Romans as materia and forma. With the interpretation implied in this translation the distinction was carried over into the Middle Ages and modern times. Kant understands it as the distinction between "matter" and "form," which he explains as the distinction between the "determinable" and its "determination." (Cf. The Critique of Pure Reason, "The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection," A266, B 322) With this we reach the point furthest removed from Aristotle's Greek distinction.
Ὕλη, in the ordinary sense means "forest," "thicket," the "woods" in which the hunter hunts. But it likewise means the woods that yield wood
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