PATHMARKS
as construction material. From this, ὕλη comes to mean material for any and every kind of building and "production." By having recourse to the "original" meaning of words (as one likes to do) we are supposed to have demonstrated that ὕλη means the same as "material." Yes, except that on closer inspection it is only that the crucial question now obtrudes for the first time. If ὕλη means "material" for "production," then the determination of the essence of this so-called material depends on the interpretation of "production." But surely μορφή does not mean "production." Rather, it means "shape," and the shape is precisely the "form" into which the "material" is brought by imprinting and molding, i.e., by the act of "forming."
[345] Yes, except that fortunately Aristotle himself tells us how he thinks μορφή, and he does so in the very sentence that introduces this concept that is so crucial for his φύσις-interpretation: ἡ μορφή καὶ τὸ εἶδος τὸ κατὰ τὸν λόγον: "μορφή, and this means τὸ εἶδος that is in accordance with the λόγος." Μορφή must be understood from εἶδος, and εἶδος must be understood in relation to λόγος. But εἶδος (which Plato also expressed as ἰδέα) and λόγος name concepts that, under the titles "idea" and "ratio" (reason), indicate fundamental positions taken by Western humanity that are just as equivocal and just as removed from the Greek origin as are "matter" and "form." Nonetheless we must try to reach the original. Εἶδος means the appearance of a thing and of a being in general, but "appearance" in the sense of the aspect, the "looks," the view, ἰδέα, that it offers and can offer only because the being has been put forth into this appearance and, standing in it, is present of and by itself — in a word, is. Ἰδέα is "the seen," but not in the sense that it becomes such only through our seeing. Rather, ἰδέα is what something visible offers to our seeing; it is what offers a view; it is the sightable. But Plato, overwhelmed as it were by the essence of εἶδος, understood it in turn as something in dependently present and therefore as something common (κοινόν) to the individual "beings" that "stand in such an appearance." In this way individuals, as subordinate to the ἰδέα as that which properly is, were displaced into the role of non-beings.
As against this, Aristotle demands that we see that the individual beings in any given instance (this house here and that mountain there) are not at all non-beings, but indeed beings insofar as they put themselves forth into the appearance of house and mountain and so first place this appearance into presencing. In other words, εἶδος is genuinely understood as εἶδος only when it appears within the horizon of one's immediate addressing of a being, εἶδος τὸ κατὰ τὸν λόγον. In each case the statement immediately addresses a this and a that as this and that, i.e., as having such and such an appearance. The clue by which we can understand εἶδος and so also μορφή
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