PATHMARKS
that into which the generation places the appearance surely must in each instance be something other than that "from which" it is generated.
Certainly φύσεως ὁδός εἰς φύσιν is a mode of coming forth into presencing, in which the "from which," the "to which," and the "how" of the presencing remain the same. Φύσις is a "going" in the sense of a going-forth toward a going-forth, and in this sense it is indeed a going back into itself; i.e., the self to which it returns remains a going-forth. The merely spatial image of a circle is essentially inadequate because this going-forth that goes back into itself precisely lets something go forth from which and to which the going-forth is in each instance on the way.
This essence of φύσις as κίνησις is fulfilled only by the kind of movedness that μορφή is. Therefore the decisive sentence, the one toward which this whole treatment of the essence of φύσις has been moving, says succinctly:
XVIII. "And so this, the self-placing into the appearance, is φύσις." (193 b18)
In the self-placing, as the ἐνέργεια ἀτελής characteristic of γένεσις, only the εἶδος, the appearance, is present as the "whence," the "whereunto," and the "how" of this being-on-the-way. So μορφή is not only φύσις "to a greater degree" than ὕλη is, and still less can it be put merely on a par with ὕλη such that the definition of the essence of φύσις would leave us with two τρόποι of equal weight, and Antiphon's doctrine would be entitled to equal authority nen to Aristotle's. Antiphon's doctrine now gets its stiffest rejection with the sentence, "Μορφή, and it alone, fulfills the essence of φύσις." But in the transition to his own interpretation (193 a28: ἕνα μὲν οὖν τρόπον οὕτως ἡ φύσις λέγεται),7 Aristotle did, after all, take over the doctrine of Antiphon. How can this fact be reconciled with the sentence we have just reached, which allows one and only one τρόπος? To understand this, we must know the extent to which [364 {GA 9 294}] Aristotle's acceptance of Antiphon's doctrine nevertheless constitutes the sharpest rejection of it. The most drastic way to reject a proposition is not to dismiss it brusquely as disproven and merely brush it aside, but on the contrary to take it over and work it into an essential and grounded connection with one's own argument — i.e., to take it over and work it in as the non-essence that necessarily belongs to the essence. For if it is possible at all to have two τρόποι in the interpretation of φύσις with regard to μορφή and ὕλη, with the result that ὕλη can be mistakenly interpreted as something formless that is stably at hand, then the reason must lie in the essence of φύσις, and that now means: in μορφή itself. Aristotle refers to this reason in the following passage, where his interpretation of φύσις reaches its conclusion:
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