PATHMARKS
indeed as the most stable, and thus in a certain sense as that which most is - and then declare this to be φύσις. Looked at in this way, φύσις offers the dual possibility of being addressed in terms of matter and form. This dual way of addressing φύσις has its basis in the original twofold essence of φύσις. More precisely it is grounded in a misinterpretation of the δυνάμει ὄν, one that changes the δυνάμει ὄν from "the appropriate" to something merely orderable and on hand. The doctrine of Antiphon and of his successors, who have continued in an unbroken line down to today, seizes upon the most extreme non-essence of φύσις and inflates it into the real and only essence. In fact, such inflation remains the essence of all nonessence.
Re (4) What is the consequence of the twofoldness of φύσις for the final determination of its essence? Answer: the simplicity of this essence. If we keep the whole in mind, then we now have two conceptual determinations of the essence of φύσις. The one takes φύσις as ἀρχὴ κινήσεως τοῦ κινουμένον καθ᾽ αὐτό, the origin and ordering of the movedness of what moves of and by itself. The other takes φύσις as μορφή, which means as γένεσις, which means κίνησις. If we think both determinations in their unity, then from the viewpoint of the first one, φύσις is nothing other than ἀρχὴ φύσεως, which is precisely what the second definition says: φύσις is φύσεως ὁδός εἰς φύσιν — φύσις is itself the origin and ordering of itself. From the viewpoint of the second definition, φύσις is the μορφή ἀρχῆς, the self-placing in which the origin places itself into the ordering process and [369] as that which orders the self-placing into the appearance. Μορφή is the essence of φύσις as ἀρχή, and ἀρχή is the essence of φύσις as μορφή, insofar as the uniqueness of μορφή consists in the fact that, in φύσις, the εἶδος, of and by itself and as such, brings itself into presencing. Unlike τέχνη, φύσις does not first require a supervening ποίησις that takes just something lying around (e.g., wood) and brings it into the appearance of "table." Such a product is never, of and by itself, on-the-way and never can be on-the-way to a table.
Φύσις on the other hand, is the presencing of the absencing of itself, one that is on-the-way from itself and unto itself. As such an absencing, φύσις remains a going-back-into-itself, but this going-back is only the going of a going-forth.
But here in the Physics Aristotle conceives of φύσις as the beingness (οὐσία) of a particular (and in itself limited) region of beings, things that grow as distinguished from things that are made. With regard to their kind of being, these beings stem precisely from φύσις, of which Aristotle therefore says: ἓν γάρ τι γένος τοῦ ὄντος ἡ φύσις, "Φύσις is one branch of being [among others] for (the many-branched tree of) beings." Aristotle says
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