Therefore the first sciences, e.g., mathematics, originated in Egypt, because the priests had the time to do nothing but observe. If thus there is indeed in Dasein a tendency to disclosure, yet an autonomous disclosure for its own sake is genuinely possible only where Dasein is free from concern over the ἀναγκαῖα. In such σχολάζειν there occurs a leap from the tendency to fabricate; σχολάζειν is a matter of abstaining from all concern over the ἀναγκαῖα in order to linger in mere onlooking and disclosure. The more mere onlooking and disclosure come into their own, the more visible becomes the why—the διὰ τί or the αἰτία—and ultimately more and more clear becomes the "from out of which," τὸ διὰ τί πρῶτον (Met. I, 3, 983a29) or τὰ ἐξ ἀρχῆς αἴτια (cf. a24)—the ἀρχή.
We now have in αἴσθησις and ἐπιστήμη two end-stations, without our having genuinely understood σοφία. That possibility which first goes beyond the merely momentary disclosedness of αἴσθησις, making beings more explicitly accessible, is retention: μνήμη. Retaining present, as a mode of access to beings, maintains itself up to σοφία, in which the presentifying relates explicitly to the ἀρχαί.
§14. Σοφία (Met. I, 2). The four essential moments of
σοφία (πάντα, χαλεπώτατα, ἀκριβέστατα, αὐτῆς ἕνεκεν).
Clarifying reduction of the first three essential moments to
the μάλιστα καθόλου.
We must now ask what is σοφία; i.e., who is the σοφός himself? Aristotle confronts this question in Metaphysics I, 2. The determination is not made dogmatically; instead, Aristotle returns again to natural and most immediate Dasein. εἰ δὴ λάβοι τις τὰς ὑπολήψεις ἃς ἔχομεν περὶ τοῦ σοφοῦ, τάχ᾽ ἂν ἐκ τούτου φανερὸν γένοιτο μᾶλλον (982a6ff.). The task is to take up and select the opinions we—κοινωνία—already possess, i.e., the interpretations of the σοφός in natural everyday Dasein, and to make this preliminary conception of σοφία more explicit and so make the interpretation found in natural Dasein more transparent. Aristotle enumerates four moments in which this interpretation characterizes Dasein's first understanding of the σοφός.
1.) πρῶτον μὲν ἐπίστασθαι πάντα τὸν σοφὸν ὡς ἐνδέχεται, μὴ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἔχοντα ἐπιστήμην αὐτῶν (982a8ff.). The wise one is conspicuous in the first place as the one "who knows πάντα, everything altogether," who in a peculiar sense understands everything, "without, however, having a knowledge which looks upon the καθ᾽ ἕκαστον, every single thing separately," i.e., without having special knowledge of every possible subject matter. Nevertheless, when one speaks with him on any subject, he understands everything, and his understanding is genuine.