On the Care Path
1.12 Degrees of Movement
Life is therefore envisaged as a presence in the world: a perfect presence, since it is complete in its being, yet one that is grasped on the basis of the reality of objects.
There is one difference, however: in the case of artifacts, the principle of production lies in something else, and the movement comes to a halt when the external end is reached—when the table has been completed.24 At that moment, the object, which has come into presence, subsists in itself as complete and hence independent of its producer. The table has become available.
In the case of a living being, by contrast, the end exists as something internal, as the mode of its movement. A living being does not have a form it must reach outside itself, but possesses the principle of movement and rest within. The completeness of the movement is already within the movement itself, in the very act of moving: the movement of life is completed at every moment—it does not result in any work. In
22 The concepts of matter and material are rooted in an understanding of the soul oriented toward production. For otherwise the idea of a material as that starting from which something is produced would remain concealed. The concepts of matter and material—the concept of hyle, which has the notion of morphe, or imprint, as its counterpart—therefore acquire a crucial role in ancient phi- losophy, not because the Greeks were materialists, but because that of matter is a fundamental ontological notion which necessarily emerges when an entity, be it a product or something which must not be produced, is interpreted within the horizon of the understanding of being inherent to the productive attitude as such (see GA 24 1975 pag 164).
23 The same view has also shaped the perception of man’s being according to those categories which enable us to grasp the meaning of objects, of things that are present and within our reach.
24 Another essential difference concerns generation, since human beings beget human beings but tables do not beget other tables (see Arist. Phys. B1 193 b 8–9).
1.12 Degrees of Movement
this respect, it therefore differs both from the perfection of sheer, ungenerated and incorruptible presence, which characterizes the divine, and from the realization of an artifact, where movedness gives way to rest through the completion of the product.
If life is movement and all movement is change, then change is a mode of being- there of life: its way of being at work in order to become complete (energeia), even though it is not yet complete (dynamis). In living beings change is understood on the basis of two principles: what remains unchanged, the substrate, which remains con- stant as transformation takes place, and form (eidos)/the privation of form (steresis), which instead constitutes that which changes. Hence the transition from one thing to another, while the selfsameness of the living creature endures in its being. Every transformation, therefore, can only be conceived as a transition from a given form to its privation, while that which endures beneath it and through it remains unchanged (substance, subject, organization).
So although human life realizes its perfection at every moment, ancient ontology grasps it as a self-subsisting entity: as an entity present within the world. The living being, in other words, is understood within the horizon of production and hence as a thing which is spatiotemporally situated and whose selfsameness also defines the possible determinations of its changes. A formula which encapsulates this view of human life, and its transformation centered around the notions of presence and pres- ent, was provided by Heidegger in the summer term course he held in 1931 (GA 33 1981): movement (change) = being in act = presence + absence.
Movement (kinesis), which corresponds to change (metabole), is an effective mode of being—the enduring presence of the substrate (ousia, energeia)—which represents the transition from something which is no longer present (apousia) to something which comes into presence (parousia) in a different and opposite way from the starting conditions. Just as the actuality of the work (i.e., the table) lies in its form, so man’s being in act manifests itself through its appearance and coming into presence and, at the same time, through its going out of presence (dikos). Youth vanishes as old age appears, or a disorder vanishes as well-being emerges. If we think of this from a Greek perspective, the manifestation of well-being coincides with the emergence of the absence of the disorder. This opposition between form and the privation of form implies that every form of movement, every alteration, constitutes a transformation of what endures, which, being always there, can change in terms of presence and the lack of presence (privation).
The lack of presence corresponds to a positive position, in the sense that it indi- cates a living absence: as when we say that we miss someone. The absence of this person is rather a determined mode of his/her presence. This privation of presence is itself constitutive of being-there. In the case of a young person who grows old, for example, the growing old is already part of the human being as a non-presence which may or may not manifest itself when—and if—the person’s being young is no longer present.
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This becoming being is what characterizes the condition of instability of sublu- nary entities. An entity in movement is not yet what it will be: it is an unfinished present being. The crucial point, however, is that change, the transformation of human life, is bound to a permanent presence. Every possibility, in other words, is abolished and reduced to a present essence, which endures while changing in terms of presence and non-presence.25 In this sense, every possibility is to be understood as an availability which may or may not become actual, depending on whether it comes into presence or not, but which in no way corresponds to sheer potentiality.
That is to say that, when Aristotle shows the changeability of sublunary entities, he grasps it on the basis of the present by fixing and neutralizing what is not yet within the permanent presence. Every past and every possible future are therefore reduced to this presence, to a permanent present. Historicity is thus erased.
Heidegger’s most thrilling discovery, based on an analysis of movedness (Bewegtheit), lies precisely in having identified this view of being as being present or being available (ousia) as the ontological orientation of the ancient world.26 This meaning endured as the precondition for thinking of man and his possibility for change in Western thought. It is no coincidence that man came to be referred to as subject (subjectum), i.e., that which is self-subsistent. With Decartes the I of man then became the unquestionable foundation of knowledge: the very I for which objectivity comes into being.
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25 The argument that acts are antecedent to possibilities rests on a supreme entity, the unmoved mover, whose essence is the act of moving. This entity moves things just as desire for the loved one moves the lover.
26 In the Greek world, the term ousia is used to describe both an entity and its being. The ontologi- cal perspective, whereby the being of an entity is grasped as the being available of any entity in general, coexists with the common sense (ontic) perspective, whereby ousia is used to describe a specific available entity—in Homer, fishing nets, for instance (see Marx 1961).
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