Being, φύσις, and Worumwillen

In building his “Ontology of facticity,” about at the beginning of twenties up to the composition of Being and Time and later, Heidegger was looking for a dynamic notion of Being. Heidegger was persuaded that such an original meaning of Being was firstly discovered by the Greeks; and, in particular, as far as this stage of his philosophical development is concerned, by Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger, thus, repeatedly searched in the Greek philosophy for concepts foreshadowing his own ontology. After the gradual marginalization of Dasein, subsequent to the so-called philosophical “turn,” Plato’s agathon and Aristotle’s physis became reliable images of Heidegger’s increasingly impersonal and autotelic notion of Being. Physis, in particular, appeared to Heidegger a suitable representation of finality and dynamis non-metaphysically (i.e. non-dualistically) understood.