At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted beings formed by nature, which had within themselves a beginning of movement and rest, and man-made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves. This book revises the Aristotelian argument and develops an innovative assessment whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinct temporality and dynamic of its own. Working his way through the history of the Aristotelian assessment of technics, the author engages the ideas of a wide range of thinkers such as Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger.