THE END OF PHILOSOPHY


namely for beings as such-what makes possible: the condition of possibility (cf. "Plato's Doctrine of Truth").

But also in the actualitas, which is determined in every respect by causalitas, the essence of beingness at the beginning maintains itself in a changed form: presence. The summum ens is distinctively characterized by omnipraesentia. However, "ubiquity," (to be present everywhere) is also determined "causally." Deus est ubique per essentiam inquantum adest omnibus ut causa essendi (qu. 8a, 3).

The interpretation of existentia can also be explained by the causal character of reality. This is the name for the other concept which is mostly equated in meaning with actualitas (reality), and is even used far more often in the conceptual language of metaphysics, above all in the distinction of essentia and existentia ("essence" and "existence"). The origin of the word existentia is traced back to two passages in Aristotle's Metaphysics which both treat almost identically the on hos alethes, the Being of beings in the sense of "unconcealed" (Met. E 4, 1027b 17 and Met. K 8, 1065a 21ff.). Here Aristotle speaks about a exo ousa tis physis tou ontos and about the exo on kai choriston. The exo, outside, means the Outside tes dianoias, that is, human reason which permeates beings in discussion, and in doing so establishes what it has talked about. What is established in this way consists and presences only for such discussion and in the neighborhood of its activity. What is outside (exo) consists and stands as something persisting in itself in its own place (choriston). What thus "stands outside," ex-sistens, the ex-isting, is nothing other than what presences of itself in its being produced, the on energeia.

At this point, a derivation of the Latin word ex-sistentia from an Aristotelian explanation of beings is called for. More important for insight into the history of Being is the fact that the characterization of what presences of itself (ousia) is already based upon a changed essence of truth. The "true" is still called alethes, the unconcealed; but what is true, namely the proposition, is true not because it itself as revealing is something "unconcealed," but rather because it establishes and thinks what is unconcealed by the adequation of reason. The determination of Being in the sense of ex-sistentia as


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Martin Heidegger (GA 6-2) Metaphysics as History of Being - The End of Philosophy