To be subject to change, to alter oneself, this is to take distance from something previous: to absence. The idea alone is pure presence, presence never absencing, a self-maintaining-making-present. This is what is there in excess: the presencing presence [anwesende Anwesenheit] — such is the ὄντως ὄν. Nietzsche had the strongest sense for this, especially in the text: “How the ‘true world’ finally became a fable” (Twilight of the Idols).70
It is then to be remarked that “the being” for Plato must be understood much more in the verbal sense: being [das Seiend], than in the nominal sense: the being [das Seiende].
We must never allow ourselves to lose sight of the fact that the determinations of φαίνεσθαι and of the ἀληθές are fully presented in the Platonic εἶδος. One is ever tempted to hear ἰδεῖν in ἰδέα, whereas what is primary is the appearance [Aussehen], the way and manner by which the thing is characterized, and not the view that one has of it, a view that one is only able to form on the basis of what the appearance first puts forth. Nothing is less Greek than what Schopenhauer says of Plato (meant is the statement about the desert that exists only thanks to my thinking of it); contrary to Schopenhauer, Aristotle says: Even if no man were to see them, the stars for that reason would shine nonetheless.71
What is said of the question of being in Being and Time? In Being and Time, the question, "What is a being?" is not asked, but rather, What is this “is”?
Immediately one runs into a difficulty. In fact, if the “is” is, then it is a being! And if, on the other hand, it is not, then is it supposed to be the bare, empty copula of a judgment?
One must come out of this aporia. From a purely grammatical point of view, “to be” is not only a verb, it is a helping verb. If, however, one thinks beyond the grammatical, one must ask: is to be, as an infinitive, only an abstraction derived from “is”—or is one only able to say “is” if being is already opened up and manifest?
For this reason, Being and Time addresses this question from the perspective of the meaning of Being.
Meaning has a very precise signification in Being and Time, even if today it has become insufficient. What does “meaning of being” mean? This is understandable on the basis of the “project region” unfolded by the “understanding of being.” “Understanding” [Verständnis], for its part, must be grasped in the original sense of “standing before” [Vorstehen]: residing before, holding oneself at an equal height with what one finds before oneself, and being strong enough to hold out.72
Here “meaning” is to be understood from “project,” which is explained by “understanding.”
What is inappropriate in this formulation of the question is that it makes it all too possible to understand the “project” as a human performance.
70 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1982), pp. 485–486.
71 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross, in Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2: 1552–1728; Bk. Z, 1041 a 1–3.
72 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 143.