meaning of their names, their whatness. What allows each being to be a being is its Idea, the pure, unique, uniform, and self-identical identity and configuration that sets this species of being apart from all other species of beings. The Presocratic first inception consisted in an experience of being as the very indeterminate presence that precedes the determinate articulation of beings as particular instances of presence—an experience in which, Heidegger claims, the radical difference between being and beings remained unthought in positive terms. The Platonic first end of the first inception, however, precisely turns toward the determinacy and articulateness of beings as the feature that grants them discursive accessibility as self-identical. While the Presocratics address beingness in terms of the self-identical unifying presence within which beings are articulated with regard to one another and thereby emerge into determinate presence, Plato approaches beingness in terms of this very articulateness that grants to beings a degree of permanent self-identity, of constant presence. As Heidegger concisely puts it:
In the inception of its history, being clears itself as emergence [Aufgehen] (physis) and dislodging [Entbergung] (alētheia). From there it attains the hallmark of presence [Anwesenheit] and constancy [Beständigkeit] in the sense of resting [Verweilens] (ousia). Metaphysics proper begins with this. (N II, 367/EP, 4; tr. mod.)
Heidegger’s most explicit summary of Platonism is to be found in Section 110 of Contributions to Philosophy, “The idea, Platonism, and Idealism.” What is beingful (seiend) in beings is the constant presence (beständige Anwesenheit) of the Idea. The Idea is the unifying one (Einigende Eine) to which the transient and multiple beings are referred back, and it is beingful precisely as unifying; thus, with respect to its many particular (hekasta) instantiations, the Idea is the common or general, the koinon (GA 65, 209/CPFE, 146/CPOE, 163).
Curiously, this subsequent and consequent determination of the idea as beingness [Seiendheit], the koinon, then becomes the first and ultimate determination of beingness (of being [Seins])—being is the “most general!” But this is not curious but necessary, because from the very inception being as beingness is experienced and thought only in terms of “beings,” of what “is,” in terms of the many and with respect to them. [. . .] Once the idea is set up as the beingness of beings and is conceived as the koinon, then it must, once again thought of in terms of what