just as much a mode of Being as “must be,” i.e., necessity, and “can be,” i.e., possibility? Why should only necessity, possibility, and actuality make up the so-called modalities of Being?
Is thinking, representation, lived experience really nothing (esse is not percipi)? That we could so readily oppose thinking to Being—do we not betray ourselves when we say: Being and consciousness? Is not the presentation, thought, or consciousness of something precisely also a mode of Being, specifically the Being of the so-called subject, Ego, self? Or are we unjustified in saying “I am,” “we are”? Why should we call only the possible object of thinking and representing a being, as if thinking itself were nothing?
Is semblance, which we oppose to Being and beings, really nothing? Should we deny Being to illusion, lying, falsehood, and error, or must we not daily admit that these are and are exercising power over us? Or, in other terms, if physics and astronomy teach us that the setting of what we call the sun and see as the sun is an illusion, should we admit it without further ado? In any case, it is still not nothing; who then says the astronomical and astrophysical sun is the actual, extant sun? On what table of laws is that inscribed? Ultimately, is not the astrophysical sun also merely an image, a semblance, although a less essential semblance than the sun and sunset of the poet or painter?
d) The question of Being as definitively lacking question-worthiness
We see that the situation regarding the delimited meaning of the word “Being” is peculiar. This meaning certainly displays determinateness. But is it not equally narrow? Why then should only that which abides, perseveres, and is on hand be a being and have Being, while everything differentiated from this does not? Especially since we have resolved not to say that becoming, the “ought,” thinking, and semblance deserve to be addressed as nothingness!
(Behind this, the question: why must the beginning grasp Being as presence {Anwesenheit}, why was the beginning intercepted! and thereby only the λόγος of οὐσία came to sovereignty?)
Yet we see even this nothingness not as nothing but, rather, as being in some way. At the same time, however, we oppose it to Being. What is happening here? Difficult to say, but we do see this: our understanding of Being is most remarkable. How we spontaneously understand Being in such a way that it is limited only by nothingness while at the same time we employ the word with a multifarious narrowness which lends to Being a certain usual determinateness. Is that accidental, a mere whim of linguistic usage not open to further investigation?