to ourselves Berlin, then we stretch the sphere of presence further out, whereby it is evident that this expansion is possible only because a sphere of presence always already essentially occurs around us. This refers not to the individual thing having presence but, rather, to presence itself. The sphere of presence does not expand by our “incorporating” more and more things that were previously absent; it is the reverse. We can “incorporate” these further beings only if the sphere, the field as such, is expanded in advance.
This presence, however, always already envelops us; i.e., presence as such is the prospect we look into, not qua something at hand but qua looking as such. Seeing is a configuring in advance of and against the prospect. More precisely: the possibility of the broadest expanse essentially occurs and is always already only factically restricted. Thereby, however, we must not take this possibility as the standard, but vice versa. Our explicit activity is the restriction, the restrictedness, of the sphere of presence. This configurative seeing that holds something over and against is the character of νοεῖν. We call it presenting or presentifying as prefiguring of presence. The present now designates the basic comportment of νοεῖν. This basic comportment as configurative seeing is in itself the projecting of presence. Envisioning is prefigurative seeing, just as is disregarding.
Conversely, this presence essentially occurs only as the projecting in the projection of configurative seeing. The present and presence intrinsically belong together (toward what is the unity of both turned? Temporality!). Thereby we have only determined more clearly the meaning of Parmenides’s axiom: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι—apprehending and Being belong together. For Being always signifies presence [Anwesenheit]; the latter essentially occurs only in the presence [Gegenwart] of νοεῖν. The axiom has thereby been interpreted originarily on the basis of what Parmenides says about Being in his σήματα and especially with the aid of fragment 2.
We now grasp the two main results of the course of proof of the σήματα: 1) the prospect on Being proves to be presence; 2) the securing and gathering of the respects on Being happen through recourse to νοεῖν and to the axiom. These two results now join into one, into an originary understanding of the axiom, which we can now formulate as follows: Being essentially occurs as presence [Anwesenheit] in the presence [Gegenwart] of apprehension. And only because the sphere of presence [Anwesenheit] essentially occurs do we understand Being and the “is.” This presence [Anwesenheit] essentially occurs in the present [Gegenwart]. The latter is the time we ourselves bring to maturity. The axiomatic statement and the temporal statement say “the same.”