the clarity of that concept and the appropriate manner of its explicit understanding we shall be able to discern what the obscure or not yet elucidated understanding of being means, namely, what kinds of obfuscation or hindrance of an explicit elucidation of the meaning of being are possible and necessary.
Furthermore, the average, vague understanding of being can be permeated by traditional theories and opinions about being in such a way that these theories, as the sources of the prevailing understanding, remain hidden. What is sought in the question of being is not completely unfamiliar, although it is at first totally ungraspable.
What is asked about in the question to be elaborated is being, that which determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings have always been understood no matter how they are discussed. The being of being "is" itself not a being. The first philosophical step in understanding the problem of being consists in avoiding the μῦθόν τινα διηγεῖσθαι,5 in not "telling a story," that is, not determining beings as beings by tracing them back in their origins to another being—as if being [Sein] had the character of a possible being [Seienden]. As what is asked about, being thus requires its own kind of demonstration which is essentially different from the discovery of beings. Hence what is to be ascertained, the meaning of being, will require its own conceptualization, which again is essentially distinct from the concepts in which beings receive their determination of meaning.
Insofar as being constitutes what is asked about, and insofar as being means the being of beings, beings themselves turn out to be what is interrogated in the question of being. Beings are, so to speak, interrogated with regard to their being. But if they are to exhibit the characteristics of their being without falsification they must for their part have become accessible in advance as they are in themselves. The question of being demands that the right access to beings be gained and secured in advance with regard to what it interrogates. But we call many things "existent" ["seiend"],* and in different senses. Everything we talk about, mean, and are related to is existent [seiend] in one way or another. What and how we ourselves are is also existent. Being [Sein] is found in thatness and whatness, reality, the objective presence
* "seiend" is translated here as "existent." On occasions when it needs to be translated as "being" this will be noted so that it is not confused with "Sein." The first appearance of "seiend" is in the "Exergue" (H xxix) where Heidegger uses it to translate the Greek word "ὄν" in his translation of the passage from Plato's Sophist. [TR]
5. Plato, Sophist 242c.