createdness, in the broadest sense of something having been produced, is an essential structural moment of the ancient concept of being. The ostensibly new beginning of philosophizing betrays the imposition of [25] an ill-fated prejudice. On the basis of this prejudice later times neglect a thematic ontological analysis of "the mind" ["Gemütes"] which would be guided by the question of being; likewise they neglect a critical confrontation with the inherited ancient ontology.
Everyone familiar with the medieval period sees that Descartes is "dependent" upon medieval scholasticism and uses its terminology. But with this "discovery" nothing is gained philosophically as long as it remains obscure to what a profound extent medieval ontology influences the way posterity determines or fails to determine the res cogitans ontologically. The full extent of this influence cannot be estimated until the meaning and limits of ancient ontology have been shown by our orientation toward the question of being. In other words, the destruction sees itself assigned the task of interpreting the foundation of ancient ontology in light of the problematic of temporality [Temporalität]. Here it becomes evident that the ancient interpretation of the being of beings is oriented toward the "world" or "nature" in the broadest sense and that it indeed gains its understanding of being from "time." The outward evidence of this—but of course only outward—is the determination of the meaning of being as παρουσία or οὐσία, which ontologically and temporally means "presence" ["Anwesenheit"]. Beings are grasped in their being [Sein] as "presence"; that is to say, they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time, the "present" ["Gegenwart"].
The problem of Greek ontology must, like that of any ontology, take its guideline from Dasein itself. In the ordinary and also the philosophical "definition," Dasein, that is, the being of human being, is delineated as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, that creature whose being is essentially determined by its ability to speak. λέγειν (cf. § 7b) is the guideline for arriving at the structures of being of the beings we encounter in speech and discussion. That is why the ancient ontology developed by Plato becomes "dialectic." The possibility of a more radical conception of the problem of being grows with the continuing development of the ontological guideline itself, that is, with the "hermeneutics" of the λόγος. "Dialectic," which was a genuine philosophic embarrassment, becomes superfluous. Thus Aristotle "no longer has any sympathy" for it, because he places it on a more radical foundation and transcends it. λέγειν itself, or νοεῖν—the simple apprehension of something objectively present in its sheer objective presence [Vorhandenheit], which [26] Parmenides already used as a guide for interpreting being—has the temporal structure of a pure "making present" of something. Beings,