as αἴσθησίς τις [a kind of perception]. By this, he does not mean that somehow the essential relations of mores or of all the historicity of Being can be smelled with the nose or heard with the ears. Instead, αἴσθησις in its proper meaning as perceiving is taken up first as the essence of knowing, spontaneously as it were, because for the Greeks, perceiving and being perceived mean the same thing as φαίνεται: to say that this shows itself, something shows itself, is the same as saying that something is perceived.

“Something shows itself”: a Greek understands this in the sense of presenting itself; it gives itself in its presence {Anwesenheit} and, in this presence, it becomes revealed. Being perceived—the fact that things enter the realm of experience—is the happening in which things come to manifestation, come into openness, show themselves, appear. We should not debase its meaning by thinking of it only in terms of ears, noses, and the like. Its meaning is a self-showing that openly comes forth.

φαντασία also has this meaning and not the later meaning of the fantastical, the merely imaginary; rather, it is the becoming-visible, the self-showing, of a being as it is. Plato says: φαντασία and perception are the same, the same happening as being perceived. When someone speaks from the perspective of a “theory of knowledge,” it makes perfect sense that φαντασία would be a mere fancy, not the same happening as what is perceived.

In being perceived, the openness of things happens: immediate, everyday experience. In the question of what knowledge is, this has led to giving this answer: knowledge is perception.

How does this conform to the fundamental meaning of knowing: to understand one’s way around a thing, to oversee it? To the extent that I am a match for the matter at hand, then it is in my grasp, it is at my disposal, it is open to me. Despite the fact that this answer is fundamentally justified, it is rejected, not because it is simply false and does not hit upon the facts of the matter, but because it is insufficient.

It does hit the mark that something like openness has to do with knowing, but knowing as standing in openness in the sense of truth is more than this. Truth is not simply openness; rather, it is the openness and unconcealment of beings.

We can clarify the distinction by way of an example. A stone that lies on the ground clearly stands in a spatial relationship with the ground, in that it lies upon it. But the ground upon which the stone lies is not given to the stone. The stone does not encounter the ground; it is not accessible to the stone. Things are different for the dog running on the ground. The dog can feel the ground in its paws. Something is given to the dog. But what is given to the dog is not accessible to it (as street, hot surface, and so on), it is not revealed to the dog. Something is revealed—the relationship between the dog and the