because they are not arbitrary, simple statements like the given example: “The path is long” or “The sky is blue”? In which sense could the principle of identity or the principle of reason, still be called basic principles according to what has now been said? In what relation do they stand to ordinary statements? The basic principles, conventionally so designated, seemingly concern every statement as statement and that means that at the same time they concern what an ordinary statement posits: namely what lies at the ground and what lies before. What the principle of identity posits, identity, does not lie before, however, like the path, the mountain, the tree, the creek, etc. Identity is not something present, no ground and soil in this sense. But everything that is present as such, that is, everything that is in presence, is itself the same as itself. Identity belongs in presence as such; we never encounter it as something among other present things. But then can presence, which itself is nothing present, still be called a ground in the way that something present is? Not only can it, it must be so called and has been so called for a long time; for what would something present ever be, were it not grounded in presence? What would all grounds and soils be, if that grounding did not reign in them, which encounters everything that lies before precisely in its lying before, everything that presences in its presencing? If we were once capable of thinking what is named in the word “presence” according to the entire fullness and breadth that blossomed in the Greek experience of the world, then and only then would we be permitted to say instead of presence also: being. Otherwise—i.e. without the heartful, fulfilled, and thoroughly considered commemoration of the destiny of being from the Greek world—the word “being” remains an empty sound, a deaf nut, or the name of a confused representation.

The specially named basic principles pertain to the being of beings. But for a long time now, being has been thought as ground, sometimes more, sometimes less decisively and clearly. It comes to light here that this word “ground” is itself ambiguous, insofar as, on the one hand, in regard to what lies before, it signifies the presencing soil and ground, and on the other hand, what is meant is not something present, but rather presence itself. The basic principles are principles of the being of beings. These basic principles, however, are also called basic principles of thinking