being is the "most general"! Yet this is not strange; it is necessary, because from the beginning on, being is experienced and thought as beingness only on the basis of "beings," so-called beings, i.e., only on the basis of the many and also back to them.
3. Once the ἰδέα is postulated as the beingness of beings and is conceived as the κοινόν, then, thought of again on the basis of so-called beings (namely, the individuals), the ἰδέα must be in relation to these the ὄντως ὄν, what is most eminently. The ἰδέα especially, indeed the ἰδέα alone, satisfies the essence of beingness and may therefore claim to count as what is most eminently, a being in the most proper sense. What is individual and changeable thus becomes μὴ ὄν, i.e., what does not ever satisfy beingness.
4. If being (always as beingness, κοινόν) is grasped in this way as EV, as what is most eminently and what is one and most unifying, and if the ἰδέαι themselves are many, then these many as the highest forms of beings can be only in the manner of the κοινόν, i.e., in a κοινωνία ["community"] among themselves. Therein are gathered the presence and constancy of beingness, i.e., unity; the γένη as unities: self-unifying and in that way generators, "genera."
5. The interpretation of ὄν as οὐσία—the latter understood as ἰδέα (κοινόν, γένη)—grasps the beingness of beings and thus also the εἶναι (being but not beyng) of ὄν. In beingness (οὐσία), being (εἶναι) is surmised as what is in some way other, what is not completely fulfilled in οὐσία. Therefore, the task is to advance along the same path, the path characterized by a grasp of presencing, and proceed beyond beingness: ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσία; (d. Übungen, "Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des abendländischen Denkens [Metaphysik]," winter semester 1937-38 [GA 88]). Because this questioning asks only about beings and their beingness, however, it can never detach itself from beings and strike up against beyng itself. The ἐπέκεινα can therefore be determined only as something that henceforth characterizes beingness in terms of its relation to the human being (εὐδαιμονία ["happiness"]), as the ἀγαθόν, the useful, the ground of all usefulness, thus as condition for "life," for the ψυχή, and accordingly as the very essence of the ψυχή. Thereby the step is taken over to "value," to "meaning," to the "ideal." The guiding question of beings as such is here already at its limit and likewise at a place where it relapses and henceforth values beingness, instead of grasping it in a more original way, and values it such that value itself is declared to be what is highest.
6. In unity with this, the relations of the ἰδέα itself to the ψυχή now
also become clear and prescriptive:
a) as εἶδος in relation to ἰδεῖν and νοεῖν—νοῦς