150. The origin of the distinction between what a being is and the fact that it is12
Beings are thereby already determined in their beingness and specifically as ἰδέα, the look, which is itself determined as constant presence. To what extent does the ἰδέα include both temporal and spatial determinations?
| Presence (t) | as gatheredness of what shines forth, of the look—what. |
| Constancy (t) | as persistence and duration—that the look does not disappear. |
| Constancy (s) | what fills up, what constitutes the constant being. |
| Presence (s) | giving space, the whither of the replacement that the being stands firm. |
Each of the two determinations, presence and constancy, at once temporal and spatial and each respectively understood in the sense of temporalization and spatialization—the particular distinction we take all too conventionally and without question as that between the "what" and the "that" of a being.
Whence this doubling in temporalization and spatialization? From their fundamental essence as transporting and captivating, and this rooted in the essence of truth (cf. The grounding, 242. Time-space as abyss).
If the "what" and the "that" as determinations of beingness, as well as this latter, are not questioned with respect to their truth (time-space), then all discussions of essentia and existentia remain, as happened in the Middle Ages, an empty wrangling over uprooted concepts.
But beingness is already founded on the hidden and insurmountable "differentiation" between beyng and beings.
151. Being and beings13
This differentiation first from the guiding question of beingness and bemired there (cf. The interplay, 110. The ἰδέα, Platonism, and idealism). Yet also in the other beginning, this differentiation possesses its truth, indeed only now acquires its truth. For, now, when beingness is no longer questioned from the standpoint of "thinking" (not beingness
12. Cf. The interplay, 98. The projection of beingness upon constant presence, and 110. The ἰδέα, Platonism, and idealism; cf. lecture course, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, summer semester 1927 (GA24).
13. Cf. The leap, 152. The levels of beyng.