EARLY GREEK THINKING
ourselves of an opportunity which in terms of its subject matter, its time, and the realm to which it belongs, lies outside philosophy, and which from every point of view precedes the pronouncements of thinking.
In Homer we perceive such an opportunity. Thanks to him we possess a reference in which the word appears as something more than a term in the lexicon. Rather, it is a reference which poetically brings to language what ὄντα names. Because all λέξις of the lexicographic sort presupposes the thought of the λεγόμενον, we will refrain from the futile practice of heaping up references to serve as evidence; this kind of annotation usually proves only that none of the references has been thought through. With the aid of this commonly adopted method one usually expects that by shoving together one unclarified reference with another every bit as unclear clarity will suddenly result.
The passage upon which we wish to comment is found at the beginning of the first book of the Iliad, lines 68-72. It gives us the chance to cross over to what the Creeks designate with the word ὄντα, provided we let ourselves be transported by the poet to the distant shore of the matter spoken there.
For the following reference a preliminary observation concerning the history of the language is needed. Our observations cannot claim to present this philological problem adequately, much less to solve it. In Plato and Aristotle we encounter the words ὄν and ὄντα as conceptual terms. The later terms "ontic" and "ontological" are formed from them. However, ὄν and ὄντα, considered linguistically, are presumably somewhat truncated forms of the original words ἐόν and ἐόντα. Only in the latter words is the sound preserved which relates them to ἐστιν and εἶναι. The epsilon in ἐόν and ἐόντα is the epsilon in the root ἐσ of ἐστιν, est, esse, and "is." In contrast ὄν and ὄντα appear as rootless participial endings, as though by themselves they expressly designated what we must think in those word-forms called by later grammarians μετοχή, participium, i.e. those word-forms which participate in the verbal and nominal senses of a word.
Thus ὄν says "being" in the sense of to be a being; at the same time it names a being which is. In the duality of the participial significance of ὄν the distinction between "to be" and "a being" lies concealed.
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