In the time between them, it has come about that the being has become an ob-ject (obiectum, or better yet: res obstans). The expression “object” simply has no correlate in Greek.
For Hegel, Greek philosophy is interpreted as “merely objective,” which the Modern and Hegelian interpretations present as what Greek philosophy truly was. What Hegel thereby actually says is that the Greeks had not yet thought the subjective as mediation and hence as the core of objectivity. In this manner, while Hegel says something that in one way corresponds to Greek philosophy, he nonetheless obstructs access to the Greek meaning of being from the ground up. This is the case because the Hegelian interpretation tacitly suggests that Greek philosophy had not thought dialectical mediation, i.e., had not thought consciousness as the key to the becoming-phenomena of the phenomena. If he thinks in this way, and he does so think, then Hegel ultimately excludes himself from the Greek experience of a being as phenomenon.
He further says that the Greeks did experience the immediate, but for him that means something negative, a poverty of those who begin, for whom the experience of dialectical mediation is still lacking.
What has occurred between the Greeks and Hegel?
The thinking of Descartes. Hegel says that with him, thinking reaches “terra firma” for the first time. What Descartes undertakes is actually to determine ground by firmness—therefore to no longer let a ground be as it is from itself. In reality, Descartes surrenders the ground. He abandons it for the sake of firmness. What sort of firmness is this? Where does the firmness of the firmum come from for Descartes? He says it himself: from punctum firmum et inconcussum.67 Inconcussum, i.e., unshakable, namely unshakable for knowledge, for consciousness, for perceptio (with Descartes knowledge becomes perceptio). The human is henceforth placed into his position as representer.
As we come back to the phenomena from here, the question arises: how are the jainímena possible? Answer: by ἀλήθεια. The Greeks are those human beings who lived immediately in the openness of phenomena— through the expressly ek-static capacity of letting the phenomena speak to them (modern man, Cartesian man, se solum alloquendo, only talks to himself).
No one has ever again reached the heights of the Greek experience of a being as phenomenon. To gain an intimation of this, one need only consider the fact that there is no Greek word by which to say the being of the human in ἀλήθεια. There is nothing close. Not even in Greek poetry, where the being of the human is nonetheless brought to its pinnacle. Consequently, to name this being “existing” . . . the word has become so common, that it is open to every misunderstanding. If there is no Greek word for this ek-static existence, it is not so due to a lack,