in distinction to the particular specimen. Rather, this universal only is the universal because it is the tree-ness of trees: it is their γένος, that from which every tree as tree, δένδρον ᾗ δένδρον, derives. The οὐσία, the beingness, is τὸ γένος, the origin, that from which every being as being originates. In short: τὸ εἶναι, being, and τὸ ὄν, the being, are not thought substantively, but rather verbally in view of the being of the being.
To name beingness and being, Aristotle uses a term he likely coined himself: τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, i.e., being as that which every being, insofar as it is a being, already was. In the determination of that which for thinking is the to- be-thought, Plato’s thinking advanced beyond the thinking of Aristotle’s, who [74] listened to Plato over the course of two decades and thereby learned to think. Plato himself names the to- be-thought of beings by means of an idiom that the Greeks, as a thinking people, could be trusted to understand. What the thinkers think is τὸ ὄντως ὄν, “the being in terms of being” [das seienderweise Seiende], the being solely in view of being. This then is also considered ‘what is of the utmost being’ within beings [das Seiendste am Seienden].
Now, admittedly the designations ὂν ᾗ ὄν, οὐσία, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, and ὄντως ὄν communicate next to nothing to our stuff ed and stubborn ears. These designations are like empty word husks. The reasons for this state of affairs cannot be found solely in the contemporary inability and disinclination to think. The reason Plato’s thought in particular, and above all the philosophy of Aristotle as an expression of Greek thought in its originary directness, remains closed to us, is owed to the fact that the philosophy of Aristotle, by way of Jewish–Arab thought in the Middle Ages, was transformed by ecclesiastical theology into an entity that has only the words in common with the Greek Aristotle, and even these are translated into the language of Latin.
How immovably Aristotle’s thought lies entombed by the Middle Ages is shown in the fact that even a thinker such as Leibniz was incapable of scaling the wall that medieval theology, through its own particular use of the Aristotelian doctrines, erected between the Greek thinker and the later ages of the Occident. Even the classical philology of recent decades, from which one could perhaps expect an inkling of the Greek essence, interprets the philosophy of Aristotle in terms of the theology of Thomas Aquinas. That is why even today most people think that when one says ‘Aristotle,’ it is Thomas Aquinas who is meant, or that when one says ‘Thomas Aquinas,’ [75] a justifiable claim has been made to knowledge of Aristotle and his thought.
As a result of this widespread thoughtlessness, a few years ago a rector of the local university informally suggested removing the figure of Aristotle from the main entrance of the university building, since today we are no longer concerned with the ‘Middle Ages.’
But perhaps it is good that Aristotle, as the last thinker of the Greeks, continues to stand in proximity to the first poet of the Greeks and the Occident [i.e., Homer].