[This was the topic of an unpublished lecture course delivered in the summer semester of 1927.]94
However, as soon as the essence of Being comes to consist in whatness (idea), then whatness, as the Being of beings, is also what is most in being about beings <das Seiendste am Seienden>. On the one hand, whatness is now what really is, ὄντως ὄν. Being as ἰδέα is now promoted to the status of what really is, and beings themselves, which previously held sway, sink to the level of what Plato calls μὴ ὄν—that which really should not be and really is not either—because beings always deform the idea, the pure look, by actualizing it, insofar as they incorporate it into matter. On the other hand, the ἰδέα becomes the παράδειγμα, the model. At the same time, the idea necessarily becomes the ideal. What is produced by imitation really “is” not, but only participates in Being, μέθεξις <participation>. The χωρισμός has been ripped open, the cleft between the idea as what really is, the prototype and archetype, and what really is not, [141|193] the imitation and likeness.95
Now, appearing takes on still another sense on the basis of the idea. That which appears, appearance, is no longer φύσις, the emerging sway, nor the self-showing of the look, but instead it is the likeness that rises to the surface.
94. In parentheses in the 1953 edition. The lecture course in question is The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, now available as volume 24 of the Gesamtausgabe, and in an English translation by Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). The distinction between essentia and existentia is discussed in pt. 1, chap. 2.
95. This and the following paragraph employ a number of words related to Bild (picture, image) and bilden (to form or build). These include hineinbilden (incorporate, or etymologically “form into”), nachbilden (imitate, or “form after”), Musterbild (model or paragon, or “model picture”), Vorbild (prototype, or “fore-picture”), Urbild (archetype, or “primal picture”), and Abbild (likeness, or “off-picture”).