and leave untouched, these supposedly basic concepts—even in the case of the most general concept: “being” / actuality.

It is highly questionable that, as Lotze believes, the only way to clarify being is to tell how it is made. Here the prejudgment is that being is something that can be produced: a thing, i.e., a being—and the same goes for the alleged “validity.” Certainly no one can tell us what being-produced is, because the question makes no sense. But granted we cannot treat being the way we treat beings, does that entail that a philosophical interpretation of being is impossible? Certainly not. It only says that the phenomena of philosophy are not things like tables and houses.

Lotze’s idea that the so-called basic concepts cannot be clarified is the same as that of the tradition. It is usually said that being cannot be defined. Therefore, because a definition has to state what something is, we cannot ask what being “is.” What is a definition about? It tells what a thing consists of, where it comes from, what its components are [77]—homo: animal rationale. A definition says something about the produced-ness of an entity, and thus is a way of determining beings and especially things. (The task of part two, section one, of the Posterior Analytics B is to point out exactly this τί.)

To discuss whether or not being and the like can be defined is in fact to understand being as a being. From the start, the whole discussion makes no sense. The statement “Being is undefinable” can indeed have a genuine sense, but one that has never been understood, namely, that because being is fundamentally different from beings, it requires a different point of departure from that of a definition. What I have just said entails the task and the challenge of questioning radically. It does not provide the comfortableness of the supposedly self-evident.

If, in saying that being is undefinable, we argue in the usual fashion, we would let it stand as something both self-evident and utterly confused. (Pascal!) From what we have said, that would make about as much sense as saying, “Since you can’t play the piano on a bike, a bike is a useless implement,” as if every implement had to have the property of “able-to-play-piano-on”—and as if everything we talk about had to be definable.

As inadequately as Lotze specifies the provenance of being or “actuality” as validity, the guiding thread he gives us is nonetheless on the mark—namely, that what Plato meant by the being of the ideas is what he, Lotze, understands as validity.

Whether or not Lotze’s particular interpretation is correct, the upshot is that he understands validity (= the actuality or being of true propositions) as the kind of being that the Greeks called authentic being and that really means the same as the thereness or presence {Anwesenheit} of φύσις in the broadest sense, although we cannot show this now.