Greek ontology and the problem of truth depends on our ability to get inside this chapter; and second, to show the kind of basic questions that can be hidden behind seemingly insignificant questions like whether a chapter belongs to a book.
To facilitate our interpretation of the chapter, we preface it with a translation that has already grown up within that interpretation. I must emphasize that all the textual difficulties of the passage have not been eliminated from the following translation and interpretation. Here I cannot go into individual explanations of, or even possible disagreements with, other efforts at interpreting the text on the part of Bonitz, Schwegler, or Ross.34
* * *
Translation of the text35
I. The problem: Being and uncoveredness in synthetic beings.
1051a34–b2, 6: Viewpoints for studying being. Uncoveredness.
“Beings” and “non-beings” are understood {in their being} in one instance in terms of the forms of the categories, in another instance in terms of possibility {i.e., not-being-there as not-yet-being-there} and actuality {thereness simpliciter} of the being or non-being {i.e., its opposite} intended in those categories.
But when a being is understood in the most proper sense of all—in its uncoveredness and coveredness—{we now skip to b5}, the question arises: When is there, and when is there not, [175] that which we are calling “uncovered” and “covered-over”? We have to investigate what we mean by these terms. {Now back to the lines we skipped above.}
b2–5: Preliminary determination: uncovering in λόγoς.
As regards [composite] beings themselves, their most proper being is grounded in their state of being-together and/or being-apart.
Therefore, one uncovers when one takes {“has” present} what-isapart in its apartness, and what-is-together in its togetherness.
34.[Here the lecture of Monday, 14 December 1925, draws to a close, to be followed by Heidegger’s lecture of Tuesday, 15 December, which opens with an 800word summary (Moser, pp. 368–71) that is omitted in GA 21. At the end of his 14 December lecture (Moser, pp. 367–368), Heidegger notes that Metaphysics IX 10 is divided into two parts, “I. The exposition of the problem” and “II. The answer to the question about the being of beings insofar as it is interpreted in terms of truth or uncovering.”]
35. In this translation, [writes Heidegger,] I place clarifications and paraphrases in wing-brackets. The translation does not aim at being linguistically polished but aims at precision in expressing the meaning that belongs to an issue-oriented discussion of its content. In that regard, compare and contrast Aristoteles Metaphysik, trans. Adolf Lasson (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1924).