for all beings in their being. This being [Seiende] that, in every being, is the being [Seiende], or is its being [Sein] (this oscillation of terms is characteristic)—this being [Seiendes] that makes every being be what it is, is the essence, the what, from which everything that is has its origin. That which from the outset always already is in every being that is there (and which therefore is there in an entirely special way) must be investigated as and in terms of being [Sein], if being is to be understood in its most proper sense. The question about being must be finally directed to essence and its being. In effect, it is the question about the being of beings.

How are we to determine the being of essences (εἶδη) [180] using the ἀληθές as our guiding thread? That entails the prior question: In general how, on the basis of the ἀληθές, are beings to be understood in terms of their being?

With this prior and introductory question, Aristotle first focuses on the ἀληθές of the λόγoς, and his answer is: Being means “synthesis” and the unity (of this synthesis). Non-being means non-synthesis and multiplicity. Specifically, this is the character of the being of those beings that always are what and how they are, the ἀδύνατα ἀλλώς ἔχειν—those which, by the very meaning of their being, cannot be otherwise.

Then against the background of the ἀεὶ ὄν, Aristotle determines the ἐνδεχόμενον ἀλλώς—that which sometimes is composed and sometimes not, that which sometimes has the unity of synthesis, and sometimes the multiplicity of the not-composed.

This understanding of things with an eye to the ἀεὶ ὄντα is adequate to the task insofar as essence itself is also an ἀεὶ ὄν. At the same time, however, this characteristic of being is inadequate from the viewpoint of the ἀληθές, because essence is something that lacks any synthesis. In principle, therefore, its being cannot be understood by way of synthesis and its unity.

How then are we to conduct an interpretation on the basis of the ἀληθές? If a being in and of itself cannot possibly be synthetic (i.e., synthetically unified), then the corresponding act of uncovering that points out the being, likewise cannot be synthetic. In order to understand, on the basis of the ἀληθές, a being that excludes all synthesis, we first have to establish what can be said about its state of ἀληθές. The uncovering of, the unhiddenness of a being that in and of itself is not composed offers no possibility of seeing anything else in the being other than that being’s own self. Such uncovering offers no possibility of focusing on something else in the being, or of showing the being in terms of something else. The being is present simply in and of itself and “as” itself.

With regard to such a being, the only possible kind of uncovering is θιγεῖν and φάναι, the act of simply touching it and addressing oneself