statement—namely, its making-present as a pure making-present, a pure letting-be-seen of the presence of entities, or of entities in their presence. The expressed statement, insofar as it is true, preserves in itself the [415] uncoveredness of the entity. Preserving uncoveredness means the same as being able to make something present at any time. Accordingly, uncoveredness is a preeminent form of possible presenting: it is the presenting of the entity we are talking about in its being and in its being-this-way-or-that.

The uncoveredness or truth that is had in a world-related statement bespeaks “presenting.”¹⁵⁸ And “being” bespeaks “presence.” That is, the meaning of being is grasped from out of presenting. Only in such presenting is presence possible. Being simply cannot be understood in any other way. Then what is meant by “understanding”? It means: to determine something as something. An entity is understood or grasped in its in-itself-ness when it is understood in its pure being-for-itself. In other words, it is understood in and from human existence’s pure presenting of its world.¹⁵⁹ Presenting is absolutely not subjective or subjectivistic or idealistic in the usual, epistemological meaning of those words. Rather, it is simply being unto the world, wherein the world can show itself in its in-itself-ness in terms of its various levels of approximation and determination.

Statements, insofar as they are statements about what is present, are grounded in making-present. Logic is the most imperfect of all philosophical disciplines, and it can be moved forward only if it reflects on the basic structures of its thematic phenomena, on the primary ontological structures of the logical as a comportment of human existence, and on the temporality of human existence itself. But the unexpressed basis of traditional logic is a specific temporality which is oriented primarily to making-present, which is expressed in an extreme form in the formulation of the Greek concept of knowledge as θεωρία, pure intuiting. All the truth of such a logic is the truth of intuition, where intuition is understood as making-present.

But should more radical temporal possibilities be found in the temporality of human existence, these would necessarily set an essential limit to traditional logic and ontology. Whether philosophical research can be intense enough and firm enough to make this limit a lived fact is a question that concerns the very fate of philosophy.

158.[Moser (p. 821.7–10) records the word mögliche (possible) before a hyphenated Gegen-wart: “But uncoveredness or truth means the same as human existence’s possible presenting [rendering-present] its world.”]

159. [“. . . aus der puren Gegenwart des Daseins zu seiner Welt” (GA 21, p. 415.12–13).]