the word οὐσία is still used both as an everyday word and as a name for the philosophical fundamental concept. As an everyday word, οὐσία means wealth, goods and chattel, that which is at all times available, because it presences {anwest} as lying fixed – still today we call a farm an Anwesen.
Now, if the Greeks had at that time been so thoughtless as to judge everything according to the wording, then they would have had to say: see, Plato and Aristotle interpret the whole of beings in view of οὐσία, of wealth, estate – a highly one-sided conception of the world. We have no witnesses for such a misinterpretation. Another reason it did not come up was because the Greeks intuited that a word in language can, beyond its customary everyday meaning, harbor within itself a saying power that, when it is released into the open, makes the word an essential word. The latter then perhaps harbors within itself a fortiori something still concealed. Perhaps this is also the case with the words “Dasein,” “existence,” “care,” “world,” “history,” “time,” “being” – perhaps …
Οὐσία means more precisely: the presence {Anwesenheit} of something in its outward look (εἶδος - ἰδέα). Beings are, that is, are presencing, and because they presence, they can be encountered, found lying before one {vor-gefunden}, fixed as present at hand {vor-handen}. Hence, according to this interpretation of beings as what presences, that which “constantly” presences is what is in the highest sense, that is to say, the ἀεί ὄν.23
With a bit of pondering, we can see from this that presence {Anwesenheit} and constancy are the distinguishing determinations of beings as such.
Just one single – but also decisive and simple – step is now needed in order to recognize the following: “presence” {Anwesenheit} and “constancy” {Beständigkeit} are indeed manifest determinations of time: “presence” {Anwesenheit} concerns “the present” {Gegenwart}; “constancy” means “at every time.” Admittedly, to the extent that this is manifest, it becomes ever more obscure in what sense “determination of time” and “time” are to be thought here. The proper standing, ἀεί ὄν, the constantly present that knows no absence, the eternal, is however precisely not “in time” – and nevertheless is thoroughly determined “in terms of time.” Or will one deny that presence {Anwesenheit} and constancy are related to “time”?
Only one thing becomes clear from such reflection: being, as constant presencing, is understood on the basis of time, whereby the essence of time and its claim to become the realm of projection for the