itself its own law. The transfer of the jointure of the essence of prior representation consists in the fact that the representing bringing-beforeoneself of all that ever encounters us establ ishes itself as the Being of beings . Permanence of presencing, that is, beingness, now consists in representedness through and for such representation; it consists in such representation itself.
Formerly every being was a subiectum, something lying before us on its own basis. For that reason alone it underlay (hypokeimenon, substans) everything that arises or passes away, everything that comes into Being (into presencing, by way of lying-before) or departs from it. The beingness (ousia) of beings in all metaphysics is subjectivity in that original sense. The more familiar name for this, but one that does not suggest anything different, is substantiality. Medieval mysticism (Tauler and Seuse) translates subiectum and substantia as understand [what stands beneath] and in a correspondingly literal way obiectum as gegenwurf [thrown over against].*
At the inception of the modem age the beingness of beings changed. The essence of that historical inception consists in this very change. The subjectivity of the subiectum (substantiality) is now defined as self-representing representation. Yet it is man, as rational creature, who is in a distinctive sense self-representing representation. Thus man becomes a distinctive being (subiectum), becomes the "definitive" "subject. " Through the designated change in the metaphysical essence of subjectivity the name subjectivity preserves and maintains its unique meaning for the future: the Being of beings consists in representation. Subjectivity in the modem sense is contrasted with substantiality and is finally absorbed in it. Hence the decisive demand made by Hegel's metaphysics runs like this: "According to my own view, which can be j ustified only in the exposition of the system itself, everything depends on our grasping and expressing the true, not as substance, but every
* Note that understand is not the English word (which is obviously related to the present context!) but a Middle High German construction meaning, literally, "what