PATHMARKS
is possible only together with the irruption of this distinction. And if what is [31] distinctive about Dasein indeed lies in the fact that in understanding being it comports itself toward beings, then that potential for distinguishing in which the ontological difference becomes factical must have sunk the roots of its own possibility in the ground of the essence of Dasein. By way of anticipation, we shall call this ground of the ontological difference the transcendence of Dasein.
If one characterizes all comportment toward beings as intentional, then intentionality is possible only on the grounds of transcendence. Intentionality, however, is neither identical with transcendence, nor, conversely, does it itself make transcendence possible.18
Our task hitherto has merely been to show, in a few essential steps, that the essence of truth must be sought more originarily than the traditional characterization of truth in the sense of a property of assertions would admit. Yet if the essence of ground has an intrinsic relation to the essence of truth, then the problem of ground too can be housed only where the essence of truth draws its inner possibility, namely, in the essence of transcendence. The question concerning the essence of ground becomes the problem of transcendence.
If this conjunction of truth, ground, and transcendence is originarily a unitary one, then a chain of corresponding problems must come to light wherever the question of "ground" — if only in the form of an explicit discussion of the principle of reason — is taken hold of in a more resolute fashion.
The statement cited from Leibniz already betrays the relatedness between the problem of "ground" and that of being. Verum esse means inesse qua idem esse. For Leibniz, however, verum esse - being true, at the same time means being "in truth" — esse pure and simple. The idea of being in general is then interpreted by inesse qua idem esse. What constitutes an ens as an ens is "identity," unity correctly understood that, as simple unity, originarily unifies and simultaneously individuates in such unifying. [32] That unifying, however, that individuates originarily (in advance) and simply, and which constitutes the essence of beings as such, is the essence of the "subjectivity" of the subjectum (substantiality of substance) understood monadologically. Leibniz's derivation of the principium rationis from the essence of propositional truth tells us that it is grounded upon a quite specific idea of being in general, an idea in whose light alone that "deduction" becomes possible. We see the connection between "ground" and "being" above all in Kant's metaphysics. It is certainly the case that one commonly finds a lack of any explicit treatment of the "principle of reason" in his
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