At this point one might make a brief comparison of Heidegger's own notion of being with the meaning of being which he finds among the Greeks. In a passage in Was ist Metaphysik? in which Heidegger refers to Hegel's Logic, saying that being and nothing indeed belong together; however, they belong together not because both agree in their character of indeterminateness or immediacy, but rather because being is finite (endlich) in its very essence. This statement occurs in the epilogue to Was ist Metaphysik?, which dates from 1943. However, it correctly characterizes Heidegger's view of being from his earliest to his most recent works. Being for Heidegger is finite and limited.

And in heidegger's view being for the Greeks was finite as well. To be infinite for the Greeks would have been to be indefinite, which was indeterminate; and undefined would have have been not to be. And even when the Greeks spoke of being as infinite or as eternal, such infinity and such eternity could only mean "many presences," an eternal string of present moments. In Heidegger's view being for the Greeks could only be finite and limited, even though it became finite only because it was limited by itself.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between the way in which time as the transcendental horizon of being is established in Sein und Zeit, and the way in which Heidegger discovers the finite character of being among the Greeks. The finite character of being is derived from, as Heidegger says, and is made clear only in the transcendence of a Dasein projected out of nothing. This is the fundamental difference between the finite character attached to the notion of being which Heidegger finds among the Greeks, and the way in which the same finiteness of being is doctrinally worked out in Heidegger's thought. In Heidegger's Sein und Zeit the finite and limited character of being is derived through the existential analysis of Dasein, which analysis reveals being as finite, as time-bound (zeitlich).

¶ 7:09 PM