How could this have come about? Heidegger gives a brief sketch of this process of degeneration. The idea is the "looked at" (das Gesichtete), that which stands be fore us (vor uns steht), that which presences (an-west) itself, that which is a presence (Anwesen), a presencing, i.e., that which in an original sense is. For as has been notes, οὐσία can mean two things: it can mean the presence of its presencing; it can also mean the present in "the what" of its outward appearance (Aussehen). These dual aspects of the Greek notion of being have already been noted as the "permanent" (Phu-) and the "appearing" (Pha-) sides of Physis. But soon it is idea which comes to constitute (Ausmacht), as well as "to make out" (in the sense of "see") the being of things. Plato's theory of ideas simply drives a permanent wedge between these two aspects of being, that which was in Parmenides and Heraclitus the peculiar "togetherness" of Physis and Logos, Logos and Physis; such that Plato's theory of ideas can be said to represent the completion, though a rather unfortunate completion, to the great beginning of the pre-Socratics. As Heidegger says in his work on thinking, Plato drove a wedge between things and being, between things and their being. He put them in different places as well. And this is why Heidegger feels justified in speaking of the Meta- (μετά-) as the whole sense of Greek thought. Indeed, this is true of western philosophy in general. For as Heidegger say in his recent work on Nietzsche, all western philosophy is Platonism. Further, metaphysics and Platonism and also Idealism are the same thing.

Thus regarding the meta-physical sense of Greek philosophy Heidegger notes, that being at rest remained for Greek thought totally other than changeable things. This difference, this character of the other, which lay between being and things, appears, then, looking from the side of things in relation to their being, as transcendence, i.e., as meta-physical. Thus can Heidegger say that with Plato's interpretation of being as Idea indeed begins metaphysics. And from Plato until Nietzsche we are dealing with the history of metaphysics.

¶ 3:22 PM