And the key to this drastic and fateful change in the history of western philosophy from a consideration of the being of things (Sein des Seienden) to a consideration of the "thingliness" of things (Seiendheit des Seienden) is, at least in the case of Plato, to be found in the second meaning of being which Heidegger found among the Greeks, the aspect of being as appearance. Thus can Heidegger point to two different meanings of appearance (Erscheinen) among the Greeks. There is the more "solid" (the pre-Socratic) side of appearance as the self-collecting, bringing-itself-to-stand and so staying in the collectivity; and there was the later notion of appearance as that which, as already standing there, present a front, a surface, gives us something to look at. In this latter notion of appearance it is the face (Geicht) which constitutes the thing.

It is clear that Plato does not understand appearance in its original sense at all. For him appearance is not emerging power (aufgehende Walten); it is rather the showing up of a copy (auftauchen des Abbildes). And from this one can easily see how being comes to be distinguished from φαινόμενον, whereas in more authentically original times the two aspects of Physis, that of permanence and that of appearance, were happily united and existed in perfect concord.

Heidegger offers what he believes to be an authentic historical verification to prove that he is on the right track in this regard. For he notes that ever since Idea and Category have come into their kingdom, philosophers have had a most difficult time trying to explain the relation between statement (thought as the falsified Logos) and being, whereas before the radical changes which took place in western thinking with Plato and Aristotle the problem of explaining the relation between statement and being did not exist. Logos and Physis were one.

¶ 6:36 PM