[Heidegger's] own distinction between the everyday preoccupation of the "they" (das Man) and the authentic sight of the self owes much to Plato's distinction between the opinion of the πολλοί and the clear sight of the philosopher. Likewise for his own concept of the disclosing function of discourse which owes much to Aristotle's λόγος ἀποφαντιχός. Likewise even for his concept of resoluteness which was, to some extent, inspired by the Aristotelian φρόνησις. For all these reasons, Heidegger never says that Greek ontology was merely trapped within the inauthenticity of everyday preoccupation. He merely says that Greek ontology was naïve.[P. 110] Naïveté combines freshness, genuineness, but also some sort of lack of awareness. Thanks to the freshness of their naïveté, the Greeks revealed many essential features of everydayness. Thanks to the same freshness they understood that the struggle over being leads back to the being that we are. In both cases they provide a model of fundamental ontology. But because of the lack of awareness implied in their naïveté, they were unable to discover that existence, our existence, taken in its ground, is the only genuine horizon for a unified understanding of all the meanings of being. This is why Heidegger concludes his remarks about the Greeks as follows: "We not only wish but must understand the Greeks better than they understood themselves. Only thus shall we actually be in possession of our heritage."[P. 111]

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