16. If we consider that the predominance of Platonism in its various orientations and forms now also governs (in fact especially for Nietzsche) the view of pre-Platonic philosophy, then we can see the significance attaching to the decisive interpretation of ὄν as ἰδέα and thereby also to the question of what genuinely took place here.
17. At issue in these considerations is not a history of Platonism in the sense of a series of doctrinal views as variations on Platonic theory. At issue is solely the history of the ways of dealing with the guiding question under the essential dominance of Platonism, with the task of playing over from the first to the other beginning. Platonism understood accordingly: the concept of that questioning of being which asks about the beingness of beings and places being, grasped in this way, into relation with representing (thinking). Being and thinking: the title for the history of thought within the first and the other beginning.
18. An essential supplement to this history is the exposition of the history of ἀλήθεια, the history of its all-too-early collapse and of its transformation into ὁμοίωσις; ["correctness"] and adaequatio and from there into certainty. This history then leads to the corresponding disregard of the question of truth; finally, in Nietzsche, only the question of the value of truth, a genuinely Platonizing (!) question. Everything far removed from the task of questioning the essence of truth as such in its most intimate relation to the truth of beyng and thus to beyng itself.
19. Arising out of the Platonic interpretation of beings is a mode of representation which in various forms radically rules over the subsequent history of the guiding question and thereby also over Western philosophy as a whole. The determination of the ἰδέα as the κοινόν turns the χωρισμός into a sort of being, and that is the origin of "transcendence" in its various forms, especially if even the έπέκεινα is grasped as οὐσία on account of this determination of the ἰδέα. Here is also the root of the representation of the a priori.
20. "Transcendence" is understood in various senses which at the same time are interconnected:
a) Transcendence in the "ontic" sense: one being surpassing all others, or for Christianity the generator that surpasses generated beings, the Creator and (in the very confused use of the word "transcendence") the "Transcendence" (as in "His Magnificence!") = God himself, the being that is above and beyond all other beings, the encompassing and thus the universal, the