Thereby is already obviated every endeavor to carry out this differentiation in a non-representational way, i.e., such that the differentiated are not posited uniformly on the same plane of differentiatedness, even if this plane is left quite indeterminate. In fact, however, this differentiation, taken formally and said straightforwardly, can only be an indication that the relation to being is other than the relation to beings and that this dissimilarity in the relations pertains to the distinct ways of relating oneself to the differentiated. As grounded, the relation to being is steadfastness in Da-sein; it means to stand within the truth of beyng (as event).
The relation to beings is the creative conservation of the preservation of beyng in the beings which, in accord with such preservation, place themselves as beings into the clearing of the "there."
In the transition to Da-sein within the questioning of the truth of beyng, the only possibility at first is to modify the representation so much that the relation to being is established as a projection and thus as the character of understanding (Da-sein's understanding of being). These determinations, as decisive as they remain for a first clarification of the wholly other asking of the question of being, are nevertheless, seen with respect to the question-worthiness of beyng and of its essential occurrence, merely something like a first tentative step on a very long springboard. With this step hardly anything is detected of the demand which, at the end of the springboard, is necessary for making the leap. Indeed this step is not even understood as the first one of a long "passage" but as already the last step. That allows one to settle into what is said as a determinate "doctrine" or "view" and with it to produce all sorts of historiological accomplishments. Or else one rejects this "doctrine" and deludes oneself that something has thereby been decided regarding the question of being.
Basically, however, the making explicit of the "ontological difference" merely testifies that the attempt at a more original question of being must at the same time be a more essential appropriation of the history of metaphysics. Yet to unify both of these or to possess them already as radically one (i.e., to begin in what is wholly other and to remain faithful to the history of the first beginning, while essentially surpassing all previous historiological accomplishments, to master and yet to maintain, with equal decisiveness, what is mutually exclusive) is so foreign to the usual procedure of historiology and system-building that these latter can never be struck by the idea that such unity could be required. (But what else is the aim of "phenomenological destruction"?)
Therefore, even the "ontological difference" is then suspended in the indeterminate. To all appearances, it had already been known at least since Plato, but in truth it was merely put into effect and, so to speak, utilized. Kant knows it in the concept of the "transcendental