and at 1052a1, where he asks about the being of simple beings, Aristotle again has recourse to direct νοεῖν—θιγεῖν. Thus uncoveredness takes over answering the question about being. One of the characteristics of the being of beings, and especially of the being of the most proper beings, the simple, is determined by means of uncoveredness.
Thus, the second and the third conditions of the possibility of falsehood are both founded on the unified togetherness of being and uncoveredness. How is this togetherness itself to be understood? What must being itself mean, and how does that let us understand uncoveredness as a characteristic of being, indeed as the most proper characteristic? And does it explain why beings must finally be interpreted, as regards their being, in terms of uncoveredness? [191]
§14. The presupposition for Aristotle’s interpretation of truth as the authentic determination of being
If we have understood what presupposition must be made, and what meaning of being must be presumed, so that uncoveredness or truth can signify a mode of being, then we have also understood the unifying bond to which the conditions of possibility of falsehood lead back. Aristotle did not ask why uncoveredness or truth is and can be the determination of being—in fact, the most proper determination. He simply enacted this determination. But if we want to understand the issue, if we want to interpret and appropriate it in an authentically philosophical manner, we have to get behind Aristotle’s enactment and explain it in terms of the unexpressed presuppositions—the unexpressed, implicit understanding of being—in Aristotle and the Greeks. Whenever thinkers like Aristotle and Plato uttered the proposition (or at least operated within the interpretation) that truth equals being or is the most authentic mode of being, we may safely assume that, in doing so, what they saw and had in mind was a certain phenomenal context. The only question is whether this connection was explicit for them and whether they were methodically conscious of the hidden presuppositions that this connection entails.
We ask: What does being mean such that truth can be understood as a characteristic of being? As we have pointed out, Aristotle in Metaphysics IX 10 introduced the idea that the being of a synthetic being means presence-unto: the presence-together of something with something in the unity of a present being. This unity, this primary presence that precedes and grounds presence-together, must be understood as presence, presenting [Anwesenheit, Präsenz]. Why? If being means and (mostly implicitly) is understood as [192] presenting or presence, then the genuine and corresponding act of relating to beings as beings is