ON THE ESSENCE OF GROUND
Nothing less than the insight that this determination of the essence of truth - however it may be conceived in its details - is indeed an uncircumventable one, yet nevertheless derivative.14 The overarching accordance of the nexus with beings, and their consequent accord, do not as such primarily make beings accessible. Rather beings, as the concern of any predicative determination, must already be manifest before such predication and for it. For it to be possible, predication must be able to take up residence in a making-manifest that is not predicative in character. Propositional truth is rooted in a more originary truth (unconcealment), in the pre-predicative manifestness of beings, which may be called ontic truth. In keeping with the different kinds and domains of beings, the character of their possible manifestness and of the accompanying ways of interpretively determining them changes. Thus, for example, the truth of what is present at hand (for example, material things) as discoveredness [28 {GA 9: 131}] is specifically distinct from the truth of those beings that we ourselves are, from the disclosedness of existing Dasein.15 Yet however multifaceted the distinctions between these two kinds of ontic truth may be, it remains valid for all pre-predicative manifestness that making manifest never primarily has the character of a mere presenting [Vorstellen] (intuiting), not even in "aesthetic" contemplation. The characterization of pre-predicative truth as intuition a readily suggests itself because ontic truth - supposedly truth proper - is in the first place defined as propositional truth, i.e., as a "connection of presentations." That which is more simple by contrast to truth thus defined is then taken to be a straightforward presenting, free of any such connection. Such presentation indeed has its own function in the task of objectifying beings, which are of course always already and necessarily manifest. Ontic manifestation, however, occurs in our finding ourselves [Sichbefinden],16 in accordance with our attunement and drives, in the midst of beings and in those ways of comporting ourselves toward beings in accordance with our striving and willing that are also grounded therein.b Yet even such kinds of comportment, whether they are interpreted as pre-predicative or as predicative, would be incapable of making beings accessible in themselves if their making manifest were not always illuminated and guided in advance by an understanding of the being (the ontological constitution: what-being and how-being) of beings. Unveiledness of being first makes possible the manifestness of beings. This
a First edition, 1929: Note here the historical origin from φύσις: [the connection] νοεῖν — εἶναι is essential.
b First edition, 1929: Here with respect to the openness of that which is closed as the rounding (εὐχυχλέος, Parmenides) of Da-sein; clearing [Lichtung] of the Da, not in terms of psychology; rather these abilities are first possible on the grounds of Da-sein.
103