precisely sheer coherence in the present. Presence {Anwesenheit}, bearing the pure fullness and the pure domination of proximity and remoteness, is the present. Again the temporal statement!
h) The recourse to the axiom
Thus we see again that the regarding of Being is basically a regarding of presence, the present. The temporal statement announces itself anew in its priority for grounding the σήματα. Not yet proved are still a negative respect, ἀτέλεστον, and two positive ones, μουνογενές and ἕν. The latter indeed already in συνεχές and οὖλον, in the sense of unity qua simplicity and wholeness, but not made explicitly thematic. Yet the following verses, 26ff., do not offer a discussion of these last named σήματα. On the contrary, the consideration turns back to what was already discussed. Let us see how.
Verses 26–28 have the same character as 15–19 in terms of method but have a different character in terms of content. They agree insofar as now again the proof is interrupted in order to take recourse in the axiom. The interruption now takes place, however, in the manner of a summary. It is now said that Being lacks all movement as named in the word κίνησις (ἀκίνητον); every sort of transition to and fro, not only emergence and disappearance, change of place and locomotion, but also the to and fro movement of trembling do not pertain to Being.
Without starting or stopping; that does not mean Being endures. On the contrary, Being is outside of duration, for that is always a from-to. Being is altogether lacking every “from” and “since when” and “until then.” If Being is nevertheless precisely the present and presence, then this must signify something other than the ongoing occurrence we measure with a clock. All from-to signifies from before until later; the before a no-longer- now, the later a not-yet-now. All from-to (whether the from-to is determinate or indeterminate makes no matter here; both equally impossible with Being—in presence no “now” whatsoever can be postulated) moves in the region of the fleeting “now” that in itself—i. e., in every “now”—is necessarily different and never related to a limit but instead is precisely altogether the limitless, the mere “on and on,” the “and so forth,” the endless.
Being has nothing to do with this endlessness. On the contrary, Being is bounded—πέρας— limit, not that at which something stops and goes no further but as is explicitly said: the limits fetter and bind, they bestow bindingness. Being is not the endlessly ongoing “now” but rather is the binding present, intrinsically self-enclosed. What is not of the essence of this present, everything “un-“ and “non-,” all nonbeing, is driven away and thrust aside from reliance on the unconcealed.