If Being did not essentially occur as such, then νοεῖν would also remain a nothingness. πάρεξ τοῦ ἐόντος, if the prospect is outside of the sphere of presence, wherein anything can be sought, then the “it is” or even only the “it was” or “will be” is no being at all. But if the projection in νοεῖν did not happen, then presence would be closed off, and no beings could ever be encountered. Being and apprehending therefore do not stand in a congruent, reversible relation of reciprocal appertaining. Instead, Being pertains to apprehension otherwise than apprehension pertains to Being, with perhaps another sense of necessity in each case. Yet this difference thus also in the reciprocity of the relation pertains to the unitariness of the full essence of Being. Even this, however, is not the last word on the matter. (Cf. below, p. 56.)
Verses 37–40 also belong to this essential characterization of Being. Given this characterization, it is now said what results, on the basis of and in light of the essence of Being, for everything considered a being according to common human opinion, everything established by the human view regarding what should count as a being. All this, understood in terms of the essence of Being, is just wordplay, mere opinion, chatter (but not purely nothing!). The common understanding of Being is suspended in idle talk about beings. Entangled therein, the gaze does not become free to carry out the gathered and gathering respect toward oneness and to conceive presence as such in the present; mere ὀνόμαζειν, not λέγειν.
l) Changeable things as nonbeings
From 6, 6–9, we already know how the human throng understands Being. That understanding is now rehearsed in sharp opposition to the essential determination of Being. It is significant that Parmenides here refers explicitly to | τόπον ἀλλάσσειν, change of place, i.e., movement in the sense of locomotion, emergence here and disappearance there, {GA 35: 182} and vice versa. Furthermore, Parmenides speaks of (ἡ) χρόα, the surface, the superficial, what first offers itself, shows itself. The superficial shows itself (φανόν) only to the eye; therefore what in a preeminent sense appears and seems, what shines, is precisely color, a changing surface in the light. There is good reason for explicitly mentioning such change here, because precisely the change of light and darkness, or day and night—as we saw earlier with regard to Anaximander—is the primal phenomenon for emergence and disappearance, γένεσις and φθορά, here and away. But that which in this manner can be here and away like day and night, that which is visible by day and hidden at night, that which is now here and now away, now has presence and now absence, is not a being. It does not satisfy Being, presence {Anwesenheit}, but on the contrary itself requires presence {Anwesenheit} in general as the domain of coming