a title that describes their content. The word only tells us something about the how of the demonstration and treatment of what this discipline [35] considers. Science "of" the phenomena means that it grasps its objects in such a way that everything about them to be discussed must be directly indicated and directly demonstrated. The basically tautological expression "descriptive phenomenology" has the same sense. Here description does not mean a procedure like that of, say, botanical morphology. The term rather has the sense of a prohibition, insisting that we avoid all nondemonstrative determinations. The character of description itself, the specific sense of the λόγος, can be established only from the "content" ["Sachheit"] of what is·"described," that is, of what is to be brought to scientific determinateness in the way phenomena are encountered. The meaning of the formal and vulgar concept of the phenomenon formally justifies our calling every way of indicating beings as they show themselves in themselves "phenomenology."
Now what must be taken into account if the formal concept of phenomenon is to be deformalized to the phenomenological one, and how does this differ from the vulgar concept? What is it that phenomenology is to "let be seen"? What is it that is to be called "phenomenon" in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence becomes the necessary theme when we indicate something explicitly? Manifestly it is something that does not show itself initially and for the most part, something that is concealed [verborgen] in contrast to what initially and for the most part does show itself. But, at the same time, it is something that essentially belongs to what initially and for the most part shows itself, indeed in such a way that it constitutes its meaning and ground.*
But what remains concealed in an exceptional sense, or what falls back and is covered up [Verdeckung] again, or shows itself only in a "disguised" ["verstellt"] way, is not this or that being but rather, as we have shown in our foregoing observations, the being of beings. It can be covered up to such a degree that it is forgotten and the question about it and its meaning altogether omitted. Thus, phenomenology has taken into its "grasp" thematically as its object that which, in terms of its ownmost content, demands that it become a phenomenon in a distinct sense.
Phenomenology is the way of access to, and the demonstrative manner of determination of, that which is to become the theme of ontology. Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. The phenomenological concept of phenomenon, as self-showing, means the being of beings—its meaning, modifications, and derivatives. This self-showing is nothing arbitrary, nor is it something like an appearing. The being of beings can least of all be something "behind which" something else [36] stands, something that "does not appear."
* Truth of being.