2 · (True) being and (mere) appearance: the two-world theory

175We may find a first consoling hint regarding this subject if we turn to the old metaphysical dichotomy二分 of (true) Being and (mere) Appearance, because it, too, actually relies on the primacy首要地位, or at least on the priority, of appearance.

176In order to find out what truly is, the philosopher must leave the world of appearances among which he is naturally and originally at home—as Parmenides did when he was carried upward, beyond the gates of night and day, to the divine way that lay “far from the beaten path of men,”³ and as Plato did, too, in the Cave parable.⁴

177The world of appearances is prior to whatever region the philosopher may choose as his “true” home but into which he was not born.

178It has always been the very appearingness显现性 of this world that suggested to the philosopher, that is, to the human mind, the notion that something must exist that is not appearance: “Nehmen wir die Welt als Erscheinung so beweiset sie gerade zu das Dasein von Etwas das nicht Erscheinung ist” (“If we look upon the world as appearance, it demonstrates the existence of something that is not appearance”), in the words of Kant.⁵

179In other words, when the philosopher takes leave of the world given to our senses and does a turnabout (Plato’s periagōgē) to the life of the mind, he takes his clue from the former, looking for something to be revealed to him that would explain its underlying truth.

180This truth—a-lētheia, that which is disclosed (Heidegger)—can be conceived only as another “appearance,” another phenomenon originally hidden but of a supposedly higher order, thus signifying the lasting predominance支配地位 of appearance.

181Our mental apparatus, though it can withdraw from present appearances, remains geared to适应于、朝向 Appearance.

182The mind, no less than the senses, in its search—Hegel’s Anstrengung des Begriffs—expects that something will appear to it.

183Something quite similar seems to be true for science, and especially for modern science, which—according to an early remark of Marx’s—relies on Being and Appearance having parted company分道扬镳, so that the philosopher’s special and individual effort is no longer needed to arrive at some “truth” behind the appearances.

184The scientist, too, depends on appearances, whether, in order to find out what lies beneath the surface, he cuts open the visible body to look at its interior or catches hidden objects by means of all sorts of sophisticated精密的 equipment that deprives剥除 them of the exterior properties through which they show themselves to our natural senses.

185The guiding notion of these philosophical and scientific efforts is always the same: Appearances, as Kant said, “must themselves have grounds which are not appearances.”⁶

186This, in fact, is an obvious generalization of the way natural things grow and “appear” into the light of day out of a ground of darkness, except that it was now assumed that this ground possessed a higher rank of reality than what merely appeared and after a while disappeared again.

187And just as the philosophers’ “conceptual efforts” to find something beyond appearances have always ended with rather violent invectives猛烈抨击 against “mere appearances,” the eminently极其 practical achievements of the scientists in laying bare揭露 what appearances themselves never show without being interfered with have been made at their expense.

188The primacy of appearance is a fact of everyday life which neither the scientist nor the philosopher can ever escape, to which they must always return from their laboratories and studies, and which shows its strength by never being in the least changed or deflected偏转 by whatever they may have discovered when they withdrew from it.

189“Thus the ‘strange’ notions of the new physics . . . [surprise] common sense . . . without changing anything of its categories.”⁷

190Against this unshakable不可动摇的 common-sense conviction stands the age-old theoretical supremacy至高地位 of Being and Truth over mere appearance, that is, the supremacy of the ground that does not appear over the surface that does.

191This ground supposedly answers the oldest question of philosophy as well as of science: How does it happen that something or somebody, including myself, appears at all and what makes it appear in this form and shape rather than in any other?

192The question itself asks for a cause rather than a base or ground, but the point of the matter is that our tradition of philosophy has transformed the base from which something rises into the cause that produces it and has then assigned to this producing agent生产性动因 a higher rank of reality than is given to what merely meets the eye.

193The belief that a cause should be of higher rank than the effect (so that an effect can easily be disparaged贬低 by being retraced追溯 to its cause) may belong to the oldest and most stubborn metaphysical fallacies谬误.

194Yet here again we are not dealing with a sheer arbitrary任意的 error; the truth is, not only do appearances never reveal what lies beneath them of their own accord自行、自发地 but also, generally speaking, they never just reveal; they also conceal—“No thing, no side of a thing, shows itself except by actively hiding the others.”⁸

195They expose, and they also protect from exposure, and, as far as what lies beneath is concerned, this protection may even be their most important function.

196At any rate, this is true for living things, whose surface hides and protects the inner organs that are their source of life.

197The elementary logical fallacy of all theories that rely on the dichotomy of Being and Appearance is obvious and was early discovered and summed up by the sophist Gorgias in a fragment from his lost treatise On Non-Being or On Nature—supposedly a refutation of Eleatic philosophy: “Being is not manifest since it does not appear [to men: dokein]; appearing [to men] is weak since it does not succeed in being.”⁹

198Modern science’s relentless不懈的 search for the base underneath mere appearances has given new force to the old argument.

199It has indeed forced the ground of appearances into the open so that man, a creature fitted for and dependent on appearances, can catch hold of it.

200But the results have been rather perplexing令人困惑的.

201No man, it has turned out, can live among “causes” or give full account in normal human language of a Being whose truth can be scientifically demonstrated in the laboratory and tested practically in the real world through technology.

202It does look as though Being, once made manifest, overruled appearances—except that nobody so far has succeeded in living in a world that does not manifest itself of its own accord自行地.