Abstract

1983 I first argued in "Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie" for the origin of the term τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι in everyday language. This article did neither get much attention, nor did it have much of an impact. The term is still considered by most scholars to be artificial and hardly understandable. In 1996 H. Weidemann tried to destroy my arguments in an article of a book edited by Chr. Rapp . To do this he invented a hypothetical construction of the possible genesis of the term, a construction which, I am afraid to say, does not have much to do with normal Greek. Here is my answer.