The Word Substance () Is Applied, If Not In More Senses, Still At Least To Four Main Objects; For Both

The word ‘substance’ (οὐσία) is applied, if not in more senses, still at least to four main objects; for both the essence (τί ἦν εἶναι) and the universal (καθόλου) and the genus (γένος) are thought to be the substance of each thing, and fourthly the substratum (ὑποκείμενον). Now the substratum is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else. And so we must first determine this; for that which underlies a thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance. And in one sense matter (ὕλη) is said to be of the nature of substratum, in another, shape (μορφή), and in a third, the compound of these. (By the matter I mean, for instance, the bronze, by the shape the pattern of its form, and by the compound of these the statue, the concrete whole.) Therefore if the form is prior to the matter and more real, it will be prior also to the compound of both, for the same reason.

Aristotle, Metaphysics

God is known better by non-knowledge

Augustine, De ordine

The finitude of philosophy consists not in the fact that it comes up against limits and cannot proceed further. It rather consists in this: in the singleness and simplicity of its central problematic, philosophy conceals a richness that again and again demands a renewed awakening.

Martin Heidegger, Metaphysical Foundations of Logic

Man should be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior; all else is folly. Friedrich Nietzsche

Human existence is handed over to itself in its having-to-be [Zu-sein]. “Handed over”—that means: already in, already ahead-of-itself, already familiar with the world, never something just-there but always already a possibility that has been decided one way or the other. Such human existence is always already prior to what it de facto is at any given moment. But prior to every possible “prior” is time itself, which makes it possible that human existence can be the very possibility of its self.

Martin Heidegger, Logic

If we want to lay hold of Being it is always as if we were reaching into a void. The Being that we are asking about is almost like Nothing, and yet we are always trying to arm and guard ourselves against the presumption of saying that all beings are not. But Being remains undiscover-able, almost like Nothing, or in the end entirely so. The word "Being" is then finally just an empty word. It means nothing actual, tangible, real. Its meaning is an unreal vapor. So in the end Nietzsche is entirely right when he calls the "highest concepts" such as Being "the final wisp of evaporating reality"

Martin Heidegger, Plato's Sophist