Coming again to Plato  , we can see that the distinction between sensible and supra-sensible, sc. between physical and metaphysical worlds, derives from the same ambivalence. In this respect it is instructive to recall that this ambivalence is expressed when we call ὄν   [òn] a participium. For the old grammarians, this meant that the word “participates” in two meanings at once, that of a noun   and that of a verb. The conception of “participation,” [Mitmachen] however, is not   a grammatical but a philosophical one. The Latin grammarians took it from the Greek grammarians (μετοχή [metoche  ]), who took it, Heidegger claims, from Plato. For Plato, the word describes the relationship between beings and Being, sc. the Ideas. A table, for example, is what it is because it offers its visage to us as a table. To the extent that an individual being offers the visage of a table, Plato maintains that it “participates” (μέθεξις [methexis]) in the Idea   of table. In other words, between Being (Idea), the participated, and beings, the participating, there is a χωρισμός [chorismos], sc. Being and beings abide in different “places” (χώρα [chora]), and what bridges the difference between the two “places” is the process of participation. For Heidegger, however, what accounts for the conception of Being and beings as abiding in two different places is precisely the ambivalence of ὄν. It is this that gives rise to χωρισμός. Participation presupposes ambivalence. [GA8GG  , pp. 134-135, 174-175 taken as a unit. Heidegger italicizes the vorausgesetzt (p. 135)] [RHPT:11-12]