ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH

against the grain of ordinary opinion and looks like a dragging up of forcibly contrived "paradoxa." Because it is difficult to eliminate this impression, such a way of speaking, paradoxical only for ordinary doxa (opinion), is to be renounced. But surely for those who know about such matters the "non-" of the originary non-essence of truth, as un-truth, points to the still unexperienced domain of the truth of Being (not merely of beings).

As letting beings be, freedom is intrinsically the resolutely open bearing that does not close up in itself. All comportment [Verbalten] is grounded in this bearing [Verhälhtnis] and receives from it directedness toward beings and disclosure of them. Nevertheless, this bearing toward concealing conceals itself in letting a forgottenness of the mystery take precedence and disappearing in such forgottenness. Certainly the human being takes his bearings [verhältsich] constantly in his comportment toward beings; but for the most pan he acquiesces in this or that being and its particular openedness. Humans cling to what is readily available and controllable even where ultimate matters are concerned. And if the human being sets out to extend, change, newly assimilate, or secure the openedness of the beings pertaining to the most various domains of his activity and interest, then he still takes his directives from the sphere of readily available intentions and needs.

However, to reside in what is readily available is intrinsically not to let the concealing of what is concealed hold sway. Certainly, among readily familiar things there are also some that are puzzling, unexplained, undecided, questionable. But these self-certain questions are merely transitional, intermediate points in our movement within the readily familiar and thus not essential. Wherever the concealment of beings as a whole is conceded only as a limit that occasionally announces itself, concealing as a fundamental occurrence has sunk into forgottenness.

[91 {GA 9 195}] But the forgotten mystery of Dasein is not eliminated by the forgottenness; rather, the forgottenness bestows on the apparent disappearance of what is forgotten a peculiar presence [Gegenwart]. By disavowing itself in and for forgottenness, the mystery leaves historical human beings in the sphere of what is readily available to them, leaves them to their own resources. Thus left, humanity replenishes its "world" on the basis of the latest needs and aims, and tills out that world by means of proposing and planning. From these human beings then take their standards, forgetting beings as a whole. Humans persist in these standards and continually supply themselves with new standards, yet without considering either the ground for taking up standards or the essence of what gives the standard. In spite of their advance to new standards and goals, human beings go wrong as regards the essential genuineness of their standards. Human beings are all

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Martin Heidegger (GA 9) Pathmarks