Reaffirming “The Truth of Being”   25


This clearing [Lichtung] … this free dimension is not the creation of the human being; it is not the human being. On the contrary, it is that which is assigned to him, since it is addressed to him: it is that which is dispensed to him.40


In Heidegger’s universe of indications: Being itself, Ereignis, Lichtung – the Same. Precisely in the same way that, according to Heidegger, “ Ἀλήθεια, Φύσις, Λόγος are the Same [his italics] … as the originary self-gathering-together in the One that is rich with distinction: to Hen . The Ἓν, the primordially unifying One and Only, is the Λόγος as Ἀλήθεια as Φύσις.”41

In summary, Being itself is the unconcealing of beings (ἀλήθεια); the emerging, arising, appearing, shining forth of beings (φύσις); the laying out and fore-gathering of beings (the primordial Λόγος) – but also the “appropriating” (Ereignis) of beings and the “lighting” and “clearing” (Lichtung) of beings. Yet to be more precise, characterizing Being itself as the appearing or manifesting of beings does not in the first place refer to the sheer, abiding “appearance” or “presence” of beings (which came to be spoken of in the metaphysical tradition as εἶδος, μορφή, οὐσία, ἐνέργεια, actualitas, essentia), but rather to anwesen selbst, presencing itself, or to “Bewegtheit” (Heidegger’s translation of Aristotle’s κίνησις), namely, the “movedness” of all beings into and out of presence, which Heidegger meditated on at length, especially in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, B I.42 Being itself: the unifying one and only, temporal-spatial emerging or appropriating of beings into presence – but also the giving, granting, freeing, letting of beings – as long as we understand by “letting” this “enabling” (Ermöchlichung) and “empowering” (Ermächtigung) movement into (and out of) presence.


Concluding Thought


Truth of Being: Being truths. The “strangeness” of this matter for thinking was not lost upon Heidegger himself, who commented in the 1943 lecture course on Heraclitus:


The thinking of metaphysics knows truth only as a feature of cognition. That is why the hint presently given – that “truth,” in the sense


Richard Capobianco - Heidegger's Way of Being