§14. We share in the unconcealment of beings [105-6] | 75

We are inquiring with regard to a partaking in beings in which we share in something that pertains to beings, without anything about beings being lost or altered in the process. What do we share in this remarkable partaking in beings? We share in their unconcealment, their truth. Only insofar as we share in the unconcealment of beings are we able to let them—beings—be, just as they make themselves known. And whenever we share in unconcealment, something is common for us that does not constitute a fragment of the chalk that could therefore only ever be the possession of one person, as it were. Nor is unconcealment a present at hand property of the chalk, such as its white color, for instance, a property that could be separated from the chalk.



§14. We share in the unconcealment of beings


We share in the unconcealment of beings. What is common is the truth of beings. The same that we were seeking is truth, and it is this same too, as unconcealment, that makes it possible for that which is manifest within unconcealment to show itself as this being that is manifest and, indeed, to show itself to all those who have this unconcealment in common.

Our initial point was that being with one another makes itself known in the comportment of several toward the same. Sameness for several is commonality, having something in common, sharing in unconcealment. Being with one another alongside beings is our sharing in the unconcealment (truth) of the beings in question.

Have we now solved the puzzles? Not at all! For now, we have only discovered, perhaps without seeing it entirely clearly, that unconcealment is that which we share in common. We see roughly that there is something in which we share, and indeed in such a way that on the one hand, beings themselves remain untouched in this, and on the other hand, that they can make themselves known to us precisely as themselves within what is common.

Truth is that in which we share. With this, however, the essence of truth as unconcealment has only become more problematic—and so it should! We share in beings, that is, in their unconcealment, which is precisely that of the beings in question and thus pertains to them—how, is obscure and remains so initially. That in which we share on the one hand pertains to beings, and on the other hand is something that we, as human beings, dispose over among ourselves, as our possession.

The question is: How do we stand in relation to such a thing as the unconcealment of something present at hand? How do we partake in such a thing? Partaking in the unconcealment of beings is—by way of unconcealment—partaking in beings. Yet this, our having a share in unconcealment—from where is this having taken? Is this having a share in truth (unconcealment) grounded in


Introduction to Philosophy (GA 27) by Martin Heidegger