ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH
essence of truth, the essence of freedom manifests itself as exposure to the disclosedness of beings.
Freedom is not merely what common sense is content to let pass under this name: the caprice, turning up occasionally in our choosing, of inclining in this or that direction. Freedom is not mere absence of constraint with respect to what we can or cannot do. Nor is it on the other hand mere readiness for what is required and necessary (and so somehow a being). Prior to all this ("negative" and "positive" freedom), freedom is engagement in the disclosure of beings as such. Disclosedness itself is conserved in eksistent engagement, through which the openness of the open region, i.e., the "there" ["Da"], is what it is.
In Da-sein the essential ground, long ungrounded, on the basis of which human beings are able to ek-sist, is preserved for them. [85] Here "existence" does not mean existentia in the sense of occurring or being at hand. Nor on the other hand does it mean, in an "existentiell" fashion, the moral endeavor of the human being on behalf of his "self," based on his psychophysical constitution. Ek-sistence, rooted in truth as freedom, is exposure to the disclosedness of beings as such. Still uncomprehended, indeed, not even in need of an essential grounding, the ek-sistence of historical human beings begins at that moment when the first thinker takes a questioning stand with regard to the unconcealment of beings by asking: what are beings? In this question unconcealment is experienced for the first time. Beings as a whole reveal themselves as φύσις, "nature," which here does not yet mean a particular sphere of beings but rather beings as {GA 9: 190} such as a whole, specifically in the sense of upsurgent presencing [aufgehendes Anwesen]. History begins only when beings themselves are expressly drawn up into their unconcealment and conserved in it, only when this conservation is conceived on the basis of questioning regarding beings as such. The originary disclosure of beings as a whole, the question concerning beings as such, and the beginning of Western history are the same; they occur together in a "time" which, itself unmeasurable, first opens up the open region11 for every measure.
But if ek-sistent Da-sein, which lets beings be, sets the human being free for his "freedom" by first offering to his choice something possible (a being) and by imposing on him something necessary (a being), human caprice does not then have freedom at its disposal. The human being does not "possess" freedom as a property. At best, the converse holds: freedom, ek-sistent, disclosive Da-sein, possesses the human being — so originarily that only it secures for humanity that distinctive relatedness to beings as
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