laws"30 or lastly, when in "the atomic age," "what presences no longer holds sway, but rather the assault reigns" over nature which has become an energy reserve.31 Φύσις is a category of presencing because, from Heraclitus to the technological era, "being lightens, although in various ways, according to the characteristics of shining-forth, of lingering in appearance, of presencing, of opposition and contrariety"32: these are all characteristics pertaining to φύσις.
This word has oriented Heidegger most consistently throughout his writings since it addresses the 'struggle' at the heart of the difference disclosed by ἐόν, the struggle between truth and untruth. The last century has seen—in Hegel as well as in Nietzsche—concepts of truth in which its affirmation stands in an essential relationship to its negation; concepts of truth as struggle, therefore, which were either dialectical or sharply anti-dialectical. But what is (perhaps) new with Heidegger is that the struggle between truth and untruth is situated outside of man, on the turf of the economies where dialectics is rendered inoperative because man is only one variable in the play of originary presencing. As a result of that displacement, truth becomes unrecognizable to philosophers. The category ἐόν underscores the difference between the noun and the verb, between an entity and being, or between the present and its emergence from absence, thereby altering all received notions of 'being'; that of φύσις designates presencing as self-manifestation, which amounts to transmuting 'nature' ; whereas that of ἀλήθεια places presencing on the battlefield of the economies, de-naturing and de-naturalizing 'truth' as well.
The anti-humanistic, categorial sense of this third perspective on presencing can best be shown in connection with the two preceding ones. If presencing differs, on one hand from present entities, as stressed by ἐόν, and on the other hand from absencing, as stressed by φύειν, then the negation contained in the privative prefix (ἀ-λήθεια) can be seen as differential, too: presencing negates substance-like permanence and it negates absencing. This category thus signals the dual movement in being: the giving of whatever happens to be unconcealed, and the undertow back toward concealment. It shows presencing as binomial, under the double law (νόμος) of giving and of taking back. Heidegger describes the play of unconceah1ent as a violent struggle: the struggle of light against darkness, and then ἀλήθεια appears as "clearing"33; the struggle of the lightness of world against the weight of earth, and then alētheia appears as "lightening" or "alleviating"34; the struggle of "the untrembling heart of well-rounded unconcealment" against the "opinions of mortals, "and then ἀλήθεια appears as the "free space of the open."35 But this category is not
30. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason B 479 (cf. N II 165 and 188 f./N iv 115 f. and 134; FD 175/WTh 225 f.).
31. Hw 100/QCT 149, cf. below, sec. 46.
32. SvG 154. The modern languages preserve something of the original sense of φύσις—presencing—inasmuch as the word 'nature' derives from nasci, to be born. Thus, "even we, when we speak of the 'nature' of things, the 'nature' of the state, the 'nature' of man ... we mean the being and the way to be of entities in general" (Wm 370/Phy 268).
33. VA 258/EGT 103. This is not the place to trace the various senses of the word alētheia through Heidegger's writings and their stages (see the entry "alētheia" in the Index of Greek Terms in William Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought [The Hague, 1963], p. 728). Suffice it to recall that in BT it is being-there that constitutes unconcealment and, in that sense, the Lichtung, clearing (SZ 33 and 133/BT 56 and 171). In the early texts, alētheuein, to disclose, is even called "a basic comportment of the psychē" (GA 24 103/BPP 73; see also Wm 84 and 158/BWr 127 f. and 207). While it is generally admitted that alētheia is a 'privative' construct, its etymological opposition to lēthē seems less assured Paul Friedländer (Platon, 2 vol. [Berlin, 1954], vol. I. pp. 233-242) had first criticized Heidegger's position on this issue, but retracted his criticism in the third edition of his book (Berlin, 1964), on which the English translation (3 vol., [Princeton, 1969]) is based (cf. vol. I, pp. 224 f. ). Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes (4th ed., Gottingen, 1975), adopts the translation Unvergessenheit, "unforgottenness," but accepts also Unverborgenheit, "unconcealedness" (not included in the translation by T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Discovery of Mind [Cambridge, Mass., 1953]). Gerhard Krüger, "Martin Heidegger und der Humanismus," in Studia Philosophica IX (1949):93-129, on the other hand, considers the opposition alētheia-lēthē to lack any philological foundation. It seems to me that Heribert Boeder ("Der frühgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und Alētheia," Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, IV ( 1958]) has put the issue in proper focus: "It is the 'transitive' lēthein that determines the sense of alētheia. ... This eliminates any opposition between alētheia and lēthē ... which indicates that the interpretation of alētheia as 'unconcealment' cannot genuinely rely upon the original sense of the word" (pp. 98 f.). The pertinent opposition would be between lēthein, to conceal and "to grant alētheia," i.e., to show. In the epic tradition that opposition would be limited to the domain of speech (pp. 92 f.). It is evident that Heidegger shifts the very terms of the debate: "It is not for the love of etymology that I stubbornly translate the name alētheia as 'unconcealedness'"(SD 75 f./OTB 68).
34. Hw 38 f./PLT 50 f. and SD 72/OTB 65 (the translator notes: "The meaning Heidegger intends is related to 'lever' [i.e., to alleviate, lighten a burden]"). "Lightening means: to lighten, to weigh anchor, to clear. ... What is so lightened is the free, the open" (Her 260/H 161).
35. Parmenides, frag. I (cited SD 74/OTB 67), with Heidegger's commentary (ibid.).