the negativity of concealing and contrasts it with the more simple negativity of a mere absence or lack. As Heidegger puts it in ‘On the Essence of Truth’:
Heidegger does not have much more to say about how this preserving or saving works or to what sorts of concealing it attaches. I propose distinguishing this preserving and simultaneous concealing from lēthē, concealment, and calling it ‘kruptesthai’ or ‘kruptein’.
‘Kruptein’ means to hide, cover, cloak, and its passive or middle voiced form, ‘kruptesthai’, means to hide oneself, ‘to take back into oneself, to hide back [bergen] and conceal [verbergen] in oneself ’ (P: 140-141/GA54: 209).15 While I make no claim about the meaning of the Greek terms themselves, I suggest that in a Heideggerian context ‘kruptein’ and ‘kruptesthai’ can be taken to name concealings that are simultaneous with unconcealing, in the sense that ‘[b]oth— proffering [Sichzuschicken] and withdrawing [Sichentziehen]—are one and the same, not two different things’ (PR: 62/GA10: 91). They are the same in the sense that both the revealing and concealing take place in a single gesture. Heidegger himself understands kruptein as ‘to conceal [verbergen] in the sense of a harboring [Bergen]’ (H: 105/GA55: 139) and kruptesthai as ‘sheltering concealing [das bergende Verbergen]’ (P: 60/GA54: 89, translation modified); ‘[k]ruptesthai is, as self-concealing [Sichver-bergen], not a mere self-closing [Sichverschließen] but a sheltering [Bergen] in which the essential possibility of rising is preserved—to which rising as such belongs. Self-concealing [Sichverbergen] guarantees self-revealing in its true nature’ (EGT: 114/GA7: 278).