The Essence of Truth

progress is inessential to philosophy. It is always the beginning that remains decisive.

The driving force and restlessness of this history is the liberation of man to the essence of being: spirit, world-projection, worldview, a fundamental reality and mode of thought in which there is light and space for epic, development of the state, tragedy, cult architecture, sculpture, philosophy. Truth begins with the beginning of this history, and with this beginning man steps into un-truth in the most profound sense of not truth, i.e. hiddenness of beings. History is nothing in itself, but exists precisely and only where something is manifest; its limit and definiteness is precisely the hidden. What unhiddenness is can only be shown from hiddenness.

Λήθη, in the genuine Greek sense, is not a ‘lived experience’ (the Greeks, thank God, knew no such thing), but is a fateful occurrence that overtakes human beings, an occurrence, however, that pertains to all beings: they fall into hiddenness, they withdraw, they are simply absent.