The Event

I. The First Beginning

I. Th e FI rsT begI n n I ng This page intentionally left blank A. The first beginning ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ cf. The History of Beyng {GA69} cf. The Overcoming of Metaphysics {GA67} cf. Meditation {GA66} cf. Contributions to Philosophy [Of the Event] {GA65} cf. Lecture on truth 1930: On the Essence of Truth {GA80} cf. Being and Time {GA2} cf. lecture courses: Winter semester 1931–32: On the Essence of Truth. Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theatetus {GA34} Summer semester 1932: The Beginning of Western Philosophy (Anaximander and Parmenides) {GA35} Winter semester 1934–35: Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germanien” and “Der Rhein” {GA39} Summer semester 1935: Introduction to Metaphysics {GA40} Summer semester 1936: Schelling: On the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) {GA42} Winter semester 1937–38: Truth. Basic questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic” {GA45} 1. The first beginning Ἀλήθεια essentially occurs as the beginning. Trueness is the truth of being. Truth is “the goddess,” θεά. Her house is well rounded, not closed, never (trembling) dissembling heart but, instead, disclosing illumination of everything. Ἀλήθεια is in the first beginning the concealed—trueness: the concealing preser- vation of the cleared-open, the bestowal of the rising up, the permitting of presence. Truth is the essence of being. * Beings Ἀλήθεια (first beginning) Being —Truth Truth —Being Turn Trueness (other beginning) Event Beginning Distinction Endurance “Being” already “is” in the disentanglement (and indeed essentially occurs in the indiscernible disentanglement). The twisting free of being. Of course it will at first be difficult to renounce beyng out of the twisting free and at the same time to experience truth as something that “is more fully” than any cognitive interpretation of its essence allows. 2. Ἀλήθεια—ἰδέα Disconcealment: when and where does it exist and happen? Can we ask such a question if we know that Ἀλήθεια is being itself? But ἔστιν γὰρ εἶναι. Certainly; this implies, however, that being itself essentially occurs in an originary way throughout time-place, although being cannot be pinned down by indicating a position therein. Yet does not the question become ever unavoidable: how would ἀλήθεια be taken up and preserved? Surely it is unavoidable, but this taking up (originating essential occurrence of the human being as νοῦς) is not in the first place the grounding of Ἀλήθεια, which essentially occurs only in its proper inceptuality, i.e., only inceptually. Therefore the experience of the inceptual is decisive, and so are, moreover, the renunciation of an explanation and the localization in a place. All this merely raises questions, because we think in terms of beings and are little able to match up to being, which we, following the designation, at the same time take and seek as an “object.” But is the ἰδέα, apparentness, not then the same as ἀλήθεια? Yes and no. In it still the essence of the emergent but at the same time the inclusion of onlooking, whereby the ἰδέα itself becomes that at which a directing is directed. This, however, does not at once introduce anything of the “subject” and the subjective. What is essential here is only that unconcealedness comes under the yoke of the ἰδέα, i.e., the 4 I. The first beginning [10–11] act of onlooking, whereby the onlooking does nevertheless not posit and create the ἰδέα but, instead, perceives it. Yet this indeed seems to have been said already, in the dictum of Parmenides which refers to νοεῖν in its belonging to being. Is εἶναι not here already νοούμενον, thus ἰδέα? Precisely not; precisely that step lies far off. Instead, νοεῖν and εἶναι are named in their belonging to ἀλήθεια. And this is essentially different from the coupling of ἀλήθεια and νοῦς under the yoke of the ἰδέα. But the ἰδέα as ἀγαθόν moves into the domain of making possible and thus of explaining—conditioning—producing—αἴτιον; αἴτιον is ἀρχή. Yet ἀρχή is not inceptually αἴτιον. With this step toward the ἀγαθόν, being turns into a being, into the highest being of such a kind that it causes being—not into the being which is inceptually. These are not the same: the being in the highest sense (the highest being) and that which, as pure being, is never a being and yet precisely for that reason remains the pure essential occurrence and inceptually and uniquely “is”—more inceptually than that ἔστιν of the εἴναι in Parmenides. But then, and before all else, we must consider: Ἀλήθεια is the disconcealment of concealment and occurs intrinsically in the abyssal and the enigmatic. And that is not simply a barrier placed in the way of human understanding; on the contrary, the abyssal character is the essential occurrence itself—the act...