and is then allowed to settle on its proper ground. Hence the need of the leap, which we can now prepare only as regards its direction.
Truth, however, is grounded as the ground through that which we call Da-sein, that which sustains man and is entrusted to him only rarely, as both donation and destiny, and only to those among men who are creative and are grounding. The “Da” [the “there”] refers to that clearing in which beings stand as a whole, in such a way that in this “Da” the Being [Sein] of open beings shows itself and at the same time withdraws. To be this “Da” is a destiny of man, in correspondence to which he grounds that which is itself the ground of the highest possibilities of his Being.
Ever since man has comported himself to beings as such and formed himself as a being on the basis of this relation, ever since man has been historical, the clearing for the self-concealing must have come to pass. Which does not imply that since then this ground of historical humanity was experienced as ground and was grounded. It was not by accident that this ground was surmised within the Greeks’ experience of what they called ἀλήθεια. But very soon, and again not accidentally, it was misinterpreted and forced into oblivion. The representation of man was itself not determined originally, on the basis of his most original essence, because that has remained concealed up to this very hour: namely, that man is the being which, in the midst of beings, bears the truth of Being. Instead, the concept of man was constructed with reference to animals and living things in general, i.e., with reference to something other than man himself. Man was distinguished from the animal only insofar as he was declared to be the “rational animal,” a determination which is still, in different variations, powerful and respectable today. And this non-original determination of man is now also supposed to represent the ground for the interpretation of everything proper to man as man—his knowledge and his creations, his self-surpassing and his self-destruction. The ground of humanity and thereby the essence of truth thus remain hidden in their full essentialization.
It is as if the most extreme need into which man was pressed historically—the need arising from the lack of need, the pursuit of truths without a relation to truth itself —it is as if this need had to compel him now to reflect on the ground of his essence. And should we then be surprised if this ground — supposing we could look into it—would open itself up for us precisely as an abyss, since we still live all too much on the basis of the habits of a previous age and take the usual and the obvious for the essence?
As inexorably as genuine questioning throws us back entirely upon ourselves