the Western destiny of Being and has not been thought up by philosophers but rather thought to thinkers (see Vorträge und Aufsätze, pp. 28 and 49*).
It is still our burden to discuss the specifications given briefly on pages 185-87 about the "establishing" and "self-establishing of {GA 5: 73} truth in beings." Here again we must avoid understanding "establish" [einrichten] in the modern sense and in the manner of the lecture on technology as "organize" and "finish or complete." Rather, "establishing" recalls the "impulse of truth toward the work," mentioned on page 187 the impulse that, in the midst of beings, truth should itself come to be in the manner of work, should itself come to be as being.
If we recollect how truth as unconcealment of beings means nothing but the presencing of beings as such, that is, Being—see page 197—then talk about the self-establishing of truth, that is, of Being, in beings, touches on the problem of the ontological difference (See Identitität und Differenz [1957], pp. 37ff).† For this reason there is the note of caution on page 186 of "The Origin of the Work of Art": "In referring to this self-establishing of openness in the open region, thinking touches on a sphere that cannot yet be explicated here." The whole essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art," deliberately yet tacitly moves on the path of the question of the essence of Being. Reflection on what art may be is completely and decidedly determined only in regard to the question of Being. Art is considered neither an area of cultural achievement nor an appearance of spirit; it belongs to the propriative event [Ereignis] by way of which the "meaning of Being" (See Being and Time) can alone be defined. What art may be is one of the questions to which
* The reference to p. 49 is to the conception of doing, as given in the previous note. The passage on p. 28 of Vorträge und Auftätze appears in these Basic Writings, pp. 325-26.—TR.
† See Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 50ff., 116ff—TR.