mean? It means unconcealment itself in what is most its own, means the place of stillness that gathers in itself what first grants unconcealment. That is the clearing of what is open. We ask: openness for what? We have already reflected upon the fact that the path of thinking, speculative and intuitive, needs the traversable clearing. But in that clearing rests possible radiance, that is, the possible presencing of presence itself.

What prior to everything else first grants unconcealment is the path on which thinking pursues one thing and perceives it: ὅπως ἔστιν ... εἶναι: that presencing presences. The clearing grants first of all the possibility of the path to presence, and grants the possible presencing of that presence itself. We must think Ἀλήθεια, unconcealment, as the clearing that first grants Being and thinking and their presencing to and for each other. The quiet heart of the clearing is the place of stillness from which alone the possibility of the belonging together of Being and thinking, that is, presence and apprehending, can arise at all.

The possible claim to a binding character or commitment of thinking is grounded in this bond. Without the preceding experience of Ἀλήθεια, as the clearing, all talk about committed and non-committed thinking remains without foundation. Whence does Plato's determination of presence as ἰδέα have its binding character? With regard to what is Aristotle's interpretation of presencing as ἐνέργεια binding?

Strangely enough, we cannot even ask these questions, always neglected in philosophy, as long as we have not experienced what Parmenides had to experience: Ἀλήθεια, unconcealment. The path to it is distinguished from the lane along which the opinion of mortals wanders. Ἀλήθεια is nothing mortal, just as little as death itself.

It is not for the sake of etymology that I stubbornly translate the name Ἀλήθεια as unconcealment, but for the sake of the matter that must be considered when we think adequately that which is called Being and thinking. Unconcealment is, so to speak, the element in which Being and thinking and their belonging together