in their Being are noncompliant. Yet precisely this is the core of the whole, for indeed on this basis the entire character of the Being of beings is determined. In this noncompliance is grounded the way beings are. If we desire to penetrate the content, that is what we must clarify.
b) The noncompliance. Day and night as the basic appearance
In what does the noncompliance persist? How does it persist? These two questions are one. The core allegation of the pronouncement is that the Being of beings consists in noncompliance. We will have to ask: how did the previous interpretation grasp the Being of beings? Will a further elucidation permit us finally to gather how the noncompliance persists and why it persists?
The only basic character of beings that was mentioned up to now is appearance, along with its most properly concomitant disappearance (γένεσις—φθορά). Reference was made to day and night, birth and death, etc. This reference initially served as an illustration. But it would be a fatal misunderstanding to take day and night, birth and death, merely as examples and particular cases of appearance. Such a conception already distances us from appearance in the Greek sense, provided we were ever in its vicinity; we remain victims of modern thinking. For, day and night are not to the Greeks just any random appearances among others; on the contrary, in day and night the originary appearance reveals itself. And that is not simply because day and night encompass everything; day and night are the basic appearance in the genuine sense because they constitute the ground of all other appearance. They permit all appearances to arise. For while the day shows itself, the light—brightness—appears; and precisely this appearing light first lets appear all other beings: sea and land, forest and mountain, human being and animal, house and homestead. As the day recedes, giving way to the night, it in a certain way takes the appearing things along with it and cedes sovereignty to the night which conceals everything. In the luster of the day and of the light, beings appear. The light, the sun, what allows appearance—allows beings presence in Being—that is time. Today we are not one step further along; on the contrary, our artificial light essentially does not exceed the power of light. At most, we thereby completely mistake the light—and forget our original bond to it.
c) Noncompliance: persistence in contours over and against
contourlessness; compliance: return to contourlessness
What does that mean? Every being sets itself out in relief, every being raises itself up over and against others. Appearance is not merely a stepping-forth; the stepping-forth is an entering into a contour and