presences, which presences within unconcealment. Λήθη is the forgetfulness of the guardianship of the essence of being. So construed, Λήθη is precisely the essential source and essential provenance of the reign of every way of being. The abbreviated and therefore easy-to-misunderstand expression “forgetting of being” says that both the essence of being, presencing, and its essential provenance in Ἀλήθεια as the event of the essence of this, as well as Ἀλήθεια itself, all lapse into forgetfulness.⁷ With this lapsing into concealment, the essence of Ἀλήθεια and of presencing withdraw. Insofar as they withdraw, they remain⁸ inaccessible to human perception and representation. For this reason, human thinking is unable to think the essence of unconcealment or the presencing in it. So construed, unable to thoughtfully remember, human thinking from the outset has forgotten the essence of being. But human thinking is only in such a forgetfulness of the essence of being because this essence itself has taken place as forgetfulness, as a lapsing into concealment.⁹ This event rests upon the world, as guardian of the essence of being, refusing itself. The hint that such refusal takes place conceals itself in the dispensation of being, a dispensation that joins in with the epochs of the forgetfulness of being so much so that these epochs, precisely as epochs of the disclosure of beings in their beinghood, are the epochs that determine Western-European history up to its contemporary unfolding as planetary totality. This is the presupposition for the fact that the modern battle for mastery of the earth is concentrated upon the positions of the two contemporary “world” powers.

Refusal of world takes place as the unguarding of the thing.¹⁰ Refusal of world and unguarding of the thing are in a singular relationship. As this relationship, they are the same, although not equivalent.

In what way does the refusal of world take place as the unguarding of the thing? In the way that positionality essences. It orders all that is present as what is constant of the pieces of

7. remains in it

8. immediately

9. Forgetting of differentiation: unguarding of the thing—refusal of world

10. of presence