The most trenchant proof for this concealed essence of beyng (for the self-concealing in the manifestness of beings) is not simply the degrading of beyng into the commonest and emptiest. The proof lies in the entire history of metaphysics, for which beingness must become precisely the most well known and must even become what is most certain in absolute knowledge, until finally, in Nietzsche, it is a necessary semblance.
Do we grasp this great lesson of the first beginning and of its history: the essence of beyng as refusal and, in the greatest manifestness of machinations and of "lived experience," as the most extreme refusal?
Do we future ones have an ear for the sound of the resonating which must be made to sound forth in the preparation of the other beginning?
The abandonment by being: it has to be experienced as the basic occurrence of our history and brought into the knowledge which configures and leads the way.
And that requires:
1. a remembrance of the abandonment by being in its long, hidden, self-hiding history. It is not enough to refer to the here and now;
2. an experience of the abandonment by being equally as the plight which protrudes over into the transition and makes it our access to what is coming. The transition as well must be experienced in its entire breadth and in its many rifts (on this, cf. Überlegungen IV, p. 96).
53. Plight
Why does the word "plight" immediately make us think of "lack," "evil," something unfavorable? It is because we value freedom from plight as a "good," and indeed we are correct to do so when at issue are well-being and prosperity. For these depend entirely on an unbroken supply of useful and enjoyable things, things already objectively present, ones which can be increased through progress. Progress has no future, however, because it merely takes things that already are and expedites them "further" on their previous path.
When at issue is that to which we belong, that toward which we are hiddenly compelled, then what about "plight"? That which compels, and is retained without being grasped, essentially surpasses all "progress," for that which compels is itself what is genuinely to come and thus resides completely outside of the distinction between good and evil and withdraws itself from all calculation.