thereby this dissembling itself be driven to the extreme externalization, to the most superficial state, and become mere spectacle, mere playacting? Theater—the structuring of reality as the work of the set designer!
If from time to time the theatrical comes to power, what does that then say about the essence? Must it not therefore, as a ground, ground in concealedness and stillness, to such an extent that it is scarcely known? But how is it then still a ground? If seen in general? But is not the essence of being the uniqueness and infrequency of the alienation? The proper distorted essence of truth is designated in the lecture on truth as errancy. This determination still more original in the occurrence of the negativity of the "there."
On the other hand, the highest distorted essence indeed precisely in the semblance provided by spectacle.
Double meaning of distorted essence [Un-wesen].
224. The essence of truth
How paltry is our knowledge of the gods, and yet how essential is their essential occurrence, and their withering, in the openness of the concealments of the "there," i.e., in the truth!
What must the experience of the essence of truth itself then say to us about the event? Indeed, how can we properly bear silence in this that is said?
What is true first is the truth (precisely as clearing-concealing) of beyng. The essence of truth resides in its essential occurrence as what is true of beyng and thus in its becoming the origin of the sheltering of what is true in beings, whereby these latter first become beings.
The precursory question of truth is simultaneously the basic question of beyng; and beyng qua event essentially occurs as truth.
225. The essence of truth
is the clearing for self-concealing. This intimately conflictual essence of truth shows that truth is originally and essentially the truth of beyng (event).
Yet the question remains as to whether we experience this essence of truth essentially enough, whether, in every relation to beings, we take up and consign ourselves to that self-concealing and thus to the hesitant withholding, as ap-propriation in its own respective way. Consigning only such that we procure, produce, create, and look after