strife and how this strife and thereby world and earth themselves are concealed and unconcealed. Yet this nearest self-concealing is only an emerging appearance of the abyssal ground and thus of the truth of the event. On the other hand, truth essentially occurs, in the fullest and richest clearing of the most remote self-concealing, only in the mode of sheltering that is in accord with all the ways and modes which belong to the sheltering and which historically bear and guide the steadfast withstanding of Da-sein, thus constituting the being of a people.
In each case, sheltering moves the self-concealing into the open and does so just as determinately as it itself is pervasively dominated by the clearing of self-concealing (cf. the demonstration of this connection in the Freiburg lectures, 193629).
Accordingly, there is apriori no place in this projection of the essence of truth for the still seemingly obvious presuming of the Platonic relation. For is not the sheltering of truth in beings all too clearly reminiscent of the insertion of the "Idea," the εἶδος, into the ὕλη? Yet even just to speak of the sheltering of truth in beings is misleading, as if truth could ever already in advance be for itself "truth."
Truth essentially occurs only and always already as Da-sein and thus as the playing out of the strife. (On the origin of the εἶδος-ὕλη distinction, likewise cf. the lectures just referred to.)
Nevertheless, an understanding of the connections essentially occurring here requires a radical forsaking of the simple mode of thinking as a representing of what is present (a forsaking of being as presence and of truth as adequation to what is present) and a directing of the gaze of thought so as to traverse all at once the entire essential occurrence of truth.
244. Truth and sheltering30
Whence does sheltering derive its urgency and necessity? From self-concealing. The sheltering of this occurrence is needed to preserve the self-concealing rather than do away with it. The occurrence is transformed and maintained (Why?) in the strife of earth and world. The playing out of the strife sets truth into work, into tool, and it experiences truth as a thing, consummates truth in deed and sacrifice
Yet there must always be a preservation of self-concealment, for only thus does the history which is grounded through Dasein remain in appropriation and accordingly something belonging to beyng.
29. "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes." In Holzwege (GA5).
30. Cf. Prospect, 21. Inceptual thinking (Projection).