a higher and more rigorous standard of knowing. Such a person merely reckons with a standard, namely, with an inappropriate one. For regarding what only announces itself in such a way that it appears in concealing itself, we also correspond to it only by pointing it out [hinweisen], thereby directing [anweisen] ourselves to let that which shows itself appear into the unconcealment proper to it. This simple pointing [Weisen] is a fundamental trait [or pull: Grundzug] of thinking, the way toward that which at the start and from then on [einsther und einsthin] gives the human being something to think about. Proving [Beweisen] – i.e., deriving from suitable presuppositions – permits itself everything. But pointing [Weisen], to free up for arrival through a pointing out, permits itself only a little, and even this little only seldom.11
What is most considerable shows itself in our considerable age in this: that we are not yet thinking. We are not yet thinking because what is to be thought turns away from the human and not at all only because humans do not sufficiently turn themselves toward [or devote themselves to] what is to be thought. What is to be thought turns itself away from the human. It withdraws itself from humans in that it is withheld from them. But what is withheld is always already available to us. What withdraws itself in the manner of being withheld does not completely disappear. Yet how can we know in the first place the slightest thing about what withdraws itself in such a manner? How do we even manage to name it? What withdraws itself refuses arrival. But – self-withdrawal12 is not nothing. Withdrawal is here withheld and is as such the event. What withdraws itself can even approach [or concern: angehen] the human more essentially and can more intimately lay claim to the human as in each case that present thing which strikes and affects the human. One gladly believes affectedness [Betroffenheit] by what is actual to be that in which the actuality of the actual consists. But affectedness by what is actual can close human beings off precisely to that which approaches/concerns them – approaches in a manner that is surely puzzling, such that the approach escapes [or goes away from: entgeht] them by withdrawing itself. The withdrawal, the self-withdrawing of what is to be thought, could for that reason now be more present as event [Ereignis] than anything that is current.
11 [The grammar here is also strange in German, so far as I can tell. Aber Weisen, … freigeben, läßt sich … .]
12 Cf. Identität und Differenz 47.