161. History | 151
is the sustaining of the essence of the truth of being. Therefore history is the essential unfolding of being itself. But because unconcealment and concealment belong to truth, there is always, in history, something open, manifest and accessible, that might easily appear {GA 70: 181} to be what is singular and proper to history. The other of history—the concealed, the veiled, the disguised—is then just a matter of the unknown. In “truth,” though, concealment is the fundamental trait of history [Geschichte]. Reckoned out of what is manifest, the concealed (if ever it is attended to and experienced) appears as the unexpected, that which is sent [Geschickte] from out of the incalculable. If it comes up, we make do with accepting this as fate [Geschick] and the mode of its appearance as destiny [Schicksal].
Why, though, is concealment the fundamental trait of history? Because in it unfolds the incipience of inception, and inception is beyng.
as specific inception, as decision about the essence of truth.
So, a series of inceptions? This would again be to think historiographically and to see from a standpoint that seems to be beyond.
Fissures between inceptions: their looming into the same; nothing in common, rather each time the singular; from each inception the relation to the other ever different; up until now, we stand in the first inception and know hardly anything of the inceptuality of history. Also not a series of fissures; rather, everything in every case inceptive.
How an inception ends and goes toward its end, and what this between- “history” is, can also only ever be known from the essential manner of the specific inception; no “theory of history,” but rather historicity—ours, as way into the inceptuality of the other inception.