noted historically can be found within history. The development of the abundance of transformations of Being looks at first like a history of Being. But Being does not have a history in the way in which a city or a people have their history. What is history-like in the history of Being is obviously determined by the way in which Being takes place and by this alone. After what has just been explained, this means the way in which It gives Being.
At the beginning of Being's unconcealment, Being, einai, eon is thought, but not the "It gives," "there is." Instead, Parmenides says esti gar einai, "For Being is."
Years ago, in 1947, in the Letter on Humanism (Wegmarken, p. 165 ), I noted with reference to this saying of Parmenides: "The esti gar einai of Parmenides is still unthought today." This note would like to point out for once that we must not rashly give to the saying "For Being is" a ready interpretation which makes what is thought in it inaccessible. Anything of which we say "it is" is thereby represented as a being. But Being is not a being. Thus the esti that is emphasized in Parmenides' saying cannot represent the Being which it names as some kind of a being. Translated literally, the esti thus emphasized does mean "it is." But the emphasis discerns in the esti what the Greeks thought even then in the esti thus emphasized and which we can paraphrase by: "It is capable." However, the meaning of this capability remained just as unthought, then and afterward, as the "It" which is capable of Being. To be capable of Being means: to yield and give Being. In the esti there is concealed the It gives.
In the beginning of Western thinking, Being is thought, but not the "It gives" as such. The latter withdraws in favor of the gift which It gives. That gift is thought and conceptualized from then on exclusively as Being with regard to beings.
A giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, such a giving we call sending. According to the meaning of giving which is to be thought in this way, Being—that which It gives—is what is sent. Each of its transformations remains destined in this manner. What is historical in the history of Being is