We are concerned now with something else. Whether or not what is present is experienced, comprehended or presented, presence as lingering in openness always remains dependent upon the prevalent opening. What is absent, too, cannot be as such unless it presences in the free space of the opening.
All metaphysics including its opponent positivism speaks the language of Plato. The basic word of its thinking, that is, of his ·presentation of the Being of beings, is eidos, idea: the outward appearance in which beings as such show themselves. Outward appearance, however, is a manner of presence. No outward appearance without light—Plato already knew this. But there is no light and no brightness without the opening. Even darkness needs it. How else {GA 14: 83} could we happen into darkness and wander through it? Still, the opening as such as it prevails through Being, through presence, remains unthought in philosophy, although the opening is spoken about in philosophy's beginning. How does this occur and with which names? Answer:
In Parmenides' reflective poem which, as far as we know, was the first to reflect explicitly upon the Being of beings, which still today, although unheard, speaks in the sciences into which philosophy dissolves. Parmenides listens to the claim:
... kreo de se panta puthestha emen aletheies eukukleos atremes etor ede broton doxas, tais ouk emi pistis alethes.
Fragment I, 28 ff.
... but you should learn all:
the untrembling heart of unconcealment, well-rounded
and also the opinions of mortals,
lacking the ability to trust what is unconcealed.4
Aletheia, unconcealment, is named here. It is called well-rounded because it is turned in the pure sphere of the circle in which beginning
4. Standard translation: "It is needful that you should learn of all matters-both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals which lack true belief." (Tr.)