that round about this man and his existence there lies a concealment causing the others present to be, as it were, cut off from him. What is essential is not the apprehension on the part of the others but that there exists a concealment of Odysseus, now keeping the ones who are present far from him. That a being, in this case the weeping Odysseus, can be experienced and grasped depends on whether concealment or unconcealment comes to pass.
In the light of these remarks we will now also consider, more carefully than is usual, an ordinary word of the stem λαθ-, namely λανθάνομαι or ὲπιλανθάνομαι. We translate the word, again correctly, "to forget." But what does "forget" mean? Modern man, who organizes everything in such a way that he can forget it as quickly as possible, should surely know what forgetting is. But he does not know. He has forgotten the essence of forgetting, supposing he ever did give a thought to it, i.e., extend his thought into the essential realm of forgetting. This indifference with regard to "forgetting" does not at all depend on the hastiness of his "way of life." What is happening here proceeds from the very essence of forgetting, which withdraws itself and hides.
Therefore it could be that an invisible cloud of forgetting itself, the oblivion of Being, hangs over the whole sphere of the earth and its humanity, a cloud in which is forgotten not this or that being but Being itself, a cloud no airplane could ever breach even if capable of the most formidable altitude. Accordingly, it could also be that at an appropriate time an experience precisely of this oblivion of Being might arise—arise as a need, and so be necessary. It could be that with a view to this forgottenness of Being a remembering might awaken, one thinking of Being itself and nothing else, considering Being itself in its truth, and thinking the truth of Being and not only, as in all metaphysics, beings with respect to their Being. For this there would be required, before all else, an experience of the essence of forgetting, of that which is concealed in the essence of ἀλήθεια.1
The Greeks experienced forgetting as a coming to pass of concealment.
§3. Clarification of the transformation of ἀλήθεια and of the transformation of its counter-essence (veritas, certitudo, rectitudo, iustitia, truth, justice—λήθη, ψεῦδος falsum, incorrectness, falsity)
1 Being and Time is the first attempt to think Being itself out of the basic experience of the oblivion of Being, i. e. it is an attempt to prepare this thinking. to pave the way for it, even at the risk of remaining on a "path leading nowhere" ["Holzweg"]