else, essentially different, something momentous, and for our history the only decisive thing: the entirety of beings has in the meantime been transformed in such a way that beings as a whole, and therefore also man, are no longer determined on the basis of the essence of ἀλήθεια. Consequently, as soon as we hear of concealment and of modes of concealing, we think immediately, and only, of modes of human activity man himself controls. We do not experience concealment and disclosure as events which "come over" beings and man. If, however, for the Greeks the essence of concealment and unconcealedness was experienced so essentially as the basic feature of Being itself, must not concealment itself then display a more pnmordial essence, for which concealment in the form of ψεῦδος, dissemblance, in no way suffices?
Nevertheless, to a certain extent we can still recognize and understand different modes of concealment. In fact we must do so, if we wish to recapture an ability to glimpse the one mode of concealment that for the Greeks, over and beyond ψεῦδος, has codetermined the truth, the unconcealedness and unhiddenness, of all beings.
Ordinarily, concealing is for us displacing, a kind of putting "away" or putting aside. What is no longer beside us, i.e., nearby (in Greek: παρά), is gone "away" (in Greek: ἀπό). What is gone away has disappeared, is absent; what is gone away is, in a certain manner, no more, it is destroyed. Destruction, as putting aside, is a form of concealment.
There is also, however, a kind of concealment that does not at all put aside and destroy the concealed but instead shelters and saves the concealed for what it is. This concealment does not deprive us of the thing, as in cases of dissembling and distorting, withdrawing and putting aside. This concealment preserves It is characteristic, e.g., of what we call, in a notable sense, the rare. Usually, i.e., for the mere eagerness to calculate and to snatch up, the rare is simply what is available only at times and even then only for a few. But what is truly rare is available precisely always and for everyone, except that it dwells in a concealment harboring something utterly decisive and holding in readiness high claims on us. The proper relation to the rare is not to chase after it but to leave it at rest by acknowledging the concealment.
Perhaps there are modes of concealment that not only preserve and put away and so in a certain sense still withdraw, but that rather, in a unique way, impart and bestow what is essential. The essential type of bestowal and bequest is in each case a concealment, and indeed not only of the bestower but of what is bestowed, insofar as the bestowed does not simply surrender its treasures but only lets this come into unconcealment: namely that in it a richness is lodged which will be attained to the degree it is protected against abuse. The concealment holding sway here is close to the concealment characteristic of the se