§5 The opposite to ἀληθές: λαθόν, λαθές. The event of the transformation of the withdrawing concealment and the human behavior of forgetting.
a) The prevailing of concealment in λανθάνεσθαι. The concealment of the forgetter in the forgotten: oblivion. Hesiod, Theogony, V. 226f. Λήθη and the hidden essence of Eris (Strife), the daughter of the night. Reference to Pindar.
In discussing the opposite of ἀληθές (the unconcealed and the disclosing), we already remarked that the opposite would have to reside in a λαθές, λαθόν, if it were to be expressed in language immediately and appropriately. Instead of that we first encountered τὸ ψεῦδος. But this also became clear, that for the Greeks λανθάνειν, being-concealed, has an unequivocal prevailing essential rank, expressed in the proper "ruling" function of the phrase λανθάνω ἤκων, I approach unnoticed, or, in the Greek way: I am in hiddenness as one who is approaching. On the basis of these apparently only "grammatical" relations, there occurs something else, which we may formulate briefly in this way: concealedness and unconcealedness determine beings as such. That means disclosedness and concealment are a basic feature of Being.
The Greeks express the prevailing of concealment above all, however, in the word λανθάνεσθαι or ἐπιλανθάνεσθαι, which we ordinarily translate as "forgetting" and thereby reinterpret it in such a way that the Greek essence is lost. Our earlier meditation already showed that in "forgetting" there occurs, for the Greeks, a concealment. The forgotten is, in the experience of the Greeks, what has sunk away into concealedness, specifically in such a fashion that the sinking away, i.e., the concealing, remains concealed to the very one who has forgotten. More precisely and more in the Greek vein, the forgetter is concealed to himself in his relation to what is happening here to that which we then call, on account of this happening, the forgotten. The forgetter not only forgets the forgotten, but along with that he forgets himself as the one for whom the forgotten has disappeared. A concealment takes place here that at once befalls the forgotten and the forgetter, without, however, obliterating them.
This concealment displays a special radiation. For the event of such concealment we have only the word "oblivion"—which actually names that into which the forgotten sinks—as the occurrence excluding man from the forgotten. In general we conceive forgetting in terms of the behavior of a "subject," as a not-retaining, and we then speak of "forgetfulness" as that by which something "escapes" us, when, because of one thing, we forget another. Here forgetfulness is poor attention.