The name as the first word lets what is designated appear in its primordial presence The essence of man, as experienced by the Greeks, is determined on the basis of his relation to self-emergent Being, so that man is the one who has the word. And the word is in essence the letting appear of Being by naming. Man is the ζῷον λόγον ἔχον—the being that emerges by naming and saying and that in saying maintains its essence. The word as the naming of Being, the μῦθος, names Being in its primordial looking-into and shining—names τὸ θεῖον, i.e., the gods. Since τὸ θεῖον and τὸ δαιμόνιον (the divine) are the uncanny that look into the unconcealed and present themselves in the ordinary, therefore μῦθος is the only appropriate mode of the relation to appearing Being, since the essence of μῦθος is determined, just as essentially as are θεῖον and δαιμόνιον, on the basis of disclosedness. It is therefore that the divine, as the appearing and as what is perceived in the appearing, is that which is to be said, and is what is said in legend. And it is therefore that the divine is the "mythical." And it is therefore that the legend of the gods is "myth." And it is therefore that man in the Greek experience, and only he, is in his essence and according to the essence of ἀλήθεια the god-sayer. Why this holds can only be understood and thought on the basis of the essence of ἀλήθεια, insofar as the latter prevails in advance throughout the essence of Being itself, throughout the essence of divinity and the essence of humanity, and throughout the essence of the relation of Being to man and of man to beings.
But what if precisely this essence of ἀλήθεια, and with it the primordial self-manifesting essence of Being, are distorted by transformations and because of such distortion are ultimately prey to concealment in the sense of oblivion? What if the essence of Being and the essence of truth are forgotten? What if the oblivion of Being invisibly and signlessly surrounds with error the history of historical humanity? If the originary divinity emerges on the basis of the essence of Being, should the oblivion of Being not be the ground for the fact that the origin of the truth of Being has withdrawn itself into concealedness ever since, and no god could then appear emerging out of Being itself?
"A-theism," correctly understood as the absence of the gods, has been, since the decline of the Greek world, the oblivion of Being that has overpowered the history of the West as the basic feature of this history itself. "A-theism," understood in the sense of essential history, is by no means, as people like to think, a product of freethinkers gone berserk. "A-theism" is not the "standpoint" of "philosophers" in their proud posturing. Furthermore, "a-theism" is not the lamentable product of the machinations of "freemasons." "Atheists" of such a kind are themselves already the last dregs of the absence of the gods.
But how is an appearance of the divine at all supposed to be able