Everywhere there holds sway in advance for the Greeks the simple clarity of Being which lets beings arise in a lustre and sink down into darkness.
Therefore what belongs to the appearance of Being is still of the type uncanny, so that there is no need to ascribe to Being a divine character subsequently and to demonstrate it afterward. If now, however, ἀλήθεια belongs to the essence of primordial Being and so does its counter-essence λήθη, then each of these is primordially a θεῖον. Therefore even for Plato λήθη is still essentially "demonic." Should we then be offended if in Parmenides' primordial thinking ἀλήθεια appears as θεά, as goddess? We would now be more surprised if that were not the case.
Λήθη, in Plato's "myth," is the δαιμόνιον of a field that resides not in the here but in the there. This field is the ultimate thoroughfare, where the wanderers must stop immediately prior to their transition out of the there into the here. It is said of the "field of λήθη": κενὸν δένδρων τε καὶ ὅσα γῆ φύει—"it is bare of all that grows as well as completely empty of everything that the earth allows to spring forth."
b) The measure of withdrawing concealment in unconcealedness.
The countenance of the ἰδέα in Plato and the grounding of
anamnesis (as well as forgetting) in unconcealedness. Λήθη:
πεδίον. The interpretation of the beginning of Homer's poems and
of Parmenides' utterance. The unforgetting of ἀλήθεια through the
withdrawal of λήθη. The overcoming of experience since Plato
through procedural operations (τέχνη).
Reference to Homer, Iliad, XXΙΙΙ, 358ff.
τὸν δὲ ἀεὶ πιόντα πάντων ἐπιλανθάνεσθαι—"However, for one who would constantly drink (this water) his relation to beings as a whole and to himself would stand in the concealment that withdraws everything and does not leave anything preserved" (621a8f.). On such a one further words should not be wasted. He could not be on earth as a man, since all beings would be concealed to him and there would be nothing unconcealed at all, nothing to which he could relate disclosively, i.e., for the Greeks, in speech (μῦθος, λόγος), and thereby be a man. Complete, measureless oblivion, i.e., concealment, would exclude the least ground of the essence of man, because such oblivion would allow no disclosure and would deny unconcealedness its essential foundation. Conversely, we see from this that a measure of withdrawing concealment belongs to the possibility of unconcealedness. Λήθη, the concealment that does not allow anything to emerge but only withdraws, nevertheless prepares the ground of essence of disclosure and so holds sway in unconcealedness.