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§8 Significance of dis-closure [197-199]

At the outset, "dis-closure" could only say as much as "un-veiling," the removal of the veiling and the concealment. But disclosure or disconcealment does not mean the mere removal and elimination of concealment. We must think dis-closure exactly the way we think of discharging (igniting) or dis-playing (unfolding). Discharging means to release the charge; displaying means to let play out the folds of the manifold in their multiplicity. Our first tendency is to understand disclosure or disconcealing in opposition to concealing, just as disentangling is opposed to entangling. Disclosure, however, does not simply result in something disclosed as unclosed. Instead, the dis-closure [Ent-bergen] is at the same time an en-closure [Ent-bergen], just like dis-semination, which is not opposed to the seed, or like in-flaming [Entflammen], which does not eliminate the flame [Flamme] but brings it into its essence. Dis-closure [Entbergung] is equally for the sake of an en-closure as a sheltering [Bergung] of the unconcealed in the unconcealedness of presence, i.e., in Being. In such sheltering there first emerges the unconcealed as a being. Disclosure-that now means to bring into a sheltering enclosure: that is. to conserve the unconcealed in unconcealedness. The word "dis-closure," the appropriateness of which only a far-reaching meditation could reveal, contains in its full sense equally essentially this emphasized moment of shelter. whereas "unconcealedness" names only the removal of concealedness. The word "dis-closure" is essentially and advisedly ambiguous in that it expresses a two-fold with an intrinsic unity: on the one hand, as disclosure it is the removal of concealment and precisely a removal first of the withdrawing concealment (λήθη) and then also of distortion and displacement (ψεῦδος); on the other hand, however, as disclosure it is a sheltering en-closure, i.e., an assuming and preserving in unconcealedness

"Disclosure," understood in its full essence, means the unveiling sheltering enclosure of the unveiled in unconcealedness. It itself is of a concealed essence. We see this first by looking upon λήθη and its holding sway, which withdraws into absence and points to a falling away and a falling out.

The lesson to be drawn, therefore, from our meditation on the opposition holding sway in unconcealedness is not that besides distortion and falsity, i.e., in brief, besides untruth, there would still be another counter-essence to truth, namely λήθη. Rather, our reflection resulted in the far-reaching insight that out of this counter-essence to truth the only conflictual and primordial essence of ἀλήθεια itself reveals itself more originally. Ἀλήθεια is against concealing closure, and through this "against" it is for sheltering enclosure. Ἀλήθεια is against concealing because it comes to presence in the unconcealed for the sake of a sheltering.

This "for" and "against" of ἀλήθεια are in themselves not "ruptures"


Martin Heidegger (GA 54) Parmenides