Nevertheless, we can now perhaps think and retain this one simple thing, namely: ἀλήθεια is the looking of Being into the open that is lighted by it itself as it itself, the open for the unconcealedness of all appearance. Could what has such an essence be a mere "concept"? The endeavor of our entire foregoing reflection has been nothing else than to bring in to a thoughtful experience of this astonishing question.
Ἀλήθεια is θεά, goddess—but indeed only for the Greeks and even then only for a few of their thinkers. The truth a goddess for the Greeks in the Greek sense. Indeed.
But what is the essence of truth for us? We do not know, because we neither comprehend the essence of truth nor do we comprehend ourselves, and we do not know who we ourselves are. Perhaps this double ignorance about the truth and about ourselves is itself one and the same. But it is already good to know this ignorance, and precisely for the sake of Being, to which the reverence of thinking belongs. Thinking is not knowing, but perhaps it is more essential than knowing, because it is closer to Being in that closeness which is concealed from afar. We do not know the essence of truth. Therefore it is necessary for us to ask about it and to be pressed toward this question so as to experience the minimal condition that must be fulfilled if we set out to dignify the essence of truth with a question. This condition is that we take up thinking.
Our attempted reflection has been accompanied by one insight. It is this we may think the essence of truth only if we tread upon the most extreme edges of beings as a whole. We thereby acknowledge that a moment of history is approaching, whose uniqueness is by no means determined simply, or at all, on the basis of the current situation of the world and of our own history in it. What is at stake is not simply the being and non-being of our historical people, nor the being and not-being of a "European culture," for in these instances what is at stake is only beings. In advance of all that, a primordial decision must be made concerning Being and not-being themselves, Being and not-being in their essence, in the truth of their essence. How are beings supposed to be saved and secured in the free of their essence, if the essence of Being is undecided, unquestioned, and even forgotten?
Without the truth of Being, beings are never steadfast; without the truth of Being and without the Being and essence of truth the very decision about the Being and non-being of a being remains without the openness of freedom, from which all history begins.
The question returns: what is the essence of truth for us? Our lectures were only supposed to refer to the region out of which the word of Parmenides speaks.
The directive within this reference pointed to the destination toward which the primordial thinker is under way, namely the home of the