PATHMARKS
of the greatest thoughtlessness that has ever gained currency in human thought and that has remained dominant until this moment. This εἶναι, however, means: to presence. The essence of this presencing lies deeply concealed in the early names for Being. But for us εἶναι and οὐσία as παρ- and ἀπουσία mean this in the first instance: in presencing there prevails, in an unthought and concealed manner, presence and duration - there prevails time. Being as such is thus unconcealed [206 {GA 9: 376}] in terms of time. Thus time points to unconcealedness, i.e., to the truth of Being. But the time that is to be thought here is not experienced through the changing course that beings take. Time is evidently of an altogether different essence,a which not only has not yet been thought by way of the concept of time belonging to metaphysics, but never can be thought in this way. Thus time becomes the preliminary name - a name that has first to be pondered - for the truth of Being that is yet to be experienced.
Just as a concealed essence of time speaks not only in the first metaphysical names for Being, so too it speaks in its last name, in "the eternal recurrence of the same." In the epoch of metaphysics,b the history of Being is pervaded by an unthought essence of time. Space is neither simply coordinated nor merely subordinated to such time.c
An attempt to make a transition from the representation of beings as such to recalling the truth of Being must, in starting from such representation, still represent, in a certain sense, the truth of Being, too; with the result that this latter representation must necessarily be of another kind and ultimately, insofar as it is representation, inappropriate to that which is to be thought. This relation, which comes out of metaphysics and tries to enter into the relation of the truth of Being to the human essence, is conceived as "understanding." But here understanding is thought at the same time from out of the unconcealedness of Being. Understanding is ecstatic, thrown projection,d ecstatic here meaning: standing in the realm of the open. The realm that opens up for use in projection, in order that something (Being in this case) may prove itself as something (in this case, Being as itself in its unconcealedness), is called meaningf (cf. Being and Time, p. 151). "Meaning of Being" and "truth of Being" say the same.
a Fifth edition, 1949: Time is four-dimensional: The first dimension, which gathers everything, is nearness. b Fifth edition, 1949: This epoch is the whole history of Being. c Fifth edition, 1949: Time-space. d Fifth edition, 1949: Thrownness and Ereignis. Throwing, throwing toward, sending; projection: responding to the throw. e Fifth edition, 1949: Brings itself to us. f Fifth edition, 1949: Meaning - pointing the path toward the matter [Sach-verbalt].
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