PATHMARKS
unrevealed. For ordinary representation, being oblivious readily takes on the appearance of merely missing something, of a lack, of something unfortunate. We habitually take oblivion and forgetfulness exclusively as an omission that can be found frequently enough as a condition belonging to human beings represented in their independence. We still remain far removed from a determination of the essence of oblivion. Yet even where we have caught sight of the essence of oblivion in its full extent, we all too readily run the danger of understanding oblivion merely as a human act or activity.
People have indeed tended to represent the "oblivion of being" as though, to say it by way of an image, being were the umbrella that has been left sitting somewhere through the forgetfulness of some philosophy professor.
Yet oblivion does not simply befall the essence of being, as something
apparently separate from the latter. It belongs to the issue of being itself,
prevails as a destiny of its essence. Correctly thought, oblivion, the concealing
of the as yet unrevealed essence (in the verbal sense of essential
unfolding) of being shelters untapped treasures and is the promise of a
find that awaits only the appropriate seeking. To have some premonition
of this requires no prophetic gift, nor the affectation of preachers, but only
an attentiveness, practiced for decades, to that which has been and which
announces itself in the metaphysical thinking of the Western world. That
which has been stands here within the sign of the unconcealment of that
which is present.
[{GA 9 416}]
Unconcealment resides in the concealment [244] of presencing.
Recollective thinking [Andenken] has the task of attending to this
concealment, in which unconcealment (Ἀλήθεια) is grounded. It recollects
thoughtfully what presences as that which has been, and which is not past,
since it remains that which does not become past in all enduring granted
by the event [Ereignis] of beingg in each case.
The recovery of metaphysics is recovery of the oblivion of being. Such recovery rums toward the essence of metaphysics. It entwines itself around it by way of what this essence itself demands, insofar as it calls for that realm that can raise it into the free dimension of its truth. In order to respond to a recovery of metaphysics, thinking must for this reason first clarify the essence of metaphysics. To such an attempt, the recovery of metaphysics initially appears to be an overcoming that merely brings exclusively metaphysical representation behind it, so as to lead thinking into the free realm attained by a recovery from the essence of metaphysics. But in this recovery, the enduring truth of the metaphysics that has seemingly been rejected first returns explicitly as the now appropriated essence of metaphysics.
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