But with this naming, the differentiation into being and into ground/reason remains concealed, and with this differentiation the belonging-together of the two conceals itself.
In terms of the history of being, it is only at a particularly high—perhaps highest—moment that the belonging-together of being and ground/reason accrues to the word λόγος. In the history of early Greek thinking, Heraclitus used the word λόγος in this sense. But the word λόγος is at the same time a word that conceals. It doesn't allow the belonging-together of being and ground/reason as such to come to the fore. Now one would like to expect that the belonging-together of being and ground/reason gradually comes to light in the train of the history of thinking. This is exactly what doesn't happen, rather the opposite does. The difference between being and ground/reason is what first becomes overt, but not in the sense of a distinction which, implying a connection between being and ground/reason, refers both to a belonging-together. Being and ground/reason show themselves as different in the sense of what is separated and divided. However, because the belonging-together of being and ground/reason reigns in what is concealed, what is separated does not fall asunder into unconnectedness. Rather, ground/reason comes to be represented as something else, not as being, but as connected to what being, for its part, determines, namely beings. It is in this way that the belonging-together of being and ground/reason reigns in what is concealed. This belonging-together never came to light—much less was it taken up by conceptual thinking—neither in terms of its Geschick-configuration, nor in terms of ground/reason and its forms. Instead, something obvious monopolizes things in the history of thinking, namely what was mentioned at the beginning of the first lecture: every being has a ground/reason. This is run of the mill for representational thinking. To what extent? To the extent that the representation of beings with respect to the fact that they are, and are in this and that way, is a representation that has being in sight and hence, although without knowing it, has something like ground/reason in sight. Therefore, it is natural for representational thinking to ask for ground/reasons and to revert to Principles.
If later on the principle of reason is formulated, it at first articulates nothing but the obvious [that every being has a reason]. But the principle itself, which , as it were, sanctions this obviousness, for its pan claims this obviousness as its own. So the principle of reason counts as an immediately intuitive law of thinking. How come? It comes from the fact that being and ground/reason "are" the same, yet their belonging-together is forgotten, which means, if understood in a Greek way: concealed. But this can't be thought as long as we understand λόγος in terms of ratio and "Reason." In this case we also do not become aware of the extent to which the Roman rationem reddere is not the equivalent of the Greek λόγον διδόναι. One can correctly translate this Greek phrase with "giving an account," "to specify the reason," but one does not thereby think