2. The enowning of en-ownment gathers within itself the de-cision [Entscheidung]: that freedom, as the abysmal ground*, lets a distress emerge from out of which, as from out of the overflow of the ground, gods and man come forth into partedness. (Ibid.)
Gods and humans are de-cided, i.e., they are parted as they come forth in being-t/here out of a distress. This distress dwells in the needfulness of the gods which necessitates being-t/here (first aspect of enowning) and is now further articulated as originating in freedom—the abysmal ground—and as being the “overflow” of this ground. Freedom names the swaying of truth itself3 which opens as the abyss out of which enowning occurs, i.e., the overflow of the ground, which lets gods and humans come forth (enowns) in their partedness.
Where gods announce themselves in the necessitating of being-t/here, humans emerge as those who, attuned by the abysmal event of the truth of be-ing, need to be the t/here, to hold open the opening of the abysmal truth of be-ing. Humans emerge—in partedness from the gods—as those who respond to the need that originates in the abysmal truth of be-ing. But why do they come forth in their partedness?
Gods dwell in their absence, in their needfulness of be-ing. Being-t/here does not result in the presencing of the gods but rather opens a time-space in which their flight and arrival becomes manifest. In being the t/here, humans come to be who they are in “resisting” the withdrawal of this opening of truth as they abide in it. They become grounders of a timespace for the manifestation of the gods in the gods’ “not yet” and “not any more” precisely by resisting the withdrawal in which they (the gods) dwell and, therefore, by parting from them. This entails that gods and humans in their partedness (which remains a parting) stay essentially related, and this is what the third aspect of enowning addresses:
3. En-ownment as de-cision brings to the parted ones countering, namely that this “toward-each-other” of the broadest needful de-cision must stand in the utmost “counter,” because it bridges over the abyss of the needed be-ing. (Ibid.)
3. Compare Heidegger’s essay “On the Essence of Ground,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 97–135.