occurs more in the general tenor and unspoken intention. Already in Being and Time, time is thought in its relation to aletheia (unconcealment) and in terms of the Greek ousia (presence).
If this is how it is with time—time being addressed as the transcendental horizon of Being—then how can {GA 14: 37} the fundamental experience guiding the position of Being and Time be characterized? Is it possible to find the character of withdrawal already in that position? The experience which attempts to find expression for the first time in Being and Time and which in its transcendental manner of questioning must still in a way speak the language of metaphysics has indeed thought the Being of beings and brought it to a conceptual formulation, thus also bringing the truth of beings to view, but in all these manifestations of Being, the truth of Being, its truth as such, has never attained to language, but has remained in oblivion. The fundamental experience of Being and Time is thus that of the oblivion of Being. But oblivion means here in the Greek sense: concealment and self-concealing.
The oblivion of Being which is manifest as not thinking about the truth of Being can easily be interpreted and misunderstood as an omission of previous thinking, in any case as something which would be terminated by the question about the meaning, that is, the truth of Being when that question is explicitly adopted and followed through. Heidegger's thinking could be understood, and Being and Time still suggests this—as the preparation and beginning of a foundation upon which all metaphysics rests as its inaccessible ground, in such a way that the preceding oblivion of Being would thus be overcome and negated. However, for the correct understanding it is a matter of realizing that this previous non-thinking is not an omission, but is to be thought as the consequence of the self-concealment of Being. As the privation of Being, the concealment of Being belongs to the opening up of Being. The oblivion of Being which constitutes the essence of metaphysics and became the stimulus for Being and Time belongs to the essence of Being itself. Thus there is put to the thinking of Being the task of thinking Being. in such a way that oblivion essentially belongs to it.
The thinking that begins with Being and Time is thus, on the one