word means the changing forms in which Being shows itself epochally and historically. The question read: How is the sequence of epochs determined? How does this free sequence determine itself? Why is the sequence precisely this sequence? One is tempted to think of Hegel's history of the "idea." For Hegel, there rules in {GA 14: 62} history necessity which is at the same time freedom. For him, both are one in and through the dialectical movement as the essence of the Spirit exists. For Heidegger, on the other hand, one cannot speak of a "why." Only the "that"—that the history of Being is in such a way—can be said. Thus in the lecture "The Principle of Sufficient Reason" the saying of Goethe is cited:
How? When? and Where?—The gods remain silent!
Then stick to Because, and ask not about Why?
The "because" in the lecture is what endures, what maintains itself as destiny. Within the "that'' and in the sense of the '"that," thinking can also ascertain something like necessity in the sequence, something like an order and a consistency. Thus one can say that the history of Being is the history of the oblivion of Being escalating itself. Between the epochal transformations of Being and its withdrawal, a relation can be seen which, however, is not a causal relation. One can say that the further one moves away from the beginning of Western thinking, from aletheia, the further aletheia goes into oblivion; the clearer knowledge, consciousness, comes. to the foreground, and Being thus withdraws itself. In addition, this withdrawal of Being remains concealed. In the kryptesthai of Heraclitus, that withdrawal is expressed for the first and 1ast time. (Physis kryptesthai philei. Nature loves to hide.) The withdrawal of aletheia as aletheia releases the transformation of Being from energeia to actualitas, etc.
We must sharply distinguish from this meaning of transformation, which refers to metaphysics, the meaning which is intended when we say that Being is transformed—to Appropriation. Here it is not a matter of manifestation of Being comparable to the metaphysical formations of Being and following them as a new manifestation.