λήθη, i.e., the signless concealment that withdraws itself as oblivion. The last word of the Greeks that names λήθη in its essence is the μῦθος concluding Plato's dialogue on the essence of the πόλις.
A thoughtful dialogue always speaks of the Being of beings. A Platonic dialogue on the πόλις therefore cannot be a consideration of a particular πόλις existing here or there. The thinker thinks the πόλις as such; he says what the πόλις is, what is its essence. This essence, what the πόλις itself is in the totality of its proper essential relations, i.e., what it genuinely is, is called πολιτεία. A thoughtful dialogue on the πόλις is from the very outset nothing but a dialogue about the πολιτεία. That is what the title says. But this title is still not unequivocal. Just as the Greek word οὐσία is used in everyday language and means there "capital," "possessions," "goods and chattels," "estates," and just as at the same time the everyday word οὐσία is elevated to a word of thoughtful speech and then comes to mean the presence {Anwesenheit} of everything present, so πολιτεία means first, in the language of everydayness, the "life" belonging to a polis and determined by it, the dealings in it, and then correspondingly means the very structure of the polis in general, from which can then be discerned something like a "constitution." This latter must not be understood as a sequence of written propositions and rules, although the word pertains so originally to the "constitution" that what is written down does not merely present a subsequent "formula" or "formulation." Plato's choice of this name πολιτεία as the title of a thoughtful dialogue on the πόλις says that his theme will be the essential structure of the πολιτεία as such and consequently the essence of the πόλις in general.
It has been discovered that the πολιτεία described by Plato has never existed "in reality" and should therefore be called a "Utopia," something that has "no place." This discovery is "correct," the only problem is it does not understand what it has discovered. In truth it is the insight that the Being of beings is "actually" nowhere within beings and is not, as it were, on hand as one of their parts. Accordingly, Being should also be a "Utopia." But in truth Being, and it alone, is precisely the τόπος for all beings; and Plato's Politeia is not a "Utopia" but exactly the opposite, namely the metaphysically determined τόπος of the essence of the πόλις. Plato's Politeia is a recollection of the essential and not a plan for the factual.
The πόλις is the essential abode of historical man, the "where," to which man as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον belongs, the "where" from which alone order is ordained to him and in which he is ordered. The πόλις is the "where," as which and in which order is revealed and concealed. The πόλις is the way the revealing and concealing of order occur such that in these occurrences historical man comes into his essence and especially