PATHMARKS
In whatever manner beings are interpreted — whether as spirit, after the fashion of spiritualism; or as matter and force, after the fashion of materialism; or as becoming and life; or as representation, will, substance, subject, or energeia; or as the eternal recurrence of the same — every time, [196] beings as beings appear in the light of Being. Wherever metaphysics represents beings, Being has been cleared. Being has arrived in a state of unconcealedness (Ἀλήθεια). But whether and how Being brings such unconcealedness with it, whether and how It brings itself within, and as, metaphysics,a remains veiled. Being in its essence as revealing, i.e., in its truth, is not thought. Nevertheless, when metaphysics gives answers to its question concerning beings as such, metaphysics speaks from out of the unnoticed manifestness of Being. The truth of Being may thus be called the ground in which metaphysics, as the root of the tree of philosophy, is kept and from which it is nourished.
Because metaphysics interrogates beings as beings, it remains concerned with beings and does not tum itself to Being as Being. As the root of the tree, it sends all nourishment and all strength into the trunk and its branches. The root branches out into the soil and ground to enable the tree to grow out of the ground and thus to leave it. The tree of philosophy grows out of the soil in which metaphysics is rooted. The ground and soil is the element in which the root of the tree lives, but the growth of the tree is never able to absorb this soil in such a way that it disappears in the tree as part of the tree. Instead, the roots, down to the subtlest tendrils, lose themselves in the soil. The ground is ground for the roots, and in the ground the roots forget themselves for the sake of the tree. The roots still belong to the tree even when they abandon themselves, after a fashion, to the element of the soil. They squander themselves and their element on the tree. As roots, they do not turn toward the soil — at least not as if it were their essence to grow only into this element and to spread out in it. Presumably, the element would not be the element either if the roots did not live in it.
Metaphysics, insofar as it always represents only beings as beings, does not recall Being itself. Philosophy [197] does not gather itself upon its ground.b It always leaves its ground — leaves it by means of metaphysics. And yet it never escapes its ground. Insofar as a thinking sets out to experience the ground of metaphysics, insofar as such thinking attempts to
a Fifth edition, 1949: Bringing within: Granting unconcealment, and therein what is unconlealed, present. In presencing there lies concealed: The bringing of unconcealment that lets presence that which is present. "Being itself" is Being in its truth, which truth belongs to Being, i.e., into which truth "Being" disappears.
b Fifth edition, 1949: Being and ground: the Same.
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