to which all self-manifestation of beings pertains. Only someone who is thinking superficially or, indeed, not thinking at all can content himself with the observation that Heidegger conceives truth as non-concealment. As if with ἀ-λήθεια what is properly worthy-of-thought did not take merely a first approximate form.3 The situation is not improved by proposing the translation "non-forgotten-ness" in place of "non-concealment." For "forgotten-ness" [too] must be thought in Greek fashion as withdrawal into concealment. Correspondingly, the counter-phenomenon to forgetting, [sc.] remembering, must receive a [genuinely] Greek interpretation which sees it as a striving after, an attaining to, the non-concealed. Plato's ἀνάμνησις of the Ideas implies: catching-sight-once-again, [hence] the revealing, of beings, sc. in that by which they shine-forth.
With the insight into ἀλήθεια as non-concealment came recognition of the fundamental trait of οὐσία, the Being of beings: presence {Anwesenheit}. But a literal translation, sc. a translation that thought draws out of the matter itself, is expressive only when the heart of the matter, in this case Presence {Anwesenheit} as such, is brought before thought. The disquieting, ever watchful question about Being under the guise of Presence {Anwesenheit} (Present) developed into the question about Being in terms of its time-character. As soon as this happened, it became clear that the traditional concept of time was in no respect adequate even for correctly posing the question concerning the time-character of Presence {Anwesenheit}, to say nothing of answering it. Time became questionable in the same way as Being. The ecstatic-horizontal temporality delineated in Being and Time is not by any means already the most proper attribute of time that must be sought in answer to the Being-question.
Subsequent to this tentative clarification of ἀλήθεια and οὐσία, the meaning and scope of the principle of phenomenology, "to the things themselves," became clear. As my familiarity with phenomenology grew, no longer merely through literature but by actual practice, the question about Being, aroused by Brentano's work, nevertheless remained always in view. So it was that doubt arose whether the "thing itself" was to be characterised
3 [Translator's note. Possibly: "... As if [it were] not with ἀ-λήθεια [that] what is properly speaking worthy-of-thought reached a first liminal appearance...."]