Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 00:04:05 +0100
Subject: Re: What is concealing?


Cologne, 05 November 1998

Mark E. Hill schrieb:
> Dear Heideggerians:
>
> I was wondering if someone might have a good understanding as to what is
> the basis to the concealing phenomenon Heidegger speaks about.  In other
> words, what is "concealing," what role does it play, and how does it
> relate to our temporal understanding of things?  Any help on this would
> be greatly appreciated.  

Mark, "concealing" plays a big role, along with its twin, "revealing" 
(enthuellen), which latter occurs throughout SuZ.

Both are situated in the problematic of the truth (a-laetheia) of being, and the 
truth of being, in various guises, is the guiding question for H. from beginning 
to end.

In SuZ it is in the first place a matter of beings showing (revealing) 
themselves of themselves. Such revealing is the precondition for them being 
understood by Dasein, both ontically (it's a hammer) and in their being (a 
hammer is good-for...).

But beings can also reveal themselves, ontically or ontologically, in a 
distorted way, or not at all, in which latter case they are concealed. An 
exammple of beings concealing their being (i.e. ontologically) is that things 
appear as substrates with properties, thus concealing their being as 
being-good-for... something or other in Dasein's existence.

Everything that _is_ needs a (unified) dimension in which it can reveal or 
conceal itself _as a being_. This dimension is the openness of a-laetheia, i.e. 
revealedness (decryption). Without this dimension (which conceals itself) there 
would be no beings at all and no understanding of being on the part of Dasein, 
and also no Dasein.

This is all very streamlined and thus simplified, but may get across the crucial 
guiding thoughts which draw H.'s thinking on.

Michael
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