Basic Writings (edition 1993)

I didn't really know what I was getting in for. I just wanted to flip through it to see what all the fuss was about, but it didn't turn out to be that kind of book. Parts of it are really beautiful, kind of terribly beautiful. Here is an example:

"At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary. The essence of truth, that is, of unconcealedness, is dominated throughout by a denial. Yet this denial is not a defect or a fault, as though truth were an unalloyed unconcealedness that has rid itself of everything concealed. If truth could accomplish this, it would no longer be itself. This denial, in the form of a double concealment, belongs to the essence of truth as unconcealedness. Truth, in its essence, is un-truth."

And then two pages later: "Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealedness."

And then two more pages later: "Truth is un-truth, insofar as there belongs to it the reservoir of the not-yet-revealed, the un-uncovered, in the sense of concealment."

It kind of made me think someone should just write a poem about it instead. But then here is another quote which seemed almost like a direct challenge: "Occasionally we still have the feeling that violence has long been done to the thingly element of things and that thought has played a part in this violence, for which reason people disavow thought instead of taking pains to make it more thoughtful."

There is something so seductive about a sentence that begins "The essence of truth," even (especially) if it concludes with un-truth.