a manifestation of the existential tendency of Dasein toward falling. The situation of the cave dwellers is rather interpreted as revealing something about the situatedness of human beings in a particular epoch of the history of Being - the era of imminent nihilism. The second point that demands our attention is that Heidegger's focus shifts from Dasein (singular) to Menschentum and Western human- 31 Heidegger, The Essence of Truth, 22. 32 For a discussion of the difference between stones, plants, animals, and human beings with regard to the world, see Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 178. See also Heidegger, Being and Truth, 137. 33 Heidegger, Being and Time, 220. 34 Heidegger, Thepresent as present deserves to be treated, namely as something to be overcome. Genuine historical return is the decisive beginning of authentic futurity" (Heidegger, The Essence of Truth, 7). 40 The word Licthung is used for the first time in the 1930 essay "On the Essence of Truth." The important element introduced by this essay is the claim that untruth (concealment) is not the result of human limitation, but rather stems from the concealing essence of truth as such. Heidegger uses the word "mystery" to describe the originary concealment that belongs to truth as such (see Heidegger, Pathmarks, 146 ff). With such a claim, Heidegger anticipates his turn from the concealing unconcealment of Dasein to the concealing unconcealment of Being as such. THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HEIDEGGER'S READING