The Clearing

“There is a clearing. Thought from out of beings, it is more in being than is the being. This open centre is, therefore, not surrounded by beings. Rather, this illuminating centre itself encircles all beings - like the nothing that we scarcely know. The being can only be, as a being, if it stands within, and stands out within, what is illuminated in this clearing.”

                               Martin Heidegger, The origin of the work of art, 1950.