Contemplating Freedom

Having read this essay several times, today I found myself concentrating on two paragraphs concerning freedom. In a treatise on the danger and chance of technology (not of technologies, but of the essence of technology, the concept of Being it derives from), these thoughts on freedom, liberty, Freiheit, liberté may appear abstract. Perhaps that is precisely the reason we so often do not consider freedom in essence. Perhaps that is precisely the danger. So here, at the risk of bemusing some, disturbing others, and giving some few pause to think, I am providing my own translation of those few lines, followed by the original. For the moment the English version satisfies me somewhat. Whether it still will do so tomorrow is difficult to predict; for I will continue thinking about what is thought worthy. What is worth considering is worth saying in another way another day. But it must at all costs be spoken. It's worth thinking about!

Freedom’s essential sway (essence) is not originally attributable to will or merely to the causality of human desiring.
Freedom administers the free, in the sense of the illuminated, i.e. of the revealed. The occurrence of revealing, i.e. of truth, is what freedom is most closely and most intimately related to. All revealing is part and parcel of a sheltering and a concealing. Liberating, however, is concealed and always conceals itself, the secret. All revealing comes from the free, goes into the free, and brings into the free. The freedom of the free consists neither in unbound arbitrariness nor in the bonds of mere laws. Freedom is illuminating concealment in whose illumination that veil flutters which conceals the essential swaying of all truth and which makes that veil appear as one that shrouds. Freedom is the realm of that sending forth which each time sets a revelation on its path.

[-RG transl.]

Das Wesen der Freiheit ist ursprünglich nicht dem Willen oder gar nur der Kausalität des menschlichen Wollens zugeordnet.
Die Freiheit verwaltet das Freie im Sinne des Gelichteten, d.h. des Entborgenen. Das Geschehnis des Entbergens, d. h. der Wahrheit, ist es, zu dem die Freiheit in der nächsten und innigsten Verwandtschaft steht. Alles Entbergen gehört in ein Bergen und Verbergen. Verborgen aber ist und immer sich verbergend das Befreiende, das Geheimnis. Alles Entbergen kommt aus dem Freien, geht ins Freie und bringt ins Freie. Die Freiheit des Freien besteht weder in der Ungebundenheit der Willkür, noch in der Bindung durch bloße Gesetze. Die Freiheit ist das lichtend Verbergende, in dessen Lichtung jener Schleier weht, der das Wesende aller Wahrheit verhüllt und den Schleier als den verhüllenden erscheinen läßt. Die Freiheit ist der Bereich des Geschickes, das jeweils eine Entbergung auf ihren Weg bringt.

[„Die Frage nach der Technik“ in MH GA Bd.7, S.26 bzw. Klett-Cotta-Ausgabe S.24-25]