Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event): Of the Event

III. The Interplay

III. th e In t er Play1 1. Cf., in this regard, Übungen, summer semester 1937, Nietzsches metaphysische Grundstellung: Sein und Schein, and Übungen, winter semester 1937–38, Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des abendländischen Denkens (Metaphysik), as well as all the historical lecture courses. 81. Interplay The confrontation with the necessity of the other beginning, out of the originary posing of the first beginning. The guiding disposition: pleasure in the interrogative and reciprocal surpassing of the beginnings. In this regard, everything concerning the distinction between the guiding question and the basic question; answer to the guiding question and proper unfolding of that question; transition to the basic question (Being and Time). All the lecture courses on the “history” of philosophy. The decision with regard to all “ontology.” 82. Interplay is of a historical essence and builds the first bridge of the transition— a bridge which, however, thrusts out toward a shore that must first be decided. Yet the interplay with the history of the thinking of the first beginning is not historiological, additional, or pregiven material for a “new” “system.” Instead, it is itself the essential, transformative preparation of the other beginning. Therefore we must direct our historical meditation , perhaps still more inconspicuously and decisively, only to the thinkers belonging to the history of the first beginning so that through the interrogative dialogue with their way of questioning we might unexpectedly plant a questioning that will some day find itself explicitly rooted in another beginning. But this historical meditation, as the interplay of the beginnings which are grounded in themselves and which pertain—in each case differently—to the abyss, already arises in a transitional way out of the other beginning (to grasp this already requires the leap), and therefore such meditation is all too readily subject to the misinterpretation that finds there merely historiological considerations regarding works of thought chosen by arbitrary predilection . This is all the more so since the external form of these historical meditations (lectures on the “historiology of philosophy”) is in no way different from what subsequent scholarship would still present as a finished history of philosophy. Historical meditations can be taken, even usefully, simply as historiological and rectifiable considerations and perhaps even as discoveries , without any intimation of history breaking through in them, i.e., of the history which is the one of beyng itself and which bears the decisions of all decisions. It is on the ground of the thinking of beyng in its historicality that historical meditations can be carried out. But what if the essence of thinking has been lost to us and “logic” has been predestined to commandeer “thinking,” even though “logic” itself is indeed merely a vestige of the powerlessness of thinking, i.e., of unsupported and unprotected questioning in the abyss of the truth of being? And what if “thinking” retains validity only as the faultless drawing of conclusions within the correct representation of objects, i.e., as the avoidance of that questioning? 83. Being, according to all metaphysics According to metaphysics, being can be found in beings, specifically in such a way that thinking goes beyond beings. The more exclusively thinking turns toward beings and seeks for itself a foundation that is most eminently (cf. Descartes and the modern era), all the more decisively does philosophy withdraw from the truth of beyng. Yet how could the metaphysical renouncement of beings be possible—or how would it be possible to renounce metaphysics— without falling prey to “nothingness”? Da-sein is the grounding of the truth of beyng. The less that humans are beings, the less that they adhere obstinately to the beings they find themselves to be, all the nearer do they come to being [Sein]. (Not a Buddhism! Just the opposite.) 84. Beings in their emergence to themselves (ancient Greece); caused by a highest instance of their essence (Middle Ages); things present at hand as objects (modern era). The truth of beyng is veiled more and more, and increasingly remote is the possibility that this truth as such could become the grounding power or could even be known at all. 134 III. The Interplay [170–171] 85. The originary appropriation of the first beginning means gaining a foothold in the other beginning The originary appropriation of the first beginning (i.e., the appropriation of its history) means gaining a foothold in the other beginning . This is carried out in the transition from the guiding question...