treasure." Love of antiquity is then a pretext for striving to evade every decisive reflection.
Readiness to confront the inception of our history thus remains more vital than any knowledge of languages. This means readiness to confront the essential, which, as a decision, is projected ahead of this history at its inception, and is its ground.
Readiness to confront the inception can originate as genuine only from the necessities of the history into which we ourselves are placed. When we cast aside reflection upon the necessary and insist we are in possession of the truth, all remembrance of the inception is impossible. And where such remembrance does seem to be fostered, it is only an evasion of what is worthy of question and a flight into the past.
The measure of whether remembrance of the inception is genuine can never be determined from an interest in reviving classical antiquity, but only from a resolve to attain an essential knowing that holds for what is to come. This knowing need not even concern the inception of our history at first.
The test, however, of whether we are merely collecting information, whether we are merely taking bygone cultural aims as a pretext for thoughtlessness, or whether we are willing to set out upon the path to reflection, this test we must putto ourselves. To this belongs inner freedom, but also the opportunity to experience first of all how such reflection proceeds and what it entails.
f) The goal of the lecture: Reflection as preparation for confronting the inception of our history
This lecture aims to provide the opportunity for such reflection or experience. You should think according to and along with what is here thought forth. This thinking is not prescribed in any examination protocol, and fortunately cannot be so prescribed. Such thinking does not belong to any "required course of study." Indeed, it does not belong to any "course of study" at all. It also does not serve to further "general education." It cannot provide entertainment for students of all departments. The thinking in which we reflect and do nothing but reflect does not