of discerning a contradiction and playing, so to speak, with a “paradox.” For relinquishing thought is the most deplorable way for thought to accomplish its task. Nevertheless, according to the way of thinking practiced until now in the otherwise usual questions of philosophy, one could undertake still other and subsequent reflections in respect to the impasse now arrived at. In view of this situation where there is no way out, where, on the one hand, being cannot be avoided, and, on the other hand, investigating being immediately makes it into a ‘‘being’’ and thus destroys its essence, one gives up the question of being altogether and declares it to be a pseudoquestion. Or else one decides to acknowledge the now exposed impasse ("aporia"). One must then cometo terms with it in some way. In such cases, the popular technique of making a virtue of necessity offers itself as a salvation. Accordingly, we could say in respect to our impasse that being itself forces us into this situation with no way out and even brings it about. Therefore, being would show itself to be what is represented as at once both unavoidable and yet ungraspable. What it shows itself to be in this way, this impasse, is precisely its essence. The impasse that being brings with it is being’s own mark of distinction. Therefore, let us take the impasse as the predicate with whose help the decisive assertion about being can be won. It states: Being is every time, with every attempt to think it, converted into a being and thus destroyed in its essence; and yet being, as distinguished from all beings, cannot be denied. Being itself has just this kind of essence: it brings human thinking into an impasse. When we know that, we already know something essential about being.
Do we truly know “something” essential about being, or do we merely discern what happens to us and our thinking when we try to comprehend being? Indeed, the only thing we attain is an insight into our incapacity to comprehend being. As long as we let it rest with an account of the aforementioned impasse, we ascertain an “‘aporia.” With this determination, which looks like an important insight, we close our eyes to the abode in which, despite all looking away, we remain. For we lay a claim to being in all our comportments toward beings. But we can consider still another possible attitude, where we neither close our eyes to the impasse nor pass it and its discernment off as the ultimate culmination of wisdom, where