Chapter One
§1. Futural philosophy; restraint as the basic disposition of the relation to Being [Seyn].
“Basic questions of philosophy”–that seems to imply there is such a thing as “philosophy” in itself, from whose domain “basic questions” could be drawn out. But such is not the case and cannot be; on the contrary, it is only the very asking of the basic questions that first determines what philosophy is. Since that is so, we need to indicate in advance how philosophy will reveal itself when we question: i.e., if we invest everything–everything without exception–in this questioning and do not merely act as if we were questioning while still believing we possess our reputed truths.
The task of this brief preliminary interpretation of the essence of philosophy will simply be to attune our questioning attitude to the right basic disposition or, to put it more prudently, to allow this basic disposition a first resonance. But, then, philosophy, the most rigorous work of abstract thought, and–disposition? Can these two really go together, philosophy and disposition? ‘To be sure; for precisely when, and because, philosophy is the most rigorous thinking in the purest dispassion, it originates from and remains within a very high disposition. Pure dispassion is not nothing, certainly not the absence of disposition, and not the sheer coldness of the stark concept. On the contrary, the pure dispassion of thought is at bottom only the most rigorous maintenance of the highest disposition, the one open to the uniquely uncanny fact: that there are beings, rather than not.