fared better than it does today, and it will fare still better in the future. But no one who knows will envy scientists–the most miserable slaves of modern times.)
(The withdrawal of science into what is worthy of questioning [Cf. “The Self-Determination of the German University”] is the dissolution of modern science.)
§3. Questioning the truth of Being {Seyns}, as sovereign knowledge.
Philosophy is the useless though sovereign knowledge of the essence of beings. The sovereignty is based on the goal established by thinking for all reflection. But what goal does our thinking posit? The positing of the goal for all reflection possesses truth only where and when such a goal is sought. When we Germans seek this goal, and as long as we do so, we have also already found it. For our goal is the very seeking itself. What else is the seeking but the most constant being-in-proximity to what conceals itself, out of which each need happens to come to us and every jubilation fills us with enthusiasm. The very seeking is the goal and at the same time what is found.
Obvious misgivings now arise. If seeking is supposed to be the goal, then is not what is established as a goal actually the limitless absence of any goal? This is the way calculating reason thinks. If seeking is supposed to be the very goal, then do not restlessness and dissatisfaction become perpetuated? This is the opinion of the feeling that is avid for quick possessions. Yet we maintain that seeking brings into existence the highest constancy and equanimity–though only when this seeking genuinely seeks, i.e., extends into the farthest reaches of what is most concealed and thereby leaves behind all mere curiosity. And what is more concealed than the ground of what is so uncanny, namely that beings are rather than are not? What withdraws from us more than the essence of Being {Seyns}, i.e., the essence of that which, in all the fabricated and disposed beings holding sway around us and bearing us on, is the closest but at the same time the most worn out (through constant handling) and therefore the most ungraspable?
To posit the very seeking as a goal means to anchor the beginning