working hypotheses in natural science—already presuppose the positing of a determinate essence of the beings aimed at, and on the ground of this essence the working hypotheses first get their sense. Every “hypothesis” presupposes a ὑπόθεσις, a prior positing of the essence. The productive seeing of the essence is the positing of the ground; it grounds itself in what it brings forth and it brings forth that in which it grounds itself.
The positing of the essence will therefore always appear arbitrary and unusual if measured against the standards of the usual and familiar. But this unfamiliarity is again not what is remote and peculiar; on the contrary, it is the simple—which can never be brought closer, no matter how many demonstrations are attempted, if it is not brought forth anew in productive seeing, i.e., if the view of the essence is not awakened in man.
Here we see something of the unfathomable distinction between philosophy, as the knowledge of the essence, and all science. Scientific cognition needs, and creates, distance from its object, which is the reason a subsequent technical-practical removal of the distance is necessary. The knowledge of the essence, conversely, creates precisely an appurtenance to Being, and all practical application comes too late and remains beneath the rank of this knowledge.
The knowledge of the essence, therefore, if it is to be shared, must itself be accomplished anew by the one who is to assume it. More precisely, it cannot be communicated in the sense of the passing on of a proposition, whose content is simply grasped without its foundation and its acquisition being accomplished again. The knowledge of the essence must be accomplished anew by each one who is to share it; it must genuinely be co-accomplished.
RECAPITULATION
1) Renewed reflection on our procedure as a whole: the necessity of a historical relation to the history of the essence of truth.
Before we briefly recall the previous course of our questioning, in order to carry it on, let us characterize anew our procedure as a