whole. I say “anew,” because a clarification of it was already attempted in what has preceded—namely in the interpolated discussions of the distinction between historiographical consideration and historical reflection. Why did we focus on precisely this distinction, one that concerns a basic attitude within history and toward history? Why did a discussion of history and historiography become necessary at all for the sake of a clarification of our procedure? Why?—because we are asking the question of the essence of truth.
Questions such as that one pertain to the construction of a “system of philosophy” and are called, according to this origin, “systematic,” in distinction to the “historiographical” reports about the philosophical opinions of other thinkers on an issue. We are asking a systematic question—even if we have no system in mind—insofar as we are asking from ourselves and for ourselves, and for the future. We are questioning systematically and yet, after taking only a few steps with this intention, we have lost ourselves in historiographical considerations. Is this not a duplicitous procedure, a detour, even an avoidance of the simple, immediate, and direct answering of the question we raised: what is the essence of truth? One could perhaps understand that our response to this question might necessitate a certain historiographical account of the theories of truth immediately preceding us, for the purpose of critical analysis and clarification. But why go back so far and so laboriously to the Greeks?
If, as appears to be the case, we are already raising the question more originally than ever before and intend to answer in the same way, why do we not then leave behind everything bygone; why not simply throw off the oppressing and confusing burden of the tradition, in order finally to begin for ourselves? This is certainly what we intend and we must do so, since—as will be shown—there is a necessity behind it. But what we must do here—overcome the historiographical tradition—we can do only on the basis of the deepest and most genuine historical relation to what we have put into question, namely truth and the history of its essence.
Let us deliberate a moment: how could it happen that Western man, and especially modern man, became so inundated and shaken by the historiographical transmission of objectively and temporally very diverse modes of thinking and evaluating, styles of creating, and forms of work that he became vacillating as to