we are speaking of is by no means just any arbitrary thought, detached from all necessity. On the contrary, the non-occurrence here is something necessarily held back and detained in the beginning and through the beginning, whereby the beginning remains the unfathomable, which ever anew instigates reflection on itself—with more difficulty, the further the decline has progressed.
§31. The end of the first beginning and the preparation for another beginning.
a) Our situation at the end of the beginning and the demand for a reflection on the first beginning as a preparation for another beginning.
We need to reflect here on the beginning of Western thinking and on what occurred in it and did not occur in it, because we stand at the end—at the end of this beginning. That is, we are standing before the decision between the end (and its running out, which may still take centuries) and another beginning, one which can only be a moment, but whose preparation requires the patience “optimists” are no more capable of than “pessimists.”
Yet it might be said that here—as elsewhere—there is no need for a special decision between end and beginning, since nobody wants the end right away, and everyone altogether prefers the beginning and its continuation. But this decision is not made in the well-tended garden of our inclinations, wishes, and intentions. If the decision is set there, it is no decision. It takes place in the domain of our preparedness or unpreparedness for the future. This domain is opened up—if it does indeed unfurl—according to the originality enabling us to find ourselves again in what genuinely occurs, out of lostness in our contrivances and endeavors, out of entanglement in what is obvious and worn out. But we will find ourselves there only through a reflection on the beginning and on what was entrusted to it. For we are thoroughly successors to and heirs of a long history, and we are satisfied by and avid for historiographical cognition and its account of the past. Historiography is a narcotic averting us from history. Even if we simply want to prepare the other beginning, we will