We are thinking of the possibility that the world civilization which is just now beginning might one day overcome its technological-scientific-industrial character as the sale criterion of man's world sojourn. This may happen not of and through itself, but in virtue of the readiness of man for a determination which, whether listened to or not, always speaks in the destiny of man which has not yet been decided. It is just as uncertain whether world civilization will soon be abruptly destroyed or whether it will be stabilized for a long time, in a stabilization, however, which will not rest in something enduring, but rather establish itself in a sequence of changes, each presenting the latest novelty.

The preparatory thinking in question does not wish and is not able to predict the future. It only attempts to say something to the present which was already said a long time ago, precisely at the beginning of philosophy and for that beginning, but has not been explicitly thought. For the time being, it must be sufficient to refer to this with the brevity required. We shall take a directive which philosophy offers as an aid in our undertaking.

When we ask about the task of thinking, this means in the scope of philosophy: to determine that which concerns thinking, which is still controversial for thinking, which is the controversy. This is what the word Sache [matter] means in the German language. It designates that with which thinking has to do in the case at hand, in Plato's language, τὸ πρᾶγμα αὐτό (See "The Seventh Letter" 341c 7)·

In recent times, philosophy has of its own accord expressly called thinking "to the things themselves." Let us mention two cases which receive particular attention today. We hear this call "to the things themselves" in the "Preface" that Hegel placed at the front of the work he published in 1807, System of Science,* First Part: The Phenomenology of Spirit. This preface is not the preface to the Phenomenology, but to the System of Science, to the whole of philosophy. The call "to

* Wissenschaft, scientia, body of knowledge, not "science" in the present use of that word. For German Idealism, science is the name for philosophy.—TR.