have to put itself into question. The result is this: the creating is replaced, right from the start, by bustle. The ways and risks of erstwhile creativity are incorporated into the gigantism of machination, and the machinational is the mere semblance of creative life
Only questioning and the decision in favor of question-worthiness can be set in opposition to "worldview." Every attempt at mediation—from whichever side it may come—weakens the positions and takes away the realm of possibility for a genuine battle.
Total political belief and the equally total Christian belief, despite being irreconcilable, are nevertheless involved in compromise and tactics. That should not be surprising about these beliefs, for· they are of the same essence. As total attitudes, they are both founded on the renunciation of essential decisions. Their battle is not a creative one but is "propaganda" and "apologetics."
Yet does not philosophy as well, and indeed it above all, claim the "total," especially if we define philosophy as knowledge of beings as such and as a whole? In fact it does, so long as we are thinking in the form of the previous philosophy (metaphysics) and are taking this philosophy as it was molded by Christianity (by the systematics of German Idealism). It is precisely there, however, that (modern) philosophy is already on the way to "worldview" (a term which, by no accident, gains ever more validity in the sphere of this "thinking").
Yet insofar as and as soon as philosophy (in the other beginning) finds itself back to its inceptual essence and the question of the truth of beyng becomes the grounding center, there is then revealed what is abyssal in philosophy, which must turn back to what is inceptual in order to bring into the free domain of its meditation the fissure and the "beyond itself," the strange and the perpetually unusual.
15. Philosophy as "philosophy of a people
Who would care to deny that that is what philosophy is? And cannot a witness be produced, one which refutes every counter-opinion: the great beginning of Western philosophy? Is that beginning not the philosophy "of" the Greek people? Furthermore, the great end of Western philosophy, namely, "German Idealism" and "Nietzsche"—is that not the philosophy "of" the German people?
Yet what do such obvious constatations actually say? Nothing about the essence of philosophy itself. On the contrary, they simply level philosophy down to an indifferent "accomplishment," "activity," or mode of behavior which could be exemplified just as well by the style of dress, manner of food preparation, etc. Reference to this obvious fact of belonging to a "people" entices one to believe that something