29. Inceptual thinking14
(The question of the essence)
In the realm of the guiding question, the understanding of the essence is determined on the basis of beingness (οὐσία—κοινόν ["beingness—common"]), and the essentiality of the essence consists in the greatest possible generality of the essence. This means, conversely, that the particular and manifold, which fall under the concept of the essence and from which this concept is established, are arbitrary; indeed, what is essential is the arbitrariness of beings, which nevertheless is precisely what the belonging to the essence indicates.
On the other hand, where beyng is conceived as event, essentiality is determined out of the originality and uniqueness of beyng itself. There the essence is not the general but is the essential occurrence precisely of what is unique in each case and of what constitutes the rank of the being.
The question of the essence contains in itself what is decisive, which now from the ground up pervasively determines the question of being.
Projection is establishing of rank and is decision.
The principle of inceptual thinking therefore sounds like something doubled: all essence is essential occurrence [alles Wesen ist Wesung].
Every essential occurrence is determined out of what is essential in the sense of the original-unique.
30. Inceptual thinking
(as meditation)
is essentially, as the carrying out and preparing for the resonating and the interplay, first of all transition [Übergang] and as such is a down-going [Unter-gang].
In the transition, meditation is carried out, and meditation is necessarily meditation on oneself. This indicates, however, that such thinking is still related to us ourselves and thus to the human being and requires a new determination of the essence of that being. Insofar as, in the modern era, that essence is postulated as consciousness and self-consciousness, it seems that the transitional meditation must become a new clarification of self-consciousness. For one thing,
14. Cf. in "The leap," the beyng of the essence.