of a complete lack of questioning, what is "most modern." All purposes and gains are fixed, all means are at hand, all benefits can be consummated; the only task is to overcome differences in the degree of refinement and to procure for the results the greatest possible scope of their easiest utilization. The hidden goal, to which all this and other things are hastening without surmising—or being able to surmise—the smallest part of it, is the state of complete boredom (cf. lecture course, 1929-309) in the domain of the most proper achievements. These themselves will eventually be unable to conceal the character of boredom any longer, in case there still remains at that time a vestige of cognitive power in order at least to be shocked by this state and to uncover it itself and that which is gaping open there, namely, the abandonment of beings by being.
24. Great unsettlement, however, comes only from essential knowledge, knowledge that already stands in the other beginning, never from powerlessness and sheer helplessness. But knowledge is steadfastness in the question-worthiness of beyng, and beyng maintains its unique dignity in such a way that it bestows itself seldom enough in refusal as the hidden event of the passing by of the decision regarding the advent or absconding of the gods in beings. Who is to come who will ground this moment of passage toward the beginning of another "era," i.e., toward the beginning of another history of beyng?
The dissolution and joining together of the departments that uphold science
The historiological human sciences are becoming newspaper science. The natural sciences are becoming machine science.
"Newspaper" and "machine" are meant here in the essential sense as the impelling modes of that final objectification which consummates the modern era and which sucks all the substantiveness out of beings, leaving them mere occasions for lived experience.
On account of this priority in the way of approach to organization and arrangement, both groups of sciences come into agreement with regard to the essential, i.e., with regard to their character as business establishments.
This "development" of modern science, its coming into its essence, is visible today only to a few and will be rejected by most as nonexistent. It cannot be proven by matters of fact; instead, it can be
9. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, winter semester, 1929-30 (GA29-30).