91. From the first to the other beginning2
The first beginning experiences and posits the truth of beings without asking about truth as such, for the things unconcealed in the truth of beings-namely, beings as beings-necessarily overpower everything because they swallow up even nothingness, incorporating it as the "not" and the "over and against." Or else they utterly annihilate it.
The other beginning experiences the truth of beyng and asks about the beyng of truth in order first to ground the essential occurrence of beyng and to let beings arise as the true of that original truth.
In the primordiality of these beginnings, everything conventional is always impossible, indeed in very different ways, and the transitional is the genuine battle. Wherever the beginning gives rise to a starting point and to an advancing, there is always the danger that these will come to count as the measure by which the primordial is not only gauged but also interpreted.
Proceeding from the first beginning, thought starts to entrench itself in the form of the question, what are beings? (That is the guiding question which is the starting point of Western "metaphysics.") This question is posed at first tacitly and then explicitly. It would be mistaken, however, to suppose that the guiding question could be encountered in the first beginning and as the beginning. Only for the sake of a rough, first instruction can the "guiding question" help to characterize the first beginning in its way of thought.
On the other hand, as soon as the guiding question becomes the measure for thinking, the primordiality of the beginning gets lost as well: i.e., it draws back into what is ungrounded about the beginning.
If we actually seek the history of philosophy in the occurrence and first beginning of thinking, and if we hold open this thinking in its historicality by developing the guiding question, which has been undeveloped throughout this entire history up to Nietzsche, then the inner movement of this thinking can be seized, although only formally by means of single steps and stages:
The experience, apprehension, and gathering of beings in their truth are concretized in the question of the beingness of beings under the guideline and anticipatory grasp provided by "thinking" (apprehensional assertion).
2. Cf. The leap, 130. The "essence" of beyng and 132. Beyng and beings.