119. The leap
is prepared by asking the basic question2
This requires knowledge of the guiding question and of the transition. The guiding question itself can be known only in its hitherto concealed history (cf. The interplay, 110. The ἰδέα, Platonism, and idealism).
1. The first beginning and its ending encompass the entire history of the guiding question, from Anaximander to Nietzsche.
2. The guiding question is not posed in the first beginning as an explicitly formulated question. Yet for that very reason it is grasped all the more originarily and is answered in a way that sets the norm: the emergence of beings, the presencing of beings as such in their truth, which latter is grounded in λόγος (gathering) and νοεῖν (apprehension).
3. The way from here to the first—and henceforth guiding—formulation of the question in Aristotle; the essential preparation in Plato; the Aristotelian confrontation with the first beginning, whereby that beginning receives an interpretation which becomes fixed for those who come later.
4. The ramifications of the question in the formulation (doctrine of categories; theo-logy) that now again steps back but still dominates every result and every approach; the recasting of the whole through Christian theology; in that form, the first beginning then alone remains historical, even still in Nietzsche despite his discovery of the inceptual thinkers as men of rank.
5. From Descartes to Hegel, another recasting but no essential change; withdrawal into consciousness and absolute certainty; with Hegel for the first time a philosophical attempt at a history of the question of beings from the basic viewpoint of absolute knowledge.
6. What lies between Hegel and Nietzsche takes many forms, but nowhere, not even in Kierkegaard, is it metaphysically originary.
*
In contrast to the guiding question, the basic question as a formulated question begins with the very formulation of the question in order to leap from it back into the originary, basic experience of thinking the truth of beyng.
2. Cf. The interplay.