Nevertheless, a long, often relapsing, and very concealed history will transpire up to this incalculable moment which of course could never be as superficial as a "goal." The creative ones, in the restraint of care, must already prepare themselves hourly for stewardship in the time-space of that passing by. Thoughtful meditation on this that is unique (namely, the truth of beyng) can only be a path on which what is unable to be thought in advance is nevertheless thought, i.e., a path on which there begins the transformation of the relation of the human being to the truth of beyng.
With the question of beyng, which has overcome the question of beings and thereby all "metaphysics," the torch is ignited and the first run-up to the long heat is ventured. Where is the runner who takes up the torch and carries it to his pre-cursor? The runners must all be fore-runners, and this holds all the more strictly for those who come later. They must not be re-runners, who at most only "improve" and rebut what was first attempted. The fore-runners must be inceptual in an ever more originary way than their "pre-cursors" (who actually come after them) and must think still more simply, more richly, and altogether uniquely the one and the same issue that is to be questioned. What they take over by bearing the torch cannot be something said as a "doctrine," "system," or the like. Instead, it is something necessitated, which opens itself only to those of abyssal origin who are among the compelled ones.
What compels, however, is only that about the event which cannot be calculated or fabricated—in other words, only the truth of beyng. Blessed is whoever may belong to the wretchedness of its fissure in order to be a complying listener to the ever-inceptual dialogue of the solitary ones. In this dialogue, the last god intimates himself because through it he is intimated in his passing by.
The last god is not an end. The last god is the oscillation of the beginning in itself and thus is the highest form of refusal, since what is inceptual eludes every attempt to grasp onto it and essentially occurs only in protruding beyond all things that, as futural, are already incorporated into it and are delivered over to its determining power.
The end is only where beings have torn loose from the truth of beyng and have denied every question-worthiness, i.e., every differentiation, and endlessly comport themselves in the infinite possibilities of what is thus torn loose. The end is the incessant "and so forth" from which the last, as the most primordial, has withdrawn right from the beginning and for the longest time. The end never sees itself; instead, it considers itself the completion and will therefore be least ready and prepared either to await, or to experience, what is last.
With our provenance out of a "metaphysically" determined position toward beings, we will only with difficulty and delay be able to know