The questioning of being in the mode of questioning the truth of beyng no longer comes to pass on a plane in which a distinction like the one between idealism and realism could possibly be grounded. Admittedly, there remains the misgiving as to whether it is indeed possible to think beyng itself in its essential occurrence without taking beings as the point of departure, i.e., whether all questioning of being must not remain inescapably a questioning back from beings. Here, in fact, the long tradition of metaphysics and the resulting habit of thinking stand in the way, especially if "logic," itself a descendant of the inceptual disempowerment of being and of truth, is still reputed a heavenly descended, absolute judge of thinking. For it is then "logically," i.e., definitively, settled that being, as what is general, comes to be acquired on the basis of beings even when the attempt is made to secure being in its constancy in the manner of beings. Beyng, which must be inventively thought in its truth, "is" nevertheless not that which is general and empty; instead, beyng essentially occurs as what is unique and abyssal, that in which something non-repeatable in history is decided (cf. Beyng, 270. The essence of beyng (essential occurrence)). To be sure, we cannot remain standing on the soil of the metaphysical question of being and from that standpoint demand a knowledge which by its very essence includes the abandonment of that standpoint, i.e., includes the spatialization of a space and the temporalization of a time which were indeed not only forgotten in the history of metaphysics or insufficiently pondered but are inaccessible to this history and even not necessary to it.
To abandon the standpoint of metaphysics means nothing else than to be subject to a compelling that arises out of a very different plight, one which was assuredly brought about by the history of metaphysics in such a way that it withdraws as the plight it actually is and allows the lack of a sense of plight (with regard to being and the question of being) to become the predominant condition. In truth, however, the lack of a sense of plight is the extreme form of this plight and can be recognized above all as the abandonment of beings by being.
In the transition from the metaphysical question of being to the future one, thinking and questioning must always remain transitional. Thereby the possibility of a merely metaphysical critique of the other questioning is excluded. Yet the other questioning is not then ipso facto proven to be "absolute" truth, as can already be seen in the fact that a proof of such "truth" runs counter to the very essence of this questioning. For this questioning is historical and is so because in it the history of beyng itself as the history of the unique and most abyssal ground of history becomes an event. Moreover, transitional thinking always accomplishes in the first place the preparation for the other