had to take through beings so as not to attain being and thus to come to an end which is strong enough for the plight leading toward the other beginning. This beginning at the same time leads back into the originariness of the first beginning and transforms the past into something not lost.
The detour, however, must not be understood in the sense that an immediate or shorter path to beyng had been missed. Indeed, it is this detour which first leads into the plight of the refusal and into the necessity of bringing up for decision that which (φύσις, ἀλήθεια) in the first beginning was only the intimation of a bestowal and did not allow itself to be grasped and preserved.
Belonging to the genuine transition are, above all, courage for the old and freedom for the new. The old is not the archaic, which inevitably struts about as soon as the greatness of the beginning (which is incomparable as the greatness of the first beginning) falls into historiological tradition and disavowal. The old, i.e., that which cannot be surpassed in essentiality by anything younger, manifests itself only in historical confrontation and meditation. Furthermore, the new is not the "modern," namely, that which is currently in vogue and thereby gains validity and favor and yet remains the hidden and selfunaware foe of everything decisive. Instead, the new refers here to the freshness of the originariness of re-beginning, that which ventures out into the concealed future of the first beginning and thus cannot at all be "new" but must be even older than the old.
The transitional and essentially ambiguous thinkers must also know explicitly that their questioning and speaking are not understandable to our times (the duration of which cannot be calculated). That is not because our contemporaries are too deficient in cleverness or too little informed for what is said but because understandability already signifies the destruction of their thinking. For understandability compels everything back into the sphere of the previous representations. The mission of the transitional thinkers is to take those who so "feverishly" desire "understandability" and make of them non-knowers, ones who do not yet know, who do not already know the "whereto," because they have accomplished the first necessary step: not to expect truth from beings without falling prey to doubt and despair. Those who do not yet know, who have not yet secured for themselves agreement about everything but have indeed preserved for questioning that which is first and unique, beyng, are the inceptual wanderers, ones who originate from the furthest away and thus bear in themselves the highest future.
The transitional thinkers must ultimately know what all insistence upon understandability especially fails to realize, that no thinking of