Out of its necessity and in an anticipatory interpretation, the thinking of the historicality of beyng can be made question-worthy in four ways:
1. On the basis of the gods.
2. On the basis of the human being.
3. With regard to the history of metaphysics.
4. As the thinking "of" beyng.
Only in appearance can these four viewpoints be followed up independently of one another.
Regarding 1. To grasp the thinking of beyng on the basis of the gods will immediately seem arbitrary and "fantastic," insofar as on the one hand it means in general to proceed without hesitation from the divine, as if that were "given" and everyone agreed about it, and insofar as on the other hand it means still more outlandishly to proceed from "gods," as if a "polytheism" were postulated as the "point of departure" for philosophy. To speak of the "gods" does of course not mean that a decision has been made here affirming the existence of many gods instead of one; rather, it is meant to indicate the undecidability of the being of gods, whether one or many. This undecidability carries within it the question of whether something like being can be attributed to gods at all without destroying everything divine. To speak of "the gods" is to name the undecidability as to whether a god, and which god, could arise once again as an extreme plight for which essence of the human being in which way. Yet this undecidability is not represented as the mere empty possibility of decisions; instead, it is to be grasped in advance as the decision from which originates either what has been decided or complete undecidedness. The thinking in advance, as abiding in this decision with regard to such undecidability, does not presuppose the existence of any gods whatever; instead, it ventures into the domain of that question for which the answer can come only from what is question-worthy itself, never from the questioner. This fact, that such anticipatory thinking denies beyng to "the gods" in advance, means that every assertion about the "being" and "essence" of gods not only says nothing about them, i.e., about that which is to be decided, but also dissimulates something objective, on which all thinking founders because it is immediately driven astray. (A metaphysical consideration must represent God as the highest being, as the first ground and cause of beings, as the un-conditioned, the infinite, the absolute. All these determinations arise not from what is godly about God but from the essence of beings as such, insofar as this essence, conceived purely and simply in itself as constant presence and objectivity and as what is clearest in representational explanation, is attributed to God as ob-ject.)