in the mode of the remaining absent of the question-worthiness of beings but also in the guise of an institutionalized expulsion of all meditation on account of the unconditional priority of "action" (i.e., the calculative and always "large-scale" bustling about) and of "facts."
The gigantic unfolds in the calculative and thus always brings the "quantitative" into prominence but is itself a denial of the truth of beyng in favor of the "rational" and the "given" inasmuch as the gigantic is the unconditioned predominance of representation and production. Yet this denial is not master of itself and, precisely in the highest self-certainty, does not ever know itself. The gigantic brings about the completion of the basic metaphysical position of the human being, a position which proceeds to invert its form and to interpret all "goals" and "values" ("ideals" and "ideas") as the "expression" and offspring of mere "eternal" "life" in itself. The foremost appearances of the gigantic are supposed to allow this "origin" in "life" to be represented as vividly as possible, i.e., to firmly establish this origin historiologically for the era of the gigantic and to confirm this era to itself in its "vitality." No matter whether "values" and "goals" are posited by "reason" or arise out of the "instinct" of "natural" and "healthy" life in itself, what is unfolding here throughout is the subjectum (human being) at the center of beings, specifically such that all forms of cultural and political configuration bring the gigantic to power in the same way and with equal necessity, carry on the historiological calculation of history and the miscalculation of history as ways of concealing the absence of goals and also secure everywhere, unobtrusively and unconsciously, the avoidance of essential decisions.
The gigantic shows that every kind of "greatness" in history arises from the implicit "metaphysical" interpretation of occurrences (ideals, actions, creations, sacrifices) and therefore is not of a properly historical essence but is merely historiological. The concealed history of beyng is unacquainted with what is "great" and "small" in terms of calculation and instead knows "only" what is decided, undecided, and decisionless with respect to beyng.
261. Views of beyng
Beyng—who bothers about beyng? Everyone chases after beings.
How is it even possible to bother about beyng? Where beyng does still occur, it is only as some "being" or other, about which we do not need to be bothered, supposing that bother may serve as the decisive criterion for what is and what ought to be. Even if the concession is finally granted that being "is" not a being, it remains an empty "representation," a