SCHOLAR: From long ago to this day it has been accepted as a universally recognized doctrine of philosophy that thinking is a kind of representing.
GUIDE: May this and other doctrines of the thinkers never lose what is venerable and mysteriously didactic, by means of which they surprise every new confrontation that lets itself into an engagement with their truth.
SCIENTIST: So then you attribute an authoritative character to the doctrines of thinkers?
GUIDE: In no way. Of course, when we still have so little understanding of the essence of thinking, we can now hardly conclude something reliable with regard to what the correct relationship would be toward thinkers and their doctrines.
SCIENTIST: Then you think that the doctrine which says, thinking is a representing, is false?
GUIDE: Not at all.
SCHOLAR: But you leave it still undecided whether thinking is already exhaustively determined by this characterization of its essence? [65]
GUIDE: It is more that I leave open whether the essence of thinking has at all been caught sight of originally. After all, it could be that the common characterization of thinking as a representing is indeed correct and yet nevertheless prevents us from experiencing the essential origin of thinking.
SCHOLAR: There is this possibility.
SCIENTIST: All the same, though, it should first be examined whether willing is a striving.
GUIDE: Presumably willing is also a striving; but it is not only this and this is not what is proper to it.
SCHOLAR: So the essence of thinking as well as the essence of willing remain questionable.
SCIENTIST: And together with these, the relation between the two.
SCHOLAR: Thus it could well be that thinking essentially has nothing to do with willing.
SCIENTIST: Which is why you also said, in our conversation about thinking, that you willed to go out toward non-willing.
GUIDE: I am thinking out toward something such as this.
SCHOLAR: And nevertheless do not stride beyond the legitimate parameters of our conversation topic.
SCIENTIST: But how are we supposed to thoughtfully pursue non-willing and its essence so long as we leave the essence of willing undetermined?
GUIDE: Perhaps we must also first experience the essence of thinking in order to recognize that thinking is not a willing.