grasp, the matter of our inquiry. All being gripped is rooted in an attunement. What Novalis names homesickness is ultimately the fundamental attunement of philosophizing.
If we return to the initial point of departure of our preliminary appraisal and ask anew: What is meant by the title "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics"?, then we will now no longer simply conceive of it as corresponding to "Fundamental Features of Zoology," or "Fundamental Elements of Linguistics." Metaphysics is not some discipline of knowledge in which we interrogate a restricted field of objects in a particular respect with the aid of some technique of thinking. We shall forego classifying metaphysics as one scientific discipline alongside others. Initially we must leave open what metaphysics is in general. We can see only this much: metaphysics is a fundamental occurrence within human Dasein. Its fundamental concepts are indeed concepts, yet these—according to logic—place something before us [sind Vorstellungen] whereby we represent to ourselves something universal or something in general, something with respect to the universal that many things have in common with one another. On the basis of such representation of the universal, we are in a position to determine individual items that stand before us, e.g., to determine this thing as a lectern, that thing as a house. The concept is thus something like a determinative representation. The fundamental concepts of metaphysics and the concepts of philosophy, however, will evidently not be like this at all, if we recall that they themselves are anchored in our being gripped, in which we do not represent before us that which we conceptually comprehend, but maintain ourselves in a quite different comportment, one which is originarily and fundamentally different from any scientific kind.
Metaphysics is a questioning in which we inquire into beings as a whole, and inquire in such a way that in so doing we ourselves, the questioners, are thereby also included in the question, placed into question.
Accordingly, fundamental concepts are not universals, not some formulae for the universal properties of a field of objects (such as animals or language). Rather they are concepts of a properly peculiar kind. In each case they comprehend the whole within themselves, they are comprehensive concepts [Inbegriffe]. Yet they are also comprehensive in a second sense which is equally essential and which ties in with the first: they also in each case always comprehend within themselves the comprehending human being and his or her Dasein—not as an addition, but in such a way that these concepts are not comprehensive without there being a comprehending in this second sense, and vice-versa. No concept of the whole without the comprehending of philosophizing existence. Metaphysical thinking is comprehensive thinking in this double sense. It deals with the whole and it grips existence through and through.