that is, as the question that constantly and specifically precedes the fundamental question and is thus related back to it.

Only from the fundamental question — about the essence of Being itself — and only from the preliminary question, which is one with it — about the essence of the truth of the essence of Being — can the guiding question as such and its structure be understood and unfolded.

But then it also becomes clear that this structure is not a contrived and imposed framework, artificially inserted into this guiding question, which otherwise knows nothing of it; rather, this structure is itself the arrangement of the event of the guiding question and the associated search for an answer; the constellation of the initial positing of the connection of (Being) from the guiding experience of the existing as φύσις; therefore, the guiding question becomes “metaphysics.”

Indeed, it is only on the basis of the guiding question and the structure that unfolds from it that one can say what metaphysics can be and is, both as a cognitive process and as an established doctrine. “Metaphysics” exists only on the ground and within the realm of the guiding question. And depending on the nature and direction of the execution of the guiding question (its formulation and answer), what we call a fundamental metaphysical position is determined.

With the overcoming of the guiding question and the very act of posing it within the inquiry into Being as such — that is, philosophy — metaphysics also comes to an end.

The preparation for the other beginning begins.

Insofar as the posing of the guiding question relates to Being as the real and is grounded in contemplative, thinking apprehension, the entire fulfilled history of the guiding question — that is, Western metaphysics up to and including Nietzsche — can be summed up under the guiding principle: Being and Thinking.

In contrast, the overcoming of the guiding question is being prepared from the unfolding preliminary and fundamental question under the guiding principle of Being and Time.

Both titles characterize the positions of the first beginning and the other beginning in their confrontation, through which Western metaphysics to date must itself be unfolded more fundamentally and thus reappropriated.