and, as such, can only be a consequence of it (namely, ‘science’), overpowers the ground (namely, philosophy), thereby inverting the relationship between ground and consequence. What is dependent attempts to subdue and master that on which it depends. Concealed herein lies a strange fate: namely, that since Plato and Aristotle, the thinking called ‘philosophy’ has failed to return to its own essential grounding in order to receive from it—and only from it—the imprint and secret of its essence [228]. This self-estrangement of philosophy has the consequence that when one wishes to avoid an equating of philosophy and science, philosophy is then characterized from a perspective foreign to it: namely, as a form of ‘art,’ i.e., as a kind of ‘poetics.’ One speaks of ‘conceptual poetry’ and ‘poetic philosophers.’ Philosophy is regarded as a kind of profession of faith or as a ‘world view.’ To think philosophy only as philosophy and to follow this thinking where it necessarily leads is too daunting and difficult for the world to attempt: for the thinking that is concealed in ‘philosophy’ is set apart from everything discussed above, including ‘science,’ as though separated by an abyss. It will necessitate a long journey in order to free authentic thinking, which curtly and emphatically we call ‘thinking as such,’ from common misapprehensions.

However, because philosophy since Plato has at the same time also been divided into disciplines and remains so divided (in the same manner as the sciences), the impression is solidified that what has been divided into disciplines is, in its essence, as concrete and unambiguous as the disciplines themselves are rigid and unquestionable.

But let us not recklessly deceive ourselves about what hides itself in the validity of such a division into disciplines and the roles thereof. What is this, precisely? Namely, that through the notion of a discipline, a set of possible questions and with them directions and ways of possible exploration are determined with a certain finality. The objects of inquiry occupied by the discipline are thereby held captive by the discipline. The matters investigated by and through the discipline can only announce themselves insofar as the discipline and its methodological apparatus allows. The discipline and its validity remain the decisive authority regarding whether and how something may become a possible object of scientific inquiry, as well as its suitability for becoming an object for research. The reigning disciplines [229] are like sieves that only allow precisely determined aspects of things through. What belongs to ‘a matter’ is decided not so much by the matters in question, their ground, and their ‘truth,’ but rather by the discipline into which they remain committed as an object of that discipline. The shackling of questions and directions of inquiry by disciplines, and the division into disciplines, also applies to the sciences and Occidental philosophy (owing to their constant proximity), and this not only in cases where such philosophy is conveyed as a doctrine in a scholastic manner, but also (and in particular) when it unfolds and consummates its fate as metaphysics in the originary thinking of thinkers. Even Kant was fond of invoking the three-fold division of philosophy. He thus begins the preface to the