“Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” That is the question. To pronounce the interrogative sentence, even in a questioning tone, is not yet to question. We can already see this in the fact that even if we repeat the interrogative sentence [16|22] several times over and over, this does not necessarily make the questioning attitude any livelier; on the contrary, reciting the sentence repeatedly may well blunt the questioning.

Thus, although the interrogative sentence is not the question and is not questioning, neither should it be taken as a mere linguistic form of communication, as if the sentence were only a statement “about” a question. If I say to you, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” then the intent of my asking and saying is not to communicate to you that a process of questioning is now going on inside me. Certainly the spoken interrogative sentence can also be taken this way, but then one is precisely not hearing the questioning. The questioning does not result in any shared questioning and self-questioning. It awakens nothing in the way of a questioning attitude, or even a questioning disposition. For this consists in a willing-to-know. Willing—this is not just wishing and trying. Whoever wishes to know also seems to question; but he does not get beyond saying the question, he stops short precisely where the question begins. Questioning is willing-to-know. Whoever wills, whoever puts his whole Dasein into a will, is resolute. Resoluteness delays nothing, does not shirk, but acts from the moment and without fail. Open resoluteness is no mere resolution to act; it is the decisive inception of action that reaches ahead of and through all action. To will is to be resolute. [The essence of willing is traced back here to open resoluteness. But the essence of open resoluteness <Ent-schlossenheit> lies in the de-concealment <Ent-borgenheit> of human Dasein for the clearing of Being and by no means in an accumulation of energy for “activity.” Cf. Being and Time, §44 and §60.