Here, powers are holding sway that bewitch and prevail over beings, their opening up and formation, their closing and deformation. Becoming—is it nothing? Seeming—is it nothing? Thinking—is it nothing? The ought—is it nothing? By no means.

But if all that stands over against Being in the separations is not nothing, then it itself is in being, and in the end is in being even more than what is taken as in being in accordance with the restricted essential determination of Being. But in what sense of Being is in being, then, that which becomes, that which seems, thinking, and the ought? By no means in that sense of Being from which they set themselves apart. But this sense of Being is the one that has been current since antiquity.

Thus, the concept of Being that has been accepted up to now does not suffice to name everything that “is.”

Being must therefore be experienced anew, from the bottom up and in the full breadth of its possible essence, if we want to set our historical Dasein to work as historical. For those powers that stand against Being, the intricately interwoven separations themselves, have long determined, ruled, and pervaded our Dasein and keep it in confusion regarding “Being.” And so, from the originary questioning of the four separations there grows the insight that Being, which is encircled by them, must itself be transformed into the encompassing circle and ground of all beings. The originary separation, whose intensity and originary disjunction sustains history, is the distinction between Being and beings.

But how is this distinction to happen? Where can philosophy start to think it? Yet here we should not talk about a start, but instead we should re-accomplish it; for it has been accomplished in the necessity of the inception under which we stand. It was not in vain that,