Only when we love that which in itself is what is to be considered are we capable of/do we enable thinking.
So that we may succeed in this thinking, we must, for our part, learn thinking. What is learning? Human beings learn by bringing their activities into correspondence with that which is addressed to them in each case as the essential. We learn thinking by attending to what there is to be considered.
Our language names that which belongs to the essence of the friend and derives from it ‘the friendly.’ Accordingly, let us now name that which in itself is what is to be considered ‘the considerable.’5 Everything considerable gives something to think about. But it always gives this gift only to the extent that the considerable is already, of itself, what is to be considered. Therefore, now and in what follows, we call ‘the most considerable’ what always gives something to think about because it did so at the start [einsther], what did so before everything and thus from then on [einsthin] .
What is the most considerable? Where does it show itself in our considerable6 age?
What is most considerable shows itself in this: that we are not yet thinking. Still not yet, although the state of the world grows continuously more considerable. This process, of course, seems rather to demand human action, instead of talking in conferences and congresses and thereby moving within the mere representation of what should be and how it must be done. Accordingly, what is missing is action, not in any way thought.
And yet – perhaps the human hitherto has for centuries acted too much and thought too little.
But how can someone maintain today that we are not yet thinking, when everywhere interest in philosophy is brisk and grows more and more industrious, so that everyone claims to know what philosophy is all about.
The philosophers are the thinkers. They are named thus because the thinking primarily plays out in philosophy. No one will deny that an interest in philosophy persists today.
5 [Gray translates das Bedenkliche as ‘what is thought-provoking,’ which is quite good. Since he has already done so in print, I have the luxury of experimenting with something else. Ordinarily, bedenklich means both ‘questionable’ (in the sense of ‘dubious’) and, more forcefully, ‘disturbing’ or ‘alarming.’ Since ‘considerable’ usually modifies things like size, or growth, or extent, as nominalized it connotes, if not something disturbing or alarming, at least something remarkable or significant. It can also be heard as ‘consider-able,’ something that incites or enables our consideration of it. And it permits a (possibly unnecessary) distinction between considering (Bedenken) and thinking (Denken).]
6 Third edition, 1967: inconsiderable?