thinking its own essence, how could metaphysics itself ever encounter its own essence? Metaphysical representations of metaphysics necessarily lag behind that essence. The metaphysics of metaphysics never attains to its essence.
But what does essence mean here? We are not adopting the idea of "essentialities" from the word . In the name essence [Wesen] we perceive what occurs essentially [das Wesende]. What is "the essence" of metaphysics? How does it essentially unfold? How dqes the relationship to Being reign in it? That is the question. Our attempt to answer it in the radius of our meditation on Nietzsche's metaphysics is necessarily inadequate . Furthermore, insofar as our thinking proceeds from metaphysics, our attempt always remains tied to what is questionable. All the same, we must hazard a few steps. Let us concentrate on the question which Aristotle expressed as the enduring question for thought: What is the being?
Every question specifies as a question the breadth and nature of the answer it is looking for. At the same time, it circumscribes the range of possibilities for answering. In order to ponder the question of metaphysics adequately, we first of all need to consider it as a question, without considering the answers that have devolved on it in the course of the history of metaphysics.
In the question "What is the being?" we ask about the being as such . The being as a being is such thanks to Being. In the question "What is the being as such?" we are thinking of Being, and specifically of the Being of beings, that is to say, of what beings are. What they are—namely, the beings—is answered by their what-being, to ti estin. Plato defines the whatness of a being as idea (see Plato's Doctrine of Truth). The whatness of being, the essentia of ens, we also call "the essence . " But that is no incidental and harmless identification . Rather, in it is hidden the fact that the Being of beings-that is to say, the way in which beings essentially occur—is thought in terms of whatness. "Essence" in the sense of essen tia (whatness) is already a metaphysical interpretation of "essence, " which asks about the "what" of beings as such. And, of course, "essence" here is always thought as the essence of beings. The Being of beings is examined in terms of beings as what is thought toward beings. Thought as what? As the genos and the