supposes the experience of the matter itself.
The experimental quality of the seminar was thus twofold: on the one hand, it wanted to point directly at a matter which in accordance with its very nature is inaccessible to communicative statements. On the other hand, it had to attempt to prepare the participants for their own experience of what was said in terms of an experience of something which cannot be openly brought to light. It is thus the attempt to speak of something that cannot be mediated cognitively, not even in terms of questions, but must be experienced. The attempt to speak of it with the intention of preparing for this experience essentially constituted the daring quality of the seminar.
The intention of the seminar aimed at bringing the lecture to view as a whole, its fundamental plan, as well as the context of the lecture within Heidegger's thinking in general. The need also arose of gaining clarity about the situation of philosophy today, at a time when Heidegger's thinking ex-sists, and which on the other hand can be characterized by the decline of philosophy. This decline has many faces. Inasmuch as philosophy is understood as metaphysics, the decline is manifest in the fact that the matter of thinking is no longer the matter of metaphysics, although metaphysics itself presumably remains. The substitutes for philosophy are already becoming apparent, the possibilities of sidestepping it: on the one hand, mere interpretation of the traditional philosophical texts, the polishing and dismantling of metaphysics, on the other hand, the replacement of philosophy by logic (logistics), psychology, and sociology, in short, by anthropology.
In this seminar we had to presuppose the knowledge and the experience of the history of metaphysics, since we could not explicitly refer to historical connections and individual metaphysical positions. Hegel was an exception. We specifically dealt with him because of the remarkable fact that Heidegger's thinking has been compared with Hegel's again and again in the most various ways. Although in point of fact Hegel is in a way further from Heidegger's concern than any other metaphysical position, the illusion of an identity, and thus of a comparability, of the two positions intrudes