J: But only if we already somehow have in view what our saying would want to reach.
I: It can hardly have escaped you that in my later writings I no longer employ the term "hermeneutics."
J: You are said to have changed your standpoint.
I: I have left an earlier standpoint, not in order to exchange it for another one, but because even the former standpoint was merely a way-station along a way. The lasting element in thinking is the way. And ways of thinking hold within them that mysterious quality that we can walk them forward and backward, and that indeed only the way bad will lead us forward.
J: Obviously you do not mean "forward" in the sense of an advance, but ... I have difficulty in finding the right word.
I: "Fore"—into that nearest nearness which we constantly rush ahead of, and which strikes us as strange each time anew when we catch sight of it.
J: And which we therefore quickly dismiss again from view, to stay instead with what is familiar and profitable.
I: While the nearness which we constantly overtake would rather bring us back.
J: Back—yes, but back where?
I: Into what is beginning.
J: I find this difficult to understand, if I am to think in terms of what you have said about it in your writings up to now.
I: Even so, you have already pointed to it, when you spoke of the presence that springs from the mutual calling of origin and future.
J: As you may have surmised, I see more clearly as soon as I think in terms of our Japanese experience. But I am not certain whether you have your eye on the same.