ON THE QUESTION OF BEING
Here there occurs something other than a mere restoration of metaphysics. Moreover, there is no restoration that could simply take up what has been handed down in the way that one picks up the apples that have fallen from a tree. Every restoration is an interpretation of metaphysics. Whoever today is of the opinion that he is able to see through and follow more clearly metaphysical inquiry as a whole in its specificity and history should, in his predilection for moving in these illuminated realms in such a superior manner, one day think carefully about where he has acquired the light to see more clearly. One can scarcely exaggerate the grotesque way in which people proclaim my attempts at thinking to be a demolishing of metaphysics and at the same time, with the aid of those attempts, keep to paths of thought and ideas that have been taken from — I do not say, are thanks to - that alleged demolition. It is not thanks that is needed here, but reflection. Yet the failure to reflect began already with the superficial [245] misconstrual of the "destruction" ["Destruktion"] discussed in Being and Time (1927), a "destruction" that has no other intent than to reattain the originary experiences of being belonging to metaphysics by deconstructing [Abbau] representations that have become commonplace and empty.
In order to rescue metaphysics in its essence, however, the role of mortals in such rescuing must content itself with first asking: "What is metaphysics?" At the peril of becoming long-winded and of repeating things that have been said on other occasions, I would like to take the opportunity of this letter to elucidate once more the meaning and import of that question. Why? Because your intention too is concerned with assisting in the overcoming of nihilism in your own way. Such overcoming, however, occurs in the realm of a recovery of metaphysics. We enter this realm with the question: "What is metaphysics?" This question, if we ask it in a thoughtful way, already contains an intimation that the question itself unsettles its own manner of questioning. "What is . . . ?" indicates the way in which one is accustomed to inquire concerning the "essence" of something. Yet when the question is concerned with a discussion locating metaphysics as the surpassing of beings by being, then this surpassing on the part of "being" immediately calls into question the elements that have been distinguished from one another in that distinction within which the doctrines of metaph physics have moved from time immemorial, the distinction from which they receive the basic outline of their language. This is the distinction between essence and existence, what-being and that-being.
The question "What is metaphysics?" at first makes indiscriminate use of this distinction. Yet reflection on being's surpassing of beings soon proves
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