truth. Yet that requires a transformation of the basic position amid beings in general or, because such is not there, its reacquisition.
Insofar as, by extolling the “new science,” a person now bustles about on account of the perversion of knowledge as a tool, he is moving blindly in a peculiar endeavor to philosophize without philosophy. And the public, who know nothing of philosophy and also need to know nothing of it, therefore receive the impression that at present the “true philosophy” would concern that which is loudly endorsed by the newspapers and the elementary school teachers (ones who have become wary of themselves, i.e., have never been self-possessed.)
If this groundless bustling, with some skill and shouting, is kneaded into the truly political happening, it then seems as if this childish din in the field of knowledge does in fact belong together with that happening. And in this pretension, which must be without measure, why should not every student, provided only that he shouts loudly enough, appear to be a hero, especially since students write about heroism every week?
53
What is politically right and great, namely, to bring the people back to themselves, becomes, in terms of worldview, something arbitrary and small, an idolizing of the people, who are now extolled as present at hand and in whom everything is formed as present at hand and “organic” and out of whom everything comes forth just as easily and of itself, if one merely has “instinct.” This “folkish” [völkisch] animalization and mechanization of the people cannot see that a people “is” only on the ground of Da-sein, in whose truth for the first time nature and history—in general, a world—come into the open and liberate the earth to its closedness.
And only this Da-sein is the possible abode of the plight—in which the flight of the gods can be experienced and the waiting for the ones who will come can be carried out.
54
The great swamp of “organic” thought and speech devours everything, and the dissolvability of everything in this dark pulp is taken as the unity of the worldview and is so taken with much approval, since indeed what is easy and current as the correct, and the latter as the “true,” always comes down to mediocrity.