46 Ponderings XII–XV [58–59]

everything public, the decision which occasionally grounds the spa-

tiotemporal field of the struggle of the encounter and of the strife:
god—human being—earth—world eventuating in their respective
uniqueness.

86 41
The senselessness of “world-historical” incidents should not be sur-
prising now or in the future, since the abandonment of beings by be-
ing, in favor of the unrestricted supremacy of beings in their machi-
nation, has been decided. Here senselessness means that beyng is
denied a truth whereby are also denied a ground and a domain in
which the gods and the humans could be essentially appropriated for
earth and world. All the same, senselessness has taken possession of
beings; beyng still essentially occurs, but its truth remains deeply con-
cealed, the gift of the purest moments. Against these moments, no
frenzy and no entanglement can accomplish even the least. The not-
ing of the sheer senselessness of beings is swallowed up in the attitude
of pursuit in the same way as the violent and forced establishment of
a “sense” qua the postulation of a “value,” of an “ideal,” of a “goal,”
and of a mysterious “steering” of all things toward an optimum. All
this places itself outside the authentic decision—i.e., always on the
87 side | of what has already been decided: the supremacy of beings in
their machination. The essentially historical and concealed humans
must first become mature for enduring the unique decision between the
supremacy of machination and the sovereignty of the event.
If the god necessitates beyng, and if the human being as Da-sein
disclosively grounds the truth of beyng, and if a world arises out of the
abyss and the earth opens itself to bearing—the hour of a beginning
has then arrived. The striking of this hour is audible only to those who
are able to perceive a silence and draw from it the powers of all pas-
sion, i.e., only to those who are not lured away by the vacuous eager-
ness of the imposed and prospectless machination. Necessitating and
grounding, arising and self-closing—each in a moment—eventuate
in the appropriating event whose preparation in human history can
be carried out only from a transformation into Da-sein. And that re-
quires the great conversion of the human being out of animality into
the basic disposition of the stewardship of beyng; for this stewardship,
every passion is simple and more intimate, every knowledge bright
and more interrogative.
 Ponderings XII [60–61] 47

42 88
Hölderlin is the poet of that unique decision—and thus he is someone
unique—incomparable; as a poet he founds in advance the essence
of this decision, without thinking of it as a decision pertaining to the
history of beyng—yet his poetizing is already an overcoming of all
metaphysics. That can be known only thoughtfully and is also wor-
thy of knowledge only for thinking. The word of this poet and the es-
sence of the word.

43
“Metaphysics” in its essence is constantly prey to various, though in-
terrelated, misinterpretations. Metaphysics is sought historiologically-
doctrinally in the form of a conceptual edifice and of the principles
detachable therefrom, thus as an assemblage of discrete and arid
thoughts. Or in it indeterminate, mythic, ideational residues are dem-
onstrated, and these are supposed to give metaphysics its unique con-
tent and support, but which metaphysics at the same time allows to
deteriorate into empty conceptual husks. Metaphysics is cast back and
forth between “logic” and “mythology” and is explained, in an appar-
ently deeply thought out and superior way, in each case on the basis
of something it is not. In truth, however, metaphysics contains the
ground of something quite decisive—the one (although still not ex-
plicitly grasped) truth and sovereign form of | beyng—a form avail- 89
able only to the highest and simplest thinking. That the clearing of
beyng is of all beings that which is most a being, that to beyng a pure
and most proper meditation as well as the appropriate discourse be-
longs, and that the word of beyng prevails powerlessly above every
power—all this pertains to what is first, what must be raised into
knowledge, if “metaphysics” is not to remain a phenomenon of the
“historiology of philosophy” or an object of “worldview” interpreta-
tion. The awakening of such knowledge, however, is already the trans-
formation of modern humanity, already a historical, i.e., essentially
preservational, overcoming of “metaphysics.”

44
According to common opinion, “thinkers” are concerned “only” with
“thoughts” and reside amid what is “unreal.” On the other hand, prac-
tical persons dwell in the “real.” What? Is not the practical person the
unconditional slave of his mere un-free “thought”? Is not the thinker
the only free person, standing free in relation to that which, of all