50 Ponderings XII–XV [63–65]

machination of beings—into the a-historicality of modern hu-

manity—into a place lying outside the spaces of the essential deci-
94 sions. | Historiological erudition always occupies a mere corner of sci-
entific research, and the latter itself is taking on more and more the
form of a publicly required and no longer remarkable branch of ac-
tivity. Nevertheless, historiological science remains the secret para-
digm of “journalism,” even if the latter devises other means and even
if it shuns the appearance of science. In turn, “journalism” determines
every kind of authorship and thus determines a basic form of the con-
figuration of publicness. The scientifically technical form is therefore
not what is essential to historiology; the essential is rather the under-
mining of the possibility of historical meditation—the technological elabora-
tion of a-historicality as the last field of effectivity of unconditional machina-
tion.—Will it be kept open to humans to ground their history out of
the decision regarding what places itself into the clearing in the es-
sential word of the undecided Godlessness and anthropomorphizing
as what is self-refused? Who will speak this word? Has it already been
spoken? Yet who will open to the word the clearing of beyng cleared
by that word? Who is still capable of halting the exploitation of all dis-
course and the inundation of all thinking by means of this exploita-
tion? What could accomplish such a damming up? Whence will come
95 to the human being the stillness | of the simplest and longest appre-
hension of the event? Will the essence of the human being ever be
grounded back into the essential occurrence of beyng? Will the his-
torical human being ever be capable of mastering metaphysics?

46
The confrontation with Nietzsche’s basic thought of the “will to
power” must grasp this thought, in advance and historically, only as
the consummation of the first beginning of Western thinking but
must experience this thinking as the most concealed history of the
West. This confrontation is the sole essential form of a foundational
overcoming of metaphysics—i.e., at the same time, a historicalizing
of metaphysics into unassailability. This confrontation is the venture
of the decision between the supremacy of beings and the sovereignty
of beyng. This confrontation leaves behind all refutation and must pay
no heed to the ever coarser massification of Nietzsche’s thinking in
public ink slinging—yet must know of this phenomenon, not because
in it the proper “effect” of Nietzsche is carried out, but only because it
represents a veiling of his thought. The confrontation with the last
metaphysician can become history only as German thinking, because
only to this thinking are reserved the breadth and abyssal depth from
 Ponderings XII [65–66] 51

which the inceptually | Greek questioning as well as the consummat- 96

ing modern questioning can be overcome in an originary way.

47
Is there a better justification of the world of faith of cultural Chris-
tianity than the more and more favored proof that all “metaphysics”
does indeed rest on a myth? Why does the age of the consummation
of Western metaphysics proceed to an instituting of a complete mis-
understanding of the essence of metaphysics? Whence this immod-
erate anxiety in the face of “thinking” and thoughtful meditation?
Driving this anxiety is the supremacy of beings as machination. This
supremacy prevents any grounding of a decision but can do so only as
a form of the sovereignty of beyng—thereby consigning beyng to the
most obscure and most perplexed intimation, and indeed striving to
make beyng forgotten. World-anxiety has long since been overcome
in a fundamental way, but only so as to leave the field to the deepest
anxiety: the anxiety in the face of beyng. The deeper the anxiety, all the
more essentially remote is it from any timidity or fearfulness and all
the more essentially does it dwell outside of all domains of feeling or
immediate “lived experience”—and all the more decisively does the
anxiety pertain to the opening up of a transformation of the essence
of humanity, a transformation still unrecognized by humans, but al-
ready a historical one.

48 97
At the moment of the decision between the supremacy of beings and
the sovereignty of beyng, the possibility of a god becomes unique and
the divine becomes most difficult, but the human being in his pre-
vious constitution and position is thrown off course and deprived
of any grounding power. Every fabricated thing is carried off all the
way to the groundless claiming of a goalless power. Yet there remains
the still concealed capacity for disclosive thinking—whether it will
gather the decisive domain into essential knowledge and be equal to
the unique possibility of the last god through what is most difficult—
the grounding of a Godlessness. But the last god is the most protracted
one—the moments of encountering him derive from the abyssal his-
tory of beyng and of its truth. All previous gods were explanations,
confirmations, and pretexts of beings. The present age can experi-
ence the determination of its own historical place most “securely”
by undergoing appraisal according to its relation to Godlessness (cf.
p. 76ff.). Yet never did an age stand so anonymously outside of every