Martin Heidegger

As a method however, the *method of ontology* is nothing but the sequence of the steps involved in the approach to Being as such and the elaboration of its structures. We call this method of ontology *phenomenology*. In more precise language, phenomenological investigation is explicit effort applied to the method of ontology. However, such endeavors, their success or failure, depend primarily, in accordance with our discussion, on how far phenomenology has assured for itself the object of philosophy__ow far, in accordance with its own principle, it is unbiased enough in the face of what the things themselves demand. We cannot now enter any further into the essential and fundamental constituent parts of this method. In fact, we have applied it constantly. What we would have to do would be merely to go over the course already pursued, but now with explicit reflection on it. But what is most essential is first of all to have traversed the whole path once, so as, for one thing, to learn to wonder scientifically about the mystery of things and, for another, to banish all illusions, which settle down and nest with particular stubbornness precisely in philosophy.There is no such thing as *the one* phenomenology, and if there could be such a thing it would never become anything like a philosophical technique. For implicit in the essential nature of all genuine method as a path toward the disclosure of objects is the tendency to order itself always toward that which it itself discloses. When a method is genuine and provides access to the objects, it is precisely then that the progress made by following it and the growing originality of the disclosure will cause the very method that was used to become necessarily obsolete. The only thing that is truly new in science and in philosophy is the genuine questioning and struggle with things which is at the service of this questioning." __rom_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_

The *second task* consists in distinguishing the mode of knowing operative in ontology as science of Being, and this requires us to *work out the methodological structure of ontological-transcendental differentiation*. In early antiquity it was already seen that Being and its attributes in a certain way underlie beings and precede them and so are *a proteron*, an earlier. The term denoting this character by which Being precedes beings is the expression *a priori*, *apriority*, being earlier or prior. As *a priori*, Being is earlier than beings. The meaning of this *a priori*, the sense of the earlier and its possibility, has never been cleared up. The question has not even once been raised as to why the determinations of Being and Being itself must have this character of priority and how such priority is possible. To be earlier is a determination of time, but it does not pertain to the temporal order of the time that we measure by the clock; rather, it is an earlier that belongs to the "inverted world." Therefore, this earlier which characterises Being is taken by the popular understanding to be the later. Only the interpretation of Being by way of temporality can make clear why and how this feature of being earlier, apriority, goes together with Being. The *a priori* character of Being and of all the structures of Being accordingly calls for a specific kind of approach and way of apprehending Being_*a priori cognition*.The basic components of *a priori* cognition constitute what we call *phenomenology*. Phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology, that is, of scientific philosophy. Rightly conceived, phenomenology is the concept of a method. It is therefore precluded from the start that phenomenology should pronounce any theses about Being which have specific content, thus adopting a so-called standpoint." __artin Heidegger, from_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_

And so man, as existing transcendence abounding in and surpassing toward possibilities, is a creature of distance. Only through the primordial distances he establishes toward all being in his transcendence does a true nearness to things flourish in him.

Because they are assertions about Being in the light of time properly understood, all ontological propositions are Temporal propositions. It is only because ontological propositions are Temporal propositions that they can and must be *a priori propositions*. It is only because ontology is a Temporal science that something like the *a priori* appears in it. *A priori* means "from the earlier" or "the earlier." "*Earlier*" is patently a *time-determination*. If we have been observant, it must have occurred to us that in our explications we employed no word more frequently than the expression "already." It "already antecedently" lies at the ground: "it must always already be understood beforehand": where beings are encountered, Being has "already beforehand" been projected. In using all of these temporal, really Temporal, terms we have in mind something that the tradition since Plato calls the *a priori*, even if it may not use the very term itself. In the preface to his *Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [Metaphysical principles of natural science], Kant says: "Now to cognize something *a priori* means to cognize it from its mere possibility." Consequently, *a priori* means that which makes beings as beings possible in *what* and *how* they are. But why is this possibility labeled by the term "earlier"? Obviously not because we recognize it earlier than beings. For what we experience first and foremost is beings, that which is; we recognize Being only later or maybe even not at all. This time-determination "earlier" cannot refer to the temporal order given by the common concept of time in the sense of intratemporality. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that a time determination is present in the concept of the *a priori*, the earlier. But, because it is not seen how the interpretation of Being necessarily occurs in the horizon of time, the effort has to be made to explain away the time determination by means of the *a priori*. Some go so far as to say that the *a priori*__he essentialities, the determination of beings in their Being__s extratemporal, supratemporal, timeless. That which does the enabling, the possibilities are characterized by a time-determination, the earlier, because in this *a priori* nothing of time is supposed to be present, hence *locus a non lucendo*? Believe it if you wish."__rom_The Basic Problems of Phenomenology_

But neither will anyone ask us whether we will it or do not will it when the spiritual strength of the West fails and the West starts to come apart at the seams, when this moribund pseudocivilization collapses into itself, pulling all forces into confusion and allowing them to suffocate in madness.Whether such a thing occurs or does not occur, this depends solely on whether we as a historical-spiritual Volk will ourselves, still and again, or whether we will ourselves no longer. Each individual has a part in deciding this, even if, and precisely if, he seeks to evade this decision.But it is our will that our Volk fulfill its historical mission.

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.

But __owhere_ does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for essentially spatial being-in. Therefore, what is threatening cannot come closer from a definite direction within nearness, it is already __here_ - and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and takes one__ breath - and yet it is nowhere.

Being, as the basic theme of philosophy, is no class or genus of entities; yet it pertains to every entity. Its 'universality' is to be sought higher up. Being and the structure of Being lie beyond every entity and every possible character which an entity may possess. *Being is a transcendens pure and simple*. And the transcendence of Dasein's Being is distinctive in that it implies the possibility and the necessity of the most radical *individuation*. Every disclosure of Being as the *transcendens* is *transcendental* knowledge. *Phenomenological truth (the disclosedness of Being) is veritas transcendentalis*.Ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct philosophical disciplines among others. These terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its object and its way of treating that object. Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein, which, as an analytic of *existence*, has made fast the guide-line for all philosophical inquiry at the point where it *arises* and to which it *returns*."__rom_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, p. 62

But what is great can only begin great.

Only in thoughtful dialogue with what it says can this fragment of thinking be translated. However, thinking is poetizing, and indeed more than one kind of poetizing, more than poetry and song.

But anyone who only expects thinking to give assurances, and awaits the day when we can go beyond it as unnecessary, is demanding that thought annihilate itself.