Physics, as physics, can neither pose nor answer this question, so that every science is, in an essential sense, questionable. A science can never itself demonstrate its own truth. This inner transcendence of science includes its essential questionability, and this is nothing negative. Yet these are dimensions that do not permit science to be absolutized. Only once this has been recognized can one affirm philology. And insofar as this is so, I too practice philology.
STAIGER: I am aware of the service-function of philology. But in order to provide a concrete example, I recall the hymn fragment “As on a Holiday . . . .” In the verses:
For if we are only pure of heart,
Like children, our hands are innocent [,]
The Father’s ray, the pure one, does not scorch us
Heidegger assumes a period after “hands,” although the manuscript clearly contains none there. Yet the period is impossible because the prose version continues with “then”: “then it does not scorch ... .” And I would designate this as a philological proof.
HEIDEGGER: A proof . . . that is a state of affairs which I can and must acknowledge. Why did you not tell me this long ago? A pity. But it is an indication, not a proof—an indication of a state of affairs. The question then becomes—and I shall take an example—Jacob Burckhardt’s Greek Cultural History. The philologists have demonstrated that it rests upon inferior, indeed even false texts.