which belongs to the need arising from the lack of need, to the abandonment of beings by Being. We will not be equal to it as long as we do not prepare ourselves for it and instead take refuge in the opinion that metaphysical-historical reflection paralyzes and endangers action, whereas it is precisely the genuine beginning of the future. For great surmises enter into reflection and remain there. To be sure, through such reflection we arrive at the entire ambiguity proper to a historical transition: that we have been thrust into a future but we have not been empowered to seize the thrust in a creative way and to transfer it into the form of the future, i.e., to prepare that by which alone a beginning begins, the leap into another knowledge.
§41. The necessity held out for us: to bring upon its ground openness as the clearing of the self-concealing—the question of the essence of man as the custodian of the truth of Being {Seyns}.
As regards the question of truth, this means that our discussion is without result. Since we steadfastly take into account the point of view of today and of the past, we are always waiting to be told what the essence of truth is. We await it all the more, since our discussion began with a critical reference to the openness lying at the ground of correctness and we called this openness the most worthy of questioning.
Our discussion is admittedly without result as long as we ignore everything else that was said and only look for a “new” declaration of the essence of truth and thereby determine that we have profited nothing.
But what has happened? The discussion was entitled, “Foundational issues in the question of truth”—a reflection on the questioning of this question. Soon we were moving more and more, and then exclusively, in a historical reflection on the beginning of Western thinking, on how there for the first time the essence of truth shone as the basic character of beings as such, on which need and basic disposition compelled into which necessity of questioning. Finally the reflection leaped over to our need. Did the reflection only leap to this at the end, or did it not constantly concern us and only us ourselves?