its originary character. I n the order in which we proceed to address our three questions, however, we shall only be able to engage with this one in third place. And this is also to say that in addressing the first and second questions, we shall in each case already find ourselves pressed to deal with the third.
We have attempted to unfold these three questions—What is world? What is individuation? What is finitude?—from out of a fundamental attunement of our Dasein, to unfold them in such a way that in the very process the fundamental attunement of that profound boredom should become ever more acute as possibility. We are not now leaving this fundamental attunement behind us as a supposedly ascertained fact that is finished and done with. On the contrary, the elaboration of these questions is nothing other than an accentuation of the possibility of that fundamental attunement. Yet this profound boredom, and boredom as such, is rooted in the temporality of Dasein. Thus in their origin, our three questions themselves reach back into the question concerning the essence of time. But the question concerning the essence of time is the origin of all the questions of metaphysics and of their potential unfolding. Whether in fact the problematic of metaphysics must always be developed on the basis of the temporality of Dasein, however, cannot be objectively decided for the whole of world history, as it were. The possibility of a different kind of necessary grounding for metaphysics must remain open. However this possibility is not some empty, formal or logical possibility; rather what is possible regarding this possibility depends entirely upon the fate of man.
Let us now look back once more over the path we have followed. Taking as our guideline the elucidated phenomenon of boredom in its relative clarity, and especially that of profound boredom, we have attempted to clarify one fundamental attunement of our Dasein, one experience of profound boredom in our Dasein. This elucidation proceeded as a form of questioning. In this connection we took as our point of departure one structural moment of profound boredom, namely being left empty in the sense of the telling refusal of beings as a whole. In the profound boredom with which we are concerned, this corresponds to the absence of any oppressiveness and the lack of mystery in our Dasein—a Dasein which knows only neediness and the necessary acts of self-defense encountered in this attunement or perhaps on an even more superficial level of our Dasein. To this inner trait of being left empty, the absence of any oppressiveness, there corresponds a unique being held in limbo in the sense of the moment of vision which indirectly announces itself at the same time. Corresponding to the absence of oppressiveness as a whole, the necessity of responding to this situation is simultaneously announced, the necessity of the ultimate demand [Zumutung] upon man. This is the demand that he necessarily shoulder once more his very Dasein, that he explicitly and properly take this Dasein upon himself. Man must first resolutely open himself up to this demand again, or learn how to do so—not indeed because someone