The greatness of the discovery of phenomenology lies not in factually obtained results, which can be evaluated and criticized and in these days have certainly evoked a veritable transformation in questioning and working, but rather in this: it is the discovery of the very possibility of doing research in philosophy. But a possibility is rightly understood in its most proper sense only when it continues to be taken as a possibility and preserved as a possibility. Preserving it as a possibility does not mean, however, to fix a chance state of research and inquiry as ultimately real and to allow it to harden; it rather means to keep open the tendency toward the matters themselves and to liberate this tendency from the persistently pressing, latently operative and spurious bonds [of the tradition]. This is just what is meant by the motto “Back to the matters themselves”: to let them revert to themselves.

Phenomenological questioning in its innermost tendency itself leads to the question of the being of the intentional and before anything else to the question of the sense of being as such. Phenomenology radicalized in its ownmost possibility is nothing but the questioning of Plato and Aristotle brought back to life: the repetition, the retaking of the beginning of our scientific philosophy.

But does this not once again relinquish all the critical caution necessary when one is dealing with the tradition? Is the question of being, just because of its venerable antiquity going all the way back to Parmenides, in the end not also a prejudice of the tradition? Why do we make an exception here? Should we ask about being only because the Greeks asked? Is the question of being to be put so that phenomenology may be more radically defined, thus only so that there may be a phenomenology? Neither of these reasons can be the basis for our inquiry. Are there still presuppositions, specifically presuppositions which allow us to recover the ground for the question of being simply from the question itself? The sole ground of possibility for the question of being as such is Dasein itself insofar as it is possible, in its discoveredness in possibilities.

Four presuppositions can be named: 1) the principle itself; 2) the question of being is somehow already emphatically there in understanding; 3) entities are experienced; 4) the distortion of the question of being and its deflection from its course can be found in the history of Dasein and grounded in Dasein only if something like the propensity toward the question of being belongs to its being and its historicity. There is a neglect only because Dasein is defined as care.

All of this would in fact be dogmatic and contrary to the phenomenological principle of working and questioning out of the matters themselves, if phenomenology itself included one or more theses which already contained a statement about particular domains of subject matter or about the priority of certain concepts. But we have noted that phenomenology is first of all a pure methodological concept which only specifies the how of the research. The aspiration to carry it through to completion is nothing other than setting out to do the most radical research in philosophy. But inasmuch as phenomenology is also defined by its theme (intentionality), it still includes a prior decision on just what, among the manifold of entities, its theme really is. Why this should be precisely intentionality is not definitively demonstrated. We have only an account of the fact that the basic theme in the breakthrough and development of phenomenology is intentionality. Our critical investigation has specifically led us beyond this theme.

The neglect of the question of the being of the intentional revealed in itself a more original question, that of being as such. To be sure, this question is also already a specific question, but we shall have to consider whether it, when taken as a scientific question, might not be a prejudgment, something dogmatic and prejudiced.

A question is a prejudgment when it at the same time already contains a definite answer to the issue under question, or when it is a blind question aimed at something which cannot be so questioned. But now, entities are familiar to us and being is in a certain sense understood. The question of being as such, however, when it is put in a sufficiently formal manner, is the most universal and emptiest, but perhaps also the most concrete question, which a scientific inquiry can ever raise. This question can be attained in any entity; it need not be intentionality. It does not even have to be an entity taken as a theme of a science. But we come to the question of being as such only if our inquiry is guided by the drive to question to the very end or to inquire into the beginning, that is, if it is determined by the sense of the phenomenological principle radically understood—which means by the matter itself—to allow entities to be seen as entities in their being.

To put this question phenomenologically means, if we follow its sense, to put it as an exploratory question which questions from the matters themselves. But this at the same time implies what was already said about “setting out to do the most radical research in philosophy.” It is “in philosophy” and not in an already given theory laden with definite problem-horizons, disciplines and conceptual schemata that philosophy, under the guidance of the phenomenological principle, is to be restored to itself.

If the phenomenologically attained fundamental question of being is presented as the question which came to life with the classical scientific philosophy of the Greeks, this historical fact should not be taken as an authority which establishes the correctness of the question. Rather, it can only be taken as an indication that this question is itself apparently in line with our research inquiry. Why should philosophy raise precisely this most universal question of being? What is philosophy, when it must raise this question? Whence is the being of philosophy itself to be understood? More later on what all this implies.

The assumption of the tradition is not necessarily traditionalism and the adoption of prejudices. The genuine repetition of a traditional question lets its external character as a tradition fade away and pulls back from the prejudices.

This process of having recourse and seeking a connection to traditional philosophies has also been the way the conception of phenomenology is defined for the broader scientific public. The two main directions of phenomenology, established by Husserl and by Scheler, were regarded directly in terms of the degree to which they established a connection with already extant philosophies, while the truly positive tendencies and the positive work itself were far less appreciated and understood. The matters discovered were not understood phenomenologically but were taken for granted. The new horizons for researching such matters were explained instead from what was traditionally known and so assimilated by modification. But this process of having recourse and seeking a connection to the tradition includes the assumption of particular interrogative contexts and particular concepts which certainly in turn are then clarified relatively along phenomenological lines and conceived more or less rigorously. However, we not only want to understand that such a contact with the tradition brings prejudices with it. We also want to establish a genuine contact with the tradition. For the opposite way would be just as fantastic, represented in the opinion that a philosophy can be built in mid-air, just as there have often been philosophers who believed that one can begin with nothing. Thus, the contact with the tradition, the return to history, can have a double sense. On the one hand, it can be purely a matter of traditionalism, in which what is assumed is itself not subjected to criticism. On the other hand, however, the return can also be performed so that it goes back prior to the questions which were posed in history, and the questions raised by the past are once again originally appropriated. This possibility of assuming history can then also show that the assumption of the question of the sense of being is not merely an external repetition of the question which the Greeks already raised. If this formulation of the question of being is a genuine one, then the repetition must rather bring us to understand that the Greek formulation of the question was conditioned and provisional and, what is more, had to be so.

The critical reflection revealed the phenomenologically fundamental question of being as such without also bringing out the ground of this question. But this ground, and with it the presupposition of the question, can be made clear only after the question is first raised. Pronouncing and uttering the interrogative sentence does not yet raise the question itself. After the manner of the statements of idle chatter, there are also questions which are merely asserted. The critical reflection at this point showed us that phenomenological questioning can begin in the most obvious of matters. But this “matter of course” means that the phenomena are not really exposed to the light of day, that the ways to the matters are not without further ado ready-made, and that there is the constant danger of being misled and forced off the trail. This in general is precisely what constitutes the sense of phenomenology as expository research.

We already noted that inherent in the phenomenon is the possibility of pretending-to-be: semblance. Put positively, this at the same time means: so much seeming, so much being. This means that wherever something passes itself off as this or that, what passes itself off retains the possibility of becoming manifest in itself and thus receiving definition. Accordingly, wherever semblance is identified, wherever semblance is apprehended and understood, there one already finds the allusion to something positive of which the seeming is the semblance. This ‘of which’ is not something ‘behind’ the experience but shines forth in the semblance itself. This precisely is the essence of seeming.

Just as the phenomena cannot be given without effort—it is rather incumbent upon research to arrive at the phenomena—so likewise is the concept of phenomenology not something which can be definitively determined in a single stroke. Our critical reflection has led us to question whether the thematic field of phenomenology is adequately determined. But this at the same time suggests that the scientific way of handling the theme is modified in its sense in accordance with the more radical conception of the thematic field. The critical reflection likewise gives us reason to doubt the previously given definition of phenomenology as ‘analytic description of intentionality in its apriori.’ Perhaps the phenomenologically original definition of intentionality and in particular the fundamental conception of its being entail a modification of the method of ‘analytic description in the apriori.’ In the end, there is also a modification of the customary division in phenomenology of the different groups of investigations into the phenomenologies of act, subject matter, and relation. Intentionality is indeed the doublet of intentio and intentum. In these two directions, one distinguished the elaboration of the intentio, the act, of the intentum, that to which the act is directed, and finally the elaboration of the relation between these two. A more refined conception of the entity having the character of the intentional will permit us to see and so supersede the threefold basis of this distinction. The closer determination of being will further lead to a more refined conception of the sense of the apriori. Heretofore, the apriori was specified as that which is always already there, that is, it was characterized on the basis of a particular concept of being, the Greek concept.

The more radical conception of being as such will bring a modification of the concept of the apriori, but this will be accompanied by a modification of our way of apprehending the apriori as well, of ideation. As before in phenomenology corresponding to its apriori, which was not truly understood but conceived in conjunction with the Greek concept of being, so likewise is ideation, in its corresponding logic, conceived as a logic of the experience of this sort of being, a logic which is then apprehension of the general, generalization. The more precise determination of the thematic field will later pave the way for a more suitable conception of the mode of apprehension, which up to now was seen only as description, a descriptive account of the simply apprehended subject matter itself. This tells us nothing about the sense of its apprehension. Something can be made of that sense only when the matter itself is clearly specified in the sense of its being. It will thus become apparent that description has the character of interpretation, since that which is the theme of the description becomes accessible in a specific kind of interpretation, expository interpretation.

But for the time being, we are faced with the sole task of elaborating the fundamental question What is meant by being? according to the phenomenological principle, in a phenomenologically radical manner. Results of the phenomenological research and the definition of this science may for the moment be left undecided.

The introductory considerations operating as immanent criticism have led to the fundamental question: What is meant by being? What is the being of the intentional? Our preliminary remarks clarifying the theme of the lecture course have already suggested that time has a distinctive function to play in distinguishing the kinds of being, and that the traditional realms of being are distinguished according to temporal, supratemporal, and extratemporal being. It was even stated there that the history of the concept of time, that is, the history of the discovery of time, is the history of the question of the being of entities. It was also suggested there that the history of the attempts to determine entities in their being is perhaps the history of the decline and the distortion of this basic question of scientific research.¹

When we now take up the question of being, we shall in the course of these considerations come across the phenomenon ‘time’ and in accord with our question be led to an explication of time. The first portion of our actual considerations is accordingly the exposition of the question of being. Let us recall the outline given earlier:

The First Part {that is, the Main Part} has as its theme The Analysis of the Phenomenon of Time:

1) The preparatory description of the field in which the phenomenon of time becomes manifest. This is nothing other than what the critical deliberations have now revealed as necessary—the exposition of the question of being.

2) The exposition of time itself.

3) The conceptual interpretation.²

If we proceed in this way, it might seem that what we have thus far considered and gone through is unrelated to what follows, so that we could have spared ourselves this passage through phenomenology in the form of an immanent critique, especially since it was expressly emphasized that the question of the being of entities can in principle be put to any entity. We do not need the specific entity of i...