What does this priority of mobilization signify? The necessary forcing into existence of a new type of human being is merely a counter-result of this occurrence, never its "goal."
But are there still "goals"? How does the positing of goals arise? Out of the beginning. And what is a beginning?
75. Concerning the meditation on science
Today there are two, and only two, ways of meditating on "science."
The first does not grasp science as the current objectively present institution but, rather, as one determinate possibility of unfolding and constructing a knowledge whose essence is itself rooted in a more original exposition of the ground of the truth of beyng. This exposition of the ground is carried out as a first confrontation with the beginning of Western thought and becomes, at the same time, the other beginning of Western history. Such meditation on science proceeds back into something past just as decisively as, risking everything, it reaches out toward something to come. It in no way moves within a discussion of something present and of its immediate achievements. Calculated with respect to the present, this meditation on science gets lost in what is not actual, which at the same time also means, for all calculation, what is not possible (cf. "The self-assertion of the German university" [Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität]7).
The other way, the one to be delineated in the following directive propositions, grasps science in its current actual constitution. This meditation attempts to grasp the modern essence of science according to the strivings which appertain to that essence. As meditation, however, it does not merely describe an objectively present state of affairs but rather exposes a procedure insofar as that procedure leads to a decision regarding the truth of science. This meditation is guided by the same standards as the first, and in relation to the first it is merely the other side of the coin.
76. Propositions about "science"8
1. "Science" must always be understood in the modern sense. The medieval doctrina and the Greek ἐπιστήμη are radically different from it, even if, in a mediated and altered way, they co-determine
7. Rectoral address 1933 (GA16).
8. Cf. Modern science.