Older Man: The being of an age of devastation would then consist precisely in the abandonment of being. Such a matter is, however, difficult to think.
Younger Man: To be sure, it is difficult currently and for the contemporary human, who hardly gives thought to the fact that, under the appearance of a secured and improving life, a disregard—if not indeed a barring—of life could occur.
Older Man: If we give room to this thought, then we must think the following: the being of all that is, remains ambiguous to the core.
Younger Man: And we must think this without initially being able to find out wherein this ambiguity is based, and whether with this characterization the slightest thing is said of being itself. Presumably we are speaking here only of a predicament of human understanding [Deutens] in relation to being, but not of being itself. It is enigmatic.
Older Man: And so more mysterious than common sense is accustomed to thinking, which rashly assesses history and historical ages according to rise and fall, and tallies all historical phenomena in terms of what is desirable and undesirable. [214]
Younger Man: This kind of historiological reckoning could already even be a consequence of the fact that the human is devastated in his essence, which now means for us, abandoned by being.
Older Man: And of the fact that the human, so abandoned, nonetheless is, but is in such a manner that with all his doing and having he rolls into nothing.
Younger Man: With this you are concisely saying that nihilism can only ever be something historically actual when something like the abandonment of beings by being occurs, an abandonment which nonetheless still lets beings be.
Older Man: Nietzsche had indeed then caught sight of the appearances of nihilism; but he did not yet grasp its essence.
Younger Man: Because for essential reasons he was not at all yet able to think this essence.
Older Man: Which is why Nietzsche’s own thinking remained caught in nihilism.
Younger Man: And so conclusively so that his metaphysics first prepares for complete, unconditional nihilism.
Older Man: And therefore, his metaphysics itself belongs in the process of the devastation.
Younger Man: The malice of this devastation reaches its extreme when it settles into the appearance of a secure state of the world, in order to hold out to the human a satisfactory standard of living as the highest goal of existence [Daseins] and to guarantee its realization.