§46. Philosophy as held bearing in relation to ground [400-401] | 279

The problem of truth in this original scope was supposed to emerge for us on our third path. What is commonly treated as logic has its place here, as does mythic truth as goddess (cf. p.267). We would have to show that each of these problems, the problem of being, the problem of world, and the problem of truth constitutes the whole of philosophy, and that it is an inner corruption of philosophy when one orients it around rigidly formed, traditional disciplines and lets the problems arise from these, instead of attaining the inner necessity of the architectonic of philosophy from the inner content of its fundamental problematic.

The two paths that we have traversed were meant to help us shed light on the essence of philosophy, and to do so with regard to the two powers that determine our Dasein at the university, whether we want it or not, science and leadership or Weltanschauung.

Science is only possible as philosophy; the latter, however, as explicit transcending—a held bearing in relation to ground—provides the original possibility for the occasion to interrogate one’s own being-in-the-world in each case with respect to its hold and to its held bearing. Philosophizing as the letting happen of transcendence is the freeing of Dasein. What is freed is the freedom of Dasein, and freedom is only in being freed.

In the letting happen of transcendence as philosophizing, there lies the original releasement of Dasein (cf. earlier: letting be), the entrusting of the human being to the Da-sein in him and to its possibilities. From here alone, there arises the genuine force of the turning toward beings that all held bearing as a confrontation with beings intrinsically demands. With philosophizing, the ascent to the peaks of the summits of the greats begins. And if at times we are surprised that the greats have no effect or no longer have an effect, then we are forgetting that what is great acts only upon what is great. If we understand that, however, then we recall that it is inessential whether or not we triumph over contemporaries or others, but that we must instead procure inner greatness for ourselves by vanquishing our own demons.


Introduction to Philosophy (GA 27) by Martin Heidegger