which really is, Being, which from the start calls and determines all beings, can never be made out, however, by ascertaining facts, by appealing to particulars. That sound common sense which is so often "cited" in such attempts is not as sound and natural as it pretends. It is above all not as absolute as it acts, but rather the shallow product of that manner of forming ideas which is the final fruit of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Sound common sense is always trimmed to fit a certain conception of what is and ought to be and may be. The power of this curious understanding extends into our own age; but it is no longer adequate. The organizations of social life, rearmament in moral matters, the grease paint of the culture enterprise—none of them any longer reach what is. With all the good intentions and all the ceaseless effort, these attempts are no more than makeshift patchwork, expedients for the moment. And why? Because the ideas of aims, purposes, and means, of effects and causes, from which all those attempts arise—because these ideas are from the start incapable of holding themselves open to what is.
There is the danger that the thought of today will fall short of the decisions that are coming, decisions of whose specific historical shape we can know nothing—that the man of today will look for these decisions where they can never be made.
What did the Second World really decide? (We shall not mention here its fearful consequences for my country, cut in two.) This world war has decided nothing—if we here use "decision" in so high and wide a sense that it concerns solely man's essential fate on this earth. Only the things that have remained undecided stand out somewhat more clearly. But even here, the danger is growing again that those matters in this undecided area which are moving toward a decision, and which concern world government as a whole—that these matters, which now