Episode 329 - Sunday, May 13, 1979

If what is "self-evident" and this alone--"the covert judgements of common reason" (Kant)--is to become and remain the explicit theme of out analysis (as "the business of philosophers"), then the appeal to self-evidence in the realm of basic philosophical concepts, and indeed with regard to the concept "being," is a dubious procedure.

But consideration of the prejudices has made it clear at the same time that not only is the answer to the question of being lacking but even the question itself is obscure and without direction. Thus to retrieve the question of being means first fo all to work out adequately the formulation of the question.

Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.

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