Indiana University Press

is now a common opinion that “one’s” task is to spiritualize and ennoble the conclusion of the National Socialist revolution. I ask: to spiritualize it with what spirit? For there is no living spirit anymore, one no longer knows anything about what spirit is (breath, gust, astonishment, impulse, engagement). Today, spirit drifts around as empty “cleverness,” as the noncommittal play of wit, as the boundless pursuit of ratiocinative dissection and subversion, as the unbridled sway of a so-called world reason.

is one who can taste, who has the right taste for what is worthy in things, who can select in advance, set limits and keep within them; who, in short, can catch the right scent and reach out to the essence of things.

means inclination, the passion of pressing toward something, staying with it, staying true to it, and protecting it. Philosophy—the passion of pressing forward and catching the scent that reaches the essence of things: the ceaseless questioning struggle over the essence and Being of beings.