Basic Concepts Book

Translator’s Foreword

Introduction: The Internal Connection between Ground-Being-Inception
1. Elucidation of the title of the lecture "Basic Concepts"
a) Basic concepts are ground-concepts b) The claim of the ground-concepts c) The difference of claims upon man i) The claim of requirements: Needing ii) The claim upon the essence of historical man d) Readiness for the originary, the incipient, and the "knowing better" of historiological consciousness e) The meaning of reflection upon the inception of history f) The goal of the lecture: Reflection as preparation for confronting the inception of our history

Recapitulation
1. Our understnading of "basic concepts" and our relation to them as an anticipatory knowing
2. The decay of knowing in the present age: The decision in favor of the useful over what we can do without
3. The inception as a decision about what is essential in Western history (in modern times: unconditional will and technology)
4. Practicing the relation to what is "thought-worthy" by considering the ground
5. The essential admittance of historical man into the inception, into the "essence" of ground

Part One: Considering the Saying. The Differnce between Beings and Being First Division: Discussion of the "Is", of Beings as a Whole
2. Beings as a whole are actual, possible, necessary
3. Nonconsideration of the essential distinction between being and beings
4. The nondiscoverability of the "is"
5. The unquestioned character of the "is" in its grammatical determination—emptiness and richness of meaning
1) The emptiness and indeterminacy of the "is" as a presupposition for its being a "copula"
b) Being ("is") as the general, the universal
6. The solution of healthy common sense: Acting and effecting amoung beings instead of empty thinking about being (workers and soldiers)
7. Renouncing being—dealing with beings

Recapitulation
1. Consideration of beings as whole presupposes the essential inclusion of man in the difference betwen being and beings
2. Wealth and poverty of meanin in the "is"
3. Equating dealing with the actual with considering begins as a whole
4. The unthought residence of man in the distinction between being and beings

Second Divions: Guidewords for Reflection upon Being
8. Being is the emptiest and at the same time a surplus
9. Being is the most common and at the same time unique
10. Being is the most intelligible and at the same time concealment
11. Being is the most worn-out and at the smae time the origin
12. Being is the most reliable and at the same time the non-ground
13. Being is the most said and at the same time a keeping silent
14. Being is the most forgotten and at the same time remembrance
15. Being is the most constraining and at the same time liberation
16. Unifying reflection upon being in the sequence of quidewords

Recapitulation Guidewords about Being
1. Being is empty as an abstract concept and at the same time a surplus
2. Being is the most common of all and at the same time uniqueness (The sameness of being and nothing)
3. The meaning of the quidewords: Instructions for reflection upon the difference between being and beings

Third Division: Being and Man
17. The ambivalence of being and the essence of man: What casts itself toward us and is cast away
18. The historicality of being and the historically esstential abode of man
19. Remembrance into the first inception of Western thinking is reflection upon being, is grasping the ground

Recapitulation
1. The discordant essence in the relation of man to being: The casting-toward and casting-away of being
2. Remembrance into the first inception is placement into still presencing being, is grasping it as the ground

Part Two: The Incipient Saying of Being in the Fragment of Anaximander
20. The conflicting intentions of philological tradition and philosophical translation
21. Nietzsche’s and Diels’s renderings of the fragment as the standard for interpretations current today

Recapitulation The remembering return into the inception of Western thinking—listening to the fragment of Anaximander
22. Reflection upon the incipient saying of being in the fragment of Anaximander a) Suppositions regarding the relation between the two sentences b) The saying about being occurs in correspondences: The first sentence thinks being as in correspondence with the inception as threefold enjoinment
23. Excursus: Insight into the with the help of another word from Anaximander a) The threefold unity of enjoinment b) Enjoinment is repelling c) The governance of being as and in and for the presencing of beings d) How does being, which is and, let beings be?
24. The second sentence thinks being in correspondence with its essence as presencing, abiding, time a) Being is overcoming the unfit b) The connection between being and time
25. The relation of both sentences to one another: The fragment as the incipient saying of being

Editor’s Epilogue Glossary