[273] The title suggests that the following is to present a point from Kant's philosophy. It will give us instruction in a past philosophy. This may have its uses – but only, of course, if our sense of the tradition is still keen.

Such is hardly the case anymore, least of all where it is a question of the tradition of what has continually concerned us human beings always, and everywhere, but which we do not expressly consider.

We use “being” to name it. The name names that which we mean when we say “is” and “has been” and “is in the offing.” Everything that reaches us and that we reach out for goes through the spoken or unspoken “it is.” That this is the case – from that fact we can nowhere and never escape. The “is” remains known to us in all its obvious and concealed inflections. And yet, as soon as this word “being” strikes our ear, we assert that we cannot imagine what falls under the term, that we cannot be thinking of anything when using it.

Presumably this hasty conclusion is correct; it justifies our being annoyed at talk – not to say idle talk – about “being,” so annoyed that “being” becomes a laughingstock. Without giving thought to being, without recollecting a path in thought to it, one has the presumption to make oneself the court that decides whether the word “being” speaks or not.