“With the question of the meaning of being, our investigation comes up against the

fundamental question of philosophy. This is one that must be treated

phenomenologically. Thus our treatise does not subscribe to a ‘standpoint’ or represent
any special ‘direction’; for phenomenology is nothing of either sort, nor can it become so
as long as it understands itself. The expression ‘phenomenology’ signifies primarily a
methodological conception.”

“Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it
blocks our access to those primordial ‘sources’ from which the categories and concepts
handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.”

“Greek ontology and its history—which, in their numbers filiations and distortions,
determine the conceptual character of philosophy even today—prove that when casein
understands either itself or being in general, it does so in terms of ‘the world,’ and that
the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated to a tradition in which it gets
reduced to something self-evident—merely material for reworking, as it was for Hegel.”