Being in questioning : From the fundamental ontological question in Heidegger’s Being and Time to the being-historical questioning in Contributions to Philosophy

In Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), Heidegger submits an attempt to think from a more original position within being by presenting ”a deeper form of questioning”. This attempt is supposed to serve as the final transition from what he calls ”the guiding question” to ”the basic question” and with that the final leap from the metaphysical tradition still present in Being and Ttime into ”the second beginning”, free from transcendental thinking. The intention of this essay is to observe how the being-historical questioning is presented in Contributions to Philosophy as it is contrasted with the position of the question in Being and time. In my endeavor to understand ”the questioning”, two of Heideggers lecture courses on Saint Augustine are presented. I show how Heidegger pinpoints Saint Augustine’s turn from searching for God as an object into forming himself into a question, and so in prayer becoming the very thing he is searching for in a deeper form of questioning. Furthermore he claims that Augustine’s ”not knowing” (nescio) has been consistently misread as a lack of knowledge, whilst it is in fact a pre-requisite for the real break through of true knowledge. I suggest that Heideggers re-reading of nescio can be helpful in trying to understand the preparation for the Event of the second beginning of which the questioning is a part