The pseudo rationalists do true rationalism a disservice if they pretend to have adequate insight exactly where strict rationalism excludes it on purely logical grounds. Rationalism sees its chief triumph in the clear recognition of the limits of actual insights.

The basic presupposition shared by Heidegger and other philosophers in the rational-metaphysical tradition from Plato and Aristotle onwards is that the central metaphysical question is aWhy-question, and is about the reason or reasons that explain why everything is and is as it is. Metaphysicians from Plato to Hegel presupposed the most fundamental metaphysical truth to bethe answer to this question, and metaphysicians from Schopenhauer onwards presupposed the most basic metaphysical truth to bethe unanswerability of this question.

I shall die […] as I have lived, rationalist, socialist, pacifist, and humanitarian[.]