it, albeit only temporarily. The necessity of a moment of crisis (of unshackling) for the awakening of the question of Being is already apparent in Heidegger's discussion of Angst in Being and Time. Under the fundamental mood of anxiety, the world - on the ground of which Dasein performs its everyday activities - reveals itself as nothing and brings Dasein face to face with the question of its ownmost being and of Being in general. Nevertheless, in the early 30's Heidegger exhibits a desire to go a step further and interprets the moment of crisis in terms of a historical event that brings not merely one Dasein, but a whole nation in front of a decision that will determine the future of the West. As we have alreadylectures given in 1934 after his resignation as Rector of Freiburg, Heidegger is still convinced of the significance of a historical crisis for the emergence of genuine questioning. Genuine questioning, he says, emerges out of the overpowering necessities of one's historical situation.76 Although philosophy is responsible for liberating the prisoners toward genuine questioning, it remains hopeless with those prisoners that do not experience a historical crisis. Notwithstanding the fact that Heidegger interprets the second stage of the allegory as a failed liberation, his claim that philosophy is powerless in shaking the self-evident tranquility of the prisoners indicates that the second stage of the allegory is not an indifferent and superfluous 76 Martin Heidegger, Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language, trans. Wanda Torres Gregory and Yvonne