Introduction to metaphysics

pp. 259-297

in: William Richardson, Heidegger, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1963

Abstract

If in WW Heidegger becomes Heidegger II, it is in the lecture course of 1935, entitled "Introduction to Metaphysics," that the main lines of the new position are firmly drawn. Here, amid changing terminology and a burgeoning problematic, the author remains faithful to his initial intention to ground metaphysics by posing the question of Being. For the question, "why are there beings at all and not much rather Non-being?," the ground-question of metaphysics, presupposes, in asking about the onto-logical difference, a preliminary question about the sense of Being. It is with this that he is still engaged.¹