The two treatises The Overcoming of Metaphysics (1938/39) and The Essence of Nihilism (1946–1948) do not belong together temporally or formally, but they are brought together in this volume because they both treat a common thesis from the standpoint of different questions – namely, that nihilism is the essence of metaphysics in relation to the history of being.
The overcoming of metaphysics is, for Heidegger, the decisive historical moment in which metaphysics is experienced as the history of the abandonment by being and overcome at the same time. The abandonment of beings by being reveals itself in the final and most extreme intensification of metaphysics as the “unconditioned predominance of manipulation.” Manipulation means here the all-dominating producibility of beings.
The Essence of Nihilism is linked to the idea of overcoming. This text deals with the attempt to elucidate the essence of nihilism through Nietzsche’s words “God is dead.” The killing of God springs from the will to power as the most extreme form of manipulation. The being of beings is grasped here as the positing of values emanating from the will to power. In this positing of being as value, it becomes clear that being itself remained unthought in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysics as such is nihilism proper.
These key works by Heidegger, now available in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and to anyone interested in Heidegger’s thought.
Table des matières
Translator’s Introduction
The Overcoming of Metaphysics
1. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
2. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
3. The History of Beyng and the Overcoming of Metaphysics
4. The Vanishing of Being
5. Metaphysics and the Predominance of Beings: The Impotence and the Vanishing of Beyng
6. “Overcoming”
7. On the Formation of the Text
8. On the Correct Grasp of the Whole
9. The Overcoming of Metaphysics through Beyng
10. The Overcoming as the History of Beyng
11. The Other Inception
12. The Transition
13. Metaphysics and the Question of Possibility
14. The Question of Possibility as the Mode of the Question of Essence
15. The Truth of Beyng
16. “Truth” (Cf. Winter Semester 37/38)
17. Truth [Clearing of Beyng (Event) and the Correctness of Representing]
18. The Essence of History
19. On the Overcoming of Metaphysics
20. Correctness
21. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
22. The Overcoming of “Metaphysics”
23. Overcoming
24. “Overcoming” and “the Human”
25. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
26. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
27. The Overcoming of Metaphysics at its End
28. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
29. Over-coming is only in the Other Inception
30. “Worldview” – “Ideology”
31. The End of Metaphysics
32. The End of Metaphysics
33. The Clearing of Beyng
34. Nietzsche and the End of Western Metaphysics
35. The End of Metaphysics as Consummation in the Unconditional Corrupted Essence. (The Metaphysics of Nietzsche)
36. The Metaphysics of Nietzsche as the Consummation of Metaphysics
37. The Consummation of Metaphysics: The Positing of Value as Nihilism
38. The Consummation of Metaphysics Comes to Fruition
39. Beyng – (Event)
40. Metaphysics
41. Metaphysics
42. The Consummation of Modern Metaphysics
43. Metaphysics as the History of Beyng
44. Metaphysical Errancy
45. Metaphysics and the “Universal”
46. Metaphysics (cf. “Basic Words”)
47. Basic concepts (of Metaphysics)
48. The Essence of Metaphysics in Terms of the History of Beyng 49. Metaphysics and “Physics” 50. The History of Being (The Overcoming of Metaphysics) – Being and Time (The Question of Being) 51. Metaphysics 52. “The Metaphysical” 53. The Role of “Science” and Philosophy as Metaphysics 54. On What is Metaphysics? 55. On What is Metaphysics? The Nothing 56. On the Essence of Ground: Ground – Freedom – Truth – Beyng
57. “Ground” and “Truth”
58. Projection and Eventuation [Er-eignung]
59. “Ground”
60. “Ground”
61. On the Essence of Ground
62. The Differentiation
63. Metaphysics and the Differentiation
64. Metaphysics
The Overcoming of Metaphysics I. Sequel
I. The Differentiation
65. The Differentiation
66. The Differentiation (and the Question concerning the Nothing)
67. The Differentiation (Beyng is the Nothing)
68. Being and Beings – Metaphysics – the Differentiation
69. Differentiation and Event
70. Differentiating Being from Beings and the Distinctness of the Two
71. The Differentiation and What is Borne Out
72. Metaphysics (“Being” – an Empty Word)
73. The Differentiation
74. Being and Beyng
75. The Differentiation – What is Borne Out
76. The Differentiation
II. On the Concept of Metaphysics
77. Metaphysics and the Thinking that is Responsive to the History of Beyng
78. The Overcoming of “Metaphysics”
79. The Transition of Metaphysics within the History of Beyng into the Other Inception of the Truth of Beyng
80. The A priori
81. Metaphysics and the A priori
82. The “A priori” – Character of “Being”
83. Metaphysics and the Differentiation
84. Metaphysics
85. “Metaphysics”
86. Being Conscious and Being (Modern Metaphysics)
87. Metaphysics and “Theology”
88. The Relation to Being within the History supported by Metaphysics
89. “Metaphysics” and the Thinking of Beyng
90. Metaphysics as Theology
91. Metaphysics and Modern Humanity
92. Metaphysics and “Theology”
93. Nietzsche and Heraclitus (“Metaphysics” and the First Inception of Philosophy)
94. The History of Beyng: “Overcoming”
95. Kant and Metaphysics
96. “Metaphysics” (“Subjectivity” and Substantiality)
97. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
98. The Essence of Metaphysics and its Overcoming
99. The Consummation of Metaphysics
100. The Overcoming of Metaphysics
101. The Consummation of Metaphysics
102. Metaphysics – Consummation (Inversion into the most Extreme)
103. The Interpretation of the Cogito
III. Art and Metaphysics
104. In the Lectures on the Origin of the Work of Art
105. “Art”
106. When Metaphysics Ends, so too does Art
IV. Metaphysics and “Worldview”
107. Metaphysics and Worldview
108. Worldview is the Perishing of Metaphysics
109. The Consummation of Metaphysics (Nietzsche)
110. “Worldview”
111. “Worldview” and “Philosophy”
112. “World-view” (“Life”)
113. Metaphysics – Worldview: The True, the Good, the Beautiful
114. Metaphysics and Worldview and the Thinking Responsive to the History of Beyng.
115. Metaphysics and Worldview
116. Metaphysics and Worldview
V. Being and Time in the History of Beyng Insofar as This History is Experienced as the Overcoming of Metaphysics
117. Being and Time and Metaphysics
118. Time and Eternity
119. On the History of the Concept of Time
120. The Essence of Time
121. Time and Being
122. Being and Time
123. Being and Time
124. Being and Time
125. “The Sense of Being”
126. Being and Time
127. Being and Time
128. Being, the Understanding of Being and Beyng
129. Da-sein and “Care” – “Attunement”
130. Being and Time
The Overcoming of Metaphysics II. Sequel
I. The Consummation of Metaphysics the Abandonment by Being and Devastation
131. Metaphysics and “Science”
132. At the End of Metaphysics
133. Inception and Metaphysics
134. The Essence of the Consummation of Metaphysics in terms of the History of Beyng
135. The Consummation of “Modernity” within the History of Beyng
136. The Nothing and Devastation
137. Abandonment by Being
138. Abandonment by Being
139. The Abandonment of Beings by Being
140. Manipulation – Technology – Beyng
141. “Technology”
142. Manipulation
II. The Origin of Metaphysics in the History of Beyng the Origin of Metaphysics and the Essence of Truth in the First Inception
143. Overcoming
144. One of the Characteristic Features of Metaphysics
145. The Age of “Theologies”
146. The Essence of Metaphysics: Theology and Mathematics
147. “Truth” and Metaphysics (Grades of the True)
148. On the Essential Determination of Modern Metaphysics in its Consummation
149. If Being is “Will”
150. Metaphysics and “System”
151. The A priori
152. The First Inception and the Origin of Metaphysics
153. Being as ἰδέα and the Collapse of ἀλήθεια
154. ἡ τοῦ αγαθοῦ ἰδέα: The Beginning of Metaphysics and the Crash and Collapse of the Ungrounded ἀλήθεια
155. How Metaphysics Begins and Peters Out
156. “Watching” and “Thinking” (The End of Metaphysics)
157. The History of Being and Metaphysics
158. “Worldview” and “Metaphysics”
159. Animal rationale – absolutum (causa)
160. Truth as Certainty: Modern Metaphysics (Leibniz)
III. Metaphysics the Individual Basic Positions of Metaphysics
161. From Whence the Appearance that the Thinking Responsive to the History of Beyng is Only a Modification of Hegel’s Metaphysics?
162. Hegel’s Concept of History
163. Beyng – Event – Inception (Meant from the Standpoint of “Metaphysics”)
164. Beings as a Whole and their Entirety (Metaphysics and Beyng)
The Essence of Nihilism
Appendix
Addendum to: The Essence of Nihilism
A propos de l’auteur
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century and the author of numerous works including
Being and Time.