What Is Metaphysics?
by Martin Heidegger · Was ist Metaphysik?
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1929
- Form
- Essay
- Language
- German
- Length
- Short · 25 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendBasic Writings, translated by David Farrell KrellHarper Perennial, 2008Krell's collection is where students usually meet the lecture, alongside its Postscript and the Letter on Humanism.
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Heidegger's inaugural lecture as professor at Freiburg in 1929. Beginning from the sciences, which deal with beings and nothing besides, he asks about that nothing. It cannot be reached by logic, but it is revealed in the mood of anxiety, in which beings as a whole slip away and we are held out into the nothing. This experience, he argues, is what makes it possible to ask about Being at all, and metaphysics is the questioning that goes beyond beings. The lecture ends by restating the question why there are beings rather than nothing.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns What Is Metaphysics? are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
