Book: Introduction to Metaphysics

Introduction and Context
Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics presents a rigorous reexamination of metaphysics rooted in lectures delivered in 1935 and later published in German. The text interrogates the historical trajectory of Western thought and seeks to reopen the fundamental question of Being. Delivered at a charged historical moment, the lectures address philosophical method, language, and the cultural situation that shapes and limits thinking.
Rather than offering a survey, the work presses for a renewal of thinking by returning to the original question that defined early Greek inquiry. Heidegger frames metaphysics as an ongoing task: not a set of doctrines but a way of asking that exposes how humans are situated within a horizon of meaning and forgetting.

Central Question: Being and Ontological Difference
At the heart of the lectures is the question, "Why is there Being and not rather nothing?" This question functions as a pole around which Heidegger explores the ontological difference between Being (Sein) and beings (das Seiende). He insists that modern philosophy has obscured this difference by treating Being as just another entity or by reducing it to subjective cognition.
Heidegger's approach reframes metaphysics as an unveiling of the ground that makes beings intelligible. To ask about Being is to ask about the conditions for the disclosure of entities, the way they show up in thought and language. This leads to a sustained critique of a metaphysics that forgets the question of Being itself.

Greek Origins and the Turn in Thinking
A significant portion of the book turns to ancient Greek thought, particularly the pre-Socratics and Parmenides, as formative for Western metaphysics. Heidegger reads the Greeks not as mere historical antecedents but as originators of a mode of questioning that allowed Being to emerge into conceptual clarity. He contrasts this originary questioning with the subsequent history that ossifies these insights into static doctrines.
This genealogical reading aims to retrieve the vitality of early thought by showing how different epochs have either preserved or obscured the fundamental question. The recovery of the Greek manner of questioning is posed as necessary for any authentic renewal of metaphysical inquiry.

Language, Truth, and the Unconcealment of Being
Language occupies a central role in Heidegger's account: words do not simply label pre-given objects, they participate in the disclosure of Being. Truth (aletheia), for Heidegger, is understood as unconcealment rather than mere correctness of representation. Thinking and speaking thus enact the opening and closing of a world, and philosophical work must attend to the way language shelters or reveals Being.
This emphasis leads Heidegger to a poetic and etymological mode of interpretation, where meanings are excavated from the historical layers of language. The task of thinking becomes attuned to how speech and poetry can preserve or reinstate a relation to Being that technical language tends to obscure.

Technology, Nihilism, and the Future of Thought
Heidegger diagnoses modernity as characterized by a drift toward enframing and calculative thinking, which reduces beings to resources and precipitates a crisis of meaning often described as nihilism. The technological mindset exemplifies the metaphysical forgetfulness that has occluded the question of Being. Confronting this requires a different manner of thinking, less governed by utility and more open to wonder and questioning.
The lectures also contain reflections on German intellectual destiny and the responsibilities of philosophy within a turbulent political context. These passages have provoked extensive debate about Heidegger's political stance and the relation between his thought and contemporary events. Regardless of controversy, the text remains a demanding call to reconsider the foundations of thinking and the conditions under which truth and meaning can arise.

Legacy and Continuing Relevance
Introduction to Metaphysics has had enduring influence by reinvigorating ontological inquiry and by shaping subsequent debates in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existential philosophy. Its insistence on the primacy of the question of Being challenges readers to scrutinize the presuppositions of modern thought and to recover a more originary relation to meaning.
The work rewards careful, patient reading; its dense meditations and provocations continue to prompt reflection on how language, history, and cultural forces determine what counts as intelligible. It stands as a provocative appeal for a thinking that takes seriously the mystery and disclosure of Being.