1110 MARTINHEIDEGGER
At this point we do not need to trace the history of the genesis and meaning of this term in
detail.
The question we have identified as first in rank—“Why are there beings at all
instead of nothing?”—is thus the fundamental question of metaphysics. Metaphysics
stands as the name for the center and core that determines all philosophy.
[For this introduction, we have intentionally presented all this in a cursory and thus
basically ambiguous way. According to our explanation of phusis,this word means the
Being of beings. If one is asking peri phuse ̄os,about the Being of beings, then the dis-
cussion of phusis,“physics” in the ancient sense, is in itself already beyond ta phusika,
on beyond beings, and is concerned with Being. “Physics” determines the essence and
the history of metaphysics from the inception onward. Even in the doctrine of Being as
actus purus(Thomas Aquinas), as absolute concept (Hegel), as eternal recurrence of the
same will to power (Nietzsche), metaphysics steadfastly remains “physics.”
The question about Being as such, however, has a different essence and a different
provenance.
To be sure, within the purview of metaphysics, and if one continues to think in its
manner, one can regard the question about Being as such merely as a mechanical repe-
tition of the question about beings as such. The question about Being as such is then just
another transcendental question, albeit one of a higher order. This misconstrual of the
question about Being as such, blocks the way to unfolding it in a manner befitting the
matter.
However, this misconstrual is all too easy, especially because Being and Time
spoke of a “transcendental horizon.” But the “transcendental” meant there does not
pertain to subjective consciousness; instead, it is determined by the existential-ecstatic
temporality of Being-here. Nevertheless, the question about Being as such is miscon-
strued as coinciding with the question about beings as such; this misconstrual thrusts
itself upon us above all because the essential provenance of the question about beings
as such, and with it the essence of metaphysics, lies in obscurity. This drags into inde-
terminacy all questioning that concerns Being in any way.
The “introduction to metaphysics” attempted here keeps in view this confused
condition of the “question of Being.”
According to the usual interpretation, the “question of Being” means asking
about beings as such (metaphysics). But if we think along the lines of Being and Time,
the “question of Being” means asking about Being as such. This meaning of the expres-
sion is also appropriate both in terms of the matter at stake and in terms of language; for
the “question of Being” in the sense of the metaphysical question about beings as such
precisely does not askthematically about Being. Being remains forgotten.
But this talk of the “oblivion of Being” is just as ambiguous as the expression
“question of Being.” One protests quite rightfully that metaphysics does indeed ask
about the Being of beings, and that therefore it is manifest foolishness to charge meta-
physics with an oblivion of Being.
But if we think the question of Being in the sense of the question about Being as
such, then it becomes clear to everyone who accompanies us in thinking that it is pre-
cisely Being as suchthat remains concealed, remains in oblivion—and so decisively
that the oblivion of Being, an oblivion that itself falls into oblivion, is the unrecognized
yet enduring impulse for metaphysical questioning.
If one chooses the designation “metaphysics” for the treatment of the “question of
Being” in an indefinite sense, then the title of this lecture course remains ambiguous.
For at first it seems as though the questioning held itself within the purview of beings as
such, whereas already with the first sentence it strives to depart this zone in order to