What Heidegger Wishes To Transcend: Metaphysics Or Nietzsche :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

What Heidegger Wishes To Transcend: Metaphysics Or Nietzsche ABSTRACT: In this paper, I shall focus first on Heidegger's attempt to tackle the problem of 'metaphysics' and his wish to transcend it. Then, I shall try to evaluate his thoughts about transcending metaphysics in connection with his interpretation of Nietzsche's anthropology, which he considers to be the highest achievement in metaphysics. In my presentation today I shall focus first on Heidegger's attempt to tackle the problem of "metaphysics" and his wish to transcend it. Then I shall try to evaluate his thoughts about transcending metaphysics in connection with his interpretation of Nietzsche's anthropology which he considers to be the top achievement of metaphysics. At the beginning of his main work Being and Time Heidegger has made clear that his aim in writing it, was to deal with the meaning of Being in a concrete way and posed the question of Being as the primary question of philosophy today. Therefore it would be useful, as a first step, to take a look at the main reason which has led Heidegger to this assumption and consequently to the inquiry into the meaning of Being. Heidegger asks the question of the meaning of Being with respect to a fact which, to his mind, characterizes our times and which he calls "homelessness". This fact is due to "the oblivion of Being", as a result of which Being "has abandoned us". (1) The basic problem that worries Heidegger is related just to the recognition of this fact. He maintains that although Being has been investigated since ancient times in different periods, it has not yet been elucidated, because the question about the meaning of Being has been neglected. (2) Due to this negligence of the meaning of Being, man has lost almost all his connections with Being and lives now in a technical, artificial world: man has lost his "ground", he is "homeless" . (3) Heidegger tries to find a way to help man to transcend this homelessness, which he considers to be dangerous for the present and the future of the human being. This is the reason why Heidegger, already in 1929, asks the question of "what is metaphysics?". He thinks that this question itself can open the way he is looking for, because it plays a very important role in putting the question of Being correctly and in settling the problem of homelessness of the human being.