Abstract

It is Heidegger who asks what there is to be thought after the end of metaphysics, and indeed his own work is never far from a response to the question. This is neither to say that there is only one such response, nor even to suppose that Heidegger’s thinking provides only one response. To be sure, the origin of the question is not difficult to identify. Metaphysics, as the grounding of known beings in some anterior or first being, comes to its end as thinking becomes capable of grasping it as a sum of relations. This occurs when thinking is awakened to the difference between inquiring about beings , including the first being, and asking the question of the meaning of Being . In an important sense, then, the “end” of metaphysics coincides with the appearing of its place within a more primordial horizon. Attending more closely to the historical configuration of this metaphysics, Heidegger often concentrates on the recurrence, or else the persistence, of an urge in thinkin ..