What Is Metaphysics, What Is Philosophy and Other Writings

This recording contains four important and related works by Heidegger: ‘What Is Philosophy’, ‘What Is Metaphysics’, ‘On the Essence of Truth’ and ‘The Question of Being’.

It starts with ‘What Is Philosophy’, which originated as a lecture given in Normandy in 1955, and was first published a year later. The translators acknowledge that ‘What Is Metaphysics’ is often regarded as a particularly key work, they feel that ‘a better preliminary understanding’ of Heidegger can be obtained from ‘What is Philosophy’. They write: Heidegger ‘is concerned with the fact that philosophy has lost its receptivity to the Being of being/entity. In other words, philosophy no longer seeks the groundless ground of Being which allows us to ask meaningful questions about being/entity, or its appearances. Heidegger uses Being as the ‘inner light’, that illumination through which we become conscious of our meaning or of our existence and of existence itself. The light allows us to know that we are ‘beings’.

The second work on this recording, then, is the more famous essay ‘What Is Metaphysics’, published in 1929, to which some 14 years later he added a ‘Postscript’. Both texts are presented here. Heidegger states that rather than enter into a discussion about metaphysics, he sets out to ‘discuss a definite metaphysical question…. Our project begins with the presentation of a metaphysical question, then goes on to its development and ends with its answer’.