Toward a Metaphysical Freedom: Heidegger’s Project of a Metaphysics of Dasein

Abstract

The ‘Metaphysics of Dasein’ is the name which Heidegger gave to a new philosophical project developed immediately after the partial publication of his masterwork Being and Time (1927). As Heidegger was later to recall, an ‘overturning’ took place at that moment, more precisely right in the middle of the 1929 treatise On the Essence of Ground. Between the fundamental‐ontological formulation of the question of being and its metaphysical rephrasing, Heidegger discovered that a ‘metaphysical freedom’ stood at the root of Dasein’s relation to his world and, thus, at the basis of his whole ontological questioning. This article will show how the very structure of the 1929 essay clearly illustrates the path Heidegger followed between Being and Time and the new philosophical beginning of the mid 1930s. It will conclude with a few critical remarks concerning Heidegger’s attempt to free his thinking from traditional philosophy and to overcome metaphysics.

Full text

Toward a Metaphysical Freedom: Heidegger’s
Project of a Metaphysics of Dasein
i
François Jaran
International Journal of Philosophical Studies
Vol. 18(2), 205–227 [Pre-print]
Abstract
The ‘Metaphysics of Dasein’ is the name which Heidegger gave to a new philosophical
project developed immediately after the partial publication of his masterwork Being and
Time (1927). As Heidegger was later to recall, an ‘overturning’ took place at that moment,
more precisely right in the middle of the 1929 treatise On the Essence of Ground. Between
the fundamental-ontological formulation of the question of being and its metaphysical
rephrasing, Heidegger discovered that a ‘metaphysical freedom’ stood at the root of
Dasein’s relation to his world and, thus, at the basis of his whole ontological questioning.
This article will show how the very structure of the 1929 essay clearly illustrates the path
Heidegger followed between Being and Time and the new philosophical beginning of the
mid-1930s. It will conclude with a few critical remarks concerning Heidegger’s attempt to
free his thinking from traditional philosophy and to overcome metaphysics.
Keywords: Heidegger; Metaphysics; Dasein; Freedom;
Transcendence; Turning
Introduction
As soon as Heidegger finished the writing of his masterwork Sein und Zeit, somewhere in the fall
of 1926, a shift occurred in his use of the term ‘metaphysics’. We have to recall that Sein und Zeit
was written against ‘metaphysics’. The first line of the book left no doubt: ‘The question [of

2
being] has today been forgotten—although our time considers itself progressive in again
affirming “metaphysics”’ (Heidegger, 2001a: p. 2/1).
ii
Heidegger refers here to a ‘resurrection of
metaphysics’ that gained popularity at the beginning of the 20
th
century with authors such as
Georg Simmel, Nicolai Hartmann or Peter Wust (who in 1920 wrote a book called Die
Auferstehung der Metaphysik). According to Sein und Zeit, this ‘new’ metaphysics wrongly believed it
was ‘spared the exertion of rekindling the gigantomachia peri tēs ousias’ that ‘sustained the avid
research of Plato and Aristotle’.
iii
But while writing his book, Heidegger started to contemplate the possibility of something he
characterized as ‘scientific metaphysics’. During the winter of 1926/27, in his lecture course
dedicated to the ‘History of Philosophy from Thomas Aquinas to Kant,’ Heidegger was already
speaking of his phenomenological ontology as a scientific metaphysics and characterized his question
of being as a metaphysical one. The following years gave Heidegger the chance to develop a new
philosophical project that was not perfectly identical with that of the fundamental ontology and
to which he gave the name ‘metaphysics of Dasein’.
For many years, this metaphysical project could be considered a curiosity of which Heidegger
spoke only in 1929, in the fourth part of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. But with the recent
publication of the lecture courses held at the end of the 1920s in the Gesamtausgabe, it became
impossible not to consider that Heidegger was in fact really trying to lay the grounds of a new
metaphysics—really trying, so to speak, to become a metaphysician. Of course, this did not last. We
know that in the mid-1930s, Heidegger had already started on a new path that would leave
metaphysics behind. But between 1926 and 1930, we have to recognize that Heidegger tried to
give a metaphysical answer to the question of being. And this has to be a surprising discovery if we
consider that Heidegger is normally viewed as the ‘Grand Inquisitor’ who, once and for all,
expelled metaphysics from contemporary continental philosophy. But at the end of the 1920s,
Heidegger never spoke of overcoming, but rather of retrieving the fundamental questions of
metaphysics.
This would be a harmless discovery if, during those years, Heidegger had written texts of a
lesser philosophical value and if we could speak of some ‘mental turmoil’ causing Heidegger to
think metaphysics was still possible. But according to many scholars, these years could be
considered the most prolific years of all. Admitting that his question of being was in fact a
metaphysical question,
Heidegger produced some of his most interesting texts.
iv

3
Among the texts published at that time, the treatise Vom Wesen des Grundes is probably the one
which best illustrates the metaphysical path Heidegger followed during these years.
v
Although
the text speaks only ‘silently’ of the metaphysical project, I will try to show here that it has to be
regarded as a turning point between Sein und Zeit and the writings of the mid-1930s, such as the
Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). By coming to grips with Heidegger’s metaphysical
enterprise, we will be able to understand what the 1929 treatise really represented and meant—
something that is rarely achieved in the scholarly literature. My purpose here is first to give an
overview of Heidegger’s metaphysics of Dasein. Then, I will show how Vom Wesen des Grundes
accomplishes, from the first to the third sections, the characteristic ‘movements’ of this
metaphysics of Dasein. The essay opens with a presentation of some fundamental ontological
considerations on Dasein as being-in-the-world (I. The Problem of Ground). Then it goes through a
redefining of this same Dasein, describing it as a ‘transcendental being’ (II. Transcendence as the
Domain of the Question Concerning the Essence of Ground). Finally, Heidegger tries to base this
transcendence on an original notion of freedom, thought as ‘freedom toward ground’ (III. On the
Essence of Ground). These three moments correspond perfectly to the path that Heidegger’s
thought followed between 1926 and 1930. Considering some commentaries the older Heidegger
made on this treatise, I will show how this metaphysics of Dasein has to be seen as a ‘turning-
point’ between Sein und Zeit and the new beginning of the mid-1930s. To conclude, I shall try to
weigh the impact that this very concept of freedom might have had on Heidegger’s path,
especially concerning his relation to the metaphysical tradition.
I The Metaphysics of Dasein (1926-1930)
After the publication of the first two sections of the uncompleted Sein und Zeit in the Spring of
1927, Heidegger remained silent for two years. In fact, we have to wait until the spring of 1929
for a second major publication: Vom Wesen des Grundes.
vi
Even if one could legitimately expect
this text to complete the fundamental ontology of 1927, Heidegger preferred to work on a
problem that was only discreetly mentioned in Sein und Zeit: Dasein’s transcendence.
vii
In the next
few years, Heidegger was not so much to try to answer the Hauptwerk’s unresolved questions as
to develop what he called a ‘metaphysics of Dasein,’ an attempt to give a metaphysical answer to
the question of being. Pleading for a ‘metaphysical’ thinking whose central topic would be
transcendence, Heidegger surprisingly rallied for a short period to philosophical paths he would
soon try to overcome.

4
Under the auspices of metaphysics, Heidegger produced some of his most powerful
philosophical texts. This leads us to believe that this temporary association between Heidegger’s
thought and metaphysics was not a simple ‘fall’ back into traditional or transcendental
schemes—even though some texts, such as the 1946 Letter on ‘Humanism,’ seem to put it this way.
The publication of Heidegger’s manuscripts allowed the discovery of this unknown phase of his
Weg (1926-1930), which corresponds to the development of a ‘metaphysics of Dasein’.
But despite the obvious philosophical value of these texts, it may seem paradoxical to take
this attempt to lay anew the grounds of metaphysics seriously. From the mid-1930s on,
Heidegger worked on an ‘overcoming of metaphysics,’ a project that surely overshadowed that
of a ‘metaphysics of Dasein’. However, one has to remember that in the mid-1920s Heidegger
was passionately fond of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
viii
and that he interpreted it as the sole
explicit attempt in all history to investigate metaphysics’ conditions of possibility. In his turn,
Heidegger wanted to proceed to a recasting of the essence of metaphysics in order to provide it
with an authentic base.
As I mentioned earlier, Heidegger first exposed a positive concept of ‘metaphysics’ in the
winter semester of 1926/27. From this moment on, Heidegger spoke of a ‘scientific metaphysics’
and opposed it to a ‘popular concept (vulgärer Begriff) of metaphysics’ (Heidegger, 2006: pp. 7-10).
Invoking Kant, who is said to have ‘tried to destroy the non-philosophical metaphysics in order
to achieve a scientific metaphysics,’ Heidegger defines the ‘popular’ metaphysics as dealing
ontically with God and the world’s ground. On the contrary, the scientific metaphysics does not
approach ‘being from its ontical origin,’ but moves within the ‘sobriety and coldness of the
concept’ (Heidegger, 2006: p. 7). The same would be said in the Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie
in the next semester, in which Heidegger wrote:
The transcendental science of being has nothing to do with popular metaphysics, which
deals with some being behind the known beings; rather, the scientific concept of metaphysics is
identical with the concept of philosophy in general—critically transcendental science of
being, ontology. (Heidegger, 1975: p. 23/17; my italics)
From this moment on, the fundamental ontology that Heidegger presented in Sein und Zeit and
that attempted to deal with being without referring ontically to some hidden being, fell under
this new concept of scientific metaphysics.

5
Even though the lecture course of 1927 did not say much about a new metaphysical project,
it was nonetheless the first one to expose the concept of transcendence that would characterize
Dasein during these metaphysical years. In this lecture course, Heidegger presented a
‘phenomenology of transcendence’ that would become, through a redefining of transcendence, a
harsh critique of Husserl’s ‘transcendental phenomenology’ (Heidegger, 1975: pp. 249, 447/175,
314) as well as a rejection of the Neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant’s concept of transcendental
knowledge (Heidegger, 1975: p. 425/299).
This new concept of transcendence—with which the second section of Vom Wesen des Grundes
deals—seeks to characterize Dasein’s relation with beings in terms of a ‘surpassing’ from beings to
being, or a ‘going beyond’ beings toward their being. At the beginning of the second section of
Vom Wesen des Grundes, Heidegger defines transcendence as meaning:
something that properly pertains to human Dasein, and does so not merely as one kind of
comportment among other possible kinds that are undertaken from time to time. Rather,
it belongs to human Dasein as the fundamental constitution of this being, one that occurs prior to
all comportment. (…) Transcendence (…) is that surpassing that makes possible such a
thing as existence in general. (Heidegger, 1976: p. 137/107-8)
Transcendence was to become the ground for all comportments of Dasein, fundamentally
because Dasein has no relation with beings if it does not transcend beings toward their being.
This redefining of the essence of Dasein from care (Sorge) to transcendence does not
constitute per se a refutation of Sein und Zeit’s theses, but still indicates that Dasein’s constitution
has now to be considered from a surpassing perspective—which the expression meta-physics
perfectly describes—that the ontological vocabulary probably failed to acknowledge. This would
appear even clearer with the coining of the expression ‘metontology’ in the summer of 1928 that
surely indicates, as we will see, some surpassing of the ontological horizon.
The lecture course of the winter semester 1927/28 dealt with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as
a model for any attempt to lay anew the grounds for metaphysics. This course was the first one
to ask the fundamental question ‘what is metaphysics?’—and not merely ‘what is philosophy?’—
and ended up clearly associating Sein und Zeit with metaphysical ambitions: ‘Universality of being
and radicality of time are the two titles which together denote the tasks which a further thinking
of the possibility of metaphysics calls for’ (Heidegger, 1977: pp. 426-7/289; my italics). The ontological

6
question concerning being and time was now closely linked to the problem of the possibility of
metaphysics. This metaphysical meditation would in fact constitute Heidegger’s principal
occupation for the next few years.
The project of a ‘metaphysics of Dasein’ was first mentioned in the lecture course of summer
1928 on Leibniz. It was also in this lecture course that Heidegger proposed—conjointly with the
late Max Scheler—‘to risk again the step into an authentic metaphysics, that is, to develop
metaphysics from the ground up’ (Heidegger, 1978: p. 165/132). The exchanges Heidegger had
with Scheler before his sudden death are probably in part responsible for the interest the former
took in metaphysics. Let us recall that Scheler’s essay Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos,
published in 1928 just before his death, concluded with the presentation of some ‘contributions
to a metaphysics of man’ which recalls Heidegger’s project. This 1928 course was contemporary
to the writing of Vom Wesen des Grundes and even though the treatise does not mention the
metaphysics of Dasein, it openly considers that ‘a more radical and more universal conception of
the essence of transcendence, necessarily entails a more originary elaboration of the idea of
ontology and thus of metaphysics’ (Heidegger, 1976: p. 140/109-10; my italics).
The lecture course of 1928 insisted on something that stands at the basis of transcendence:
freedom, a concept that was fully developed in the treatise Vom Wesen des Grundes. In both texts
Heidegger develops an ontological concept of freedom that increasingly occupied him until the
lecture course of summer 1930, entitled Vom Wesen der Freiheit, and in the 1930 conference Vom
Wesen der Wahrheit, in which Heidegger asserted something as surprising as ‘the essence of truth (…)
is freedom’ (Heidegger, 1976: p. 186/142).
The year of 1929 was to be Heidegger’s most openly metaphysical year. For that matter, his
lecture course Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik—‘Meine erste wirkliche Metaphysikvorlesung!’
(Letter to Julius Stenzel on November 23
rd
, 1929; see Heidegger and Stenzel, 2000: p. 7)—and
his well-known conference Was ist Metaphysik?—in which Heidegger affirms that metaphysics is
the ‘fundamental occurrence in our Dasein’ (Heidegger, 1976: p. 122/96)—are both important
texts. But for the idea of a metaphysics of Dasein, the lecture course of the summer semester
1929 on German idealism is probably more essential, as Heidegger then contrasted his own finite
metaphysics with Hegel’s absolute metaphysics.
The lecture course of summer 1930 on human freedom concluded Heidegger’s metaphysical
project. Having dealt with the metaphysical problem of freedom, Heidegger attempted a rare

7
incursion into Kantian practical philosophy. Criticizing Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, this
course introduced a metaphysical understanding of freedom that contrasted with Kant’s concept.
According to Heidegger, this concept refers to spontaneity, and is thus grounded in the mere
ontical notion of causality.
This lecture course was the last one to use the expression ‘metaphysics of Dasein’ as well as
the last one to consider metaphysics in its possibility. But the last exhaustive presentation of this
metaphysics was certainly the conference of March 1930, given in Amsterdam, entitled Hegel und
das Problem der Metaphysik—to be published in Volume 80 of the Gesamtausgabe.
ix
In this
interesting text, Heidegger tries to justify his retrieval of the metaphysical undertaking beyond its
achievement with Hegel’s absolute metaphysics and he introduces the important distinction
between the metaphysical ‘Leitfrage’ and ‘Grundfrage’—the ‘leading question’ and the ‘fundamental
question’. For the last time, Heidegger speaks of the possibility of metaphysics and not yet of its
overcoming. However, if Hegel accomplished metaphysics by exhausting all the possibilities of
the question concerning ‘beings as such and as a whole’ (the Leitfrage), he nonetheless missed the
question concerning the condition of possibility of the understanding of being—that of the
relationship between being and time (the Grundfrage).
As we will now see, this interpretation of the relation between traditional metaphysics and the
metaphysical question concerning being and time vanished during the next lecture course,
dedicated to Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes. But what is of foremost importance for us is to get
a grasp of the progression Heidegger’s thought went through during these years: from the redefining
of care and being-in-the-world in terms of transcendence to the understanding of transcendence in terms of freedom.
What precisely happened between the two interpretations of Hegel’s metaphysics—that of
March 1930 and that of the winter semester 1930/31—such that the metaphysical project came
to an end?
The lecture course that followed the end of this metaphysical interlude has to be considered a
breaking point in many ways. First of all, we have to remember that in this lecture course
Heidegger openly abandoned phenomenology to Husserl. Even though he stopped using the
phenomenological vocabulary for a while, the rupture with Husserl was now complete. As
Heidegger said, ‘we would do better in the future to give the name of phenomenology only to
that which Husserl himself has created and continues to produce’ (Heidegger, 1980: p. 40/29).
Heidegger also abandoned the use of ontological vocabulary to characterize his thinking and tried
to reinterpret it in terms of an ‘ontochrony,’ in which, as he writes, ‘chronos stands in the place of

8
logos’ (Heidegger, 1980: p. 144/100; see also Heidegger, 1999: 95). This ontochronical undertaking
did not prosper, but surely indicates that Heidegger was already seeking something new.
We also have to take into account the coining in this lecture course of the expression ‘onto-
theology,’ a term not to be confused with the one appearing in Kant or in Schopenhauer. From
this lecture course on, metaphysics would be thought of as achieved once and for all in Hegel,
with no possibility of retrieval. And this achievement lets us finally see the structure it had had all
along: the onto-theological structure that, from Aristotle’s prōte philosophia to Hegel’s
identification of ontology with a ‘theo-logic’ (Theo-Logik) (Heidegger, 1997: p. 32; 2001b: p. 70),
prevented metaphysics from interrogating being in relation with time. Metaphysics suddenly
appeared as the impossibility of philosophy’s Grundfrage. The concept of metaphysics would no
longer be identical with the concept of philosophy in general. And in the next lecture course on
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the vocabulary of the overcoming or the surpassing (überholen) of
metaphysics would then substitute that of the retrieval (wiederholen) (Heidegger, 1981: pp. 81-
2/68-9). In the introductory part of this course, Heidegger ironically referred to his past attempt,
saying: ‘Do we really know what this thing is that we so commonly call “metaphysics”? We do
not. Nowadays the word bewitches us like a magical incantation, with its suggestion of
profundity and its promise of salvation’ (Heidegger, 1981: p. 3/1).
If this coining of the onto-theological vocabulary is so important, it is because Heidegger, in
his metaphysical period, did not use metaphysical vocabulary in a merely rhetorical fashion, but
really tried to give a specific solution to the problematical unity of metaphysics as it first
explicitly appeared in Aristotle’s concept of prōte philosophia. Although the concept of ‘onto-
theology’ only appeared at the beginning of the 1930s, the ‘idea’ behind it was already present in
the mid-1920s.
x
Thus, when Heidegger planned a retrieval of metaphysical questioning, he was
already perfectly aware of this dual structure.
II The onto-theological constitution of the metaphysics of Dasein
In fact, Heidegger always thought of his metaphysics of Dasein as the retrieval (Wiederholung) of
an unsolved problem in Aristotle: that of the unity of the ontological and theological
questionings. But Heidegger did not try to solve first philosophy’s ‘remarkable doubling’ or even
to reconcile it into a unity. Heidegger’s task was rather to ‘illuminate the grounds for the

9
apparent disunity and the manner in which both determinations belong together as the leading
problem of a “first philosophy” of beings’ (Heidegger, 1998: p. 8/5). This obscure relationship
between the question of beings (to on) and the question of the divine (to theion)—unquestioned
since the death of Aristotle (Heidegger, 1983: pp. 51-3/32-5; 1997: p. 34)—has to be
interrogated as to its unity and its origin.
The metaphysics of Dasein tried to investigate more radically the traditional metaphysical
problems. Besides the ontological problems, Heidegger opened a realm of questioning where
beings are no longer questioned in their being or their beingness, but rather as a whole (im
Ganzen). In some texts, Heidegger explicitly presented his metaphysics of Dasein following the
onto-theological structure. These texts show that Heidegger did not then conceive the onto-
theological problem as a faulty path for philosophical questioning, but as a possible access to
philosophy’s basic questions.
The first two texts that I will discuss are taken from the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im
Ausgang von Leibniz, in which Heidegger traces explicit parallels between the Aristotelian division
of Metaphysics (prōte philosophia/theologike episteme) and divisions that exist inside his own thought.
The first text, often commented on, is taken from the famous appendix inserted in the middle of
the second part and entitled ‘Describing the Idea and Function of a Fundamental Ontology’
(Heidegger, 1978: pp. 196-202/154-9). The initial plan of the systematic part of Sein und Zeit’s
fundamental ontology consisted of two essential sections: an ‘interpretation of Dasein in terms
of temporality’ and an ‘explication of time as the transcendental horizon of the question of
being’ (Heidegger, 2001a: p. 41/37). In the summer semester 1928, Heidegger added a third
section to this fundamental ontology. As he then wrote, this third section should not be
understood as a step further, but as a ‘turning-around’ (Kehre) of this analysis, an ‘overturning’
(Umschlag) that enables the fully developed fundamental ontology to return to its ontical point of
departure: ‘The temporal analysis is at the same time the turning-around, where ontology itself
expressly runs back into the metaphysical ontic (in die metaphysische Ontik) in which it implicitly
always remains’ (Heidegger, 1978: p. 201/158). Heidegger simply calls this ontical horizon of the
ontological investigation ‘metontology’—what comes after (meta) ontology.
xi
I will not try to give an interpretation of this metontology here.
xii
My aim is simply to
highlight the fact that Heidegger traces a parallel between this new structure of fundamental
ontology—or of the metaphysics of Dasein—and that of Aristotle’s metaphysics:

10
In their unity, fundamental ontology and metontology constitute the concept of
metaphysics. But herein is expressed the transformation of the one basic problem of
philosophy itself, the one touched upon above in the introduction under the dual
concept of philosophy as prōte philosophia and theologia. (Heidegger, 1978: p. 202/158)
Heidegger thus characterized this ‘modified version’ of fundamental ontology as a new answer to
the ‘basic problem of philosophy’ that sustained the avid metaphysical research of Aristotle.
Even though the nature of this metontology is problematical, we have to recognize that
Heidegger indicated here that, following the example of Aristotle, his own metaphysics presents a
twofold structure: fundamental ontology and metontology.
But this is not the only passage in this lecture course to recognize such a link between the
traditional division of metaphysics and the metaphysics of Dasein. Analyzing the definition of
philosophy that Aristotle gives in his Metaphysics (books 4 and 5), Heidegger established some
parallel with his own thought in the introduction, referring to what was developed in Sein und
Zeit:
Let us keep in mind that philosophy, as first philosophy, has a twofold character:
knowledge of being [sc. ontology] and knowledge of the overwhelming [sc. theology].
(This twofold character corresponds to the twofold (dem Zweifachen) in Being and Time of
existence and thrownness). (Heidegger, 1978: p. 13/11)
Heidegger recognized once more that this twofold character of Aristotle’s Metaphysics found a
certain response in Sein und Zeit. But what did this mentioned ‘twofold’ mean in Sein und Zeit, and
how could it correspond to the Aristotelian division of metaphysics?
Existence (Existenz) and thrownness (Geworfenheit) are presented in Sein und Zeit as two of the
three basic characters of Dasein’s being, of care (Sorge). According to §§ 41 and 58, care
encompasses the unity of three ontological determinations: ‘facticity (thrownness), existence
(project) and falling prey (Verfallen)’ (Heidegger, 2001a: p. 284/262). This twofold of existence
and thrownness of which the passage speaks is a subject that Heidegger often mentioned with
this unique formula: ‘thrown project’ (Heidegger, 2001a: p. 285/263; 1998: p. 235/165).
According to this characterization, Dasein would stand between the power to project the
possibilities of a world (project) and a complete helplessness as to the withdrawal of some of
these possibilities (thrownness). Only a complete analysis of this notion would give us an

11
understanding of the parallel Heidegger traces with the Aristotelian division of metaphysics.
However, what matters here is to recognize the existence of such parallels.
We should also mention Heidegger’s characterization of the ‘authentic concept of
metaphysics,’ in the winter semester 1928/29. In this Einleitung in die Philosophie, Heidegger
described the tasks of his philosophical investigations not with the twofold of fundamental
ontology and metontology, but with a dichotomy between the problem of being and the
problem of the world. Once again, Heidegger seems to acknowledge the limits of his ontological
approach and tries to give a more complete idea of philosophy. Even though Heidegger did not
mention Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the many interpretations he then gave of Aristotelian theology in
terms of a worldly or ‘pagan’ problematic suggest that this problem of the world has to be
understood as the problem of the theion, the problem of beings as a whole.
xiii
In the winter semester 1928/29, the problem of the world was presented as a complementary
problem to that of being, in such a way that their unity is then said to form philosophy’s
complete problematic: ‘The problem of the world is primordially united with the problem of
being; in their unity, the problem of being and the problem of the world first determine the unity
of the authentic concept of metaphysics’ (Heidegger, 1996: pp. 323-4). But the connection
between both problems was outlined without being fully developed: ‘The problem of being—in
its originality—unfolds necessarily in what we call the problem of the world’ (Heidegger, 1996: p.
391). And further:
On his side, the problem of the world, once unfolded, does not allow itself to be isolated,
but bursts again and bounces on the construction of the problem of being. The problem
of being unfolds as the problem of the world, the problem of the world sinks into the
problem of being—this means: both problems form philosophy’s one problematic.
(Heidegger, 1996: p. 394)
The onto-theological structure of the metaphysics of Dasein was thus presented in various
ways at the end of the 1920s. But as already mentioned, the concept of ‘onto-theology’ only
appeared in the winter semester 1930/31 on Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes, and with a negative
connotation. From then on, this metaphysical structure would represent a characteristic peculiar
to this traditional interrogation on beings (as such and as a whole) which the fundamental
philosophical question concerning being has to overcome. The emergence of this distinction
between philosophy’s Leitfrage and Grundfrage coincides with the abandonment of this attempt to

12
explicitly retrieve Aristotle’s dual conception of philosophy. When Heidegger identified the
onto-theological structure with the incapacity of metaphysics to ask correctly the question of
being, it should be seen as a direct critique of the metaphysical attempt that he had made in the
preceding years—an attempt that was onto-theological in a ‘positive’ way.
The Brief über den ‘Humanismus’ of November 1946 would later confirm that the achievement
of Sein und Zeit ‘did not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics’ (Heidegger, 1976:
p. 328/250). Even clearer is the letter Heidegger wrote to Max Müller in November 1947, in
which he said that the very title Sein und Zeit was a catastrophe, as was the whole effort of that
time, as it never succeeded in overcoming ‘the onto-theological basis of metaphysics’ (Heidegger,
2003: p. 15). If, for a few years, Heidegger took up the onto-theological challenge—which was
then intended to try to solve, in a ‘retrieval manner,’ the problematic unity of metaphysics—, he
later considered it an attempt fully embedded in that ‘incurable’ metaphysical structure, and tried
to overcome it. The mere idea of ‘authentic metaphysics’ is thus contradictory. Of course, this
does not mean that Heidegger would ever purely ‘reject’ the ontological or metaphysical attempts
he made in the 1920s. It was, it might be said, a necessary step towards a transition (Übergang) to
a new beginning.
III Vom Wesen des Grundes and the achievement of the metaphysics of Dasein
It is thus possible to describe Heidegger’s metaphysics of Dasein in terms of three different
moments: the fundamental ontological moment, which corresponds to the years 1926 and 1927;
the transcendental moment, which first emerged in the summer of 1927 and disappeared after
the summer of 1929; and, finally, the moment of freedom, which appeared in 1928 and became
the ‘ground of ground’ (Grund des Grundes) until the end of the metaphysical enterprise.
The project of a metaphysics of Dasein thus reached its peak with the exposition of a
metaphysical concept of freedom that Heidegger considered the origin and condition of
possibility of all ontical freedom (like, for example, the Kantian concept of spontaneity), as well
as all possible relation with beings, whether it be practical, theoretical or aesthetic. But why does
the project end with these observations on freedom? Is this new concept the cause of the
‘abandonment’ of this metaphysical project, or should we consider it its achievement, its success?
Should we speak here, as it is often the case with Sein und Zeit’s fundamental ontology, of the

13
‘failure’ of the metaphysics of Dasein? In other words, did this project promise more than it
really delivered?
In the case of Sein und Zeit, it was quite simple to establish not only from a philosophical point
of view, but also at a purely material level, that the fundamental ontology did not give the
‘expected results’. The incompletion of the book is a testimony to the fact that the solution to
the problem initially posed could not be given. But in the case of the project of the metaphysics
of Dasein, we have no textual or material reasons to consider it a failure. Nonetheless, we have
to wonder why the project came to an end.
We can at the outset note that the critique the older Heidegger made of the fundamental
ontology does not seem to spare the metaphysics of Dasein. Insofar as both the fundamental
ontology and the metaphysics of Dasein try to think of being by bringing to light the essence of
Dasein, both projects have to be considered, from the perspective of the Brief über den
‘Humanismus,’ as still not achieving the abandonment of subjectivity (Heidegger, 1976: p.
328/250). Yet, a commentary taken from the Beiträge zur Philosophie from the years 1936-38
speaks precisely of the treatise Vom Wesen des Grundes not as a mere continuation of the
fundamental ontology, but as a new attempt to remedy the ‘crisis’ that the question of being was
going through after the partial publication of Sein und Zeit:
Thus at the deciding juncture it was necessary to overcome the crisis of the question of
being (…), and above all to avoid an objectification of beyng (eine Vergegenständlichung des
Seyns)—on the one hand by holding back the ‘temporal’ interpretation of beyng and at the
same time by attempting besides (unabhängig davon) to make the truth of beyng ‘visible’
(freedom toward ground in Vom Wesen des Grundes, and yet in the first part of this treatise
the ontic-ontological schema is still thoroughly maintained). (Heidegger, 1989: p.
451/317)
Heidegger did not just hold back the conclusion of the fundamental ontology; he also tried, as
he says, to ‘overcome the crisis of the question of being’ by means of a presentation of the
concept of ‘freedom toward ground’ (Freiheit zum Grunde)
xiv
, which was explained in the third part
of Vom Wesen des Grundes. According to what is said in this passage, these developments
constituted a new way of approaching the problem of being, one independent (unabhängig) of the
temporal interpretation of being. Thus, Heidegger recognized in the Beiträge that the treatise of

14
1929 was already an attempt to avoid the objectification process deployed in Sein und Zeit, even
though the first section was still embedded in the 1927 ‘ontic-ontological schema’.
As we have seen earlier, in the first section of the treatise Heidegger exposes the most central
theses of Sein und Zeit, while discussing Leibniz’s concept of ratio. After presenting the
‘transcendence of Dasein’ in the second part, the treatise deals, in its third and last part, with the
concept of ‘freedom toward ground’ that the Beiträge identified with an attempt to overcome the
crisis of the question of being. Thus, it is as though the 1929 essay exemplified, from its first to
its third part, the transition, der Übergang, that leads from the fundamental ontology to a new
approach to the question of being, one that distances itself from the objectification of being that
was part of the project elaborated in Sein und Zeit.
xv
The treatise Vom Wesen des Grundes thus describes the whole journey of what Heidegger called
the metaphysics of Dasein, from being-in-the-world to transcendence to freedom. Some of the
marginal notes we find in Heidegger’s first edition of the treatise confirm that something
happened between the first and the third part of the essay. On the threshold of the first part,
Heidegger notes: ‘The approach in terms of the truth of beyng (Seyn) is undertaken here [that is:
in the first part] still entirely within the framework of traditional metaphysics’. And Heidegger
adds: ‘Here one path toward overcoming “ontology” as such is broached (cf. Part III)’
(Heidegger, 1976: p. 126, Anm. a/100, note a). According to this, the 1929 essay would do no
more than retrieve a traditional and metaphysical approach to doing philosophy. But it would
nonetheless open, in its third part, a path toward the overcoming of this same metaphysics.
A note added to the first page of the third part in the same edition follows the same idea:
In [the] III[
rd
part], an approach to the destructuring (Destruktion) of [the] I[
st
part], that is,
of the ontological difference, [of the] ontic-ontological truth. In [the] III[
rd
part], the step
into a realm that compels the demolition (Zerstörung) of what has gone before and makes
a complete overturning (Umkippung) necessary’. (Heidegger, 1976: p. 163, Anm. a/125
note a)
Heidegger recognizes here that the third part constitutes the overcoming of the first one; that is
to say that the exposition of freedom toward ground in the third part undertakes the destructuring of the basic
notions of the fundamental ontology exposed in the first part and that this destructuring makes a complete
overturning necessary. As such, the treatise Vom Wesen des Grundes has one foot in the fundamental

15
ontology and another one in the overcoming of this same fundamental ontology—a process that
we surely associate with what Heidegger called the Kehre, the turning. Between a ‘classical’
development of the question of being in the first part—centered on the preontological
understanding of being, on the conceptualization of being, on the ontological truth and on the
ontological difference—and this new unfolding, in the third part, of a concept of freedom
defined as freedom toward ground, an overturning took place.
All these observations are not contemporary with the writing of Vom Wesen des Grundes. It is
an older Heidegger that, retrospectively, discovers that the germ of the overcoming of the
fundamental ontology was already to be found in this important treatise of 1929. In the last
moments of the metaphysics of Dasein, the concept of freedom gained an increasing
importance, as in the 1930 text Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Why then should we speak of the
‘failure’ of the metaphysics of Dasein? In what way was the metaphysics of Dasein an
unsuccessful attempt? According to the commentaries Heidegger made, starting from the mid-
1930s, it seems that the metaphysics of Dasein would rather present itself as a path toward the
overcoming of the ‘crisis of the question of being’ and thus permit the transition from Sein und
Zeit towards new attempts to deal with the problem of being. The ‘step’ into metaphysics would
accomplish what the Beiträge call the ‘transition’ (der Übergang), the conversion of fundamental
ontology into the thinking that unfolds after the turning and aims toward a new beginning. If
this were correct, the metaphysics of Dasein would then be nothing other than the turning itself.
If we can easily speak of Sein und Zeit as a failure because the promised ‘concrete answer to
the question of the meaning of being’ (Heidegger, 2001a: p. 19/17) was never given, it seems
impossible to do so for the metaphysics of Dasein. As such, it didn’t make any promises apart
from these two: ‘to develop metaphysics from the ground up’ (Heidegger, 1978: 165/132) and
‘to present a new laying of its grounds’ (Heidegger, 1998: p. 1/1). As we have just seen, this
developing of metaphysics allowed a transition toward something else and opened the way to a
reconsideration of the fundamental ontology. It accomplished its task by discovering an
ontological or metaphysical concept of freedom that grounds the preontological understanding
of being on which Sein und Zeit established itself.

16
IV Freedom and the overcoming of metaphysics
In the post-Kehre perspective of the Beiträge, we could thus argue that by accomplishing the
demolition (Zerstörung) of the fundamental ontology—that is, by accomplishing the turning—, the
metaphysics of Dasein should not be considered a failure. The ‘more original elaboration of the
idea of metaphysics’ of which Vom Wesen des Grundes speaks thus represents, in this later
perspective, the first draft of an overcoming of metaphysics. We could then speak of the metaphysics
of Dasein as an accomplishment, and not as a failure.
As we saw at the end of the first section, Heidegger began to mention this surpassing
(Überholung) of metaphysics as early as in the summer semester 1932. Heidegger then indirectly
recognized he had been somewhat ‘bewitched’ by the idea of a new metaphysics. Should we
conclude from this that the development of the concept of freedom toward ground not only
accomplished the demolition of the fundamental ontology, but also set Heidegger free from his
metaphysical path of thinking? It looks as though the concept of freedom toward ground gives
us the answer to why Heidegger abandoned metaphysics.
As Jean-Luc Nancy argued in his 1988 book L’expérience de la pensée, we can identify various
steps in Heidegger’s reflections on freedom (Nancy, 1988: pp. 54-5/35-6). Even if Sein und Zeit
could legitimately be characterized as a philosophy of freedom,
xvi
the concept as such only
became a basic notion during the years of the metaphysics of Dasein, in the essay Vom Wesen des
Grundes, in the text Vom Wesen der Wahrheit and in the summer semester 1930 lecture course Vom
Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, Heidegger
openly tried to ground his whole metaphysical endeavour on the concept of freedom. We have
already seen fundamental ontology’s basic concepts substituted by that of freedom in Vom Wesen
des Grundes, but we could also mention that a year later, in Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, Heidegger
showed that the very concept of truth depends, according to its essence, on the concept of
freedom. And in his long commentary on Kant’s ethics in the summer of 1930, Heidegger took
one last step and wrote that “The question concerning the essence of human freedom is the fundamental
question of philosophy, in which is rooted even the question of being.” (Heidegger, 1982: 300/203).
Once he had abandoned his project of a metaphysics of Dasein, Heidegger nonetheless
continued his investigations into freedom, turning his attention toward a new interlocutor. In the
mid-1930s, Schelling’s 1809 treatise Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit replaced Kant’s 1785
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik des Sittens.
xvii
According to Nancy, we have to understand this reading

17
of Schelling as still governed by the methodological principles of retrieval or repetition
(Wiederholung) (Nancy 1988: 58/39). In this lecture course, the dialogue with Schelling—as was
the case with Plato and Aristotle in Sein und Zeit or with Kant in the Kantbuch—still constituted an
attempt to ask anew the traditional philosophical questions from a ‘destructuring’ perspective,
that is, a reading that frees untapped possibilities hidden in the traditional texts with the aim of
transforming the basic philosophical questions.
xviii
If the dialogue with Schelling in 1936 can still be interpreted as some sort of a destructuring
attempt, such is not the case with the erneute Auslegung of Schelling’s treatise in the years 1941-43.
In the second reading, the gesture of retrieval was replaced by the ‘gesture of separation’ (Nancy,
1988: p. 59/39). The Auseinandersetzung with tradition is still thought of as an attempt to free
oneself from tradition, but a certain resolution to free tradition from our traditional
interpretations has been lost. We can talk about two ways of freeing oneself from tradition in
Heidegger’s oeuvre. With the project of a ‘phenomenological destructuring’ of the history of
philosophy, Heidegger always envisaged his relationship with the past as an attempt to free both
the historical thinkers and ourselves from mere tradition (Tradition, Weitergabe). The task was to
open an access to forgotten questions and to transform them in such a way that they would
become problematic once again. As an example, Sein und Zeit is presented as a reawakening of an
understanding for the meaning of the question of being—a question that Plato and Aristotle
tried to solve and that tradition thereafter eclipsed. Destructuring is thus a way to make us free
from a superficial and traditional understanding of the past, a way that also makes us free for a
new formulation of philosophy’s fundamental problems.
xix
In the phenomenological years, Heidegger never read historical writings with the aim of
‘getting over’ or ‘surmounting’ (überwinden) philosophy and leaving it on its own. As opposed to
the ‘destructuring path,’ the ‘overcoming path’ can be described as an attempt to free thinking
from traditional philosophy. The whole Western philosophical tradition is then thought of as the
metaphysics, which then means as a ‘homogeneous’ attempt to determine being as phusis. The
prolific dialogue with the history of philosophy that was the hallmark of Heidegger’s texts in the
1920s led the way to an attempt to surmount traditional thinking towards a new beginning that
would be completely free from metaphysics. From this moment on, Heidegger did not try to
radicalize what had already been done, but to overcome it. We can illustrate this fundamental
difference by referring to what Heidegger says about the relation between the ‘leading question’
and the ‘fundamental question’ mentioned earlier. At the end of the 1920s, Heidegger tried to
show how it is possible to ask the leading question so as to convert it into the fundamental

18
question—an elaboration thought of as a radicalization, a ‘working-through’ (Ausarbeitung) or a
progression that can be described with a series of questions:
The following series of question arose: ti to on, what are beings? What are beings as such?
What are beings in respect to their being? What is being? What is being understood as?
We have, so to speak, dug more and more into the content of the leading question, and
thereby dug out more primordial questions. (Heidegger 1982: 111/78)
But this slow development of the fundamental question that would take its point of departure
in the traditional way of questioning beings was replaced, in the Beiträge, by the idea of a ‘leap’
(Sprung) that disclosed the necessity of a new beginning:
Going from the leading question to the fundamental question, there is never an
immediate, equi-directional and continual process that once again applies the leading
question (to be-ing); rather, there is only a leap, i.e., the necessity of an other beginning.
(Heidegger 1989: 76/53; slightly modified translation)
Between the summer semester 1930 lecture course on human freedom and the writing of the
Beiträge between 1936 and 1938, Heidegger augmented the distance that separated traditional
metaphysics and his own attempt to question being. This coincided with the abandonment of
any consideration of ‘human freedom’ at the end of the 1930s, in the name of what Nancy calls
the ‘freedom of being’ (Nancy, 1988: p. 59/40). The metaphysical freedom (freedom toward
ground) and its corresponding metaphysics of freedom that Heidegger developed at the end of
the 1920s vanished with this necessity of a new beginning. Freedom no longer represented the
possibility of freeing oneself from mere tradition and could only be understood as the mark of
subjectivity. This distance taken from freedom can be regarded, as Nancy argues, as the final
separation from metaphysical thinking. In fact, the 1936 lecture course on Schelling was
probably the last occurrence of a positive notion of metaphysics in Heidegger’s works
(Heidegger, 1971: p. 79)
xx
. The second lecture courses on Schelling left no doubt as to the
necessity of abandoning metaphysics and freedom altogether:
Freedom: metaphysically as the name for the capacity to begin something by itself
(spontaneity, cause). As soon as it moves metaphysically into the centre (into true
metaphysics) it intrinsically unifies the determination of cause and selfhood . . . that is, of

19
subjectivity. In the perspective of a more initial thought, a thought of the history of being,
freedom forfeited its role. (Heidegger, 1971: p. 330)
Freedom set Heidegger free from his fundamental-ontological path and the ‘crisis of the
question of being’ that this metaphysical framework had to bring about. For some years,
Heidegger still considered human freedom from a positively metaphysical perspective. But the
attempt to free his thinking from subjectivity finally forced him to free it from any reference to
freedom, understood as the modern concepts of autonomy and self-regulation.
The overcoming of metaphysics—and of freedom, as we have seen—would have major
consequences on Heidegger’s relation to the history of philosophy. Leaving behind Western
philosophy as constituting ‘only’ the first beginning, Heidegger also abandoned one of his most
inventive and fertile projects: that of phenomenological destructuring. Even if we can argue that
destructuring was never fully abandoned by Heidegger, the basic concept of retrieval that is
essentially linked to it proved incompatible with the idea of a new beginning. Plato, Aristotle,
Kant or Schelling are no longer regarded as ‘allies’ in his search for a ‘concrete answer to the
question of the meaning of being,’ but only as halts on the route of a Seynsgeschichte. The dialogue
with them still exists, but the very project of finding new questions hidden behind
‘concealments’ produced by tradition has lost its meaning. The peculiar yet productive relation
that Heidegger’s thought had with history in the 1920s has been lost on the way. If Heidegger’s
path can be followed with great interest up to the overcoming of metaphysics and this freeing
from freedom, the loss of methodological tools such as destructuring and retrieval may
nevertheless seem too high a price to pay. These tools represent core concepts for what we call,
for want of anything better, ‘continental’ philosophy and have inspired a whole generation of
philosophers.
xxi
The retrieval of philosophical questions is, in the end, the condition of possibility
of any positive and productive dialogue with the philosophical tradition. And if we are to debate
with our contemporaries on shared philosophical questions, it might also be the basic nature of
any philosophical dialogue.
Archives Husserl, Paris

20
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Notes
i. Support for this research was provided by […].
ii. Our citations of Heidegger’s texts first list the pagination of the German edition followed by the pagination
of the English translation, should one be available.
iii. Concerning the absence of the metaphysical terminology in Sein und Zeit, see Greisch, 1993: pp. 177-8,
196. In this study, the author argues that Heidegger’s reluctance to use a metaphysical vocabulary up to
Sein und Zeit not only has to do with the popular philosophers who declared the ‘resurrection of
metaphysics,’ but also with the still vivid repercussions of Husserl’s 1911 essay Philosophie als strenge
Wissenschaft. For his part, Jeffrey Andrew Barash considers that the preference Heidegger manifests for
the ontological––rather than metaphysical–– vocabulary represents a break with the theological motifs of
his first lecture courses in Freiburg. The word ‘metaphysics’ had then a theological connotation that
Heidegger tried to avoid (Barash, 2003: pp. 157-8). On the virtual absence of a metaphysical vocabulary
prior to the publication of Sein und Zeit, see Grondin, 2003: pp. 42-6.
iv. Cf. Grondin, 2003: p. 57.
v. The writing of this treatise was finished on October 17
th
1928, as Heidegger wrote to Elisabeth Blochmann
(Heidegger and Blochmann, 1989: p. 27). The text was presented in the Festschrift for Husserl’s 70
th
birthday on April 8
th
1929. It was published on May 14
th
1929 in the Ergänzungsband zum Jahrbuch für
Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Halle an der Saale: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1929, pp. 71-
110; reprint: Bad Feilnbach: Schmidt Periodicals Gmbh, 1989), simultaneously with the short address that
Heidegger read on that occasion (“Edmund Husserl zum siebzigsten Geburtstag”. Originally published in

24
Akademische Mitteilungen. Organ für die gesamten Interressen der Studentenschaft von der Albert-
Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg/Br., 4
th
series, 9
th
Semester, N°14, May 14
th
1929, pp. 46-7; now in
Heidegger, 2000: pp. 56-60; trans: Sheehan, T., in Husserl, 1997: pp. 475-7). Regarding this matter, cf.
Sheehan, 1997: p. 28. There are two English translations of this text: The Essence of Reason (trans: Malick
T., Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969) and On the Essence of Ground (trans: McNeill W., in
Pathmarks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
vi. To be exact, in 1928 Heidegger published a book review of Ernst Cassirer’s 1925 Philosophie der
symbolischen Formen. 2. Teil: das mythische Denken (Deutsche Litteraturzeitung, 21. Heft; now in
Heidegger 1998), as well as the Editor’s preface to Husserl’s Phänomenologie des inneren
Zeitbewusstseins (Husserliana, vol. X).
vii. In the § 69c of Sein und Zeit dedicated to the ‘transcendence of the world,’ Heidegger asks the following
question: ‘what makes it ontologically possible for beings to be encountered within the world and
objectified as encountered beings?’ (Heidegger, 2001: p. 366/335). The answer Heidegger then gives can
be seen as an anticipation of the developments of the metaphysics of Dasein: ‘If the thematization of what
is objectively present (des Vorhandenen)––the scientific project of nature––is to become possible, Da-sein
must transcend the beings thematized. Transcendence does not consist in objectivation, but is rather
presupposed by it. But if the thematization of innerworldly beings objectively present is a change-over
(Umschlag) from taking care which circumspectly discovers, then a transcendence of Da-sein must already
underlie “practical” being together with things at hand (beim Zuhandenen)’ (Heidegger, 2001: pp. 363-
4/332). But Heidegger does not explicitly describe Dasein as a transcendental being before the
Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (summer semester 1927) where it is closely linked to the problem of
the ontological difference (Heidegger, 1975: § 20e). Transcendence would be understood as Dasein’s basic
constitution up to the Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (winter semester 1929/30) where it suddenly
disappeared (one exception: Heidegger, 1983: p. 447/308). On Dasein’s transcendence, see my […].
viii. In two letters to Jaspers (December 10
th
, 1925 and December 26
th
, 1926), Heidegger spoke of the ‘love’
he then felt for Kant (Heidegger and Jaspers, 1990: pp. 57, 71/61, 73).
ix. It is nonetheless available in a German-French edition in France-Lanord & Midal 2001,
pp. 16-62.
x. Concerning the emergence of the concept of ‘onto-theology,’ see my […].

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xi. The expression ‘metontology’ already appeared in the summer semester 1926: “The question of being
transcends itself. The ontological problem goes into reverse! Metontological; theologikè; beings as a
whole” (Heidegger, 1993: p. 106). This very schematic mention of ‘metontology’ could nonetheless be a
remark added later to the manuscript.
xii. Concerning metontology, see, among others, Greisch, 1994: pp. 481-3; Grondin, 2003: pp. 46-7; Kisiel,
2001: pp. 263-4.
xiii. Among numerous mentions of the non-religious character of Aristotle’s concept of the divine (theion),
we can include: Heidegger, 2005: pp. 99-101, 389; 1993: p. 179; 1992: pp. 222, 242/153, 167.
xiv. This translation of Freiheit zum Grunde is taken from Michael Heim’s translation of The Metaphysical
Foundations of Logic, which we prefer to “freedom unto the ground” (William McNeill, Pathmarks).
xv. This objectification of being was not yet considered a danger for philosophy at the end of the 1920s, as it
was to be in the Beiträge and the upcoming texts (Heidegger, 1989: p. 451/317). Let us simply recall that
the lecture course from the summer of 1927, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, still refered to it as
the basic task for philosophy, as ‘the basic act of the constitution of ontology, of philosophy’ (Heidegger,
1975: p. 459/322).
xvi. In his 1988 book Martin Heidegger. Phänomenologie der Freiheit, Günther Figal described the whole
path of Heidegger’s thought as a ‘philosophy of freedom,’ arguing that the analysis of Dasein is a way of
understanding what it means for Dasein to be free (see also Ruin, 2008: 280). We can easily highlight the
importance of freedom in Sein und Zeit by mentioning concepts such as ‘Freedom toward death’ (Freiheit
zum Tode), ‘Dasein’s being free for its ownmost possibility’ or ‘Potentiality-of-Being’ (Seinkönnen).
Nevertheless, the concept of freedom as such was not yet the fundamental concept in regard to the question
of Dasein’s being.
xvii. On the difference between Kant’s and Schelling’s concepts of freedom according to Heidegger, see
Ruin, 2008: pp. 287-8.
xviii. In the summer semester 1928, Heidegger described the method of retrieval in these words:
‘Fundamental ontology is always only a retrieval (Wiederholung) of what is ancient, of what happened
earlier. But what is ancient gets transmitted to us by retrieval, only if we grant it the possibility of
transformation. For by their nature these problems demand as much. All this has its basis, as we will show
in detail, in the historicity of the understanding of being. And characteristically, the tradition (Tradition),
i.e., the externalized transmission (Weitergabe), deprives the problem of this very transformation in a

26
retrieval. Tradition passes down definite propositions and opinions, fixed ways of questioning and
discussing things. This external tradition of opinions and anonymous viewpoints is currently called ‘the
history of problems’ (Problemgeschichte). The external tradition, and its employment in the history of
philosophy, denies problems their life, and that means it seeks to stifle their transformation, and so we
must fight against it.’ (Heidegger, 1978: p. 197/155; slightly modified translation)
xix. This relation between Destruktion and freedom is still stressed in the 1955 text Was ist das—die
Philosophie?: ‘Destruction means: to open our ear, to make ourselves free (freimachen) for what speaks to
us in tradition as the being of beings.’ (Heidegger, 1966: p. 22/73)
xx. See Heidegger, 1971: p. 79. On this, see the fifth section of my “L’onto-théologie dans l’oeuvre de
Martin Heidegger. Récit d’une confrontation avec la pensée occidentale” (2006b).
xxi. Nancy writes: ‘Actually, an entire epoch was invented through repetition, and invented its difference as
repetition, that is, difference as a secondary consequence of the ‘end of philosophy,’ as the re-demand
(repetitio) for what is at stake in philosophy. But it is Heidegger himself who inaugurated thinking as
repetition (and not as critique or sublation) of what had already been thought.’ (Nancy, 1988: p. 76/190)