Introduction to Metaphysics

Introduction to Metaphysics is a revised and edited 1935 lecture course by Martin Heidegger first published in 1953. The work is notable for a discussion of the Presocratics and for illustrating Heidegger's supposed "Kehre," or turn in thought beginning in the 1930s—as well as for its mention of the "inner greatness" of Nazism. Heidegger suggested the work relates to the unwritten "second half" of his 1927 magnum opus Being and Time. Background and publication history Introduction to Metaphysics, originally a summer lecture course at the University of Freiburg in 1935, was first published eighteen years later by the Max Niemeyer Verlag (Halle, Germany), simultaneously with the Seventh German Edition of Being and Time. In a one-page preface accompanying this post-war edition of Being and Time, Heidegger wrote that the newly available Introduction to Metaphysics, would "elucidate" material contemplated for the once-promised but long-abandoned "second half" of Being and Time. The preface also noted that the text of this latest (1953) B&T edition had eliminated several references to itself as a "first half." Among English translations, the second edition (2014) of a version by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt from Yale Press (New Haven) was in print as of 2020. Ralph Manheim produced a 1959 translation praised by Fried and Polt in their introduction to the second edition as largely responsible for introducing Heidegger to the English-speaking world. But Manheim worked prior to the 1962 Macquarrie version of Being and Time—which established several conventions for Heidegger's English translators. The work is included in Volume 40 (1983) of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe (collected works) edited by Petra Jaeger.