The Concept of Metaphysics and its Interpretation in Heidegger

Abstract

The concept of metaphysics is a problem from the beginning. The word “metaphysics” originated in the 1st century BC as a technical working term for a description of Aristotle's texts about πρώτη φιλοσοφία written three centuries earlier. The concept of metaphysics established as a term in Scholasticism and, finally, acquires special importance in the philosophy of 17-18th centuries. And since the 19th century the adjective “metaphysical” is also used in the sense of “doubtful”, “unscientific” and “senseless”. This is largely the result of a misunderstanding of metaphysics, especially its classical version of the 17-18th centuries. Because at the latest, starting with Christian Wolff, metaphysics is nothing but a science of the first principles of human cognition. Metaphysics is therefore the way of thinking based on the concepts of the soul and its abilities, as well as the concepts of the world and God. From this perspective, the metaphysical thinking really reaches Plato and Aristotle. However, the classical form of metaphysics originates from Descartes. A common trait of the metaphysical thinking is the interpretation of human being as animal rationale, namely being whose soul is endowed with understanding and reasoning abilities. Thus, the dissatisfaction with metaphysics that emerged in the 19th century was also the result of serious attempts to reconsider the idea of human being as animal rationale. These attempts culminated in the first half of the 20th century, and one of the most striking of them is the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The paper first reconstructs Heidegger’s analysis of the concept of metaphysics in its historical context, then analyzes Heidegger's own use of the term “metaphysics”. Finally, the paper discusses the problem of Heidegger's interpretation of metaphysics.