ABSTRACT
Martin Heidegger’s thinking begins with a question which has remained uniquely and exclusively the guiding question of Western metaphysics. The task of metaphysics is to exhibit these ultimately and mutually irreducible characteristics of Being. For metaphysics, thinking is a “seeing,” and Being is a Being-in-view which stands in constant presentness. To be able to articulate the truth of Being as the ground of metaphysics, Heidegger asks about the essence of truth. In thinking beings as beings, metaphysics conceives a being in its Being or truth. When a being is understood as a being, this being comes into its Being and thus into the openness of its truth. By thinking of Being as constant presence without reflecting on the horizon of time within which presence and presentness is thought, metaphysics carries the realm of facticity and historicity within itself—but as that which it has forgotten.
