ABSTRACT

In the Spiegel interview, Heidegger defends himself against the accusation that his project of overcoming metaphysics is damaging Western philosophical tradition. He explains,

My whole work in lectures and exercises in the past 30 years has been in the main only an interpretation of Western philosophy. The regress into the historical foundations of thought, the thinking through of the questions which are still unasked since the time of Greek philosophy-that is not a cutting loose from the tradition. [1966a, 109/674]

The orientation of Heidegger’s path of thinking is integrally bound up with a retrieval of resources in the Western philosophical tradition. His thoughts on the origin and transformation of philosophy are concentratedly thematized in terms of the first and the other beginning. From this perspective, he ascribes central importance to the early Greek philosophers, whom he regards as the inceptive thinkers of the first beginning.