Martin Heidegger — The Destruction of Western Metaphysics
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Heidegger’s Basic Diagnosis: Forgetfulness of Being
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) developed the most radical fundamental critique of the whole of Western metaphysics — a critique that included Hegel as its “completer.” His basic diagnosis: Western philosophy from Plato to Hegel misses the question of being through the forgetfulness of being. It asks after beings, but not after the being of beings.
What does this mean? Metaphysics asks: what is the being? What is its substance, its essence, its ground? It treats the being as something present-at-hand, as an object that can be conceptually grasped. But it does not ask: what does “being” mean at all? What does it mean for something “to be”? This more fundamental question — the question of being — has, according to Heidegger, been forgotten since the pre-Socratics.
Hegel, as “the last metaphysician,” brings this forgetfulness to its highest completion. Absolute knowing is the complete presentation of beings in the concept — but precisely thereby the complete forgetting of being. Being is fully dissolved into conceptuality — there is no longer any “that” which withdraws from the “what.”[1]
Being and Time as Anti-Dialectic
Heidegger’s principal work, Being and Time (1927), was conceived as fundamental ontology — a philosophy that sets in before all metaphysics. Access to the question of being proceeds via the analysis of Dasein — human existing, which alone among beings has an understanding of being.
Dasein is thrown existence — not dialectically mediable, but referred to its own finitude in anxiety and being-toward-death. The existentialia (attunement, understanding, discourse, care) are not categories in the Hegelian sense, but ways of being-in-the-world. They are not conceptually derivable, but phenomenologically to be exhibited.[2]
Against Hegel’s dialectic of history, Heidegger set the “historicity” of Dasein. History is not the progress of reason, not a dialectical development from the immediate to the mediated, but “the history of being” — the coming and going of various ways in which being shows itself. Modern technology as “enframing” (Gestell) is the completion of metaphysics — the total objectification in which being is completely forgotten.
The Methodological Innovation: “Destruction” instead of Construction
Heidegger’s method was not constructive dialectic but “destruction.” The inherited concepts must be “destructed” — not in the sense of destroying, but of dismantling — in order to find one’s way back to the original experiences they conceal.
This destruction is no arbitrary deconstruction, but a systematic going-back to the “unspoken presuppositions” of the tradition. Hegel had claimed to make all presuppositions explicit — a presuppositionless science. Heidegger showed: precisely this claim is the greatest presupposition of all — the assumption that being can be made fully conceptually transparent.[3]
Heidegger’s Later Engagement with Hegel
In his lectures on the history of philosophy (from the 1930s, published posthumously), Heidegger engaged extensively with Hegel. “Hegel’s Concept of Experience” (1942/43) and “Hegel and the Greeks” (1958) show his more differentiated critique.
The basic thesis: Hegel’s “absolute knowing” is the highest form of the forgetfulness of being. Being is completely dissolved into conceptuality — there is no more concealment, no inaccessibility, no withdrawal. Everything is transparent, mediated, sublated. But precisely this absolute mediation misses being, which shows itself only in withdrawal.[4]
Against Hegel’s conceptual mastery, Heidegger set “letting-be” — a thinking that lets being be, instead of dialectically penetrating it. “Releasement” (Gelassenheit) is not passivity but the highest activity — engaging with what shows itself without doing violence to it.
The Problem: Romantic Longing for Origins
Heidegger’s thinking of being articulates dimensions (finitude, thrownness, anxiety, mortality) that genuinely resist dialectical integration. His fundamental critique of systematicity strikes a raw nerve: can a system do justice to contingency, to the factical, to the singular?
But Heidegger’s alternative remains problematic. His philosophy of being tips over into a romantic longing for origins — the search for a “more original” thinking that lies before metaphysics. The Greeks (before Plato), the pre-Socratics, Hölderlin — they become witnesses of an “other thinking” that modernity has lost.
This longing for origins is philosophically unfruitful. It cannot develop any constructive alternative to scientific rationality. Heidegger’s late writings — “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “Letter on Humanism,” “The Question Concerning Technology” — are brilliant essays, but not a systematic philosophy. The destruction succeeds, but the construction is missing.[5]
The Political Entanglement — A Necessary Excursus
An account of Heidegger would be incomplete without mention of his entanglement with National Socialism. As rector of the University of Freiburg, he delivered in 1933 the notorious rectoral address, in which he welcomed the “German revolution.” He joined the Nazi party, took part in the “coordination” (Gleichschaltung) of the university with Nazi policy, and intrigued against Jewish colleagues (among them his teacher Husserl).
After 1945, Heidegger refused any serious confrontation with this entanglement. No apology, no self-criticism, only vague allusions to “errors.” Worse still: he staged himself as a victim — the thinker who was misunderstood, who philosophized in solitude in his mountain hut while the world moved toward catastrophe.
The philosophical question is: was Heidegger’s Nazi engagement merely a biographical accident, or are there systematic connections to his thought? Research (Victor Farías, Hugo Ott, Emmanuel Faye) has shown that such connections exist. The critique of “rationality,” the glorification of the “Volk,” the rejection of the “public sphere,” the longing for “origin” — all of this could be connected with National Socialist ideology.[6]
For our account of the reception of Hegel, this means: Heidegger’s critique of Hegel was not only philosophically motivated, but also politically. Hegel’s rationalism, his cosmopolitanism, his defense of civil society and the constitutional state — all of this was suspect to Heidegger. The “destruction of metaphysics” also had a reactionary dimension.
After 1945, Heidegger was nonetheless instrumental in having his students appointed to philosophy chairs in Germany — an unfortunate continuity that shaped German philosophy well into the 1960s. Critical engagement with this history is necessary, however painful it may be.
Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, Halle: Niemeyer, 1927; later edition Tübingen: Niemeyer, from the 8th edition 1957. ↩︎
Heidegger: Being and Time, §§28–44 (analysis of care and temporality). ↩︎
Heidegger: Being and Time, §6 (The task of a destruction of the history of ontology). ↩︎
Martin Heidegger: “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” in Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege), Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950, pp. 105–192. ↩︎
On the critique of Heidegger’s thinking of origins, see: Theodor W. Adorno: The Jargon of Authenticity, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1964. ↩︎
On Heidegger’s entanglement with National Socialism, see: Victor Farías: Heidegger and Nazism, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1989; Hugo Ott: Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988; Emmanuel Faye: Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy, Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2009. ↩︎