If in the guiding question of metaphysics what is interrogated is beings, but what is ultimately sought after is the being of beings, what is interrogated in Heidegger's other questioning" is the being of beings, the meaningful prescience of beings, whereas what is sought after is not more being, but rather a third thing, namely, the radical depth dimension of the temporal happening and differentiated giving of this being of beings. If the configuration of the guiding question is beings/being, the postmetaphysical configuration of Heidegger's topic is beings/being/the temporal giving of being in different historical shapes. His "step back" out of metaphysics is "out beyond the conception of being as the being of beings".
Thus heideggerians in their search for "being" have for years been after the wrong thing. Despite Heidegger's continued use of such phrases as "the question of being," "being as being," and "being itself" right up until the unfinished introduction to his collected edition, his question was never really the question of being, but rather the more radical question of what gives or produces being as an effect. The "question of being" misleadingly suggests that being here means what it has always meant in traditional metaphysics. "The name being loses its naming power in the step back, because it always unwittingly says 'presence and permanence,' determinations to which the essential presencing of being can never be attached as a mere addendum." This Heidegger spoke of the "disappearance of being" in the step back to that which makes being possible, "when the emphasis reads: letting come to presence [Anwesen lassen], there is no more room even for the name being. The letting is then the pure giving, which itself points back to the It that gives, which is understood as Ereignis."
