This looking to being from the side of things appears as transcendence. Thus the metaphysical tradition, as distinguished from what might be called the more authentically "ontological" in our tradition, represents the failure to make what Heidegger calls the "ontological difference" between being and things. The meta-physical tradition did make a distinction of sorts. But where Plato made his mistake, in the view of Heidegger, was in separating being from things and putting them in different places. Plato and classical metaphysics in general indeed had a "difference"; however, it was not the ontological difference. For it failed to make the fundamental distinction which is responsible for the forgetting of being that in our days has resulted in the misery of nihilism.

For it only after Plato that thinking concerning the being of things as that which looks up to (Aufblicken) the ideas comes to be called philosophy and finally metaphysics. For Plato's "difference" dis-placed being from things, and then Plato proceeded to concern himself with the other place, a place which ceased to be being, but became Idea.

Heidegger does not find it so strange, however, that Physis should have come to be characterized by Idea. What he does find strange is that Idea should have come to be the only and the authoritative interpretation of being. This in his view was the totally decisive factor.

¶ 10:25 AM