Still, showing how the story of western metaphysics came to an end in Hegel and Nietzsche must remain an important part of any discussion of Heidegger's views on ancient western philosophy. For only in a proper understanding of the unfortunate, but necessary, projection of nihilism from out of the thought of the ancient world can one fully appreciate the importance of the ancient Greek thinkers and their primordial thinking on being. Or taking the other side of the coin, only by understanding how the falsification of the authentic Greek Logos after Parmenides and Heraclitus and the subsequent generation of truth as inconcealedness into mere statement, and the degeneration of being as an emergent dominance (aufgeende Walten) into mere idea, can the key be found for the understanding of the nihilism which, with us at least since Plato, has become in Nietzsche the open sore of western philosophy. Only in finding this key can nihilism be recognized and overcome. Only by understanding nihilism in its original thought-projective origins can we hope, in Heidegger's view, to bring about an overcoming (Überwindung) of this falsified metaphysical tradition.

What does Heidegger mean by this nihilism which has characterized western metaphysics since the time of Plato? And what does it mean to "overcome" this nihilism? Concerning the nature of nihilism, Heidegger says in this Einführung in die Metaphysik that to concern oneself with things (das Seiende) to the total ignoring of being (Sein): that is nihilism. This is the sense in hich Heidegger can speak of the whole tradition of western metaphysics as nihilistic. It represents a forgetting of being in the failure to make the fundamental distinction between being and things, and in interesting itself in things rather than in being itsef. The importance of this the "ontological difference" between things and being cannot be overestimated in studying Heidegger. As he says, it is this distinction which sustains history. This is also what Heidegger meant when in his commentary on Anaximander's fragment he said that the whole of the fate of the West hinged upon the translation of the little word ἐόν.

¶ 7:20 PM