Hence the sort of metaphysical question which Heidegger had carried on in "Was ist Metaphysik?" indicated to him that he had already overcome nihilism. It also indicated that he had overcome metaphysics as well, for the essence of metaphysics of nothing else but nihilism. To draw nothing into the very questioning of the essence of being is to overcome nihilism, as Heidegger says. The realization of this essence of nihilism was, however, already the first step in overcoming it. And the essence of nihilism, which rests upon and has characterized the whole history of the western tradition of metaphysics as a forgetting of being, fulfills itself in the end as a will to will. It finds its perfect expression in modern science, where domination for the sake of domination is the order of the day.

However, simply because with Nietzsche's philosophy metaphysics is "all washed up" (vollendet), this does not mean that thinking itself is at an end. Thinking is in transition (Übergang) to a new beginning. This is the essence of metaphysics as the fate of transcendence. For if, as Heidegger says in his work Zur Seinsfrage, "nothing" (das Nichts) predominates in nihilism; and if the essence of nothing belongs to being (Sein), in the sense seen above; then being itself is the fate of transcendence (Überstiege), and the essence of metaphysics shows itself as the basic location (Wesensort) of nihilism. This is what Heidegger means when he says that "turning the tales" (Überwindung) on nihilism is based upon a "turning out" (Verwindung, getting rid) of metaphysics. For the whole of the metaphysical tradition has been falsified from the very beginning, and the only way to overcome it is to come to an understanding of what it is, as thought back into its very essence, and in this way to get it out of one's system. This is what Heidegger meant by the "destruction of the history of ontology" which was to be carried on in the second part of Sein und Zeit. That which had its beginning among the Greeks came to its logical conclusion in the nihilism of our own day. And to overcome this blight upon the tradition of western thinking on being, in the view of Heidegger, we must go back, dig back into our tradition in order to understand how it came to be--thus, again, the importance which the pre-Socratics have for Heidegger.

¶ 9:06 PM