The history of metaphysics, which coincides with the history of technology and the history of Western civilization, is the repeated effort to repress Ereignis. Technology has its roots in Greek philosophy with the fatal turn in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle away from physis to a metaphysics privileging presence over absence, eternity over time, and substance over nothingness. The divine being is configured by Plato as the good, by Aristotle as pure act, in both instances an absolute self-presence capable of protecting the totality of beings from the danger of Ereignis. Greek philosophical monotheism consolidates the move from physis to metaphysics, merging with the revelation of the one God in the Jewish Bible into a monolithic tradition Heidegger calls "onto-theology." Used as a synonym for metaphysics, onto-theology conceals the question of the meaning of being by constructing a narrative that traces all beings back to a highest being, the good, the first mover, the Creator, the first cause or the causa sui. In Heidegger’s view, it is no accident that most metaphysical treatises in the history of Western philosophy are founded on a philosophy of God. Metaphysics, Heidegger says, is essentially onto-theological: it allows us to elide the question of the meaning of being by presenting the origin of beings as a foregone conclusion: we always already know where beings come from (God); hence we can, with seemingly good conscience, limit our thinking to the ontic.

The eventfulness of Ereignis is experienced in the vicissitudes of history, no moment of which gives us an absolute vantage point from which preceding epochs may be judged; every age brings with it unprecedented disclosures and concomitant concealments of what has been disclosed. We are "sent" (geschickt) into an epoch of history in which being opens up the there of a historical moment of Dasein and makes possible a set of possibilities for understanding while closing down others — the later Heidegger's version of "the hermeneutical situation." The early Heidegger tells us that we neither can nor should want to extricate ourselves from that into which we have been thrown: to understand is to think our way into the strengths and limits of the way of seeing constitutive of our time. For the later Heidegger an original sending of being is progressively distorted and forgotten until, at the end of the epoch oblivion descends upon Dasein and the old traditions no longer speak to it. Heidegger's philosophy of history is a story not of continual progress but of inevitaible decline. The task for thinking (the successor to philosophy) is to decipher the meaning of the Western epoch as it winds itself down. “The latecomers" await in darkness the new sending, which will open the new era of thinking. When the sun rises in the Black Forest, that which was not seen clearly emerges into the light: the valley, the farmhouses, and the animals come into dear illumination. At the same time, something disappears that prior to this unconcealment was unconcealed, namely, the stars in the night sky.

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¶ 8:42 AM