“How is it going with Being?”—that is the question Heidegger demands that we ask. Or at least, that is Zabala’s rendering of Heidegger’s question in Introduction to Metaphysics: Wie steht es mit dem Sein?. Zabala’s translation is appropriate: it suggests the open-endedness of Heidegger’s question and its reference to an event that, in Heidegger’s view, runs throughout Western history yet is particularly urgent for us today. Because of its provocative questioning, Introduction to Metaphysics is, for Zabala, “the most significant of Heidegger’s texts after Being and Time”. There is at least one rival, though: the Contributions to Philosophy, written in the later ’30s, where Heidegger’s question becomes Wie west das Seyn?—“How does Be-ing essentially happen?” or “How is Be-ing essencing?”—and the word Ereignis, “event,” comes to the center of his thought as a response to this question.

¶ 9:33 AM