Introduction to Metaphysics

One may ask why a new translation of Martin Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics is needed. The present volume is the second English version of Heidegger’s 1935 lecture course, Einführung in die Metaphysik, the text of which was first published in German only in 1953. An earlier translation appeared in 1959 and has remained in print until the present; now, however, we have a version that the student of twentieth-century Continental philosophy will likely find more congenial than the first, although important problems remain in the translators’ attempt to make Heidegger’s thought accessible. It is well known that Heidegger was in the habit of writing out the lectures for his courses, many of which have appeared posthumously. His Introduction to Metaphysics is no exception, and the text, which includes the author’s marginal notes made between 1935 and 1953, remains as compelling now as it was when Heidegger first presented the course soon after the troubling time of his rectorship at the University of Freiburg.