Review: Introduction to Metaphysics

Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Values not enough

In 1928, there appeared the first part of a collected bibliography on the concept of value. It cites 661 publications on the concept of value. Probably by now there are a thousand. All this calls itself philosophy. In particular, what is peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism, but which has not the least to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement [namely, the encounter between global technology and modern humanity], 115 is fishing in these troubled waters of "values" and "totalities."

Yet we can see how stubbornly the thought of values entrenched itself in the nineteenth century when we see that even Nietzsche, and precisely he, thinks completely within the perspective of the representation of values. The subtitle to his projected main work, The Will to Power, is Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. Its third book is headed: Attempt at a New Positing of Values. Because Nietzsche was entangled in the confusion of the representation of values, because he did not understand its questionable provenance, he never reached the genuine center of philosophy. But even if some future thinker should reach the center again-we today can only labor to pave the way-he will not avoid entanglement either; it will just be a different entanglement. No one can leap over his own shadow.

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