THE METAPHYSICAL FUNDAMENTAL POSITION AND THE EXPLORATION OF THE GUIDING QUESTION OF METAPHYSICS ACCORDING TO MARTIN HEIDEGGER

Abstract

This article intends to investigate and circumscribe the Heideggerian concepts of “metaphysical fundamental position” and “guiding question of metaphysics” and what the exploration of the latter means. To do so, we approach the metaphysics understood from the first beginning of Western philosophical thought as the question for the principle of all things (ἀρχή), a question that makes visible the beings as such and in totality and does so from the ontic domain of beings according to Heidegger. At this point, we enter into the clarification of what is the guiding question of metaphysics (what are beings?) and what is the metaphysical fundamental position (the lack of exploration of the guiding question). That said, we set out to investigate what Heidegger understands as the need to explore the guiding question of metaphysics. We show that the guiding question duly explored reveals a more original question that supports and leads it: the fundamental question of metaphysics (what is being?). Finally, and not least, we point out that the fundamental question of metaphysics is also the question of what founds the internal possibility of the openness of being, a path that leads us to the transcendence of human Dasein.