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This phrase-form of metaphysics, as a technical title referring to the doctrinal position of work pertaining to πρώτη φιλοσοφία, becomes contracted with time.96 _The contraction does not occur in Greek, but in its Latin translation – metaphysica. In this translated form, the technical meaning of μετὰ, as it refers to a categorisation of textual materials, becomes transformed into a title for the content of those textual materials. This is founded on the multivalent character of μετὰ, which in other forms (Heidegger uses the example of μεταβολή – changeover) connotes a 'turning away'.97 _Heidegger draws the distinction between “meta” as meaning “post”, in the first instance, and “trans” in the second. This contraction and shift in meaning results in πρώτη φιλοσοφία becoming understood as “metaphysics”, where metaphysics is a 'turning away' from one domain of being (namely those understood as being natural [φύσει ὄντα]) and toward another. As such, being is first divided up into distinctly separate realms and a domain beyond (trans) the natural is posited.

Metaphysics becomes the title for knowledge of that which lies out beyond the sensuous, for the science and knowledge of the suprasensuous [..] This changeover is by no means something trivial. Something essential is decided by it – the fate of philosophy proper in the West.98

The initial titling was based on a misunderstanding, and this second meaning of title “metaphysics” incorporates the central character of this mistake; philosophy proper is positioned as a discipline alongside others. Without an understanding of history generated 'from out of a living problematic of metaphysics', the same problem of 96 _{On Heidegger's understanding, the exact moment and the circumstances surrounding this}

compression are unknown. 97 _{FCM, §11. b)}

treating philosophy as one discipline amongst others would remain. A productive and properly philosophical philosophising is bound up with the generation of a certain historical attitude which itself must first be somehow oriented toward history. In terms of the investigation at hand, this marks the limit of historical orientation, but also the limit of a non-philosophical historicising. If metaphysics is to remain a title for philosophising, then it must first be shown that an understanding of the originary meaning of πρώτη φιλοσοφία can be developed. This is problematic for the following reasons:

We can show the first [that an originary understanding of πρ τη φιλοσοφ αώ ί can be developed], however, only if we ourselves have already developed a more radical problematic of philosophy proper. Only then do we have the torch with which to illuminate the concealed and unexcavated foundations of πρ τηώ

φιλοσοφ α and thus ancient philosophy, so that we may decide what isί

fundamentally happening there. Yet, we are supposed to first enter such philosophizing proper via these lectures.99

Heidegger's way around this hermeneutic conundrum is to show that the traditional concept of metaphysics, rather than being an interpretation of πρώτη φιλοσοφία

according to its content in any way, remains locked throughout history (at least up to Kant) in an engagement with the arbitrary word-formation of the title “metaphysics”. 100_{In this way Heidegger can show the deficiencies of the traditional concept of} metaphysics without having to offer his own fully fleshed out “philosophical” reading of Aristotle.

In summation, Heidegger offers up three points regarding the deficiency of the 99 _{FCM, §12}

traditional concept of metaphysics. The first point is that metaphysics becomes

trivialised. In pursuing First Philosophy as a theology, medieval metaphysics posits the divine as both occupying a different domain of being to that of nature/the sensuous, and as being a being, albeit one of a different order, namely supra-sensuous. Pursued as a doctrine, metaphysics is thus developed as the science that pursues knowledge of the suprasensuous. In this way the intent and profundity of both Aristotle's conception of the divine and First Philosophy is trivialised in a way that characterises the whole of the history of the West's relationship to the Greeks up until Nietzsche. This trivialisation is constituted by First Philosophy (and accordingly the divine) being brought alongside all other sciences, the divine being reduced to the status of a being, and the suprasensuous becoming both a separate domain and a matter of knowledge.

The second point concerns the confusing of the two directions of questioning laid out in Arisotle's First Philosophy. Citing Aquinas, Heidegger claims that the second mode of questioning – regarding essence, the being of beings - was also taken up by medieval metaphysics. This line of thinking took μετὰ up in terms of its supposed reference to content, but this time in terms of the development of the unsensuous. When considering the being of beings the natural step is to consider beings in general – 'to pass over beyond each individual being', 'to the most general determinations of beings'.101 _The beyond associated with beings in general (general concepts like unity, difference etc.), is clearly of a different order of the beyond of the divine. These two different senses of the beyond, the unsensuous (as most general being) and the suprasensuous (as supreme being), are not properly separated off and recognised in distinction to one another.102 _{As a result, what constituted the original problem of “metaphysics”, namely}

101 _{FCM, §12. b)}

the unity/relation of these two ways of questioning, is confused. The third point is a direct continuation of the second: due to the trivialisation and confusion of Greek philosophy in its uptake by medievals, what was originally a problem within “metaphysics” is rendered unproblematic. This results in the failure of modern philosophy up to Kant to 'make metaphysics itself a problem'.103