Heidegger - The Destruction of Inceptual Thought

In the age of the first and definitive unfolding of Western philosophy among the Greeks, when questioning about beings as such and as a whole received its true inception, beings were called phusis [φύσις, phsysis].  This fundamental Greek word for what is is usually translated as 'nature'.  We use the Latin translation natura, which really means 'to be born', 'birth.'  But with this Latin translation, the original content of the Greek word φύσις is already thrust aside, the authentic philosophical naming power of the Greek word is destroyed.  This is true not only of the Latin translation of this word, but of all other translations of Greek philosophical language into Roman.  This translation of Greek into Roman was not an arbitrary and innocuous process, but was the first stage in the isolation and alienation of the originary essence of Greek philosophy.  The Roman translation then became definitive for Christianity and the Christian Middle Ages.  The Middle Ages trans-lated themselves into modern philosophy, which moves within the conceptual world of the Middle Ages and then creates those familiar representations and conceptual terms that are used even today to understand the inception of Western philosophy.  This inception is taken as something that we have left behind long ago and supposedly overcome.


-M.H., Introduction to Metaphysics, trns. by Fried and Polt.


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