Abstract

Heidegger's thinking of Gelassenheit is his most appropriate response to the problematic of metaphysics. In this dissertation, I first contrast Gelassenheit with metaphysical thinking in its consummation, as displayed in the thought of Nietzsche. I then retrieve the central insight of Being and Time in the death-analysis, and show that it is a result of an encounter with the Nothing and the subsequent leap beyond nihilism. I then show how Kant could have taken a similar leap in his second Critique. The outcome of these considerations is to identify the leap of reason from the principle of sufficient reason to what I call the "possible impossibility" that existence is. ;I then show how Heidegger implicitly applies the leap of reason to his own project of fundamental ontology, the result of which he calls metontology. I further show how this leap can be applied to phenomenology as a project that seeks the conditions of possibility. This in turn makes apparent the irreducible body of thought, the a priori of any thinking that can never be made present. I then give a possible version of Heidegger's incomplete project of "Time and Being." It involves grounding what I call the four differences on the transcendence of Dasein itself. It includes the explanation of the impossibility of such a project. Next, I show that the thingness of a thing involves understanding, mood and interest, or one's comportment to totality. ;Finally, I show Gelassenheit to be Heidegger's final response to the same primordial problem that Parmenides articulated at the beginning of Western philosophy, namely the problem of sameness and difference . This problem is at the heart of most fundamental problems of philosophy, such as the problems of one/many, mind/body, freedom/determinism, etc. These paradoxes arise precisely because philosophy is looking for an answer. This seeking of remedy, of an exit from the possible impossibility that existence is, is what I identify as the metaphysical position. Gelassenheit is the name of that posture or mood which not only endures existence, but affirms it