On Inception

<p><i>On Inception</i> is a translation of Martin Heidegger's <i>ber den Anfang</i> (GA 70). This work belongs to the crucial period, before and during WWII, when Heidegger was at work on a series of treatises that begins with "Contributions to Philosophy" and includes "The Event" and "The History of Beyng." These works are difficult, even hermetic, but represent a crucial development in Heidegger's thinking. <i>On Inception</i> deepens the investigation underway in the other volumes of the series and provides a unique perspective on Heidegger's thinking of Being and of Event. Here, Heidegger asks, with a greater insistence than anywhere else in his work, what it might mean to think of being as event, and not as presence. Event cannot be thought without the sense of a beginning—an inception—and so, Heidegger insists, we must try to think of being as inception, as fundamentally inceptive. <i>On Inception</i> pursues rigorously the difficult and puzzling implications of this speculation. It does not merely extend work already undertaken but also opens doors onto wholly other pathways.</p>