Phusis

Heidegger’s alternative and inceptive metaphysics begins by going back to Greek poetry to locate the originary encounter.  The importance of this originary encounter for us is that Heidegger tells us that the poets were dealing with their particular situation.

This situation, their Being-in-the-world, was in relation to phusis.It was not a natural process that the Greeks first experienced what phusis is, but the other way around: on the basis of a fundamental experience of Being in poetry and thought, what they had to call phusis disclosed itself to them. (16)

The Greeks begin to notice “things” among this overwhelming sway (phusis).

This act of noticing is originary because of an inceptive state of nature.The violent, the overwhelming is the essential character of the sway itself. (159-60) We would have to think of this in an “as if” situation: as if we could experience things for the first time, to see things apart from other “things,” and to begin to notice their essences as they disclosed themselves to us; a world where literate tools like the definition and dictionary have yet to be invented. 

This noticing of “things,” Heidegger frames as originary apprehension.On the other hand, apprehend means to interrogate or witness, to call him to account, and thus to comprehend the state of affairs, to determine and set fast how things are going and how things stand. Apprehension in this double sense denotes a process of lettings things come to oneself in which one does not simply take things in, but rather takes up a position to receive what shows itself. (147-8) The key to the Greek inception in relation to the world is that things became disclosed to their selves in their situation. 

The literate framework established at the onset permits the recording of the “things” the Greeks apprehended via the word with alphabetic writing. In writing things down, in recording them via writing technology, the Greeks establish a new way of thinking within their new apparatus.  The creation of “things” allowed for literate organization: the category.Because, as ways of Being-said, they have been created out of logos--and because to assert is kategorein--the determinations of the Being of beings are called kategoriai, categories. On this basis, the theory of Being and of the determinations of beings as such becomes a theory that investigates the categories and their order. The goal of all ontology is the theory of categories." (199-200)

Metaphysics, the categorization and organization of the world, is possible through the written word.  However, what Heidegger shows us, is that how this categorization ensues can delimit the possible thinking supported by such categories.  Literacy is an apt support structure for pure reason (science), but not well equipped for practical reason.