Introduction to Metaphysics, originally a summer lecture course at the University of Freiburg in 1935, was first published eighteen years later by the Max Niemeyer Verlag (Halle, Germany), simultaneously with the Seventh German Edition of Being and Time.

[citation needed] Ralph Manheim produced a 1959 translation praised by Fried and Polt in their introduction to the second edition as largely responsible for introducing Heidegger to the English-speaking world.

[6] Heidegger aimed to correct this misunderstanding (Charles Guignon 2014) by reviving Presocratic notions of 'being' with an emphasis on "understanding the way beings show up in (and as) an unfolding happening or event."

[8] Heidegger used his discussion of Heraclitus' and Parmenides' respective notions of logos in his argument that to avoid nihilism, modern philosophy must "reinvert" the traditional, post-Socratic conception of the relationship between being and thinking, according to Daniel Dahlstrom.

")[12][13] Gregory Fried and Richard Polt praised the work for "the range and depth of its thought as well as for its intricate and nuanced style", arguing that it deserved its status as the successor to Being and Time.

Regarding its mention of National Socialism, they write that, “Interpreters differ widely, and often acrimoniously, on whether Heidegger’s Nazism was due to a personal character defect” or whether the philosophy itself reflects a fascist outlook.