"To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky."
Thus did Heidegger think, and such was his accomplishment: a body of work that stands still in the philosophical world's sky like a "Rosetta" stone--a device that enables the translation of the Western philosophical canon (Plato to Kant) from metaphysical speculation (the search for substance or a bedrock of "whatness" or quiddity called "Being") into a new, and different, direction of thought and practice. Heidegger abandoned the presiding pretense of Western metaphysics (that there is an Archimedean standpoint upon which one may place a philosophical lever to "move the world") and adopted, instead, a more humble prospect: a new place from which to pose the question of how things hang together. The move from "what" to "how" is the true hallmark of Heideggerian genius.
The greatest difficulty with Heidegger's project is encountered in his insistence on pouring this new wine into old wineskins: he does not abandon the old metaphysical vocabulary (a la Wittgenstein) but attempts to invest it with new significances. The result of this strategy is much tortured prose. The most important prerequisite of Heidegger studies is perseverance. Through perseverance, the stone that the builders rejected becomes the chief corner stone.
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