The project of a history of being, which Heidegger begins to elaborate from the 1930s onwards, must face multiple criticisms in order to account for its coherence and legitimacy. In particular, the German philosopher is accused of having brought together the history of metaphysics unto one single and exclusive guiding thread (the question of being). In this way, and based on this reconstruction, the legitimacy of any historical research would be considerably limited. Thus, major figures (themselves influenced by Heideggerian thinking), such as Derrida, Ricœur or Blumenberg, seem to share this opinion. The posthumous publication of the writings of the Ereignis, as well as of the Black Notebooks, help us reconsider this interpretation, and allows us to expose many arguments against the usual criticisms. Even before presenting it to the public, Heidegger is aware of the difficulties involved in his project. It could be, then, that the history of being is far from that totalizing and authoritarian project that judges Western history and its destiny as mere decay (Untergang).
In this contribution, taking as the starting point numerous comments and notes scattered in his private writings, we will try to elucidate what kind of history the history of being represents. Against his critiques, we will argue that it contains new possibilities, methodological and conceptual resources, which can be reactivated from our current phenomenological perspective. In this respect, some passages underline that the history of being would be the continuation of the phenomenological destruction already announced in the first pages of Being and Time. Finally, as the philosopher points out in his “Anmerkungen VII”, perhaps the history of being would be capable of founding a different interrogation of historiography and historical science (Historie), giving new perspectives to classical problems. We will argue that, despite its limits, we can read the Heidegger of the 1930s-1940s as a rigorous but creative historian of philosophy.