This collection of original essays brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the influence and importance of Parmenides to Heidegger's quest to bring about the end of philosophy according to its own beginning.

While the significance of Plato and Aristotle to Martin Heidegger's philosophical development in the 1920s and 1930s is well documented, the role of Parmenides remains relatively obscure. From Heidegger's thinking prior to Being and Time and after it, toward his thought of The Event, Parmenides is a constant presence within Heidegger's developing concern to overcome metaphysics, and so restore for thinking the original question of being. This book makes the case that, without Parmenides, philosophy could not be philosophy, and Heidegger could not be Heidegger.