This work, the text of Martin Heidegger's lecture course of 1929/30, should be extremely valuable for an understanding of Heidegger's transition from the major work of his early years, Being and Time, to his later preoccupations with language, truth, and history. First published in German in 1983 as volume 29/30 of Heidegger's collected works, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics includes an extended treatment of the history of metaphysics and an elaboration of the philosophy of life and nature. Heidegger's concepts of organism, animal behaviour, and environment are developed and defined with intensity.