Being and Time previous philosophies that had become entrenched and hidden within the theoretical attitude of the metaphysics of presence. This use of the word "Destruktion" is meant to signify not a negative operation but rather a positive transformation or recovery. In "Being and Time" Heidegger briefly undertakes a destructuring of the philosophy of René Descartes, but the second volume, which was intended to be a "Destruktion" of Western philosophy in all its stages, was never written. In later works Heidegger uses this approach to interpret the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Plato, among others. "Being and Time" is the major achievement
Being and Time of what a hammer "is" is not determined by a theoretical understanding of its presence, but by the fact that it is something we need at the moment we wish to do hammering. Only a "later" understanding might come to contemplate a hammer "as" an object. The total understanding of being results from an explication of the implicit knowledge of being that inheres in "Dasein". Philosophy thus becomes a form of interpretation, but since there is no external reference point outside being from which to begin this interpretation, the question becomes to know in which way to proceed with this