that Being is the emptiest of all concepts and therefore nothing at all is quite informative in revealing the oblivion of Being in modern thinking. This oblivion, however, is for Heidegger the culminating point of the spiritual decline of the West.28 Much like in his story of the wanderer, decline is the result of a distancing from the source of our history. In front of such a danger, Heidegger appeals to an understanding of existence in terms of a transcendence from that which is most familiar 25 It is in his 1930 essay "On the Essence of Truth," that Heidegger explicitly draws a link between the beginning of Western Dasein's historicality and the Greek understanding of Being as physis (see Heidegger, Pathmarks, trans. William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge Universitysolicits their actions, and yet, they remain unaware of it. Like in Being and Time, Heidegger's interpretation of the first stage of the allegory suggests that human beings have the tendency of becoming absorbed in the world, and "Being-lost in the publicness of the 'they'."33 "The prisoners do not even know that they are in a 'situation'."34 It is important, however, to remain alert to two important differences between Heidegger's account of everydayness in Being and Time and its tacit re-examination in the early 30's. One thing to bear in mind is that Heidegger's later remarks about everydayness are informed by the first steps that his thinking takes toward the history of Being (Seinsgeschichte).35 This means that the situation of the cave dwellers is not interpreted merely as