This article examines the development of Heidegger’s thought directly following Being and Time , a period that is significant both in its own right and in its capacity to shed light on the problems driving Heidegger’s later works. I assess Crowell’s thesis that Heidegger’s aim was to develop a metontology along the lines of a pre-critical metaphysica specialis based on a reassessment of Kant’s transcendental dialectic. I show that such a reading misrepresents the nature of Heidegger’s project in this period and argue that Heidegger was instead attempting to develop a distinctively critical metaphysics in a post-Kantian vein.

metontology | transcendental illusion | special metaphysics | unity of being | temporality