With the basic question of metaphysics “Why are there beings at all rather than nothing,” our question implies beings have a “why,” a ground that is not just a cause in the ordinary sense.  Moreover, we are not just asking after this or that being or the total collection of beings, but rather beings as such and as a whole.  For example, I might look out the window and see 6 people.  There is no unity here just a collection artificially numbered 6.  By contrast, if I look out on the ice and see a team of six hockey players, they are born out of a unity and purpose even if two of their members have to leave the ice because of penalties.

Previously, I gave a number of examples of beings in unity, such as the beings in the world of the schizophrenic appearing in a conspiracy saturated way.  Another example I gave was how beings are usually subtly or conspicuously out of joint when suddenly something splendid happens and everything temporarily falls into place and God is once again in his heaven and all’s right with the world (so to speak – even an atheist knows what it means for everything to fall into place).  Another example was how a hammer was not first a lone being but had significance connecting to the other entities in the workshop related to the purposes of the carpenter.

Heidegger comments:

The domain of this question is limited only by what simply is not and never is: by Nothing.  All that is not Nothing comes into the question, and in the end even Nothing itself – not, as it were, because it is something, a being (for after all, we are talking about it), but because it “is” Nothing… We are not interrogating this being or that being, nor all beings, each in turn; instead, we are asking from the start about the whole of what is, or as we say for reasons to be discussed later: beings as a whole and as such … This why question does not seek causes for beings, causes which are of the same kind and drawn from the same level as beings themselves (Heidegger, IM, 2-4)

We spoke about this Ground/Reason with respect to Leibniz and how reasons are not causes that prevent beings from falling out of existence but allow entities to stand forth in their fullness (e.g., how a right-angle triangle appears to a child vs to a geometry professor with their relative levels of mathematical intelligence).