This article reveals and elucidates the multilayered significance of Heidegger’s notion of going‐under (Untergang) that remain concealed in his three‐volume Ponderings written from 1931 to 1941 as well as in his other nonpublic manuscripts concerning the history of Beyng written around the same period of time. For Heidegger, our era is one of gigantic going‐under, and Europe is the actualization of the decline (Untergang) of the West. However, the going‐under is constitutive of the transition (Übergang) into the other inception. By labeling the going‐under as the necessary courage of the human being, Heidegger accentuates the primordial role which going‐under could play in the grounding of the truth of Beyng. In On the Inception of 1941, Heidegger considers that such notions as event, inception, abyss, going‐under, and tragedy all share meaningful resonances in the free‐playing space of the clearing as the abyss, and need be all pondered upon from out of the inceptual essence of the abyss. Echoing his reversal of the relation between the Nothing and Beyng, which is derived from his self‐criticisms of the Contributions to Philosophy of 1936–1938, Heidegger even speaks of the overcoming of Beyng while stressing the primordiality of the going‐under.