The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hyperintensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological (...) dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)” (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the central issue in Heidegger’s path of thought from Being and Time to Contributions and beyond is what he will later call “the matter itself”: neither the meaning of being nor the analysis of Dasein but a transformational encounter in the margins of fundamental ontology. Heidegger’s account of temporality and transcendence from the late 1920s is a clue to the transformation, but it is not until the completion of fundamental ontology in the naming of (...) ontological difference that he arrives at a crisis which performs the transformation and announces the “overturning.” This interpretation revolves around a reading of Heidegger’s 1929 treatise “On the Essence of Ground” in which the text and subsequent marginal notes prepare the transition from Being and Time to Contributions, from Sein to Seyn, and from ontological difference to its appropriation. Thus we find that the language of Ereignis beginning in the 1930s and whatever we might call the “turn” signal the doing of justice to the original task from Being and Time. (shrink)

Heidegger’s ontologische Differenz imposes methodological limits which strictly mark his philosophy for rigor and determinacy. If it is not possible to think Being from the categories of the entity, it is also true that the difference is a tank of possibilities and developments to which Heidegger himself hints at. From the accuracy of the early works to the overturning of the problem in the later works, the ontological difference is a constant of Heideggerian thought. This paper seeks to push Existenz (...) from a mode of being of Dasein to a mode of giving of Seiende. In accordance with his late writings, bringing the question of the Being­-existence bond towards the perspective of the entity – and not only the entity among entities that poses the question –, the development of the problem in Heidegger’s meditation is analysed through the questions of ontological difference – the mode of negation, the between of distinction, the specific situatedness that defines experience, the Being, as a member of ontological difference, in its connection to the Nichts, the Event as a relaxation of the connection between Sein and Seiende. The entity that is exist­ent is the convergence point of the Event where Being and existent, Being and existence, are not in contrast, but protrude (ragen) towards each other revealing the traits of a Seyende des Seyns, of the entity of Being. (shrink)

The desire for the inner feeling of existence was central to Heidegger’s later philosophy. During the 1930s in works like the Contributions to Philosophy, he began to search for the direct experience, rather than the mere knowledge, of existential power. I characterize such feelings as post-Lutheran. Luther taught his followers to feel the presence of an existentially creative God within themselves. Such feelings, as evidence of one’s salvation, became endemic. After the Enlightenment and despite the rise of secularism, the desire (...) for the inner feeling of existence remained within portions of German culture. Heidegger rejected the idea of God as the foundation of existence, which he called an ontotheology, but he retained the desire to experience the coming-to-be of existence as an inner activity. In the Contributions, Heidegger repeatedly describes Being or “Seyn” as the “trembling” or “oscillation” between existence and nothingness. He tells us that nothingness always remains central to Being, which is what distinguishes Being from mere beings. The latter belong only to what has come-to-be; what Heidegger wanted to experience, not intellectually but as an inner feeling, was the power of coming-to-be. In short, Heidegger sought the inner experience of coming into being from nothingness. (shrink)