ContentsEditor’s ForewordLECTURE 1: ‘What Being Really is’Against the philosophy of standpoints and philosophical world views; the meaning of rigour in philosophy and the positive sciences – the plan of these lectures; immanent critique – ‘What being really is’; ontology as structural interconnection – the doctrine of being contra idealism and methodology – the concept of meaning; the being of beings; the meaning of being – being and essence – categorial intuition versus abstractionLECTURE 2: On Ontological DifferenceThe structure of being and being itself; regional ontologies and fundamental ontology – on the problem of ontological difference (I) – ontic questions and ontological questions – questions concerning the meaning of being – question of origin as petitio principii – circular reasoning (I) – critique of origins – circular reasoning (II) – fusion of mysticism and the claim to rationality – historical dimension of ‘the question of being’LECTURE 3: History of the Concept of BeingCircular reasoning (III) – the unreflected ‘question of being’ – being in the Pre-Socratics, in Plato and Aristotle – experience of being is not ‘prior’; being as product of abstraction – being and thought in Parmenides; abstraction and vital powers not distinguished for archaic thought; the most ancient not the truest – philosophy and the particular sciences; dialectic of enlightenment; residual character of being – two kinds of truthLECTURE 4: Being and Language (I)Prehistory of the new ontologies: Franz Brentano; ontology as counter-enlightenment – a double front against realism and conceptualism – fundamental ontology as hermeneutics; being and language; nominalist critique of language – analysis of the concept of being; positivism and language – conceptuality as domination of nature; inadequacy of concept and thing; thing in itself and being – functional understanding of concepts; double sense of being as concept and anti-conceptLECTURE 5: Being and Language (II)Ambiguity of the concept of being (I) – arbitrariness in concept formation; Kant versus Spinoza - ambiguity of the concept of being (II) – ambiguity of the concept of being (III) – subjectivity as constitutive for ontology – substantial character of language; borrowing from theology – on the analysis of language; obligations regarding linguistic form – the wavering character of beingLECTURE 6: Separating Being and BeingsExamples from antiquity; on Aristotle’s terminology; the priority of the tode ti – genesis and validity; Heidegger’s being as third possibility; on Heidegger’s concept of origin – archaic dimension of Heidegger’s ontology; against genetic explanation; phenomenology and history – phenomenological method; red and redness; the inference to being-in-itself in Scheler and Heidegger – Husserl’s return to transcendentalismLECTURE 7: Mind in relation to Beings‘Priority’ as petitio principii – critique of the possibility of ontology; on Cartesian dualism – phenomenological reduction of the subject; objectivity of the second level; shutting out beings – philosophical compulsion for cleanliness – allergy towards beings; an aura borrowed from theology; the story of Snow White – ontology as counterpart to nominalism and positivismLECTURE 8: Ontologizing the Ontic (I)The subject-object division not permanent; fundamental ontology and the loss of tradition; the ‘unintelligibility of Heidegger – oblivion of the numinous; material stuff and abstraction in the Pre-Socratics – ontology or dialectics; ‘being’ as ‘the wholly other’ – critique as differentiation; original non-differentiation; Heidegger’s anti-intellectualism – against postponement –Heidegger’s trick: ontologizing the onticLECTURE 9: Ontologizing the Ontic (II)Conceptualizing the non-conceptual; philosophy of being and idealism, Heidegger and Hegel – ontologizing existence – spurious appeal of the new; fascination through ignorance – subreption of the nominalized verb ‘being’ – Dasein as being and a being – ‘Be who you are!’ – eidetic science and ontology – subjectivity as the site of beingLECTURE 10: Ontological NeedHeidegger and Kant; Kant’s ultimate intention – Heidegger’s thought as the site of being; a diminished concept of subject: absence of labour and spontaneity – initial observations on the ontological need – a sociological interjection – the ‘elevated tone’; Heidegger’s language and Adorno’s great grandfather; fundamental ontology as index of a lackLECTURE 11: The Abdication of PhilosophyOn the sociology of the ontological need – philosophy and society; distracting effect of Marxism; the relevance of morality – philosophy and the natural sciences; philosophy and art – Kant’s abdication before God, freedom, and immortality – the ‘resurrection of metaphysics’; impotence of philosophy in the face of the essential – Schelling, Schopenhauer, NietzscheLECTURE 12: The Relation to KierkegaardScience versus philosophy; accepted heresies – an anti-academic academy – licensed audacity – relation to Kierkegaard – ‘subjectivity is truth’ – history of the concept of ontologyLECTURE 13: Critique of SubjectivismThe anti-subjectivism of modern ontology – the problem of relativism (I); how questions vanish – the problem of relativism (II); ‘to the things themselves’ – transcendental subjectivism and egoity – the acosmism of post-Kantian idealism; the unreason of the world - the crisis of subjectivity and the development of cosmology – critique of the domination of nature; fundamental ontology and dialectical materialism; changes in the concept of reasonLECTURE 14: Hypostasizing the QuestionThe crucial role of subjectivity in Heidegger’s early thought; Heidegger and Lukács – need and truth; question and answer Ð the philosophical structure of the question; hypostasis of the question in Heidegger – the question as surrogate answer; the mechanism of subreption – the ideology of ‘man’LECTURE 15: Time, Being, Meaning‘Man’, ‘tradition’, ‘life’: indices of loss – philosophy of existence and philosophy of life – labour and the consciousness of time; phenomenology of ‘wisdom’; loss of historical continuity, America – antiques business and abstract time; ontologizing the concept of substance – time and being as complementary concepts; disenchantment of the world and the creation of meaning – raiding poetryLECTURE 16: Ontology and SocietyHeidegger’s archaic language; feigned origins; primordial history and petit bourgeois mentality – social presuppositions of ontology – ontology as philosophical neo-classicism – impossibility of ontology today – Heidegger’s strategy; sympathy with barbarism – phenomenological caprice – ‘project’LECTURE 17: Mythic ContentRegression to mythology – fate and hybris in the concept of being = blindness, anxiety, death; relation to religion – National Socialism and the homeland; National Socialism and the relation to history – the indeterminacy of myth and the longing for the concrete; the most concrete as the most abstract – being as ‘itself’LECTURE 18: The Purity and Immediacy of BeingTautological determination of being; purity in Husserl; scholasticism and empiricism in Brentano – the method of eidetic intuition – intuition and the a priori – on the concept of ontological difference (II) – purity and immediacy irreconcilable; conceptuality as the Fall – idle talk and the forgetfulness of being; the experience of being, the language of nature and musicLECTURE 19: The Indeterminacy of BeingPro domo – indeterminacy as determination – the ‘overcoming’ of nihilism; being as ens realissimum - the question of constitution versus the priority of being; synthesis and the synthesized; the physiognomic gaze – the particular transparent to its universal – being – the meaning of being (I)LECTURE 20: Meaning of Being and the CopulaThe meaning of being (II) – ontology as prescription – protest against reification; the problem of relativism (III) – structure of the lectures – the copula (I)LECTURE 21: The Copula and the Question of BeingThe copula (II) – the copula (III) – no transcendence of being – the childish question; language and truth – the question of being (I); ‘authenticity’ and the decline of civilisation – the question of being (II);LECTURE 22: Being and ExistenceHeidegger’s turn; the concept of ontological difference (III) – the mythology of being; archaism – function of the concept of existence – ‘Dasein is ontological in itself’ – ‘existence’ as authoritarian – ‘historicity’ – against the ontology of the non-ontological – history as the medium of philosophy – critiqueLECTURE 23: The Concept of Negative Dialectic‘Peep hole metaphysics’ and negative dialectics - Left Hegelianism and the ban on images – priority of the object – reversing the subjective reduction – interpreting the transcendental – ‘transcendental illusion’; against hierarchyEditor’s NotesIndex