On Being in Hegel and Heidegger

Hegel Bulletin. 2017. Vol. 38. No. 1. P. 150–170.

Haas A.

What is being? This is, from the Greeks to Hegel (according to Heidegger), the guid-
ing question of ontology and the history of philosophy as metaphysics. And the
answer is presence: ‘being’ means ‘being present’, ‘presencing’; ‘to be’ means ‘to be
present’. By clarifying the limit of this philosophy of presence, however, it is possible
to go beyond it, to a thinking of being as presence and absence—for both coming-
to-presence and going-out-into-absence are ways in which beings are, and being
happens. And yet, are presence and absence the only ways to think being? On the
contrary—there is a third. From the Greeks (through Hegel) to Heidegger, the being
that fails to come to presence, but also does not simply remain in absence—this is
what is merely implied, an implication. But then what does it mean to think being
as implied? Being as implying? As an implication?

Keywords: Hegel, ontology, metaphysics, implication, being, presence, Heidegger