Ontology and dialectics: 1960/61

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 Lukacs - need and truth
 question and answer D 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