I. The concept of being

‘Being, pure being,—without any further determination’; or ‘being, and nothing else, without further determination or filling’; being understood as ‘indeterminate immediacy’—so begins Hegel’s Logic (WL II: 59). And it ends with being too: the absolute idea—this ‘alone is being’ (WL I 1: 371–72). But what is being? What is Hegel’s concept of being? And how does he think it?

In fact, for Hegel’s system of science, the phenomenologic (Phenomenology and Logic) of absolute spirit’s absolute (actually-rational speculative) knowledge of the absolute idea, being means presence, that is, the presence of absolute spirit throughout history, and so throughout the history of the education of consciousness from sense-certainty to absolute knowledge (a knowledge which was always already present to absolute spirit); and the presence of the absolute idea throughout thinking (which was always already the essence and ground, the reality and truth, the substance and subject, of every concept). For the end is present in the beginning, and continues to be so; the τέλος is the ἀρχή. As Hegel writes: ‘advance is actually a retreat into the ground, to what is original and true, on which depends and, in fact, from which originates, that with which the beginning is made’ (WL II: 43; Haas Reference Haas2000: 90). Thus, both the Phenomenology and the Logic must be read in reverse, back-to-front, from the last chapter to the first, from absolute knowing to sense-certainty, from the absolute idea to being—for the end is already present as the actual beginning, and the beginning is merely a result of abstraction, the coming to presence of the end.

What then—if the beginning is the end, or the end is the beginning—does it mean for absolute knowing to be sense-certainty? Or to claim that the idea is being? What is this verb, being, ‘to be’, doing here?

In fact, in phenomenologic—as for the entire onto-theo-logical history of philosophy as metaphysics—‘being is understood in the same sense as in the ancients, namely, as continual presence’ (Heidegger Reference Heidegger2001).Footnote ³ The verb, being, means: to be present—or being means presence. So the end is present at the beginning, or the beginning is where the end comes to presence. Thus, absolute knowledge is already present in sense-certainty, and throughout the Phenomenology; and being is how the idea comes to presence as the beginning of the Logic, and stays with it throughout.

On the one hand, every moment of the dialectical movement of the Phenomenology bears the stamp of spirit’s presence, of its absolute knowledge and knowledge of the absolute—and so, of being qua presence. If, in the beginning, ‘knowledge of what immediately or simply is ... pure being or this simple immediacy’, comes to presence qua sense-certainty, that is, the consciousness of a contradictory concept (that an object which is immediately present in the world as a particular this-or-that, here-and-now, is just as universal); it is because, in the end, absolute spirit’s absolute knowledge of ‘what it is’ (whereby it comes back to itself as pure presence-to-self) reveals itself as having always been present—not only in us, but just as much in spirit’s absolute self-consciousness (PhG:22–23,764). For spirit was always already present in the moment of sense-certainty—whether we recognize it and know it, or not. And ‘being is thinking’ because thinking comes to presence as the thinking of being, or ‘a substance is’ means ‘a substance comes to presence (as itself by going-through the movement of becoming other than itself)’ (PhG: lxvii, lxiv).Footnote ⁴ So spirit presents itself to itself as natural-historical, as the dialectical movement by which it comes to the absolute self-presence of absolute self-knowledge—which is why spirit’s becoming is eternally-temporal, both together, beide zusammen, (1) the eternal externalization, ewige Entäußerung, of its continual existence (the presentation of its presence as the substance of nature), and (2) the recollection and preservation of itself in time, an die Zeit (the re-presentation of its presence as history) (PhG: 763–64). Thus, from what presents itself as consciousness to what comes to presence as absolute knowing, spirit is present—or rather, the presence of what is present—for Hegel thinks the continuous presence of spirit, just as he thinks absolute knowing as being (or having always already been from the beginning) present throughout the Phenomenology.

On the other hand, in the Logic, every moment is merely another way in which the concept is, and comes to presence. The concept is (1) present as being, as ‘indeterminate immediacy’, pure presence, without any further determination (WL II: 59). So if being is immediate (like pure nothing), it is present as the pure concept of being; and if being is indeterminate, it comes to presence without determination, as being a purely indeterminate concept (WL I 1: 7, 21, 22).Footnote ⁵ In other words, being is presented as devoid of all content, equal only to itself; pure being presents itself as purely indeterminate. And ‘to be indeterminate’ means ‘to be indeterminately present’; just as ‘to be immediate’ means ‘to be immediately present’. So being can be grasped insofar as its indeterminacy (being indeterminate) comes to presence; or it can be thought only as the presence of being. For determination means conceptual presentation, how being is being, how being is present (or comes to presence) in all its purity—for the concept of pure being is the presence of both being, and the concept of being (thus, the presence of the concept). But then (2) the concept is present as being nothing: if being is presented without any determinations, pure indeterminacy—well then, it is nothing (WL II: 59).Footnote ⁶ Then as the absence of all determinations, being presents itself as being nothing; being is the presentation of nothing, the presence of non-presence; and ‘to be nothing’ means ‘to be nothing’, just as ‘being nothing’ means ‘to be present as nothing’, or ‘being present insofar as nothing is determined’, or ‘nothing is present’—here or there or anywhere, now or then or anytime. And thinking being is thinking nothing; just as the thought of being is the thought of nothing. So being and nothing are the same: pure presentations of pure indeterminateness, which is why they present themselves as one another, come to presence as the presence of the absence of determination (WL II: 60). And then (3), the concept is present as being both being and nothing, as becoming. For being and nothing are not just being and nothing: in being the same, they are themselves and each other; or more precisely, being and nothing are (in truth) their sameness, their relation through which they become one another, their unity (and so not merely unmediated, separate, self-equal; but just as much mediated, inseparable, equal-to-one-another). Indeed, sameness is how being and nothing come to presence; their way of being present as one (although not simply identical)—for the unity of being and nothing both destroys their difference and maintains it. And this unity is becoming, that is, the becoming nothing of being which is the coming to be (the becoming) of nothing, or the movement of both through which they come to presence as distinct and indistinguishable, separate and inseparable. So becoming is the way in which being and nothing are present, and ‘to become’ means ‘to be continually present as the movement of being and nothing’, the movement whereby their difference comes to presence, and (becoming their identity) goes out into absence. And thinking being and/or nothing is thinking becoming as the truth of the relation of being and nothing, that is, thinking the being of becoming, thinking how becoming is, or always already is (so that being and becoming can come to presence as different from one another, each identical with itself—although the truth is that they are also one, identical and different). Thus, the meaning of being in the Logic is being-present: if ‘being is nothing’ means that ‘being comes to presence as nothing’, if ‘becoming is a movement’ (whereby being and nothing are the same and different) means that ‘becoming presents itself in the presence of being and nothing’; then it is because the concept is continually present (and coming to presence) throughout its determination as quality–quantity–measure, or reflection–appearance–actuality, or subjectivity–objectivity–idea (which is also how any being, natural or cultural, subject or substance, whether τόδε τι or φύσις as a whole, a word or deed, can be present and come to presence as itself or as another)—for the concept reveals itself as having been continuously present as the truth, and being means always already having been present.

For phenomenologic then—in fact, for the entire system of science, and so for everything that is—‘to be’ is ‘to be present’. Being is being-present. And each moment of the movement of Hegel’s thought exhibits the continual presence of the absolute idea of conceptual spirit.

But how so? How can the Phenomenology’s spirit be, on the one hand, present in sense-certainty, in force and understanding, in the master and the slave—and yet, on the other hand, still be spirit? How can spirit be another (the spirit of, for example, reason and religion)—and yet still be itself? How can the Logic’s idea come to presence as indeterminate immediacy—be there at the beginning—and yet still be the idea (there at the end)? Or how can the concept be present in concepts—and yet be irreducible to any of them? How could there be a concept of being and of nothing, and becoming—and yet still, a concept of the concept?

Hegel answers: the concept can be continually present only as a contradiction; the presence of spirit is contradictory. And this is why each moment of the Phenomenology is contradictory: spirit is present in (and as) natural consciousness—we just do not know it until all is recollected and realized and revealed at the end, and the end shows itself to have always already actually been there from the beginning. And this is why each concept of the Logic is a contradiction: being is indeterminate and determined, itself and another, nothing (from which it is both distinguishable and indistinguishable, immediate and mediated, separable and inseparable, the same and different, empty and full, pure and impure, itself and its opposite, ἑτερότης or στέρησις)—but the concept is not simply a concept, not merely a particular concept, although being is a concept, as is nothing, because the concept is just as universal, which is how it can also be both being and nothing. But this contradiction (of particular and universal) is not a defect or flaw, not a ‘real philosophical embarrassment’ (GA 2, front-piece); nor is it illogical, nor simply nonsense—on the contrary, it is the truth of the phenomenologic in which ‘all things are in themselves contradictory’ (WL I 2: 77).

What then, does it mean to think this contradictory concept? How is the contradiction of being to be brought to presence in thought? In a way of thinking that (in accordance with Hegel’s adoption of the Spinozistic principle, omnis determinatio est negatio) must be as contradictory as it is non-contradictory?Footnote ⁷ And a contradiction that must be as present as it is absent?

In fact, Hegel is quite clear: contradiction must be thought as the essence of the concept. In this way, the concept is neither a category—neither Aristotelian nor Kantian, which both seek to resolve contradiction; nor is it simply an abstract idea (like some Platonic other-worldly εἶδος)—for it is just as real and concrete. Rather, the concept, Begriff, is a way of tolerating contradiction, by both resolving and maintaining it, by grasping, begreifen, the truth of contradiction contradictorily, by ‘sublating’ contradiction. And Hegel uses this word, sublation, Aufhebung, because it has the advantage of ‘not just different meanings, but opposite ones’ (WL II: xvii); it translates a Latin two-fold origin: tollo, tollere, sustuli, sublatus comes from tolero, tolerare, toleravi, toleratus (bear, endure, tolerate) and fero, ferre, tulis, latus (bring, bear; tell speak of; consider; carry off, win, receive, produce; get). Thus, as Hegel notes: one word, aufheben, is essentially ambiguous, double, two-fold, Janus-headed (and so perfectly suited to phenomenologic)—for it means both destroying or dissolving, elevare, and preserving or keeping, conservare.Footnote ⁸

It should, then, be no surprise that the concept of being is contradictory, the sublation that simultaneously preserves and destroys itself—for being tolerates nothing as its opposite, maintains nothing insofar as it is. And so too, being as presence is a contradiction—for it tolerates absence as its negation (and itself as negation of the negation), presents it as being absent (itself a contradiction). In this way, being is and is not, is indeterminate and determinate, immediate and mediated, identical and different; or, the concept comes to presence as itself by being another—which is a contradiction. But not just contradiction—for the contradiction must be contradicted, if it is to be contradictory. Thus, the truth of each moment is the movement of contradiction and non-contradiction, as positive as it is negative; it is the continual presence of the concept in that which Hegel names ‘the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk’, but a revel which is just as much repose (PhG §47: lvi; Haas Reference Haas1997).

And if being is contradictory, then spirit’s way of being present, the continual presence of absolute knowing, is contradictory as well—for every moment of history (even the sense-certainty with which the Phenomenology begins) is absolutely spiritual, mediated by the knowing spirit that is there, present; but each is just as much immediately itself and unspiritual. So spirit is the essence of both the master and the slave—but each is master and slave of itself, and spirit is gone. And spirit knows not only itself, but its negation—for it is the contradiction of both, externalization and internalization, concrete and abstract, subject and substance, really ideal and ideally real. Thus, contradictory spirit comes to presence temporally as history; and has always already come to presence (or been present, eternally or constantly present, which is the end of history).

And the Logic shows how to tolerate the presence of contradiction in thinking—and in being itself. In this way, phenomenologic is not simply natural or human science—for insofar as science refuses the contradictory Aufhebung of ‘knowledge and truth’, it cannot know (or think) contradiction as true, nor the truth of contradictory and two-sided knowledge, nor think truth qua contradiction (PhG: 762). But if being is a contradiction, and thought as contradictory, then logic must learn to tolerate the presence of the contradictory concept, just as the work of phenomenology is learning to tolerate spirit’s contradictory presence.

II. The question of being

If phenomenologic, however, thinks being qua presence; then, for Heidegger, Hegel is (1) unable to raise the question of being because he has already answered it with absolute spirit’s continually present absolute idea, and (2) unable to engage in asking about the ‘to be’ because he already thinks he knows that it means ‘to be present’. On the one hand, Hegel thinks what being is as spirit (or concept, or idea), that is, a being, ein Seiendes (albeit one that is two-fold, double, contradictory: ideally real and really ideal, substance and subject, formal–material, abstract–concrete, empirical–transcendental, as negative as it is positive); he thinks spirit qua totality of things, the beingness, Seinheit, essence or concept or idea (even the absolute essence or absolute concept or absolute idea) of being that is always already present as the ‘ground of the belonging-together’ of an (absolute) substance, or comes to presence as the foundation or ὑποκείμενον of the (absolute) knowing of an (absolute) subject.Footnote ⁹ But this means that Hegel cannot think beings as a whole, Seienden im Ganzen, or being as a whole, Sein im Ganzen or being itself, Sein, the being of beings, Sein des Seienden—for although he thinks what it is, he forgets about how so; and thus, cannot think both the what (presence) and the how (present) of being (GA 9: 110; GA 2: 8, 16n). On the other hand, Hegel thinks being qua contradiction; but this means thinking the presence of contradiction, however true—not only that being is always already present as aufgehoben, but that the contradictory concept is continually present as sublated in the Phenomenology’s absolute knowledge, and in the Logic’s movement of sublation in play (GA 65: 264; GA 68: 12).

And yet, although this philosophy of presence is, according to Heidegger, the apogee or completion of Western philosophy as metaphysics, the Vollendung of ontology, it is not the only way to think being. On the contrary, by listening to what language (and especially the language of the Greeks) has to say about being, as well as how it does so, it is possible to take up the task of thinking being in a way that is no longer simply bound to presence, that is not merely limited to what is present; and so to destroy or destructure the traditional (and still dominant) answer to the question of being. Thus, by clarifying the limits of the philosophy of presence, Heidegger hopes to contribute to the history of metaphysics by attempting to notice that which has remained unnoticed, seeking to think the unthought, say the unsaid, remember what has been forgotten and how so.

How then, is it possible to think ‘what being is’ in a way that does not reduce it to a being, or the presence of the beingness of a being? And how is it possible to think ‘how being is’ as not simply being present?

Heidegger is quite clear: thinking must take a Schritt zurück, a step back from the present, and back from the way in which being qua presence has been thought from the Greeks to Hegel—even to those who today remain loyal to the philosophy of presence and the ontology of the present (Heidegger Reference Heidegger1957: 39).Footnote ¹⁰ Or rather, three steps back: (1) the step from Hegel’s negating as preserving the presence of the negated, and into a questioning (of being and beings) that opens up the possibility of the absence of an answer; (2) the step from the presence of the (tolerated) contradiction of identity and difference, and into an original difference that opens onto the possibility of the absence of identity; (3) the step from the eternal presence of the present (as the ground of history and the experience of time from the Greeks to contemporary science), and into a temporality of original finitude that opens up the possibility of the non-present, the absent (that is not merely reducible to a present absence). And this means back from Hegel.

First step: while Hegel thinks negation as the movement by which spirit, knowledge, the idea, comes to presence (as nothing, in the Logic, for example, is the negation of being, and becoming is the negation of the negation, which will itself be negated); for Heidegger, this simply embodies the metaphysical prejudice for translating the negativity of absence into positive presence. But the conceptual thinking that negates what is absent in order to tolerate contradiction actually leaves fundamental absence (like abstract negation)—as well as the essence of the nothing and nothingness—unthought; and

Or again: ‘Hegel’s negativity is no negativity at all’—for the No of the nothing, of non-presence, absent absence, is already sublated, aufgehoben, in the Yes, present absence (GA 68: 47). And if phenomenologic thinks immediate absence as mediated, it cannot think immediate immediacy or the absencing of immediate absence—rather, ‘with Hegel: everything immediate is mediated’ (GA 56–57: 108). So infinite absence is thought as present qua absent, wherein lies its finitude; just as infinite infinity is bad, schlecht, and must be translated into good infinity, a finite infinity, in order to think the accomplishment of what has always already been accomplished, the thought of what is totalized, completed, ended. And thinking is merely the explication of the Vollendung, of what is the case, the realization that ‘what is’ has always been true, the revelation of the truth, the grasping (as in Platonic ἀνάμνησις) of what is actually already there, present, to be grasped or revealed, discovering or uncovering the infinite presence of what has actually been infinitely present. There is nothing new here, nothing truly absent, only the unconcealing, ἀλήθεια, of the very old—thus, complete boredom, die vollständige Langweiligkeit. As Heidegger writes: ‘nothing happens anymore, and nothing can happen’ (GA 68: 54)—which is not simply a criticism, especially from a thinker who undertakes an entire phenomenology of boredom (GA 29–30). But if Heidegger follows Hegel in negating the one-sidedness, das Einseitige, of traditional metaphysics as onto-theology; it is not because he follows Hegel’s adoption of the contradictory concept—rather, Heidegger seeks to think being’s presence and absence, that is, its all-sidedness, das Allseitige (GA 68: 54). Then thinking is not merely negating absence (and affirming, nor negating the negation, nor affirming the affirmation), just as speaking is not simply yes-saying (nor merely judging, determining, subsuming under categories). Thinking is a matter of questioning, of questioning and listening for what is present and absent, for an answer and non-answer, for the coming to presence of what is answerable and the remaining in absence of the unanswerable, for that which presents itself as given and for what is not (and cannot be) given. And questioning? For Heidegger, questioning is a way of being that opens up the possibility of thinking presence and absence; it is a way for us human beings to be with being, a belonging-together that happens when we step-back from determining and negating (and from determinate negation) what presents itself, back from the translations of the philosophy of presence, back from grasping and back from the nachträgliche conceptualization of that which is always already present, in order to raise the question of being present and absent, and take up the task of listening to how being comes to presence (and goes out into absence) in beings (GA 68: 39). And although questioning may not know the answer to the question of being (whether such an answering is possible at all, or rather far more impossible) and may not be able to bring the absence of being to presence—it might at least know (in accordance with Socratic irony) that it does not know, which is perhaps more than can be said for the history of philosophy as metaphysics, or for the ontology that stretches from the Greeks to us.Footnote ¹¹

Second step: while Hegel thinks the coming to presence of the ‘unity of being and non-being’ (WL II: 48), the contradictory identity of identity and difference, the conceptual ground of subject and substance, the infinite (eternally present) foundation of knowledge; Heidegger also thinks the non-presence of identity, that is, the difference that belongs to ‘everything that “is”’ (GA 40: 155). Or, prior to the presence of spirit in each of its historical moments lies their absence, out of which they come, and the difference between presence and absence. So more original than contradiction is difference, the intolerant Streit, πόλεμος, différend, out of which tolerance comes. And before the concept of the concept (the idea) actually shows itself to have always already been present, before the idea reveals itself in any concept (so that truth can be what is the case, wirklich in the world and in consciousness, the actual work of spirit, ἐνέργεια), it must have already been absent therefrom, that is, a mögliche presence, a possibility, potentia, δύναμις; and there must be a difference between actually present and potentially present (that is, actually absent)—but this difference, or difference’s way of being, can be neither actual nor potential, neither present nor absent. Heidegger’s step then, is back from the unity of being and non-being in the history of philosophy, back from the unity of presence and absence of history, spirit, science, logic; and so back from the identity of identity and difference, back from the one-sided logical identity of Fichte’s I=I, back from the no-sided indifference of Schelling’s night in which all cows are black (PhG: xix); and back from Hegel’s refusal or Ab-sage of difference (WL I 2: 43), whereby he cannot question the origin of identity, nor think the difference of identity and difference, nor the absence of unity in the difference of being and non-being—and this is because Hegel already knows (or thinks he knows) that difference has come to presence by being abstracted out of identity, and that difference is to be (or has always already actually been present as) aufgehoben by contradiction. Thus, Heidegger steps back from all this, and into a thinking of original difference, the difference of differences, the ontological difference (between being and beings), the grounding or fundamental difference, gründender Unterschied, from whence beings as a whole first come to presence and go out into absence.Footnote ¹²

Third step: while Hegel thinks being as eternal or infinite presence, an always actually present spirit, and an already actually present concept; Heidegger steps back in order to also think the original temporality out of which the eternal and the temporal (the present and the absent non-present, now and then, past and future) first come. But then being is not ‘in’ time—for time is not something ‘in which’ being (or anything) could be; it is neither an order of things (Aristotle 1950: 219b2) nor their schema (Kant Reference Kant1900, III–IV: A145/B184), nor the history in which spirit runs its course or in which it appears (PhG: 764). Rather, ‘time is the how’ (GA 64: 124), the way being is present and absent; so how beings are determined in their finitude as coming to presence and going out into absence. Indeed, being (and beings) does not just have time; it is temporal. As Heidegger writes:

And not just beings that come to be (or phenomena that appear, come to presence, present and absent themselves)—like those that are born and die, words and deeds, objects and subjects—for if time is how anything is whatsoever, then even the a-temporal or supra-temporal or non-temporal (or phenomena that are given as always already having been present), the eternal and infinite, are characterized by time. In other words, not only the moments of the education of consciousness, not merely the movement of the concept through its logical iterations, but just as much infinite spirit and the absolute idea—in fact, everything which Hegel speaks in the infinitive—is finite and temporal (which is why being, sein, in German is a verb, time-word, Zeitwort)—and the infinitive is a privation of finitude, of past-present-future tense. Thus, Heidegger steps back from the continual presence of time, the infinite time of being, and into a thinking of original temporality as the finite way in which being and beings are present and in the present, or absent and past or future.

So three steps back from Hegel, and from the philosophy of presence—back to the absence of an answer to the question of being, to the absence of the original difference of identity (being identical, self-identical, as well as the identity of being), and to the absence of the finitude of temporality (as being’s way of being).

But what about this absence? Does questioning not bring the absence of the questioning of being to presence as questionable? Does the thinking of original difference not bring it to presence as the ground of being? Is the finitude of temporality not continuously present as the how of being and beings? In other words, in stepping back from the philosophy of presence, has Heidegger not stepped into it? Into an always already present question, difference, temporality? Into a thinking of another being on which to ground the (actual possibility of the) absence of the question, of difference, and of temporality?

On the contrary—in fact, for Heidegger, the step back from presence is not a step into another continuously present ground, but into an unground, an abyss, Abgrund (GA 68: 48). Indeed, the abyss is that which allows ‘everything that is’ to be. As the origin of being, the ‘groundless ground’ opens up and thus makes the difference of being and nothing (and being and beings) first possible. The abyss is that which withdraws and so lets the question of being be questionable (rather than answered or even answerable); it is what clears a path for being to be temporal (and so for the finitude of beings, whether beings like us, or any being whatsoever). And if being is not presence, not present as ground, but an abyss; then this is not to say it is nothing—although neither is it thereby something, some being, nor being itself—rather, as empty and open, not simply there, the abyss ‘is’ the absence of ground. Thus, the abyss is the actual possibility of being, and so the origin of presence.

But what is being qua abyss? As Heidegger insists: ‘I mean the “ground”!’ (GA 68: 48)—here in quotes in order to mark that it is not presence, but nevertheless still somehow ‘present’; not eternal but temporal, not infinite but finite; so not a ground, but a ‘ground’. Indeed, ‘being as a-byss—nothing and ground at the same time’ (GA 68: 48). In other words, being is not a ground, but still ‘grounds’; the abyss is groundless, but it functions as, als, a ‘ground’—for it is not merely negative, privative, deficient, and its work is far more a positive way of being (GA 2: 308). As Heidegger writes: ‘If I say of someone: “I miss him very much, he is not there,” I precisely do not mean to say that he is not there, but express a quite particular way that he is there for me.’Footnote ¹⁴ Thus absence is a particular way of being present, just as the abyssal non-ground is a way of being a ‘ground’, at least insofar as ‘the ground grounds as a-byss’ (GA 65: 29); and ‘the opening of the a-byss is not groundless. The abyss is not “no” to every ground in the manner of groundlessness; but a “yes” to the ground in its concealed breadth and remoteness’ (GA 65: 387).

If the abyss, however, is the ‘ground’ of presence, then it is because being is no longer thought as presence, but just as much as absence, as that absence which allows being to be, which lets the event of being, Ereignis, happen.Footnote ¹⁵ In this way, Heidegger thinks that which remains unthought in Hegel: being as an absence which is both there and not there, not present (and being there, present qua absent). For Heidegger thinks the abyss as a way of being nothing and something, the original non-ground grounding of being itself. And what being is, the abyssal event, is determined on the ‘ground’ of how so, on how being qua event happens, ‘das Ereignis ereignet’ (GA 14: 29)—for if being, ‘to be’, sein, is a verb; it is because it is an action, an act, the activity on the ‘ground’ of which presence and absence are first possible.

The history of philosophy as metaphysics then, becomes ‘richer’ (GA 68: 55n1)—for thinking the unthought, stepping back from presence, back into absence, back into difference, back into how being is temporally, means that the question of being (from the Greeks to Hegel) becomes questionable again. And if the Grund of knowing and thinking, feeling and imagining, shows itself to be an Abgrund—then being is not some kind of thing or being, but the happening of the abyss, the event that brings being and beings to presence and lets them go out into absence. Thus being is no longer presence, but just as much absence—or more precisely, it is the ‘ground’ of both.

III. Being as implication

With respect to the question of being then, Heidegger steps back from Hegel, back from a concept of being as presence, and into a thinking of being as absence (as well), into the happening of the event on the ‘ground’ of which beings come to presence and go out into absence. In this way, the history of philosophy as metaphysics, first philosophy, φιλοσοφία πρώτη—which has ‘its source in ancient philosophy’, in the study of being qua being, τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὄν—comes to think ‘everything that is’, or being as a whole, καθόλου (GA 80: 5). And the clearest and greatest example of this tradition is the thought of being as (the happening of) the abyss as the ‘ground’ on which beings come to presence and go out into absence—for here, being continues to be understood, in one way or another, as it has always been understood, in terms of presence and absence, ground and abyss—and tertium non datur, there is no third.

Or is there? For what if it became necessary to step back again? To repeat the step back? To step back from Heidegger’s step back from Hegel’s retreat—and from the history of philosophy as the philosophy of absence and presence? To step back from the ground and the abyss? To think that which remains unthought in the ontological tradition—because it could not be thought—namely, an understanding of what it means to be neither simply present, nor merely absent? What then?

For as Aristotle reminds us: being and unity imply one another (Aristotle 1957: 1003b22–24). But what does that mean? To imply? To be implied? To implicate? Or to be an implication? And so, to think being—not as presence or absence, neither as ground nor abyss, neither as an event, nor even a non-event—but as implying?

Aristotle is quite clear: implication is not λόγος; it is not definition or meaning, value or measure, explanation or argument, expression or utterance, speech or subject-matter, word or law—and it is not ground (and so too, not non-ground or abyss—thus, neither presence nor absence, neither happening nor non-happening). To imply is not λέγειν; it is neither to reason or calculate, nor to give an account or narrative, nor merely to speak or to think, nor just to lay-out or gather-up.

Rather, implying is the how of being. Implied is the way in which being is. Implication is the what of being. And this implicates the entire history of philosophy as metaphysics (as well as the other philosophical disciplines which presuppose its results), and the ontological tradition (as well as the human and natural sciences which remain loyal to its assumptions), from the Greeks to us.

How then, is being implied? Perhaps a clue from language—for as Heidegger reminds us: ‘language speaks’ (GA 12: 243; Benjamin Reference Benjamin1991: II.1, 144; Haas 2014). Or as Hegel writes: ‘the forms-of-thought are first set-out and put-down in human language’ (Wer V: 20).

Heraclitus says: ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων (Diels Reference Diels1960: B119).Footnote ¹⁶ That is: ‘a person’s character is his divinity’.Footnote ¹⁷ Or ‘the (familiar) abode for humans is the opening for the presencing of the (un-familiar) god’ (GA 9: 356; my emphasis). But the word ‘is’ is not in the original—being is not present, or absent; it is implied, an implication, that which neither comes to presence nor simply remains in absence. But what is implied can be neither determined as appearing, nor asserted to be what does not appear; it is neither an event nor a non-event, neither something nor nothing, neither a ground nor an abyss, neither here nor there, now nor then, never nor always—at least insofar as it is implied. Rather, implication suspends presence and absence, which is why Heraclitus simply says: ‘human character divine’—for ‘to be’ does not mean ‘to be present’, but ‘to be implied’; being is implying, an implication.Footnote ¹⁸

And language speaks. It speaks of implication. It speaks in the language of implication. So language does not simply speak, or remain silent, but implies.

But what does language imply? Not just what is implied, but just as much how so. So if language implies anything whatsoever, it also implies something about implication.

And language tells us how being is implied; and thereby, what being is—an implication—not just in speech, but just as much in thought (and act).

The history of philosophy as metaphysics then, insofar as it presupposes an understanding of being qua presence and absence, would leave the history of implication unthought—even if this would no longer simply be ontology or onto-theology.

On the one hand, when Hegel thinks that being and nothing are the same, he means that being and nothing necessarily imply one another—for it is not simply a matter of tolerating the presence of that which is aufgehoben in the contradictory concept, but thinking how it is implied thereby (which presumably implicates the entire Logic). When all things are in themselves contradictory, he means that contradiction is implied by each thing insofar as it is; when spirit is thought as always already present in history, emptied out into time, as the original truth of subject and substance, and the ground of the education of consciousness from sense-certainty to absolute knowledge—it is because spirit is implied in every movement of every moment of the Phenomenology—for Hegel thinks implication as presence.

On the other hand, when Heidegger raises the question of being, thereby illuminating the question as questionable; it is not merely because the answer is absent, but because it is implied, because the ‘answer’ to the question of the meaning of being is implication. Or when difference is thought prior to identity, as the origin of the ontological difference of being and beings, it is not because difference is always already present as the possibility of presence; but rather because difference (and identity) is implied by ‘everything that is’, by everything that comes to presence and passes out into absence, and because difference is implicated in how being is, and is thought. Or when temporality characterizes the finite way in which being and beings are present or absent, it is because time is implicated therein—not only that being and time imply one another, but just as much that time is implied by any being whatsoever, which is how it can be past, present or future. Or when the ‘ground’ of being is thought as a non-ground or unground, it is not because the abyss is the original absence out of which the event happens, comes to presence—rather, it is a sign that there might be another way of thinking being, even if it never happens at all.

So, how can being be thought as implied, an implication? Is being necessarily implied, an actually necessary implication, every time anything is, in anyway whatsoever? Or is it only possibly implied, a possibility or possible implication? So that to be or not to be remains a question? Or is there a third, tertium datur, being implied in such a way that is neither simply necessary nor merely possible, that suspends the necessity and possibility of being, and so of being present and absent? And would this way of being not be a problem for the history of philosophy as metaphysics, for the entire ontological tradition from the Greeks to us? But then, how could this problem be thought?

A clue from Kant, from a thinker who knows that there are things we cannot know and ‘yet must be able to think’ (Kant Reference Kant1900, III: Bxxvi)—for ‘we first judge something problematically, then take its truth assertorically, and finally claim it as inseparably united with understanding, that is, as necessary and apodictic’ (Kant Reference Kant1900, IV: A76; III: B101). And these categories are not simply ways of judging or knowing, of determining whether something is being implied (and if so, then what) or nothing; on the contrary, they are ways of being. Then implication is either problematic, assertoric or apodictic; and ‘everything is’ in a way that is necessary or possible or problematic—and being too: being is implied necessarily, possibly or problematically by beings. But if implied being—not only in speaking, but just as much in doing and thinking, or more precisely, in ‘everything that is’—is problematic, it is because implication is a way of being that suspends the necessity and contingency, the possibility and impossibility, of being there, of the event of coming to presence (indeed, of presence itself, and absence). So that which is problematic about the problem is that being (as well as unity, time, aspect; Haas 2015b) is only implied. Then being’s way of being is in suspense, neither something nor nothing, neither being nor non-being. For being is an implication—and so, tertium datur, a third thing, a problem to be held, kept, carried, borne. And if being can be asserted as a possibility, or apodicted as a necessity, it is because being qua implication is first problematic. Thus the problem of being, that which is problematic about being, is the problem of implication, or how being is implied.

So tertium datur: being is neither presence nor absence, but implication; it is neither present nor absent, but only implied. Beings are because being is implied, which implicates being in everything that is. And presence and absence are merely (perhaps certain somehow motivated necessary or possible) ways in which implication has been thought (or translated) by the history of philosophy as metaphysics.

The question of the meaning of being then, is the question of implication—for if being is an implication, and implying is the how of being, then how is being implied? And how is being implicated in the being of any being whatsoever?