If Metaphysics Is to Have a Future
If Metaphysics Is to Have a Future

Summary/Abstract: If metaphysics is to have a future, then ontology – the traditional teaching and learning of the question of the meaning of being – must be suspended: being cannot simply mean essence or existence, presence or absence, or some combination thereof. Rather, being’s way of being – neither present nor absent, but implied – shows what it always already was, an implication. But being, as we know, also implies unity and time and aspect. And this has implications for teaching and learning the history of philosophy as metaphysics (and all other areas of philosophy, as well as knowledge in the arts and sciences, and for any being whatsoever), if it is to have a future. And it also has implications for us – for the traditional names by which we know ourselves, from human being to Da-sein, must then also be suspended, at least if metaphysics is to have a future. Or, as the Spartans say: if.

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