The Absolute and the Failure to Think of the Ontological Difference: Heidegger’s Critique of Hegel
The Absolute and the Failure to Think of the Ontological Difference: Heidegger’s Critique of Hegel

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine Heidegger’s critique of Hegel andto determine whether it is justified. Heidegger claims that Hegel tries to reduce everything to a single absolute entity, to the absolute knowing subject. The resultis the identification of being and nothing, as Hegel formulates it at the beginning of his Logic. Hegel identifies being with nothing because being has no references,no predicates, no properties. Heidegger agrees with Hegel that being and nothing are the same, but in completely different respects. They are the same becauseonly entity actually exists, i.e. as an existent being. But Being itself does not exist, and should be conceived in an utterly different way from entity. And since Beingcannot “be” it is a non-entity and therefore nothing.

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