question of the meaning of being

is concerned with what it is that makes beings intelligible as beings.

The question of the meaning of Being is concerned with what it is that makes beings intelligible as beings, and whatever that factor (Being) is, it is seemingly not itself simply another being among beings. (stanford encyclopedia / heidegger)

is not circular in that the issue is not one of grounding something by such a derivation... it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it and exhibiting them.

Such 'presupposing' has nothing to do with laying down an axiom from which a sequence of propositions is deductively derived. It is quite impossible for there to be any 'circular argument' in formulating the question about the meaning of Being... for in answering this question, the issue is not one of grounding something by such a derivation... it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it and exhibiting them.* (heidegger 'being and time' : 28)

is a problem that arises naturally from Husserl’s phenomenology because being is the one thing presupposed by all conscious experience.

This is why Heidegger thinks that the question of the meaning of being arises naturally from Husserl’s phenomenology. For what is the one thing presupposed by all conscious experience? Being. This green truck is. This plate of rigatoni is. This boy and this girl are cousins. Unfortunately, phenomenology pulls up short before asking more deeply about the meaning of being. We will now see why.

is forgotten, which is to say, that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power.

According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten. So Heidegger sets himself the task of recovering the question of the meaning of Being.

is recovered by bringing to light the ontological difference, that is with the ontical (i.e. concern with facts about entities) the ontological (i.e. a concern with the meaning of Being, with how entities are intelligible as entities).

So Heidegger sets himself the task of recovering the question of the meaning of Being. In this context he draws two distinctions between different kinds of inquiry. The first, which is just another way of expressing the ontological difference, is between the ontical and the ontological, where the former is concerned with facts about entities and the latter is concerned with the meaning of Being, with how entities are intelligible as entities. Using this technical language, we can put the point about the forgetting of Being as such by saying that the history of Western thought is characterized by an ‘onticization’ of Being (by the practice of treating Being as a being).

is forgotten in that Western thought has onticized Being, portraying existence as a substance or fact.

is concerned with what it is that makes beings intelligible as beings, and whatever that factor (Being) is, it is seemingly not itself simply another being among beings.

question of the meaning of being, n.Definitions

question of the meaning of being