Martin Heidegger's concept of ontological difference (also ontic-ontological difference) is his way of starting to answer his question of being. In his book "Being and Time" Heidegger criticized all previous philosophical conceptions of being which is viewed as something individually existing in the present . Viewed as something that is merely present, being is stripped of all temporal and meaningful references to the world: by stating that something exists, one cannot understand what something is.
Heidegger's critique ends with his teacher Edmund Husserl's phenomenological reduction. This is also a mistake for Heidegger who thinks it enables onto-theology, for example, to assume a supreme being which anchors reality through time such as God.
The way of ontological difference
For Hiedegger, a fundamental ontological investigation should bring together the question of being with the question of time. . In Being and Time, Heidegger wanted to place ontology on a new foundation. The starting point for his investigation was the "ontological difference" between being and beings. For Heidegger "Being is always the being of a being" but "The being of beings 'is' not itself a being." A search for being thus always only brings beings to light. However, being as the contextual background remains the prerequisite for beings to be. Only in this way can something be understood as something. Thus, despite the difference, being and beings remain related to one another. Neither is conceivable without the other: their relationship consists in the identity of difference.
Explained simply, being is used by Heidegger to describe the horizon of understanding which is based on what we encounter in the world itself. It is the context within which things can gain meaning. So when we encounter something, we only ever understand it through its meaning in a world. It is only this relationship to the actual world that constitutes its being. Beings, therefore, take part in being but are not being itself, and this is the ontological difference. This thought sets forth Heidegger's journey of understanding being through time.
Learn more:
Here you can read an introduction and find summaries and explanations on Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. You can also check out our introduction to Heidegger or our introduction to phenomenology.
