Being and Nothing

The Primordial Question of Philosophy

Lorenz B. Puntel, Alan White

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350503472
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

In this masterful work, leading German philosopher Lorenz B. Puntel answers the primordial question of philosophy: "Why is there Being at all and not absolutely nothing?"

Considering the history of philosophy from Parmenides through to Heidegger and beyond, Puntel charges philosophy with persistently failing to adequately confront the question of Being. In response, Puntel sets out a systematic philosophy to rival Hegel's Science of Logic and Whitehead's Process and Reality.

In two parts, the book first surveys the history of Western philosophy through the theoretical framework of Structural-Systematic Philosophy (SSP), which unites continental philosophy's comprehensiveness with the precision and linguistic rigor of the analytic tradition. Analysing all of the major stages in the "forgetfulness of Being" in Western philosophy, Puntel establishes a dialogue with a vast number of thinkers and movements in the history of philosophy, including Plato, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Francisco Suarez, Christian Wolff, Leibniz, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, W.O. Quine, Peter van Inwagen, Kit Fine, Alexius Meinong, and Jean-Luc Marion. The second part develops the methodical question of a systematic theory of Being. Puntel sets out a universal metaphysics, introducing concepts of world, existence, and types of beings. Moreover, he examines the plurality of possible worlds, the disclosure of Being, and modern philosophies of subjectivity since Kant, including the analytic philosophies of Robert Brandom and Ernst Tugendhat. The book culminates in a theory of Being and explains the relation of Being to the concept of God.

Being and Nothing is the third in Puntel's trilogy comprising Structure and Being (2008) and Being and God (2011), and is a book that will appeal to all those with an interest in the history of philosophy, continental philosophy, theology, and analytic philosophy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• On the manner of citation and the form of the bibliography
• Introduction: How the Topic is Situated within the Structural-Systematic Philosophy
• Part I. Critical Inventory of the History of Philosophy from a Systematic Point of View
• I.1. First Metaphysical Approaches: The Development of Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Being itself (εἶναι) to Metaphysics as the Science of Beings as Beings and to the Dimension beyond Beingness (οὐσία)
• I.2. Christian-Metaphysical Approaches in High- and Late-Scholasticism: From an Inchoative Being-Theoretical to a Purely Onto-Theo-logical Determination of Being and Nothing
• I.3. Leibniz and the Question “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?”
• I.4. Nihilism, Critique of Metaphysics, and the Topic Being and Nothing: Nietzsche and Heidegger
• I.5. J.-P. Sartre’s The Being and the Nothing: A Conception that Is Purely One of a Phenomenology of Subjectivity
• I.6. The Fading-Out and Absence of the Question about Being Itself and Absolute Nothing in the Mainstream of Analytic Philosophy
• I.7. Relative Nothing
• Part II. Basic Features of a Systematic Theory of Being and Nothing
• II.1. Systematic Bases
• II.2. Systematic Onto-logy as Theory of Beingness/Beings
• II.3. Possible Worlds
• II.4. Disclosure of the Dimension of Being: A Systematic Approach
• II.5. Disclosure of the Dimension of Being as the Result of the Overcoming of the Modern Philosophy of Subjectivity I: Kant and Hegel
• II.6. Disclosure of the Dimension of Being as the Result of the Overcoming of Modern Philosophy of Subjectivity II : Husserl and the Transformation of Phenomenology
• II.7. Disclosure of the Dimension of Being as the Result of the Overcoming of Analytic Philosophy Interpreted as Philosophy of Subjectivity
• II.8. Theory of Being I: Basic Features of a Theory of Being as Such
• II.9. Theory of Being II : Theory of Modal Status of the Dimension of Being as the Ultimate Systematic Clarification of the Topic Being and Nothing
• II.10. Theory of Being III : Systematic Explication of the Modal Two-Dimensionality of the Dimension of Being
• Afterword: A Look Back and a Look Ahead
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Copyright