Ontological Difference Quotes

“The philosophical consequences of this Kantian parallax are fully explored in thenotion of ontological difference, the focus of Heidegger’s entire thought, which canbe properly grasped only against the background of the theme of finitude. There is adouble doxaon Heidegger’s ontological difference: it is a difference between the What-ness, the essence of beings, and the mere That-ness of their being—it liberates beingsfrom subordination to any ground/arche/goal; furthermore, it is a difference notmerely between (different levels of) beings, of reality, but between the All of realityand something else which, with regard to reality, cannot but appear as “Nothing.”. . .This doxais deeply misleading.With regard to the notion of ontological difference as the difference between whatthings are and the fact that they are, the doxasays that the mistake of metaphysics is tosubordinate being to some presupposed essence (sense, goal,arche...) embodied inthe highest entity, while ontological difference “de-essentializes” beings, setting them free from their enslavement to Essence, letting-them-be in their an-archic freedom—prior to any “what-for? why?”, and so on, things simply are,they just occur....If,how-ever, this were Heidegger’s thesis, then Sartre, in Nausea,would also outline ontologicaldifference at its most radical—does he not describe there the experience of the stupidand meaningless inertia of being at its most disgusting, indifferent to all our (human)meanings and projects? For Heidegger, in contrast to Sartre, “ontological difference”is, rather, the difference between the entities’ stupid being-there, their senseless real-ity, and their horizon of meaning.”
― zizek