Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
What Is Metaphysics?
Why is there something rather than nothing? — the question of being approached through the experience of dread (Angst)
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | What Is Metaphysics? (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Undefined |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
What Is Metaphysics?
Time as the horizon of being is taken over from Being and Time. Anxiety discloses time in a particular way — the moment of being-toward-death is the temporal core of the analysis.
Space
What Is Metaphysics?
Relational treatment of space; not theorised directly in this lecture.
Matter
What Is Metaphysics?
Beings as a whole are encountered relationally; matter is one mode of being among others.
Observer
What Is Metaphysics?
Dasein remains the analytical centre. Anxiety is the fundamental mood through which the Nothing is disclosed.
Energy
What Is Metaphysics?
Not engaged.
Information
What Is Metaphysics?
Truth as unconcealment (aletheia) is the relational informational structure. No personal-conservation commitment.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The 1929 lecture sits between Being and Time and the later Kehre. Its treatment of the Nothing has been criticised (Carnap) as confused metaphysics and defended (post-structuralists) as a profound destabilisation of substance ontology. Heidegger's subsequent Postscript and Introduction were attempts to clarify the position against both readings.