ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to highlight the centrality of what Heidegger calls the ‘ontological difference’ to our understanding of the twofold of existence: individuality and interaction. This difference is, in Dewey’s terms, between aesthetic and reflective experience, but Dewey did not fully comprehend it because he approached it primarily from a pragmatic perspective in reflective experience. Peirce helps here, as he describes the unity inherent to existence as individuality, thereby distinguishing it more clearly from interaction. For Heidegger, the ontological difference marks the difference between being and beings; between the simple and the multiple; between two different ways of questioning being (the grounding question and the guiding question); between originary and ordinary senses of time; between meditative and calculative thinking. Comprehending the ontological difference in this way, within existence or secondness, also distinguishes it from the logical difference (between secondness and thirdness) and Ereignis (between firstness and secondness). In this chapter we also discuss the character of Ereignis, which is unlike either the ontological difference or the logical difference. Each of these three, marking folds in experience, is unique.
