Le avventure del ‘non’

Abstract

My article will question Heidegger’s idea that philosophical tradition was not capable to provide sufficient foundations for the notion of ‘not’ and therefore for negation. To show that Heidegger was not completely right, I will provide a series of counterexamples to his idea. I will survey some traditional positions on negation, starting from Hegel, and investigating Cusano, Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Proclus, Plato, up to the Indo-Aryan tradition. My analysis will show that it is indeed possible not only to individuate a non-defective conception of ‘not’ and negation, as desired by Heidegger, but also to go so far as to trace the roots of ‘not’ by going behind ontology.