In his 1929 essay, written for the Festschrift in honor of Edmund Husserl’s 70th birthday, Heidegger thinks the ontological difference as the nothing between entities and being. He also provides one of his most important descriptions of the phenomenon of world, which emerges from his discussion of Immanuel Kant’s concept of world in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Heidegger begins by showing that the problem of ground is essentially one of truth. The principle of the ground, that is, every entity has a ground, is grounded on the truth of judgments. This truth is in turn grounded on ontological truth as the manifestation of entities in their being. Ontic truth is grounded on ontological truth as the unveiling of the being of entities. The distinction between ontic and ontological truth presupposes the ontological difference. This difference can only be understood by an entity that discloses the being of entities and thus transcends entities in the whole. The ontological difference is thus grounded on being-there’s transcendence. The transcendence of being-there is its being-in-the-world.
Transcendence is the origin of the ground as its coming to presence from out of the disclosure of world. This unified process of grounding consists of three elements: (1) Ground as laying-claim (Stiften); that is, being-there’s projection of the “for-the-sake-of-which” as world. (2) Grounding as taking ground (Boden-nehmen); being-there transcends entities in surpassing toward the horizon of world, but this is only possible because the self is already situated among entities. To transcendence belongs the taking-ground in the midst of entities in the whole. (3) Grounding as founding; freedom as transcendence is freedom in relation to the ground as founding, which uncovers from the depths of its finitude the basis for any ground. Founding makes it possible for being-there to encounter entities by making them manifest in and as themselves. The origin of the ground is the threefold discharging of the ground process that arises as the projection of the world, the taking-ground among entities in the whole, and the ontological founding of the being of entities.
Translated in Pathmarks.
Wegmarken (GA 9)