This book goes through the history of the concept of the being from Kant to the most recent debates within the ambit of analytical philosophy. After analysing the theories of Kant the author examines the notion of the being during the Romantic period right up to the anti-Hegelian ideas of Trendelenburg and Feuerbach and the combination between being, nullity and nihilism typical of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. This theme is then studied in the ideas of Herbert and in the spiritualism of Brentano who resumes the theories of Aristotle, in the fundamental ideas of Heidegger, in the existentialism of Sartre and in the contributions of Gadamer and Derrida. Nor does the book omit the ontology of Hartmann, neoscholastics (Gilson and Maritain) and Protestant theology (Barth and Tillich). Finally the book deals with the relationship between being, not being and appearance in Husserl, semantic Platonism, Russell, Wittgenstein and semantics, ontology and metaphysics according to analytical tradition.

Fiorenza Toccafondi has a PhD in Philosophy and does research at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Florence.