Heidegger and Hegel

The author investigates the parallel conceptions of the overall philosophical goal of M. Heidegger and G. W. F. Hegel. He is of the opinion that the main parallel in the philosophical work of these two thinkers is evident when we compare Heidegger's conception of the first and second beginning of the history of being with Hegel's historical scheme of the two phases of the return of the absolute idea to itself. Hegel's moment of one's own fully-conscious self-understanding determining the mediation of oneself, and thus overcoming one's own externality is revealed to be the foreshadowing counterpart of Heidegger's conception of the overcoming of the first beginning. This overcoming, which Heidegger calls a second beginning, is the overcoming of a movement that substitutes being with the highest being. Heidegger takes the first beginning of the history of being as its necessary initial movement, and only thus can being become aware of itself as the mediating movement of the historical possibility of the second beginning. Hegel's and Heidegger's thought are thus revealed to follow analogical and parallel paths in expressing the ultimate conceptions of philosophical thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.