An unavoidable issue emerges when it becomes clear that one must go beyond the strictly scientific intent of phenomenology. That is to say, two very different paths surpass Husserl's rigorous and comprehensive science of phenomena: ontology and ethics, being and the good. Up to this point, when here and there we have encountered this issue, for example in Levinas's dissatisfaction with the immanence or “mineness” (Jemeinigkeit) of be-ing (despite Heidegger's completely contrary intent), I have repeatedly posed Levinas's ethical metaphysics against Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Heidegger's ontology is not fundamental enough, or rather, because it is fundamental it has lost sight of that which exceeds even the fundamental, that is, the meta-physical, the “good beyond being”. In this chapter we will consider the opposition between ontology and ethics more closely. There can be no doubt that Heidegger's thought, and its prolongation by his epigones (Derrida perhaps first and foremost among them), has found a large following, to put the matter in merely sociological terms. But its allure is deeper than sociology, or rather, its sociological effect follows from its deeper allure. Or so it claims.

Of course, with the name Heidegger, one cannot be fully or even partially responsible if one ignores other questions, disturbing questions. But perhaps, except for certain sycophantic followers (and Heidegger has had them), these are not at all “other” questions.