Being and Time describes his project in the following way: "our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the sense of "being" and to do so concretely." Heidegger claims that traditional ontology has prejudicially overlooked this question, dismissing it on the basis that being is the most universal and emptiest concept, that is indefinable or obvious. Instead Heidegger proposes to understand being itself, as distinguished from any specific entities (beings). "'Being' is not something like a being." Being, Heidegger claims, is "what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood." Heidegger is seeking
George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (philosopher) George Dickie (born 12 August 1926 in Palmetto, Florida) is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago. His specialities include aesthetics, philosophy of art and Eighteenth Century theories of taste. He received a BA from Florida State University in 1949 and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978. He served as President of the Illinois Philosophy Association (1990–91) and President of the American Society for Aesthetics (1993–94). He is an influential philosopher of art working in the analytical tradition. His institutional theory