Western philosophy follows out a line of what Jacques Derrida has named the metaphysics of presence. The movement of that great thought which began with the Greeks and culminated in Hegel was the idea of metaphysics, the science of Being qua Being. What is of interest here is that this great thought moved in a certain direction, along a certain theme — that the metaphysical moment is the moment of presence; that the metaphysical notion of Being as it is in itself is the notion of absolute presence.