Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy)

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research. Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, Robert Piercey Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepke Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler Heidegger and Happiness, Matthew King Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis Heidegger on Language and Death, Joachim L. Oberst Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin Heidegger, Work, and Being, Todd S. Mei Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte Heidegger’s Platonism, Mark A. Ralkowski The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

Philip Tonner

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Philip Tonner 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-7229-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tonner, Philip. Heidegger, metaphysics, and the univocity of being / Philip Tonner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-7229-7 (hard) ISBN-10: 1-4411-7229-7 (hard) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 2. Ontology. 3. Duns Scotus, John, ca. 1266-1308. I. Title. B3279.H49T59 2009 193--dc22

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

2009013821

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations of Heidegger’s Works Introduction General Introduction The Univocity of Being The Modern Predicament

vii ix 1 1 2 5

1. The Problem of Univocity in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy From Heidegger to Aristotle Medieval Philosophy Scholasticism

10 10 19 21

2. Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity Section One The Question of Being Analogy, the Medieval Experience of Life Univocity and Phenomenology Destruction and Tradition Metaphysics Phenomenological Philosophy and Aletheia Descartes, Scholasticism and Time The Presupposition of the Tradition

27 27 27 32 35 37 39 41 44 48

Section Two Scholasticism, Analogy and the Interpretation of Heidegger The Phenomena of Beingness and Time Beyond Being The Analogical Interpretation of Heidegger’s Text 3. Univocity and Phenomenological Philosophy Being and Some Other Key Terms The Phenomenology of Being and the Question of Dasein Transcendental Philosophy

49 49 57 58 60 65 65 72 74

Contents

vi

Univocity from 1916 to 1927 Cartesian Connections and the Medieval Ontology Dasein, Univocity and the Question of Analogy

79 85 89

4. Univocity and Fundamental Ontology Husserl and Heidegger Phenomenology, Being and Univocity Univocity and Analogy

94 94 107 114

5. Univocity and Heidegger’s Later Thought Section One Mysticism The Present Age The Later Heidegger A-Letheia, Ereignis and Epochal Immanence A History of Being

117 117 117 125 126 128 133

Section Two The Tradition The History of Metaphysics The Medieval and the Modern A History of the Modern: Subjectivity

137 137 140 145 151

6. Univocity and the Problem of History History and Civilization Art and History Fractured History Language and Poetry The Fate of Univocity The Re-enchanted Forest Being Mortal

153 153 157 161 167 169 174 177

Conclusion

180

Appendix: The Univocity of Being: Deleuze Notes Select Bibliography Index

185 189 196 209

Acknowledgements

The original idea for this book occurred to me while I was studying philosophy at the University of Warwick. I would like to thank all the members of staff and postgraduate students of the Department of Philosophy who made my time there enjoyable. Particularly, I would like to thank Miguel de Beistegui, Peter Poellner, Stephen Houlgate and Keith Ansell Pearson for their early encouragement and advice. While conceived at Warwick, this text was written in Glasgow. I would like to extend my considerable thanks and warm gratitude to Alexander Broadie for his sustained help and guidance over the years. The argument of the present work has certainly benefited from his input. I would also like to extend my warm thanks to David Campbell, formerly of the Department of Philosophy at Glasgow. David kindly met with me to discuss some difficult points of interpretation and his comments on an earlier draft undoubtedly improved the text as a whole. Later comments from Brian Elliott and Richard Stalley have proven invaluable in improving the overall coherence of my argument. I owe both of them thanks for their continued support of my projects. I would like to thank Gerald Moore and Michael Nix, both of whom gave me helpful comments on aspects of the penultimate draft. I would like to thank Sarah Campbell and Tom Crick and the team at Continuum for their help and support with the final preparation of the manuscript. Of course, any errors or omissions in the book as a whole remain my fault. I would like to extend my thanks to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, staff and students, for making my time there unforgettable. Particularly, I would like to thank Dudley Knowles, Philip Percival, Paul Brownsey, Robin Downie, Susan Stuart (now at HATII), Scott Meikle, Anne Southall and Susan Howel. I would like to extend my warm thanks and gratitude to my family and friends, all of whom have made their contribution to my thought over the years. Particularly, I would like to thank my mum and dad, Jane and William, and my uncle Philip, for their continued support, patience and

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Acknowledgements

encouragement throughout this and other projects. Also, I would like to thank our friend Bill Craw for his support throughout my studies. Lastly, I would like to thank my partner Lynsey for putting up with me throughout this and other projects; this book is dedicated to her. Philip Tonner Glasgow 2009

Abbreviations of Heidegger’s Works

BPOP The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Trans. A. Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, 1988. BT Being and Time, Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Basil Blackwell, 1962. BT (2) Being and Time, A Translation of Sein und Zeit, Trans. J. Stambaugh, State University of New York Press, 1996. BW Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell, Routledge, 1978. DS Duns Scotus’ Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, Trans. H. Robbins, De Paul University Chicago, Illinois, 1978. EGT Early Greek Thinking, The Dawn of Western Philosophy, Trans. D. F. Krell and F.A. Capuzzi, Harper and Row, 1975. EOP The End of Philosophy, Trans. J. Stambaugh, Condor, Souvenir Press, 1973. HCT History of the Concept of Time, Prolegomena, Trans. T. Kisiel, Indiana University Press, 1992. ID Identity and Difference, Trans. J. Stambaugh, The University of Chicago Press, 1969. IM Introduction to Metaphysics, Trans. G. Fried and R. Polt, Yale University Press, 2000. KPM Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics, Trans. R. Taft, Indiana University Press, 1990. OTB On Time and Being, Trans. J. Stambaugh, The University of Chicago Press, 1972. PLT Poetry, Language, Thought, Trans. A. Hofstadter, Harper and Row, 1971. QCT The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. W. Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks, 1977. TMFL The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Trans. M. Heim, Indiana University Press, 1992. WIP What is Philosophy?, Trans. W. Kluback and J. T. Wilde, Vision Press, 1963.

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Introduction

General Introduction Heidegger’s philosophy is guided by one question: what is the meaning of being? Despite the fact that it was this question that stood out in antiquity as the question of philosophy, Heidegger holds that this question has been forgotten in modernity. Today we do not have an answer to this question and we are not even concerned about our inability to comprehend it. It was this question that Heidegger posed in Being and Time and that, in one way or another, guided his thought throughout his life. In recent years much ink has been spilt trying to come to terms with Heidegger’s thinking. Partly because of his style of doing philosophy, a style that goes back to the texts of past philosophers in the Western tradition and attempts to elicit what he calls the ‘unsaid’ from their works, coming to terms with his thought is, in an important sense, inseparable with coming to terms with the entire history of philosophy. In any attempt to do this, it is the problem of the meaning of being that must act as guide. The result of the tradition of metaphysics, particularly the thought of Plato and Aristotle, has in Heidegger’s view, become over the years calcified into what we now know generically as the Western tradition of philosophy. Since an adequate answer to the question of being is not to be found in this tradition we must, Heidegger maintains, reawaken our sense for the ‘meaning of this question’ and we must raise it once again. Our fate, as historically engaged agents who are sensitive to the meaningful world of things, is bound up with the fate of the question of the meaning of being. Heidegger attempted to reawaken our sense of urgency in the face of this question, together with raising the question itself, in Being and Time. This work constitutes the first stage of a lifelong quest for an appreciation of the question of the meaning of being; all of his works are, in one way or another, intimately related to this question. It is a matter of history that what has come down to us as the Western tradition of philosophy has been massively influenced by Aristotle’s thought. Perhaps one of his most important insights was that there is ‘a kind of

2

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

science whose remit is being qua being’.1 Despite the fact that in the history of philosophy, from antiquity through medieval ontology down to the present, there has been an engagement with this science, nowhere, from Heidegger’s point of view, has there been given a satisfactory answer to the question of the meaning of being. This is a problem for Heidegger since it is his conviction that all ontology, no matter how internally consistent and apparently useful its categories are, will persist visionless and corrupted from its raison d’être if it fails to clarify the meaning of being and to understand this clarification to be its most fundamental task. The question of being must be elucidated adequately. Although ‘being is always the being of an entity’, ‘it’ is not itself an entity nor a class of entities. Rather, there is an ontological difference between being and beings. The question of being refers to being and not to beings. Nevertheless, Heidegger holds that in order to elucidate this question we must take an entity as a paradigm and make its being transparent. Since posing the question of being is a fundamental possibility of our being, it is appropriate that it is us, qua Dasein, that is rendered transparent. In fact, for Heidegger, the very posing of this question is Dasein’s mode of being and Dasein receives its essential nature from being itself. Heidegger agreed with Aristotle that the fundamental question of philosophy is the question of being. Since we use the predicative ‘is’ in many ways Aristotle searched for a unitary meaning of being that founded all of the various ways in which it is said. How can there be a unified sense or meaning of being when being is said in many ways? A concern with a unified sense or meaning of being was a major concern of Heidegger’s and there is an affinity between his thought and Aristotle’s, in so far as both thinkers, ultimately, open a space for the univocity of being to emerge as the proper expression of the meaning of being.

The Univocity of Being My central aim in this book is to develop an interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy in terms of the univocity of being. Achieving this is impossible without reference to Aristotelian-scholastic substance ontology in general, and to the philosophy of John Duns Scotus in particular. Scotus raised philosophical univocity to its historical apotheosis. Minimally, the univocity of being entails that there is a fundamental concept or sense of being under which falls anything whatsoever that exists. Such a view plays a distinctive and crucial role in both Scotus’s and Heidegger’s philosophy.

Introduction

3

For Scotus the univocity of being is expounded in terms of being’s opposition to nothingness: all being is opposed to nothingness regardless of the determinations of being into infinite being and finite being. In Heidegger, the univocity of being emerges as the temporal configuration of being, understood as meaningful presence. Attributing the doctrine of philosophical univocity to Scotus is not controversial. With regard to Heidegger, things are more complicated. Hitherto, univocity has not played an important role in Heidegger interpretation. On the face of it at least, this is significant because early in his career Heidegger wrote a book-length study on what he took to be philosophical texts of Scotus. To that extent, you might expect a brief discussion of this notion in the literature: but you would be disappointed. The word univocity rarely features in the index to translations of Heidegger’s works, if it figures at all, and most scholars do not note univocity as a point of interpretation let alone discuss its significance to Heidegger’s thought. This is not to say that interpreters of Heidegger’s works have not come close to raising this question. Significantly, Thomas Sheehan has interpreted Heidegger’s text in terms of the analogy of being. Accordingly, his work will form an important point of reference. It is my view that, employing a Scotist move, analogy is impossible without a prior univocity. For Scotus, a fundamental sense of being as opposed to nothing underscores any further determination of that concept and for Heidegger time emerges as the horizon for the understanding of being. While different in important respects, both these views uphold a fundamental univocal sense of being and it is just this parallel that I shall have cause to explore. Among the few exceptions to the rule of passing over the concept of univocity with reference to Heidegger have been the partial readings put forward of his thought by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition and by Allers in his ‘Heidegger on the Principle of Sufficient Reason’.2 For his part, Deleuze interprets Heidegger in terms of the thesis of univocity. On this reading, Heidegger ‘follows Duns Scotus and gives renewed splendour to the Univocity of Being’.3 Part of my project here will be to gain a fuller understanding of what this statement means for the interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of being. Doing this will involve discussing Heidegger’s relationship to Duns Scotus and to traditional metaphysics more generally. In recent years, the early Heidegger’s relationship to Scotus has emerged as an area of novel scholarship in terms of the renewed interest in Heidegger’s earliest philosophical engagement. As witness to this

4

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

there is the work of Theodore Kisiel, John Van Buren and John D. Caputo. The young Heidegger based his Habilitation thesis on what he took to be the work of Scotus and scholars have explored this area thoroughly. One consequence of this has been that Heidegger’s relationship with Scotus beyond this text has remained largely unexplored. Whereas the attention paid to the early Heidegger’s engagement with Scotus has remained largely within the confines of scholarly intellectual biography, my engagement will seek to place the entirety of Heidegger’s thought in a critical relation to the univocity of being, and thus unavoidably, to Scotus. Two initial questions are prompted by this approach: first, is the doctrine of the univocity of being explicitly significant for Heidegger? Second, even if being is univocal for Heidegger does his concept of univocal being have anything in common with Scotus’s view of being? My answer to the first question is that univocity, while not explicitly thematized in his work, remains an implicit commitment and as such can serve as an interpretive tool for characterizing his philosophy. Howsoever Heidegger characterizes his philosophy of being explicitly; his concept of being is, implicitly, univocal. My answer to the second question is that while Scotus’s and Heidegger’s concepts of being differ radically from each other, they do nonetheless have something in common. That is, Scotus and Heidegger share a commitment to being having one prevailing sense. This is enough to characterize both philosophies of being in terms of univocity. Also, for both thinkers, albeit in different ways, to uphold univocity, implicitly or explicitly, is not a matter of opposing their doctrine to an alternative view that claims that being has a plurality of senses. For both thinkers, it is a matter of ‘as well as’ rather than ‘in opposition to’. I am pursuing univocity in connection with Heidegger because it has been suggested that Heidegger’s view of being follows the path of analogy. While certain commentators have intimated that Heidegger’s view upholds univocity, and so have begun to chart this territory, I propose to go all out after an interpretation of his thought that explores this notion. To be sure, Deleuze and Allers have been beacons of light in this regard, but neither has offered a sustained discussion of this theme. Allers, for example, affirms: a . . . fundamental conviction which is, perhaps, never stated explicitly but is clearly basic to Heidegger’s philosophy . . . [is that] . . . BEING is an univocal term.4 This remark when taken with Deleuze’s pronouncement that Heidegger ‘follows Scotus’, motivates my project. I will be comprehensive in my

Introduction

5

reading of Heidegger’s philosophy and I will show the limit and extent of univocity in his thought. For this reason my concern with his very early work is subordinated to my larger aim of interpreting his text generally in terms of univocity. Given the importance of Heidegger’s thought to contemporary European philosophy such a project is necessary. I will provide a reading of Heidegger’s thought as a whole taking the thesis of the univocity of being as my point of departure. I will show that, from his beginnings in the Scotus dissertation through to Being and Time and then to his later critique of representational thinking and ontotheology, the thesis of the univocity of being, properly interpreted in terms that uphold being as meaningful presence, is a central guiding concern of his thought.

The Modern Predicament Philosophical univocity, as present in Heidegger’s text, entails a commitment to a kind of thinking without recourse to traditional ontotheological grounds. Philosophy is, and should be, committed to a certain form of immanence. It should not have recourse to a ground or foundation outwith ‘experience’. To put this in Heideggerian terms, philosophy cannot base its program on any foundation beyond the epochal play of the concealing and revealing of being. All historical human beings are entitled to is their limited finite interpretations of things and any appeal to principles of order which, in one way or another, make a claim to atemporal universality, should be treated with a degree of suspicion and scepticism. It is this problematic that is at stake when Heidegger’s thought is interpreted in terms of univocity. The univocity of being, as I understand it, implies immanence. As such, philosophy contains within it a response to the condition of modernity, a modernity characterized by three coordinate concerns or circuits of interpretation, all of which take their point of departure from the conviction that ‘metaphysics’, broadly understood, has been and must be surpassed. Deleuze has listed three contexts within which this move has been made. They are, in his order: (1) The Death of God, (2) The Death of the Human and (3) other forms of thought.5 Modern European philosophy can be understood in terms of its point of departure. From a point of crisis, the death of God and/or the human, which amounts to a destabilization of traditional metaphysical points of departure, be they theological or humanist, modern European philosophers have attempted to oppose a novel response in terms of an ‘other’

6

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

form of thought, not bound by the same fate as metaphysics. In Heidegger’s case this new manner of philosophizing was initially phenomenology. Phenomenology represented a method by which Heidegger could answer the traditional metaphysical problem, the question of being. Later, with his non-representational thinking, which, from a biographical point of view, is the successor of phenomenology, Heidegger sought further to abandon any commitment to traditional metaphysics in order to think the event of the revelation of being to and for thought. This issue of crisis and of ‘thinking differently’ connects with other currents in European thought throughout the 20th Century, particularly with philosophies that emphasize innovation and revolution in contradistinction to those that emphasize traditionalism and conservatism; the issue of the extent to which Heidegger abandoned conservatism in favour of innovation, or vice versa, shall be intimated in my discussion of his so called ‘later philosophy’. The death of God heralds for philosophy the abolition of the distinction between two worlds: one of being and the other of becoming and it heralds also the loss of any recourse to a transcendent ground that would provide the foundation for this temporal world of becoming. The death of God heralds the loss of the ultimate principle of order and source of all value in the universe that was prevalent in the metaphysical tradition. One response to this loss has been, reasonably enough, the substitution for God of another source of value and order. Historically, this has been the idea of humanity or ‘the human’, and this substitution has been bound up with the rise of consciousness and the birth of the subject. From this point of view, the broadly Cartesian transformation of philosophy, whereby the subject is firmly at the centre of things, takes on a further significance. When, in modern European philosophy, the subject is destabilized as the source of meaning and value, the death of the human is intimated: the death of the human means that it is no longer possible simply to replace God with another idea. In principle, other replacements are possible, which would then act as the source of order and value in the universe, but such a move is, from the point of view of the posttraditional thinker, an illegitimate appeal to transcendence. Such a substitution does not require us to think differently, which is one of the central motifs of modern European philosophy. In effect, with the substitution of the idea of the human for God there has only been the substitution of one point of order and value for another and as Deleuze has put the point, ‘finished is the belief in the substitution of humanity for God, the belief in the Human-God who would replace God-the-Human’.6 This is

Introduction

7

the crisis of modern European thought. Without recourse to some transcendent source of order and value it may seem that the task of the thinker is insurmountable. How can one respond to this crisis? For Heidegger, this crisis is a crisis over metaphysics. In his early thought Heidegger shows himself to be a methodological Nietzschean; philosophy, which is phenomenology, must remain atheistic. Later, Heidegger conceives himself as preparing the way for a return of the Holy. This is not the return of the Christian God, but it does herald the return of the ‘divine’ or the most high in human affairs. From Heidegger’s point of view, the indifference to the divine and the Holy, which is characteristic of modernity, is something to be lamented rather than applauded. Integral to Heidegger’s response to modernity was the attempt to abandon the will to power which he took to be central to the modern metaphysics of subjectivity. The modern age of technology, which for Heidegger is modern humanity’s way of relating to being, is the end product of modern subjectivism/humanism/anthropocentrism. In modernity, the general current of thought which asserts the Protagorean doctrine that ‘man is the measure of all things’ takes the form of the will to power: the unceasing attempt, individual or communal, to subordinate the earth to human control. Heidegger’s response to the condition of modernity is bound up with a manner of thought that attempts to let beings be. Several consequences follow from this: particularly, Heidegger rejects philosophy, construed as metaphysics, and attempts to think non-representationally without recourse to metaphysical grounds. That is, he attempts to think without why. One theme that I will return to repeatedly is Heidegger’s thematization of death and finitude. It is his view that in the anticipation of death, being is revealed to Dasein. Now, in fundamental ontology Dasein is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe but Dasein is not the subject in the Cartesian sense. Heidegger’s view is that, in anticipation of death, the way in which things can be meaningfully there or meaningfully present for ‘you’ becomes revealed. Being is nothing less than the meaningful presence which things can have for a Dasein or for a community. Death is that fundamental non-relational certainty which serves to individualize the Dasein in its concrete existence. In this fundamental experience being, in its univocity as meaningful presence, is revealed. What things actually mean for a Dasein will of course be different, but, for the univocity of being to obtain in Heidegger’s text, what is important is that they mean something. The univocity of being obtains at the level of meaningful presence, and this has a temporal connotation.

8

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

According to Heideggerian existential phenomenology, the individual is a practically engaged agent and, as confined by finitude and death, the life of the individual has a certain tragic essence. The individual’s task in a world that precludes any recourse to a founding transcendence is one of coming to terms with the inherent finitude of existence and the inevitability of death. The finitude of existence and the inevitability of death is the tragic essence of existence. This fact, considered alongside the claim that being is revealed in the anticipation of death, provides the rationale for my repeated return to this theme. It may be that Heidegger’s mature response to the meaningful world of things, that we let them be, is sensible; given our inherent finitude, the would-be master of the earth seems to be overplaying his hand. Being, the meaningful presence which things can have for Dasein, is unified by care (Sorge). In Being and Time care is defined as ‘ahead-of-itselfalready-being-in (a world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered withinthe-world)’. In section 65 of that text Heidegger reveals that the ontological meaning of care is temporality. Thus, when revealed ontologically, Dasein is its temporality. As he puts it: ‘Dasein . . . is time itself’.7 Dasein’s temporality is revealed as the transcendental horizon for the understanding of being. As such, all being is understood in terms of time. To that extent, being is univocally understood in terms of time and being itself is temporal. For Heidegger, the univocity of being in terms of time is the conception of being in his thought. In History of the Concept of Time (a text that Kisiel has called the phenomenological draft of Being and Time) Heidegger accuses Descartes of reformulating an analogical conception of being. As always, Heidegger’s critique of previous positions centres around the two fundamental terms of his own thought, being and Dasein. In Being and Time Heidegger takes up the various issues surrounding the Cartesian philosophy and finds weaknesses in its conception of being. The critique of the philosophy of analogy is an important aspect of Heidegger’s thought and it is a problematic to which he returns throughout his career. It is my view that it is the univocal sense of being in terms of time that Heidegger will determine in his own terms, that functions as the guiding principle for his critique of the tradition of philosophy and the thought of being in terms of analogy alone. From Heidegger’s point of view, all previous philosophers have passed over both his sense of being as meaningful presence and his understanding of the being who understands being, Dasein. In what follows, I will explore Heidegger’s critique of the tradition of philosophy in terms that allow the univocity of being to emerge in its proper place as an expression of his radical philosophy of being.

Introduction

9

Heidegger came to employ the word Ereignis, which can be translated as the event of appropriation, rather than ‘being’ to name his central concern. This concern is the revelation of being qua meaningful presence together with the opening up of Dasein as finitude. This is a temporal event and being is revealed in the anticipation of death. Being may essentially unfold as appropriation but, as meaningful presence, it is still univocal.

Chapter 1

The Problem of Univocity in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

From Heidegger to Aristotle The prelude to Being and Time, which is headed by a quotation from Plato’s Sophist, inaugurates the question of being. From these passages it is possible to elicit two readings of the meaning of this question. Heidegger refers to the meaning of the word being and to a phenomenon of being. He is concerned with both. In spite of the importance of this question in the history of philosophy Heidegger notes that he faces three prejudices in his day against raising it again. He proposes to bring these to light at the outset of his enquiry. In the discussion of these prejudices the importance of Aristotle’s philosophy of being for Heidegger emerges. The three prejudices are: (I) being is the most universal concept; (II) as a concept, being is indefinable; and (III) as a concept, being is self-evident. (I) Being is indeed the most universal concept but its universality is not that of a class or genus. The universality of being transcends the universality of a genus. Heidegger notes that in medieval ontology being was denoted as a transcendens in that it transcends the categories. He agrees with this, ‘being is the transcendens pure and simple’. He notes that Aristotle put the problem of the unity of this transcendens on a new basis with his concept of the unity of analogy but notes that he failed to fully shed light on this problem. Hegel, who, for Heidegger, still looks to ancient ontology as his clue, no longer gives Aristotle’s problem of the unity of being as over against the multiplicity of categories the place it deserves in ontology. The concept of being, despite its universality, remains the ‘darkest of all’ and we must discuss it further.

The Problem of Univocity in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

11

(II) The prejudice of the indefinability of being is parasitic upon the prejudice of its universality. Being cannot be conceived as an entity and can never have the concept of definition in traditional logic applied to it. This is the problem of the ontological difference, the difference between being and beings. The fact that being is indefinable does not dispel the question of the meaning of being, nor does it mean that it is permissible to overlook this question. Rather, this indefinability demands that we face up to this question. (III) The prejudice of being’s self-evidence is based upon the idea that when any thinking, speaking and comporting of oneself towards beings or one’s self, the notion of being is made use of and is, therefore, intelligible without effort. But this, as Heidegger calls it, average kind of intelligibility, in fact demonstrates being’s unintelligibility. In any comporting of oneself towards beings as beings there is a priori ‘an enigma’, for despite this pre-understanding of being the meaning of being is shrouded in darkness and so it is necessary to raise the question of the meaning of being again. The centrality of Aristotle’s problem for Heidegger emerges most clearly with regard to the first prejudice. Aristotle attempted to answer the question of the meaning of being and Heidegger notes that this put this question on a new basis. However, from Heidegger’s point of view, Aristotle failed to satisfactorily deal with this question and this fact makes it necessary to raise the question of being again. The question concerning being perplexed Aristotle from the time he wrote the Categories through to his mature works that were collected together under the title of Metaphysics. This problem is firmly in mind at the opening of the Categories where he begins with definitions of the notions of homonymy, synonymy and paronymy. What is at stake for Aristotle is far more than the meanings of words. Rather, Aristotle saw definition as a way to tackle and illuminate the metaphysical structure of reality itself. He is concerned with things, not words, and the definitions of homonymy, synonymy and paronymy apply to things. These notions are all intimately related to the ambiguous verb ‘to be’ and the ambiguity of this verb discloses a fundamental and profound fact about the structure of reality. For Aristotle, things are homonymous if the same name applies to them but in a different sense each time. Things are synonymous if the same name applies to each in the same sense each time. Synonyms are thus susceptible of a general definition. Homonyms are not. For Aristotle, many philosophical terms were homonyms the most important of which is the

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verb ‘to be’. This scheme of homonyms and synonyms allows for particular things to be both homonymous and synonymous because there may be names that apply to both but in different senses and other names that apply to both in the same sense. From these definitions follow the definitions of equivocal and univocal terms corresponding to homonymy and synonymy respectively. Paronymy is slightly different although it is, along with homonymy, another case in which things are said in many ways. Things are paronymous if their names are related in a certain way. Paronymous things are denoted by either the same name or a modification of that name and they are almost identical with regards to definition. This is so because both name and definition are related to some further thing in a focal way. The second chapter of the Categories begins with a division of reality. Aristotle divides the ‘things that are said’ into those said with (‘man runs’, ‘man wins’) and those said without (‘man’, ‘win’, ‘runs’) combination. He then divides up the ‘things that are’ (beings) into four kinds. Whereas the first division seems to apply to subjects and their various acts, properties and relations the second is a division of reality itself by four. In the totality of beings (things that are) all are either predicable of (said-of) something or not and either inhere in (are ‘in’) something or not. With this schema there is the first hint of a division between the notions of universal, particular and the crucial notion of substance (ousia). In the Categories Aristotle distinguishes between primary substances and secondary substances. Primary substances are the ultimate subjects of predication, they are individual particular things which are numerically one. Aristotle’s examples are of an individual man and an individual horse. Primary substances are not said of a subject nor are they in a subject. Secondary substances are the things that are predicable of the primary substances but do not inhere in them. They are the classes or universals, species and genera which subsume particular existents. Aristotle says: The species in which the things primarily called substances . . . [i.e. primary substances] . . . are, are called secondary substances, as also are the genera of these species. For example, the individual man belongs in a species, man, and animal is a genus of the species; so these – both man and animal – are called secondary substances.1 Secondary substances exist in a less fundamental way than primary substances and could not exist without them. The remaining two divisions of the schema are occupied with non-substantial beings that inhere in substances.

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Chapter three of the Categories introduces the transitivity of predication, the said-of relation. Thus, if ‘P’ is said-of ‘Q’ and ‘Q’ is said-of ‘R’ then ‘P’ is also said of ‘R’. Applying this it is the case that if Socrates (primary substance) is a man (species) and man (i.e. if that species) is an animal (genus) then Socrates, by dint of his substantiality, is an animal (i.e. is a member of that genus) in addition to being a man (i.e. a member of that species). For Aristotle, the said-of relation is definitional of the individual particular thing. So, for example, an individual man is subsumed under the general definition of animal. Species, by contrast with genus, reveals the nature of the individual particular thing. Each genus, provided that it is not subordinate to another, has its own particular set of differentiae; such as ‘footed’, ‘winged’ or ‘aquatic’ for the genus animal. The characteristic feature of substances and differentia is that ‘all things called from them are so called synonymously’.2 This is so since all the predicates they admit are predicable both of the individual particular things and of the species. Synonymy is also involved when, in the said-of relation, a secondary substance is invoked in the definition of a primary substance since in such a case the primary substance is indicated by the name of their species. In contrast to homonymy and paronymy, which are both cases where things are said in many ways, synonymy is an example of things being said in the same sense of every thing of which it is said. Synonymy corresponds to univocity. This is important because Aristotle assumes a harmony between language and reality to the extent that synonymy and homonymy are properties of things. Thus, the order of being with which Aristotle is concerned with exists in a univocal way. So, when an individual particular man (Socrates) is defined by the secondary substance ‘man’ (species) he is being defined by the name of his species, with the strict definition of that species firmly ‘in mind’, and in so doing a space of univocity opens up between the different orders of being. Chapter four of the Categories makes a return to the division between things that are said with and those said without combination. Those things said without combination comprise the famous list of the ten categories. These ten categories refine those things that are said (predicates) and give more information about the things that are (beings). They are, in effect, numerous ways in which a particular existent met with in our experience may be characterized. The ten categories are: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, activity and passivity. The first category of substance is rather different than the other nine. Substance is never ‘in’ anything else. The other nine categories, by contrast, are things that are

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‘in’ other things. That is, the other nine categories are in substances. No substance can ever be in anything else because something’s being in something else precludes it being definitional of that thing. In the Metaphysics Aristotle develops the problematic of the Categories. As we shall see, Heidegger derived his question of being from Aristotle, in what must be regarded as an Aristotelian-scholastic setting, but he maintained that Aristotle never managed to clarify and develop the problem of being, never mind solve it. Heidegger does not simply reject Aristotle. Rather, in keeping with his general approach to figures in the history of philosophy, Heidegger seeks to trace Aristotle’s conceptual creations back to the fundamental experiences to which they are a response. From this he hopes to be able to reinvigorate and reawaken the urgency of these problems and concepts so as to exhibit their limits and possibilities. This process is known as retrieval and it is conceived as following the destruction of the history of philosophy which he called for in the early stages of Being and Time. The destruction of the tradition of ontology is crucially important since: the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation. 3 So, this destruction is only possible in terms of the formulation of this question. Within this destruction and retrieval Greek ontology is particularly important since it determines the conceptual character of philosophy from antiquity right down to the present day. Aristotle’s ontology is in many ways the apotheosis of Greek ontology in general and the referent of Heidegger’s text. Destruction and retrieval will ultimately lead to our liberation from the calcified tradition and allow for a proper understanding of Dasein’s being and ultimately to a proper understanding of being generally. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is made up of 14 books that hold together more like a selection of related essays rather than one systematic treatise. The Metaphysics can be seen, to a large extent, as seeking to resolve the philosophical problems that are left over from the Physics, which drew heavily on the Categories. Book Gamma of the Metaphysics opens with the proclamation that there is a kind of science that investigates ‘being qua being’. This science is radically different from all other sciences for it does not first mark out a specific region and then examine the ontological constitution of the things

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that fall within its bounds. The science of being qua being, metaphysics, engages in general speculation about ‘that which is qua that which is’. As such, metaphysics turns out to be the science that studies ‘the primary causes of that which is qua that which is’.4 In this context we can interpret Aristotle’s notion of first philosophy as ontology. Taken this way, first philosophy qua ontology, is the primary science. First philosophy is also characterized as theology. Essentially, the problem that Aristotle faced was how is first philosophy, conceived as ontology, the science of being qua being, possible? Sciences are generally concerned with particular regions of beings. These particular beings are unified under a highest genus. Being, however, is not a genus. The particular axioms of the regional sciences do not apply across all sciences in a straightforward manner. Rather, their application is analogically determined in that they mean something slightly different when applied to a different subject matter. This problem is made all the more complicated by the fact that being is spoken of in many ways. In order to show that first philosophy was possible Aristotle had to show that the many ways that being is said ultimately reduce to one primary way. In Delta VII Aristotle distinguishes between four ways in which being is said. The first way ‘accidental being’, is where beings are denoted in terms of an accidental or coincidental/contingent way of being. The second way in which being is said is in terms of substance and the ten categories. The third is in terms of truth and falsity. The fourth way is in terms of potentiality and actuality. Now, Aristotle sought to reduce this plurality of ways in which being is said to one generic unity. The first stage of this reduction is the elimination of the ways in which being is said in the first way and third. The result is that the problem of being is concerned with how being is said in the sense of the categories and in the sense of potentiality and actuality. Books Zeta and Eta discuss being in the sense of the categories. Potentiality and actuality receive treatment in Theta. Because potentiality and actuality are in fact modes of substance the problem of being turns out to be concerned only with the way being is said in the categories. The problem of a general science of being is still open since being is said in different ways in each of the categories. Recalling the definitions at the start of the text of the Categories, if being were said simply synonymously across all ten of the categories then we would be dealing with one genus and Aristotle’s problem would not arise. If being is said simply homonymously across the ten categories the problem of being could not be solved since, between the multiplicity of ways of saying being there would be no commonality at all.

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Aristotle did hope to solve this problem and so took it that there must be some kind of relation between the ways being is said across the ten categories. There are two candidates for this relation. In addition to paronymy, introduced in the Categories, there is analogy. Paronymy and analogy are often taken as different ways of expressing the same concept. There is, however, a slight difference between the two. 5 Analogy is based upon a similarity or, in some cases, identity of relations between at least two things. It is different from metaphorical language which is based upon similarities between states or properties. Paronymy, by contrast, is the situation where a derivative name of some thing is instantiated on the basis of its relation to a prior name of some related thing. The derivative name is a new form of the original name, for example, ‘anthropologist’ from ‘anthropology’, ‘historian’ from ‘history’ and so on. Despite this, in book Delta VI Aristotle uses analogy to designate the relation of paronymy ‘those things are one by analogy which are related as some further thing is to some yet further one’.6 Analogy is different from paronymy in that it is based on similar relations between terms that are heterogeneous. Paronymy, by contrast, is a relation of naming based upon things having different relations to one focal thing that is so named in an ultimate way. Paronymy is sometimes referred to as the pros hen relation. Analogy is somewhat inappropriate in regard to a solution of the problem of being despite the fact that Aristotle does hold that there is a relation of analogy between all categories. Aristotle needs to ground the science of being qua being. Analogy is inappropriate because it is not genus specific; it is used across different genera. For example, a relation of analogy holds between the following ‘Henry is a man’ and ‘Prodigality is a vice’, for in both cases an individual particular thing is subsumed under a general name. This kind of analogy may be called analogia entis. If the ten categories are conceived as highest genera (substance would then be the highest genus of all substances and quantity would be the highest genus of all quantities etc.) it would follow that such analogy could never designate only one homogenous genus. The categories can also be construed as classes of predicates that may be applied to primary substances. If the categories are construed in this way then it follows that being is used in each of the ten categories in such a way that the notion of being in each category is related to the way being is used in the fundamental category of substance. The primary substances are neither said-of anything else nor are they in anything else. They are the ultimate subjects and exist in the most fundamental way and all other uses of ‘is’ will be related to how it is used in terms of these primary beings.

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If we combine the notions of the categories as classes of predicates and as highest genera then the use of ‘being’ in categories other than that of substance will be, following Philipse in his Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being, paronymically related to saying being in a singular highest genus, substance. This is precisely what Aristotle does in Gamma 2 where he says: Now that which is is indeed spoken of in many ways. But it is spoken of with regard to one thing and a single kind of nature. It is not spoken of by homonymy. Its position is similar to that with health. Everything that is healthy is spoken of with regard to health. So, one thing is said to be healthy by dint of preserving health, another by dint of producing it, another by being a sign of it, another by being capable of having it. [100 3b] . . . this . . . will not exhaust the examples of things spoken of with regard to something in this way.7 In line with the interpretation of the categories as highest genera, substance becomes the highest genus. Therefore, since all ways in which being is said are pros hen related to the focal case of substance (ousia) it follows that the domain or subject matter of first philosophy or ontology is substance. There is a further reduction in Aristotle’s Metaphysics of first philosophy as ontology, the science of substance, to theology, the science of the Deity. This too is a case of reduction by paronymy. This reduction is carried out because of the requirement that true scientific knowledge (episte- me-) be directed towards eternal objects. Since true scientific knowledge is immutable, so too must be its object. Since primary substances, which, in the Metaphysics, are seen as compounds of form and matter, are mutable and ultimately perishable, something else has to fulfil this requirement. The science of substance has to reduce to theology since the object of theology, the Deity, is immutable. Central to Aristotle’s analysis in all of this is the view that there is only one set of categories for being. Heidegger will reject this assumption. In section three of Being and Time Heidegger puts forth the thesis that there are different regions of being each with their own set of categories. This radicalizes Aristotle’s thesis that being is said in many ways. For Heidegger, being is indeed said in many ways, but not simply across ten categories. Rather, it is said across a plurality of regions of being each with their own set of categories. For Aristotle, the notion of substance provides

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the conceptual centre of all the categories and the ten categories apply throughout the sciences. Heidegger objects to this universalization of one set of categories to fit all regions of being. In particular, the Aristotelian notion of substance is inappropriately applied to Dasein. Dasein is not a ‘thing’ at all. Heidegger accuses Aristotle of erroneously universalizing ontological concepts derived from the sphere of artefacts over all other regions of being, most problematically to Dasein. When, in production, a tool is created, matter is formed. When this process is finished there exists, for example, a knife where once there was just formless matter. The manufacturer conceives of the form of the knife prior to production. Once production is completed and the form of the knife has been actualized there is nothing further for the knife ‘to do’. The essence of the knife can be stated as a ‘what’; this can never be the case with a Dasein. By applying concepts like form and matter to human existence Aristotle analysed human existence in inappropriate terms. Instead of universalizing one set of categories to fit all regions of being Heidegger argues that the limitations of this set should be realized and new appropriate sets of categories should be forged that apply to the various regions of being. Most notably, we should forge a set of ‘categories’, what Heidegger calls existentialia, that are appropriately expressive of Dasein’s mode of being. With Aristotle all the categories are related to the fundamental category of substance and the fundamental category of substance is inappropriately applied to Dasein. By contrast to Aristotle, Heidegger conceives of Dasein as the ultimate ontological centre to which all other regions of being are related. This view, in conjunction with his misunderstanding of ontology as concerned with substance, led Heidegger to reject Aristotle’s further reduction of ontology to theology. Aristotle’s ontology provided the basis for the development of traditional logic. For example, a subject-predicate sentence is the linguistic expression of the ontology of substance-property metaphysics. Yet, Aristotle did not manage to raise the question of being properly because the being of all beings is, by his doctrine of the primacy of substance, reduced to the being of a being. This being may be more foundational, but it is still a being. With the reduction of ontology to theology this only constituted a further reduction to the being of some other being, God. By this, Aristotle failed to recognize the ontological difference, the difference between being and beings, and with this fateful error being fell into oblivion and the ontology of presence (substance) began. Heidegger had to overcome Aristotelian metaphysics and reawaken the question of being.

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Medieval Philosophy Medieval philosophy is distinguished by the fact that the Christian worldview dominated the lives of its exponents. For the medieval philosopher faith was the space of philosophy. There is no better statement summing up the nature of questioning in this period than that of St Anselm of Canterbury: Fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. The task of the medieval philosophers was bound up with the task of interpreting their world and the dictates of their faith. Faith grounded the intelligibility of the world. Consideration of the medieval and particularly the Scotist doctrine of being is important for an appreciation of Heidegger’s view of being. From the perspective of Being and Time the term ‘Dasein’ can be applied to any human being. Dasein’s world is a context of significance in which it goes about its business. For the most part Dasein understands itself in terms of its world and the objects of its circumspective concern. Accordingly, there can be a Dasein of differing contextual configurations. To be Dasein is to be there, here and now in a world and to understand oneself in terms of that world. There are many possible worlds which Dasein could inhabit and understand itself in terms of. The world of the medieval philosopher and the Dasein of faith is just one such configuration. Many have dismissed medieval philosophy on the grounds that it is merely a grand rationalization of faith. But the very early Heidegger, the Heidegger before Being and Time, clearly saw the remarkable character of medieval philosophy. Writing to Father Engelbert Krebs (1919) he affirmed that: I believe that I – perhaps more than those who work on the subject officially – have perceived the values that the Catholic Middle Ages bears within itself, values that we are still far from really exploiting.8 Although written with the intention of announcing his move away from ‘dogmatic Catholicism’ this letter bears witness to the lasting influence medieval thought was to have on him and to the understanding of it he claimed for himself. Somewhat earlier, Heidegger gave this expression to a view of the religious character of medieval scholastic thought: Scholasticism and mysticism belong together essentially in the medieval worldview. The two pairs of ‘opposites’ – rationalism–irrationalism and Scholasticism–mysticism – do not coincide with one another.9

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Heidegger’s thought was always bound up with certain religious concerns. One can read Heidegger’s text in terms of his changing religious views from an early concern with demythologizing the mythic scriptural world to remythologizing the world in terms of a Greek neomythology. Heidegger’s move away from dogmatic Catholicism in 1919 represents, for Caputo in Demythologizing Heidegger, the first turn or change in orientation in his thought. It is the turn from Catholicism to Protestantism. The ‘middle ages’ are an epoch in Heidegger’s sense of that term. They are a historically defined configuration of meaning. The highest conceptual expression of this age was the philosophy of analogy. In Being and Time Heidegger held that much of what needed destroyed in the tradition arose out of the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle’s most fundamental mistake was taking the question of being to be about substance (ousia). Against this and from the perspective of fundamental ontology, Dasein is firmly placed at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe. All possible regions of being must in some way relate to Dasein. In an Aristotelian universe all the categories relate to substance, and ultimately to the Deity. This relation is understood in terms of focal meaning. Ultimately, for Aristotle, the Deity is at the centre of the ontological universe and there is an analogy of being between the categories. Analogy and paronymy are both instances where being is said in many ways. Heidegger, when dealing with Aristotle, tends not to distinguish between analogy and paronymy. As noted, Aristotle uses the term ‘analogy’ at least once for the relation of paronymy. Many scholastic philosophers followed Aristotle in their doctrine of analogia entis and regarded paronymy as an instance of analogy. Of paronymy and analogy, it is paronymy which is the more ontotheological, a term Heidegger employs when characterizing a philosophy that determines a highest ontological and/or theological principle in metaphysics. Even though, strictly speaking, paronymy may be different from analogy, it has nonetheless been known as part of the doctrine of the analogy of being. On this reading, the ‘discrete reappropriation’ of the doctrine of analogia entis that commentators like Taminiaux read into Heidegger would be more properly described as a reappropriation of paronymy. Both paronymy and analogy are cases in which being is said in many ways. However, neither is as strong in this as equivocity. Equivocity, on a Heideggerian ontology, makes no sense since the propositions of ontology carry a temporal sense, grounded as they are in the transcendental horizon of being, which is Dasein’s temporality.

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On a Heideggerian ontology, the univocity of being in terms of time implies that time is the common sense in all discourse and comportment regarding being. For Heidegger, a concept is univocal if what is intended by it is intended in the same sense. In Aristotle’s Categories, univocity/ synonymy is implied when a secondary substance is predicated of a primary substance since there is a common content of meaning (specifically, definition) intended between the two regions. Similarly, in Heidegger’s ontology, univocity will be implied between various regions of being since when they are intended they will be intended temporally, with reference to Dasein’s temporality. All the propositions of ontology are temporal propositions. The univocity of being is rooted in Dasein’s temporality. Within the Aristotelian philosophy of being, it is by virtue of their focal reference to substance that the diverse categories of being are intelligible as categories of being. Their unity is a unity of analogy. Now, from Heidegger’s perspective, there are two interrelated problems with Aristotelian philosophy. First, Aristotle does not thematize Dasein in its true nature. On Aristotle’s view, a human being is a thing of a particular type. The Aristotelian categories may be applied to objects; but they cannot arrive at the kind of being appropriate to Dasein. Dasein is never just one more thing amongst others. Dasein is always a who and never a what. As far as Heidegger is concerned Dasein is not a thing at all. Dasein has its being to be and is possessed of a self-relation in a way that no thing is. Heidegger also holds that in order to avoid carrying over all the pre-suppositions of the traditional discourse an entirely new vocabulary is required that can be appropriately applied to Dasein. Second, Aristotle fails to note the crucial difference between being and beings: he is the father of the forgetfulness of being and of the tradition Heidegger sought to destroy in Being and Time. Aristotelian ontology could only present an ontology of things that are simply there or present-to-hand. Aristotelian substance ontology instantiated the metaphysics of presence that Heidegger sought to overcome.

Scholasticism The metaphysical framework within which the medieval philosophers operated was profoundly influenced by the Aristotelian heritage. That framework included the doctrine that reality can be divided up into substances and accidents. Corporeal substances are composites of matter and form. Particularly, the form of a living corporeal substance, such as Socrates,

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is his soul: soul is that which structures matter in such a way that it is constituted as the living flesh and blood of a particular body. Accidents, examples are height and colour, are further kinds of form that take an individual substance, such as Socrates, as their substrate. As such, accidents depend for their existence on substances and in turn account for the ontologically derivative characteristics of substances. Such a metaphysical view of reality is broadly continuous with the Aristotelian substance ontology. There is further continuity between Aristotle’s and medieval Aristotelian-scholastic ontology that is paramount with regards to the related issues of univocity, equivocity and analogy. As theology, Aristotle’s universal science deals with the primary kind of being upon which all others depend. This prompts the traditional distinction between special metaphysics dealing with the Deity and general metaphysics dealing with being in general (ens commune). Aristotle’s philosophy is separated from the scholastic philosophy by more than just the gulf of around a thousand years; it is also separated by the advent of monotheistic and creationist philosophical theology. When in the middle ages the Aristotelian philosophy of being was approached by Christian thinkers, such as Aquinas, it provoked a distinct response. Aquinas’s reading of Aristotle’s philosophy, for example, was conditioned by his reading of Scripture where the creation of the universe ex nihilo by God is revealed. In philosophical terms this entails that God is the first efficient cause of all beings and further that God is the primary being. With the revelation of God qua Creator we have reached the Aristotelian-scholastic paradigm and God is seen to be that primary being to which all other beings have focal reference. For Aquinas the ‘name’ of God is revealed in Exodus in terms of being: as it reads in the Vulgate translation, ‘Ego sum qui sum’, ‘I am who am’. It is worth noting that the text that first brought the question of being to Heidegger’s attention, Franz Brentano’s On The Several Senses of Being In Aristotle, drew heavily on Aristotle’s medieval commentators. Brentano goes so far as to quote Pico de la Mirandola’s assertion that ‘without Thomas Aristotle would be mute’.10 For Aquinas God alone is being essentially: the being of a creature is necessarily other than its essence and is given the creature by God’s efficient causality. For Aquinas metaphysics or first philosophy has as its object being qua being or being in general (ens commune) and it is precisely in terms of this science that Aquinas faces up to the problem of the analogy of being. The problem Aquinas faced was posed in terms of the unity of the concept of being. It is: what kind of unity does the concept of being possess

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if it is to apply to all beings and if it is to apply across all the categories of being? His answer is that being is predicated analogically and not purely univocally nor purely equivocally. Analogy is the middle ground between univocity and equivocity. Aquinas maintains the Aristotelian principle that being ‘is said in many ways’ against the Parmenidean principle that being (or, that which is) is used in just a single way. For example, by the Aristotelian-Thomist view, the term being may be ‘said’ to mean substance and it may be ‘said’ to mean accident, nonetheless, the term being applies to both. It is Aquinas’s view that in reality there are different degrees or levels of being (entitas). Essentially, there are different kinds of substance that exist within the created universe. This is the doctrine of the hierarchy of being, and underpinning this view is a metaphysics of participation.11 Existence, the act of being or esse, is participated in by beings but esse does not participate in anything else and there is only one being that does not participate in esse but is esse: this being is God. Every other being receives its perfection by virtue of its participation in esse. The metaphysical view of a hierarchy of being was widespread in medieval philosophy. The view itself originates in the pagan ancient world and predates Aquinas in its elaboration by Christian philosophers. The principle thinker in this regard is perhaps Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Denis the pseudo-Areopagite) who elaborated the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. In the most general terms the hierarchical view of being holds that there is a scale of being that ranges in ascending order from inanimate beings, through living beings to purely rational beings and ultimately to the most self-sufficient, rational being, God. Aquinas himself accepted this view and held also that the highest degree of being in a particular genus participated in the lowest degree of being in the genus immediately above it. The philosophy of analogy elaborated by Aquinas was a natural ally of this vertical, hierarchical conception of reality. Since, it is held, the doctrine of analogy maintains God’s absolute transcendence of creatures, the being of God and the being of creatures are separated by an absolute gulf. Aquinas rejects the view that names (such as being) are predicated of God and creatures univocally. If this were the case, so holds the analogical thinker, God would not be transcendent. Also, Aquinas rejects the equivocal predication of names of God and creatures since, by equivocity, there would be no common ground or sense between these names and any hope of natural knowledge of God would disappear. Therefore, Aquinas defends analogical predication of certain names of God, particularly of the pure

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perfections.12 Names are applied both to God and creature analogically, because of the relationship of the creature to God, God is both the principle and cause of the creature. Despite the absolute gulf separating the being of God from the being of creatures, so holds Aquinas, every effect is like its cause. This likeness of creature qua effect of God qua uncaused cause is the metaphysical ground for the predication of divine names by analogy. In his Categories Aristotle had argued that predicates are either substantial (essential) or accidental. Substantial predicates treat of the kind of thing that the subject is. Accidental predicates, by contrast, treat of the non-essential attributes of the subject. By the time he wrote the Metaphysics, he had realized that this classification was limited. In the Metaphysics, being and unity emerge as features of things which exceed the classificatory scheme of the Categories. In medieval thought such features came to be known under the title of the transcendentals. Duns Scotus was one of the most significant of the scholastics to pursue a philosophy of being in terms of the transcendentals. When Heidegger wrote his Habilitation thesis, it was a different, though related, aspect of Scotus’s philosophy which would prove decisive. This was the concept of haecceitas. Scotus’s concept of haecceitas provided Heidegger with the insight into individuality that he had begun to investigate through his early engagement with Aristotle. Any individual’s haecceitas, on Scotus’s ontology, is its principle of individuation and unrepeatability by virtue of which it is absolutely singular. The mature Heidegger reconfigured this principle of individuation and unrepeatability in terms of his account of facticity and death. On Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, what is absolutely singular about any individual Dasein is its death. Death is nonrelational and concretizes Dasein in its very factical being-there: death is the existential principle of individuation. This is not substance ontology; nor is it transcendental realism; and Heidegger, in his account of death, is not giving an account of the individuality of present-at-hand objects. Rather, he is giving an account of Dasein’s way of being. In addition to the important account of haecceitas, Scotus’s philosophy of being also establishes a coherent augmentation of the philosophy of analogy by establishing the univocity of being. Although Scotus’s philosophy can be read in relation to the Thomistic philosophy of analogy the critical bent of his work was aimed primarily, not at Thomas, but at Henry of Ghent (1217–93).13 Henry was a neoAugustinian critic of Aquinas and the most important theologian of the generation preceding Scotus. It would be a misreading to see in Scotus a

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simple rejection or negation of the positions held by Henry and the philosophy of analogy but it is true that Scotus forged his own position in reaction to Henry’s, particularly with regards to Henry’s philosophy of being. In large part Scotus takes Henry’s positions as his point of departure rather than Thomas’s. Radically, Scotus broke with the view that being was analogical and argued that there must be a notion of being (and the other transcendentals) that is univocal to God and creatures and also to the ten categories. Scotus’s theory of univocity is particularly concerned to respond to Henry’s philosophy of analogy that, so Scotus believed, made explicit the problems facing the doctrine in accounting for the human being’s natural knowledge of God. A central dimension of this debate was one of the recurring issues of the medieval period. This was the problem of reconciling the possibility of attaining at least some knowledge of God’s divine nature from our knowledge of creatures while at the same time maintaining His absolute transcendence of them. In order to preserve God’s absolute transcendence it is important to stress that His divine nature has nothing creaturely about it. God has no reality in common with creatures. The problem then becomes, how can any knowledge of God be gained from the creature? Scotus does not flatly reject analogy. Rather, there must be some grounding concept of being shared univocally by analogous and proper notions as they apply to God and creature. If there were not, then these concepts would not in fact be analogous. Rather, they would be purely equivocal and natural knowledge of God would be impossible. What Scotus rejects is the theologians’ reliance on analogy as sufficient for determining a concept of God. For Scotus, the subject matter of metaphysics is being and its goal is God. By correctly elucidating the transcendental attributes the existence of God can be inferred. Scotus held there to be a certain number of facts that could be known about God independently of revelation. Metaphysics is the particular science which proves these facts. Given that particular sciences do not prove the existence of their subject matter and given that the metaphysician proves facts about God (for example, His existence) God cannot be the subject matter of metaphysics. Metaphysics’ proper subject is being as being. Being, as far as Scotus is concerned, denotes ‘all that is intelligible’ and the human mind is, in principle, capable of knowing all that is intelligible. Being, then, is the first ‘object’ of the intellect. Our concept of being qua being is our most abstract concept. It is arrived at by abstraction from creatures and is not the concept of a thing but is rather the universal

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concept of being considered prior to any determination and taken only as opposed to nothingness. For Scotus, metaphysics is the science of the transcendentals and the transcendentals are precisely those attributes of a thing that transcend the ten Aristotelian categories. Being is the most fundamental transcendental. The other transcendentals – unity, truth and goodness/desirability – are coextensive with being. In a sense, they are properties of being. Of any particular existing being it is possible to say that it exists, that it is one, that it truly is what it is and that its being what it is, is desirable. As well as these transcendental attributes, there are also the disjunctive attributes. These are attributes, also coextensive with being, such as ‘necessary-or-contingent’ and ‘finite-or-infinite’. The pure perfections also have transcendental status. Some pure perfections, such as the divine attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, can only be said of God. Other perfections, such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘will’, which also have transcendental status, can apply to God and creatures. If these transcendentals are correctly elucidated, so Scotus thinks, the existence of God can be inferred. As such, a proof of the existence of God is the goal of metaphysics. So construed, metaphysics is natural theology. For Scotus, the univocity of the concept of being has a basis in reality. This is so since every actual being – whether finite or infinite – is actually opposed to nothingness. So, the univocity of the concept of being has a foundation in reality since being itself is conceived as the opposite of nothingness. But Scotus does not hold that there is an actually existing being that is neither finite nor infinite, neither contingent nor necessary and so on. He believes, however, that univocal being does exist, though existing only at the conceptual level. That is, there is a concept of univocal being neutral to the alternatives of infinite and finite. This concept of univocal being can be predicated of both alternatives. Thus, the doctrine of univocal being as it is elaborated by Duns Scotus is a doctrine about predication, and nothing more. As such, the univocity of being is on the side of logic rather than of metaphysics.

Chapter 2

Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity

Section One The Question of Being It has often been said that Heidegger’s thought exhibits a unity. From beginning to end he was motivated by a single question. My main concern in this chapter will be to raise a problem regarding the interpretation of his philosophy with respect to the notions of analogy and univocity. Heidegger is in important respects a thinker of paths. He conceived of his thinking as ‘preparatory’ and less grand than traditional metaphysics. The time of ‘systems’ is over he remarks in his Contributions to Philosophy, and as such he does not offer us one. Rather, he offers us different paths to tread through the forest of thought. Such paths may be dead ends (Holzwege), but they are not in vain. As he says of Being and Time in the preface to the seventh German edition ‘the road it has taken remains even today a necessary one, if our Dasein is to be stirred by the question of Being’.1 In this chapter I will largely be concerned with the approach to the question of being as present in Being and Time: that is, with the ‘transcendentalhorizonal’ approach as opposed to the ‘being-historical thinking’ (seinsgeschichtliches Denken) of Heidegger’s later style of thinking. Before and after the shift in orientation in his approach, Heidegger was concerned with the same fundamental question: the meaning of being. In order to understand how that question was first stirred in Heidegger’s imagination I shall return to his earliest philosophical engagement. This will show why he became interested in Scotus’s philosophy. In 1907 Heidegger received a copy of what had been Franz Brentano’s doctoral dissertation – first published in 1862 – On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Heidegger described this text as ‘the first philosophical text through which . . . [he worked his] . . . way, again and again from 1907’.2 Significantly, one of the distinguishing features of Brentano’s book was that the reading of Aristotle put forward there was influenced by his medieval

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commentators. In this respect the question of being was first brought to Heidegger’s attention in an Aristotelian-scholastic setting. Heidegger agreed with Aristotle that the fundamental question of philosophy was the question of being. As we have seen, this question is no simple matter. The problem that motivated Aristotle and Heidegger was the search for a unitary meaning of being and it is with a discussion of this problem that Brentano begins his discussion in his text. This question (how is it possible for there to be a unified sense of being when it is said in many ways?) Heidegger inherited from Aristotle and this question was first roused in him by his reading of Brentano. As he says in his letter to Richardson, ‘the question that determined the way of my thought [was] what is the pervasive, simple, unified determination of Being that permeates all of its multiple meanings?’3 Prior to his abandonment of ‘dogmatic Catholicism’ that he announced in his 1919 letter to Krebs Heidegger had shown considerable interest in the philosophy of the middle ages, as witness his Habilitation (post-doctoral teaching qualification) on John Duns Scotus, a text which can be read as the culmination of the very early Heidegger’s philosophical and theological interests. Many of the writings that express these early interests are now published in the volume Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond. This collection also reprints the author’s book notice to the published version of the Habilitation thesis together with the conclusion to that work that was written as a ‘supplement’ for the published version. It also reproduces the letter to Krebs. Recently, Van Buren has distinguished four possible phases that Heidegger’s thought passed through on the way to the publication of Being and Time. They are: the ‘anti-modernist neo-Scholastic phase’ (1909–13), the ‘mystical neo-neo-Scholastic phase’ (1914–16), the ‘free Protestant mystical phase’ (1917–early 1920s) and a possible fourth phase that saw Heidegger begin to identify with the death of the Christian God as this is intimated in Nietzsche and Hölderlin. This identification with Nietzsche and Hölderlin, suggests Van Buren, includes the cognate identification with their aspiration that a new more Greek God will be born.4 The earliest period of Heidegger’s engagement displays his interest to be essentially theological, moral, aesthetic and cultural. His outlook was essentially anti-modernist and philosophically Aristotelian-scholastic. This was in line with the milieu of the Catholic Church at this time. In these very early writings Heidegger distances himself from the subjectivistic and historicist position of ‘modern’ philosophy and culture as this is expressed in the writings of figures like Nietzsche. Further, he demands a return to

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the realist Aristotelian-scholasticism of medieval Europe that upholds a view of being as objective, timeless and grounded in the being of God. In his first published article in an academic journal, ‘The Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy’ (1912), Heidegger promotes Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy, that has always been realist and declares that ‘Positive, progressive work must be its main concern’.5 Such positive and progressive work will entail a fresh confrontation of the problem of the intentional relation of consciousness to being. On Van Buren’s chronology, the Scotus Book, Heidegger’s Habilitation, was written during the mystical neo-neo-Scholastic phase of his thought and, by his own attestation, represents an ‘onto-logic’ of the categories of being. In the ‘book notice’ he says: This investigation into the history of problems ultimately has a systematic goal: the theory of categories, whose fundamental establishment and organic development has today been made one of the clearly recognized tasks of philosophy.6 In this text the categories of being are approached as a timeless ideal framework by virtue of which intentional judgements access real being; and this real being is ultimately grounded by God’s absolute being. It is precisely in terms of its focus on problems that this text engages the philosophy of Duns Scotus. As far as Heidegger was concerned Scotus presented one of the most philosophically complete and intellectually satisfying paradigms of medieval Scholastic thought and while ostensibly about logical matters, the Scotus Book also displays Heidegger’s appreciation of Scotus’s philosophy in terms of its ‘nearness to real life’: Duns Scotus doesn’t receive our direct attention just because he is rightfully famous for a kind of thought which is unusually apt and critical for logical problems. His striking individuality as a thinker characterizes him in general as having unmistakably modern traits. He has a more extensive and accurate nearness (haecceitas) to real life, to its manifoldness and possible tensions than the scholastics before him. At the same time, he knows how to turn, with the same ease, from the fullness of life to the abstract world of mathematics.7 Heidegger’s engagement with Scotus was motivated by the possibility of retrieving a philosophy of radical singularity expressed in the concept of haecceitas. In Heidegger’s hands this concept would become facticity.

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Haecceitas/facticity is precisely that excess by virtue of which something is absolutely singular and unrepeatable. Heidegger’s early engagement with this concept in the philosophy of Scotus is pregnant with significance for his later philosophy. Heidegger’s interests in logic and metaphysics during this phase of his thinking were complemented and complicated by his theological interests and by the more general interest in developing a phenomenology of religion, which he had intimated in the Scotus Book and which became bound up with a ‘destruction’ of the essentially Greek concepts through which Christian theology is expressed. In this ‘free Protestant mystical phase’ Heidegger intimates themes such as ‘destruction’, ‘the end of philosophy’ (and theology) and ‘a new beginning’ (which in this context is a new beginning of both philosophy and theology) that he will return to in his so called ‘later thought’. Such concepts begin to appear in his thought at this time because of his interest in thinkers like Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard and the medieval mystics, his interest in whom had been mooted in the Habilitation. Through his engagement with these thinkers together with his interest in a phenomenology of religion Heidegger sought to gain access to the lifeworld of ‘primal Christianity’ (Urchristentum) and to fashion an adequate conceptual expression of it. He took Christian categories such as mystery, the coming (parousia), the moment (kairos), wakefulness and falling to be ontic (that is, regional and/or particular) examples from which general ontological categories could be drawn. Such categories would found a ‘new beginning’ for ontology. Through this engagement, Van Buren argues, the neo-neo-Scholastic becomes anti-philosopher and the Scholastic interpretation of the presence of God qua summum ens is deconstructed back to the primal Christian experience of the New Testament and the experience of the divine qua deus absconditus, accessible only in terms of an alert and anxious faith within the time of the moment. Returning to the Habilitation: this text was written under the supervision of the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert to whom the work is dedicated. Reading the Habilitation as a work on Scotus is complicated by the fact that Heidegger based some of his considerations on the Grammatica speculativa, a text later shown to be a work of Thomas of Erfurt which had been falsely attributed to Scotus. Practically nothing is known about Erfurt except that he was active in the early 14th century. The anti-relativist and anti-psychologistic speculative grammarians of the middle ages held that the way things are determines how the human being can think about them. Thought, in turn, determines human language. Human grammar and language are,

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in effect, a function of universal ‘forms of thought’ which reflect the way things are. As such, every natural language has to obey ultimate grammatical principles. The task of the speculative grammarian was to study these ultimate structures of language. Heidegger perceived a continuity of this anti-psychologistic project in his own time with the appearance in 1901 of the second volume of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. There, contra psychologism, Husserl says: Modern grammar thinks it should build exclusively on psychology and other empirical sciences. As against this, we see that the old idea of a universal, or even of an a priori grammar, has unquestionably acquired a foundation and a definite sphere of validity, from our pointing out that there are a priori laws which determine the possible forms of meaning.8 Heidegger’s concern with the current problems of philosophy as they were coming to light in the writings of Husserl was a factor in the style and content of the Habilitation thesis itself. Heidegger enters into dialogue with a thinker and text from the history of philosophy in the service of current problems. From his early point of view, it is to problems that philosophers turn their attention: Although the religious . . . political and cultural aspects . . . are indispensable for the understanding of the genesis and historical conditions of a philosophy, these aspects can, nevertheless, be set aside for the sake of purely philosophical interests which as such are concerned with the . . . problems themselves.9 Erfurt had followed Scotus to such an extent that when questions of authorship were settled they did not discredit the interpretation Heidegger had put forward. Heidegger’s approach in this text shows indications of his later destructive readings of the history of philosophy. ‘Destruction’, a fundamentally positive method, loosens up the concepts of the tradition in order to get to the ‘fundamental experiences’ from which these concepts actually arose. Much later in his Basic Problems of Phenomenology Heidegger will speak of the ‘birth certificate’ of concepts. Destruction aims to uncover the ‘living roots’ and ‘life-giving’ experiences from which our concepts arise. Central to this task is the question as to whether these concepts are appropriate to the subject matter or domain which they organize or determine. Destruction, he tells us in his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, may involve placing oneself in the unsaid of a text (its general presuppositions

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which might otherwise remain concealed) in order to force it to speech. In a practically identical passage from the much earlier Habilitation Heidegger says: ‘What is not said needs to be considered if there is to be productive insight and thorough evaluation of the wealth of scholastic thought’.10 Destruction, an approach that will play a central role in the fundamental ontology of Being and Time, was already present in its infancy in the Habilitation, and was to be deployed in the interpretation of scholasticism.

Analogy, the Medieval Experience of Life From the time of the Habilitation Heidegger had displayed a significant interest in medieval mysticism. Very early in his engagement with medieval thought he rejected the view that Scholasticism and mysticism represent a pair of opposites in the medieval context. Through an incipient destructive method of philosophizing Heidegger could break through the surface of the ‘schoolbooks’ to their living side. Such a destructive move is nothing less than the performance of the method of his phenomenology of religion and the living side of these texts is an expression of the medieval lifeworld. Heidegger’s early engagement with medieval mysticism would ultimately pay dividends. At key points Heidegger’s thought is deployed in a critical relation with certain mystical thinkers. Themes that will become important in a distinctively Heideggerian sense, such as letting-be (Gelassenheit), are explored by Heidegger in his engagement with mysticism in the early ‘The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism’. This text is the text of a cancelled lecture course Heidegger proposed to deliver in 1919–20. Significantly, in these notes Heidegger discusses medieval mysticism in relation to Luther. Heidegger’s thought was always on the move and the method of destruction was also prompted by an engagement with medieval mysticism. Medieval mysticism was for Heidegger a fusion of the religious lifeworld of primal Christianity and the scholarly, ‘researching lifeworld’ of scholasticism. In this sense mysticism and scholasticism did not represent polar opposites. Heidegger regarded the living side of the texts of the middle ages as of fundamental importance. This side of the period can be found in its religious dimension, that which Heidegger – following Dilthey – calls the medieval ‘experience of life’ (Lebenserfahrung). The conceptually rich and abstract philosophies of the middle ages express the ‘form of life of medieval

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man’.11 Here the concepts of ‘experience of life’ and ‘form of life’ prefigure the explicitly phenomenological concept of the lifeworld. Given my topic of univocity the example Heidegger gives of the conceptual expression of the medieval experience of life could not be more appropriate: the concept of analogy . . . appears at first glance to be an utterly faded and no longer meaningful schoolbook concept. However, as the dominant principle in the categorial sphere of sensible and supersensible reality, it contains the conceptual expression of the qualitatively filled and value-laden experiential world of medieval man that is related to transcendence. It is the conceptual expression of the particular form of inner Dasein that is anchored in a primordial, transcendent relation of the soul to God and lived precisely in the Middle Ages with an unusual reserve.12 The analogy of being, most associated in the middle age with the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, is the conceptual crystallization of the relation of the human soul to God. As such, the doctrine is bound up with transcendence. The concept of analogy is ‘lived’ in the middle ages, it expresses the lifeworld of the medieval Christian. Heidegger’s relationship to the thesis of analogy did not remain constant throughout his writings. Here the thesis stands as the highest conceptual expression of the medieval understanding of being. In the period of fundamental ontology, in texts such as Being and Time, Heidegger destructively reappropriates this thesis on the basis of a univocal conception of being in terms of time. Destructive reappropriation is not mere repetition. It is a retaking of a question, and the engagement Heidegger had with texts in the history of philosophy exhibits this kind of approach. Heidegger did not subscribe to an analogy of being where being is understood as some kind of substance. And, in a sense, his topic was not ‘being’ but the mysterious depth-dimension, as Van Buren puts it, of the temporal granting of being which he explores in terms of ‘there is/it gives’ (Es gibt), ‘worlding’ (Welten), event of appropriation/appropriating event (Ereignis), kairological time and temporal motion (kinesis). Historically, the concept of analogy arose explicitly with the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotle’s text is certainly one of the main sources of inspiration for Aquinas. By the early 1930s Heidegger’s point of view on analogy had shifted. He came to see this thesis as a ‘stringent aporia’: The analogy of being – this designation is not a solution to the being question, indeed not even an actual posing of the question, but the title for

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the most stringent aporia, the impasse in which ancient philosophy, and along with it all subsequent philosophy right up to today, is enmeshed. In the Middle Ages, the analogia entis . . . played a role, not as a question of being but as a welcomed means of formulating a religious conviction in philosophical terms.13 The conceptual expression of a fundamentally religious orientation is now regarded negatively. The problem is, as Heidegger expresses it, that the philosophy of analogy does not actually pose the question of being. From Heidegger’s point of view, all analogy does is provide a formula for determining the being of creatures in relation to the creating and preserving God of Christian philosophical theology. What is striking is that despite all the other changes of perspective that have transpired in Heidegger’s thought from the writing of his Habilitation to these lectures in the 1930s he still holds analogy to be the expression of a fundamentally religious point of view. Analogy is still seen as the expression of a religious conviction but qua expression of a religious conviction the concept is seen negatively as an aporia. The analogy of being qua aporia distracts attention away from the possibility of a genuine posing of the question of being. Such genuine posing of the question of being would intimate the central concern of Heidegger’s thought, Ereignis. Towards the end of the passage that I’ve quoted here, Heidegger refers to the problem of equivocity, univocity and analogy in exactly the terms that the medieval philosophers approached this problem. In the 1930s the philosophy of the middle ages and the philosophy of analogy was as sharply in focus for Heidegger, albeit in these negative terms, as it had been while he was preparing his Habilitation. Even though for Heidegger, just as for Scotus and other scholastics, being was the ‘first object of the intellect’ and to this extent the scholastic view is repeated by Heidegger in his claim that Dasein’s understanding of being is its most fundamental characteristic and that being is its most natural concern, we should not conclude that his relationship with medieval thought is one of simple continuation and appropriation. In his mature writings Heidegger regards medieval scholastic thought to be a paradigmatic example of ontotheology and he criticizes it as such. Consider the following example drawn from Scotus’s text: a thing [res] is primarily classified (1) as created or uncreated, (2) as having being of itself or having it from another, (3) as necessary or possible,

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(4) as finite or infinite. The uncreated, self-existent, infinite, and necessary thing or being we call God. The created, the ‘from another,’ the possible [i.e., contingent], the finite goes by the common name of ‘creature’.14 God is a being and – as Heidegger would say – Scotus has failed to think the particular giving of being that is named by the Ereignis. Scotus’s thought remains ontotheological. Scotus has thought univocal being but he has not thought the granting of being. Scotus remains a metaphysician who thought in terms of the substance ontology that Heidegger attempted to overcome. Nevertheless, as I have intimated, it was through an engagement with this supreme metaphysician that Heidegger gained a valuable insight. It was Scotus’s concept of haecceitas that gave Heidegger the insight he required into individuality. With that concept, so Heidegger says, Scotus entered into proximity to real life. Haecceitas promised Heidegger access to the crucially important ‘place’ of real life. So construed, in Heidegger, haecceitas became facticity. His engagement with Scotus allowed him to ‘go all out after the factic’ and problematize Dasein’s concrete life. All questioning, including that of ontology, has its origin in the concrete life of Dasein. In its concrete life Dasein has an understanding of being and the question of being, as posed by Heidegger in Being and Time, is nothing less than the radicalisation of this understanding.

Univocity and Phenomenology My view is that Heidegger’s concept of being is ultimately univocal from the standpoint of Being and Time, and that this conception is related – in a less than straightforward manner – to a concern running through Heidegger’s thought beyond Being and Time. In order to elucidate this I must engage with the text of Being and Time. However, there is an immediate problem: Being and Time is incomplete. In section 8 ‘Design of the Treatise’ Heidegger states that Being and Time will be composed of two parts, each with three divisions. As published, Being and Time is made up of only the first two divisions of the first part of the projected text: ‘the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein’ and ‘Dasein and temporality’. Material that was intended to form the first division of the second part – ‘Kant’s doctrine of schematism and time,

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as a preliminary stage in a problematic of temporality’ – received attention in Heidegger’s 1929 publication Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Material intended to be discussed in the last division of the first part – ‘time and Being’ – and the last two divisions of the second part – ‘the ontological foundation of Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, and how the medieval ontology has been taken over into the problematic of the “res cogitans”’ and ‘Aristotle’s essay on time, as providing a way of discriminating the phenomenal basis and the limits of ancient ontology’ – are attended to in the 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. The omission of the section on ‘time and Being’ is significant. However, the lecture course, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology consists of an elaboration of division 3 of part 1 of Being and Time. Although Heidegger did not go public with his thoughts on time and being in a published manuscript at this time he did explore this matter and in order to get a perspective on the question of being in fundamental ontology it is necessary to engage with other texts that surround Being and Time. In a letter to Bultmann in 1927 Heidegger outlines his project. Rather than reproduce this letter here (since it is already reproduced in Kisiel’s The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time) I will instead restrict myself to reproducing the brief mention of Aristotle and Scholasticism he gives there. He turns to them ‘for the strict formulation of certain ontological problems’.15 In this letter scholasticism is put alongside Aristotle. In 1927 the being question was thought by Heidegger with an intimate connection to the Aristotelian-scholastic context with which it was first formulated, albeit in a more mature way. This attention to the ‘strict formulation’ of problems is in keeping with Heidegger’s conviction that his methodology – phenomenology itself – is guided by the idea of ‘scientific philosophy’. Phenomenology, as he understands it at this stage in his career, is the method of ontology, and that is, of scientific philosophy. If it is par for the course in the interpretation of Heidegger to note his most important influences and to do so by naming Husserl and Aristotle then the Aristotle connection stands in need of a qualification. That qualification is the addition of scholasticism into the mix. Scholasticism in the period of Being and Time did not yet have the significance it was to attain in Heidegger’s later thought. The early Heidegger did hold the view that with Aristotle there was a falling away from the vitality that surrounded the being question and he considers it necessary to engage in a destruction of the history of ontology. This was part of the problematic of Being and Time as it was set out in section 8 of that treatise. Part two of Being and Time was intended to outline the ‘basic features’ of

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the phenomenological destruction of the entire history of ontology from Greek thought through to modern philosophy. In this task, temporality was the guiding principle. Destruction (or destructuring as Stambaugh has it) was a central element of Heidegger’s early problematic and is intimately related to his later ‘history of being’. In his 1955 What is Philosophy? Heidegger was still concerned with the notion of destruction: Destruction does not mean destroying but dismantling, liquidating, putting to one side the merely historical assertions about the history of philosophy. Destruction means – to open our ears, to make ourselves free for what speaks to us in tradition as the Being of being.16 Destruction is, in some important respects, a dialogue, one where the interpretation has to pay attention to the unsaid of a work, what Heidegger calls its ‘concealed inner passion’ in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. The unsaid of a text comprises its concealed and orientating presuppositions. What is unsaid can be just as important as what is said. Destruction involves laying out the orienting presuppositions concealed in a text. Heidegger did not aim to give a historically accurate picture of a previous philosopher in all their specificity, rather, he sought to engage with them in order to think the matter itself.

Destruction and Tradition From the perspective of Being and Time, it is Plato and Aristotle that initiate the philosophical tradition. The character of their thinking has been determining for all that has followed since. This is why radical phenomenology is nothing other than their questioning ‘brought back to life’. The result of the Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle’s, has been the substance ontology integral to the tradition. This tradition has congealed and is in need of destruction. Destruction is necessary if the history of the question of being is to be brought to light. All questioning – including the being question – is an ontic possibility of Dasein but Dasein tends to misunderstand itself. For the most part Dasein understands itself in terms of the world which it is in. It falls back and understands itself in terms of the reflected light of that world. Another feature of this fall is that Dasein falls prey to the tradition of philosophy which thus prevents it from being its own guide either in inquiring or in choosing. With the tradition as master what it transmits

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becomes concealed. It obstructs our access to the primordial sources from which the concepts and categories of the tradition have been drawn and it makes us forget that they even had such a source. It is the Greek ontology (which means, Plato and Aristotle) and its history that determines the conceptual character of philosophy from antiquity to the present. By the time of Hegel, so Heidegger contends, the tradition had become self-evident material there at one’s disposal for reworking. The middle ages saw the Greek ontology shaped into a body of doctrine. Although the medieval conceptions of being had been ‘taken over dogmatically’ from the Greek ontology the scholastics did manage to engage in serious work and take matters further within the limits of the Greek ontology. Greek ontology has, with the ‘peculiar character’ given it by the scholastics, been transmitted down through Suarez’s Disputationes metaphysicae to the transcendental philosophy and metaphysics of the present age. This tradition must then be ‘loosened up’ and its ‘concealments dissolved’. Heidegger understands this task as proceeding from the question of being with the aim of destructuring the Greek ontology until the primordial experiences from which the nature of being was first determined. The destruction of the history of ontology is inseparable from the way the question of being is itself formulated and in Being and Time he proposes to implement that destruction at decisive junctures in the unfolding of the tradition. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology Heidegger augments his conception of phenomenology in terms of the three equiprimordial notions of reduction, construction and destruction. Reduction implies that the method of phenomenological vision or seeing is directed not simply toward a being but toward the very being of that being. As such, reduction projects the being upon the way it is unconcealed. The move is from beings to being. Such a move involves bringing oneself positively towards being. Being does not become accessible in the same manner as beings. To paraphrase Heidegger, being is not simply found there in front of us. Rather, being must be brought into view. Projecting the being which is antecedently given upon the structures of its being is called by Heidegger ‘phenomenological construction’. Construction projects an entity/being upon its ontological structure and allows its being to come into view. As such, Heidegger’s method of phenomenological reductive-construction is conceived as the conceptual interpretation of being together with its structure. It begins by moving from beings to being and being is unified as the meaningful relatedness which beings can have for Dasein. But, this beginning happens at a particular point in history. As Heidegger says:

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This commencement is obviously always determined by the factual experience of beings and the range of possibilities of experience that at any time are peculiar to a factical Dasein, and hence to the historical situation of a philosophical investigation.17 Beings can be accessible in different ways at different times and are accessible relatively to different individuals. Since Dasein is historical in its very existence, its possibilities of access to, and modes of interpretation of, beings must themselves be diverse, varying as they will in different historical situations. It is Heidegger’s view that in antiquity an average concept of being was forged and was employed in the interpretation of all beings. From Plato and Aristotle down to Hegel all ontology has been carried out within this average concept of being. Heidegger’s own inquiry is determined by his historical situation along with all its possibilities and the tradition of philosophy. Tradition and its concepts are so pervasive that its influence cannot be overestimated. For this reason even the most radical attempt to begin again is still dominated by traditional concepts and as such, by traditional directions of approach. As questioners, we cannot simply assume that the concepts we employ arose ‘originally’ and ‘genuinely’ from the region of being which it is claimed they fully determine. Necessarily then, along with reduction-construction there is also destruction. Heidegger conceives destruction to be a critical process in which the traditional concepts from which we must begin are destructed down to the experiential sources from which they arose in the first place. Only by means of such a destruction can the concepts of ontology be assured phenomenologically. The method of phenomenology is thus unified as reduction-construction-destruction and destruction signifies a fundamentally positive approach to the history of philosophy.

Metaphysics Whereas Heidegger in his later phase sought to overcome metaphysics, in an important respect fundamental ontology sought to complete it. As he says: Fundamental Ontology is the metaphysics of human Dasein which is required for metaphysics to be made possible.18

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In at least this respect then, we are entitled to see Heidegger as taking further the Kantian Copernican Revolution. ‘Laying the ground for metaphysics’ is possible only on the foundation of time, and pursuing this question is, in important respects, as aspect of the problematic of Being and Time. In Kant and the Problems of Metaphysics, Heidegger gives us one of his most succinct formulations of the notion of retrieval. There retrieval is understood as the opening-up of a problem’s long-concealed possibilities. By working these out, the problem itself is transformed. This is why Heidegger sought to reappropriate or retrieve elements of the tradition. Such retrieval repeats the motivating questions or ‘matter of thought’ of a previous thinker in a way that brings that matter to life again and allows it to be reimplemented in an authentic way. Such an authentic way pays attention to how the concept in question arose from Dasein in its factical life. This is why inquiry begins with Dasein and a ‘hermeneutics of facticity’. Phenomenology is pervasively concerned with the origin or genesis of our concepts in experience. This method aims to go back and discover the origin of concepts in their experiential base. Only by so doing can their validity to their subject matter be established. As Heidegger vividly puts it with regard to the metaphysical concepts of essentia and existentia: We must try to obtain a clue to the origin of these concepts . . . We shall ask what their birth certificate is and whether it is genuine or whether the genealogy of these basic ontological concepts takes a different course, so that at bottom their distinction and their connection have a different basis.19 It is in this sense that one is justified in talking of a genetic phenomenology. Heideggerian genetic phenomenology aims to derive the genesis of our concepts from their experiential and intentional base. For Heidegger, intentionality is founded upon the understanding of being. Intentionality is the directional nature of consciousness. To be conscious is to be conscious of something. To intend something is to point at it. Such directionality is provided for by his concept of the understanding of being. Dasein is in such a way that it has a pre-theoretical understanding of being. This pre-theoretical understanding of being is Dasein’s second priority; Dasein is ontological. Consider the famous hammering example from Being and Time where Heidegger describes the operation of making an item in a workshop. This example concerns the sphere of operative intentionality. Here the intentional directedness of ‘hammering’ is the construction of a finished product. This particular direction is, however, only possible

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on the basis of Dasein’s prior understanding of the being of the particular world of tools and work, where the concept of world is construed as a system of significance relations or references, and so as a general context of significance. The scholastics understood existence as actualitas. Actualitas derives from agere/actum which signify the activity of a subject. As such, the medieval notion of existentia harbours within it a concealed reference to a conception of Dasein as productive agent. As such, and as Heidegger will argue, the ancient and medieval understanding of being moved within the horizon of productivity despite the fact that both ancient and medieval thinkers were unaware of this implicit reference of their understanding of being to Dasein’s productive comportment. Their understanding of being is genetically related to the activity of the artisan, a productive agent who establishes a form in formless matter. From the point of view of fundamental ontology, Dasein is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe. ‘To be’ is to be understood by Dasein and the world is a holistic totality of significance relations wherein the being of anything is defined by its use or readiness-to-hand in relation to Dasein. To this extent, the birth certificate of concepts is to be found in Dasein’s productive and experiential activity.

Phenomenological Philosophy and Aletheia Now, because of the belonging together of construction and deconstruction philosophical method has a determinate historical dimension. In this respect the history of philosophy, which is sometimes held to be separable from philosophical problems, a view that Heidegger would have found scarcely intelligible, belongs essentially to philosophy, taken as scientific phenomenological research. Phenomenology and the history of philosophy belong essentially together. Our concepts are the outcome of a particular historical context. This conviction will play a prominent role in Heidegger’s critique of scholasticism. Although, in a sense, Aquinas and Scotus were part of Heidegger’s world and are part of ours, the world that they inhabited was not ours. Part of the project of destruction was the retrieval of elements of the tradition. Indeed, Taminiaux has argued that it could be demonstrated that the project of fundamental ontology is a combination of what Heidegger took to be the core insights of Husserl and Aristotle. In the late text ‘My Way to Phenomenology’ Heidegger remarks that Husserl’s distinction between sensuous and categorial intuition was central to the possibility of

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coming to grips with the problem of the ‘manifold meaning of being’. The important thing to note here is that categorial intuition grasps the being of a thing. Givenness admits of two levels and Dasein has immediate access to both of them. The presence of the categorial, as Husserl describes it, is a ‘surplus of meaning’ founded on sense perception but distinct from it. This surplus provides for the presence of that which is present in the sensuous act ‘as what and how it is’, that is, it allows that which is present to be present in its being. The agent who utters the statement ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘the ocean is blue’ knows the sky or ocean ‘as’ blue. This as-dimension heralds the surplus. It was while Heidegger was working on the text of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, where the distinction between the two forms of intuition comes into play, that he realized that: What occurs for the phenomenology of the acts of consciousness as the self-manifestation of phenomena is thought more originally by Aristotle and in all Greek thinking and existence as aletheia, as the unconcealedness of what-is present, its being revealed, its showing itself.20 As Heidegger cautions us in Being and Time, it is crucial that we stay clear of any determination of truth as ‘correspondence’ or ‘accordance’, for this is not the primary sense of truth bound up with the concept of aletheia. In the tradition truth has been understood to be the adequation of the mind to reality, the thought is adequate to the thing (adaequatio intellectus ad rem), as such its primary locus was the predicative judgement. Husserl displaced this notion of adaequatio by conceiving of the prior notion of evidence, understood as the self-manifestation of the intentional object as phenomenon to intentionality, as the criterion of truth. The primary locus of truth was no longer confined to the predicative judgement, rather, it is located in intentionality itself and thus in all modifications of consciousness and this insight Heidegger took to be the fundamental trait of Greek thought, if not of philosophy itself. Husserl’s was a considerable breakthrough; he had brought to theoretical determination the phenomenological correlation between noesis (intentional activity) and noema (intentional object); but Heidegger believed Aristotle to be more original, in at least two respects. First, Heidegger insists, Aristotle understands truth as the unconcealedness of beings ‘for’ an unconcealing agent, Dasein. Second, unconcealing is a matter of comportment, of Dasein’s way of being as such. Unconcealing is not restricted to consciousness. The term Dasein, which from the perspective

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of fundamental ontology can be applied to any human agent, means, in its verbal sense, ‘to be present’ or ‘to exist’ and in its sense as a noun ‘presence’ or ‘existence’. The prefi x Da of Da-sein includes in its meaning ‘there’, ‘here’ and ‘then’ and indicates a ‘place’ and ‘time’ of an event. Dasein (t/here-being or being-t/here) is the site where unconcealment happens. As Heidegger will argue, it is Dasein that is properly understood as ‘true’: Dasein is ‘in the truth’ so to speak. This means that Dasein has at its disposal the unconcealed beings with which it has an association. Dasein is constituted by disclosedness and there is truth only so long as there is Dasein. All truth is relative to Dasein. With his reading of the Greeks (particularly Aristotle) Heidegger brought together the notion of Dasein’s acts of disclosing beings (aletheuein) with the notion that beings are ‘self-presentative’ (accessible, intelligible). Combining this aletheiological insight with the phenomenological insight, Heidegger arrived at the point where he saw that beings are self-showing or self-disclosive (alethes) only to the extent that they are correlated by the multiple ways in which Dasein co-performs disclosure. Of primary significance for Heidegger are the ways in which practically engaged Dasein co-performs this disclosure and Dasein is essentially a practically engaged agent. It is precisely this aletheiological/phenomenological correlation that Heidegger came to see as already present in pre-Socratic thought. It was named in Heraclitus under the guise of logos and physis and in Parmenides as the ‘belonging together’ of thought and being. This is precisely the issue that Heidegger understands as the event of intelligibility in the factical life of Dasein. It is precisely this event that has to be thought. This event is the Ereignis. It is the ultimate a priori which is, ultimately, unfathomable. Ereignis is the ultimate presupposition of Western philosophy and is the matter that has remained unthought in the entirety of the tradition. It signifies the very giving of the given and the most pressing question that can be asked is ‘why Ereignis?’ Being and Time is the text where this question received its first public formulation – a formulation that Heidegger himself later came to regard as premature. Nonetheless, it remained a path that he considered necessary to reawaken a ‘sense’ for this question. In that text he brought to language a whole range of structures, on the side of Dasein, that are far more primordial than Husserl’s overly theoretical ones; structures such as finitude and temporality. The essence of the Ereignis is essentially bound up with the essence of Dasein. As such, Ereignis is bound to finite temporality. In Being and Time, being discloses in Dasein’s being-towardsdeath.

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With regard to the positive aspect of the destruction of the history of ontology Heidegger proposes to raise the question of whether and to what extent the problematic of being and the phenomenon of time have been thematically brought together. Part of this project involves examining whether the theme of temporality, which is required for the proper understanding of being, has ever or could have ever come properly into view. The only philosopher ever to have come close to the problem of temporality was Kant. He did so with his doctrine of the ‘schematism’ whereby the a priori categories of the understanding are schematized in terms of time. In order to be applicable to what is given in experience such a priori concepts or categories must be invested with a temporal sense. For example, the category of substance is interpreted as permanence. Kant’s appearance in the history of philosophy constitutes a decisive juncture in the unfolding of the tradition. Temporality did, however, remain closed to Kant in its ‘real dimension’ and intrinsic ontological function because he neglected the problem of being (of the way in which things can be meaningfully related to Dasein) and failed to provide an ontology of Dasein. Both of these barriers are connected. In fact Heidegger contends that despite the areas where Kant had gone beyond Descartes he dogmatically carried over Descartes’s position. And although he brought time back into the subject his conception of it still moved within the traditional understanding. This prevented him from working out a transcendental determination of time in its structure and function. Ultimately, the result of this double effect of tradition was that the essential and decisive connection between time and the ‘I think’ was passed over.

Descartes, Scholasticism and Time Despite his claim to have placed philosophy on a new and sure foundation Descartes left the being of the res cogitans undetermined. He left undetermined the being of the ‘sum’. Kant and Descartes are crucial in the destruction of the history of ontology. The subject for Descartes was still understood as a created being, an ens creatum in contradistinction to the ens infinitum, God. Descartes was a pluralist who upheld the reality of more than one substance: God, the divine substance, created the other two kinds of substance, individual minds and material bodies. Except by divine power, neither material body nor mind could be created or destroyed. Createdness in the sense of something’s having been produced was integral to the ancient notion of being and had a dominating presence in medieval scholasticism.

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Descartes was thus nowhere near as radical and his new foundation was nowhere near as new as he took it to be. Descartes depended upon scholasticism. Thus, what has to be brought to light in order to make this statement philosophically relevant is how the scholastic ontology has influenced the way the tradition has determined or failed to determine the res cogitans in its ontological character. The medieval ontology was itself determined by the ancient ontology. It should come as no surprise that Heidegger maintains that this fact cannot be fully comprehended until ancient ontology has been fully explored with reference to the question of being. As such, the task of destruction involves interpreting the foundation of the ancient ontology in terms of the problematic of temporality. The problematic of any ontology must take its clue from Dasein. The meaning of Dasein’s being is care (Sorge) and the ontological meaning of care is temporality. When we take this into consideration and pursue the task of destruction we will see, so Heidegger argues, that the ancient conception of the being of beings is oriented towards the world/nature and that its understanding of being is obtained in terms of time. The outward evidence that this is the case is the treatment of the meaning of being as ousia (substance). Ousia signifies ‘presence’ (Anwesenheit) and beings are understood in their being as presence. And this means that they are understood in terms of the mode of the present. By raising the question of the meaning of being Heidegger placed himself in a critical relation to the Aristotelian tradition of substance ontology. The outcome of this tradition was the notion that there are manifold meanings of being. For Aristotle, there are as many meanings of being as there are categories of beings. For example, there is the category of primary substance: individual particular things possessed of ontological independence and which occur in nature. All other beings are attributes of these primary substances and either inhere in them or stand in some relation to them. Aristotle regarded his categories as inscribed in the nature of things: they were not the mere reflection of the human mind. They are read off nature and not imposed upon it or read into it by a subject. Aristotle’s position was a species of metaphysical realism. In the Greek language there is a clear distinction between the terms for ‘beings’, ta onta, the verb ‘to be’ einai and the noun ‘being’ ousia and in Aristotle’s philosophy ‘to be’ means to be a substance or to be one of the attributes of substance and as the standard interpretation has it, since there is an irreducible difference in being between all the categories (substance, quality, quantity and so on)

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there is no univocal meaning of being that could be predicated of all the categories but only an analogy of being determined by focal reference to the central category of substance. In modern Aristotle scholarship it was Brentano who re-established the centrality of the focal meaning of being in terms of substance. It is this tradition of substance ontology which determined the subsequent tradition of metaphysics from antiquity to modernity and against which Heidegger pitted himself. Heidegger came to regard this broad Aristotelian approach as overdetermined by the dominance of the theoretical attitude and it is Heidegger’s general claim that philosophy has been distorted by this predominance. For Heidegger, it is Dasein’s understanding which donates meaning to an object, and co-ordinately, the object is taken as able to take that meaning. This meaning or significance itself is determined by the context in terms of which our understanding operates and within which we act. Also, it is Heidegger’s view that these activities comprise both the practical and theoretical. ‘To be’, on a Heideggerian ontology, means to be understood as something. It is Dasein’s being, care (Sorge), which unifies all the different modes and concepts of being and its temporality serves as the transcendental horizon of the meaning of being as such. It is precisely because Heidegger takes Dasein’s understanding to be the locus of being that he begins with an analysis of Dasein. Dasein is always already concerned with itself and its world and always already operates within an implicit pre-understanding of the being of both of these terms. Heidegger’s phenomenological description of Dasein’s undifferentiated everyday state (everydayness) aims to render explicit the fundamental structures underlying our pre-understanding of being. Dasein’s being is determined by the fundamental a priori of its having a world: its being is being-in-the-world. Heidegger’s analysis is transcendental in the Kantian sense that it uncovers the conditions which make the encounter with beings possible in terms of the way Dasein makes sense of beings. All encountering of beings determines their being and there is no other meaning of being than the one donated to beings in Dasein’s understanding. The theoretical stance adopted hitherto by philosophers constitutes the fundamental myopia of their approach. Now, this approach does have justification for the theoretical inquirer and would be virtually harmless when taken as what it in fact is: namely, a derivative mode of being determined by the manner in which their object is held up by them as the subject matter of inquiry. When this derivative mode of being is regarded as the sole mode of being underlying all beings and as the only mode of

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being worthy of philosophical elaboration then the other modes of being which Heidegger takes as more fundamental are covered up. The theoretical inquirer only gains access to ‘mere occurrence’ or presence-to-hand. Prior to this mode of being emerging into view there is the more fundamental mode of readiness-to-hand constitutive of our everyday dealings with our environment. There are also the modes of ‘being-with’ other Daseins and ‘in-each-case-mineness’ (mineness) of our concernful selfrelation. Dasein’s life and everyday dealings with its world is determined by its understanding of the being of beings in terms of its practical concerns, projects and self-appointed tasks including its relations with its self and others. Thus, among these four ontological regions of being the mode of theoretical presence-to-hand is derivative because it comes to the fore only when Dasein’s referential totality of practical and personal concerns is passed over. In Heidegger’s phenomenology the ontology of presence-tohand is relegated to a derivative understanding of being. The unifying term care (Sorge) denotes that basic feature of Dasein whereby all its possible involvements with the world are founded. The structure of care enables Heidegger to determine Dasein’s being holistically as being-in-the-world. The concept of care notes the general meaning Dasein gives to its existence in the world and in terms of which it becomes an organic whole. The fundamental feature of Dasein’s relation to its world is determined by the concern which allows it to regard everything it encounters as part of its project. Dasein projects its whole existence into its world and understands its self together with everything else in terms of the possibilities within the projection it makes of its self. Everything Dasein deals with has its being in terms of this project and has it only in that it forms part of that project. Dasein projects its self into an anticipated future which is the aim of its various tasks. However, our projection is not a radically free choice of an anticipated future. Rather, Dasein’s ability to make a project of its self is its already existing understanding of its self and its world: this understanding is determined by its past, which it still is. Dasein always already understands itself and its projects in terms of the constitutive state of the past. In all its tasks Dasein is fundamentally bound to the present: Dasein is ‘in’ and is generally absorbed by its world. Such absorption in the present determines our general undifferentiated state of inauthentic everyday falling. Taken together, this is an initial view of Dasein’s temporality. Dasein exists as these three temporal dimensions simultaneously: being ahead of itself in the future, drawing on its past and being concerned with its present constitutes Dasein’s being as temporality. Past, present and

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future are what Heidegger calls the ecstases of temporality. The ecstatic nature of temporality is the way in which Dasein is always extended into these temporal dimensions and as such, can never be contained in a particular here and now. Dasein is not a static point nor an instant on an infinite arrow of time but rather the being whose understanding comprises the temporal dimensions of its existence. It is Dasein’s temporality that is the transcendental condition of all understanding of being. The meaning of being is constituted in Dasein’s understanding and is grounded in the temporal structure which underscores that understanding. Being is not created by Dasein; nor is being simply identical with our understanding. But, our (Dasein’s) only access to being is through our (Dasein’s) understanding of being. Heidegger’s view then is that the substance ontology of the tradition – where substance is understood as sub-stantia, that which ‘stands-under’ and remains constant or present through change – is wrong headed. That which is really real is that which remains constantly present. As Guignon points out, this view can be found in Plato with his doctrine of the Forms, in Aristotle with his notion of primary substance, in Christian philosophy with God, in Descartes with the dualism of res extensa and res cogitans, in Kant with his notion of noumena and in the notion of the ‘physical stuff’ presupposed by contemporary naturalism. The essence of this dichotomy of being and becoming is summarized by Bertrand Russell: We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time . . . But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where ‘being’ is opposed to ‘existence’ as being timeless.21 As Russell’s statement indicates, the problem of philosophy, which is the problem of being, is bound up with the problem of time.

The Presupposition of the Tradition As Far as Heidegger is concerned the entire tradition of Western philosophy has unfolded with a presupposition at its core. Heidegger saw this presupposition as arising out of the theoretical attitude that lies at the heart of traditional philosophy. When the inquirer abstracts from that which is closest to them, the world of their concern, of their agency, then things can appear as ‘objects’ to be theoretically understood. This theoretical

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mode of comportment tends, however, to obscure the prior level from which it is an abstraction. Part of Heidegger’s project from the beginning was to restore the more original sense things have for us in our everyday engagement with things by displacing the distorting theoretical attitude we tend to adopt in traditional philosophy. For example, the computer in front of me is ready-to-hand as available to be used in my task of writing this book, before it is present-at-hand as the object of theoretical inquiry for the IT technician, when inevitably I run into technical problems. Before we can say exactly what the being of any particular thing actually is, we must first understand what it means to be. To this extent it is possible to read Heidegger’s question of being as a question about the conditions of the intelligibility of things. What things are – their being – only becomes accessible to us in so far as the things themselves become intelligible and show up as mattering in some concrete way. Fundamental ontology lays bare the conditions of intelligibility or meaning of things in general by starting with Dasein as that being who has an understanding of being. Given all of this, the traditional question of philosophy is posed as the question of the meaning of being. It is precisely in terms of this inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of any understanding whatsoever that Guignon understands the published portion of Being and Time, the analytic of Dasein and this interpretation places Heidegger’s project in a strict relation to the tradition of transcendental philosophy, particularly Kant. This broadly epistemological interpretation of Heidegger’s being question is also held by Polt in his Heidegger, An Introduction: there it is suggested that Heidegger’s project is similar to Kant’s precisely because ‘being’ for Heidegger is a condition of the possibility of our experience of beings. That is, whenever we encounter a being, in any way, we must already be in possession of an understanding of being and it is this understanding of being that makes the encounter possible.

Section Two Scholasticism, Analogy and the Interpretation of Heidegger A related interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of being that verges on the issue I want to raise is Caputo’s. According to Caputo Heidegger believed that the scholastics were metaphysically naïve in that they believed that they could attain objective being-in-itself in the manner of pre-Kantian metaphysics. Heidegger’s thought is at odds with such a conception and

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he therefore mounts a criticism of the scholastics from a transcendental point of view. This transcendental critique stems from a Cartesian standpoint at odds with the realism of scholasticism. Ultimately, Heidegger’s critique of scholasticism begins from his general post-Kantian standpoint. Heidegger is indebted to the Copernican turn of modern philosophy. The modern scholastic philosopher, reading Heidegger’s critique, so Caputo suggests, might invoke the doctrine of analogy, since it is with this doctrine that scholasticism achieved a critical self-awareness of the ‘origin and applicability’ of the terms it employs.22 Such a defence would hold that the scholastic philosopher is not naïve since they are aware that whatever is affirmed of God is also denied of Him: everything said of God has its epistemological origin in this sensible world. However, this defence will not hold water according to Caputo since Heidegger’s critique of scholasticism goes farther than any theory of analogy. Part of Heidegger’s argument is that the practical is primary and the theoretical derivative. As such, all theoretical objects are related back to the existential subject from which they derive their meaning. This is at odds with the primacy of the theoretical/speculative amongst some of the scholastics. In fact, Caputo goes so far as to say that Heidegger’s genetic phenomenology rules out any idea of objective being-in-itself and therefore of realism. On this account, Heidegger is not so far away from Husserl and transcendental philosophy. Being is fundamentally related to Dasein’s understanding of being. There is being only insofar as it is understood by Dasein. As Caputo summarizes the conclusion to Being and Time with relation to the philosophy of analogy: the meaning of Being is time, that is, Being is projected upon time inasmuch as temporality constitutes the Being of Dasein. Thus Heidegger’s claim is far more radical than any theory of analogy.23 In so far as being can only ever be understood in terms of time, the concept of being is univocal. Analogy fails because of its implication that there is being-in-itself for the intellect to achieve, however imperfectly. Such a pre-Kantian illusion is entertained precisely because the existential genetic origins of this concept have been ignored. Ultimately then, it is Caputo’s view that the philosopher who intends to respond to Heidegger’s critique of scholasticism and realist metaphysics generally, has to come to terms with the entire premise of transcendental philosophy.

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In an earlier note to the same chapter of his Heidegger and Aquinas Caputo registers the fact that scholastic philosophers such as Johannes Lotz responded to Heidegger’s critique by pointing out that his concept of being was univocal, by being time bound. This is an intimation of my view. However, there is an important qualification to be made: although there is nothing particularly scholastic about Lotz’s claim that Heidegger’s concept of being is univocal, Lotz, according to Caputo, remained a scholastic thinker. My project, by contrast, is not scholastic and I will not defend a scholastic position. My aim is to interpret Heidegger’s philosophy of being and instead of coming by way of an engagement with Lotz and other scholastic thinkers my interpretation of Heidegger, in terms of the thesis of univocity, comes by way of Deleuze’s suggestion in his Difference and Repetition that Heidegger follows Scotus and gives ‘renewed splendour’ to the univocity of being. That being is univocal is a central claim of Deleuze’s philosophy and he elaborates an unconventional secret history of philosophy in terms of this concept that draws on Duns Scotus, Spinoza and Nietzsche wherein concepts drawn from his engagement with these thinkers are deployed in a Nietzschean critique of Platonism. Generally, the problem with Platonism, or the history of metaphysics, is that on this philosophy being is taken as either equivocal or analogical: only one being is fully real, transcendent and substantial and all other beings are secondary and are in some way derivative of this being. These beings cannot be said ‘to be’ in the same sense as the original transcendent being. As such, univocity is not upheld. Against this, Deleuze upholds univocity and argues that no being can be said to be more real than any other and that there is no transcendent being that would necessitate recourse to equivocity or analogy. For Deleuze, being is univocal and immanent and each being is fully real and equal as an expression of an immanent and expressive (divine) substance. Both Deleuze and Heidegger are paradigmatic examples of philosophers who, in their own distinctive way, attempt to respond to philosophical modernity in the wake of Nietzsche. In this study of Heidegger I want to maintain Deleuze’s insight that univocity = immanence. What is at stake in my interpretation of Heidegger is the elaboration of a philosophy of immanence in Heideggerian terms. I have caught an arrow fired by Deleuze and have engaged in a reinterpretation of Heidegger’s thought as a result. It may be that Deleuze forged a schizo-scholasticism, as Ansell Pearson put it in Germinal Life, The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze, but this question remains independent of my concern with Heidegger and univocity.

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We are now swimming in the deep waters of Heidegger interpretation. In order not to drown I must paint a picture of Heidegger’s path of thought. I shall do this by elucidating and discussing Thomas Sheehan’s interpretation. Let me start by revisiting the problematic of the destruction of the tradition of Western philosophy. I have already brought to light the fact that Heidegger conceived the destruction of the tradition as fundamentally positive. He aimed to appropriate elements of the tradition. With regard to the Aristotelian-scholastic dimension, this retrieval has been understood to focus on the doctrine of the analogy of being. Following Taminiaux’s construction of this view: it has been argued that in Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein it is possible to discern a discreet reappropriation of the scholastic concept of analogia entis (analogy of being). As the medieval scholastics established what they called the degrees of being in terms of analogy between different kinds of beings and the highest divine being (summum ens) whose actuality contains no potentiality and whose essence is identical with its existence, so Heidegger establishes analogically a hierarchy of the ways of being by reference to Dasein. Objects such as stones are termed ‘world-less’ and animals are held to be ‘poor in world’. Both of these characterizations operate in terms of an analogy with that being whose essence, once it has been thrown, is to exist in the world. This being is Dasein.24 Given the problematic of univocity, it is crucial to get in view an interpretation of Heidegger that centres on analogy. It is just such an interpretation that Sheehan puts forward. Given the importance of Sheehan’s view I will devote the remainder of this chapter to laying out his interpretation. My reconstruction will focus on three of his texts in particular: his essay in the Cambridge Companion to Heidegger entitled ‘Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard Times’; his article in A Companion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics entitled ‘Kehre and Ereignis: A Prolegomenon to Introduction to Metaphysics’; and his ‘Introduction: Heidegger, the Project and the Fulfilment’ in his collection Heidegger, The Man and the Thinker. Sheehan thinks that it is potentially misleading to say of Heidegger that the subject matter of his thought was the question of being. He suggests that to gain a better grasp of Heidegger’s project the phrase the question of being and the term being should be displaced from the centre of the discussion. The phrase question of being is an abbreviation of what was originally referred to as the question of the meaning of being. Further, the form of the question underwent several changes from the question of the meaning of being to the question of the ‘truth of being’ to the question of the ‘place of being’. Part of the problem is that the term being (sein) has two meanings

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in Heidegger’s texts. To distinguish his unique sense of the term Heidegger adopted such methods as invoking the archaic spelling seyn, crossing it out and eventually abandoning the word being altogether. Sheehan reminds us that the term ‘being’, especially when capitalized, has the tendency to invoke a supreme being or metaphysical super-entity at odds with Heidegger’s intentions. Talk in Heidegger of being ‘hiding itself’ and of ‘sending itself’ can also provoke problems. As Sheehan says: talk of Being ‘itself’ can easily lose sight of the analogical character of Being. Heidegger was not after a univocal something that subsists on its own. Over and above the Being of man, the Being of implements, nature, artworks and ideal objects, there is no second level of ‘Being itself’. Rather, the ‘itself’ refers to the analogically unified meaning of Being (in Aristotelian terms, its pros hen unity) which is instantiated in all cases of the Being of this or that.25 On Sheehan’s interpretation then, Heidegger was after an analogically unified meaning of being. Crucially, my interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy does not suggest that he was after the kind of ‘univocal something’ that Sheehan describes here. At no point do I intend to attribute such a view to Heidegger. The ‘univocal something’ that Sheehan mentions above implies the kind of ontotheological view that Heidegger explicitly rejects. I emphatically agree with the fact that Heidegger was not after ‘being itself’ in Sheehan’s sense. Nonetheless, Heidegger’s concept of being can be read univocally, that is, in terms of time. By contrast to this, on Sheehan’s view, being, for Heidegger, is analogical. As I understand Sheehan’s view, the analogically unified meaning of being must be rooted in Dasein’s understanding since, for Heidegger, ‘to be’ is to be understood by Dasein. Dasein’s temporality is, after all, the transcendental horizon for any understanding of being. Phenomenology became Heidegger’s method for analysing the unresolved question of metaphysics about the ‘essence’ or meaning of being and that question is, so Sheehan argues, really about the ‘analogical unity’ that underlies all of the various modes of the being of beings. Reading the tradition phenomenologically, Heidegger refashioned the question about the meaning of being in terms of the question about the essential nature of the phenomenological correlation between being as givenness and Dasein and this question is about the analogical unity that underlies all of the possible ways that beings can present themselves for us in order that they be appropriated.

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Sheehan’s view then is that, that which unites the manifold ways in which what is present to Dasein, is present to Dasein, is analogy. Being is Heidegger’s term for the meaningful presence that things have to Dasein’s understanding and interest. Being is relative to Dasein. The being of any thing is its meaningful presence to Dasein. The being of beings is the presence of what is present to Dasein and meaningful presence is itself unified by analogy. All analogical modes of presence or being are united in Dasein as the site of the revealing of the meaningful presence or being of things as such. Now, according to Heidegger, being has been forgotten by the tradition. The prima facie oddity of this has been raised by Caputo and Sheehan in relation to the philosophy of Aquinas. Being is manifestly not forgotten in Aquinas’s text. There, esse, the existential act of being – God – is placed firmly at the centre of the metaphysical enterprise. Aquinas distinguished Sacred Doctrine or theology based on scripture from what has come to be known as Natural Theology or theology based on the study of the world. The object of both of these sciences is God. Sacred Doctrine studies God as He is revealed in the scriptures: Natural Theology as He is revealed in Creation. Both of these sciences are distinct from metaphysics which has as its object being qua being and studies God only secondarily as the First Cause of being. Being in general (ens commune) is the proper subject matter of metaphysics. Only in God, who is being essentially, do esse (existence) and essence coincide. All other things, as created, participate in Him. That is, all things have esse from God. Heidegger is aware of all of this. Nonetheless, he maintains that being has been forgotten in the tradition. Heidegger is not asking about exactly the same thing that philosophers in the tradition have been asking about. Rather, Heidegger is inquiring after the possibilizing condition that has provided for the possibility of all determinations of the being of beings hitherto. As such, there are two senses of being in play here. One sense belongs to metaphysics and the other to a pre- or post-metaphysical thinking. This pre/post-metaphysical sense of being (that is, its non-representational sense) is the sense intended by Heidegger. Such is Sheehan’s view. The concept of being in metaphysics refers to either the highest ontological or theological principle determinable in metaphysical inquiry. This is the beingness (Seiendheit) of beings: hence Heidegger’s invocation of the term onto-theology. Traditional metaphysics thinks the beingness of beings and is ontotheology. For Heidegger, being denotes a pre-ontological principle a priori undiscoverable by metaphysics that possibilizes any determination of the beingness of beings. This principle – Ereignis – is not divine creation but

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the very happening of the ‘world of sense’ wherein historical human beings dwell. This, Sheehan holds, is being in Heidegger’s sense of the term. Sheehan continues, the many questions raised in traditional metaphysics ultimately reduce to one, which is coordinate with traditional essentialism. That question is the question of being qua being (on hei on). This question asks after the essence of any particular thing. It asks after that which makes a being a being in so far as it is in the first place. And this question – what is a being? – reduces to the question ‘what is the beingness of beings?’ This kind of questioning is manifestly Aristotelian and belongs to the tradition of substance ontology. When characterizing the ‘is-ness’ or ‘stateof-being’ of beings qua beings Aristotle employed the term ousia. The noun ousia is derived from the present participle of the verb ‘to be’, eimi or einai and the neuter of that participle yields on or onta, ‘beings’. In its philosophical sense, given it by Aristotle, ousia became the essential property of beings. It is precisely this word, ousia, which was translated into Latin as essentia and into English as essence or substance. In his The End of Philosophy Heidegger understands the Greek ousia to include both the sense of essence and of existence. As such, Sheehan translates ousia as beingness and the question of ‘first philosophy’ is the question ‘what is beingness?’ And, so Sheehan contends, metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche follows the path structured by this question. The analogical unity of beingness, when found, is taken as: the substantial ground and cause of actual beings, regardless of the particular interpretations of beingness that emerge in the tradition.26 The general project of metaphysics is bound up with the philosophy of analogy and the doctrine of substance. This view is confirmed by Heidegger’s statement in his Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–3 that all philosophy including and since ancient philosophy is bound up with the ‘stringent aporia’ that is the philosophy of analogy. All metaphysics is ontotheological: ontological in that it transcends particular beings to their beingness and theological in that it seeks out the cause or ground of beings. Metaphysics as ontotheology even holds true of Nietzsche as far as Heidegger is concerned. The name for the beingness of beings in the tradition is the ‘being of beings’ and the ‘being of beings’ is named idea, energeia, esse and so on. Such a concern with beingness is the generic unity of the metaphysical tradition. This is the first step in Heidegger’s reading of the tradition. In the second Heidegger will uncover the fact that beingness in all of its constructions is related to Dasein, although this relation remains concealed. Beingness is

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Dasein-relative. The term that Heidegger will employ for his specific concern will name the meaningful relatedness or intelligible presence that things can have for human understanding and interest. And this means ‘revealedness’, which in Greek is aletheia. The Greek revelation of being, which is inseparable from Greek culture, is summarized in the word eidos: the look of a thing, its meaningful appearance to a Dasein. The world of things is present to historical humanity as historical humanity. The meaning of being is relative to a historical culture’s understanding of itself and its world. The meaning of being in a given epoch is what allows things to show up as they do for members of that historical community. As such, the term ousia (beingness) carries shades of thereness, presentness or being-present (parousia), of openness (aletheia) and emergence into presence (physis). In fact, by raising the question of ousia in such a way that the issue of parousia (presentness or openness) is intimated, Heidegger has, on Sheehan’s view, determined the fundamental matter of Greek thought in the logos or disclosive bond between historical humanity and beingness: the openness or appearance of things and the essence of historical humanity as letting that disclosure happen. The belonging together of beingness and historical humanity, although there, was not explicitly thematized in Greek philosophy. As such the aim of Heidegger’s destruction of the tradition was to bring this dimension of Greek thought to light. Heidegger’s phenomenological method was uniquely placed to get into the problem of beingness. Beingness is the appearing of things for a Dasein. Dasein is essential to the event of disclosure. Beingness is the intelligible presence of beings, it is the condition of possibility of beings coming to presence in the human world. Now, on Sheehan’s view, Heidegger can ask the prior question: what enables the fact that beingness itself can show up? Or, what enables beingness in the human world? The same question posed in terms of presence reads as follows: if beingness is the presence of beings, then what enables the presence of presence? As Sheehan has it, Heidegger’s question puts beingness in focus. He wants to attend to the beingness of beings as itself and in its fundamental relationship with historically situated humanity. The beingness of beings is bound up with the essence of humanity. Heidegger’s focus is on that disclosive bond between historical humanity and beingness (the meaningful relatedness things have for human understanding and interest). It is precisely this bond which is covered over in our everyday lives and in the tradition of metaphysics. This bond is proper to historical humans and

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historical humans are appropriated to it; and to be most properly what they always already are, historical humans must personally reappropriate their situation of appropriation to this bond. The appropriation to this bond is the condition of possibility for the event of the revelation of beingness and of the appearance of beings for a situated Dasein. More precisely, the very appropriation of historical humans to beingness discloses beings. It is this primordial event which is the proper matter of Heidegger’s thought. It is named by him: das Ereignis.

The Phenomena of Beingness and Time In order to engage with the problem Heidegger has set for himself, beingness must itself become a phenomenon. Description of phenomena is, of course, integral to the project of phenomenology. In this regard it was Husserl from whom Heidegger took his lead. Husserl (and Kant) stood within the tradition that takes the doctrine of beingness (Seinslehre) to be a doctrine of categories. Husserl distinguished sensuous and categorial intuition and showed that beingness is given in categorial intuition, analogously to how sensuous being is given in sense intuition. This is the clue Heidegger used in his return to the tradition. Since beingness is the presentness of beings it needs to be analysed in terms of temporality. The problem with metaphysics has been the understanding of beingness in terms of only one mode of temporality, the present. Husserl’s contribution here is, to be sure, decisive. But Heidegger asks a question that Husserl did not pose. Beingness is a phenomenon, but, how is it given? Beingness is the very givenness of beings and if this givennessof-beings is itself given it can, as such, be treated as a phenomenon and investigated in the ‘how’ of its presencing. The how of this giving is bound up with the temporality of Dasein and it will be Heidegger’s contention that all being (or beingness) is understood in terms of time and is, to this extent, univocal. However, on Sheehan’s account, the analogy of being (or of beingness) was integral to Heidegger’s project from the start. Remembering, of course, that Being and Time remained incomplete, Sheehan argues that the first part of that text was intended to establish the ‘time-character’ of beingness in general based on an account of Dasein’s temporality. The second part of Being and Time would then deconstruct traditional ontology to reveal its underlying ‘temporal content’. That is, Sheehan argues, the second part of Being and Time would establish by historical deconstruction/destruction what the first had established by phenomenological construction, and that

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is: the thesis of the analogical unity of all modes of beingness. The meaning of beingness would be revealed in terms of time. A doctrine of analogy as phenomenologically constructed was always part of Heidegger’s agenda. My view, with Duns Scotus (and, in effect, Deleuze, albeit in different terms), is that there is no analogy without univocity. Ultimately, Sheehan’s contention is that Zeitlichkeit, in its horizon-forming function called Temporalität, ‘determines the analogically unified temporal meaning of beingness’.27 My qualification to this is that being, as always understood in terms of time, is univocal. While it does not follow from this statement that Sheehan is committed to denying the kind of univocity that I am arguing for, it does follow that the problem of univocity and analogy is at the centre of Heidegger interpretation. It is precisely over analogy that my interpretation will part company with Sheehan’s. I will argue that the unified meaning of being in terms of time must be understood in terms of univocity. If being is bound up with time then time constitutes the fundamental sense in which being is understood at all. As such, the fundamental sense of being in Heidegger’s philosophy of being is univocal in terms of time. As Duns Scotus argued, there can be no analogy without univocity. If Ereignis is the topic of Heidegger’s thought, what about the issue of the ‘turn’ from the Heidegger of Being and Time to the later Heidegger? With regards to the question of the turn, there are two issues in play. There is the matter of the turn (die Kehre) and the matter of the change in Heidegger’s thinking. The change in Heidegger’s thinking refers to the change in style and method that he employed in the presentation of his thought. This began to occur in the 1930s. The ‘turn’, on the other hand, is one of the titles given by Heidegger to his central concern: the giving of being in its connection with the opening up of Dasein. Following Sheehan, the turn is the inner movement of Ereignis whereby finitude opens a clearing in human Dasein wherein beings can show up or appear as what they are. The change in orientation in his thinking refers to the shift in how the mature Heidegger attempted to bring this inner movement of Ereignis to language. Heidegger’s fundamental question remained the same. Being is given as presence and Dasein is opened up by finitude. The change in Heidegger’s thinking refers to the move away from the approach adopted in Being and Time towards his later approach.

Beyond Being On Sheehan’s interpretation, then, Heidegger’s concern for being and Dasein was in a certain sense preliminary to raising the question of Ereignis.

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Ereignis goes by many names in Heidegger’s text. Examples are ‘Da, Welt, Zeit, Lichtung, Kehre, Seyn, Sinn des Seins, Temporalität des Seins, Unterschied/ Unterscheidung’. The Ereignis is the ‘enabling power’, the condition of the possibility of the phenomenological correlation between being as givenness and Dasein. Ereignis is the presupposition of all events. As enabling power Heidegger speaks of Ereignis as analogous to the Idea of the Good in Plato: The expression ‘the idea of the good’ – which is all too misleading for modern thinking – is the name for that distinctive idea which, as the idea of ideas, is what enables everything else.28 In this respect only Ereignis – the ‘It’ which grants being and time – is beyond being. The question of Ereignis entails the question of Dasein as the site of the revelation of being. Dasein and Ereignis belong together essentially. Given the centrality of Ereignis in Heidegger’s thought, what about the problem of the analogy of being? Ereignis is the withdrawal that opens up openness. Dasein is drawn along with this withdrawal. Now, the background of Heidegger’s problematic here is, so Sheehan will contend, traditional and Aristotelian. In support of this we have only to think of Aquinas’s view of human being as marked by transcendental openness to being in general. It is precisely this openness which is the condition of possibility of metaphysics. Heidegger elaborated his philosophy of Dasein and Ereignis out of an Aristotelian-scholastic background. As Sheehan reconstructs it, being (reality), in an Aristotelian metaphysics, is analogical. Being comes in degrees which form a hierarchical structure from most perfect being to least perfect being. Any particular thing’s degree of being is its degree of perfection. Perfection is itself measured by the extent to which a being has returned to or fulfilled its essence. God as the being in whom essence and existence coincide is the being to which perfect self-coincidence and self-presence belong. All other beings have being to the degree that they approximate God’s perfect self-coincidence. To the extent that a being remains open it is imperfect. As essentially open, human being is essentially imperfect in this sense. Human being is never complete and always in a state of becoming, never fully achieving full selfpresence. As such, the human being is essentially marked by this constitutive lack in being. This lack is what Heidegger names guilt (Schuldigsein) in Being and Time. In so far as human being remains essentially lacking it can never become fully self-coincident. Dasein is imperfect and is always in a process of becoming, its being is existence, it has its being to be.

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This lack that marks Dasein is its finitude and it is this finitude that opens Dasein up. Finitude draws Dasein into its becoming and by so doing opens up the open. Ereignis is bound up with Dasein’s lack in being which draws it out into openness and into the movement of becoming. By so doing the possibility of understanding givenness (world) and the particular givenness of beings is provided for. As essentially open, Dasein is essentially receptive to the presence of beings. However, mirroring Dasein’s own incomplete and imperfect self-presence this presence of other beings is always imperfect and partial. Dasein only knows the finite meaning of being in any historical context and is fated to know things only as taken ‘as’ this or that. Any quasi Bergsonian intuition whereby the being is grasped absolutely from the inside is manifestly ruled out on this Heideggerian picture. Dasein takes things as this or that and sees them ‘to be’ as so taken. What they are is relative to Dasein’s understanding and as such, Dasein knows the being of things. Being is relative to Dasein and it is Dasein’s finitude which underwrites its ability to grasp the being of things. It is Dasein’s finitude which makes possible the event of the appearance of the being of beings. As such, Dasein’s finitude was the fundamental matter to be thought. Ereignis is the reciprocal grounding of Dasein and being. Following Sheehan, it is the reciprocity between ‘needing’ and ‘belonging’ that constitutes Ereignis and Kehre names this reciprocity qua movement back and forth between the two terms ‘needing’ and ‘belonging’. Ereignis is the opening of the clearing to which historical human being belongs essentially. This clearing is essential for beings to be understood as what they are and for the appearance of being. Heidegger’s imperative (with a considerable Nietzschean echo) is become what you essentially are. That is, reappropriate your openness, embrace the presupposition that makes you human and allow yourself to be taken up by the Ereignis. Such is Sheehan’s reconstruction of Heidegger’s view.

The Analogical Interpretation of Heidegger’s Text We Now have a coherent interpretation of Heidegger in terms of analogy clearly in view. The analogy of being in Heidegger is twofold. First, that which can become present to Dasein (and be appropriated) is unified analogically. Secondly, there is something like a scala naturae present in Heidegger’s thinking that operates in terms of an analogy. Dasein is not the only being in the world. There are also animals and objects.

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The fact that what is present to Dasein is unified analogically is possible only because things, as they appear, are really like that. Dasein, although always incomplete, is nonetheless the being to which something like an understanding of being pertains. Understanding of being and understanding of world are co-ordinate in the sense that both have the manner of being of presence. Being and Time attempts to establish that existence as Dasein’s manner of being is the ground of presence which is the mode of being of the world and of the beings which make up part of that world. Historical humanity is, as Heidegger puts it in his lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, ‘world-forming’. Animals, by contrast, are ‘poor in the world’: they form a specific class in the Aristotelian manner in contradistinction to Dasein and every individual animal and species of animal is no more or less perfect and complete as any other. Stones and the like are worldless. Now, although Heidegger does want to distance himself from a traditional metaphysical hierarchical conception of reality he does proceed as follows: the distinction between poverty in world and world-formation . . . reveals itself as one of degree in terms of levels of completeness with respect to the accessibility of beings . . . this immediately supplies us with a concept of world: world initially signifies the sum total of beings accessible to man or animals alike, variable as it is in range and depth of penetrability. Thus ‘poor in world’ is inferior with respect to the greater value of ‘world-forming’.29 Precisely this kind of method gives credence to an Aristotelian-scholastic interpretation of his text. Although analogy does not feature prominently in this quote the notion of degrees of reality does. From there, analogy is just round the corner. Beings are worldless in so far as they have no access to the being of things. The distinction Heidegger wants to articulate between the three ‘classes’ of beings is revealed in terms of the accessibility to beings as beings. Out of the three classes, it is only Dasein who can relate to beings as beings and that is, to being. It is only Dasein, as incomplete, that has a relationship to being. Animals remain open to a degree but only in so far as they are taken by and become absorbed in their ‘encircling ring’ of habitual and contextually defined activity. Dasein, by contrast, remains open to things in their manifestness and is fundamentally world-forming. Dasein exists in the midst of beings as ‘the there’ of being. Only Dasein can be the ‘Da’, the sight of the revealing of being. Dasein is ontological in a way that an animal cannot be.

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Distinguishing animals and objects from Dasein in the way that Heidegger does is only possible on the basis of an analogy with Dasein. Dasein is that focal reference to which all other things relate in their being. The being of all other things is only intelligible in terms of the being of Dasein. Dasein really is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe. The traditional Aristotelian picture has suffered something of an inversion. Dasein as openness is now at the top of the scale and that which is closed is at the bottom. It certainly seems that Heidegger conceived his project in terms of the retrieval of an analogically determined notion of being. There is evidence backing up Sheehan’s interpretation of Heidegger in terms of the analogically unified meaning of being. Taminiaux’s reading of the discrete reappropriation of analogia entis in Heidegger’s text is also significant in this respect. This is precisely the issue with which my interpretation of his philosophical text will have to come to terms. Essentially, I maintain that there cannot be analogy without univocity. Fundamentally, it is Heidegger’s view that being is always and only understood in terms of time. Only on the basis of this temporal univocity of being could any analogy of being be built. For Heidegger, being is the difference it makes that there is something rather than nothing and being is only ever understood as projected upon the transcendental horizon of Dasein’s temporality. Precisely because of the central place afforded to temporality by Heidegger in the question of being, being is univocal. Dasein’s temporality provides for the possibility of beings coming into presence for Dasein. Dasein is the site of all meaning and being is only ever understood in terms of time. Being needs Dasein to ‘take place’. And, as Heidegger is keen to emphasize, it is Dasein’s responsibility to be the place where the meaning of being comes to presence. Dasein’s temporality is ecstatical: past, present and future are the ecstases of temporality: Dasein ek-sists in the sense that it ‘stands out’ into a past heritage, into a present world and into future possibilities. Dasein transcends itself and stands-out into these ecstases of temporality. The three ecstases form a unity, the essence of which is to produce itself in time or temporalize in the unity of the temporal ecstases. Temporality is Dasein’s ontological ground and the concept of time has to be elucidated with regard to Dasein’s ontological structure. Dasein’s existence consists in its running ahead (Vorlaufen) towards its end, its retrieval of its thrownness (Wiederholung), and its making present its situation (Gegenwärtigung). Because Dasein ‘stands out’ into these ecstases, its being, along with the other beings it encounters, matter to it. It is this process of temporalizing which makes possible Dasein’s various modes of being.

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Although the primary phenomenon of what Heidegger calls primordial and authentic temporality is the future, the ecstases of temporality form an equiprimordial unity. The ecstasis of the future has a priority in the sense that temporality primordially temporalizes itself out of the future. As Polt reminds us, this priority of the ecstasis of the future is entirely in line with Dasein’s being, being an issue for it. If Dasein could not choose future possibilities of being then it is hard to see how its being could be an issue for it in the first place. Dasein tends to understand itself and its world in terms of its projects, and these have a bias towards the future. Even though equiprimordial, each act of temporalizing within the ecstases is different. Each has its own horizon and ‘carries Dasein off’ on that horizon. The horizon of each is its ‘whither’ and Dasein’s temporality is essentially finite. Dasein is carried off by each ecstasis to its own particular horizonal schema but nonetheless remains ‘in’ all three all at once. The horizonal schemata also form a unity that is grounded in ecstatic temporality. The ecstases of temporality open up their corresponding horizonal schema and taken together, these open up the world for Dasein and facilitate Dasein’s understanding of the being of beings. The horizonal schemata is the temporal framework that provides for Dasein’s understanding of being and allows Dasein to encounter entities in its world. At this formal level, the univocity of being obtains. This is so since ‘to be’ is to be understood by Dasein and Dasein’s understanding is founded on this temporal framework. Horizonal schemata are transcendental in the Kantian sense that they precede intelligible experience and provide for its possibility. They also involve transcendence since they provide for Dasein’s transcending beings towards their being. Further to Being and Time, the two texts which are particularly important when considering Dasein’s temporality are The Basis Problems of Phenomenology and The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology Heidegger describes how the ecstasis of the present carries Dasein off towards its horizonal schema praesens, which in Being and Time had been called the ‘in-order-to’. Praesens enables Dasein to understand and deal with the being of the ready-to-hand within its environment. The ready-to-hand are projected upon the horizonal schema of praesens. By producing in time and making present or temporalizing enpresenting, Dasein projects and produces the presence which belongs to the present. Dasein is the ground of presence. The horizonal schema of the future is known in Being and Time as the ‘for-the-sake-of-itself’ while the schema of the past is rendered the ‘what has been’. Heidegger says in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, regarding the horizonal schema of the future, that being carried away in general

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provides for futurity as such, and that this amounts to the provision of ‘possibility’, pure and simple. The ecstasis of the future does not produce a definite possible. Rather, it produces the horizon of possibility itself. It is within this horizon that a definite possible can manifest. Dasein’s understanding of being is determined by the horizonal schema to which it is carried off in ecstatical temporality and being can be given to Dasein only as it is projected upon its transcendental horizon. Being is only ever intelligible in terms of time and time is the primary horizon of ontology, the transcendental science. Ontology is only possible as a temporal science and temporality is the condition of possibility of all understanding of the being of beings. Temporality is the origin of the ontological difference. The ontological difference is ‘temporalized’ in the temporalizing activity of primordial temporality. Dasein mediates between being and beings by holding open the difference between them and the ontological difference has the mode of being of Dasein: it belongs to existence and existence itself means, as Heidegger says in Basic Problems of Phenomenology, to be in the performance of this distinction between being and beings. Since being can only ever be projected upon the transcendental horizon of temporality, the unitary meaning of being in Heidegger’s phenomenology must be temporal. The unitary meaning of being as it is constituted in Dasein’s understanding is grounded in Dasein’s temporality. Dasein is the condition of possibility for any ontology whatsoever and every manner of being other than it is in some way related to it and its temporality. The univocity of being is grounded in Dasein’s temporality.

Chapter 3

Univocity and Phenomenological Philosophy

Being and Some Other Key Terms I aim to show that there is an underlying univocal sense of being in Heidegger’s philosophy. Part of my aim in this chapter will be to exhibit Heidegger’s path of thought in relation to this concept. After consideration of the precise formulation of the question of being in Being and Time I shall return to Heidegger’s earlier philosophical engagement and display its relation to the debate over univocity and analogy. This will further elucidate my claim that Heidegger’s concept of being is univocal. Before I turn to the elucidation of the question of being in Being and Time, however, it will be useful to offer some sharp definitions of some of the constant themes that Heidegger investigates throughout his career: being, time, understanding, meaning (or sense) and truth. The definitions I shall offer here are put forward from the point of view of fundamental ontology and will serve as a reference point for the discussion that follows. The term being in fundamental ontology means something that mostly does not show itself. Nevertheless, being belongs to that which does for the most part show itself, namely beings in that it constitutes their meaning and ground. Thus, being is the very meaningful relatedness of beings to Dasein’s understanding and interest. Time, so Heidegger states in Being and Time, has served as a criterion whereby diverse regions of being have been determined. Being and time are essentially linked in fundamental ontology. Time has this ontological function but, Heidegger prompts, no philosopher has investigated how time has come to have this role and part of his project is an investigation of how time acquired this function. As far as he is concerned, his investigation into the question of the meaning of being will enable him to show that the central problem of all ontology has its foundation in the phenomenon of time.

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Heidegger’s treatment of time is indebted to Husserl’s. He says as much in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. What Husserl called ‘timeconsciousness’ is time in the primordial sense. It is this primordial time that Heidegger reconfigures as Dasein’s temporality and it is by virtue of the fact that all being is only ever understood in terms of its transcendental horizon that time can serve its aforementioned ontological function. Precisely because time is rooted in Dasein’s understanding it can serve to differentiate diverse ontological regions of being in temporal terms. ‘To be’ is to be understood by Dasein and to be understood by Dasein is to be projected upon a (temporal) horizon. All understanding of being is fundamentally temporal. The question of time is central to my understanding of the concept of being as univocal in Heidegger’s philosophy. Temporality is that phenomenon that makes possible Dasein’s understanding of being. Dasein’s temporality is primordial time and it is made up of the ecstases of the past, present and future. Primordial time is the unity of the three ecstases of temporality. As a unity, primordial time is the transcendental horizon of being. When Heidegger reinterprets Dasein’s ‘everydayness’ in terms of time he reveals the fact that Dasein’s temporality can be authentic or inauthentic. This means that each ecstasis admits both authentic and inauthentic modalities. For example, when inauthentic, Dasein ‘forgets’ its throwness and is content to ‘await’ its future while being absorbed in its present in terms of ‘making present’ the objects (tools, etc) that it is dealing with. By contrast, when authentic, Dasein’s present is reconfigured existentially as a ‘moment of vision/decision’ where its past is taken over in a repetition that reaffirms it in terms that anticipate Dasein’s future qua finite mortality. It is anxiety that provides for this existential change. Now, this change is a modal change on the part of a transcendental structure that remains fundamentally temporal. It is, after all, primordial time that is authentic or inauthentic and so, from a transcendental point of view, the sense in which each ecstases is referred to remains fundamentally temporal. Whether authentic or inauthentic, temporality qua transcendental, is the depth dimension of primordial time. Whether authentic or inauthentic, Dasein is ‘in’ all three ecstases of temporality equiprimordially and each ecstases is univocally temporal. The notion of understanding as it is employed by Heidegger in Being and Time is not restricted to language. Rather, Heidegger cautions us that his term for understanding, Verstehen, is etymologically related to Vorstehen or fore-standing and this means ‘skilled management’. Beings are disclosed to Dasein by virtue of Dasein’s letting them be involved in a possibility of its

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being. Thus, understanding is defined in terms of possessing possibilities of being and projecting possible ways of being. It is by virtue of Dasein’s projection of possibilities that it understands beings. The concept of meaning (Sinn) is related to the concept of understanding. If something ‘has meaning’ for a Dasein then that thing can be said to be ‘understood’. Revealing the meaning of something is an attempt to understand it. To understand something implies that a proper context is available for it. Heidegger refers to such a context as a ‘horizon’. For example, when I ask for the meaning of a sign and I am told that it is a road-sign meaning ‘drive slowly’ I can place the sign within the horizon of the activity of driving a car. Thus, a thing having meaning is its revelation as relevant in the life of a Dasein or a community. Meaning, then, is the context that provides access to a thing. Truth is one of the central terms of Heidegger’s philosophy. The concept of truth is outlined in Being and Time in terms of uncovering. Truth as uncovering is fundamentally related to Dasein’s manner of being since being true in the sense of uncovering is only possible on the basis of beingin-the-world. Truth is uncovering or the unconcealment of a thing for Dasein, the uncovering/disclosing practically engaged agent in a world of meaningful things. Naming this phenomenon unconcealment is prompted by the Greek term for truth, aletheia. A great deal of the material for my interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy in terms of univocity is contained in Being and Time. In his later years Heidegger came to view Being and Time as something of a ‘work of transition’. Regarding it in this way expresses the point of view Heidegger came to have after the change in orientation that occurred in his thought in the 1930s. After Being and Time Heidegger sought to engage in what he described as being-historical thinking. This style of thinking would leave metaphysics to itself and engage in a non-representational thinking which responds to the gift of the coming to presence of being. Such a thinking is accompanied by a ‘letting be’, a Gelassenheit, and is characterized as a poetic-thinking without why. Such a form of thought is no longer enslaved to the will to power of metaphysical philosophy and develops themes, such as Gelassenheit, already partially explored, in a different context, as early as 1918–1919 in ‘The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism’. Although I intend to defer treatment of issues in Heidegger’s later thought in detail for now, it is worth noting here that his view of Being and Time and the project of fundamental ontology did change as his thought developed. The view of Being and Time that emerges from his later standpoint is a characterization of this text in terms of a failure to move beyond the traditional language of metaphysics. Heidegger’s remark to this effect

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occurs in his Letter on Humanism in the context of a discussion of why the third division of part one of Being and Time (Time and Being) was held back. He says: The division in question was held back because thinking failed in the adequate saying of this turning [Kehre] and did not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics.1 In other words, Heidegger failed to say what he tried to say in Being and Time because he was still enslaved to the traditional language of philosophy. Kehre is Ereignis and it is precisely this matter which is inexpressible by metaphysics. The text of Being and Time does not simply consist of a metaphysical enquiry in the traditional sense. Heidegger’s thought here about the status of metaphysics is close to Kant’s: fundamental ontology is the metaphysics of human Dasein and is required in order to make metaphysics possible. Being and Time occupies a critical relation to metaphysics. It is a broadly Kantian enquiry in that it fills the space which logically precedes metaphysics. Metaphysics qua metaphysics is in question just as much for Heidegger as it is for Kant. This dimension of Heidegger’s thought goes some way towards accounting for the distinctly Kantian echo in the language of ‘blindness’ and ‘perversion’ employed by Heidegger when characterizing his task in Being and Time. Being and Time sought a move into a more originary questioning than metaphysics. This questioning would result in a reorientation of philosophy back to its true path, the path of the question of being. The prelude to Being and Time where Heidegger sets out the aim of the treatise, is followed by a substantial introduction, which is itself divided into two parts. In the first section of the first part, before he attempts to lay out the ‘formal structure’ of the question of being he confronts the necessity for ‘explicitly restating’ the question of being. Immediately, as we have seen, he faces a problem: there is no need to ask the question of being. Heidegger takes this to be prejudice born of ancient ontology which itself bars the way to an adequate understanding of that ontology, an understanding which can be completed only after the question of being has been ‘clarified and answered’. It is here that Heidegger proposes to discuss the three prejudices regarding the question of being and these prejudices are couched in terms of universality, indefinability and self-evidence. To recap: being is regarded as the most universal concept. He quotes Aquinas: ‘an understanding of being is already included in conceiving

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anything which one apprehends as a being’. The universality of being is however not the universality of a class or of a genus: it is not restricted to kinds of things, however general. Being’s universality transcends the universality of genus. As such, Heidegger reminds us, in medieval ontology being is understood as a transcendens because it transcends Aristotle’s categories. The fact of being’s universality does not answer the question of being: rather, it prompts it. Aristotle’s understanding of the unity of this transcendental universal was in terms of the unity of analogy in contradistinction from the multiplicity of the categories construed as highest genera applicable to entities. Despite his dependence on Plato’s formulation of the question, Aristotle’s discovery – so Heidegger contends – put the problem of being on a new basis. Nevertheless, Aristotle failed to bring the problem of the multiplicity of categorial interconnections fully to light. Heidegger reminds us that in the medieval context this problem was discussed widely, especially in both the Thomist and Scotist schools. Heidegger’s reference here is to the debate between the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of being as analogical and the Scotist conception of being as univocal. That Aristotle and the Scholastics should figure so prominently in these early pages of Being and Time is testimony to the continued importance of their ‘strict formulation of ontological problems’. As noted, the question of being first became a problem for Heidegger in an Aristotelian-scholastic context, and at this mature stage in his philosophical development the question is still being raised with explicit reference to this same context. Analogy, to be sure, puts the problem on a new footing, but only in terms of univocity is any solution coherent. Scotus’s point about analogy was not that it was wholly wrong but rather that it presupposed a univocal conception of being in terms of opposition to nothingness. For Scotus, no matter how a being is, it is rather than ‘is not’ and being in general ‘is’ rather than ‘is not’. Even Hegel’s determination of being as the indeterminate immediate is not sufficient as a solution to the question of being. Hegel still – so Heidegger contends – takes his point of departure from ancient ontology but does not pay attention to the problem of the unity of analogy or the unity of being in contradistinction to the multiplicity of categories. Heidegger summarizes: if being is the most universal concept this does not entail that it is the most clear and no more attention need be paid to it. Rather, it remains the ‘darkest’ of all concepts; in general, the ratio essendi (order of being) and the ratio cognoscendi (order of knowing) go in opposite directions, what is closest to one is the most mysterious.

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As supremely universal being is held to be indefinable. Being is in no way a being and cannot be treated as such. The concept of being cannot be arrived at through the process of definition used in traditional logic. For Aristotle, definition (horos, horismos) was an account (logos) that signifies the essence of a thing. He distinguishes (although not in these terms) between nominal definitions, which state beliefs associated with a thing or name, from real definitions that give a true account of the universal underlying the various beliefs established in the nominal definition. Now, not every name admits just one nominal or real definition. The name ‘horsedog’ signifies no real universal. There does not exist a kind of animal which is both a horse and a dog. Further, some names refer to more than one universal. ‘Bank’ for example refers to both a financial institution and to the raised earth shelf at the side of river. As such, words like bank are homonymous, more than one definition being required to determine the signification of the term. One important case of homonymy is ‘being’, Aristotle’s first category ousia (literally, ‘being’, translated into Latin as substantia and into English as substance). In addition to being, there are also the other nine nonsubstance categories. Each category admits both particulars and universals. For example, when it is stated that an individual particular man is an animal, a secondary substance (a universal in the substance category) is being predicated of a primary substance (an individual particular thing in the substance category). A further example is ‘red is a colour’. Here one universal quality is being predicated of another. Aristotle’s Categories displays the problem of defining the term ‘being’. The term ‘animal’ constitutes a univocal genus that admits of a single definition. By contrast, the term being does not. There is no single account of what it is for something to count as a being and as such, there is no univocal genus under which all beings could be subsumed. And whereas definition may be appropriate to beings, it cannot be appropriate to being since being is not a thing. This indefinability does not justify us in eliminating the question of being from our philosophical milieu. Quite the opposite, indefinability demands that we face up to this problem. This is precisely what Heidegger aims to do. Being, of all our concepts, is the least problematic since it is self-evident. In all comportment of oneself towards anything at all, in all cognition and in all assertion, being is implicitly already in play. This ‘average intelligibility’ of being does not allow us to merely pass over the question of its meaning in silence. Rather, it makes manifest the fact that in all our comportment there is, a priori, an enigma. Being, in its self-evidence and average intelligibility, in fact indicates being’s unintelligibility. We always

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already dwell in an understanding of being without explicitly attending to its meaning. Precisely because of this collection of problems surrounding being it is necessary to raise it as a question again. Heidegger’s question is the radicalization of the pre-understanding of being in which we, as engaged agents, are always already situated in our factical life as Dasein. The question of being is just the radicalization of Dasein’s pre-ontological understanding of being. It is this conviction that allows Heidegger to develop the question of being (in section 2 The Formal Structure of the Question of Being) in terms of a seeking guided already by what is sought. What is sought is the meaning of being, the presupposition of all ontology. Being is presupposed in ontology, but not as a concept. Part of Heidegger’s aim is to determine the concept of being: a conceptual determination of what we mean when we use the word ‘being’. When he finds it, it will be univocal. Significantly, Heidegger agrees with the scholastics that being is the transcendens. Being is the transcendens precisely because of the ontological difference: being is not an entity or a class of entities. Heideggerian phenomenology is concerned with being. When Heidegger elaborates his concept of phenomenology in Being and Time he does so without explicitly appealing to Husserl, the founder of phenomenology as a movement. In Being and Time phenomenology emerges as a predominantly methodological concept: phenomenology is Heidegger’s chosen method of access to being, the theme of ontology. It is the method of philosophy construed as ontology. There is an implicit reference to Husserl, however, when Heidegger says that the term ‘phenomenology’ expresses the maxim ‘to the things themselves’. ‘To the things themselves’ was Husserl’s rally cry for the phenomenological project and it will be here that Heidegger thinks Husserl did not go far enough. Husserl did not question out of the things themselves, phenomena, as they present themselves for phenomenological description in the radical way that Heidegger will attempt. Without appeal to Husserl, Heidegger defines phenomenology in terms of the component parts of that term: phenomenon and logos. Phenomenon is understood as that which shows itself in itself or the manifest and logos designates a letting something be seen. Taken together, phenomenology means to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the manner in which it shows itself from itself. This, in Heidegger’s view, expresses the maxim ‘to the things themselves’. Phenomenology differs from the positive sciences, such as theology, which have already designated their objects. Phenomenology by contrast does not designate its object or characterize beforehand its subject matter.

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The term phenomenology designates the manner in which what is treated in this science is dealt with. Phenomenology is a descriptive science and logos, the specific character of the description, according to Heidegger, can be construed in terms of the thinghood of that which is to be described; of that which is to be given scientific definiteness as it is encountered. The term phenomenology can be applied to any exhibiting of anything as it shows itself in itself from itself.

The Phenomenology of Being and the Question of Dasein The subject matter of Heideggerian phenomenology is being. Phenomenology allows being to become the matter of description. Understood phenomenologically being is something that mostly does not reveal itself. It lies ‘hidden’. What mostly shows itself is beings. Nevertheless, being belongs essentially to that which does mostly show its self in such a way to constitute their meaning and ground. This something that remains hidden and which exhibits itself only in disguise is the being of beings. The meaning and ground of beings can, as Heidegger despairingly pointed out in the prelude to Being and Time, be covered over or concealed to such an extent that it becomes forgotten. In this sorry state no question arises about the meaning of being. The promise of phenomenology is that it offers a method for getting access to being. Recall here the threefold characterization of the phenomenological method as the equiprimordial unity of reduction, construction and destruction that Heidegger instantiated in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (pp21–23). Reduction is the move away from beings towards their being. Construction is the projection of beings onto their ontological structure, allowing their being to come into view. Destruction is the process of deconstructing or destructuring the concepts which express the being of beings – that are transmitted by the tradition – so as to arrive at their source in experience. This method, this way of seeing phenomenologically, allows that which for the most part lies hidden, being, to come into view. As Dermot Moran has pointed out, approaching being as Heidegger does, through the forgetfulness of being (Seinsvergessenheit), through the way the phenomenon comes to presence in the present age, is deeply phenomenological. The phenomenological conception of phenomenon that Heidegger has in mind, the ‘that which shows itself’, is the being of beings, its meaning, modifications and so on. Nothing lies behind the being of beings that would not appear. There is nothing behind the phenomena of phenomenology.

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Understood phenomenologically, phenomena make up being: appearance (phenomena as they reveal themselves to a Dasein) is reality and there is no recourse to anything ‘unintended’. Phenomenology, as configured by Heidegger, is the science of the being of beings: phenomenology is ontology. Heideggerian phenomenological ontology takes its point of departure from Dasein because of all beings Dasein is that being with an understanding of being. Dasein’s ontical distinction is that it is ontological. The terms ontical and ontological refer to beings and being respectively. Ontical inquiry is concerned with beings. Ontological inquiry is concerned with being. Dasein is not just an occurring thing like a rock. Rather, Dasein is distinguished ontically by the fact that in its being, its ‘being is an issue for it’. Dasein’s essence consists in having its being to be. In short, as Heidegger puts it in Being and Time, the essence of Dasein is in its existence. The term Dasein is itself an expression of the manner of being of the practically engaged agent qua Existenz (existence). In one way or another Dasein always comports itself towards its being qua existence and in this process Dasein’s own being is disclosed to it. Understanding itself in terms of its existence Dasein always understands itself in terms of the possibility of being itself or not being itself; only the particular Dasein can decide its existence, whether it does so by taking it over or by neglecting it. Dasein means being-t/here and connotes being there, here, now. Dasein’s being is being-in-the-world. Dasein is always there in its world or meaningful context of significance. There is no Dasein without world and no world without Dasein. Dasein is its ‘there’, it is its ‘disclosedness’. Inhabiting a there, a there in terms of which it understands itself and in terms of which it becomes who it is, is so essential to Dasein that without it, it would not be Dasein. Dasein, as being-in-the-world, is what Heidegger calls the ‘clearing’: Dasein is ‘the there’ (das Da) of being. Dasein is the site that being requires in order to ‘happen’ at all. Dasein is the site of the revealing of being and all the key words and phrases – such as difference, disclosure, emergence, unconcealment, truth, the meaning of being, the truth of being – all refer to the event (Ereignis) of the revelation or gift of being to and for Dasein. Dasein has priority over all other beings. As the site for the revelation of being, Dasein is the only being for whom raising the question of being is a possibility. Characterizing being as the ‘meaning and ground’ of beings is significant. In Heidegger’s own marginalia to the text (printed in the Stambaugh edition) he notes beside this designation the phrase ‘truth of being’. The

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term being is Heidegger’s name for the meaningful relatedness that things have for Dasein’s understanding and interest. The meaningful relatedness of things to this understanding and interest is their very presence to Dasein. The being of beings is the presence of what is present and thought, in Heidegger’s technical sense of that term, and being belong together essentially. The truth of being names the event (Ereignis) whereby being is revealed and things/beings can be meaningfully appropriated into the lives of individuals and communities. Heideggerian phenomenology is concerned to occupy itself with the manifold ways in which that which is present comes to presence, abides and passes away. The truth of being is the temporal character of being or presence itself. The truth of being is thought in terms of the Ereignis, the event of appropriation. This event, as Heidegger understands it, is the way in which being essentially unfolds as the history of the West. The task of the thinker is to think being historically. From this point of view, the project of fundamental ontology, approaching being through the analytic of Dasein, undergoes a radical displacement. Philosophy as metaphysics thinks the being of beings in terms of substantiality and subjectivity. Metaphysics thinks the beingness of beings. Yet, metaphysics does not think the difference of being and beings: metaphysics does not approach the truth of being and crucially, it does not think the way in which historical human beings ‘belong’ to the truth of being. As a philosopher of difference, Heidegger will be concerned to think this matter of the difference. Traditional metaphysics cannot raise the question of the Ereignis, that is, of the occurrence of the truth of being. So, in order to think this event Heidegger will have to think non-metaphysically. Heidegger will engage in being-historical thinking which attempts to think the essential unfolding of being in its history: the history of being is being itself. Being and Time, together with the project of fundamental ontology, attempted to think being in its temporal occurrence: what Heidegger later calls the truth of being. Later, from around the 1930s, the period in which he composed the Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger attempts to think from the temporal occurrence of being as appropriation. The temporal occurrence of being as appropriation is the presupposition of all human events and is the origin of being and time. Ereignis is the capitalized ‘It’ which gives being and time to thought and Dasein has to remain attentive to this gift.

Transcendental Philosophy I have noted Heidegger’s agreement with the scholastic sense of being as a transcendental: being is the transcendens pure and simple. On its own however,

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this sense of transcendental would not be enough to convey Heidegger’s sense of this term. Being is also a transcendental in the Kantian sense of transcendental condition or condition of possibility. Being is a transcendental structure or condition of possibility for the presence of beings. Being, as transcendental-horizonal structure, allows things to show up for us as what they are. This is the Kantian dimension of the project of fundamental ontology: being is the condition of possibility of Dasein’s experience of things since in all possible experience of things an understanding of being is presupposed. Dasein’s understanding of being makes the experience of things/beings possible. Being is a transcendental in the sense that it transcends the categories and in the sense that it is a condition for the appearance of beings. This is an importance aspect of the ontological difference. As a transcendental in both senses – and as transcendent in the scholastic sense of ‘lying beyond’ – being cannot be a being. Now, there is a crucial sense in which Heidegger’s project differs from both Kant’s and the scholastics’. He differs from the scholastics in that he does not aim to construct a systematic theology. For the scholastics, the doctrine of the transcendentals was closely tied to their systematic theological intent. For Scotus, while being was the subject of metaphysics God was its goal. He held that if the transcendentals were elucidated correctly then it will be possible to infer the existence of God. Proving the existence of God was never part of Heidegger’s agenda. It was his conviction during the period of Being and Time that philosophy must necessarily be atheistic. In a remark in History of the Concept of Time, Prolegomena he indicates that philosophical research, because it is atheism, can become what a great man once called ‘ joyful science’. The great man implicitly referred to here is Nietzsche. Interestingly, Nietzsche is not among those influences named by Heidegger in his 1927 letter to Bultmann. There Heidegger points out that he has no ambitions towards a theology but that his work may allow for the construction of Christian theology as a science. It is in this respect that despite his attention to scholasticism, in its joyful atheism Heidegger’s philosophy of being has a definite Nietzschean motif. What is in play here for Heidegger is a methodological atheism: Heidegger was not atheistic in the anti-theist Nietzschean sense. Heidegger had no systematic aims towards the construction of a theology in Being and Time; nor did he have any scholastic aims towards proving the existence of God. His phenomenology is not ‘catholic phenomenology’ as some had jibed. Philosophy must be atheistic.

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With respect to Kant, Heidegger will differ fundamentally, particularly with regards to the issue of noumena. Heidegger’s destructive-reappropriation of the history of philosophy was to focus on ‘decisive junctures’ in that history. One such juncture arose with the philosophy of Kant. Kant came close to the problematic of temporality. Heidegger thought that in an important respect Kant’s philosophy anticipated his own fundamental ontology. It is possible to see something of an anticipation of the very project of destruction in Kant’s critical philosophy. In his ‘An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?’ Kant reminds us that the motto of Enlightenment is ‘Have courage to make use of your own understanding!’.2 Enlightenment generally is the release of humanity from its ‘self-imposed immaturity’ wherein individuals failed to employ their own understanding and allowed themselves to be directed by ‘another’. Kant likens the critique of reason by itself to the institution of ‘a court of justice’ wherein reason may secure its ‘rightful claims’ while at the same time dismissing all its ‘groundless pretensions’. For Kant, in his own words: ‘this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself’.3 This critique is not merely of ‘books and systems’. It is rather a critique of the faculty of reason generally and of the cognitions that reason may approach independently of experience. For this reason, the critique of pure reason puts up for decision the possibility or otherwise of metaphysics in general together with its source and ultimate extent. Kant explicitly questioned the right of metaphysics to make the claims it made. He did so not simply by attacking actual claims but by enquiring into the very source of metaphysics itself. Kant wanted to know whether metaphysics was possible. To be sure, Heidegger is not an Enlightenment philosopher. But the philosophy of Being and Time does share an affinity with Kant with regards to the ‘task of thought’. Heidegger sought to problematize the claims of metaphysics and ultimately the determination of being as permanent presence. Fundamental ontology is the metaphysics of Dasein. Heidegger’s aims were ontological whereas Kant’s, by common consent, were broadly epistemological. The self-imposed immaturity that Kant brings to our attention in his Enlightenment essay is paralleled in Heidegger when he contends that Dasein falls prey to the tradition. The result of this fall is that Dasein is prevented from being ‘its own guide’ in both decision and inquiry. It is not too much of an imposition to read this as an ‘existential re-interpretation’ of this central Kantian theme. The mistake permeating the tradition of metaphysics, according to Kant, was a conception of the object of knowledge as determined independently of the subject’s knowledge of it. Knowledge can transcend experience

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or immanence and attain a reality determined without reference to the knowing subject. Such a rationalistic philosophy can be called transcendent or transcendental realism. The problem with such rationalism is that it renders the pursuit of knowledge vain. How can the subject have any knowledge about a reality entirely estranged from its manner of knowing? It was precisely this kind of problem that confronted Descartes. Since the aim of knowledge was mind-independent reality or things in themselves a guarantee was required which would ensure that the subjective representations in the mind of the subject actually corresponded to things as they actually are independent of the subject’s knowledge of them. This guarantor was, for Descartes, a non-deceiving God. Rather than solving the problem of knowledge this position immediately prompts the further question: how do you know that God (another transcendent being) exists? We do not need to raise the question of whether or not Descartes did or not actually prove the existence of God since all that is required for doubt to be cast over the whole enterprise is that doubt concerning God persists. What is important is that Kant came to see philosophers engaged in such an enterprise as having only two options: either they can persist in claiming knowledge dogmatically or they will be forced down the path of scepticism or empiricism. Importantly, the sceptic maintains the presupposition of transcendental realism. The aim of knowledge is still unconditioned reality but the sceptic has come to see the sceptical outcome of this position, namely, that the dogmatist’s claims to knowledge of mind-independent reality is undermined and at best all they could be justified in claiming knowledge of is appearances. As such, all genuine knowledge is limited to the sphere of immanence and is thus wholly based on sense experience. Not satisfied with either dogmatism or scepticism and unwilling to abandon metaphysics Kant resolved to abandon the presupposition of transcendent realism. Reason must undergo an immanent critique in order to determine whether metaphysics, that which has constantly resorted to either the extravagance of dogmatism or the non-philosophy of scepticism, is at all possible. As such, the critique of pure reason is an enquiry effected by reason itself into its capacity to know objects, such as God and the soul, which transcend sense experience. Such an inquiry demands that the conditions under which objects in general can be known be displayed. The first half of the first Critique supplies an account of cognition while the second half examines the claims of metaphysics. Kant’s positive doctrine, transcendental idealism, offers an account of the conditions under which objects can be known. In and through transcendental idealism the Copernican

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revolution was carried out in philosophy and it is possible to read Heidegger’s own philosophy in Being and Time in a critical relation to that revolution. Previous metaphysics has assumed that knowledge must conform to objects. Kant proposes that we may go further in terms of the problems of metaphysics if we assume rather that objects must ‘conform to our cognition’ of them. The object of knowledge is determined by the subject’s knowledge of it. Conceiving of the object of knowledge in this way means that it is conceived as being determined by the subject’s manner of representing what is empirically given to them. The content of our knowledge is given to us precisely in the sense that it is not created by the mind. Now the object of experience, so Kant argues, should be taken in a twofold sense as ‘appearance or as thing in itself’.4 As appearance or phenomenon the object of knowledge is knowable for a subject. Taken as thing in itself or noumenon it is not. In this respect the notion of noumena represents the limits of the subject’s knowledge. A subject can know phenomena but cannot know noumena. From this notion of the object, the object taken in a twofold sense, Kant went on to distinguish between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. The phenomenal world is the world of human experience: the world of immanence. Human experience is transcendentally conditioned to be in space and time. Space and time are the forms of human intuition. Whatever a human being experiences in the phenomenal world, this experience will be in space and in time. Now, the noumenal world is the world of things in themselves. It is the world of things considered independently of human experience. We can know nothing of this noumenal world beyond the fact that it exists. With this, we have reached the fundamental problem of Kant’s thought. With noumena, transcendental realism creeps back into Kant’s philosophy. In sum, there remains a fundamental ‘transcendence’ in Kant’s thought. This is the world of noumena that is beyond the immanent world of conditioned experience. Now, despite his considerable debt to Kant, there is nothing in Heidegger that corresponds to the noumenal world. In this respect Heidegger sought to confine himself to an ‘immanent’ thought in Being and Time, that is, to a thought without any recourse (whether in a positive or a negative sense) to a ‘beyond’ or ‘transcendent’. Ultimately, for Heidegger, there are only the phenomena of phenomenology and thought is confined to – and must work out of – this sphere of immanence. Construed phenomenologically, phenomena make up being and there is an ontological difference between being and beings. The issue of the ontological difference is one of the central points of reference in Heidegger’s

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critique of the tradition in terms of the forgetfulness of being. The tradition, beginning with the Greeks and ending with Husserl, forgot the difference between being and beings and co-ordinately they forgot Dasein. Dasein is that being for whom its being is an issue and to whom an understanding of being belongs. In essence, Dasein is sensitive to the ontological difference: as well as being sensitive to things, Dasein is sensitive to the meaningful relation which things can have for it. The question of being is none other than the radicalization of the understanding of being that pertains to Dasein. Failure to investigate in this manner amounts to a failure of investigation itself. That is, investigation has to be truly radical and work out of the things themselves as they show themselves.

Univocity from 1916 to 1927 The Question of being was raised for Heidegger in an Aristotelianscholastic context as early as 1907 and his interest in this question was prompted by his reading of Brentano. Recall Van Buren’s division of Heidegger’s early engagement leading up to his philosophical maturity in his ‘The Earliest Heidegger’. From 1909 until 1913 Heidegger’s thought can be described as anti-modernist and neo-scholastic. From 1914 until 1916 it was mystical and neo-neo-scholastic. From 1917 until the early 1920s Heidegger’s thought moved into a free Protestant mystical phase and as Caputo reminds us, Heidegger went so far in 1921 to describe himself to Karl Löwith as a Christian theologian. Caputo has argued in Demythologizing Heidegger that the early turn from Catholicism to Protestantism coincides with a shift in Heidegger’s philosophical interests from questions of logic to questions of history and from pure (Husserlian) phenomenology to the hermeneutics of facticity. It also coincides with his shift to the theology of the New Testament from his previous concern with dogmatic theology. This is the turn from Aristotelian-scholastic thinkers such as Aquinas and Scotus to Pascal, Luther and Kierkegaard and it is evidenced in his philosophical text. The philosophical project that issued in Being and Time, what we might call, given Van Buren’s chronology, the fourth phase leading up to fundamental ontology, interwove many themes. As Caputo has put it, Being and Time emerged from a retrieval of Aristotle and the Nicomachean Ethics and New Testament life and led to a ‘ jewgreek’ philosophical unity. Heidegger’s categories of factical life, care, existence, instrumentality, temporality and historicity would be the same wherever they are found,

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whether in polis or ekklesia. Caputo puts this ahistoricist view of these factical categories down to Heidegger’s enthralment to Husserlian phenomenology, the universal science that lays bare common and universal structures of the lifeworld, wherever it is manifest. In these terms, Caputo argues that the goal of Being and Time was to formalize such factical structures and render them conceptualized formally and ontologically in such a way that they are ontologically neutral from the point of view of their instantiation in a particular context. Such an aim is at once Husserlian and Neo-Kantian. In fundamental ontology Heidegger attempted to define universal structures of factical life, of existing Dasein, and not set forth an example of a particular way to be. Officially, from the perspective of fundamental ontology, there is no privileged way to be. To return to the debate regarding univocity and analogy: Heidegger displays a categorial ahistoricism in the Scotus Book. That is, in that text Heidegger forges an onto-logic of the categories, regarding them as a timeless, ideal conceptual framework by virtue of which intentional judgements access real being. This real being is itself founded on God’s absolute being. It is precisely in these terms that Heidegger engages with the debate over univocity and analogy in that text. There Heidegger clearly recognizes the Scotian point about univocity being on the side of the logical and analogy being on the side of the real. During his discussion of a philosophy of language he makes the point about the necessity of a univocal ground that underscores concrete divisions or manifestations of things, categorial or otherwise. Regarding the philosophy of language, he says: It is incumbent on it to set forth the ultimate, theoretical foundations which lie at the basis of language. Without the univocal, conceptual rendering of ‘meaning in general’, of the ‘object intended in meaning,’ of the ‘category of meaning,’ of the ‘relation of the forms of meaning’ there is no possibility of a certain path in the researches on language. 5 Heidegger is stating that in order to further proceed with an investigation of language that is formal and not, as he says, psychological and historical, then sharp, univocal, conceptual foundations have to be set forth. The sense of univocal in play here is ‘un-equivocal’. That is, there should be no dubiety about these foundations. However, in addition to this, such univocal-theoretical foundations would serve to ground diverse manifestations of linguistic phenomena. In this sense, univocity serves as a unifying term with regards to language in a similar way as I hold it does with regards to Heidegger’s later philosophy of being.

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Interestingly, univocity appears here, in the mystical neo-neo-scholastic phase, in connection with the notion of ‘object intended in meaning’. It is in just such terms that Heidegger will define univocity, by reference to intentionality, in his later fundamental ontology. Moving on from this early period of Heidegger’s thought to consider being, univocity and analogy in fundamental ontology. Along with Aristotle, the most decisive philosophical influence on the Heidegger of Being and Time was Husserl. Heidegger regarded Husserl’s work as the summation of the tradition of philosophy from Plato which fell into a metaphysics of presence. Husserl had himself developed a twofold thesis concerning being in his Logical Investigations, the work that Heidegger regarded as the breakthrough to and ‘basic text’ of the new method of phenomenological research, the ultimate aim of which was to found phenomenology as a strict science. Taminiaux conveniently summarizes the thesis on being of the Logical Investigations and Heidegger’s appropriation and conversion of it as follows. In the first place, Husserl held with Kant, that being is not a real predicate and in the second, against Kant, that being is given in categorial intuition. For Husserl, as with Kant, the thesis that being is not a real predicate means that, as predicate, it is not one among the other predicates that define the essence of beings. Heidegger’s use of this thesis amounted to a statement of the ontico-ontological difference or ontological difference between beings and being: being is in no sense a being. The insight that being is given in categorial intuition was taken over by Heidegger and converted into the thesis that the human being has in its factical life an understanding of being and understands or interprets itself with regard to being. Husserl’s phenomenological project is further developed, along with his view on the nature of being, in Ideas I. It is in Ideas that Husserl introduces the notion of transcendental phenomenology. His aim was to lay bare a pure phenomenology as a basic science fundamental to philosophy. Pure phenomenology is transcendental phenomenology. Attempting such an investigation entails awakening from the natural attitude which can be done by revealing the constituting activity of consciousness. The natural attitude is that attitude of consciousness whereby it is immersed in a world of things and persons and where the reality of the external world is naively accepted. In the natural attitude ‘things’ are taken to be independent and prior to consciousness and perception reveals the world as it is. Husserl recommends suspending this attitude in order to reflect in an unprejudiced manner on conscious life. The method of

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transcendental phenomenology is a first person reflection on consciousness. Husserl’s conviction is that consciousness constitutes the meaning or sense which is bestowed upon what is given in perception. It is not things, such as any particular material object, which are constituted by consciousness. It is rather meanings: the very notion of ‘material object’ as such. Consciousness is the origin of these objectivities. It is by virtue of consciousness’s constituting activity that we can talk about an objective world in the first place and so become immersed in the natural attitude. Husserl’s method of extricating oneself from this attitude involves two reductions: the eidetic reduction and the phenomenological or transcendental reduction. The epoché or phenomenological reduction suspends or brackets all claims about empirical reality outside consciousness. This epoché provides for phenomenological description. By virtue of the epoché all conscious acts are taken on the same plane and can be investigated as to their differences from each other. Bracketing allows consciousness to attend to its objects as meant or as meanings. Consciousness is intentional: consciousness is always consciousness of something. Husserl shared with empiricists the general principle that philosophical clarification of anything whatsoever entails tracking it to the experience in which it is encountered directly. As such, phenomenological inquiry attends to the correlation between the intention (noesis or cogitatio) and object as intended (noema or cogitatum qua cogitatum). The eidetic reduction allows the inquirer to intuit essences. Such an intuition of essences is distinguished from any possible grasp of empirical universals. Empirical universals are apparent in judgements which identify particulars as members of a category. It is empirical in that once the universal has been identified it can itself be made the object of scientific judgement; and science aims to specify completely the characteristics of empirical universals. In Husserl’s view, science can never fully achieve this goal since it is impossible that a truly comprehensive determination of an empirical concept be reached. The intuition of an essence occurs when empirical universals are submitted to ‘free’ or ‘imaginative variation’. Such variation reveals the invariant structure or essence of an object. A further consequence of the epoché is that the personal and cultural prejudices of the inquirer are neutralized and they are rendered a pure ego set apart from all historical limitation. In such a pure state, the ego gains access to universal structures of consciousness. Intentionality was, for Husserl, a three termed structure: act → meaning → object. Given that the object of an act may not exist what is essential to the act cannot be the existence of the object. Rather, what is essential to the act is the meaning that

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it has necessarily as its correlate. As such, existence (both of the object and of the world taken as the totality of objects) can be put in parenthesis leaving the essential structures of consciousness as the field for enquiry. Such a method displays consciousness in its constituting activity of articulating and structuring the world. Since consciousness is intentional, any adequate account of it must also consider its objects with regard to ‘how’ they are intended. Phenomenology has to take account of all possible modes of objectivity for consciousness. Phenomenology gives an account of the different ontological regions of being, such as the human world and the physical world, with regard to ‘how’ they are experienced, through perception or imagination for example. Transcendental phenomenology was intended to resolve all philosophical problems and ground philosophy as a rigorous science. It was Husserl’s view that through the study of consciousness there could be derived a secure foundation for the other sciences. Phenomenology is not just subjective idealism, by virtue of intentionality, but it is a variety of transcendental idealism: all reality is to be taken in terms of the meaning which it has for consciousness. The world is not reducible to the consciousness we have of it (it transcends our consciousness) but consciousness bestows meaning on the world and phenomenology is concerned to analyse how that bestowal of meaning happens. The objective world that is there for us is ultimately the accomplishment of consciousness. Consciousness or the pure ego is considered to be transcendental when it is regarded in its meaning giving relation to the transcendent world. In this sense Husserl’s thought is ultimately a species of transcendental idealism. Consciousness remains the phenomenological residuum, a unique region of being and domain of the novel science of phenomenology; it is of an order of being radically different from extra-mental reality: The realm of transcendental consciousness as the realm of . . . ‘absolute’ being, has been provided us by the phenomenological reduction. It is the primal category of all being . . . the one in which all other regions of being are rooted, to which, according to their essence, they are relative and on which they are therefore all essentially dependent.6 Here we can readily see why Deleuze points out in Difference and Repetition that some readers of Husserl have found in him distinct Thomist echoes. For Husserl, consciousness is absolute being. For Aquinas, absolute being is God. Husserl is not a Thomist. Nevertheless, an echo of a traditional system can be heard in the phenomenological project. In phenomenology,

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it is transcendental consciousness which is attained by the process of bracketing. Individual being along with the empirical self and the empirical world are put in abeyance. As absolute being, transcendental consciousness depends upon nothing beyond itself for its existence and all other regions of being are phenomenologically rooted and phenomenologically dependent upon absolute being or consciousness. Consciousness is immanent being and all that is outside consciousness is transcendent being. The Thomistic echo in Husserl’s thought is this: in phenomenology there is one primary constituting and necessary region of being to which all others are related and on which they are dependent. This is an echo of the traditional doctrine of participation and from here, a phenomenological interpretation of the doctrine of the analogy of being is possible, constituting a further traditional echo in the Husserlian project.7 Though the concept of being refers to many different things it does not do so equivocally. Rather, it refers to its many things with reference to some primary analogon, in a primary sense to which all other uses of the term are analogous. For Aristotle, the primary term to which all others were analogous was ousia. For Aquinas, it was existence, ipsum esse. As encountered phenomenologically, the various orders or regions of being can be read as united in terms of a unity of analogy to the primary region of consciousness. And, when that consciousness is described in the terms Husserl describes it, as necessary and constituting and so on, one can hear the echo of Thomism. It is in his lecture course History of the Concept of Time that Heidegger deals most explicitly with Husserl. In this lecture course Heidegger is still keen to portray himself as a ‘learner’ or beginner when it comes to Husserl. Beginner he may be, nonetheless, his critique of Husserl serves to bring out much of the project of Being and Time and of my own specific problematic. As is to be expected, Heidegger’s critique revolves around the problem of being and it is in this text that he points out that the traditional realms of being are distinguished into temporal, supratemporal and extratemporal being. This is true of the entire tradition from Plato to Husserl. In the tradition, being has itself been reduced to something present and beings have been understood in terms of an analogy to this present being. To date, phenomenology itself operates in ‘fundamental neglect’ of Heidegger’s question of being and the question of Dasein and the more mature text Being and Time will be concerned to overcome this neglect. Heidegger’s concern in History of the Concept of Time is with determining how the newly realized ‘scientific domain’ of phenomenology arises from what is given in the natural attitude. The scientific domain of phenomenology is the region of lived experience, of ‘pure consciousness’ together

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with its correlates. It is the domain of the pure ego, of absolute being. In anticipation of the method of starting with Dasein as immersed in its world, Heidegger proposes to start with the ‘consciousness’ and its mental processes as they are given in the natural attitude. After all, as being-inthe-world, Dasein cannot be sensibly removed from the world, either by epoché, or some other method. On Husserl’s account, the subject or human self is ‘given’ in the natural attitude. This subject performs mental acts (cogitationes) and the totality of such acts is an individual stream of ‘lived experiences’. Reflection is the self-directedness of oneself toward one’s own individual stream of lived experiences. The distinction of consciousness is intentionality. By virtue of intentionality, the transcendent world is, in a certain respect, there in lived experience. That the apprehended object is there in the apprehension is called immanence. Consciousness is always concretized in a particular really existing being. Nonetheless, consciousness is distinct from the world: there are two distinct spheres of being, immanence (consciousness) and transcendence (world). This separation into two distinct spheres of being is remarkable because it is the sphere of lived experience or immanence which establishes the possibility within which the transcendent world that is radically other than it can itself become objective in the first place. The performance of the epoché and eidetic reduction allow a non-individual pure field of consciousness to come into view as opposed to the field of a particular consciousness. The sphere of transcendence is distinct from the sphere of immanence. Nonetheless, everything that can be called objective in immanent experience has the same mode of being as the sphere of immanence. As Heidegger reminds us, this means that the object of immanent perception is absolutely given. The sphere of immanence is distinguished by its absolute givenness. As absolutely given, pure consciousness, reached by means of the reductions, is for Husserl, the sphere of absolute being. This sphere of absolute being is in no way affected by the contingency of the transcendent world. With this position, Heidegger contends, phenomenological reflection has reached its apotheosis.

Cartesian Connections and the Medieval Ontology At this stage Heidegger directs our attention to the kinship of Husserl’s thought with that of Descartes and suggests that the field of pure consciousness is that field which Descartes construed as res cogitans.8 The

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transcendent world is the res extensa. This is important since division two of part two of Being and Time was intended to discuss the carrying over of the medieval ontology into the problematic of the res cogitans in Descartes. The medieval ontology itself was characterized implicitly in terms of the debate between analogy and univocity. This is significant. We shall see in what follows just how ‘traditional’ this debate is. From his exposition Heidegger moves to a critique. The two regions of being which Husserl posits are distinct. However, Heidegger asks, does Husserl inquire into the being of consciousness? What does absolute being mean? Does phenomenology inquire into the meaning of being? Heidegger summarizes Husserl’s position as follows: Consciousness is 1) immanent being; 2) the immanent is the absolutely given being. This absolute givenness is also called absolute being pure and simple. 3) This being, understood as absolute givenness, is also absolute in the sense that . . . ‘it needs no res in order to be.’ . . . 4) Absolute being in these two significations – absolutely given and needing no reality – is pure being, in the sense of being the essence, the ideal being of lived experiences.9 It will prove crucial that Husserl employs the traditional determination of substance in relation to consciousness here. Consciousness, immanent and absolute, constitutes each and every possible being. All transcendent being ‘is’ only by virtue of its relation to consciousness. Consciousness, understood this way, is the first being. And as Heidegger reminds us, this first being is possessed of an advantage: it does not need reality. Quite the opposite, it is reality that stands in need of the first being. Consciousness is absolute when compared to any other being or region of being. In fact, in constituting itself, consciousness constitutes any possible reality other than it. This is the heart of the matter. Both Cartesian and Thomist threads in Heidegger’s interpretation of Husserl’s position are clear. On its own the Cartesian thread is damaging enough for a presuppositionless science since it is Heidegger’s view that when Descartes asks after the being of a being he is asking about, in the manner of the tradition, substance. Substance in the tradition stood for the most ‘primary kind of being’. Of entities distinct from God in a creationist context it designated that the entity needed nothing besides God for the continuation of its existence. Heidegger holds that Descartes follows the scholastics in expression, concept and subject matter. Because of this, he follows the ‘basically Greek’ configuration of

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the question of beings. This is why Heidegger was concerned to devote a division in the second part of Being and Time to a discussion of the medieval ontology and its carrying over by Descartes. The context of these remarks is Heidegger’s discussion of how the phenomenon of the worldhood of the world has been passed over by the tradition of philosophy. It is in this context in both History of the Concept of Time and in Being and Time that the notions of analogy and univocity are discussed, albeit in a distinct context and thus in a limited way. In the former text the concept of substance is determined as ‘extantness’ or ‘being on hand’ in that it is in need of no other being. The ontological concept of God as the most perfect being (ens perfectissimum) indicates that God most exemplifies what it is to be a substance. However, it is the same concept of being that is used in reference to both God and creatures: being as substance. As such, creatures can also be called substances even though there is an infinite difference between their being as created and God’s being as Creator. Creator and created are considered alike qua beings. The concept of being, as it is used here, has such a wide sense that its meaning ranges over an ‘infinite difference’. The concept of being is not, however, univocal. As Heidegger defines univocity, a concept is univocal if what it intends (its meaning content) is intended in the same sense across all its intentions. The non-univocity of the concept of being in this context is due to the infinite difference in being between creature and Creator. If ‘is’ were univocal then creature could be viewed as of the same manner of being as Creator and the uncreated would be reduced to the manner of being of something created. It is Heidegger’s view that in dealing with these issues ontologically Descartes is always at a distance behind the Schoolmen. When Descartes states that the concept of being is not used univocally Heidegger contends that this is an evasion of the issue and amounts to his failure to put in question the meaning of being which the notion of substance embraces. Descartes does not face the problem of the kind of universality which this signification has. Owing to the infinite difference in being which Descartes ascribes to God and creatures the concept of being is not used univocally but analogously. The term ‘being’ can still be applied to both in the terminology employed by the scholastics, which Descartes does not mention. Heidegger notes that the analogy of being was first formulated by Aristotle and that this formulation constituted his advance over the Platonic conception of being and he concludes that Descartes is left behind by the insights of the scholastic middle ages.

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Substance means being ‘on hand’ or permanent presence-to-hand. Descartes construes the being of God, the res extensa and the res cogitans as being ‘on hand’. This is the nub of the issue and constitutes the ultimate failure of the tradition. Taking all beings in this way prevents Descartes from bringing the manner of Dasein’s ‘way of behaving’ into view. But not only does the limitation of being to presence-at-hand disallow the thematization of Dasein qua existence: it also bars the way to an adequate determination of the being of any being and to the meaning of being. The being of any thing is not its mere presence-to-hand, it is its use or readiness-to-hand for Dasein as that is determined by the holistic field of significance relations or world wherein Dasein dwells. Being itself means the meaningful relatedness which things can have for Dasein. The tradition has completely passed over the worldhood of the world as it is composed of the totality of these relations of significance or readiness-to-hand. The terms ‘world’ and ‘being’ are correlative for Heidegger: being is the meaningful relatedness which things can have for Dasein and world is the totality of these meaningful relations and both being and world are relative to Dasein. Descartes’s position is traditional, it constitutes a continuation of a concept of being as substance together with the concept of analogy. The concept of being remains Aristotelian-Thomistic. Husserl’s position fares little better: his determination of being is, after all, not original. In Aquinas’s philosophy, absolute being, the kind of being which simply is, is God.10 With Husserl, as with Aquinas, absolute being constitutes reality and reality is wholly dependent on it. In Husserl, an echo can be heard of a broadly Thomist metaphysic. God (in Aquinas) and consciousness (in Husserl) could, in principle, survive the utter annihilation of all being other than themselves. In their own distinct way and for their distinct objects, God provides for the being of creatures as consciousness provides for the being of that which is other than it. Ontologically, for Husserl and for Descartes, subjectivity has priority over objectivity. For the Thomist, God has ontological priority over his creation. In the modern epoch, the subject displaces God. Consciousness is pure in so far as it is regarded in contradistinction from its concrete individuation. Heidegger argues that what is in question here is the being of the detached structure of intentionality and not of the being that has this structure. In other words, Dasein, the situated being-there, is nowhere to be seen in Husserl’s analysis. Indeed, the four determinations of consciousness drawn by Husserl do not arise out of ‘the entity itself’ and amount to obstacles to getting to grips with the being of Dasein. In Heidegger’s view, Husserl is moved not by the question of the being of consciousness but by the question of exactly how consciousness can become the

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object of absolute science. This however, is not an original problematic. It is the problem that has occupied philosophy since Descartes. So the problem with Husserl for Heidegger is that the laying out of pure consciousness as the field of phenomenology is not derived phenomenologically, and that is, out of the matters themselves. It is derived from a traditional concept of the philosophical project itself. Heidegger’s critique focuses upon the fact that none of the determinations of consciousness that Husserl offers are original and what is more, they are not derived from consciousness itself. Husserl does not work out of the matters themselves and as such he falls back into tradition. Dasein is not put in question. Further, by not putting Dasein in question and by treating the concrete as something to be bracketed, Husserl manages to construct Dasein’s being as ‘on hand’, as a thing that has comportments added onto it and not as that being who’s comportments are constitutive of its very being. Husserl has passed over Dasein, the practical agent, the true locus of intentionality and meaning constitution. Whereas Husserl identified intentionality with pure consciousness Heidegger found it rooted in the temporal structure of practically engaged Dasein. Husserl’s failure is the failure of the tradition. Both the lack of originality of the determinations of being Husserl puts forward and the lack of determination of Dasein result in a philosophy where the question of being is left undiscussed. Husserl did not pose the question of being in an original way and was ultimately pulled under by the tide of the tradition. The question of the meaning of being and the issue of the being of the questioner remain, so far as Heidegger is concerned, overlooked by the tradition and it is the turn of the tide out of the tradition of Western philosophy that Heidegger will ultimately seek to ride. ‘To be’ means, for Husserl, to be the object of a science: being means being true, for a scientific manner of knowing. Husserl remains in the grasp of the theoretical. Dasein with its pre-theoretical understanding of being is completely passed over. Behind all of Husserl’s inquiries there lies the presupposition of the definition of the human as animal rationale. It turns out that Husserl’s phenomenology, the presuppositionless science, is in fact dogged by presuppositions.

Dasein, Univocity and the Question of Analogy Recall, being for Husserl is articulated into two radically different orders or spheres: immanence and transcendence. Despite this, it is possible to

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draw out a unified sense of being in Husserl’s philosophy. This can be understood in terms of his notion of a formal ontology and can be extrapolated from his Ideas I, section thirteen. Phenomenology begins with a theory of objectivity and formal ontology is eidetic science of ‘any object whatsoever’. As such, formal ontology is wholly a priori. Formal ontology contains all material or regional ontologies within its determining theoretical framework: formal ontology determines the structure of regional ontologies. The concepts ‘being’ and ‘to be’ are formal notions and on Husserl’s view the question of the meaning of being would be a matter of formal logical ontology. Such a formal investigation would have no need to put the being of the questioner in question and as such would be absolutely unacceptable to Heidegger whose question of being is none other than the radicalization of the pre-theoretical understanding of being possessed by Dasein. Heidegger has moved decisively away from the early onto-logic of the categories of being that he presented in the Scotus Book. Now the being of the questioner is fundamentally important in a way that it was not quite yet in his early engagement. To return to the problematic of univocity and analogy: I am now in a position to draw some provisional conclusions. The first, and perhaps most important, is this: the tradition associated with analogy, the tradition that stretches from Aristotle to Aquinas to Descartes to Husserl, ultimately fails to raise the question of being in a way that would satisfy Heidegger. Analogy is, as Heidegger says, a stringent aporia in which past thinkers have become caught up. Such thinkers variously confuse being with a being, with that which remains constantly present through change and, as such, fail to take note of the ontological difference: being is not a being nor a class of beings. Further, there is a tendency in the tradition to consider one entity as privileged over other entities; be it God or the subject qua consciousness. Thus, analogy leads to ontotheology. Now, although Dasein is without question privileged for Heidegger – it is, after all, that being in possession of an understanding of being – it is not an entity in the traditional sense. Dasein is privileged but Dasein is not God nor a ‘subject’ in the Cartesian sense. Dasein is always a ‘who’ and never a what. Dasein’s being is ‘in each case mine’. Dasein is the practically engaged agent: it is that being for whom its being is an issue. It is that being who has projects and plans and is immersed in a culture and a world with a shared history and set of hand-me-down self-understandings or self-interpretations. Dasein is every one of us. Its privilege may however be regarded as part of the vestiges of the tradition that Heidegger had not yet overcome in Being and Time.

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Given that there is a privileged entity for Heidegger how can we sensibly talk about his philosophy in terms of univocity? Quite simply, while there is a definite sense in which Sheehan and Taminiaux are correct and that Heidegger was concerned with a unified meaning of being and that this unified meaning was a matter of unity of analogy there remains a sense in which being for Heidegger is univocal. This univocal sense of being is time and the point about univocity is a logical one, not a metaphysical one. As Heidegger says in Being and Time, time has the ontological function of differentiating diverse regions of being. There may be an analogy of being between these regions, in the manner of the tradition, but in order to be so related there must be a concept distinct from and univocal to these regions. Univocity has always been conceptualized alongside analogy: it is its logical presupposition. Scotus outlined such a univocal concept of being that was neither finite nor infinite but which could function as the term that links the finite and infinite because of their both being opposed to nothingness. Ultimately, as Dasein is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe and ‘to be’ is to be understood by Dasein, being is ultimately bound up with Dasein’s temporal nature. To argue for the univocity of being as a logical presupposition of Heidegger’s philosophy is to point out that Dasein’s temporality is the transcendental horizon of being. Heidegger’s concern with reappropriating analogy will eventually come to be seen by him to be bound up with a fateful error. This error is part of the reason why Heidegger eventually changed his orientation away from his position in Being and Time. As his thought matured analogy came to be viewed with such scorn by him, mostly because of its ontotheological orientation, that by the time he delivered his lectures on Aristotle in 1931 he could refer to it, as noted, as a stringent aporia. The issue over the analogical interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy is whether or not I am entitled to note in this comment on analogy a hint of self-criticism. There is good evidence that Heidegger engaged in a reappropriation of analogy in the period of Being and Time. As witness, there is his discussion of animals and objects in his Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It is also well known that the shift of orientation that occurred in Heidegger’s thought in the 1930s involved a further move away from metaphysics and involved a decentring of Dasein. Clearly, in the period of Being and Time, Dasein is privileged. The so-called later Heidegger’s reorientation to being over Dasein is credited with being the final surpassing of the remnants of the metaphysical tradition.

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If Heidegger’s thought in Being and Time can be read as transcendental anthropocentrism, as Frede suggests, then his later thought can be seen as putting this earlier project in its proper place. The path taken in Being and Time remained a necessary one. As he says in the preface to the seventh German edition it is necessary in order to stir ‘our’ Dasein into being concerned with the being question. It is my view that the issue of analogy and univocity opens a further dimension to the narrative of Heidegger’s philosophical development and it also indicates why analogy became the object of such scorn for Heidegger. The early Heidegger was concerned with a reappropriation of aspects of the tradition, including elements of the thesis of analogy. He does understand animals and material objects in terms of a discrete analogy to Dasein. Nonetheless, I would qualify this and say that although Heidegger did engage in this reappropriation he did so on the logical basis of a univocal conception of being in terms of time. From a logical point of view, analogy presupposes univocity. It is the notion of ‘care’ (Sorge) that provides for all of Dasein’s involvements in the world, an essential aspect of this engagement and involvement in the world is that things encountered there are encountered as part of Dasein’s project(ion) of itself: ultimately, the structure of Dasein’s being-in-the-world must be interpreted in terms of temporality. Dasein projects itself into the world and everything encountered in the world, along with Dasein’s own self-interpretation, is understood in terms of possibilities within this projection. Things, including the diverse regions of being encountered in ontology and metaphysics, have meaning and therefore have their being only by virtue of their involvement in this projection. Projection involves Dasein in a projection into an anticipated future that is the aim of its activities. Dasein makes such a projection into the future on the basis of its existing self-understanding and understanding of its world. That is, projection is conditioned by the past that Dasein still is. Dasein’s ‘self’ and its projects are ‘always already’ understood in terms of the past. Further, Dasein’s projection is bound to the present since it is ‘in’ the world of its general concern. This is Dasein’s temporal nature and all that is encountered by Dasein is understood in terms of temporality. It is for this reason that being is univocal. Time is the horizon for all understanding of being. Temporality is, as Frede has put the point, the transcendental condition of Dasein ‘being in’ a meaningful universe of beings. As Heidegger moved further away from the metaphysical tradition, he came to see not only the language of metaphysics and the transcendental

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orientation of Being and Time as problems to be gone beyond but also, in my view, the reappropriation of the thesis of analogy itself. Essentially, the thesis of analogy is bound up with a metaphysical mode of thought. Analogy tends towards a thinking that metaphysically privileges a particular being over other particular beings. It tends towards a thinking that considers one particular being to be the ground of all others. It intimates a thinking that tends to reduce being to a being and understand being in terms of a particular region of beings. Analogy is on the side of beingness and ontotheology. Given this, it is no surprise that Heidegger came to see analogy as a problem to be gone beyond, a problem not only pertinent to other thinkers, but also to his own thinking.

Chapter 4

Univocity and Fundamental Ontology

Husserl and Heidegger One epistemological consequence of Heidegger’s ontological project was the possibility of providing a foundation for the ontologies that would in turn ground the ontical sciences. The metaphysical supposition that such a project is founded upon is the view of the regionality of being. Particular sciences are grounded upon particular regional ontologies which are in turn founded upon transcendental ‘first philosophy’. Heidegger held a version of this metaphysical view that he inherited from Husserl although he is damningly critical of Husserl’s conception of it. Husserl’s phenomenological problematic is partly the Cartesian epistemological foundationalist program of putting knowledge on secure foundations and partly the Kantian transcendental project of answering the question of how knowledge is possible in the first place. In order to engage in phenomenological research it is necessary, from Husserl’s point of view, to ‘bracket’ or suspend all claims about empirical reality outside consciousness. This epoché of beings to the appearance of beings in consciousness provides for phenomenological description. Phenomenology was, for Husserl, the study of what appears in consciousness. He held that only by studying consciousness could there be derived a secure foundation for the various sciences. Husserl is also concerned with traditional operations of the mind and with its intentional objects, the objects to which the mind is directed, such as desks and computers and non-real objects like the Devil and superman. He is also concerned with the question of how something like a constant world can emerge from the flux of human experience. Ultimately, the world is there for consciousness by virtue of the operations of synthesis and its constituent modes of retention and protention. The experience of objects in, for example, perception is by no means a simple business; I am on my way into my study and expect to see my desk

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there. When I perceive the desk my expectation that I would perceive it is fulfilled; but I have not perceived the entire desk, only an aspect of it from a certain perspective. As I attempt to use the desk in work further expectations become fulfilled and I see further aspects of it that are related to the other aspects. These aspects become synthesized into the notion of a single object, the desk. Such synthesis consists in retaining certain aspects of the object that have been seen and protaining certain aspects that have not as yet been seen. It is the ego which performs such acts of synthesis. In so doing, the ego is constantly aware of itself as persisting through its different acts and experiences. Husserl shows how empirical objects turn out to be transcendentally constituted by consciousness. The objective world that is available to us is ultimately an accomplishment of consciousness. The condition of possibility for consciousness itself is the pure or transcendental ego. Thus, Husserl’s thought ultimately led him to forge the position he called, in the wake of Kant, transcendental idealism. In Ideas I Husserl argues that consciousness has its own manner of being that is not ‘touched’ by phenomenological reduction. To that extent, he calls it the phenomenological residuum: a region of being that is unique and is the subject of the novel science of phenomenology. In the last chapter we saw how Husserl understands consciousness to be of a radically different order of being from, for example, the class of all natural objects. We also explored Heidegger’s criticisms of Husserl’s view in his lecture course History of the Concept of Time. Classes of being are different regions of being that are ontologically distinct and there should be as many sets of categories as there are regions of being.1 As Philipse has noted, Husserl assumes that the entirety of being is divided up into distinct ontological regions. The being of the entities that fall within the various ontological regions ultimately consists in their being constituted by consciousness. Husserl conceived of this process as a kind of interpretive activity of the transcendental ego operating on its sensations. The outcome of this process is that the empirical world as constituted is ontologically dependent upon the transcendental ego. Ultimately, being is articulated into two radically different orders: the being of the transcendental ego which is ontologically independent, and the being of beings which are ontologically dependant upon the transcendental ego. We also saw in the last chapter how this view is bound up with an echo of traditional metaphysics and how this became a source of criticism for Heidegger. Heidegger’s method of destruction and retrieval, if carried out with enough care and attention, should rule out taking over presuppositions unthinkingly from the tradition of philosophy.

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Husserl’s position does imply a conception of a unitary meaning of being. This can be drawn out from section thirteen of Ideas I, Generalization and Formalization, and consists in his notion of a formal ontology. Husserl maintains a distinction between regional and formal ontology that is founded upon his distinction between generalizing and formalizing. For Husserl, generalizing is the process by which ever more general concepts or categories are found under which individual particular things may be subsumed. An example would be, starting with the concept of ‘guitar’ I, by a process of generalizing, end up with the concept ‘musical instrument’. This most general concept (musical instrument) is known as the highest material genus. Once arrived at, the highest material genus establishes a region of being and particular regional ontologies are deployed in setting out the specific ontological structure of such a region. The region’s structure is determined by the various material categories contained therein. In contradistinction to this, formalizing is operative in the domains of mathematics and mathematical or formal logic. This is an important distinction. The process of formalizing is operative when variables take the place of material expressions. The bounds of these variables are set by formal categories and such categories of formal ontology are called by Husserl, eidetic singularities. These have their highest genus in the essence ‘any category whatever of formal ontology’.2 Such formal categories include traditional concepts such as property, relation, entity and predicate and so on. In this context, Husserl distinguishes apophantic logic from formal ontology. Apophantic logic makes statements only about significations and is part of comprehensive formal logic. Formal disciplines that deal with significations or propositions and the constituents of propositions are designated by the term apophantic logic. The formal disciplines that deal with beings or entities and the constituents of entities, their relations and kinds are designated by the term formal ontology. Husserl argues that we must not mistake the operations of formalization for a kind of generalization by taking the notion of a generic entity, any individual particular thing, as an instance of a ‘highest material category’. For Husserl the concepts of being and ‘to be’ would be included in the category of formal notions, and would be excluded from the domain of the material and in so far as the question of being aims at a unitary meaning of being and not a purely regional meaning, the question of being belongs in the domain of formal ontology and to the domain of formal logic. The unitary meaning of being will be essentially formal. This is unacceptable to Heidegger. Given the Cartesian and Kantian threads that run through Husserl’s position it is possible to read his philosophy as, amongst other things, a solution

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to the problem of the existence of the external world. Typically, philosophers who attempt an answer to this question – how do human beings know that the world they perceive ‘out there’ exists? – take the human subject to be something radically distinct from the world. Such philosophers take the human subject to be a ‘self’ that gazes on the world from a distance, and so cannot be sure that it exists. I may be being deceived about the existence of the world as I perceive it by an evil demon (Descartes) or by an overzealous scientist who stimulates and tricks my brain into believing that I am embodied and existing in an objectively real world (contemporary epistemology). Epistemology, for such thinkers, is the primary concern of philosophy. It is not difficult to interpret Husserl in such an epistemological way. He holds that the transcendental ego is something radically distinct from the world, which ultimately grounds both its existence and the existence of consciousness. If Husserl’s position is secure then it would make no sense to doubt the existence of the external world since the world is ultimately dependant upon the transcendental ego, the existence of which cannot itself be doubted intelligibly. The reason that the transcendental ego cannot be doubted intelligibly by even a global sceptic is because transcendental philosophy implies a special kind of argument that if successful renders their conclusions immune to scepticism. Traditionally conceived transcendental arguments are a species of modus ponens (P → Q, P ๵ Q) in which the second premise makes an assertion, such as, ‘P’ ‘I have experience’, which, it is held, would be accepted by even global sceptics. In relation to this, the first premise is intended to show that there is a necessary condition ‘Q’ which must prevail in order for the second premise to obtain. Given that the sceptic will accept the second trivial premise they are forced to accept the first premise that states the existence of the necessary condition: the conclusion that follows from the two premises is then immune to scepticism. Typically, on this reading, transcendental arguments show that the sceptic’s position is inconsistent because they deny the necessary condition for what they accept. Reading Husserl in such a way, the transcendental ego would be the necessary condition for the existence of experience and in turn for the existence of the external world. This interpretation of Husserl as an epistemologist gives an insight into why Heidegger rejected Husserl’s transcendental idealism. This is so because it is based on a fundamental misconception of the nature of the self and of the self’s relation to the world. This fundamental misconception is precisely the source of the impetus for attempts to prove the existence

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of the external world in the first place. The true ‘scandal of philosophy’ is, so far as Heidegger is concerned, that such proofs are attempted over and over again in the history of philosophy. For Heidegger ‘the self’ that emerges in the philosophical tradition is a construction and a mistake. Rather than being a ‘self’ in this ontologically distinct sense ‘selfhood’ for Heidegger is something that is founded in care or ‘coping’ (Sorge). Conceiving of a self as something over and above the world completely bypasses the care structure which, as far as Heidegger is concerned, properly casts the relationship of agency and world. Rather than speak of selves Heidegger will speak of Dasein and Dasein’s being is being-in-the-world. A further reason Heidegger has for rejecting Husserl’s position is his answer to the question of the meaning of being: that it is purely formal and belongs in the domain of logic. Being, for Heidegger, is not something that could be bracketed in the Husserlian sense. Heidegger also rejects Husserl’s position because of his views on the nature and purpose of phenomenology itself. Phenomenology, for Heidegger, is the method of philosophy construed as ontology. Eventually Heidegger came to see Husserl’s philosophy as the apotheosis of the metaphysics of presence and the rejection of his position constitutes a source for Heidegger’s insistence on reawakening the question of being. Husserl misconceives the self by taking, in the first place, that there is a ‘thing like self’ and, in the second place, construing that this self is somehow only externally related to the world. Rather than speak of selves Heidegger uses the term Dasein. This term can be applied to any human subject in fundamental ontology. However, Dasein is not just another entity that occurs amongst other entities in the world. Indeed, Heidegger uses the term Dasein to express the peculiar way of being of the practically engaged agent. Dasein is distinct from all other entities. Dasein is that being who’s being is an issue for it. This is what Heidegger calls Dasein’s ontical distinction. This ontical distinction is a constitutive state of Dasein’s being. It implies that Dasein, in its very being, has a relationship to its own being. Dasein is not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’. Dasein’s essence cannot be cited by a ‘what’. Rather, Dasein’s essence lies in the fact that it has its being to be as its own. Dasein is something that has to be accomplished. Dasein is, in some sense, explicitly aware of its peculiar way of being and this fact distinguishes Dasein from all other entities. Through its existence its way of being is disclosed to it. Dasein always comports itself towards existence and Dasein transcends itself by standing out into a future, into a past and into a present situation.

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Every Dasein has an existentiell understanding of itself that it has by virtue of its own project of existing. This understanding does not require that the ontological structure of existence is transparent theoretically. The question of existence is never rendered explicit except through existing. This question is an ontical matter for Dasein. The explicit question of existence aims at rendering the structure of existence theoretically transparent. By doing this Heidegger arrives at the constitution of existence, the set of structures he calls ‘existentiality’. Existence is the determining character of Dasein and in order for the analytic of this entity to be carried out requires that existentiality has been considered. Dasein is the entity which in its being comports itself towards the subject matter of the question of the meaning of being. The understanding Dasein has of being is a constitutive characteristic of Dasein’s way of being. It means that Dasein is distinguished ontically in that it is ontological. Dasein is in such a way that it possesses an understanding of being. Dasein means ‘being-there’. Dasein cannot be usefully abstracted from its world; it is essentially in it. Heidegger’s notion of being-in-theworld is the fully worked out consequence of Husserl’s notion of intentional consciousness. There is never a subject without a world and there is no world (as a totality of involvements and relations) without Dasein. Dasein’s being is essentially being-in-the-world and the understanding of being that belongs essentially to Dasein also holds true of Dasein’s understanding of the world and to the entities that become accessible in it. The primary ontology is fundamental ontology. Fundamental ontology serves as the foundation for all other possible ontologies and must be located in an ‘existential analytic’ of Dasein. Dasein has priority over all other entities, both ontically and ontologically. Its ontical priority lies in the fact that its being is existence and its ontological priority lies in the fact that Dasein ‘is’ ontological. Dasein is privileged because of its possession of an understanding of the being of all other entities that are distinct from it. This understanding is constitutive of its understanding of existence. This priority amounts to Dasein being the ontico-ontological condition of any ontologies whatsoever. While Dasein is distinct from all other entities, the conception of a ‘thinglike’ self that emerges in the tradition and that is of a radically distinct order of being from the world is unacceptable to Heidegger. Dasein’s basic state is being-in-the-world and the hyphenation of this is intended to stress that ‘being’, ‘in’ and ‘world’ cannot be ontologically separated. The totality of being-in-the-world, the essential structures of which are focussed in disclosedness, is care (Sorge).

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Dasein exists: as such Dasein is not a thing at all. Rather, Dasein is what Heidegger calls an understanding potentiality-for-being. Dasein is always ahead of itself projecting itself upon possibilities of its being and coping with the world. It is only by neglecting this prior state that Dasein is always already in and focussing on the theoretical state that emerges only when there is a breakdown in our everyday functioning in the world that the notion of a distinct thing-like self emerges. It is also after such a breakdown in our pragmatic coping with the world that the scientific description of the world becomes appropriate. When the self is conceived as some kind of entity the temptation arises to apply inappropriate ontological categories to it. This has been the mistake of the tradition beginning with Aristotle and ultimately ending with Husserl. Such categories, Heidegger will argue, should be replaced by what he calls the existentialia, which are, properly understood, the ontological characteristics of Dasein. Heidegger’s account of Dasein is an essential part of his response to what he considered the failure of the tradition. Husserl also failed in Heidegger’s view to provide for a unified meaning of being. The notion that the answer to the question of the meaning of being lay in the domain of formal ontology and logic was Husserl’s key mistake here. Part of Heidegger’s project is to show that the reign of logic in the history of philosophy should be challenged. As Heidegger points out in his lecture ‘What is Metaphysics?’, in the face of a more ‘originary questioning’, logic proves inadequate. Strict adherence to logic and formal investigation will never be sufficient for answering the question of being. In fact, it is not sufficient for even asking the question correctly. We must rather begin with a reawakening of the power of this question and open ourselves to an encounter with being in its historical revelation to Dasein. Such revelation occurs in the transcendence of Dasein when it is held out into the nothing. The nothing is disclosed in the fundamental mood of anxiety when the totality of the world slips into insignificance, into meaninglessness. It is precisely this meaninglessness that is the nothing: being/meaning is essentially finite since it is bounded by the nothing/ meaninglessness. For Heidegger, our moods disclose the world in a more profound way than any logical proposition could ever hope to. We attain a profound sense of the totality of beings and of being when we, in anxiety, transcend the totality of beings and are thrust out into meaninglessness. We can never rely on logic for an answer to the question of being since logic can only ever deal with theoretical matters and never with the primordial unconcealment that is essential to our existence as Dasein. For these reasons, we

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must reject Husserl’s answer to the question of the meaning of being and ask it again. One further point of disagreement between Husserl and Heidegger can be seen in terms of method. Whereas Husserl saw phenomenology as concerned with elucidating the nature of consciousness Heidegger saw phenomenology as the method of access to being. Husserl’s phenomenology begins with the epoché. This phenomenological reduction brackets the natural standpoint that individuals occupy in their everyday existence and constitutes the adoption of a new perspective that provides for phenomenological description. From this phenomenological perspective questions of existence have been bracketed. It is this bracketing of questions of existence that is a travesty for Heidegger, since the question of being, is the question of philosophy. As Heidegger puts it in his Introduction to Metaphysics, the text of a lecture course delivered in 1935 and to which he directs readers’ attention in the preface to the seventh German edition of Being and Time who seek an elucidation of the question of being: ‘Dasein is itself by virtue of its essential relation to Being in general’.3 Precisely because of this essential relationship, the very idea of the phenomenological reduction and the adoption of Husserl’s specifically phenomenological perspective is fundamentally mistaken. Heidegger rejects the epoché and Husserl’s specifically phenomenological perspective. Being and Time does not attempt to subscribe to a specific standpoint or direction because phenomenology cannot be reduced to either of these notions. Phenomenology for Heidegger is nothing less than a process of revealing things and he will engage in a process of showing or describing, not proving, how Dasein, the world and ultimately being, show themselves phenomenologically. Heidegger’s ultimate aim is elucidating and answering the question of being. His phenomenology is the method of philosophy construed as ontology. Given this, it would have been impossible to take over Husserl’s conception of phenomenology without serious modification. This modification is the reorientation of phenomenology towards, in Heidegger’s view, its proper task of tackling the question of being. Ontology is the primary domain of philosophy, not epistemology or philosophy of science. Being for Heidegger is something that mostly does not show itself. Being lies hidden, yet it is something that belongs to that which does show itself essentially. This phenomenon that is hidden is the very being of entities and this phenomenon can be covered over and forgotten to such an extent that no question about it arises at all. It is this hidden phenomenon that phenomenology has to tackle thematically.

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Dasein’s being is being-in-the-world, the totality of which is care (Sorge). Care is the meaning of Dasein’s existence and is made up of existentiality, facticity, and fallenness. The unity of these in care allows for Heidegger to give a definition of Dasein’s structural whole as ahead-of-itself, beingalready-in a world as being-alongside entities encountered within-the-world. Care is also being-towards-death. Dasein is always ahead of itself projecting itself upon possibilities of its being. Fundamentally, time or temporality is the ultimate meaning of Dasein’s being. Temporality makes possible the unity of existence, facticity and falling and constitutes the structure of care. Temporality is ultimately the condition of the possibility of Dasein’s way of being and the transcendental horizon of being itself. Dasein’s understanding of anything whatsoever is bound up with its temporality and since being ultimately depends upon Dasein, there is no meaning of being except that meaning of being relative to Dasein. The meaning of being is founded in Dasein’s temporality. Heidegger’s phenomenology is phenomenological ontology because its subject matter is being. It is also distinctive because of its hermeneutic dimension. Heidegger’s phenomenology interprets Dasein and being and the very process of interpretation itself. Interpretation is ongoing, there is no point at which we can be sure that we have reached absolute foundations. So, the question of the meaning of being has been forgotten by the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition and at the culmination of this tradition with the philosophy of Husserl, there is still no satisfactory answer to this question. By this stage in philosophy’s history the urgency of this question has itself been forgotten. Being and Time is Heidegger’s first systematic attempt to answer this question. He never completed this project and he gradually moved away from the remnants of systematic philosophy in Being and Time and came to doubt that a definitive systematic answer to this question was desirable. Despite this, division two of Being and Time does come close to an answer to the being question with the account of Dasein’s temporality. It is Heidegger’s view that the unitary meaning of being is founded in Dasein’s temporality. Dasein is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe. It is the being whose being is an issue for it. Dasein is that being who in its being has an understanding of being. Dasein is not a self as such. It is not some essential subject. It is not present-at-hand. For Heidegger, the self is a way of being of Dasein and Dasein is a self only through existing. It is the care structure that includes the phenomenon of being a self. The world is an elaborate web of involvements and possibilities which Dasein is essentially in. Within

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this world things disclose themselves to Dasein and Dasein is the clearing or space where being is revealed. Dasein ‘is’ how the world shows itself to it. Care is Heidegger’s term for the human condition as such. The analysis of care provides an insight into the constitution of existence. Essentially, Dasein’s being is care and temporality is the ontological meaning of care. Dasein is ‘attuned’ to its situation and attunement is essentially bound up with care and temporality. Richard Polt describes Being and Time as having an almost spiral structure. As such all that happens in division one is taken up and reinterpreted in division two. In division two of Being and Time Heidegger reinterprets the basic features of everydayness in terms of time, and temporality is revealed as the ultimate meaning of Dasein’s being. Dasein, for the most part, dwells unreflectively in the world. Nonetheless, this homeliness of the world is constantly under threat. The fundamental mood of anxiety can come upon Dasein at any moment. Anxiety is an essential aspect of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. The experience of anxiety is, however, relatively rare and Dasein goes about its business for the most part unreflectively. In anxiety by contrast, Dasein is brought face to face with the nothing. The world slips away into meaninglessness and Dasein’s everyday interpretations of itself have been challenged. In a sense anxiety alienates Dasein from its world and Dasein is anxious about its very beingin-the-world. Anxiety reveals Dasein as ‘not-at-home’ in the world and this reveals Dasein’s futurity. Dasein has to choose. Authenticity entails choosing to choose, freely choosing who you are going to be. Dasein is not possibility without end and anxiety reveals this to us with great force. Anxiety forces Dasein to face up to its self as the chooser of its self. Anxiety individualizes Dasein to its self and withdraws it from ‘the they’. Ultimately, anxiety is about death. Dasein’s possibilities are always finite. They are always bounded by death. Death entails no more possibilities for Dasein; it is Dasein’s ‘basic certainty’. Since Dasein’s being is care and Dasein is always ‘guilty’, in the sense that it has chosen a certain set of possibilities and not others, Dasein is always susceptible to the silent call of care as ‘the call of conscience’. Being guilty signifies that Dasein is the basis of a nullity. It is bound up with Dasein’s having a past (indebtedness) and a future (responsibility). Indebtedness follows from Dasein’s having a past which it cannot control and which serves as the foundation of its existence. Responsibility follows from the fact that Dasein, on the basis of its past, projects certain possibilities of its being that are not other possibilities. Dasein chooses an approach to its

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existence that since it is finite, necessarily excludes following other alternative approaches. Guilt then, brings out aspects of Dasein’s temporality and the call of conscience alerts Dasein to these aspects of its existence. In the call of conscience Dasein qua care is calling Dasein silently in its inauthenticty to its debt and responsibility, and that is to the central character of itself as care. When Dasein recognizes itself as guilty it becomes resolute, which is an illuminating form of disclosedness. Once again, resoluteness is intimately linked with Dasein’s temporality. Resoluteness recognizes guilt which in its futural aspect involves what Heidegger calls being-towards-death. For this reason resoluteness proper is anticipatory resoluteness, involving facing up to mortality. Once again, this dimension of Dasein is bound up with temporality. It is anticipatory resoluteness that includes within itself what Heidegger refers to as an authentic potentiality-for-being-a-whole. The care structure is the condition of possibility for this existentiell potentiality and temporality is the ontological meaning of care. In section 65 of Being and Time Heidegger states that meaning designates the ‘upon-which’ or horizon of a projection and that projection discloses possibilities. Elucidating the upon-which of a projection will disclose the conditions of possibility of that which has been projected. So, to elucidate the meaning of care entails examining the projection and horizon which constitute and underlie care. What is projected is the being of Dasein. The horizon upon which Dasein, as disclosed, has been projected is the condition of possibility for the constitution of Dasein as care. So when the meaning of care is enquired about the question becomes what makes the totality of the care structure itself possible? The concept of meaning that is in play here is the ‘upon-which’ of the primary projection of Dasein’s understanding of being. When Dasein understands itself as being-in-the-world it at the same time and with equality understands the being of other entities which are disclosed to it withinthe-world. This is so even if the problem of being has not been explicitly formulated. If entities have meaning they have become accessible in their being. This being of entities is projected upon its own ‘upon which’ or horizon and it is this projection which ‘has meaning’ in the first place. Beings are projected upon their being in order to be understood. Projection always carries Dasein with it (Dasein ‘stands out’ in its transcendence). Being itself is the horizon for beings and being is projected upon its own horizon. Only by so doing is it understood as being. This horizon is Dasein’s temporality. Dasein’s temporality is the transcendental horizon of being in general. The understanding of being underlies the

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being of entities. This is where the sequence of projections ends. Being is given to us and all that is given is given only in so far as it is projected upon a horizon. And it is the primary projection of Dasein’s understanding of being that bestows meaning in the first place. Dasein is in either one of two ways: it is either authentically or inauthentically disclosed to itself. While the ecstases of temporality are equiprimordial, the dimension of the future can appear privileged. The primordial nature of the future is a ‘coming towards’, where Dasein, as existing, ‘comes towards’ itself. The ecstasis of the future is the dimension of temporality in which Dasein has to choose who it is. The future is finite since it is bounded by death. Indeed, either authentic or inauthentic being-towardsdeath is only possible as futural. The future is not a ‘now’ that will come to be and then pass away. Rather, it is the very coming of Dasein. Dasein is authentically futural in anticipation and anticipation itself is only possible in so far as Dasein is ‘coming towards itself’ or is futural in its very being. Anticipatory resoluteness is bound up with guilt and the past. This means that in coming towards itself Dasein comes back; being authentically futural entails being authentically its past (its ‘having been’). The condition of possibility of this authentic ‘having been’ is Dasein’s character as futural. As Heidegger will argue, in a sense, the nature of ‘having been’ arises from the future. In anticipatory resoluteness the current situation of the ‘there’ of Da-sein (being-there) is disclosed. It is disclosed in such a manner that Dasein, as existence, is concerned with its immediate ready-to-hand environment. By this, resoluteness makes the present, present: Resolute Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand in the Situation – that is to say, taking action in such a way as to let one encounter what has presence environmentally – is possible only by making such an entity present . . . [and it is the case that] . . . Only as the Present . . . in the sense of making present, can resoluteness be what it is: namely, letting itself be encountered undisguisedly by that which it seizes upon in taking action . . . Coming back to itself futurally, resoluteness brings itself into the Situation by making present.4 The past means being already in a world, being thrown. Dasein is already someone. The past is bestowed with meaning from the projection of a future. The present means making beings present. It is the means by which the contents of the surrounding environment present themselves to and are revealed by Dasein. This only ever happens within a world and it does

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so because of the past and future dimensions of Dasein’s temporality. The past arises from the future in such a way that the future, that is in the process of ‘having been’ gives from itself the present. The unity of this is Dasein’s temporality. This temporality is the condition of possibility of the authentic potentiality-for-being-a-whole of anticipatory resoluteness and it is the meaning of the care structure that is constitutive of Dasein’s being. Time as it is ordinarily understood is a genuine phenomenon but it is one which is derivative of Dasein’s primordial temporality. The ordinary concept of time arises from inauthentic temporality which itself has its roots in primordial and authentic temporality. The totality of Dasein’s being is care. Care exhibits three dimensions: the ‘ahead-of-itself’, the ‘already-being-in’ and the ‘being-alongside’. These three dimensions correspond to the three dimensions of temporality: the future (‘ahead-of-itself’), the past (‘already-being-in’) and the present (‘being-alongside’). Ecstatical temporality implies ‘standing out’. Dasein transcends itself and ‘stands out’ into the ecstases of temporality. The three ecstases of temporality form a unity, the essence of which is to temporalize or produce itself in time, in the unity of the temporal ecstases. This process of temporalizing makes possible Dasein’s various modes of being. Despite being an equiprimordial unity temporality primordially temporalizes itself out of the future. Since it is bounded by death, Dasein’s temporality is finite. Dasein’s temporality, which can be both authentic and inauthentic, is the horizon upon which being is projected. As temporality, Dasein is in all three ecstases at once. Each ecstasis carries Dasein off to its horizonal schema, which also form a unity. The three ecstases of temporality open up the corresponding horizonal schema and these together open up the world for Dasein and facilitate the understanding of the being of beings. The horizonal schema is a temporal framework that lets Dasein understand being and meet entities in its world. The ecstases of the present, for example carries Dasein off towards the horizonal schema praesens or ‘in-order-to’ and enables Dasein to understand the being of the ready-to-hand in the broadest sense, in its environment. The ready-to-hand are projected upon the horizonal schema of praesens. Dasein (by temporalizing (producing in time) enpresenting (making present)) projects and produces the presence that belongs to the present. Dasein understands being across all its possible manifestations and modalities in terms of the horizonal schemata. The unity of the horizonal schemata is the unitary horizon of the projection of temporality and being can be given to Dasein only as projected

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upon this transcendental horizon. Being is intelligible only in terms of time and ontology, the science of being, is only possible as temporal science. Time is the condition of possibility of all understanding of the being of beings. As such it is the origin of the ontological difference and the ontological difference has the mode of being of Dasein.

Phenomenology, Being and Univocity Essentially, my interpretation of the problem of the univocity of being in Heidegger’s philosophy in the period of fundamental ontology can be summarized as follows: fundamental ontology reveals Dasein’s being as beingin-the-world. Being-in-the-world is unified in the care structure which is then revealed as temporality as we saw above. Temporality is the transcendental horizon for the projection of being. The meaning of being is temporal. Fundamental ontology prepares the way for ontology, the temporal science of being. On the foundation of fundamental ontology all ontological projection can be displayed in its temporal nature. Fundamental ontology aims to render explicit the a priori structures that determine temporality. Phenomenology, the method of philosophy construed as ontology, must start with Dasein and being is revealed as univocal since it is only ever understood with reference to Dasein’s temporality. Whether Dasein’s temporality is authentic or inauthentic, ‘to be’ is to be understood by Dasein. Despite the shift in emphasis in Heidegger’s work after the change in orientation of his thinking, there remains a fundamental continuity, namely the bond between Dasein and being. There is being only in so far as there is Dasein and there is Dasein only in so far as there is being. Being approaches Dasein and Dasein responds: and as only ever understood in terms of time, being is univocal. For the remainder of this chapter I shall build on my account of temporality and consider fundamental ontology in relation to the doctrine of the univocity of being. Recall, Being and Time opens with the motif of forgetfulness. There exists no answer to the question of being in the present age; and, what is worse, historical humanity is no longer moved by its inability to comprehend the significance of this question. A central aim of Heidegger’s thought is to reawaken a sense of urgency with regard to the question of being. He reminds us that the question is not just any question: it is the question of philosophy, the question that perplexed Plato and Aristotle who stand at the very start of the Western tradition of philosophy. The modern

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age considers itself ‘progressive’ by feeling that it can affirm ‘metaphysics’ again. Yet we believe ourselves to be spared a ‘Battle of Giants’ over being. As he says two years before the publication of Being and Time in the History of the Concept of Time: Phenomenology radicalised in its ownmost possibility is nothing but the questioning of Plato and Aristotle brought back to life: the repetition, the retaking of the beginning of our scientific philosophy.5 Phenomenology is the method of philosophy, construed as ontology. Despite Aristotle’s insight that there is a science that studies being qua being, the question of being that was ‘vigorously posed’ and ‘full of life’ in Plato’s Sophist has, since Aristotle, grown mute. Appropriately then, it is with a quotation from Plato rather than Aristotle that Heidegger heralds the project of Being and Time. Echoing Kant’s claim in the first critique that hitherto metaphysics has remained a ‘mere groping’ Heidegger cautions the reader that all ontology, no matter how sophisticated, will remain blind and removed from its most proper concern if it does not clarify the meaning of being and conceive this task as its most fundamental aim. The Seinsfrage is concerned with being and only in so far as it is concerned with being is it concerned with beings. Until Heidegger’s project, being has been presupposed in ontology. The aim of Being and Time is to articulate and overcome this presupposition and explicate the question of being. To get at this question however will involve taking an entity as a paradigm and lay it bare in its being. As it is Dasein who possesses the possibility of posing this question it is appropriate that it should be Dasein who serves as this paradigm. This is the project of fundamental ontology. Dasein, as inquirer, is as it is by virtue of being. The project of fundamental ontology, the analysis of Dasein, prepares the way for the explication of being in terms of time which is the ultimate aim of Being and Time. Being and phenomenology are intrinsically linked. To reiterate, from the standpoint of Being and Time: philosophy is phenomenological ontology and it takes its point of departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein. The hermeneutic of Dasein, the analytic of existence, is conceived as the point of departure of all philosophical inquiry. In an important respect the project of phenomenology is interminable and although it is possible to refer to phenomenology as a method of enquiry and talk about phenomenological philosophers, the important thing is not to simply reduce phenomenology to something actual. Beyond this, phenomenology must be grasped as

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a possibility. Phenomenology is a possibility that thought can attain and through which can achieve its true matter. The analysis of Dasein allows the inquirer access to the question of being precisely because Dasein has both ontic and ontological aspects. Any particular Dasein is not to be taken as an example of some genus or other and being as such is prior to the distinction between essence and existence made by the tradition. The being of Dasein is in ‘each case mine’. Precisely because of this ‘mineness’ (Jemeinigkeit), when addressing Dasein one always has to use a personal pronoun. Dasein can choose itself and win itself because it is its own possibility. Dasein can also lose itself. It is always possible that Dasein never win itself or only seems to win itself. Dasein can be authentic (eigentlich) or inauthentic (uneigentlich) and both of these qualifications are grounded in mineness. Crucially, the notions of authenticity and inauthenticity do not carry any specifically moral sense for Heidegger. Rather, authenticity connotes the condition of someone’s being their own being and inauthenticity is the condition of not properly being one’s own being. It is crucial to the analytic of Dasein that Dasein be approached in the correct manner. In its self-determination Dasein always operates in terms of a possibility which is not distinct from itself and which it understands. This is Dasein’s existential constitution. Primarily because, in Dasein, there is a priority of existence over essence, the analysis of Dasein has to proceed from the existentiality of existence. As existence Dasein’s existentiality is constitutive of its being and because the notion of being is bound up with this notion of existentiality qua constitutive state of Dasein, the priority of the question of being announces itself in the project of the existential analytic. The inquiry into the being of Dasein will necessarily lead to the question of being in general. Dasein always already operates within an understanding of being and is guided in its inquiry into being by what is sought. As such, the meaning of being is available to Dasein even before it is made explicit as a question. In the analysis of Dasein it is crucial not to proceed in terms of a particular construction of existence as, for example, rational animal, but instead to let the phenomenon – in this case Dasein - show up as it is in the first place. Instead of proceeding from some differentiated and definite way of being, Dasein should be uncovered in its undifferentiated state in which it is for the most part. This undifferentiated state is precisely Dasein’s ‘average everydayness’. When Heidegger discloses the fundamental structures of existentiality, called existentialia, they will have either an authentic or inauthentic

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character, by virtue of mineness. Crucially, these existentialia are not categories in the Aristotelian sense. All existentialia have a transcendental status, they are a priori conditions of possibility for Dasein’s existence. Existentialia are elements of the fundamentally constitutive state of Dasein’s being as being-in-the-world. For Dasein, as being-in-the-world, both the world and the being of beings are already disclosed. World and being are co-ordinate notions for Heidegger and Dasein qua existence is the ground of the world and the beings therein when correctly understood in their manner of being as presence. Dasein is ‘in’ the world precisely in the sense of ‘having a world’. To be Dasein is to be a member of a shared public world. The beings that are there for Dasein in its world are there ‘as’ this or that and being is their meaningful relatedness to Dasein. Entities are disclosed by Dasein through its productive activity and as such become part of its world as the totality of present beings. Being, the presence of what is present, is relative to Dasein qua existence. Being-in-the-world is the primal phenomenon through which access to the existentialia is gained. Being-in-the-world should be considered a unitary phenomenon, as the being of Dasein. Yet emphasis can be put on ‘world’, ‘being-in’, or on the ‘who’, who is in the world. Understanding world in the correct way leads us to conclude that it is only Dasein who is in the world in Heidegger’s special sense. Co-ordinately, there would not be a world were it not for the uncovering activity of Dasein. The world in question in the notion ‘being-in-the-world’ is an existentiale. Recall, the term ontology means the investigation of being in philosophy and the term ontological pertains to being. By contrast, the term ontical pertains to particularities of particular beings without reference to being. Existence (Existenz) is Dasein’s way of being and existential pertains to existence. Existential analysis is a kind of ontology that investigates Dasein’s way of being and existentiell pertains to a particular Dasein’s own existence. Generally, Dasein has a pre-ontological or existentiell understanding of themselves gained simply by existing. Often, such understanding is deficient and the particular Dasein is not fully aware of it. As such, this understanding is rarely converted into existential understanding of the general structures of Dasein or human existence in general. As such, world in Heidegger’s sense belongs to Dasein essentially. I noted earlier that Dasein’s world is a context of significance within which Dasein goes about its business. Such a world is not primarily characterized by the order of being of the present-at-hand but rather by the manner of being of the ready-to-hand. Dasein, the practical agent, is

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constantly dealing with pragmatic contexts in which it encounters beings. These beings however are not the objects of scientific enquiry such as H2O. They are rather beings taken as ‘something in order to’, such as water to drink ‘in order to’ quench thirst. The important thing to grasp is that these beings be considered as instruments suited or adjusted to a particular pragmatic concern of Dasein’s. In these terms it is tempting to read Heidegger’s account of the being of entities teleologically: what beings are, in these terms, their telos, is, after all, fundamentally related to Dasein’s pragmatic concerns. It is also tempting to say that, despite Heidegger’s insistence on Dasein’s essence residing in its existence, he maintains a fundamental Aristotelian motif wherein the telos of historical human beings is the disclosure of and ‘care taking of’ the truth of being. Within such a context of significance nothing is isolated, especially not Dasein. All beings are connected by significance relations and all presuppose a contextual background with which Dasein is familiar in order to come to presence or appear as ‘in order to’ at all. What we are describing is called by Heidegger the ‘worldhood of the world’. For Heidegger, such relations are primary and it is precisely this worldhood, along with the practical nature of Dasein that has been completely passed over by the tradition. This is why Heidegger refers to the Cartesian world as impoverished. It is also within this broad context that Heidegger raises the issues of univocity and analogy. The theoretical is not primary. It is the practical that is primary and the theoretical is parasitic or founded upon the practical. Dasein first deals with cups and saucers, computers and books, not substances. The fateful error of the history of philosophy was to pass over Dasein qua existence and with that the worldhood of the world. Dasein is that situated being-t/ here in a world in the midst of beings, with other Dasein. All ontology must ultimately begin with Dasein since Dasein is the ground of presence. The ontological meaning of being-in-the-world is care and the ontological meaning of care is temporality. This is the thesis that Heidegger outlines in section 65 of Being and Time. Time is the key to the problem of being. Heidegger writes: Time must be brought to light – and genuinely conceived – as the horizon for all understanding of Being and for any way of interpreting it . . . the central problematic of all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time . . . In the exposition of the problematic of Temporality the question of the meaning of Being will first be concretely answered.6

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A stronger statement of the univocity of being in terms of the concept of time would be hard to formulate. Time is a univocal concept and being is only ever understood in terms of it. The provisional aim of Being and Time as a whole was the interpretation of time as the ‘possible horizon’ for any understanding of being. It is Dasein’s temporality (Zeitlichkeit) that will prove to be the transcendental horizon for the question of being. It is Dasein’s temporality which is the very condition for the possibility of any understanding whatsoever. Dasein, the being who understands being, is that being whose ultimate ontological determination is temporality. My point is not that the analogical interpretation of Heidegger’s text is wholly wrong. Rather, in line with the Scotist qualifi cation of analogy, my point is that even if being is further determined by Heidegger analogically it can only be on the basis of being’s fundamental relationship with Dasein’s temporality and therefore its sense as temporal. Dasein’s transcendental constitution is understood by Heidegger in terms of the unity of the three existentials of projection (Entwurf ), thrownness (Geworfenheit), and ‘being with beings’ (sein bei). These existentials structure Dasein’s existence and constitute its being as care. Dasein is always already ‘ahead of itself’. It is always projecting itself onto possibilities of being and is always already thrown into a world of shared public possibilities of being that are handed over to it. As such, Dasein is also ‘always already’ alongside other beings within the world. The three dimensions of care correspond to the three ecstases of temporality. Before moving on to the explicit treatment of care and temporality in Being and Time, Heidegger raises the issue of Dasein’s ‘possible being-awhole’: that is, of Dasein’s being-towards-death. Such an exploration brings out the inherent finitude of Dasein’s transcending projection. For the most part this limit is not explicit for Dasein who generally goes about its business ‘as one does’. However, in the fundamental attunement (Grundstimmung) of anxiety death is disclosed as Dasein’s ‘ownmost possibility’, which is the ‘possibility of not being’ or death. Death qua limit is not simply negative. Rather, Heidegger conceives of death qua limit along the lines of his reading of the Greek word for limit, peras. Such a limit is one that ‘sets something free’ in its very limiting. Dasein can attain a freedom towards death. By not fleeing from death, by anticipating it, Dasein’s possibilities of being and not being are disclosed genuinely. In anticipatory resoluteness – the anticipation of death qua limit – Dasein’s existence is authentic. As Heidegger says:

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Care is Being-towards-death . . . In such Being-towards-its-end, Dasein exits in a way which is authentically whole as that entity which it can be when ‘thrown into death’.7 In anticipatory being-towards-death only the ‘ontological possibility of being-a-whole’ has been discovered. The ontic attestation of Dasein’s ontological possibility of being-a-whole is located in the phenomenon of the call of conscience. Care is that fundamental structure that unifies Dasein and the unity of care is understood in terms of its three modalities. Care can be considered in its totality as a whole and its limits have to be made explicit. These limits are none other than birth and death, between which is stretched the unfolding life story of a human existence. Just as with birth, death cannot be viewed simply as some isolated external moment. Existence includes within itself its own end. Death permeates existence, making Dasein’s project essentially finite and conditioning it as being towards death. The significance of death for Dasein cannot be overstated. On Heidegger’s account death belongs essentially to any Dasein as an individual. Death individualizes the individual. The process of individualization is particularly disclosive of Dasein’s ‘there’. Death, for Heidegger, is the existential principle of individuation. Death takes hold of a particular Dasein and individuates it down to itself. Death is absolutely non-relational. That death will come is certain for Dasein. Death is the ‘basic certainty’ of Dasein. In the face of death Dasein can focus on a particular possibility of being and become authentic. The authentic response to death is called by Heidegger Vorlaufen and is translated as ‘anticipation’.8 Authenticity involves facing up to death, not becoming morbidly fixated on its ‘when’, but accepting or coming to terms with the essential finitude of one’s possibilities and choosing in light of this. Facing up to death qua death is a profoundly liberating experience for Dasein. It liberates Dasein from its everyday concerns. Ultimately, for Heidegger, anxiety is about death. Anxiety is rare and disturbing. In anxiety Dasein feels the force of its fragile and finite existence and faces the challenge of authentic existence. The phenomenon of the call of conscience is bound up with authenticity. Conscience is always justified in calling Dasein and can do so at any time because of Dasein’s guilt in the non-moral sense of being responsible for its life in terms of possibilities that it has chosen. Dasein can have recourse to no ground other than its self-projection for the genre of its unfolding life story.

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Univocity and Analogy The mistake of the tradition beginning with the Greeks was to mistake the full temporal character of being by identifying it with but one modality of time: the present. The shortcoming of the analogical interpretation of Heidegger is that it does not take full account of his temporal univocity of being. Heidegger was indeed concerned with the unity of being and there is evidence that he found this unity in terms of analogy: animals are understood as poor in the world, stones as worldless. These determinations of being operate in terms of a discrete analogy with Dasein. The analogy of being operates in terms of its focal reference or meaning to a particular fundamental reality. In Aristotle, this fundamental reality or mode of being is ousia. The meaning of being can be unified in terms of an analogy to the focal reference or meaning of ousia. For Heidegger, the meaning of being is constituted in Dasein’s understanding and this means that it is ultimately grounded in the temporal structure underpinning that understanding. The only possible access to being, including the being of animals and rocks, is through Dasein’s understanding of being and that understanding of being is conditioned by temporality. As I have argued, in any determination of analogy, a univocal conception of being is presupposed. Analogy is not wrong; it is just not the full story, for analogy tends to ontotheology: the status of the focal reference tends towards ontological privilege. Now, despite Dasein’s manifest privilege in fundamental ontology, there is a co-dependence between Dasein and being: there would not be being if there were no Dasein and there would not be Dasein if there were no being. Later, Heidegger will say that being is the gift of an ‘It’ which gives. In Heidegger, the univocity of being is rooted in temporality. Since being can only ever be projected upon its transcendental horizon and understood by virtue of this projection, it is clear that the unitary meaning of being is in some sense temporal. Dasein’s temporality, as transcendental condition, is the condition of possibility for the meaningfulness of beings in toto. The unitary meaning of being is constituted by Dasein’s understanding and is grounded in Dasein’s temporality. The being of the beings that Dasein encounters in its dealings with the world are disclosed to it out of a temporal horizon. By contrast, Dasein is its disclosedness, Dasein’s being is disclosed to it only through existing. Dasein ‘is’ time. Being and Time ends with a series of questions, one of which is, is it possible to get from the account primordial time to the meaning of being? Heidegger’s lectures The Basic Problems of Phenomenology were initially

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charged with finding this way. In these lectures Heidegger analyses being in terms of its modifications and structure. This project is consistent with the project of Being and Time; of developing fundamental ontology and providing the basis for regional ontologies. Dasein’s understanding is fundamentally temporal and Dasein’s temporality constitutes the foundation for Heidegger’s analysis of the transcendental horizon of being itself, which is located in Dasein’s temporal nature. In Being and Time Dasein is understood to be able to transcendentally constitute objects and Dasein’s third priority, as Heidegger calls it, is the fact that Dasein has an understanding of the being of all beings. Dasein’s understanding of being is centrally important since it is through the understanding of being that Dasein constitutes or uncovers the world and discloses beings as what they are. Dasein provides the condition of possibility for any ontologies whatsoever and all modes of being depend for their being upon Dasein. Dasein is the only being that exists in Heidegger’s special sense of existence and Dasein is the site that being requires in order to happen at all. Fundamental ontology is the necessary preparatory study that must be undertaken in order to first lay bare the meaning of being and prepare the way for the temporal science of ontology. On the basis of this foundation all ontological projection can be made conspicuous in its temporal nature. With Dasein at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe all other regions of being, the various multiplicities with their own sets of categories, must all somehow relate to it. As regions of being, they must be understood in terms of their being by Dasein against the transcendental horizon of being in general, temporality. Being is the transcendens, as the medieval thinkers had it, but for different reasons. Being is the transcendens because of the ontological difference. With Aristotle the universe was slightly more simple. All the categories relate paronymously to the primary being substance and, in the end, to the Deity. The Deity is at the centre of the Aristotelian ontological universe and Aristotle held that there was an analogy of being between the categories. Analogy and paronymy are both cases in which being is said in many ways of that of which it is said, but both are not as radical in this as equivocity, since equivocity means that terms are applied in different senses to that of which they are applied. The idea that the term ‘being’ is applied simply equivocally to all that it is applied to makes no sense in a Heideggerian ontology since all the propositions of ontology are ultimately temporal; they are all ultimately grounded in the transcendental horizon of being. Given that being

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may be said in different ways across all its multifarious modalities (for example, being may be said in terms of Dasein; and in terms of a present-athand being, or a ready-to-hand being) it has to be said in terms of time in each case. The sense of time is common to all utterances of the word being. In Aristotle’s Categories, a space of univocity opens up when a secondary substance (species or genera) is predicated of a primary substance, since there is a common content of meaning (definition) intended between the two regions of being. Similarly, with Heidegger, a space of univocity opens up because all the various regions of being will be intended temporally when they are intended at all. Ontology is temporal science and all its propositions, temporal propositions. Time is a univocal concept for Heidegger and being, since it is understood in terms of time, is understood univocally. Dasein’s temporality is the transcendental horizon of being and Dasein is in all three ecstases of temporality equiprimordially; each ecstases of temporality is univocally temporal. The equiprimordiality of the ecstases of temporality is a condition of possibility of the temporalizing of temporality. In terms of the unity of temporality, the being of each ecstasis is equal and ‘is’ in the same sense in spite of the difference between each of them. Each ecstasis, in its difference from the others, is an aspect of a unity. Being can only be given to Dasein in terms of the transcendental horizon of being and Dasein understands being across all its possible modalities and in all its possible diversity in terms of this transcendental horizon. Being is grasped in all its possible differences in terms of time. The transcendental horizon of being is ultimately that to which all senses of being must be related. Both the relations of paronymy and analogy presuppose the concept of univocity since in order for the various senses of a term to relate to one central sense there must be something in common that is grasped in each instance of such a related term. In this case, this common sense is the sense of time or temporality. As Heidegger says, a ‘concept is univocal if its meaning content, that is, what it intends, what is addressed by it, is intended in the same sense’.9 This same sense is the sense of time or temporality. Regions of being as projections upon horizons must be intended ultimately in relation to the transcendental horizon of temporality. All regions of being and ways of being are, ultimately, projections of Dasein. Readyto-hand and present-at-hand beings are projected upon a horizon and all understanding, as projection, is founded in temporality. In Heidegger’s philosophy the univocity of being is at work in terms of time and the unity of being is rooted in Dasein’s temporality.

Chapter 5

Univocity and Heidegger’s Later Thought

Section One Mysticism It has been argued that after Being and Time Heidegger’s thought can be understood as a series of mystical ruminations on the meaning of being. While this is not a fair appraisal of his later writings it is possible to read some of them and pick up a hint of mythopoetic flair. As John D. Caputo has argued forcefully in his The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought, it is really quite misleading to speak of Heidegger as a mystic. Heidegger was always concerned with mystical thinkers but, despite appearances sometimes, he was no mystic. The most that can be said of the so called ‘later’ Heidegger is that there is a certain ‘mystical element’ in his thought and Caputo argues that this element is best understood in terms of his relationship with Meister Eckhart. In the later Heidegger, the Heidegger after the change in orientation from thinking being and time to thinking time and being in the early 1930s, the matter for thinking becomes the history of being as it unfolds across the epochs of Western history. This amounts to thinking being as it addresses Dasein, how it unfolds and is appropriated, across these epochs. Heidegger is concerned with the happening of truth in history and thinking must be open to the event (Ereignis) of being. There is no doubt that Heidegger learned something from the mystics (and scholastics), notably Eckhart, and from medieval thought generally in his philosophical development. Medieval philosophy which, for Heidegger, was a key source of inspiration and, at points, of criticism, constitutes perhaps one of the most distinctive, if not chronologically one of the longest periods in the history of philosophy. Copleston has noted that 800 CE, the year of Charlemagne’s coronation as emperor, might as well be taken as the start date of medieval philosophy.1 If this is as good a bet as any, and I can follow tradition in considering Descartes to be the earliest thinker of the

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modern era, then medieval philosophy endured for around 800 years. For the medieval philosopher the Christian faith was the ground of philosophy and as St Anselm of Canterbury put it, Fides quaerens intellectum, ‘faith seeking understanding’ best characterizes medieval thought. Wittgenstein once said ‘I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view’.2 Not only did the medieval philosopher tend to see philosophical problems from a religious point of view, they were deeply religious men. Such faith in the medieval context is essentially linked to the being of the individual. Being faithful, in the performative sense, takes on the character of necessity; it forms the very ground of the intelligibility of the world. The medieval scholastic philosopher, no less than the layperson, for which philosophy ‘proper’ was not an option, interpreted their world from the perspective of faith. Dasein inhabits its world and cannot be usefully abstracted from it. Dasein is ‘in each case mine’ and from the perspective of Being and Time the term Dasein can be applied to any particular human being. Dasein’s world is a context of significance within which it goes about its business. For the most part Dasein understands itself in terms of its world and in terms of the ‘objects’ of its circumspective concern. Heidegger does recognize that there can be ‘Daseins’ of differing contextual configurations. In Being and Time, for example, he remarks that Ernst Cassirer ‘has recently made the Dasein of myth a theme for philosophical Interpretation’.3 To be a Dasein ‘of’ a particular context or configuration of meaning is to be subject to the norms and conditions of it, and to engage in self-interpretation within the terms and boundaries it provides. It is ‘to be there’ in a particular way. It is to be in a world and understand oneself in terms of that world. And it follows from Heidegger’s remark about Cassirer that there is a multiplicity of such worlds. The historical world of the medieval philosopher was just one of them. Regarding Eckhart specifically, to compare him to Heidegger it is necessary to relate his notion of the human souls openness to God to Heidegger’s notion of the openness of thinking to being. Importantly however, Heidegger’s later ruminations on the event of being differ profoundly from medieval mystical texts. Being, according to Heidegger, fell into oblivion because the ontological difference between being and beings was not recognized in metaphysics. This process started with the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. After what Heidegger came to call ‘the first beginning’ of thought, with pre-Socratic attempts to ‘think’ being; Plato reduced it to eternal presence in terms of his theory of forms. After Plato, Aristotle reduced being to substance and then to the Deity. With this being

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came to be associated with the being of a particular being. This is the birth of ontotheology. The difference between being and beings was concealed and being fell into oblivion. It was the question of being that was the guiding concern of Heidegger’s thought throughout his long career. Indeed, his habilitation thesis Duns Scotus Theory of the Categories and of Meaning amounted to the asking of the question of being in terms of the question of the categories, and the question of language in terms of the doctrine of signification. Language became, as Heidegger’s thought developed, increasingly important when considering Dasein’s relation to being. Heidegger came to realize in the years following Being and Time that the term being belonged to the very tradition that he was attempting to criticize – the tradition of Western metaphysics – and that he could no longer use it for the matter that he wanted to think. Metaphysics or onto-theo-logy from Plato to Nietzsche has been concerned with being or beingness, but that has been the tradition’s failure, for the matter to be thought, as Heidegger came to see it, is not ‘being’ but the ‘that which grants being’ as the possible subject matter of metaphysics in the first place. It is no longer the ontological difference – the difference between being and beings – that specifically concerns Heidegger but the ‘that’ which opens up this difference in each and every particular epoch that has produced a metaphysics. Aquinas, for example, notes an ontological difference between pure subsistent being (God) and finite beings: finite beings participate in and depend for their being upon pure subsistent being (God). As Caputo argues, being is not in ‘oblivion’ here. Quite the contrary, it takes pride of place. What is in oblivion however is what Heidegger calls the dif-ference, the that which produces or ‘opens-up’ the ontological difference between being and beings, within which Aquinas and all other metaphysicians thought. This dif-ference is the proper matter for thought from Heidegger’s perspective. It is this dif-ference (Unter-Schied = inter-scission) which afforded Aquinas the ability to think being as he did. Another name for this dif-ference is Ereignis, the event of appropriation, and it is this event which grants or sends being to thought. It is Ereignis that provides the possibility of the history of Western metaphysics. Crucially, Ereignis is not a new term for being. Rather, Ereignis is that which allows for the approach of being/meaning to historical humans in the first place. The history of metaphysics, as Heidegger came to understand it, is a history of the multiple ways in which being or beingness has been named by the metaphysicians who have, at the same time, left the ‘it’, the Ereignis which sends being to thought, unthought.

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However, as Caputo stresses in his reading of Ereignis, there is a dark side to it and a general notion of danger in Heidegger’s thought post Being and Time. It is this dark side that is not to be detected in the thought of the medieval mystics. Heidegger sometimes speaks of Ereignis as a ‘play’, a game, a purposeful movement back and forth in which the ‘essence’ of Dasein itself is at stake and in which the results are anything but certain. The danger in this game is that the essence of Dasein and the essence of truth will be thrown off course indefinitely. As Caputo cautions us, the game that is Ereignis, plays groundlessly. Every self-sending of being to thought is at one and the same time accompanied by being’s self-withdrawal. Indeed, this concealment that accompanies disclosure is inscribed in the essential nature of being itself. All disclosure of being is accompanied by such a concealment and there can be and could never have been, despite what Heidegger says about the early Greeks, one privileged sending of being where it came into full view and rendered itself transparent to Dasein. As Caputo argues, every age or epoch in which there is a sending of being to thought is equally epochal and subject to the self-concealing of being. Every epoch is subject to différance: human beings have no absolute point of view on things. The world is not neutral and Dasein’s relationship with that world is not simple. No one epoch in this history of the sending of being to thought can be privileged – not the ‘first beginning’ of thought with the ancient thinkers or the ‘new beginning’ which Heidegger seeks to usher in. As Caputo intimates, if Heidegger’s thought ever gives the impression of such privileging he is not staying true to the overcoming of metaphysics and is still bound up with a metaphysical view of history. By being attentive to the oblivion of being we do not suddenly become released from it. Yet such attentiveness or wakefulness is constitutive of overcoming. Heidegger speaks of A-lethia, the unconcealing of truth. A-lethia is another term for the granting of the various historical epochs. A-lethia is the granting of being and truth in the first place and it points to the event, the Ereignis whereby historical epochs and languages become possible. The significance of historical languages for Heidegger at this point is hard to overstate. ‘Language is the house of being’ and the history of language discloses not only the status and approach to the Seinsfrage, but also an aspect of the way in which being itself becomes manifested in the various epochs. The matter to be thought has become the ‘opening’, the dif-ference, in and through which being, time, history and metaphysics are granted to historical humans. In many ways, the term ‘being’ has taken on the meaning of ‘history’.

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It is essential, from Heidegger’s point of view, not to get caught up by and become consumed by the dominant metaphysics of an age. To paraphrase Caputo, Dasein has to think the giving of being and not get lost in the gift. All past metaphysical systems have made use of the notion of an ontological difference between being and beings but have failed to thematize the dif-fering in this difference. It is precisely this dif-fering which opens up the ontological difference. Plato, Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas and as many other of the great metaphysical thinkers of the past that can be brought to mind bathe in the light of being but fail to think the giving of that light. Take for example Ibn Sı-na-’s system (980–1037 CE). Known in middle ages to Latin philosophers as Avicenna, he held that there was a hierarchy of being with the One (God) at its head. This One is the source of all activity and every created being ultimately depends upon ‘it’ for their existence. The One is a being, namely God, whose existence is necessary. The essence of the One is to exist. The One is an intelligence that thinks itself. The ‘thought’ which the One has of itself simultaneously produces being. The movement from the One to the many, which is a result of the productive nature of thought, is the movement of emanation. The notion of this cosmic emanation is at the centre of a system that is a paradigmatic example of the metaphysical ontotheological view of reality. The entire world order comes about from the thought that the necessary being, the One/God, has of itself. In thinking itself this being thinks everything else in the universe. That which is communicated in this cosmic emanation is a participation in what the One possesses necessarily, namely existence. Everything in the universe other than God ultimately has its existence bestowed upon it by the One. The fundamental division in being is the division between essence and existence. Any being at all has both an essence (a ‘what’ that they are) and an existence (the fact of their existence). The One’s essence is to exist: it is a necessary being. The One freely creates and conserves every thing else that exists. Everything that has existence by virtue of the One has it only contingently: everything except the One may never have existed at all. With this metaphysical philosophy the basic premises of the revealed Qur’an, that all that is derives from a single creator God, is grounded. It has been argued in the secondary literature that Heidegger took from Plotinus the distinction between that which is illuminated (beings) by virtue of the illuminating power of the sun, and the light of the sun itself (being). When we focus our attention upon that which is shown up by the light of the sun we forget the very power by which things are illuminated

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in the first place. Only by shifting our attention from that which is shown up is Dasein able to see that by virtue of which these beings are shown up. By this analogy with Plotinus on the one hand and the analogy with Eckhart on the other it has been argued that Heidegger creates the false impression of being a mystic, without any of the divinely inspired content that the mystics held true to. In short, Heidegger’s philosophy is simulacra of mysticism. The history of metaphysics consists of a history of competing theories all of which posit ‘a meaning of being’; but all of these metaphysicians have failed to recognize this history as what it is. This history is to be placed in question in terms of the oblivion of the difference. The oblivion of the matter to be thought, which was inaugurated in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, has had the effect of instantiating the forgetting of the more originary and primordial Greek experience of aletheia. Aletheia is that happening whereby the world as an elaborate historical context of significance and meaning becomes ‘opened-up’. Aletheia is the emergence into the open, it is that process whereby beings are brought into the clearing and become unconcealed. The history of being is the unfolding of the difference. Through this the various different senses of being or ‘truths of being’ are enumerated: no one is privileged or canonical. The concept of being in Being and Time has the character of meaning rather than reality. Being is the difference it makes that there is something rather than nothing and being is only ever understood as projected upon its transcendental horizon. Dasein’s temporality is a transcendentalhorizonal structure that provides for the appearance of beings. In the years after Being and Time Heidegger increasingly spoke of ‘the end of philosophy’ and tended to characterize his own thought as arising out of this end. Crucially however, this end is not an end point. Rather, thinking in the end of philosophy is in transition to ‘another beginning’. ‘Thinking’ in this context is not philosophy. Now that philosophy is ending there is the possibility that thought itself could be restored to its former glory with a great retrieve of the ‘first beginning’ with the pre-Socratic thinkers. Properly speaking, this first beginning took place before philosophy. As such, the pre-Socratics were not ‘philosophers’ in the sense of metaphysicians, having thought before the oblivion of being; reading them as preparatory for Socrates and Plato and for everything that follows does them (and us) a great disservice. Heidegger’s idea is that since ‘thought’ preceded philosophy, it can once again arise from its end. The end of philosophy is its completion. Philosophy has realized all the possibilities that were part of its essence at its inception. The beginning

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of philosophy was the beginning of the rule of reason and in the last century philosophy unfolded in the form of the particular sciences. Philosophy in the form of metaphysics begets philosophy in the form of the particular sciences. There is one possibility, Heidegger maintains, that has yet not been realized and this possibility is one which philosophy could never take up as part of itself. This is the very possibility to overcome philosophy. The overcoming of philosophy is the accomplishing of the task which philosophy has set for itself but is in fact incapable of carrying out. This task is none other than the thought of being. Socrates is the paradigmatic philosopher for Heidegger, since philosophy – now equivalent to Western rationality or metaphysics – is a matter of reason and argumentation. Heidegger’s thinking has nothing to do with philosophy in this sense. Indeed, his thinking is only possible if the thinker makes the ‘leap’ beyond the principle of sufficient reason. Heidegger wants the thinker to leave such techno-rationality behind and engage in nonrepresentational thought. Heidegger’s thought is no longer philosophy but that which arises out of the end of philosophy, it is no longer metaphysics but that which arises out of the overcoming of metaphysics and it is not to do with ‘being’ but with the Ereignis, the event of appropriation, which gives being to thought. Twenty years after Being and Time in his Letter on Humanism Heidegger warns his readers that what is required of historical human beings is less philosophy and more thought. In terms of Heidegger’s mystical dimension, it would be a mistake to think of his late affinity with the mystic was completely new. Heidegger had always been concerned with mysticism. Indeed, in his Habilitation he warned that it would be a mistake to conceive of medieval scholasticism and mysticism as opposites. Rather, they belong together essentially. There is a parallel between Heidegger and the mystic. If we consider Eckhart and Heidegger side by side we see that each thinker petitions Dasein to open itself up to that which is beyond itself. In the case of each thinker, Dasein must become detached and let that which ‘is’ be. Just as Eckhart’s mysticism can be read as an overcoming of the scholastic metaphysics of his day Heidegger’s thought can be seen analogously in regards to the transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics of the early 20th Century. Caputo argues that an essential element of the affinity between Eckhart and Heidegger can be seen with regards to the problem of the nothing. Heidegger’s treatment of the nothing in ‘What is Metaphysics?’ (1929) began with a deliberate, somewhat playful fallacy of equivocation and it was this move that was no small part the source of Carnap’s positivistic

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outrage. Heidegger remarks that the sciences are concerned with beings and nothing more. Heidegger wonders, ‘what about this nothing?’ This is deliberate provocation, but it is deliberate provocation with a serious point for Heidegger wants to show that the first sense of the nothing is in fact dependent upon the second more profound sense. The question of the nothing is a metaphysical question. In this text Heidegger is unfolding a metaphysical question from within metaphysics in order to let metaphysics do the talking. Being is bounded by the nothing. Dasein encounters the nothing in the fundamental mood of anxiety. In this experience particular beings show up against the backdrop of the nothing. In this experience Dasein is awakened to the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Heidegger suggests that Hegel was correct to think of pure being and pure nothing as the same, even if he did so for the wrong reasons. For Heidegger, the question of the nothing is actually an approach to the question of being. The occurrence of the mood of anxiety is ontological. The nothing for Heidegger is not the negation of all things, as in logic. Rather, the nothing is that which is ‘other’ than all beings and what else is ‘other’ than all beings except being itself. In a sense, the nothing is the being of beings. This has an analogue in Eckhart for whom God is pure being and pure nothing. In Being and Time anxiety was bound up with the silent call of conscience to Dasein. If Dasein heeded this call then it would be called forth to the unique possibility for being relative to it. With this, Dasein ‘chooses to choose’ and in choosing Dasein chooses to have a conscience. This choosing to have a conscience is bound up with Dasein’s admission of its guilt. As such, anxiety in Being and Time is linked to purposeful choice. After the change in orientation in his thinking however, Heidegger left such a philosophy of the will behind. At this point Heidegger distinguishes between ‘representational thinking’ and ‘essential thinking’. The former is that kind of thinking which calculates beings, it is purposeful thinking. Essential thinking on the other hand is concerned with the truth of being. Essential thinking is a non-representational meditation on being which ‘steps back’ out of metaphysical reason. At this stage there is a definite affinity between Heidegger and Eckhart since both thinkers realize that the only way to deal with being and God respectively is to let them deal with us. Being and God do not submit themselves to us in the sense of being subordinated to Dasein. The only possible way to grasp being or God is to let them be, to let them approach Dasein. The mood of anxiety responds to the call of being and this call is the call to Dasein to wonder at the fact that there is something rather than nothing;

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to wonder at the fact that any particular being is set over against the nothing. Crucial to this process is that Dasein surrenders itself to being. Dasein must receive being and preserve its truth. This sacrificing of Dasein’s being is a ‘thanking’ of being for the gift of itself to Dasein as a matter for thinking. Being does not surrender to Dasein’s control and if Dasein has managed to think being at all, it is only because being has given itself to it. As the only responsible response to a gift is thanking, Dasein must thank being by thinking. With all this Heidegger has parted company from his earlier attempt to establish a fresh conceptual determination of being.

The Present Age Much has been made of the difference between the earlier and later phases of Heidegger’s thought. There are, however, significant reasons for being wary in accepting a straight-forward thesis of divorce between ‘early’ and ‘late’ Heidegger. Since the publication of Heidegger’s very early work scholars have read into it intimations of what came to pass in Heidegger’s career not only in the years leading up to Being and Time but afterwards. Themes such as ‘destruction’ and ‘other beginning’ were intimated, albeit in a different context, early in Heidegger’s path of thought. Now, Heidegger did focus on a constant cluster of themes throughout his career, themes such as being, time, understanding and so on. The question as to why Heidegger gave up or moved beyond fundamental ontology is a complex one. One reason is that he came so see Being and Time as a work of transition that was still too metaphysical. Rather than attempt to follow a strict chronological approach to this question I shall suggest an interpretive reason for moving beyond fundamental ontology. This reason involves analogy. Taminiaux has noted that, from a systematic point of view, one reason for Heidegger’s abandonment of fundamental ontology was that there is a paradox at the core of the project. If fundamental ontology is identified with the metaphysics of Dasein then, as Heidegger says, ‘ontology has an ontic foundation’. Ontology can’t be established purely ontologically. Ontology, and so being, is fundamentally related to Dasein and the understanding of being. If this is so, so Taminiaux argues in his summary of Heidegger’s philosophy in Volume VIII of the Routledge History of Philosophy, how can it be possible not to reduce being to characteristics of a particular being (Dasein)? It is partly for this reason that I have criticized the analogical interpretation of Heidegger’s text. In particular I suggested that the privilege of Dasein in

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fundamental ontology and the analogical interpretation of his text brings his own thought into proximity with ontotheology. If fundamental ontology is prior to the ontology of being then Dasein’s temporality must be distinguished from the temporality of being itself. If this is so, suggests Taminiaux, the provisional nature of fundamental ontology contradicts its fundamental dimension. Thus, Taminiaux argues, in the project of Being and Time, paradoxically, being is in oblivion in favour of a being, Dasein. Undoubtedly, Heidegger’s later thought is characterized by an attempt to get beyond Dasein to being, and from being and time to ‘time and being’. There are two broad approaches that might be followed in order to illuminate Heidegger’s later approach to the question of being. The first approach would take a single text, perhaps the Contributions to Philosophy or the Letter on Humanism, and offer a sustained analysis of key themes as they are developed there. The second approach would consider a cluster of texts representative of Heidegger’s views as they are developed in his career after Being and Time. I will take the second approach since it is broad enough to cover a considerable number of texts while at the same time allowing me to dwell on particular texts, including longer ones like the Contributions, when the need arises. I will engage with texts, such as the essay On Time and Being, and issues such as time-space, in relation to the concept of time, and I will place these in a critical relation to the problem of univocity. I shall also return to themes, such as substance ontology, in terms of Heidegger’s critique of these issues in his later thought. The Heidegger I will be dealing with here is the Heidegger after Being and Time, from the 1930s on.

The Later Heidegger After the change in orientation in his thought in the 1930s Heidegger became concerned with charting the history of being as it unfolds in the epochs of Western history. The history of being serves as the clue to all human history. Heidegger, concerned with the happening of truth in history, holds that being has fallen into oblivion because the ontological difference between being and beings has been passed over by Western metaphysics. This process began with Plato and Aristotle. It was in 1923 that Heidegger realized that the Greek term ousia means constant presence. With Aristotle, being became associated with the being of a particular being and the difference between being and beings was concealed; as a result, being fell into oblivion.

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What is in oblivion in the metaphysical tradition is what Heidegger calls the dif-ference: the process of clearing (Lichtung) and dispensing (Geschick) which makes possible the metaphysical difference between being and beings. Dif-ference is the differing in the difference between being and beings. The hyphenation in the term dif-ference marks the fact that this is a process. Dif-ference marks the differing in which being and beings are carried outside of one another while at the same time they are carried towards one another. Dif-ference, in opening up the ontological difference, withdraws. As the ‘being’ of beings, being gives itself to and ‘comes to pass’ in beings: being discloses or reveals itself in beings. Being is there in this process of disclosure. Beings do not pre-exist this process: beings appear or come to presence in and through the disclosure of being. The disclosure of being is at the same time the appearance of beings. Further, as the disclosure of being, the appearing of beings is the concealing of being: the disclosure of beings is simultaneously the concealment of being. This is the process of dif-fering or Ereignis. Ereignis names the self-sending of being to thought, its revelation in and through Dasein, and every self-sending of being to thought is at once accompanied by being’s self-withdrawal. This concealment accompanying disclosure is inscribed in the essential nature of Ereignis itself. All disclosure is accompanied by concealment on the part of being. As one way in which things can be meaningfully there for human understanding and interest becomes manifest another recedes and is shrouded in darkness. As Heidegger read the tradition of Western philosophy, there was a first beginning of thought in Greece within which an intimation of an ‘other beginning’ can be discerned. One way of reading this implies that the Greek revelation of being qua origin of Western thought was somehow privileged and that the other beginning will inherit this privilege. It is precisely in these terms that I part company with Heidegger. Every epoch is equally epochal: human beings do not have and can never have a privileged point of view on things. Heidegger is right to say that the human world is not neutral and the human being can never transcend it and that what things are is determined in terms of this perspective. The human subject can never attain the perspective of a God: a perspective which, although from nowhere, sees all. No one epoch in the history of the way in which things are available for human understanding and interest could be privileged. The position that emerges from this parting company is a form of perspectivism. My criticism of Heidegger’s view does not operate at the level of his interpretation of the history of Western philosophy and its dominant view of

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being. That is, I am not contesting his view that the history of Western philosophy is dominated by the metaphysics of presence and by a concept of being construed in terms of presence. My criticism of Heidegger’s philosophy of history operates at the level where it might be put to work in writing history, and even prehistory. What can be retained from Heidegger’s thought after such a parting company is a determination of the manner of being of practically engaged agents who are constitutive of particular communities. Heidegger has elaborated the structures of practical agency qua Dasein, in its relation to being qua temporally configured meaningful presence. In Ereignis historical humans and being are mutually appropriated. This is a formal and ontological framework that underscores the ontic and particular configurations of meaning constitutive of particular historical civilizations and prehistoric communities. I am not attributing to Heidegger a view that holds that there is a ‘univocity of meaning’ across diverse epochs of being where such a view implies that what it means ‘to be’ an ‘X’ would be the same to the ancient Greek as to the medieval peasant. Nor would I accept this view. What it means ‘to be’ in one epoch may be different from another: human being may be meaningful in terms of ‘fallen humanity’ from a medieval Christian point of view while it may be meaningful as ‘bearer of rights and duties’ from a modern one. In each case different ontic meanings of being human are founded upon certain ontological (transcendental) structures. As I have argued, and as Heidegger says, there can be a ‘Dasein’ of different historical frameworks. In the mutual appropriation of historical human beings and meaningful presence the way in which things can be meaningfully there for them, is established. My view, following Heidegger’s, is that it is possible to interpret diverse configurations of meaning and agency by attending to founding events, such as the building of monuments. I shall place this view in relation to Heidegger’s philosophy in more detail in the next chapter in terms of the notion of archaeological hermeneutics.

A-Letheia, Ereignis and Epochal Immanence It is hard to overstate the importance of Greek thought for Heidegger. One has just to consider the following testimony from the late autobiographical piece ‘My Way to Phenomenology’: What occurs for the phenomenology of the acts of consciousness as the self-manifestation of phenomena is thought more originally by Aristotle and in all Greek thinking and existence as aletheia.4

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It was Heidegger’s view that Aristotle had been more original than Husserl when it came to his account of truth, even though Husserl’s phenomenology had gone towards overcoming the traditional definition of truth as adaequatio intellectus ad rem with the notion of evidence (the self-manifestation of phenomena to intentionality). As Heidegger would read this, the locus of truth was not merely the judgement but intentionality or consciousness itself. In Heidegger’s hands, this was further developed in terms of Dasein being ‘in the truth’. Truth is not a mental state but is rather the event of disclosure for a disclosing being. Rereading Aristotle through phenomenology led Heidegger to the view that he had been more original than Husserl, first because he had understood truth to be the unconcealment of beings for an unconcealing being, the human being. Secondly, because instead of confining this unconcealing behaviour to consciousness, it is said just to be a feature of human comportment or of human being. On this reading, truth or aletheia is bound up with existence. It was through this engagement with Aristotle that Heidegger came to reserve the word Dasein for the factical life of the human being. Heidegger speaks of A-letheia, the unconcealing of truth. This term is composed of the privative prefi x a-, (un- or dis-), and the root lethe- (hiddenness or closure). Lethe- is the river of oblivion or forgetfulness which separates the underworld from the world of the living. Attaching the negative prefix ‘a-’ here serves to connote a sense of unforgetting and hence of unconcealment. The disclosure of a being is its momentary release into presence (a-) from its prior unavailability or hiddenness (lethe-). A-letheia is the original event that produces meaningful presence or being. It is the very granting of historical configurations of the meaning of being, and that is, of epochs. A-letheia is the granting of being and truth and signals the Ereignis whereby historical epochs, languages, determinations of being and truth are produced as effects. For Heidegger, the oblivion of the matter to be thought, which was inaugurated in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, has had the effect of instigating the forgetting of the more originary and primordial Greek experience of a-letheia. A-letheia is that happening whereby the world as an elaborate historical context of significance becomes opened-up or uncovered for Dasein. Aletheia is the very emergence into the open, it is that process whereby beings are brought into the clearing and become un-concealed. Within the course of the unfolding of the history of being there is no recourse to any transcendent ground: there is nothing beyond the immanent play of the revealing and concealing of being. Within its immanent play as the unfolding of the history of being there can be no recourse

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to a founding transcendence. Dasein cannot be abstracted from its world and can never gain a view from nowhere. Ereignis is not a grounding transcendence. It is rather the granting of meaningful presence. Although there are many meanings of being in the history of the epochs of being, there are many different ways in which what it means to be is determined historically, nonetheless, qua temporal granting of meaningful presence, being, for Heidegger, remains univocal and immanent. This is a significant point of continuity with Heidegger’s earlier understanding of time. I shall further investigate the notion of a temporal extending of meaningful presence when I discuss the notion of time-space. Here the notion of temporal extending is linked with the notion of space and the ‘site of the moment’. Recently, commentators such as Elliott and Wood have begun to problematize the roles of space and time in Heidegger’s thought. This is a profitable discussion, but one that will remain largely beyond my discussion in this text. In his Thinking After Heidegger, Wood has pointed out that in texts such as On Time and Being, Ereignis is thought by Heidegger in terms of withdrawal, withholding, denial, expropriation and temporal extension. Significantly, in this text I will attempt to deal in detail with just one of these characterizations of Ereignis. Namely, Ereignis as temporal extension. My view does not preclude an exploration of any of the other determinations of Ereignis and it does not preclude a further examination of space. Space is an important concept in Heidegger’s thought and I shall intimate a reading of this notion in terms of the notion of a ‘site’, the function of art and in terms of time-space. Elliott has further argued in his Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger that the notion of space is, even from Heidegger’s earlier engagement, perhaps the dominant notion at work in his philosophy. That this may be so is not ruled out by my reading of the importance of time for Heidegger. I agree that space is of considerable importance to Heidegger’s thought and I can accept that this significance is reflected in his early engagement. My point is not that space is unimportant or even that it is not the most important notion in play in Heidegger’s thought. Rather, my point is that time is fundamentally important in Heidegger’s philosophy of being and that whatever other notions are important, time remains one of the foundational points in Heidegger’s engagement with the question of being and with the history of philosophy. Temporality is, after all, the transcendental horizon for being. Meaningful presence is temporally configured and while the manner in which things can be meaningfully present to Dasein can change,

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nevertheless, as meaningful presence, being is univocal. The being of beings is the presence of what is present. The structure of the dynamic event of the revelation of being remains temporal and as thought of in terms of time, being is univocal. When we discuss being in Heidegger’s text we are discussing the univocity of being. By the time he wrote ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’, in the 1960s, Heidegger was keen to emphasize that, in the present age, philosophy is at its end. What was once merely possible, has become actual: philosophy, or rather the questions of philosophy, have developed into and constitute independent sciences. Heidegger insists that philosophy’s end must not be construed as mere cessation. Rather, the end of philosophy is that ‘place’ where the entirety of philosophy’s history is ‘gathered’. Philosophy’s end, as completion, is this gathering. Such is Heidegger’s argument. But what is philosophy? And what is it about philosophy that renders it susceptible to such an end? For Heidegger, at this point, philosophy is metaphysics, and metaphysics is identical to Platonism. The character of Plato’s thought, so Heidegger argues, remains decisive throughout the entire history of the West. Philosophy, or metaphysics, is a manner of representational thinking that seeks out grounds, and the end of philosophy is the completion of metaphysics. It is the decisive feature of philosophy, evident even in the age of the Greeks, that what became the independent sciences would develop in and through the space that philosophy cleared. Far from resulting in the mere dissolution of philosophy, the process of the development and increasing self-assertion of the sciences belongs essentially to and constitutes the very end of philosophy as completion. This fate befalls philosophy legitimately, from Heidegger’s point of view. The present age of the end of philosophy has become dominated by the forms of thought constitutive of the sciences. As such, the interpretation of phenomena (in the widest sense of the term) moves along the lines drawn by the forms of thinking constitutive of the sciences – and that is, so Heidegger contends – technologically. He says: The end of philosophy proves to be the triumph of the manipulable arrangement of a scientific-technological world and of the social order proper to this world. The end of philosophy means the beginning of the world civilization that is based upon Western European thinking.5 Technology (Gestell) is the way being is revealed in the present age and this event compels historical human beings to see the totality of the world as

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manipulable resources there for them to master. In the nihilistic epoch of technology beings are taken as a ‘stockpile’ of manipulable resources that is, in principle, wholly transparent to human understanding. Opposed to this last possibility for thought, philosophy’s dissolution into the technological thinking of the sciences, Heidegger raises the question of a first possibility: a possibility which was contained in and yet concealed from philosophy. As such, this first possibility remains inaccessible to philosophy as metaphysics and to its progeny, the particular sciences. The task of such thinking is preparatory and far less grand than philosophy. Such a thinking attempts to articulate something to the present age, something that can in fact be heard in the dawn of philosophy. Such a thinking is characterized by the ‘step back’ out of metaphysics. This step back is simultaneously a step into the very origin of metaphysics. It is only by means of this step back that thinking can confront its true matter. The guiding question of metaphysics (die Leitfrage) asks ‘what are beings (as such)?’ In determining this, metaphysics thinks the beingness of beings: it characterizes being in terms of a region of beings. This is not the task which Heidegger holds out for his non-representational thinking: the thinker’s task lies in asking the basic question (die Grundfrage) which has been forgotten by the tradition: ‘what is the truth, sense or essence of being?’ This question will problematize the relationship of being and time. Through musing on this question, Heidegger will reveal being as the meaningful presence which emerges as the temporal event, the univocity of being in terms of time. The truth of being is thought as the event of appropriation, Ereignis; the temporal revelation of meaningful presence in conjunction with the opening up of openness. It is this event which brings historical human beings to their essence as the place of the revelation of meaningful presence. Appropriation is mutual, being is in so far as it has a place in open human nature, and human nature is properly what it is as the site for the revelation of being. It is precisely this question that has been forgotten in the history of philosophy. Forgetfulness of being is forgetfulness of Ereignis. In the context of Heidegger’s late work, philosophy understood metaphysically as Platonism, becomes a danger that threatens thinking. Heidegger’s late writings are characterized by an effort to find a manner of expression for this position. In Heideggerian language, he is attempting to ‘bring to language the happening of Ereignis’. In non-Heideggerian language, he is attempting to express the fact that there is meaningful presence in the first place. Increasingly, his chosen manner of expression was poetry. The matter for thinking cannot be grasped by the concepts of philosophy. The thinker does not say ‘being is’ but ‘there is being, it gives being’.

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The thinker, or the historical human being Martin Heidegger, attends to the ‘It’ which gives: ‘we try to look ahead to the It which-gives Being and time . . . We try to bring the It and its giving into view, and capitalize the “It”’.6 The ‘It’ is the dif-ference (Austrag) or Ereignis and the aim of thought is to attend to this ‘It’ which joins any historical human and being. Ereignis is the fundamental thought in terms of which the path of Heidegger’s thinking must ultimately be interpreted: Ereignis is the primal mystery that is still unthought today. Ereignis is that event which brings about being to and for thought. That is, Ereignis issues in meaningful presence. It is the opening up of the clearing which allows beings to come to presence or appear as what they are. The term Ereignis first appears in Heidegger’s corpus in 1919 in the context of a discussion of lived experience. The term does not feature prominently in Being and Time but comes back into usage in the late 1920s becoming the central term from the 1930s and the text of the Beiträge (Contributions to Philosophy) onwards. Ereignis is that which opens up the ontological difference between being and beings, the difference within which all metaphysical thinking dwells. On Heidegger’s terms, Ereignis is that which differs in the difference: it is the between of being ‘and’ beings. It is that which bears them apart and binds them together. Heidegger had once moved in the direction of thinking being and time. With the recognition of Ereignis as the proper matter of thought Heidegger has seen that what is at issue is the very conjunction of the two: being ‘and’ time. Ereignis is this conjunction. The temporality characteristic of Dasein is now extended to it by virtue of the appropriating event. Heidegger has named the event that binds being as meaningful presence to the temporality of Dasein. And, he contends, only by means of its step back can thinking attain that ‘place’ from which Ereignis can be thought. Ereignis is deeper and more primordial than both being and time. It is the primordial sending or dispensation of the two: it is the ‘It’ which gives.

A History of Being It is from the perspective of attempting to think the temporal event or Ereignis that Heidegger conceives of his history of being. Metaphysics is the history of being and the history of being is being itself. Ereignis is not a posit of human subjectivity; it is rather that which allows humans to posit subjectivity. Ereignis opens the space of metaphysics but is not itself thought by metaphysics: metaphysics operates within the difference between being and beings but cannot question the origin of this distinction. As a result,

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the history of being as metaphysics consists of various epochs where what is grasped is the beingness of beings: the determinations of the beingness of beings are determinations of being in terms of the various features of beings. It is Heidegger’s view that the limits of the philosophical milieu of an epoch can be discerned in terms of the ‘name’ that a great metaphysician has given to the being or beingness of beings. His list includes, Idea in Plato, energeia in Aristotle, act in Aquinas, representedness in Descartes, objectivity in Kant, Absolute Spirit in Hegel, and will to power in Nietzsche. It is not clear to what extent Heidegger thinks this list exhaustive. Epoch of being is understood in terms of the notion of epoché (suspending) of being and is characterized by the oblivion of Ereignis. Ereignis is that which remains unthought in the tradition of metaphysics and is that matter which Heidegger seeks to think. This thinking is no longer metaphysics but the overcoming of metaphysics. It is a thinking that is no longer limited to the distinction between being and beings but seeks to think the origin of this distinction. In the present age of technology or ‘framework’ (Gestell) a first glimmer of the appropriation which mutually appropriates historical human beings and being can be seen. Heidegger wants us to become sensitive to the essential connection of meaningful presence to the ‘preservers’ of that presence. These ‘preservers’ are, variously, individuals and communities. Heidegger lets Parmenides, with the words ‘the Same are thinking as well as being’, carry us over to the question of the belonging together of thought and being. This ‘belonging’, presented here in a somewhat mythologized fashion, is intended to intimate Ereignis. Heidegger maintains that being and thinking belong together essentially in an identity occasioned by Ereignis. Ereignis is now the central term of Heidegger’s thought. When ‘belonging’ is emphasized in this way, so Heidegger holds, thinking and being are held apart and held together simultaneously in the Same. This Same is the active essence of Ereignis. Ereignis is an abyss, not in the sense of an engulfing sphere of reference, context or framework wherein phenomena are assigned meaning, but in the sense that it is beyond all frameworks. It is the very happening by which such historical configurations of meaning or frameworks can come to be in the first place. In this sense, Ereignis is the very condition of possibility of culture. The ground of beings is something that can only be determined within a context. Ereignis, as that which allows being to be determined as ground in the first place and as that which allows spheres of reference to come into being, as that which first clears a space and allows something like a world to come to presence at all, is without ground. Ereignis allows

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human beings and being to reach each other and to lose the metaphysical baggage that the tradition has burdened them with. For Heidegger, thinking Ereignis allows for a more original mutual appropriation of being and historical humanity than that offered by traditional metaphysical philosophy. The paradigm of his later thought is the notion of ‘letting be’. Ereignis, so he would wish to emphasize, cannot be explained in the language of metaphysics or in terms of the conceptual framework of the natural sciences. It is the primal mystery to which we can only remain open. When the thinker achieves ‘letting be’, they have ceased overcoming metaphysics and are content to leave it to its own devices. It is Heidegger’s conviction that in order for thinking to gain insight into its proper task it must review the entire history of philosophy. If this project were not taxing enough, thinking must also think the historicity of the ‘It’ which grants the history of philosophy. That which grants a possible history to philosophy is the event of appropriation. Ereignis is not being; nor is it time. Being and time are given by the Ereignis. Ereignis is not a particular sending of being but rather the source of every sending. Being itself means presencing and the being of beings means the presence of what is present. Time is also given by the ‘It’ which gives and this giving is understood to be that which preserves the ‘realm’ wherein presence is itself extended to historical humanity. Giving is understood as the sending of being as time, understood as an opening-extending. Time-space is the clearing for being as presence. Presence is the ‘constant abiding’ which approaches, reaches and is extended to historical humanity. Time-space names that openness which is opened in the interplay of past, present and future and ‘true time’ is four-dimensional. Heidegger employs a spatial metaphor to elucidate the fourth dimension of time. Part of his reason for doing so is that the approach of temporality to Dasein clears the ‘space’ in which meaningful presence comes to presence in the mutually appropriating Ereignis. The fourth dimension of time is ‘nearing nearness’ or ‘nearhood’, and this is understood as the ‘giving that determines all’. What determines time and being in their belonging together is the event of appropriation. Amidst these somewhat abstract determinations, Heidegger has not forgotten human existence. Human existence belongs to appropriation. Dasein is no longer at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe in the sense that it had been in the philosophy of Being and Time. Now, pride of place is afforded to the nonhuman event. The event brings the human into its own, its essence, by appropriating it to being. With the thinking of Ereignis the concealment of being, essential to the history of being, is afforded its proper place and thought

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attains its true matter, the thinking of the source from which the various determinations of being arise. What has emerged in my investigation of Heidegger’s philosophy so far is that there is a fundamental univocal sense being in his thought. That fundamental sense is meaningful presence or presencing. Ultimately, for Heidegger, the being of beings is the presence of that which is present. All beings display this characteristic: beings come to presence, abide, and pass out of presence and behind the presence of what is present there is essentially nothing else. There is no substance which ‘stands-under’ the presence of what is present. Nor is there any transcendent ground beyond the play of revealing and concealing. In Heidegger’s thought there is a univocal conception of being as presencing. The dynamic I want to stress in Heidegger’s thought is as follows. While what it actually means for something ‘to be’ (or to show up as a being) in distinct historical epochs may be different – a being may be conceived as an imitation of an Idea in ancient Greece or as a manifestation of the will to power in technological modernity – nonetheless, beings have to show up as meaningfully present in the first place. Appearing as meaningfully present amounts to a being showing up as what it is. Being, as meaningful presence, is relative to Dasein and as meaningful presence, being is univocal. Ereignis, the very event of the revelation of meaningful presence itself, is not a metaphysical ground in the way God or the subject is. Ereignis is not a being and cannot be approached in the way beings are approached. Ereignis is beyond all contexts but does not transcend the meaningful world of sense in the way required for a metaphysical principle of ground. Ereignis ‘is’ only in the belonging together of finite human being and meaningful presence. By characterizing Heidegger’s position on being in terms of univocity I mean to say only that there is in his thought a fundamental sense of being qua presencing. In so doing I do not commit him to any of the metaphysical claims usually associated with a position that takes being to be univocal. My concern with univocity comes by way of a reading of Deleuze. In terms of the history of being, medieval scholastic metaphysics is characterized by Heidegger as a falling away from the fundamental Greek experience of being as presencing. Metaphysics thinks within the ontological difference of being and beings which is opened up by the event of appropriation. However, it does not think the differentiation by virtue of which there is a difference between being and beings: metaphysics does not think the difference, the Ereignis, the ‘It gives’. The greatness of the early Greek thinkers was for Heidegger, not in their having transcended metaphysical thinking, but in having thought before metaphysics, and that is, before Plato.

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Section Two The Tradition Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus thought at the very beginning of the metaphysical tradition. Metaphysics, as Heidegger sees it, appears with the fateful turn from presencing to ‘being’ conceived in terms of the Idea with Plato and substance with Aristotle. Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus were not philosophers in the sense of metaphysicians. Rather, they were thinkers. Their thinking constitutes the first beginning of Western thought. These thinkers think being poetically, they respond to the ‘appeal of its presencing’. Being was disclosed to these thinkers primordially as presencing. As Heidegger understands it, presencing is the very upsurge of beings into being. In ancient Greece, being was thought as this very upsurge or emergent process of shining forth into unconcealment. With the ancient Greeks, being was disclosed in terms of physis and aletheia. Physis is the ‘emerging sway’ which includes both ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, the very event of ‘standing forth’ from the concealed. The stepping forth from concealment of this emerging sway is the event of unconcealment or aletheia.7 The present age, so Heidegger contends, is the liminal extreme of the history of being. The present age is situated between two beginnings: the first beginning and the anticipated other beginning which can only begin with the thinking of the Ereignis. Just as the first beginning thought being non-metaphysically so shall the other beginning. The beginning Heidegger anticipates is the other beginning of non-metaphysical thought. It is a basic assumption of Heidegger’s thought that the origin of a tradition is an event that determines from the beginning the character of what will come to be in it. With this in mind we can gain access to the question Heidegger poses in ‘The Anaximander Fragment’: ‘what if that which is early outdistanced everything late; if the very earliest far surpassed the very latest?’8 In this context, Heidegger raises the question of destiny, gathering and being as eschatological. Heidegger thinks the eschatology of being immanently in the history of being. If we in the present age, as Heidegger suggests we should, think immanently the eschatology of being then the previous ‘dawn’ of thinking will be anticipated in the ‘dawn to come’. This previous dawn is nothing less than the first beginning of thought in Greece. And it is this non-metaphysical thought that Heidegger wants us to anticipate in the coming other beginning. Such eschatological thinking is only possible in our present age. If thought will enable us to hear an echo

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in the first beginning of what might take place in the other beginning, our thinking may become other than the techno-representation of metaphysics. Such is the importance of the early Greeks. By paying them heed modern humanity can glimpse what has been lost for so long, being as presencing. The thinker lets be and remains open to the enduring mystery that there is being. In his discussion of Anaximander’s experience of presence Heidegger gives us further insight into the presencing process. What is present ‘lingers awhile’, this transitional moment is the moment between approach and withdrawal. Between this ‘two-fold absence’ that which presences endures for a moment; Heidegger refers to this between and to presence in terms of joining or ‘ jointure’. The jointure is that space where what is present presences. In Heidegger’s view, this original primordial presencing process (Anwesen) becomes degraded by a process of calcification and becomes the permanent presence of the Idea (Plato) or substance (Aristotle). The process of calcification does not stop there: it continues with the medieval scholastic conception of substantia. A little further on in ‘The Anaximander Fragment’ Heidegger lets us see just how he thinks this happens: what is present insists on remaining present in the sense of perduring and becoming permanent. We should note that this insistence is couched in terms that place it on the side of self-presenting phenomena. The shift towards permanent presence is not just the responsibility of humanity. What comes to presence takes on the posture of persistence and becomes indifferent to any other presence. Its aim is, as Heidegger frames this phenomenon, for ‘continuance’ and ‘subsistence’. This congealment into permanent presence continues throughout the history of being. In the present age of technology, which is the manner in which modern humanity relates to being, it has congealed to such an extent that beings reveal themselves as stable manipulable resources there at humanity’s disposal. In such an age philosophy or metaphysics operates in complete ignorance of the clearing for being as meaningful presence. It is this clearing, which is the open region for all modes of presencing (including the presencing of the absent), of which it is necessary for the thinker to become aware. The clearing is that free space upon which presence always remains dependent and to which thought must redirect its attention. In Being and Time Heidegger had taken Dasein to be the source of truth. Dasein is that being which uncovers and constitutes truth. In this sense Dasein is said to be the clearing or lighting through which beings show up as what they are. The clearing is more primordial than particular beings

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of any kind. The clearing is that free space wherein particular forms of life as being-in-the-world emerge into presence. Through the clearing the various practices which form the interpretive lines constitutive of a historical civilization are drawn. Historical communities and their world come into being in their interdependence through the clearing. Heidegger’s position is what I would call a deep contextualism: both self and world belong essentially together in the structure of Dasein. Self and world are never wholly distinct existing beings. They are not subject and object nor are they ‘I’ and ‘thou’. Rather, self and world are essential aspects of the unified structure of being-in-the-world. Guignon suggests that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology can be read along the lines of a ‘Ptolemaic reaction’ to the Kantian Copernican revolution. The world is not constructed by transcendental subjectivity as it is for Kant and Husserl. The subject, transcendental or otherwise, does not replace God. The human and the thing are constituted by the event of the co-belonging of thought and being. And that is, through the temporal event of unconcealment (Ereignis) inseparable from the understanding of being that is constitutive of Dasein’s historical form of life or community. Dasein is always caught in the hermeneutic circle and there is no such thing as presuppositionless knowledge. Dasein’s general sense of things depends upon what it encounters in its world. Nonetheless, Dasein can only encounter something as significant in some particular way precisely because it has a pre-ontological understanding of how things in general can matter for it – and this, because it has been initiated into the shared practices and language of its historical culture. The being of beings is Dasein-relative. Heidegger’s early thought, although still retaining something of the transcendental tradition, goes a long way in displacing the ‘subject’. His later thought is even less anthropocentric. The complex event of being still ‘needs’ and ‘uses’ human beings but is even less to be thought of as something created by them. As Heidegger says: Be-ing needs man in order to hold sway; and man belongs to be-ing so that he can accomplish his utmost destiny as Da-sein.9 Caputo has shown that the later Heidegger’s thought displays a mystical dimension whereby thought’s relation to being is structurally similar to the relation of the soul to God in mysticism, displaying as it does a certain ‘thankful’ openness. To be sure, for Heidegger, being is not the Christian God. It is rather the meaningful presence which things can have for Dasein

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and, as already indicated, this meaningful relatedness of things for Dasein comes to pass differently in the various epochs of being constitutive of its history from Greece to the present age of modern technology. In this sense, the unfolding of being, understood as the unfolding of the manifold ways things can be meaningfully there – and thus appropriated – by Dasein, can be read as primordial history, a history of the ‘looks’ that being has assumed throughout its historical unfolding. Each stage along the way has been accompanied by a configuration of truth and in this sense the history of being is also a history of truth, a history unfolding in and through being’s self-donation and withdrawal from thought. Understanding the history of being affords the key to understanding all human history. As the beings who are ‘called’ to respond to the gift of being’s presencing, human beings are seen as ‘preservers’ of the truth of being. Truth is now the truth of being and truth is the clearing and sheltering of being. The truth of being is that which the sense (Sinn) or meaning of being in Heidegger’s earlier thought had tried to name. The truth of being is what mostly remains concealed but nonetheless constitutes the ‘meaning’ and ‘ground’ of that which initially shows itself (beings). Historical civilizations are constituted by a particular revelation of the truth of being. The essence of truth is historical.

The History of Metaphysics In the first beginning the early Greeks, by posing the guiding question (die Leitfrage) of Western thought, (‘what are beings?’ or ‘what is the being of beings?’) brought to language an intimation of the event. The early Greek answer to this question was physis. However, despite their access to being as presencing and their proximity to the dif-ference, the early Greeks did not manage to think the dif-ference explicitly. The oblivion of being is the oblivion of the difference between being and beings. Oblivion is not a mere human error but belongs to the history of being itself, a history which begins with the oblivion of the dif-ference. Heidegger continually returned to Parmenides. His esti gar einai, ‘for there is being’, brought the primal mystery of all thought to language. It is Heidegger’s view that esti gar einai remains unthought even today. In a very real sense, this remark serves to sum up Heidegger’s entire project. Parmenides speaks of the presencing of what is present and the other key term of his, Moira, so holds Heidegger, names the giving of presencing as

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the presence of what is present. The Moira is that which sends or gives while it itself remains withdrawn in the giving. Moira intimates Ereignis. Parmenides problematizes being and thinking in terms of their belonging together. The Same binds together that which differs. Thought and being essentially belong together. The question of identity for Heidegger is no longer formulated in terms of the relation of equality but in terms of the notion of the Same. Questioning into the meaning of this Same, of the belonging together of being and thought, so Heidegger argues in The Principle of Identity, is the question of the ‘active nature’ of identity. Thought and being are not identical in the classical sense but rather belong together in the Same by virtue of the primordial event of belonging together called Ereignis. The event of appropriation, the dif-fering in the dif-ference, is the letting belong together of thought and being. Belonging together is always a belonging together in the Same. Parmenides takes to on, literally ‘the being’, to be univocal and as Deleuze will say, it is from Parmenides to Heidegger that this univocal ‘voice of being’ is taken up. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, the history of metaphysics is characterized by the ever escalating withdrawal and concealment of the difference and a continual falling away from the primordial early Greek experience of wonder in the face of physis. The move away from the early Greeks is bound up with the turn towards ontotheology and the analogical conception of being. Analogy is understood as an aporia in which the entire history of philosophy since Aristotle is caught. Metaphysics, as history of being, is characterized by the continual moving away from the original Greek experience of being as presencing. The ‘fateful destiny’ of the oblivion of being begins with Plato and Aristotle and culminates in Nietzsche. What marks out metaphysics as different from previous thought is the distinction into essence and existence, whatness and thatness. Metaphysics, as understood by Heidegger, begins with the fateful event of the distinction into whatness and thatness. This distinction is no mere accident of human thought. Rather, it is an event in the history of being. This event presents itself as the matter to be thought. Since metaphysics moves within the distinction of whatness and thatness, the question of the origin of this distinction is one that metaphysics cannot raise. Any attempt to enquire into this origin moves within the province of the overcoming of metaphysics. It is in the context of a discussion of the unthought ontological difference that the distinction between essence and existence appears in The End of Philosophy. Here the distinction is presented as belonging on the side of being. The difference that Heidegger is concerned with in his thought is difference as dif-ference. Interestingly, when Heidegger says that essence and

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existence belong on the side of being in the unthought difference he is referring us back to his critique of scholasticism from the perspective of fundamental ontology in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. The problem with the metaphysical distinction between essence and existence is that it does not coincide with Heidegger’s ontological difference. Rather, it belongs with one of the terms Heidegger distinguishes. The metaphysical distinction merely articulates being more fully and does not penetrate to the heart of the matter. The terms essence and existence can be employed in discussion of the being of what is present-at-hand but are wholly inappropriate when applied to Dasein. Heidegger was always keen to stress that Dasein has no essence in the way an inanimate object does. Dasein is always a ‘who’ and never a ‘what’. Dasein also has no existentia in the classical sense. Rather, Dasein is Existenz: it has its being to be. In being-historical-thinking, Da-sein becomes something that historical human beings can be brought to by the appropriation: Da-sein is the turning point in the turning of enowning, the self-opening midpoint of the mirroring of call and belongingness . . . In this way Da-sein is the between [das Zwischen] between man (as history-grounding) and gods (in their history).10 As a consequence, any ontology that deals solely with essence and existence can never account for Dasein. The metaphysical distinction is lacking. Heidegger conveniently summarizes his view of how the shift from the early Greek experience of being to the later Greek experience took place in ‘Metaphysics as History of Being’ in The End of Philosophy. At first being ‘opened itself out’ in terms of emerging (physis) and unconcealment (aletheia). From here it takes on the character of presence and permanence in terms of enduring substance (ousia). Once this happens, metaphysics has begun. What is thought in metaphysics is beingness and beingness is divided into essence and existence. The first covering over of the primordial experience of being occurs with Plato. The early Greeks experienced being in terms of physis (emergence). Aletheia (unconcealedness) is the primordial essence of truth that accompanies the emergence process. The early Greeks marvelled at and stood within the primordial essence of being as physis and aletheia, of emergence into the unconcealed. With Plato, so Heidegger argues, metaphysics begins. Here the matter for investigation became the beings which had emerged and the emerging process itself became forgotten. As Heidegger argues in ‘Metaphysics as History of Being’, Plato is the thinker that prepares the way

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for the distinction into essence and existence. With Plato, the beingness (general properties or causes of beings) of beings is disclosed in the notion of the Idea. Whereas the notion of Idea had once belonged to the unconcealment process as the outlook of a thing as it emerged into presence, now Idea becomes enmeshed in representational thought. In order to think being for Plato, one has to think beyond the beings of appearance. Being can only be known through abstraction: the thinker has to abstract the general properties or features of beings in order to arrive at their being. As such what is attained, in Heidegger’s view, is not their being, but their beingness. The Ideas are the features that individual beings have in common and serve as the plan which the Demiurge (the former of matter) instantiates. As such, the beingness of beings is their whatness, their essence. When being itself begins to be thought of as causal, as first cause of beings (causa prima) and as the highest of those beings (summum ens) it is taken as a being. The difference between being and beings is forgotten and ontotheology, the task of seeking out a being which most truly exemplifies what it is to be and which is then taken as grounding beings and is deployed in classifying beings, holds sway. With Plato, truth is no longer conceived as aletheia but is transformed into the judging subject’s conformity with the Ideas. With Plato, being is established as transcendent ground of beings. Plato is the father of metaphysics as ontotheology and all metaphysics speaks ‘the language of Plato’. In Aristotle’s thought it is still possible to hear an echo of the primordial experience of being. Being for Aristotle means ousia and ousia means what is permanently present. Heidegger reads Aristotle in terms of presencing and aletheia and he hears in him an echo of the primordial first beginning. This is apparent in his interpretation of the notions of primary and secondary substance. Primary substance is usually taken to signify a particular existing thing and secondary substance is usually taken to mean the universal under which that particular is subsumed. Heidegger reads these notions in terms of presence and insists that primary and secondary substance are in fact modes of presence: Presence in the primary sense is Being which is expressed in the hoti estin: that something is, existentia. Presence in the secondary sense is Being, to which we trace back in the ti estin: what something is, essentia.11 Primary substance is that which comes to presence first: the being. Secondary substance is that which comes to presence secondarily: the look

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the being displays. This is the beginning of the problematic of the categories of being. The division into primary and secondary orders of being paves the way for the analogical interpretation of being and the notions of essence and existence set the stage for all subsequent metaphysics. The apotheosis of metaphysics is reached with Nietzsche. Heidegger interprets Nietzsche’s central doctrines of will-to-power and eternal return as, respectively, the essence and existence of beings. Nietzsche carried the metaphysics of modern subjectivity to its end. The eternal return as an endless repetitive machination is the essence of modern technology or Gestell. It is in terms of the Gestell that modern human beings relate to beings, which are seen as simply there for humanity to consume, manipulate and otherwise use up. Being in the Gestell has lost all meaning. In the scholastic phase of the history of being metaphysics is in full swing. It is also that period in the history of thought where the great debates over the nature of being were conducted. For the later Heidegger, this period is yet another in the oblivion of being: it is even further removed than was the later Greek period from the primordial essence of being as presencing. The middle age is the poor cousin of the age of Plato and Aristotle. The middle age is the ontotheological age. It is within the scholastic context that much of the debate concerning analogy, equivocity and univocity took place. That an age is dominated by a single principle of interpretation of being is the result, not of humanity’s decision, but of the play of the Ereignis. Now, Heidegger did learn something from the scholastic metaphysicians. I have shown how Heidegger’s relationship with a particular scholastic, Duns Scotus, turns upon the concepts of haecceitas and univocity. Scotus’s concept of haecceitas afforded Heidegger an early insight into the individuality of the individual. Heidegger’s motivation in his reading of Scotus was to retrieve a philosophy of radical singularity, expressed in the concept of ‘thisness’ that would later become facticity. Regarding the concept of univocity, to be sure, univocity has a different connotation for Scotus than it does in my interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of being and time. Univocity for Scotus was determined in an ontotheological context and provides for humanity’s natural knowledge of God, whereas for Heidegger, univocity speaks of the temporal nature of being’s occurrence as meaningful presence. Being is a temporal event and is never wholly present according to Heidegger. Scotus discusses univocity in order to answer a question regarding the adequacy of human language as a means of signifying God and His attributes. The notion of a fundamental transcendent metaphysical ground qua God is a central dimension of his thought. Univocity, for Heidegger, is bound up with the attempt to think being non-metaphysically without

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recourse to a transcendent metaphysical ground. To this extent, univocity is expressed very differently by these two thinkers. What is the case however is that there is a fundamental sense of being; opposition to nothingness in Scotus and meaningful presence in Heidegger and it is this that qualifies their respective philosophies in terms of univocity. Both employ a fundamental sense of being and it is just this employment of a fundamental sense of being that qualifies a thinker as a thinker of univocity. Heidegger came to regard Being and Time as a work of transition, still bound up with metaphysics. Part of this problem was couched in terms of a ‘failure of language’. In Being and Time and associated texts such as Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger still speaks the language of the tradition. He still employed words such as transcendental for example. As his thought progressed he came to see this as problematic on a fundamental level. In Being and Time he was aware of the problem that thought needed a new vocabulary, one that would enable the inquirer to get to the matters themselves without bringing the baggage of the tradition with them. In his later thought this took on an even greater urgency. This is evident in the shift away from talk of being to talk of Ereignis. Previously, this term had no philosophical significance whatsoever. Now it is the central term in Heidegger scholarship and the philosophy of the event is a determining feature of recent philosophy in Europe. The text where Heidegger attempts to respond to being in terms of the Ereignis has assumed a distinguished place as his most significant text after Being and Time. This is the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)] and is known by Heidegger scholars simply as ‘the Beiträge’. In this text much of his later thought takes shape. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, he attempts to prepare for an alternative to Western thought itself. One of the most recent texts of Heidegger’s to appear, Mindfullness, written in 1938–39, represents after the Beiträge, Heidegger’s second major ‘being-historical’ treatise.

The Medieval and the Modern The condition of modernity horrified Heidegger and the text of the Beiträge can be read as his response to it. For Heidegger, the modern condition can be characterized in terms of objectivism and subjectivism, known in the Contributions as machination and lived experience. Machination names the phenomenon Heidegger will later refer to as technology (Technik) or enframing (Ge-Stell). Machination is not simply

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human behaviour but rather ‘a mode of the essential sway of being’ itself. It is a revelation of beings as a whole as objects there to be exploited and manipulated. The world of machination is one of calculation. It is a world where quality is either reduced to or displaced in favour of quantity. It is the modern mathematized world. It is in this context that Heidegger speaks of the death of God and the flight of the Gods. The modern world has been abandoned by the sacred. In such a world, being has abandoned beings and humanity is no longer captivated by the fact that there is something rather than nothing. In this context, dif-ference itself has withdrawn and the world where being made a difference has vanished. In such a barren world human subjective life is dominated by lived experience (Erlebnis). This is not an existentially enriching kind of experience (Erfahrung) enjoyed by the few and the rare. It is rather experience understood as ‘superficial stimulus’ that leaves the subject wholly indifferent and unchanged. The modern condition of machination and lived experience is the modern productive world of human consumption, the world of mass production, of pre-packaged goods, of globalization, the Internet and human resources management. Machination and lived experience is the cultural logic of late Capitalism. The Beiträge and related texts constitute Heidegger’s reaction to this fact. But even more than that: Machination and lived-experience are formally [formelhaft] the more originary version of the formula for the guiding-question of Western thinking: beingness (being) and thinking (as re-presenting comprehending).12 The central notion at work in the Contributions is Ereignis. Thus: das Seyn west als das Ereignis; ‘being essentially unfolds as appropriation’. The meaningful relatedness of beings to our understanding and interest is determined by the historical event (Ereignis) which appropriates us and which we can appropriate and make our own during those rare moments constitutive of our historical dwelling. Such moments reveal our cultural logic to be what it is and allow us a fresh encounter with the mysterious fact that there is being. Historical civilizations are constituted by particular revelations of being (the truth of being) and involve a particular view of truth. Heidegger’s concern is with epochal shifts in the way historical humanity relates to itself, its world and to being. By using the word Ereignis Heidegger wants to suggest a sense of the word eigen (own). Eigen is not etymologically related to Ereignis but, by virtue of its sound, can function to bring a sense of Ereignis to presence. It

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is, however, the root of Eigenschaft (property), geeignet (appropriate) and eigentlich (authentic). This is why Ereignis is rendered the event of appropriation. Ereignis involves appropriating the historical event of being’s occurrence. The challenge of the Contributions is to think being historically, on its own terms. Metaphysics proceeds by thinking beings and has posed the guiding question of the beingness of beings. Scotus is a prime example of a metaphysician, determining, as he does, his concept of the univocity of being in abstract-general terms. The entire medieval approach to the question of God, abstracting from imperfect creatures to the perfect being, is paradigmatic ontotheology.13 God qua being, is only ever understood in terms of the beingness of beings and beingness is nothing less than a determination of being in terms of the general features of a class of beings. Metaphysics remains enthralled by beings and never reaches the event of appropriation. This is precisely the problem with the philosophy of analogy: It seems to be a law of machination, whose ground is not yet established, that the more powerfully it unfolds – for example in the Middle Ages and in modernity – the more stubbornly and more machinatingly it hides itself as such, hiding behind ordo and the analogia entis in the Middle Ages and behind objectness and objectivity in modernity, as basic forms of actuality and thus of beingness.14 The trouble with analogy is that it is bound up with what becomes the technological way of revealing being. Further to this, analogia entis determines being by analogy to a particular being or class of beings. Such a method can never get beyond beingness. The trouble with analogy is that it is bound up with ontotheology. Analogy, as a metaphysical doctrine, further prepares the way for the modern revelation of being and, from a Heideggerian point of view, constitutes another stage in the continued falling away from the primordial Greek experience of being. Analogy is part of the calcified tradition of metaphysics. Machination is part of the unfolding history of being and analogy is a problem precisely because it is the surface manifestation of the deeper tendency to submit being to human control. The dispensation of being which dominates in the present age is technology/machination (Gestell). Technology, the way being happens in the present age, is as a challenge to historical humanity to master the earth. Historical humanity qua technological takes up this challenge in its technological-calculative response to beings as it subordinates

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them to its planning. Gestell implies that the world is there for humanity in the way that the contents of a warehouse are there for the owner of a construction business. Beings are the stockpile of human machination. The understanding of analogy that Heidegger is laying out represents the dark side of his engagement with and deep understanding of medieval thought. Analogy is the crystallization of the understanding of being in medieval life. Here it becomes seen as part of a tendency to submit the world to the domination and control of historical humanity. Analogy is the way being comes to pass in the middle ages. It is bound up with the accumulating pervasion of thought by metaphysical representation, and the control spoken of does not stop at the human. To the medieval mind, the idea that humanity was the sole master of its own destiny was quite alien. The world was, in a sense, there for it, but only in the way a croft is there for a crofter: God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’.15 The world and all therein is the gift of God. The medieval experience of the world and the philosophy of analogy testify to depths of the Western Christian experience of life. Nowhere more than in the middle ages is this so clear. What happened in the middle ages was that the realm of beings were opened up in the sense of being God’s creation. What comes to pass in the middle ages with the philosophy of analogy is part of the unfolding drama of being’s historical occurrence in the West. Continuously, it was the medieval experience and expression of being that was transformed in and through the advent of modernity. There, beings became mere objects which could be controlled and calculated by human beings. Each transformation of being is an event from which a new world arises. Although belonging to different civilizations, the medieval and modern way of revealing being is continuous. They represent stages on the way of the growing dominion of machination and the challenge to subdue the standing reserve of beings is deeply ingrained in Western self-understanding and experience. To be sure, Heidegger would not have us refer to a ‘medieval world picture’ or ‘ancient world picture’. The kind of subjective relativism involved in such a notion is alien to his thought. The very idea of subjective ‘pictures’ of the world belongs to the modern machinating way of relating to what is. As he argues in ‘The Age of the World Picture’, expressions such

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as ‘the modern world view’ presuppose something impossible: namely, an ancient and a medieval world picture. From Heidegger’s point of view it makes no sense to speak of the ‘world picture’ changing from the medieval to the modern. Rather, modernity is itself distinguished by the fact that here and now the world is revealed as something that could be ‘pictured’. With this the technological relativistic subjectivity of the modern age (der Neuzeit) is complete. Such subjective ‘consumer conscience’ characteristic of the present age has absolutely no place in medieval thought. The modern is distinguished by the fact that the meaningfulness of the world has been sufficiently reduced to the extent that it can be held up as something pictured by modern humanity. The proliferation of subjective pictures of the world is indicative of the fact that being counts for nothing in the modern age. As the mature Heidegger understands the situation of the middle ages, things were very different: For the Middle Ages . . . that which is, is the ens creatum, that which is created by the personal Creator-God as the highest cause. Here, to be in being means to belong within a specific rank of the order of what has been created – a rank appointed from the beginning – and as thus caused, to correspond to the cause of creation (analogia entis).16 Here analogy is clearly linked by Heidegger to the fundamental experience of the world in the middle ages and to the intrinsically hierarchical thinking of ontotheology. This is a significant point of continuity with his earlier engagement with analogy. Heidegger always linked analogy to the medieval experience of life. From this later point of view, analogical thinking is still seen as central to metaphysics but it has no place in the new thinking (or ‘other beginning’) Heidegger intends to intimate. This can be clearly seen in the appendices to Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, the text of a lecture course Heidegger gave in 1936 while he was working on the text of the Contributions. In this text the origin of analogy is held to lie in the project of subordinating beings to their beingness. Beingness emerges as the most universal and highest cause of beings, under which they are all subsumed. With this in view, analogy is appealed to as an explanation of the multiplicity of beings. However, as Heidegger reads it, the problem with this is that it is vacuous. The apparatus of scholastic thought (metaphysica generalis coupled with metaphysica specialis and culminating in theologia rationalis) is now understood to be ‘the doctrinaire reflection of the uncomprehended truth

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of beings which was absolutely founded by Plato as Idealism (understood metaphysically)’.17 This is consistent with the view Heidegger has expressed elsewhere about the nature of scholastic thought generally and particularly of its medieval expression. The early Greek expression of physis and aletheia exceeds metaphysical speculation and renders the first beginning unthinkable by metaphysics. Heidegger argues that the first beginning can only ever be misunderstood by the metaphysician and that the last of these misunderstandings was initiated by Nietzsche. Questioning into the nature of the first beginning together with abiding in Ereignis overcomes all the questions of metaphysics which arise from analogy. Such a move, which Heidegger believes his thought has made, questions the difference as difference and intimates the other beginning. In this connection he announces: Analogy belongs to metaphysics, in the double sense: 1. That beings themselves ‘co-respond’ to the highest being. 2. That one thinks and explains with regard to correspondences, similarities, universals. Where, on the other hand, one thinks in terms of Being itself, ‘analogy’ no longer has any basis.18 The link here between analogy and metaphysics is just as unmistakable as the redundancy of analogy to the thought of what is called by the name ‘being’. And that is, thought of Ereignis. The history of being thus runs from Greece to the middle ages to modernity and planetary technology. Metaphysics as ontotheology arises with Platonic Idealism and in all its forms cannot think the event of appropriation. In metaphysics, aletheia is displaced in favour of representational thought. The essence of truth as unconcealment has been displaced in favour of intellectual correspondence with the Ideas. Ontotheology is bound up with an ontical hierarchical thinking that in no way leads back to the source, Ereignis. Being is in oblivion and analogical-hierarchical thinking reigns. The middle ages represent a further stage in this metaphysical oblivion of being. Partly responsible for the character of medieval thought was the predominance of the thought of Plato and Aristotle. Recourse to them however, only manages to miss the magnificence and significance of their predecessors. Given his mature position Heidegger is scornful of the fact that Platonic and Aristotelian thought has been, both in the middle ages and now, seen as synonymous with Greek thought in toto. In his view it is sadly telling of the condition of the interpretation of Greek philosophy that all pre-Socratic thought has been and continues to be interpreted as

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mere preparation for Plato. Conceived in these terms, so Heidegger holds, early Greek thought remains denied to us in its true light as the thought of being.

A History of the Modern: Subjectivity In the Contributions and elsewhere, Heidegger is preparing for the other beginning of Western history. The Greek first beginning is studied in order to prepare the way for this other beginning which will occur at some indeterminate future. Preparing for it makes our understanding of the Greek first beginning possible: the other beginning is brought about by the ones to come, thinkers and poets, who leap forth into the Ereignis or truth of being. The other beginning does not begin from nothing, just as the first beginning did not. The first beginning begins with the creative overcoming of myth. Essentially, this is the acknowledgement of the mystery of being together with the refusal to reduce the fact that there is being (that there is something rather than nothing) to some particular narrative, mythical or otherwise. True thinking, on Heidegger’s view, involves the renunciation of such stories and the retrieval of receptive openness to the mystery. The epochs of the history of being do not correspond to the standard categories of narrative history. The Greek word epoché meant withdrawal and as such, a historical epoch is a particular episode in the withdrawal of being. The modern world begins with the advent of subjectivity. This occurs with Galileo and Newton. When Galileo intimates what Newton will call the principle of inertia he employs the words, mente concipio, ‘conceive in my mind’. With this, the emphasis in the adequation of mind and thing is placed on the mind. This is the beginning of what Descartes calls mathe-sis: mathe-sis is that project whereby the cogito realizes itself and acquires its position of mastery. For Descartes, the cogito does ultimately depend upon God but, the cogito itself is the basis upon which the beingness of beings is revealed. In the epoch of Cartesian philosophy, beingness is objectivity. With the cogito the established rule is subjectivity. Whereas in Greek the word for basis is hupokeimenon, in Latin it is subjectum. The relation of subject–object entails the submission of the thing/being/entity to the rule of the human cogito. This is the origin of modern calculative reckoning and evaluation. The modern epoch is born into the world and its screams are those of domination. It is the birth of mathe-sis universalis. Beings are at

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once subjectivized and objectivized: they are referred to the cogito as master and objectivized as governable and calculable. The birth of modernity is the birth of mechanized naturae. Nature is no longer physis and truth no longer aletheia. From Descartes to Nietzsche there is essentially a continuity. Nietzsche is the last great thinker of the West. Western thinker means metaphysician. Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, was simply the philosopher who brought metaphysics and modern subjectivity to its ontotheological apotheosis. Nietzsche, like all metaphysicians, speaks the language of Plato. In modernity, the subject displaces God. The will-to-power is read ontologically as the beingness of beings, the eternal return is read theologically as the ground of beings and beingness. Will-to-power and eternal return repeat essentia and existentia, the ‘what’ and the ‘that’ of beings. The essence of every being is will-to-power and their existence is to eternally recur. The subjectivation and objectivation bound up with mathe-sis reach their limit with Nietzsche: the will treats every being as an object (Gegenstand) and simultaneously compels it to be available for manipulation. Further, all beings are reduced to the value that they have for the self-aggrandizing value-bestowing will. The world is demythologized in favour of a world there to be used up and manipulated in the service of modern humanity’s calculating rationality. The eternal return is nothing more than endless repetitive machination. This is the essence of modern technology. With the thought of the will-to-power and eternal return the wonder experienced by the early Greeks at the intrinsically ambiguous and mysterious event of being’s revelation has been decisively lost. From this perspective, Heidegger’s evaluation of the fundamental ontology of Being and Time is that, despite his intentions at the time, it runs the risk of reinforcing nihilistic subjectivity. In machinating technological modernity being counts for nothing and nihilism prevails: modern technology is the summation of the oblivion of being, which is the culmination of that Platonic way of thinking – metaphysics.

Chapter 6

Univocity and the Problem of History

History and Civilization In his Contributions to Philosophy Heidegger wants to provoke humanity into being ‘Dasein’. Being Dasein is now conceived as the historical possibility of being ‘the there’, the historically situated site, for the revelation of meaningful presence or being. Being Dasein entails being the grounder and preserver of the truth of being. The truth of being – what it means for anything to be in a particular epoch, the meaning of being – needs to be sheltered in beings. When beings are approached with a sensitivity to their meaningful presence, they indicate or intimate the meaning of being of their age; by so doing they shelter the truth of being. The notion of Ereignis signals that being is a historical event that involves owning or appropriation. Being, the meaningful relatedness things can have for individuals and communities is essentially bound by time. Being is historical and understanding the history of being provides for the understanding of all history: being’s history is the history of the way in which how things matter for Dasein is transformed through the unfolding of Western history. History (Geschichte) is itself an event in which the fate and destiny of humanity is in question. The fate and destiny of the West is bound up with the way in which being is sent (geschickt) to historical human beings. Such is Heidegger’s position. In this chapter, in addition to discussing the fate of the univocity of being in Heidegger’s thought, I will put forward a reading of the key themes in his mature position and show how these could be used in the service of a novel historiography. ‘Being’ takes on the meaning of ‘history’ in Heidegger’s mature texts and understanding the history of being provides for the understanding of all human history. Reading this claim historiographically, if it is possible to understand the historical unfolding of the way in which things can be meaningfully present to historical humanity, then this provides the key to the creation of a series of interrelated narratives that present human history

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from the side of meaningful presence. That is, human history and possibly pre-history, could be written from the point of view of an understanding of how the changes in the meaningful presence of things provides for narrative self-interpretation on the part of individuals and groups. Such a project would maintain the structures of practical agency in its relation to meaningful presence at the formal ontological level while recognizing the possibility of diverse manifestations of practical agency and novel cultural configurations of meaning and circuits of interpretation on the other. It is precisely these novel configurations of meaning that can be interpreted with reference to the general ontological structure underlying them. Such a project would draw on aspects from both early and later Heidegger but would give up Heidegger’s later eschatology. Humanity is ‘thrown’ into history and the prevailing meaning of being of an age is ‘thrown’ to historical humanity. From Heidegger’s point of view, historical humanity’s task is to ‘catch’ what is thrown to it, care for and preserve it and ultimately cast it towards its future unfolding. This dimension of Heidegger’s thought links up with broader concerns in 20th century thought and culture more generally. When historical humans are charged with the ‘care of’ and ‘preservation of’ the prevailing way in which what is meaningfully present for them is meaningfully present, then Heidegger’s view tends towards philosophical and cultural traditionalism and conservatism. This is opposed to a philosophical and cultural view that emphasizes innovation and revolution. These themes are related to themes such as authority versus individualism and universalism versus relativism that also play themselves out in the 20th century. A thinker on the side of innovation and revolution would perhaps regard historical humanity’s task as one of ‘thinking differently’. Recall my characterization of European thought in my Introduction. In the spirit of thinking differently, after catching what is thrown to it, the historical human’s job is to innovate and challenge rather than conservatively conserve. As I argued in my Introduction, this tension is reflected in the history of European thought itself. Much European philosophy challenges the historical human agent to think differently and many European philosophers attempt to forge a novel reaction to a perceived crisis in philosophy. For the reasons just mentioned, it is possible to read Heidegger’s thought conservatively and to see him on the side of conservative preservation of past meanings of being. However, there is also in his thought the tendency to read the history of being eschatologically and prepare for a radical and transforming revelation of being. At this level he can be read as imploring historical humans to prepare for the possibility of ‘thinking differently’. If

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this is so then a question will immediately follow: when should we begin to think differently? It is not clear that Heidegger answers this question. If his eschatology of being is abandoned then this releases historical humans from the task of ‘awaiting’ the transforming event. There is not a transforming event ‘to come’ at some undisclosed futural point; a transforming event can overtake humanity at any time. Historical humans are always free to creatively appropriate the way in which things can be meaningfully there for them and innovation can always follow from this. As historical, humanity always inherits a meaning for being. Participation in the event of being (Ereignis) is what makes historical human beings ‘the there’ of being. It is this that makes them Dasein. Dasein is the thrown thrower: What is meant is always merely the projecting-open of the truth of being. The thrower itself, Da-sein, is thrown, en-owned by be-ing.1 Heidegger is keen to emphasize that the prevailing meaning of being which is thrown to historical humanity belongs to it as the destiny of its community. Humanity belongs to being and being belongs to humanity. Appropriation is mutual. Humans are appropriated by being and turned into Dasein. Being appropriated by being, by meaningful presence, is what differentiates humans from animals and things. Dasein appropriates being. The event of being is bound to a particular site or place where a historical people dwell. The advent of a new way of dwelling by virtue of a new dispensation of being can be traumatic for a historical people. Their task, as Dasein, is to remain steadfast (inständig) in the site cleared in the revelation of being and to cast or throw it forward towards the unfolding of the meaning of being in the future. Historical humanity cannot become complacent and closed off to new possibilities of being or dwelling. They must be attentive to the limits of their civilization. The terminology employed by Heidegger here is deliberately ‘destinal’. That is, he is trying to provoke a reaction on the part of human beings in the service of being. He is trying to remind humanity that it is their destiny to be ‘the there’ for the revelation of being. From his point of view, a civilization is established when a meaning of being particular to it is achieved. Such a meaning of being enshrines the ultimate values inherent in that community’s self-relation and relation to beings. A civilization may be founded through religious, poetic, philosophical or political activity. Civilizations stagnate when they no longer attend to their meaning of being. In such times, the meaning of being particular for that community

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becomes self-evident and no longer worthy of question. As such, the specific historicity of their meaning of being and situation lose their vitality as historical. When a community’s cultural know-how, enshrined in its meaning of being, becomes taken as self-evident and eternally true, as just ‘the case’, then, as Polt reminds us, that community has lost touch with its specific nature as historical and has fallen prey to the delusive de-historicizing of philosophical Egyptianism. Egyptianism is the pernicious tendency of philosophers to de-historicize what they deal with. As Nietzsche complains of philosophers idiosyncrasies: There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred of even the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing honour when they dehistoricise it, sub specie aeterni (from the viewpoint of eternity) – when they make a mummy of it. All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped . . . their hands alive. They kill, they stuff, when they worship, these conceptual idolaters – they become a mortal danger to everything when they worship.2 Entire civilizations can fall prey to this pernicious tendency but in philosophy proper, metaphysics and metaphysicians have erred precisely because they de-historicized being. Ontotheology is Egyptianism. However, what is at issue here is that pernicious tendency of historical civilizations to forget that they are historical. Heidegger holds that the historical humans constitutive of such a civilization have forgotten that their task is to remember being and cast it forward to its future unfolding. This means, since such humans now take for granted the manifold way in which things can be meaningfully present for them, they have forgotten that this way of being is a historically contingent circuit of meaning. From a non-Heideggerian point of view, it should be noted that there is a conservative tinge to some of this. In effect, Heidegger believes that the totality of historical humans constitutive of a community should engage in activities that preserve the culturally enshrined practices and values constitutive of that group. In addition, he seriously entertains the idea that the particular way in which things can be meaningfully present for a group can be subsumed under the larger destiny of being as it eschatologically unfolds as Western history. Heidegger is waiting for the advent of an other beginning of non-metaphysical thought that can only come to be at the end of philosophy. Reading his thought in terms of its inherent possibilities as

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an approach to history (and anthropology, although, to be sure, Heidegger is not a philosophical anthropologist: his motivation was the question of the meaning of being) is based on a rejection of Heidegger’s conservatism. This amounts to rejecting destinal thinking. Nevertheless, what can be learned from Heidegger is that, by paying attention to the events which enshrine the way in which things can be meaningfully present for members of a group, together with a view of the structure of practical agency that is constitutive of the members of that group, the means of writing a novel account of their historical form of life is achieved.

Art and History In the addendum to his ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ Heidegger tells us that art belongs to appropriation. Art is not simply taken subjectively as ‘cultural achievement’ or in quasi-Hegelian terms as appearance of ‘spirit’. Not at all for Heidegger, art itself belongs to the disclosure of appropriation. By way of such disclosure, what Heidegger called the meaning of being in Being and Time, can be determined. This essay was originally written in 1936, during the time that Heidegger was writing the Contributions, and belongs squarely within this later perspective. The text itself, much expanded, was finally published in 1950. The fundamental division that operates in Heidegger’s essay is between particular works of art, such as ‘this painting’ or ‘this poem’, and art itself. Art itself is the essence and origin of all particular works of art. Heidegger sets out to show that art itself is a particular form of disclosure (aletheia), his central topic. The result of disclosure is that what is disclosed emerges as ‘what it is’, in its being. This happens in all events of disclosure. Now, Heidegger holds that there is a further kind of disclosure that is the event of the ‘disclosure of disclosure’. In this event, not only the particular disclosed being is made present but also the event of the disclosure of the being of that particular being. At this formal level Heidegger’s philosophy of being can be understood in terms of univocity. Although the meaningful presence of particular beings may be different in different epochs, nonetheless, as an event of the revelation of the meaningful presence of what is meaningfully present, of the disclosure of disclosure, univocity is at work. Formally, being remains meaningful presence. On the one hand, there are the formal temporal dynamic structures that Heidegger outlines and, on the other hand, the actual meaning of things in any given

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epoch. Extraordinary disclosive events allow the very fact of disclosure of the being of beings to be attended to and agents in different epochs can attend to the very meaningfulness of beings; they can be sensitive to the disclosure of the being of a being and they can wonder about the meaningfulness of things. That such wonder is possible is due to the fundamental structures underlying the diverse manifestations of the meaningfulness of beings and of the particular understanding of the nature of human being in any epoch. In such events, the disclosure of the meaningful presence of a being ‘is established’ (sich einricht) in that being and can be seen there. Thomas Sheehan lists Heidegger’s five examples of extraordinary disclosure as follows: there is the founding of a nation state, the nearness of God, sacrificing your life for another’s, the thinker’s questioning activity which reveals that being can be questioned and the ‘installation’ (Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen) of disclosure which happens in the work of art.3 The extent to which this list is intended to be comprehensive is unclear. Nonetheless, art belongs to that extraordinary group of acts/events that disclose not only the being of a being, but also the very disclosure of the being of the being. Art itself ‘installs’ disclosure in particular art works. Works of art are disclosive of disclosure; they allow the granting of meaningful presence itself to come to presence. Significantly, art for Heidegger was historical humanity’s best hope of counteracting the holding sway of technology. He indicates this in connection with his intimation of the ‘saving power’ in his ‘The Question concerning Technology’. Art also has a political role to play. Viewing art as simply cultural achievement is too subjectivistic for Heidegger. To view it in that way presupposes the existence of civilizations and completely passes over art’s function in the founding of civilizations. In a sense art is history for Heidegger, in that it ‘grounds history’. Art allows for the origination of truth, it is the origin of ‘creators’ and ‘preservers’ and this amounts to it being a people’s historical existence. Art is essentially an origin: art lets truth come into being and become historical. A great art work is an event that transforms the world of a historical people. Great works of art enshrine the meaning of being which is constitutive of a community. Such a work has a focal function in that it can focus and direct the lives of individuals in the community. Great works of art, including great works of architecture such as the Greek temple or the Gothic Cathedral, serve as examples of what Dreyfus has called cultural paradigms.4 Cultural paradigms inaugurate the history of a community. They define and determine how beings can show up as meaningful for a historical community. It is worth quoting Heidegger at length here to let

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him speak for himself. In this passage from his ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ much of his later position is revealed. With regard to the temple, he says: Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of that rock’s clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence . . . Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter . . . Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation. In the things that arise, earth is present as the sheltering agent. The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground . . . The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves.5 Such a work of architecture opens the clearing in which beings become accessible and intelligible in their being. In just this way, the work of art realizes the meaning of being constitutive of a given civilization. The focal function of the work of art is analogous to the focal function of a particular being in the philosophy of analogy. The existential orientation of individuals in such communities can be determined by a discrete analogy to the focal function of the work of art. In realizing the meaning of being for a civilization the work of art gathers together the interpretive network in terms of which all beings are what they are. Dasein and the entire network of the ready-to-hand acquire their meaning and so being in terms of this contextual circuit focused on the orienting work of art or cultural paradigm. This is analogical philosophy writ large. From the point of view of an approach to writing history and anthropology, these cultural paradigms form the basis for interpretation. If it is possible to give a reading of these works in terms of the way in which they, as events, establish a historical network of meaning or the meaning of being constitutive of an age, then it is possible to read historically the meaning of being. Heidegger has already said that it is possible to read what comes down as the being of beings in the texts of the history of philosophy. The

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approach to the cultural paradigm that I am proposing entails a similar move on the part of world history and for that matter, pre-history. Abandoning any claim to an overarching metanarrative of the destiny of being, the archaeologist, in a special sense of that term, can attempt to ‘read’ what comes down to them as the meaning of being constitutive of an (past) age. Such a method is of particular interest and significance for those attempting to hermeneutically reconstruct the world of non-literate peoples, where the only ‘texts’ that can be consulted as to the meaning of being particular to their age is their material culture. Only partly for this reason, my approach can be called archaeological hermeneutics. Employing the term archaeology to characterize this approach places my view in an essential relation to recent European thought. As Lawlor has pointed out, the term archaeology ‘belongs’ to Michel Foucault.6 The term archaeology had currency among thinkers such as Husserl, who in a late piece intimated what he called a ‘phenomenological archaeology’ and Merleau-Ponty, who, late in his career, described his own thought as an archaeology. While we cannot stage an Auseinandersetzung or ‘critical encounter’ between Heidegger and Foucault here it is worth noting, as Milchman and Rosenberg do, that such an encounter is required.7 In this regard, texts such as Foucault’s ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge would be required reading. It may be that the term archaeology could represent something of a bridge between French and German phenomenology and Foucault’s post-structuralism. As Gary Gutting understands it, Foucault’s archaeology attempts to transcend the conscious life of individual subjects: that is, the level of concepts, methods and theories in favour of the depth dimension of the ‘epistemic unconscious’. This epistemic unconscious is beneath the conscious life of the subject and it makes possible any individual’s knowledge. On this reading, Foucault’s archaeology is similar to logic and grammar due to its discovery of the rules that individuals might not be aware of but that govern their discursive behaviour. While grammar discovers/uncovers the rules governing meaningfulness and logic discovers/uncovers the rules governing consistency, the ‘archaeology of knowledge’ discovers/uncovers the rules limiting the range of permissible statements for a particular general epistemic structure or epistemé. Each epistemé is a general archaeological framework. Now, Gutting reminds us that while Foucault may sometimes employ Kantian language to describe his archaeology, in that it uncovered the ‘conditions of possibility’ for thought in any period, his view is very different from Kantian transcendental philosophy. That is, whereas Kant

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claimed to have discovered universal and necessary conditions of possibility for all possible experience Foucault only claims to have uncovered contingent conditions that depend upon their particular historical situation and so can vary over time and domain of knowledge. Archaeology reveals only relative ‘historical a prioris’. Foucault’s method, so Gutting argues, does not attempt to find ‘truths’ transcending those discoverable in empirical historiography. It is also worth noting, as Gutting does, that Foucault’s history is not hermeneutic in the sense that it does not attempt to discover the ‘deeper meaning’ of ‘finds’ or ‘artefacts’, such as any particular philosophical text, for example, Kant’s Critique or Spinoza’s Ethics. Rather, such finds are treated as indicative of the structure within which they were produced. The method that I am suggesting here remains hermeneutic in the qualified sense that the issue of meaning, with reference to the Heideggerian problematic, is still an issue. But before giving a concrete example of this method I should return to Heidegger’s text.

Fractured History Heidegger sought to overcome metaphysics and prepare for the other beginning of Western history. This other beginning is conceived by him to be the advent of a neo-Greek form of non-metaphysical thought which attends to Ereignis. It is within this context that he understands human beings as ‘called’ to respond to the gift of being’s presencing. Human beings are seen as preservers of the truth of being. The truth of being is what for the most part remains concealed but nonetheless constitutes the meaning and ground of that which initially shows itself, namely beings. It is Heidegger’s view that historical civilizations are constituted by particular revelations of being. In contradistinction from the technological oblivion of being or nihilism of the present age and in order to prepare for the other beginning we preservers of the truth of being should pay heed to the thought of the early Greek thinkers. This is so because in the fragments that remain of their texts these thinkers managed to intimate the event of appropriation. And since being is inherently eschatological, then: If we think within the eschatology of Being, then we must someday anticipate the former dawn in the dawn to come; today we must learn to ponder this former dawn through what is imminent.8

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In such eschatological thinking we preservers of the truth of being can discern a hint of what is to come in the other beginning in what came to pass in the first beginning. Such a thought will attempt to bring the granting of being to language in a meditative poetic thinking that has left metaphysics to itself. Thinkers in the other beginning meditate the mystery of being without why. In service of a novel approach to world history, what I have called archaeological hermeneutics, a substantial portion of the Heideggerian problematic must be qualified and parts of it rejected, particularly, his eschatology of being. The grand meta-narrative that Heidegger constructs of the oblivion of being that begins with Plato and Aristotle and ends in modern technology shall be put in parenthesis. I am not abandoning every aspect of Heidegger’s analysis of particular epochs but I am abandoning the subordination of each epoch to an overarching destiny of being. For this, I would substitute a fractured history of disparate and dispersed noncontemporaneous communities interacting and colliding throughout their epochal co-determination. I reject Heidegger’s notion of a destiny of the West to which historical humanity as a whole could be subordinated. Even if there were such a destiny, it would not be clear that subordination to it would be desirable or even possible. My view might also be called a ‘discontinuity thesis’ since I have abandoned the subordination of historical communities to an overall destiny. Epochs, while they may ‘follow’ each other in sequence, can be discontinuous with each other. Such a discontinuity thesis emphasizes the innovative side in the debate over innovation versus traditionalism that I have already mentioned. Discontinuity is in line with the view that humans can ‘think differently’ and break with the past. Such a discontinuity view can be elaborated in relation to thinkers such as Foucault, who held a discontinuity thesis, and to thinkers such as Bachelard and Canguilhem. Bachelard developed a notion of ‘epistemological break’ (coupure epistémologique) and emphasized the notion of discontinuity in scientific development. Gutting has argued that Foucault’s historical work can be read as an extension to the social sciences of the kind of enquiry carried out by Bachelard regarding the physical ones and by Canguilhem regarding the biological sciences. On Gutting’s reading, Foucault took many of Bachelard’s and Canguilhem’s claims about science for granted, particularly over science’s essentially historical nature and over the central and determining role of epistemological breaks. Recently, O’Farrell has argued that the ‘principle of discontinuity’ is one of the central notions at work in Foucault’s approach to history and further that this principle is never abandoned in his work.

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The general parameters of this European debate connect with a debate in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy that surrounds the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and issues such as paradigm shift, conceptual scheme, commensurability and incommensurability. Particularly, the term incommensurability was adopted by Kuhn (and Feyerabend) in connection with the view that successive scientific theories tend to be incommensurable with each other since there is no neutral way to compare their virtues. Also, Kuhn implied that what counts as evidence in any domain may depend upon the background paradigm that provides for the scientists’ general orientation in the first place. In this regard, Dreyfus has noted the connection between Heidegger and Kuhn. He goes so far as to say that ‘Kuhn is quite Heideggerian in holding that it is the paradigm that guides the scientists’ practices and that the paradigm cannot be explained as a set of beliefs or values and so cannot be stated as a criterion or rule’.9 An investigation of the issues surrounding the discontinuity thesis in relation to the debate over incommensurability and paradigms is necessary. While this debate cannot be investigated in detail here it is worth noting this philosophical connection. The purpose of reading Heidegger in service of a discontinuous, fragmented or fractured historiography is to salvage what can be salvaged from his thought and to put it to work in an archaeological hermeneutics that ‘unearths’ past meanings of being particular to a given community. Since meaning is in question, this archaeology remains hermeneutic. I want to suggest that such a fractured history can replace destinal history. My historiography refuses the three Heideggerian myths that have been identified by Caputo. First, the geophilosophical myth Heidegger constructs of being’s history. This history begins in Greece and ends in Germany, with Heidegger’s thought. Second, a totalizing myth of being’s own destiny. And third, the eschatological myth of an other beginning of Western thought and history. My method of fractured history rejects these myths together with many of Heidegger’s late preoccupations. But, there remains a significant portion of his thought which can be taken up and put to use on my terms.10 I shall begin in this regard with Heidegger’s essay on art. The concept of ‘earth’ introduced in The Origin of the Work of Art complements the notion of world (context of significance). Earth, which was once conceived as physis, is the mysterious source from which beings arise. Following Richard Polt, reading world as culture (a context of significance which enables the self-understanding and contextual/environmental understanding of a community) earth can be read as nature (the autonomous pre-cultural

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ground for culture which tends to resist the cultural impulse). Earth is the autonomous power of nature/physis which is beyond humanity’s control. Between the two, world and earth (culture and nature) there is strife: World and earth are essentially different from one another and yet are never separated . . . The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to surmount it . . . The earth, however, as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it there. The opposition of world and earth is a striving.11 Great works of art such as the Greek temple or Gothic cathedral, to name but two candidates for the title ‘great work of art’, embody the strife between world and earth. They do so by ‘setting up’ a world and ‘setting forth’ the earth. The artwork establishes a historical world and at the same time allows the earth to come to presence as something that resists the will of human beings, collective or otherwise. Earth, by remaining concealed, discloses the limits of historical humanity’s dominating understanding. The further case of nihilistic cultural paradigms, such as the power station or gas works, are those which overstate humanity’s ability to master the earth. From an evaluative standpoint, such nihilistic paradigms are characteristic of communities which are caught up in the tide of Egyptianism: such communities are now so confident in their way of understanding being that even the most capricious forces – here coming under the title of the ‘earth’ – at work in nature are allowed to manifest as something that is in principle controllable and subject to our will. From a Heideggerian point of view, this manner of relating to ‘what is’ is characteristic of modern technology. Clearly, there is an evaluative mechanism at work in Heidegger’s text here. Cultural paradigms such as the Temple of Apollo at Bassae and the Gothic cathedral at Chartres define the way in which things can be meaningfully present for members of their attendant communities. In their focal function, these monuments set out the tasks implicit in being a member of that community. The work of art provides a narrative schema that enables individuals to incorporate their own life stories into the larger narrative of their community as it unfolds historically. In anticipating the future achievement of their history, communities gain insight into what should be preserved from their past, as Dasein by choosing its hero, identifies what possibilities of being it will retrieve as an example to live by from the multitude of possible self-interpretations it has at its disposal. The past is monumental in just this evaluative manner. By maintaining such a monumentalized

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conception of the past, a standpoint for the critique of the present is achieved. An account of the past that is both monumental and ‘antiquarian’ is at once a critique of the present. The terminology that Heidegger is employing here in Being and Time is borrowed from Nietzsche and the use he puts it to does not depart significantly from his predecessor. Such an evaluative standpoint for a critique of the present is achieved by way of a monumentalized conception of the past. Great works define the meaning of being for an epoch. The great work of art shelters the truth of being constitutive of an age and all art is essentially poetry: Art . . . is the becoming and happening of truth . . . Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry.12 The poetic status of art must be construed in the broadest of terms. The Greek temple or the Gothic cathedral has a poetic status in Heidegger’s sense since it composes the meaning of being for a particular historical people. Let me take the Gothic cathedral as a concrete example to apply my archaeological hermeneutic method to. The point of doing so is to ‘unearth’ the meaning of being of the Gothic age as it is materially enshrined in the work of architecture. The Gothic style of cathedral, such as the one at Chartres (begun in the 1140s), was the dominant style of cathedral in Europe from the middle of the 12th century until the early 14th. Without exception, a city’s cathedral was its largest building, enabling it to be seen clearly on the horizon from all around the surrounding area and so as one approached the city. The faithful, when in the nave and facing the main altar, are facing Jerusalem. A nave is intersected by a transept, so that the cruciform floor plan dominant in Christian architecture is achieved. As I have argued, it is Heidegger’s view that the conceptually rich and abstract philosophies of the middle age express the ‘form of life’ of the medieval agent. In this context, Heidegger says in the Scotus Book that while the concept of analogy may first appear to be a ‘faded’ and meaningless schoolbook concept, nevertheless: as the dominant principle in the categorial sphere of sensible and supersensible reality, it contains the conceptual expression of the qualitatively filled and value-laden experiential world of medieval man that is related to transcendence. It is the conceptual expression of the particular form

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of inner Dasein that is anchored in a primordial, transcendent relation of the soul to God and lived precisely in the Middle Ages with an unusual reserve.13 The analogy of being, most associated in the middle ages with St Thomas Aquinas, is the conceptual crystallization of the relation of the soul to God characteristic of medieval Christian life. Analogy is the crystallization of the understanding of being in medieval life and it gave to the medieval agent a sense of their metaphysical place in the order of things. To this extent, Scotus’s point that univocity is on the side of logic and not metaphysics is placed in context: univocity might obtain in logic, but metaphysical reality is analogical. To the medieval mind, the idea that humanity was sole master of its destiny was alien. The world was there for it, but only by virtue of the Divine will. The world and all therein is the gift of God and is ordered according to His will. The medieval experience of the world and the philosophy of analogy testify to depths of the Western Christian experience of life. And nowhere else than in the middle ages was this experience of life lived more fully. In the Scotus Book and elsewhere, Heidegger clearly links analogy to the fundamental experience of the world and to the intrinsically hierarchical thinking of ontotheology. In my chosen example of the medieval cathedral, the distinct vertical lines that abound in Gothic architecture are possessed of the spiritual function of drawing the spectator’s spirit heavenward towards God and relate squarely with the vertical thinking of St Thomas Aquinas and others. In this sense, the Gothic cathedral materially enacts the transcendent relation of the soul to God as it is crystallized in the philosophy of analogy and in so doing the meaning of being constitutive of the middle ages is set in stone. Ultimately, Heidegger holds that what comes to pass in the middle ages with the philosophy of analogy is subordinated to the unfolding drama of being’s historical occurrence in the West. The middle age itself is subordinated to the destiny of the West that I would rather reject. However, rejecting this subordination to a destinal metanarrative does not entail abandoning the substantive interpretation of the medieval meaning of being given by Heidegger and developed here. What I would rather reject is Heidegger’s claim that the meaning of being can be subsumed under an all-embracing European destiny. Rejecting this metanarrative does not entail rejecting the view that Chartres cathedral, like the many other Gothic cathedrals spread throughout Europe, enshrine the medieval experience of being in stone, crystallizing as they do, the transcendent

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relation of the soul to God as it is expressed in medieval philosophical theology. All art has this poetic function whereby it composes the meaning of being characteristic of an age. Also, poetry less broadly conceived as linguistic art, has priority for Heidegger among the arts generally. This is so because poetry draws on and has a special relationship with the folkloric and ritualistic practices of a historical community. Poetry originates in the ‘speech’ of a group and transforms the ‘saying’ of the people ‘so that every word puts up for decision what is holy and what unholy’.14 The background saying (Sagen) of a people includes their proverbs, anecdotes, oral traditions, customs, rituals and festivals. Poetry has a deep connection with the form of life of a historical culture. Texts like Homer’s or Hesiod’s embody and realize the mythic structures representative of a historical community’s form of life. As Heidegger would put it, the work of art defines the task of the future preservers of the truth of being representative of their world and this truth of being is realized in the work. Precisely because great works of art put up for decision the ultimate values of a community (what is holy and what unholy) they have a role in the very founding of historical communities. Great art is political.

Language and Poetry The significance that language assumed in Heidegger’s mature thought is hard to overstate. To paraphrase his ‘Letter on Humanism’: language is the house of being wherein historical humanity dwells. On Heidegger’s account, language is not just an instrument of human use, but also has a central role in the revelation of a world to a historical people. In this connection, poetic language is fundamentally important since poetry is the ‘elementary emergence into words, the becoming-uncovered, of existence as being-in-the-world’.15 This view was Heidegger’s in his Basic Problems of Phenomenology and so belongs firmly within the perspective of fundamental ontology. This view is essentially related to Heidegger’s later accounts of language that characterize it as being the very mode of appropriation or Ereignis. In ‘The Way to Language’ Heidegger says that when taken as ‘saying’, language is the mode of appropriation. For this reason, language is the ‘house of being’.16 Further to this, it is Heidegger’s view that language itself speaks. What he means by this can be drawn out of a series of remarks he makes in his essay ‘Language’. There he says that the speaking of language:

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bids the dif-ference to come which expropriates world and things into the simple onefold of their intimacy. Language speaks. Man speaks in that he responds to language.17 Historical humanity as such participates in an event of meaningfulness yet they are not the primary speakers of language. Language, on Heidegger’s view, is not simply a human invention. It is rather a ‘saying’, an event of unconcealment. As bidding the difference – Ereignis – language allows being to appropriate historical humanity, allowing them and their world to fully be what they are. The saying of language is bound up with being as presence. Essentially, the world says something to us in and through its meaningfulness for us. It bids us to take notice of it as it is there in relation to us. Language is that medium through which historical humans’ access to being as appropriation is established. The meaningful relatedness that things can have for a historical human being is assimilated to language and language is understood in terms of the expression of the meaningful relatedness that things can have for a historical human. In this sense, language generally is prior to any particular speaker in somewhat the same way that being is prior to any particular entity. Particular historical human languages are a response to this original language. The speaking of this original language is silent since it lacks an agent or speaker who could give it voice. If Heidegger can be allowed to speak of the ‘saying of the world’ then he can be allowed to characterize the relationship of historical humanity to this saying (as he does) as a kind of ‘hearing’. Historical humanity hears the speaking of the world and their response is particular natural languages. Now, as Heidegger argues, the essence of poetry must be understood out of the essence of language. He and Hölderlin are in agreement: poetically, man dwells on this earth. Existenz, Dasein’s way of being, is poetic and linguistic poetry is taken as the ‘primal language’ of a historical community. For this reason, poetry is regarded as the ‘sustaining ground’ of history.18 Poetry, of all the arts, is privileged precisely because it draws on the very essence of what it means to be a human being. Poetry, as the primal language of a people, is the original naming of things. It is this naming which allows them to show up as meaningful in the first place within a particular historical context. Poetry is projective saying. Such saying produces the rules and structures that enable the showing up of things in their being. Projective saying also produces the conditions of meaninglessness for a historical community. That is, projective saying produces precisely that which cannot show up as meaningful or sayable for a historical community:

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Projective saying is poetry: the saying of world and earth, the saying of the arena of their conflict and thus of the place of all nearness and remoteness of the gods . . . In such a saying, the concepts of an historical people’s nature, i.e., of its belonging to world history, are formed for that folk, before it.19 The fact that certain phenomena show up as ‘magical’, ‘threatening’ or ‘sacred’ for a particular group is because that group inhabits a world where such an interpretation of phenomena and of events has currency; the phenomena so revealed are ‘magical’ or ‘threatening’ or ‘sacred’. Ereignis produces the horizons of meaningfulness for a particular historical community and the decline and fall of historical civilizations can be read in terms of the rise and fall of different responses to the appropriating event of being’s presencing. This is the meaning of epoch of being and this logic is Heidegger’s ‘logic of sense’ or ‘logic of meaning’. Each revelation of being is also a withdrawal of being. Just as one meaning of being, one way in which things can be meaningfully present for a historical community, becomes revealed and appropriated another withdraws and becomes shrouded in darkness. There can never be an absolute point of view on things. Historical humanity is epochal.

The Fate of Univocity By paying heed to how being was revealed in the beginning of the Western tradition, Heidegger wants to prepare the way for the other beginning of Western history. This process begins by inquiring about the meaning of being in the present. Retrieval of the past will prepare the way for nothing less than historical humanity’s existential transformation and the heralding of a new non-metaphysical thought: To ask: how does it stand with Being? – this means nothing less than to repeat and retrieve (wieder-holen) the inception of our historical-spiritual Dasein, in order to transform it into the other inception. Such a thing is possible. It is in fact the definitive form of history, because it has its onset in a happening that grounds history.20 The task in the other beginning is to think the very giving of being as meaningful presence, Ereignis. This term carries the sense of the ‘It’ which gives and of the appropriating event. Ereignis is not a place or realm but a relation,

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it is the relation between historical human agent and being. Appropriation is an active process where the relation between the two terms (as appropriated) is more basic than the two terms. Metaphysics begins when being and time are separated. Plato separates the realm of being (Idea) from the realm of time qua becoming. Thinking non-metaphysically entails thinking these two terms, being and time, non-metaphysically. This involves thinking Ereignis, the ‘It’ which gives time and being. Ereignis determines both time and being in their essential belonging together. This essential belonging together is Ereignis.21 Western thought, we should recall, does think being in the sense of the beingness of beings: being is determined metaphysically in terms of a particular region of beings. Heidegger recognizes this and his criticism is that it is the Ereignis which remains unthought by the tradition of Western philosophy. As he says: In the beginning of Western thinking, Being is thought, but not the ‘It gives’ as such. The latter withdraws in favor of the gift which It gives. That gift is thought and conceptualised from then on exclusively as Being with regard to beings.22 In the giving the ‘It’ which gives withdraws. This giving Heidegger calls a sending. Being is sent to historical humanity and each of its historical configurations (or transformations) is destined in the sending. The history of being is the destiny of being in this sense. Both the sending and the ‘It’ which gives withdraw in the revelation of being. The history of being is essentially epochal in the sense of epoché: To hold back is, in Greek, epoche. Hence we speak of the epochs of the destiny of Being. Epoch does not mean here a span of time in occurrence, but rather the fundamental characteristic of sending, the actual holding-back of itself in favor of the discernibility of the gift, that is, of Being with regard to the grounding of beings. The sequence of epochs in the destiny of Being is not accidental . . . The epochs overlap each other in their sequence so that the original sending of Being as presence is more and more obscured in different ways.23 Epoch of being is characterized by the withdrawal of the Ereignis qua giving. Destructuring or destruction acquires for thought a first glance at what is revealed as the destiny of being. Thought itself cannot divorce itself from the epochal happening of being but must attempt to think the very

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It which gives being. In this context the determination ‘present’ carries both the temporal sense and, as Taminiaux emphasizes, the sense of a gift. Being is still only ever grasped in terms of time. Now, however, the central notion of ecstatical temporality is reconfigured by Heidegger. Each ecstasis of time (future, past and present) is now renamed as a ‘dimension’ of time and ‘true time’ is revealed to be ‘four dimensional’. Historical human communities stand within approaching presence: they receive the gift of presencing given by the ‘It gives’. If historical humanity did not receive being then it would remain concealed and human beings would not be what they are. Presence is the ‘constant abiding’ that approaches the historical agent, it reaches them in the sense of being extended to them. Presence determines being in the unifying sense of presencing and ‘allowing-to-presence’, of unconcealing. Presence itself means, ‘to last’. Presence is the abiding that is extended to human being and it is extended to historical human being along the dimensions of Heideggerian temporality. The three ecstases of temporality and their unity are extended to historical human being as Dasein. True time is four dimensional. The fourth dimension is the giving that determines time. It is the giving that gives to each dimension of time its character as a dimension of the unified phenomenon of temporality. Giving gives each dimension of time its manner of presencing. Giving holds each dimension of time apart from each other as opened and bares towards each other in the nearness that holds them together. The fourth dimension of time is ‘nearing nearness’ or ‘nearhood’ (Nahheit). Time itself is given by the ‘It’ which gives. Absence is itself a mode of presence. The unity of the three ecstases Heidegger calls the fourth dimension of time. In its four dimensional unity true time is understood as something granted or extended to historical humanity as such. The past is no longer simply that which Dasein retrieves in terms of its finite projection. Rather, the past happens to us, it is extended to us and it solicits us. It comes to us as an absence which concerns us in its very granting. In each dimension of time, including the fourth, there is an interplay of withholding and granting. In the unity of true time the future is no longer privileged. The fourth dimension is a clearing extension or opening and Heidegger’s emphasis is on the presencing process. With the extending of presence there opens up the ‘time-space’: Time-space . . . is the name for the openness which opens up in the mutual self-extending of futural approach, past and present . . . The

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self-extending, the opening up, of future, past and present is itself prespatial; only thus can it make room, that is, provide space.24 Time-space is not an area of routine activity or daily business. It is rather the site of the moment. Time-space is the site for the appropriating event. The moment (Augenblicksstätte) is nothing less than the moment of decision which establishes a new historical civilization. It is Ereignis which gives both time and being. The Ereignis is not a being, it is not God. It is rather, the event of the co-belonging of historical humanity and being. Four-dimensional temporality is true time and true time is nearing or coming-towards. Nearing unifies the three dimensional opening-extending of time. In order to truly be a historical human being, it is required that one stand within this temporal extending. Time is not something produced by human being and human being is not produced by time. Heidegger will not employ such a metaphysically loaded term as production in this context. He will insist that what is at stake is giving in the sense of an extending that opens up timespace. Ereignis is the event of the co-belonging of historical humanity as such and being. The event opens the time-space or playspace, (Spielraum) of time within which entities come to presence as what they are. I began this study of Heidegger with a view to understanding his philosophy of being and time in terms of the notion of univocity. By doing this, I don’t want to subordinate Heidegger’s thought to the metaphysical tradition. Far from it, I understand univocity in terms that have been established by Gilles Deleuze. Univocity implies immanence. So, in what sense can I speak of univocity being at work in Heidegger’s thought? Univocity obtains since, in the strict sense that, understood formally as the temporal event of the revelation of meaningful presence, being is always understood in terms of time. Being is meaningful presence. The being of beings is the meaningful presence of what is present and presence has a temporal configuration; being, understood formally as meaningful presence, is univocal. Heidegger does not appeal to a founding transcendence nor does he refer to an ontotheological ground in his philosophy of being. Rather, thinking must be content within its proper horizon and that is to think the event qua Ereignis. This is the locus of the univocity of being in Heidegger’s thought. This is also where it stops. Minimally, the single formal sense of being which remains constant in Heidegger’s thought, and which underlies his determination of the substantial ‘look’ which being takes on (being as Idea, as substance and so on) is being as meaningful presence. Being as meaningful presence unifies the various epochs in the history of being. What

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it means for any being ‘to be’ in each epoch of the history of being is different, and this by virtue of the look being takes on in that epoch. What something ‘is’ is determined in terms of its place within a larger context of significance and the history of being is the history of how these contexts of significance change in terms of the destiny of the West. Take, for example, a particular human being. To be a human being in the modern age means to be a bearer of rights and duties, a consumer, a citizen. To be human in the middle ages meant to be a creature of God, created in His image but fallen and infected with sin. Or take my example of the Gothic cathedral. In the middle ages a cathedral was the house of God and came to presence as such. Now, it is a relic of a bygone age, an aesthetically-pleasing tourist attraction. Univocally, being is meaningful presence but what it means for any being to be is dependent upon the context wherein it shows up. From Heidegger’s point of view, the successive meanings of being in the history of the West are related. More than that, they are subsumed under the destiny of being. Agreeing with Heidegger, but placing his destinal thinking in parenthesis; historical communities always inherit a meaning of being and interpret themselves and their world in terms of that meaning of being. And I would suggest that the method of unearthing a past meaning of being would be a species of archaeological hermeneutics. This method, by way of a reading of works of art and cultural artefacts, provides for the possibility of reconstructing the interpretive networks constitutive of particular communities. Such a method can be followed without reference to anything like a destiny of being. We might even say that the meaning of being unfolds as appropriation, that is, the meaningful relatedness which things can have for human understanding and interest unfolds gradually as it is appropriated by particular groups, changing along the way as it is enshrined by events, such as the work of art, that represent the form of life of that group. Being is appropriated into the form of life of a historical community. Being and time are only there by virtue of the event of appropriation, the event of the mutual belonging of historical humanity and being. It is here that all metaphysical categories fracture, including the metaphysical sense of univocity, equivocity and analogy, for none of these name the mystery of the event of being: that there is being. Despite this, there remains a sense in which there is an analogical unity of being in Heidegger’s thought and it is the merit of Sheehan’s interpretation of Heidegger to bring out this dimension. However, the danger in this context is that the interpreter runs the risk of bringing over all the baggage of the metaphysical tradition with them when discussing Heidegger’s

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thought in such terms. Heidegger sought to think non-metaphysically and it is essential that this is kept in mind. Terms that have their origin firmly within the metaphysical tradition, such as univocity and analogy, can be used joyously by a figure such as Deleuze, who was not worried about the Heideggerian ‘end of philosophy’, at least, not in Heideggerian terms in a way that must be qualified by Heidegger’s overall project of overcoming metaphysics and eventually of leaving metaphysics to its own devices. With this in mind, it is the case that the analogy of being in Heidegger’s thought is founded on a more fundamental univocity of being understood temporally as meaningful presence. Analogy does not form the underlying basis upon which all modes of being are built. The Scotist move is that any philosophy of analogy presupposes univocity. Any analogical relatedness of all the ‘looks’ that being has taken on and of all the modes of being, such as readiness-to-hand and presence-to-hand, are grounded in the temporal nature of Dasein’s understanding of being. The univocity of being is grounded in temporality. Whether in Dasein’s productive activity, understood from the perspective of fundamental ontology or in terms of the clearing-appropriating event of being-historical-thinking, being is temporally configured meaningful presence. The essence of the phenomenological correlation, from a Heideggerian point of view, is the univocity of being. In this sense, being for Heidegger is univocal.

The Re-enchanted Forest Heidegger opposes his late thought of Ereignis to the global Enframing of modern technology. Eventually, paying heed to the mutual belonging of thought and being involves thinking what Heidegger calls the fourfold (das Geviert). By this stage of his intellectual journey Heidegger has certainly left metaphysics behind. At this stage, interpreting Heidegger by recourse to traditional concepts such as analogy and univocity, however nontraditional their meaning is taken to be, is something of an imposition onto the thought of this thinker who sought to abandon conventional philosophy and metaphysics. This is explicitly what Heidegger intended to do and the fourfold is conceived as the antidote to modern technological rationality. In thinking the event, the fourfold of earth and sky, gods and mortals emerge in their mutual belonging together. Human beings are now understood as mortals and it is mortals who dwell poetically on the earth. Human beings are understood as mortals because they are capable of death construed existentially. In this

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connection, Heidegger says it is only ‘man’ that dies; but he does so ‘continually, as long as he remains on earth, under the sky, before the divinities’.25 Understanding human beings as mortal serves to bring the other three terms of the fourfold to presence, the divinities, the earth and the sky. The four are one in this sense. Mortals dwell poetically on the earth and by so doing enter the fourfold. By dwelling, mortals preserve the four. Mortals dwell by saving the earth, by receiving the sky as sky and by awaiting the Gods as Gods. Mortals dwell by initiating their own nature as the beings capable of death as death. By initiating their nature as being capable of death as death mortals can be extended a euthanasia or good death. Death is still a fundamental term in Heidegger’s thought. On one level, in thinking the fourfold Heidegger has entered the domain of mythopoetry. In the fourfold the forest is re-enchanted. What was once referred to as Dasein’s everydayness is transformed. The world inhabited by historical human agents, who have managed to out-think the Gestell, is the world of the world-four. In the fourfold the earth is regarded as earth. It is saved from technological domination and abuse and is let be to be what it is. Things, such as the jug from which the libation is poured, stand at the intersection of the four: In the gift of the outpouring earth and sky, divinities and mortals dwell together all at once. These four, at one because of what they themselves are, belong together . . . The gift of the outpouring stays the onefold of the fourfold of the four. And in the poured gift the jug presences as jug.26 While the fourfold is something of a remythologization of the world it is not totally without precedent in Heidegger’s thought. Recently Julian Young has argued that in Being and Time the ‘divine destinings’ (gods) or ethos of a community went by the name ‘heritage’ and that heritage was embodied by mythologized ‘heroes’ who are preserved in the collective memory of a culture.27 Such heroes embody what it means to be a member of the specific community that they are heroic for. Heidegger describes how the history of being begins by overcoming the mythical interpretation of the universe. Now, in a sense, it ends with its remythologization. Historical human being is no longer conceived as master-subject. Rather, it is caught up in the free play (Spielraum) of the world four. Earth and sky, divinities and mortals . . . belong together by way of the simpleness of the united fourfold . . . [the] appropriating mirror-play of

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the simple onefold of earth and sky, divinities and mortals we call the world. The world presences by worlding.28 Heidegger’s thought of the world four and of its worlding is mythopoetry and the writings where he deals with it are mythopoetic. What he is trying to say to us in these texts is definitively related to the way in which it is said to us. In barren modernity the gods have flown and the other beginning prepares the way for a return of the Holy in human affairs. Mythopoetic meditation on the fourfold is Heidegger’s antidote to technological modernity. Through his confrontation with the Gestell, by thinking it through, Heidegger has conceived of the possibility of a coming dawn, an other beginning of the world of the fourfold. The gods which come to presence in the mutual interplay or mirroring of the four are the antithesis of the God of metaphysical ontotheology. Before the ontotheological God, so Heidegger contends, human beings can ‘neither pray nor sacrifice’. In front of the causa sui, human beings ‘cannot fall to their knees in awe nor play music and dance’.29 This is Heidegger’s response to technological modernity. In his late writings, it is the mutual interplay of the world four that becomes the Saying of the world which addresses mortals and to which they respond: The bidding of language commits the bidden thus to the bidding of the dif-ference . . . The dif-ference expropriates the thing into the repose of the fourfold.30 Heidegger eventually gave up using the words ‘being’ and ‘time’ in favour of ‘clearing’ and ‘presencing’ (Lichtung und Anwesenheit). These words have more than metaphorical significance for him. For better or worse, Heidegger’s thought has radically reshaped the philosophical landscape. He has issued a novel task to the thought of being: where being is concerned, thought must respond to the appeal of its presencing. In the context of Heidegger’s late writings I think Caputo (Demythologizing Heidegger) is right to contend that one of the most salutary aspects of Heidegger’s neomythology of the fourfold is its ecological bent. The concept of the earth, as that which recedes from and exceeds the control of human beings is certainly inspiring for those who would seek to save it from the domination of technological rationality. Ultimately, Heidegger inspires historical human beings ‘to let beings be’ and to engage in a non-anthropocentric thinking ‘without why’. What is to be received by thought is the gift of presencing and historical humanity has the task of safeguarding the truth of being.

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Despite all of this, Caputo notes a fundamental danger in Heidegger’s thought, in so far as the history of being is bound up with a geophilosophical myth. The history of being began in Greece and ends in Germany. Ultimately, the task fell to the German people (Volk) to take up the challenge begun by the Greeks. The ultimate meaning of the myth of the Greek beginning of Western thought is the exclusion of any other myths from the retrieval of the first beginning and the onslaught of the other beginning. Caputo goes so far as to say that Heidegger excludes the ethico-religious God in favour of the poetic woodland God who arises from the experience of the earth as something to which reverence is owed. Mythopoetry is one thing; a thought which operates on the basis of a totalizing exclusion is quite another. The motif in Heidegger’s thought that excludes particular historical communities in favour of an overarching history of being – which is a history of the West – should be rejected. Heidegger’s error was to subordinate the happening of historical civilizations to the overarching destiny of being, which is also the destiny of the West. The destiny of being as the destiny of the West and the grand meta-narrative of being’s eschatological history must be put in parenthesis. In the present age, there can only be suspicion of such totalizing myths. There can never be a privileged revelation of being to historical humanity and there is no privileged perspective from which being can be apprehended. There is no past community that apprehended being in a more fundamental way than others. There is a multitude of traditions within which being is appropriated and in terms of which the world is understood. None of these is privileged: each remains all too human.

Being Mortal What emerges from Heidegger’s philosophy, from the early fundamental ontology to the late being-historical-thinking, is a thematization of historical human existence in its finitude. The project of fundamental ontology was intended to pave the way for elucidating the question of the meaning of being in terms of time. Dasein’s temporality is the transcendental horizon for the question of being. Being, the meaningful presence that things can have for a particular historical human is revealed in the anticipation of death. Accordingly, I shall conclude this chapter with a section on the meaning of death in Heidegger’s text. It was in the service of fundamental ontology that Heidegger read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. From Heidegger’s point of view, the Nicomachean Ethics prepares the way for fundamental ontology.

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Heidegger remained Aristotelian in so far as he determined Dasein’s ultimate accomplishment as the ‘contemplation’ (theoria) of being. Human dwelling is bounded by death. Death is the existential principle of individuation: it is non-relational and is that in the face of which Dasein may win itself and become authentic. Death is Dasein’s basic certainty: as he says in History of the Concept of Time ‘I am in that I will die’. Heidegger’s critique of the whole tradition of philosophy, the tradition that he holds to have passed over Dasein can be read in terms of his philosophy of death. Taking Dasein as a thing or substance in Aristotelian fashion, only serves to pass over Dasein’s essential nature. Dasein’s being is characterized by what Heidegger refers to as ‘mineness’. We are all Dasein but crucially, factical Dasein cannot be approached as if it were an instance of a genus or species. As determined by mineness Dasein’s being is an issue for it and mineness is the ground of authenticity and inauthenticity. Authenticity and inauthenticity refer to conditions in which the Dasein in question is properly its own being or is not properly its own being. They have no specific moral connotation. Dasein is always a ‘who’ and never a ‘what’: Dasein’s essence is its Existenz. Dasein has its being to be in a way that no thing does. It is precisely here that Heidegger will part company with Aristotle, and the tradition inspired by him. Authenticity is precisely that state wherein a Dasein attains its own being to be in such a manner that it has it as its own. Authenticity allows one the opportunity to become the true author of one’s biography. Dasein exhibits an ontological as well as an ontic layer. It is by virtue of Dasein’s ontological structure as care (Sorge) that we can talk about it in terms that approach the general. In addition to death’s individuating power it also has the power of freeing. For the most part Dasein is lost in ‘the They’. Dasein does not attend to itself in its capacity for authentic existence but just goes about its business ‘as one does’ relating to itself ‘as one does’ and saying ‘what they say’. In the fundamental mood of anxiety, however, Dasein is wrested out of the They and can attend to itself and become authentic. Moods are disclosive for Heidegger, being in a particular mood attunes Dasein to its situation. Anxiety (Angst) is a generalized and particularly illuminating mood concerned with Dasein’s being-in-the-world and it may take over Dasein at any moment. In anxiety the meaning and significance of things such as they are in our generic theyness pale into insignificance. Whereas normal Dasein is at home in the world, Dasein in anxiety feels unsettled or homeless and it is this ‘not-at-home’ that is the more ‘primordial phenomenon’.31 Anxiety is about Dasein and its being-in-the-world. Anxiety discloses beings as a whole as not mattering. Anxiety reveals to Dasein its structure as care.

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Dasein realizes that it is that being who is thrown into the world and has its own being to be. Ultimately, anxiety is about death. Death is that in the face of which Dasein can become authentic. In anxiety, Dasein faces up to mortality precisely because it feels the ultimate fragility of its existence together with the necessity of deciding what existence will mean for it. Anxiety is not mere fear. Fear is directed towards particular things; anxiety is generalized. Fear may be characterized by confusion and panic, anxiety, by contrast is not pervaded by such confusion. Anxiety doesn’t let such confusion arise. In fact, anxiety is pervaded by a ‘peculiar calm’.32 Anxiety can cause Dasein to flee itself and fall into the relative comfort provided by the public world of ‘the They’. Unbidden anxiety can, however, tare Dasein out of the familiar and in so doing disclose Dasein as a being with its own being to be. Anxiety reveals Dasein as a task to be accomplished in the face of death. In the Phaedo Plato spoke of catharsis as a liberation of the soul from emotions such as pity and fear. There, he describes the virtues of the philosopher in terms of a catharsis from ‘bodily’ aspects such as appetite and passion. The soul is liberated from these bodily constraints and the philosopher can achieve a kind of serenity. This serenity includes the kind of serenity in the face of death displayed by Socrates. Plato says: in truth, moderation and courage and justice are a purging away of all such things, and wisdom itself is a kind of cleansing or purification. It is likely that those who established the mystic rites for us were not inferior persons but were speaking in riddles long ago when they said that whoever arrives in the underworld uninitiated and unsanctified will wallow in the mire, whereas he who arrives there purified and initiated will dwell with the gods.33 Such serenity in the face of death is eminently uplifting. By not surrendering to our emotions we are delivered over from them by means of them. By wresting us from our relative comfort in ‘the They’ and by liberating us from fear Plato’s serene catharsis anticipates Heidegger’s notion of anxiety. Catharsis is ultimately general. Catharsis is about our being-in-the-world. Catharsis is about death. In his Poetics, Aristotle claims for poetry that uplifting power which Plato had claimed for philosophy. Precisely in this sense poetry is more philosophical than history: it treats of universals and, while being absolutely particular, nothing is more universal for humanity than death. By means of anxiety human beings can be at peace with themselves and their situation. Anxiety allows the individual to let be and become truly mortal. By so doing, the human being can dwell with the Gods.

Conclusion

I began this study of Heidegger’s philosophy with the overall aim of showing that it could be interpreted in terms of the philosophical thesis of the univocity of being. While univocity remains at a somewhat formal level in Heidegger’s philosophy what is ultimately at stake with regards to univocity is the question of philosophical immanence. It is my view that achieving the end of understanding Heidegger with reference to univocity is impossible without reference to the philosophy of John Duns Scotus, who raised philosophical univocity to its highest point in the history of Western philosophy. Univocal being entails that there is one fundamental sense of being ontologically prior to any further elaboration and it is my view that an implicit commitment to univocity plays a fundamental role in Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s conception of the unitary meaning of being is more radical than both Husserl’s and Aristotle’s. The unitary meaning of being is founded upon the transcendental horizon of being, temporality, which is the meaning of Dasein’s being. In fundamental ontology, Dasein is at the centre of Heidegger’s ontological universe and all ontology is fundamentally temporal. Being is always understood in terms of time. Being may be said in many ways but these many ways are only possible because they share a common sense of time. The univocity of being is implicit in Heidegger’s philosophy of being and time. I have explored the interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of being in terms of the thesis of analogy, the chief alternative to univocity. To this end I paid particular attention to the work of Thomas Sheehan who reads Heidegger’s text in these terms. My aim in doing this was to problematize the domain of Heidegger interpretation precisely in terms of univocity and analogy. On this level, my interpretation of Heidegger in terms of univocity serves as a qualification to those interpretations that stop at Heidegger’s reappropriation and reinterpretation of analogy. Interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy revolves around the central issues of Ereignis and the site for being’s disclosure, Dasein. When the full extent of univocity is understood in terms of Heidegger’s philosophy of Ereignis, then it will

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be realized that all historical human beings are entitled to is their finite historical interpretations. There is only the immanent play of the revealing and concealing of being and there is no absolute transcendent point of view on things. Heidegger’s philosophy of being and the event operates without recourse to traditional ontotheological or metaphysical grounds. The word Dasein as it occurs in Heidegger’s text is both a verb and a noun. In its verbal sense it means ‘to be present’ or ‘to exist’ and as a noun it means ‘presence’ or ‘existence’. The prefi x ‘da’ connotes both ‘there’ and ‘then’. The ‘da’ points to a site, a place and time where and when something happens. From the point of view of analogy, Heidegger accounts for all other beings, such as animals and objects, in terms of a particular analogy to Dasein. By this view, there is a new version of the traditional scala naturae operative in his thought. If this is so, then perhaps Heidegger’s early criticism of Husserl, that he did not work strictly out of ‘the things themselves’ and so carried over an aspect of the tradition, might be levied against Heidegger himself. If it were, then the accuser would have to come to terms with Heidegger’s entire project in terms of the centrality of the method of destruction and retrieval of past philosophies. Whatever the case, it is my view that any analogy of being in Heidegger’s text is underscored by a fundamental univocity of being understood in terms of the temporal configuration of meaningful presence. Partly because of such complications I returned to Heidegger’s central concerns with phenomenological method and engaged in a destructive reading of his relationship with Husserl. Approaching Heidegger’s philosophical relationship with Husserl in this way entailed entering wellcharted waters. I went back to Heidegger’s texts and found a mandate for problematizing their relationship in terms of the philosophy of analogy and the problematic of univocity. Heidegger’s critique of Husserl focuses on the fact that the founder of phenomenology failed to work out of ‘the things themselves’. Nevertheless, I have shown that Heidegger’s critique of Husserl also turns on Husserl’s relationship to the philosophy of analogy; working out of ‘the things themselves’, as Heidegger attempts to do, does not simply produce a phenomenological version of the philosophy of analogy. Rather, it raises the problem of the univocity of being. One of my aims has been to open up a debate over analogy and univocity in Heidegger’s thought by augmenting the interpretation of his texts in terms of univocity. In doing this the role of time has proved decisive. My interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy represents an augmentation, rather than a rejection, of the analogical reading of his thought. In line with Scotus’s point that any philosophy of analogy presupposes a commitment

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to univocity, I have attempted to show that any interpretation of Heidegger that emphasizes analogy presupposes the univocity of being. Being is univocally meaningful presence and meaningful presence has a specific temporal configuration. The project of fundamental ontology is intended by Heidegger to pave the way for elucidating the question of the meaning of being in terms of time and Dasein’s temporality is understood as the transcendental horizon for this question. In order for ontological univocity to obtain in any philosophy there must be at work a single and primordial sense of being that underlies any further analogical determination. In the philosophy of Duns Scotus this primordial sense of being is determined as being’s fundamental opposition to nothingness. In Heidegger’s philosophy being is understood as meaningful presence and the being of beings is the presence of that which is present. Presence itself has a temporal configuration. Dasein is the site where being is revealed in its temporal nature. It is Dasein’s temporality that serves as the transcendental horizon for the revelation of being. Being is ultimately understood in terms of time. Time is, as Heidegger will later say, the ‘truth of being’. Dasein is determined in terms of its essentially finite temporality and being is revealed in the anticipation of death. Death is always a central term in Heidegger’s thought. Not only is it the existential principle of individuation it also functions to disclose being qua meaningful presence. If death does what Heidegger holds it to do, then it discloses the univocity of being. My concern with the philosophical thesis of univocity as it is presented in the philosophy of Duns Scotus was always subordinate to my aim of giving an interpretation of Heidegger’s thought. I have not attempted to stage a confrontation between these two thinkers. Scotus thought within the metaphysical tradition, the tradition that Heidegger sought to overcome and the defining aspect of Scotus’s philosophy of univocity is that he maintains the fundamental transcendence of God. In the medieval context, what was at stake in the discussion of univocity and analogy was transcendence. For Scotus and other medieval Christian philosophers being is ultimately understood in terms of production: God created and conserves the universe while eternally sustaining Himself in existence. From a hermeneutic point of view, the ‘world’, as a meaningful context of significance, which Scotus and the other medieval philosophers inhabited, was one wherein being faithful was of paramount importance. As such, it was quite distinct from this modern secular world. Philosophical univocity in Heidegger’s thought entails a commitment to a thinking which has given up recourse to traditional metaphysical and ontotheological grounds, including God. Philosophy is committed

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to immanence and has no recourse to grounds outwith experience. To this extent, Heidegger’s thought is on the side of revolution. In distinctly Heideggerian terms, thought has no recourse to any foundation beyond the epochal play of the revealing and concealing of being. Any appeal to principles of order or ground which, in one way or another, make a claim to atemporal universality, are to be rejected. As such, Heidegger’s philosophy contains within it a response to the condition of modernity. As I understand it, the modernity that is at stake for Heidegger and much European philosophy can be characterized by three coordinate concerns all of which take their point of departure from the conviction that metaphysics, traditionally conceived, has been and must be surpassed. Modern European philosophy can be read in terms of its point of departure, which is a point of crisis, from the death of God and/or the human. This crisis amounts to the destabilization of the traditional metaphysical points of departure as they have unfolded in the history of Western philosophy. In light of this, modern European philosophers have countered with a novel response conceived in terms of an ‘other’ form of thought which is not bound by the fate of metaphysics. Understood in these terms Heidegger’s response was initially phenomenology. To the early Heidegger phenomenology represented a novel method by which he could radically reconfigure and answer the traditional metaphysical problem of being. His later non-representational thinking sought to further abandon any commitment to traditional philosophy in order to think the event of the revelation of being even more primordially. God’s death heralds for modern European philosophy the abolition of the distinction between the two worlds of being and becoming. Further, God’s death entails the loss of any recourse to transcendent ground that would underscore and provide the foundation for the temporal world of becoming. God’s death heralds the loss of any ultimate principle of order and source of value in the universe that had been established by the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger’s response to this crisis of modern European philosophy is bound up with his response to traditional metaphysics. In Being and Time and related texts Heidegger was a methodological Nietzschean: philosophy, which is phenomenology, must be atheistic. In his later thought Heidegger undertook to prepare the way for a return of the Holy in the affairs of this world. The indifference to the divine that is characteristic of technological modernity is something to be regretted rather than celebrated for Heidegger and his late thought of the fourfold is his mythopoetic response to barren modernity wherein the ‘gods have

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flown’. The eschatological other beginning prepares the way for a return of the Holy, and Heideggerian mythopoetic meditation on the fourfold is the antidote to technological modernity. Integral to Heidegger’s response to modernity was his attempt to abandon the ‘will to power’ and engage in a manner of thinking that lets beings be. As such, Heidegger rejects metaphysics and attempts to think non-representationally ‘without why’. The philosophy of analogy is the conceptual expression of a distinctly medieval way of viewing the world. Analogy is ontotheological. When I claim that analogy presupposes univocity, I make a Scotist move with Deleuzeian inspiration. In Scotus’s ontology the univocity of being is understood in terms of being’s opposition to nothingness. For Heidegger, univocal being is determined as the temporal configuration of meaningful presence. The analogy of being is impossible without a prior univocity. I have not abandoned the parameters of Heidegger interpretation established by Sheehan et al. More modestly, I have qualified these parameters in terms of the univocity of being. Despite the fact that over the past few years Heidegger’s early relationship to Scotus’s philosophy has begun to be interpreted, no commentator has placed the entirety of Heidegger’s thought in a critical relation to the most famous of Scotistic theses, the univocity of being. This is exactly what I have attempted to do in this study. Heidegger’s view is that in Dasein’s anticipation of death, being is revealed. It is in the anticipation of death that the fact that things are meaningfully present for ‘you’ becomes revealed. The actual meaning of things may be different in different historical periods and in different civilizations, but being as meaningful presence, remains univocal. Death is the tragic essence of existence and being is revealed in its anticipation. Heidegger’s mature response to our essence and to the meaningful world of things is to issue a challenge that, if answered, will put the world of modern technology in its place. Heidegger’s challenge to us is that we must recognize and appropriate our mortality and give up our futile effort to master the earth. Human life will always remain fragile and contingent. Ultimately, Heidegger’s challenge to mortal humanity is to implore us to ‘let be’ and become the grounder and preserver of the way in which things can be meaningfully there for us and for our community. Heidegger came to employ the word Ereignis, a word that had no prior philosophical significance, for the fundamental matter he intended to think. This matter is the revelation of being qua meaningful presence in its essential correlation with the opening up of Dasein qua finitude. This temporal event is the ontological meaning of the anticipation of death. Being may essentially unfold as appropriation, but as meaningful presence, it is still univocal.

Appendix The Univocity of Being: Deleuze

Since the publication of Alain Badiou’s Deleuze: La clameur de l’Etre in 1997 the doctrine of the univocity of being has become a central point of interpretation in Deleuze scholarship. For his part, Badiou interprets Deleuze as a classical thinker of the One where the ‘nominal pair virtual/actual exhausts the deployment of univocal being’.1 Leaving the issue of how close Badiou’s reading is to Deleuze’s texts and intentions; placing the question of univocity at the centre of the debate over Deleuze’s ontology is one of Badiou’s lasting contributions, not only to Deleuze studies, but to philosophy as a whole. Since Badiou’s text, it is impossible to ignore the centrality of univocity to Deleuze’s project. Deleuze’s endorsement of univocity is significant in terms of the current situation of philosophy. Since Heidegger there has been a great renewal of interest in the problems of ontology. Ontology has displaced epistemology as the central concern of European philosophy and there is now a significant body of work that addresses the question of being. For Deleuze, ontology and philosophy are one and the same thing. In his own words: Philosophy merges with ontology, but ontology merges with the univocity of being (analogy has always been a theological vision, not a philosophical one, adapted to the forms of God, the world, and the self).2 The central concern of the new onto-philosophy is the univocity of being. It is significant that Deleuze advocates the univocity of being in direct opposition to the philosophy of analogy. The philosophy of analogy is centrally linked to theology in Aristotelian-scholastic metaphysics and, as I have argued, since Heidegger’s analysis, analogy has become synonymous with ontotheology. Deleuze and Heidegger agree that analogy is ultimately a

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theological vision and for both thinkers it is necessary to move beyond analogy and affirm univocity. Deleuze stands in a different relation to modern European philosophy than do more conventional post-Heideggerian phenomenological thinkers, many of whom have been in broad agreement with Heidegger that ‘metaphysics’ has to be overcome. Unlike these thinkers, Deleuze has no problem with the ‘language of metaphysics’, a language that has become the object of so much criticism in Heidegger’s wake.3 Although Deleuze (and Guattari) think in proximity to Heidegger, as almost all European thinkers in the later 20th century did, they nonetheless maintain a significant distance from him. Rather than attempt to ‘overcome metaphysics’ in Heideggerian terms Deleuze and Guattari engage in what they take to be the genuinely philosophical task. This is, to create concepts: philosophy is the discipline that involves creating concepts . . . So long as there is a time and a place for creating concepts, the operation that undertakes this will always be called philosophy, or will be indistinguishable from philosophy even if it is called something else.4 Philosophy, as the creation of concepts, is a form of Nietzschean constructivism. In line with the Heideggerian view, philosophers can no longer simply accept what has been handed down to them as the well-formed conceptual base of their ‘discipline’. As Nietzsche says: What dawns on philosophers last of all: they must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing.5 Neither Deleuze nor Guattari are deaf to the Heideggerian criticism of metaphysics and their relationship with Heidegger is far more complicated than it might first appear.6 There have been three principal thinkers of univocity in the tradition of philosophy. The first figure in this history is Duns Scotus. Deleuze notes that ‘there has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which gave being a single voice’.7 However, even though Scotus raised univocity to its highest point of subtlety, he did so at the price of abstraction. Univocity for Scotus is a feature of the logical order rather than of the expressive metaphysical order.

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The second figure in Deleuze’s secret history of univocity is Spinoza. The third is Nietzsche. Ultimately, ontological univocity will mean for Deleuze, in the words of Agamben, a commitment to ‘absolute immanence’ without recourse to any form of transcendence whatsoever.8 Deleuze considers himself heir to the tradition of Scotus, Spinoza and Nietzsche. His texts, Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, are all works that centrally involve the doctrine of univocity and display his commitment to absolute immanence. These texts also represent the culmination of his early reaction to Heidegger. In fact, it is Daniel W. Smith’s view that a concern with Heidegger’s philosophy of being can be read into Deleuze’s work from its very beginnings. As Smith reads it, Deleuze’s problem with Heidegger centres on the notion of the ontological difference; the difference between being and beings. In his ‘The doctrine of univocity, Deleuze’s ontology of immanence’ Smith suggests that a more Deleuzeian way of expressing the ontological difference would be in terms of the question of how being is distributed among beings? Despite reinvigorating ontology and giving ‘renewed splendor’ to the univocity of being, from Deleuze’s point of view, Heidegger did not go far enough. That is, Heidegger did not establish univocity as belonging only to difference. Deleuze’s project is partly the project of pushing the problematic of ontological difference towards its necessary conclusion. This project is taken up in Difference and Repetition and it is Smith’s view that this text can be read as a response to Heidegger’s Being and Time. In Difference and Repetition, difference corresponds to being and repetition corresponds to time.9 For Deleuze, the only satisfactory ontology will be one that affirms univocity. Such an ontology will be able to conceive of difference-in-itself and will be able to provide difference with its own concept. Deleuze took over the notion of a ‘pure’ ontology (one that postulates nothing beyond, outside or superior to being) from Spinoza and deployed it in terms of the problem of difference.10 Deleuze wants to think difference-in-itself without subordinating it to identity. Deleuze’s landmark work, Difference and Repetition, can be read as an experiment in metaphysics, the aim of which is to provide a transcendental description of the world from the point of view of a principle of difference rather than identity. And while Deleuze is indebted to Heidegger he never subscribed to the notion of overcoming metaphysics. On the contrary, Deleuze described himself as a ‘pure metaphysician’: while he appropriates aspects of past metaphysical

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systems he does so on the basis of a rejection of their points of terminus, God, the world and the self. Deleuze set out to find the metaphysics that is required by modern science, and it was his view that only an ontology of univocity could provide philosophy with a truly philosophical concept of being.

Notes

Introduction 1

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3 4 5

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Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma 1, Trans. H. Lawson-Tancred, Penguin, 1998, p79. Allers, R., ‘Heidegger on the Principle of Sufficient Reason’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 20, Issue 3 (March 1960), pp365–373. Deleuze, G., Difference and Repetition, Trans. P. Patton, Athlone, 1994, p66. Allers, p370. Square brackets: my addition. Deleuze, G., ‘How Jarry’s Pataphysics Opened the Way for Phenomenology’, in Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–1974, ed. D. Lapoujade, Trans. M. Taormina, Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, 2004, pp74–76. Ibid., p74. Heidegger, M., The Concept of Time, Trans. W. McNeill, Blackwell, 1992, pp13E–14E.

Chapter 1 1

2 3

4 5

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Aristotle, Categories, 2a11, Categories and De Interpretatione, Trans. J.L. Ackrill, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp5–6. Aristotle, Categories, 3a33, p9. Heidegger, M., Being and Time, Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Basil Blackwell, 1962, ¶6, p23/44. The page number of the German original appears first, followed by the page number in the translation. I will use the abbreviation BT for this translation in future. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma 1, p79. See Philipse, H., Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being, A Critical Interpretation, Princeton University Press, 1998, p90. Philipse defends an interpretation of this relation as one of paronymy. See also, Barnes, J., ‘Metaphysics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 1998, pp66–108. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Delta VI, p124, emphasis in the original. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma 2, pp80–81. Heidegger, M., ‘Letter to Krebs, 1919’, quoted in Sheehan, T., ‘Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard times’, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. C.B. Guignon, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p72. Heidegger, M., ‘The Theory of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus’, Trans. R. M. Stewart and J. van Buren in Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, ed. J. van Buren, State University of New York Press, 2002, p68.

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Brentano, F., On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, Trans. and ed. R. George, University of California Press, 1975, p120. See Aquinas, T., ‘How are Things Good? Exposition of On the Hebdomads of Boethius (1257)’, in Thomas Aquinas Selected Writings, ed. and Trans. R. Mcinerny, Penguin, 1998, pp142–162. The pure perfections and perfect-being theology was developed by Anselm and was later endorsed by Scotus. See, Cross, R., Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate, 2005, pp49–50. For a discussion of Scotus and Henry see, Dumont, S., ‘Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus’, in Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume III, Medieval Philosophy, ed. J. Marenbon, Routledge, 1998, p297. See also my ‘Duns Scotus’s Concept of the Univocity of Being: another look’, in Pli, 18, 2007, pp129–146. On Scotus, see: Cross, R., Duns Scotus, Oxford University Press, 1999. On medieval metaphysics see: Wippel, J. F., ‘Metaphysics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. N. Kretzmann and E. Stump, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp85–127.

Chapter 2 1

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3

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Heidegger, M., BT, p17. This page number does also not appear in the translation. Heidegger, M., ‘Preface’, in Heidegger, Through Phenomenology to Thought, ed. W. J. Richardson, Fordham University Press, 2003, px. This is the text of the famous ‘Letter to Richardson’ published as preface to his comprehensive study of Heidegger (originally published 1963). I will refer to it in future simply as the ‘Letter to Richardson’. Square bracket: my addition. Heidegger, M., ‘Letter to Richardson’, in Richardson 2003, px. Square bracket: my addition. See, Van Buren, J., ‘The Earliest Heidegger: A New Field of Research’, in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall, Blackwell, 2005, p27. Heidegger, M., ‘The Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy’ (1912), in Supplements, p48. Heidegger, M., ‘Author’s Book Notice’ (1917), in Supplements, p61. Heidegger, M., Duns Scotus’ Theory Of The Categories And Of Meaning, Trans. H. Robbins, De Paul University Chicago, Illinois, 1978, p15. I will refer to this text as DS in future. This is Heidegger’s Habilitation thesis, sometimes known simply as the Scotus Book. Husserl, E., Logical Investigations, Volume 2, Trans. J. N. Findlay, ed. D. Moran, Routledge, 1970, p49. Heidegger, M., DS, p6. Heidegger, M., DS, p13. Heidegger, M., ‘The Theory of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus’, in Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, ed. J. Van Buren, State University of New York Press, 2002, p68. Ibid., p67.

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Heidegger, M., Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ 1–3, On the Essence and Actuality of Force, Trans. W. Brogan and P. Warnek, Indiana University Press, 1995, p38. Duns Scotus, J., God and Creatures, The Quodlibetal Questions, Trans. F. Alluntis and A. B. Wolter, Princeton University Press, 1975, p3. Letter: Heidegger to Bultmann, 1927. Cited in Kisiel, T., The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, University of California Press, 1993, p452. Heidegger, M., What is Philosophy?, Trans. W. Kluback and J. T. Wilde, Vision Press, 1963, pp71–73. In future this text will be referred to as WIP. Heidegger, M., The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Trans. A. Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, 1988, p22. Hereafter, I will refer to this text as BPOP. Heidegger, M., Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Trans. R. Taft, Indiana University Press, 1990, p1. I shall use the abbreviation KPM for this text in future. Heidegger, M., BPOP, p100. Heidegger, M., On Time and Being, Trans. J. Stambaugh, The University of Chicago Press, 1972, p79. Hereafter, I shall use the abbreviation OTB for this text. Russell, B., The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1998, p57. Caputo, J. D., Heidegger and Aquinas, An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, Fordham University Press, 1982, p98, n17. See also: Caputo, J. D., ‘The Problem of Being in Heidegger and the Scholastics’, The Thomist, Volume 41, Issue 1, January 1977, p98. Ibid., p98. Taminiaux, J., ‘Philosophy of Existence I: Heidegger’, in Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century, Routledge History of Philosophy Volume 8, ed. R. Kearney, Routledge, 1994, p54. Sheehan, T., ‘Introduction: Heidegger, the Project and the Fulfillment’, in Heidegger, The Man and the Thinker, ed. T. Sheehan, Precedent Publishing, Inc. Chicago, 1981, pviii. Ibid., ‘Introduction’, px. Ibid., pxvi. Heidegger, M., ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’, Trans. T. Sheehan, in Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p175. Heidegger, M., The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, World, Finitude, Solitude, Trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker, Indiana University Press, 1995, p193.

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Heidegger, M., ‘Letter on Humanism’, in Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell, Routledge, 1978, p231. This collection will be referred to as BW in future. Kant, I., ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, in Practical Philosophy, Trans. and ed. M. J. Gregor, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p17. Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, AXII, Trans and ed. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p101. Ibid., BXXVII–BXXVIII, p116. Heidegger, M., DS, pp168–169.

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10

Notes

Husserl, E., Ideas Pertaining To A Pure Phenomenology And To A Phenomenological Philosophy, first book, Trans. F. Kersten, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983, p171. I will refer to this text as Ideas I in future. In his, The Field of Consciousness (1964), Aron Gurwitsch suggests that a phenomenological interpretation of the doctrine of the analogy of being may be possible. See, Edie, J. M., Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, A Critical Commentary, Indiana University Press, 1987, p90. One difference between Husserl and Descartes should be noted. Whereas for Husserl, consciousness requires no other being to provide for its existence, the being of the cogito for Descartes is dependant upon the being of God. Heidegger, M., History of the Concept of Time, Prolegomena, Trans. T. Kisiel, Indiana University Press, 1992, p103. Hereafter, HCT. In his recent Aquinas on Being, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002, Sir Anthony Kenny has distinguished twelve types of being in Aquinas. They are: specific existence, individual existence, substantial being, accidental being, common being, actual being, absolute being, intentional being, fictional being, possible being, predicative being and identical being, pp189–192.

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See Husserl, E., Ideas I, §16, pp31–32 and §17, p32. Husserl, E., Ideas I, §13, p26. Heidegger, M., Introduction to Metaphysics, Trans. G. Fried and R. Polt, Yale University Press, 2000, p22/31. The preface to the seventh German edition is reprinted in both the Macquarrie–Robinson translation and the Stambaugh translation. Heidegger, M., BT, ¶65, p326/374. Heidegger, M., HCT, p136. Heidegger, M., BT, p17/38–19/40. Ibid., p329/378. Richard Polt notes that Vorlaufen means literally ‘running forwards’ and that ‘facing up’ may be a better translation than ‘anticipation’. Heidegger, M., HCT, p173.

Chapter 5 1 2

3 4 5

6

Copleston, F. C., Medieval Philosophy, An Introduction, Dover, 2001. Quoted in Glock, H. G., ‘Religion’, in A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell, 1996, p321. Heidegger, M., Being and Time, p490, nxi. Heidegger, M., ‘My Way to Phenomenology’, in OTB, p79. Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’, in Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell, Routledge, 1978, p435. Heidegger, M., ‘Time and Being’, in OTB, p5.

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10 11

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14 15 16

17

18

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Heidegger, M., Introduction to Metaphysics, Trans. G. Fried and R. Polt, Yale University Press, 2000, pp11–12/16. The page number of the English translation appears after the German. Hereafter, IM. Heidegger, M., ‘The Anaximander Fragment’, in Early Greek Thinking, The Dawn of Western Philosophy, Trans. D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi, Harper and Row, 1975, p18. This collection will be referred to in future as EGT. Heidegger, M., Contributions to Philosophy, From Enowning, Trans. P. Emad and K. Maly, Indiana University Press, 1999, p177. Hereafter, Contributions. The English title translates the German Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Enowning thus tries to capture the sense of the event of appropriation. Heidegger, M., Contributions, pp311–312/219. Heidegger, M., ‘Metaphysics as History of Being’, in The End of Philosophy, Trans. J. Stambaugh, Condor, Souvenir Press, 1973, pp7–8. Hereafter, I will refer to this collection as EOP. Heidegger, M., Contributions, p90. The issue of Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology in relation to Duns Scotus is complicated. It has recently been discussed by Cross in his Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate, 2005. See pp249–259. Reference to Heidegger and ontotheology is made on p258. Heidegger, M., Contributions, p89. Genesis 1:27. Heidegger, M., ‘The Age of the World Picture’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Trans. W. Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks, 1977, pp130–141. This collection will be referred to as QCT in future. Heidegger, M., Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, Trans. J. Stambaugh, Ohio University Press, 1985, p187. We are following the discussion, found on pages 186–192, in our exposition. I shall refer to this text as Schelling’s Treatise in future. Ibid., p192.

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3

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5

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Heidegger, M., Contributions, p214. Nietzsche, F., Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 1968, p35. This list occurs in Sheehan, T., ‘Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976)’, in The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Craig, Routledge, 2005, p365. See Dreyfus, H. L., ‘Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology, and Politics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. C. B. Guignon, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp289–316. Heidegger, M., ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, Trans. A. Hofstadter, Harper and Row, 1971, pp42–43. Hereafter, I shall refer to this collection as PLT. See Lawlor, L., ‘The Chiasm and the Fold: An Introduction to the Philosophical Concept of Archaeology’, in Thinking through French Philosophy, The Being of the Question, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp24–46.

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17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32

33

Notes

See, Milchman A., and Rosenberg, A., ‘Toward a Foucault/Heidegger Auseinandersetzung’, in Foucault and Heidegger Critical Encounters, Contractions, Volume 16, ed. A. Milchman and A. Rosenberg, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, pp1–29. Heidegger, M., ‘The Anaximander Fragment’, in EGT, p18. Dreyfus, H. L., ‘Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology, and Politics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, p299. In his Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger Brian Elliott has noted the possibility that phenomenology might become archaeological and that this would involve a certain ‘going beyond’ Heidegger. See his text, p154. Further, Gutting elaborates the concept of archaeology with reference to Foucault and elaborates the concept of ‘archaeological hermeneutics’ with reference to Ricoeur. See his French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, p268 and p367 respectively. Also, Lawlor, in his Thinking through French Philosophy, The Being of the Question, provides an ‘introduction to the philosophical concept of archaeology’. See his text, pp24–46. For a discussion of Heidegger’s mythologizing tendencies, see J. D. Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger, Indiana University Press, 1993. Heidegger, M., ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in PLT, pp48–49. Ibid., pp71–72. Heidegger, M., ‘The Theory of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus’, in Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, ed. J. Van Buren, State University of New York Press, 2002, p67. Heidegger, M., ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in PLT, p43. Heidegger, M., BPOP, pp171–172. Heidegger, M., ‘The Way to Language’, in On The Way to Language, Trans. P. D. Hertz, Harper and Row, 1971, p135. Heidegger, M., ‘Language’, in PLT, p210. Heidegger, M., ‘Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry’, in Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, Trans. K. Hoellner, Humanity Books, 2000, p60. Heidegger, M., ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in PLT, p74. Heidegger, M., IM, p41. Heidegger, M., ‘Time and Being’, in OTB, p19. Ibid., p8. Ibid., p9. Ibid., pp13–14. Heidegger, M., ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, in PLT, pp150–151. Heidegger, M., ‘The Thing’, in PLT, p173. Young, J., ‘The Fourfold’, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Second Edition, ed. C. B. Guignon, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp373–392. Heidegger, M., ‘The Thing’, in PLT, p179. Square brackets: my addition. Heidegger, M., ‘The Onto-theo-logical constitution of Metaphysics’, in Identity and Difference, Trans. J. Stambaugh, The University of Chicago Press, 1969, p72. Heidegger, M., ‘Language’, in PLT, p206. Heidegger, M., BT, p189/234. Heidegger, M., ‘What is Metaphysics?’, in Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill, Trans. D. F. Krell, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p88. Plato, Phaedo, Trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Plato, Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, Hackett, 1997, (69c–d), p60.

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Appendix 1

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Badiou, A., Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Trans. L. Burchill, University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p43. Deleuze, G., The Logic of Sense, Trans. M. Lester with C. Stivale, ed. C. V. Boundas, Athlone, 1990, p179. He says: ‘Philosophy is always a matter of inventing concepts. I’ve never been worried about going beyond metaphysics or any death of philosophy’, Deleuze, G., Negotiations, 1972–1990, Trans. M. Joughin, Columbia University Press, 1995, p136. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., What is Philosophy?, Trans. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchill, Verso, 1994, pp5–9. Nietzsche, F., The Will To Power, Trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1967, ¶409, pp220–221. See, for example, Beistegui, M., de, Truth and Genesis, Philosophy as Differential Ontology, Indiana University Press, 2004. Deleuze, G., Difference and Repetition, p35. See, Agamben, G., ‘Absolute Immanence’, in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, ed. J. Khalfa, Continuum, 1999, p156. Smith, D. W., ‘The Doctrine of Univocity, Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence’, in Deleuze and Religion, ed. M. Bryden, Routledge, 2001, p170. See Smith, p174.

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Index

absolute being 29, 80, 83–4, 85, 86, 88, 192n. 10 accidental being 15, 192n. 10 accidental predicate 24 actualitas 41 actuality 15 adaequatio intellectus ad rem 42, 129 ‘The Age of the World Picture’ (Heidegger) 148–9 aletheia 55–6, 67, 120, 122, 128–33, 142, 152 phenomenological correlation 42–4 Allers, Rudolf 3, 4 analogia entis 16, 20, 34, 52, 62, 147, 149 analogy 3, 20, 46, 184 Aristotelian 20, 87 beingness and 93, 149–50 Heideggerian 60–4, 90, 91, 92–3, 111, 114–16, 147–8, 165–6, 174 Henry of Ghent’s 24–5 in medieval philosophy 20, 32–5, 148, 149–50, 166 paronymy and 16, 20 Scotist 24–5, 69, 184 Thomist 22–4, 33 univocity vs. 86, 114–16 see also analogia entis; univocity Anaximander 137, 138 ‘The Anaximander Fragment’ (Heidegger) 137, 138 ancient philosophy univocity 10–18 see also specific philosophers, e.g., Aristotle; Greek philosophy; Western tradition of philosophy Ansell Pearson, Keith 51 Anslem of Canterbury, St. 118 anti-modernist neo-Scholastic phase (Heideggerian philosophy : 1909–13) 28–9, 79 anxiety Dasein and 103, 113, 124–5, 178–9

apophantic logic 96 Aquinas, Thomas 59, 79, 121, 134, 166 being 68–9, 88, 192n. 10 God 22–4, 33, 54, 119 echo in Husserl 83–4 archaeological hermeneutics 128, 160, 162, 163, 165, 194n. 10 archaeology 160–1, 194n. 10 The Archaeology of Knowledge (Foucault) 160 architecture 158–9, 165, 166 Aristotle 1, 37, 84, 107, 108, 121, 122, 134, 138, 141 analogy 20, 87 being 1–2, 10–18, 20, 27–9, 45, 69, 88, 143–4, 177–8 Dasein 18, 21 definition 70 Deity 17, 20, 115, 118 Heideggerian critique 14, 17–18, 20, 21 human existence 18 influence on medieval philosophy 21–2 medieval philosophy vs. 22 metaphysics 14–15 ontology 14, 18, 21, 39 predication 24 science 14–15, 22 theology 15, 22 truth 42–3, 129 Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–3 (Heidegger) 555 art 157–61, 164 poetic status 165, 167 atheism 7, 75, 183 Augustine, St. 30 authenticity 103, 109, 113, 178 Avicenna see Ibn Sına ˉ ˉ Bachelard, Gaston 162 Badiou, Alain 185 The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Heidegger) 31, 36, 38, 63, 72, 114–15, 142, 145, 167

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being 65 Aristotelian 1–2, 10–18, 20, 21, 69, 143–4, 177–8 Aristotelian-scholastic context 27–9, 36, 69, 88 beings vs. see ontological difference Cartesian 8 Hegelian 69 Heidegger’s analogically unified meaning 52–7, 58–60, 62, 91, 173–4, 180 Husserlian 81, 86, 88, 89–90 indefinability 10, 11, 68, 69, 70 metaphysical view 54–5, 119 non-univocity 87 Parmenidean 23, 43 phenomenology 72–4, 107–13 qua being 1–2, 14–15, 16, 22–3, 25–6, 54–5, 108 self-evidence 11, 68, 70–1 temporality and 44–8 Thomist 68–9, 88, 192n. 10 transcendental attributes 26 Being 53 Being and Time (Heidegger) 1, 8, 14, 17, 19, 20, 27, 33, 35, 40, 42, 49, 50, 59, 65, 87, 124 aim 108 see also Seinsfrage critical relation to metaphysics 68 Deleuze’s response 187 Ereignis formulation 43 Heidegger’s views 67, 125, 145 incompleteness 35–6, 57 organization 68 phenomenology 71–2 prelude 68, 72 spiral structure 103 being-historical thinking 67, 74 beingness analogy and 93, 149–50 of beings 54–6, 134, 142–3, 170 Dasein and 55–6 historical humanity and 56–7 time and 57–8 being, question of see Seinsfrage beings 38–9, 45, 72, 73–4 being vs. see ontological difference beingness 54–6, 134, 170 ontical inquiry 73 self-presentative 43 Brentano, Franz 22 influence on Heidegger 27–8, 79 Bultmann, Rudolf 36, 75

Canguilhem, Georges 162 Caputo, John D. 4, 20, 51, 54, 163 reading of Heidegger 79–80, 117, 119–20, 123–4, 139, 176–7 reading of Heideggerian criticism of scholasticism 49–51 care (Sorge) 8, 45, 46, 47, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 112–13, 178 Cassirer, Ernst 118 categorial intuition 41–2, 57, 81 categories 13–14, 15–16, 21, 45–6, 70, 143–4 beingness and 57 as classes of predicates 16–17 Deity and 20 Heideggerian 29, 30, 79–80 Heideggerian objection to universalization of 17–18 Categories (Aristotle) 11, 12–14, 21, 24, 70 catharsis 179 celestial hierarchy 23 Christian God 7, 48, 139 death 28 see also God clearing 58, 60, 73, 103, 122, 127, 133, 135, 138–9, 159, 171, 176 cogito 36, 151–2, 192n. 8 concepts 38 Nietzschean constructivism 186 origin 40–1 consciousness 6 Husserlian 81–4, 85–7, 88–9, 94–5, 192n. 8 intentionality 40–1, 85 conservatism Heidegger’s rejection 6, 157 construction 38–9, 72 Contributions to Philosophy (Heidegger) 27, 74, 126, 133, 145, 147, 153 Copleston, Frederick C. 117 corporeal substance 21–2 critique of pure reason 76, 77 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 161 critique of the present 164–5 cultural paradigms 158–60 culture 163–4 Greek 56 twentieth century 154 Dasein Aristotelian 18, 21 beingness and 55–6 Cartesian neglect 88

Index death and 7 faith 19 Heideggerian 2, 18, 19, 21, 24, 46–7, 52, 59–64, 66, 90–2, 98–107, 118, 129, 135, 138–9, 142, 177–9, 180–1 ontical distinction 98–9 phenomenology of being and 72–4 pre-theoretical understanding of being 40–1 productive agent 41 self-interpretation 37–9, 47, 73, 92, 109 temporal nature 20, 21, 47–8, 53, 62–3, 66, 91, 92, 102, 104–7, 115–16, 122, 133, 174, 177, 180 tradition’s neglect 79, 100, 111 truth and 42–3 death Dasein’s 24 existence and 113 God 5–6, 146, 183 Heideggerian 7, 8, 175–9, 184 human 5–6 deep contextualism 139 definition Aristotelian 70 Deleuze, Gilles 3, 4, 5, 58, 136, 172, 174 reading of Husserl 83 univocity 51, 185–8 Deleuze, La clamour de l’Etre (Badiou) 185 Demythologizing Heidegger (Caputo) 20, 79, 176 Denis the pseudo-Areopagite see Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite Descartes, René 44, 117, 134, 151, 192n. 8 created being 44–5 Husserl’s kinship with 85–7 knowledge 77 medieval ontology 85–9 neglect of Dasein 88 destruction 14, 30, 31–2, 38, 39, 41–2, 72, 170 history of ontology 14, 36–7, 44 tradition and 37–9, 52 difference 119, 120, 127, 133, 146, 167–8, 176, 187 early Greeks’ 140–1 see also Ereignis Difference and Repetition (Deleuze) 3, 51, 83, 187 Dilthey, Wilhelm 32 disclosure 157–8 discontinuity 162–3

211

disjunctive attributes of being 26 Disputationes metaphysicae (Suarez) 38 Dreyfus, Hubert L. 158 Duns Scotus Theory of the Categories and of Meaning (Heidegger Habilitation thesis) 4, 24, 28, 29, 30, 34, 119, 123 destruction in 31–2 dwelling 146, 155, 159, 175, 178 earth 159, 163–4, 175–7 ecclesiastical hierarchy 23 Eckhart, Meister 117, 118, 122, 123–4 ecstatical temporality 62–4, 66, 106, 171 Egyptianism 156, 164 eidetic reduction 82, 85 eidetic singularities 96 Elliott, Brian 130, 194n. 10 empiricism 77 end of philosophy 30, 131–2, 174 The End of Philosophy (Heidegger) 55, 131, 141, 142 Enlightenment motto 76 epistemology 49, 94, 97, 101 epoch 127, 134, 162, 170–1 epoché 82, 85, 95, 101, 151, 170 equivocity 12, 20, 23–4 Ereignis (event of appropriation) 9, 33, 34–5, 54–5, 57, 58–60, 74, 119–20, 127, 130, 132–3, 134–6, 141, 146–7, 169, 172, 180–1 formulation 43 Erfurt, Thomas of 30–1 eschatology 137, 154, 155, 161–2 essentia 40, 55, 143, 152 essential thinking 124 Ethics (Spinoza) 161 event of appropriation see Ereignis evidence 42, 129 existence 23, 40, 55, 73 as Dasein’s existentiality 109 death and 113 external world 96–7 Heideggerian 8, 99, 101 metaphysical distinction between essence and 141–3 scholastic understanding 41, 84 existentialia 18, 100, 109–10 experience of life (lebenserfahrung) 32–5, 148–9, 166 Expressionism in Philosophy, Spinoza (Deleuze) 187

212

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facticity see haecceitas faith medieval philosophy 19, 118 faith seeking understanding (fides quarens intellectum) 19, 118 fides quarens intellectum see faith seeking understanding finite beings 119 finitude 7, 8 Dasein and 60 human existence 177–9 focal meaning 20 formalization 96 formal ontology 96 form of life 32–3, 165 forms 48, 118 Foucault, Michel 160–1, 162 fourfold 174–7, 183–4 fractured history 161–7 Frede, Dorothea 92 free Protestant mystical phase (Heideggerian philosophy: 1917–20) 28, 30–5, 79 The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (Heidegger) 61, 91 fundamental ontology 28, 33, 67, 74, 79, 99, 107, 139, 177–8, 182 being and time 65 Dasein 7, 20, 24, 41, 42–3, 49, 76, 108–13 Heideggerian abandonment 125–6 Kantian dimension 75 metaphysics and 39–41, 68 Galileo Galilei 151 gelassenheit see letting be generalization 96 The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Kisiel) 36 genetic phenomenology 40, 50 genus 10, 12–13, 15, 16–17, 69, 116 Germinal Life, the Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (Ansell Pearson) 51 God 175–6, 192n. 8 Aristotelian 17, 20, 115, 118 death 5–6, 146, 183 divine nature 25 existence 77 Ibn Sına’s ˉ ˉ 121 medieval approach 147 ontological concept 87, 88 perfect self-coincidence 59 Scotist metaphysics and 25–6, 34–5

Thomist 22–4, 54, 119 see also Christian God good Plato’s 59 Gothic architecture 158, 164, 165, 166–7 grammar 160 thought and 30–1 Grammatica speculativa (Erfurt) 30–1 Greek ontology 14, 38 Greek philosophy 37, 56, 127, 151 importance 128–9, 137–8 notion of difference 140–1 presencing 137 question of being 86–7 see also Aristotle; Plato Guattari, Felix 186 Guignon, Charles 48, 49, 139 guilt 59, 103–4 Gutting, Gary 160–1, 162, 194n. 10 haecceitas 24, 29–30, 35, 144 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 38, 39, 69, 124, 134 Heidegger and Aquinas (Caputo) 51 Heidegger, An Introduction (Polt) 49 Heidegger, Martin analogy 60–4, 90, 91, 92–3, 111, 114–16, 147–8, 165–6, 174 Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy promotion 28–9 being, unified meaning of 52–7, 58–60, 62, 91, 173–4, 180 Brentano’s influence 27–8, 79 Caputo’s reading 79–80, 117, 119–20, 123–4, 176–7 categories 29, 30, 79–80 categories, objection to universalization of 17–18 central concern 2–5, 9, 27–32, 52–3, 68–9, 107–8, 119 compared to Eckhart 118, 123–4 criticism 127–8, 181 critique of Aristotle 14, 17–18, 20, 21 critique of Cartesian conception of being 8 critique of Husserl 84, 88–9, 95, 97–102, 181 critique of medieval philosophy 34–5 critique of scholasticism 41, 49–51 Dasein 2, 18, 19, 21, 24, 46–7, 52, 59–64, 66, 90–2, 98–107, 118, 129, 135, 138–9, 142, 177–9, 180–1

Index Greek philosophy’s importance 128–9 Husserlian consciousness 85–7 Husserl’s influence 57, 66, 81 individuation 24, 113 Kant, kinship with 68 Kuhn, kinship with 163 later philosophy 6, 30, 91–2, 117, 126–8 meaning 67, 104–5 medieval thought’s influence 19, 117 metaphysics 39–41, 137 mysticism 117–25, 139–40 mysticism, early engagement 32–5 Nietzsche and Hölderlin, identification with 28 ontology 20, 21, 108, 110, 115, 125 philosophical phases 28–35, 79 philosophical shift 58, 91, 117 Scotist engagement 3–4, 28, 29–30, 144 Sheehan’s reading 52–7, 58–60, 62, 91, 173–4, 180 substance 48, 87, 88 theology 20, 30, 34, 75 thinking 122–5, 132–3, 134–5 time 65–6, 171–2 truth 67, 129 understanding 66–7 univocity 65, 66, 67, 71, 79–85, 87, 111–12, 114–16, 144–5, 157, 172–4, 180, 181–3 “Heidegger on the Principle of Sufficient Reason” (Allers) 3 Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being (Philipse) 17 Henry of Ghent Scotist critique 24–5 Heraclitus 43, 137 heritage 175 hermeneutics of facticity 40 Hesiod 167 hierarchy metaphysical view 23 historical humanity 56–7, 61, 107, 123, 128, 131–3, 147–8, 170–2 art and 158 language and 168–9 subordination 162 task 154–5 history 153–7 art and 157–61 fractured 161–7 history of being 37, 117, 122, 126, 129–30, 133–6, 137, 140, 141–3, 144, 150, 153, 175

213

history of metaphysics 51, 119, 122 Greek 140–4 scholastic phase 144–5 history of philosophy destructive-reappropriation of 76 neglect of Dasein 79, 100, 111 phenomenology and 41 shortcomings 114 History of the Concept of Time (Heidegger) 8, 84, 87, 95, 108, 178 History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena (Heidegger) 75 Hölderlin, Friedrich 28, 168 Homer 167 homonymy 11–12, 15, 70 human existence 135 Aristotelian 18 finitude 177–9 humanism 7 humanity 6, 7, 138, 148, 153–4, 155, 166 see also historical humanity Husserl, Edmund 31, 36, 71, 79, 139, 160 consciousness 81–4, 85–7, 88–9, 94–5, 192n. 8 epistemologist 97–8 Heideggerian critique 84, 88–9, 95, 97–102, 181 influence on Heidegger 57, 66, 81 intentionality 82–3 regional and formal ontology 96 sensuous and categorical intuition 41–2 truth 42, 129 Ibn Sına ˉ ˉ 121 Idea 134, 136, 138, 142–3, 170 Ideas I (Husserl) 81, 90, 95, 96 immanence 78, 85, 86, 89 univocity and 5, 51, 172, 187 inauthenticity 109, 178 incommensurability 163 individuation death and 177–9 Heideggerian 24, 113 inertia principle 151 innovation 6, 154–5, 162 intentional activity (noesis) 42, 82 intentionality consciousness 40–1, 85 Husserlian, 82–3 intentional object (noema) 42, 82, 94 ‘Introduction, Heidegger, the Project and Fulfilment’ (Sheehan) 52

214

Index

Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger) 101 intuition essence 82 Husserlian 41–2, 57, 81 jointure 138 kairological time 33 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Heidegger) 31, 36, 37, 40 Kant, Immanuel 139, 161 being 81 Enlightenment 76 metaphysics 68, 76–8 temporality 44 ‘Kehre and Ereignis, A Prolegomenon to Introduction to Metaphysics’ (Sheehan) 52 Kierkegaard, Søren 30, 79 kinesis see temporal motion Kisiel, Theodore 4, 36 knowledge aim 76–7 Cartesian 94 Krebs, Engelbert, Father 19, 28 Kuhn, Thomas 163 language 80 poetry and 167–9 significance 120 thought and 30–1 ‘Language’ (Heidegger) 167 Lawlor, Leonard 160 lebenserfahrung see experience of life Letter on Humanism (Heidegger) 67–8, 123, 126, 167 letting be (gelassenheit) 32, 67, 135 lived experience 84–5, 86, 133, 145, 146 logic apophantic 96 Heideggerian 100 Logical Investigations (Husserl) 31, 42 The Logic of Sense (Deleuze) 187 logos 43, 56, 70, 71–2 Lotz, Johannes 51 Löwith, Karl 79 Luther, Martin 30, 32, 79 machination 145–6, 147 matheis ˉ 151–2 meaning 82, 67, 104–5

medieval ontology 10 Cartesian connections 85–9 medieval philosophy analogy 20, 32–5, 148, 149–50, 166 Aristotelian influence 22 era 117–18 God 147 Heideggerian critique 34–5 influence on Heidegger 19, 117 religious character 19, 118 see also specific philosophers, e.g., Aquinas, Thomas, St.; scholasticism Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 160 The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (Heidegger) 63, 66 metaphysics 5–7, 74, 131, 152, 184 Aristotelian 14–15 being 54–5, 119 essence vs. existence 141–3 guiding concern 132 Heidegger and 39–41, 137 history 51, 119, 122, 140–5 history of being 133–5 Kantian 68, 76–8 Scotist 25–6 Thomist 22–4 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 11, 14 Metaphysics. Delta VI (Aristotle) 16 Metaphysics. Delta VII (Aristotle) 15 Metaphysics. Eta (Aristotle) 15 Metaphysics. Gamma (Aristotle) 14–15 Metaphysics. Gamma 2 (Aristotle) 17 Metaphysics. Theta (Aristotle) 15 Metaphysics. Zeta (Aristotle) 15 methodological atheism 75, 183 Milchman, Alan 160 Mindfullness (Heidegger) 145 modern European thought crisis 6–7 destabilization of subject 6 point of departure 5–6 see also Western tradition of philosophy modernity 183 Heideggerian response 7, 145–9 Moira 140–1 monotheistic theology 22 Moran, Dermot 72 The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Caputo) 117 mystical neo-neo-Scholastic phase (Heideggerian philosophy: 1914–16) 28, 29, 79, 81

Index mysticism Heideggerian 32–5, 117–25, 139–40 scholasticism and 19, 32, 123 mythopoetry 175–7 ‘My Way to Phenomenology’ (Heidegger) 41, 128 natural theology 54 nature 13, 45, 53, 152, 164 neomythology 20 new beginning 30, 120 Newton, Isaac 151 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 79, 177–8 Nietzsche, Friedrich 51, 60, 150, 186, 187 criticism of philosophers’ idiosyncrasies 156 Heideggerian identification with 28, 75, 165, 183 metaphysics 55, 119, 134, 141, 144, 152 ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ (Foucault) 160 noema see intentional object noesis see intentional activity nominal definition 70 non-representational thinking 6, 7, 67, 132, 183, 184 nothing 3, 123–4 nothingness 3, 25–6, 69, 91, 182, 184 noumena 48, 76, 78 O’Farrell, Clare 162 On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (Brentano) 22, 27–8 ontical inquiry 73 On Time and Being (Heidegger) 126, 130 ontological difference 2, 11, 18, 29, 64, 71, 75, 78–9, 81, 107, 118–19, 121, 126–7, 133, 141–2, 187 ontology 185 Aristotelian 14, 18, 21 destruction of tradition of 14, 36–7, 44 Greek 14, 38 Heideggerian 20, 21, 108, 110, 115, 125 see also medieval ontology ontotheology 5, 34–5, 54, 55, 93, 141, 147, 156 birth 118–19 operative intentionality 40–1 The Order of Things (Foucault) 160 ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (Heidegger) 157, 159, 163 ousia see substance

215

Parmenides 134, 137, 140–1 being 23, 43 paronymy 11, 12, 13 analogy and 16, 20 reduction 17 participation 23, 84 Pascal, Blaise 30, 79 perception 94–5 phenomenological reduction see epoché phenomenology 6, 71–2, 90, 194n. 10 aletheia and 42–4 being 72–4, 107–13 genetic 40, 50 history of philosophy and 41 Husserlian vs. Heideggerian 94–102 introduction 81–2 origin of concepts and 40 scientific domain 84–5 Thomist echoes 83–4 univocity and 35–7, 107–13 Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger (Elliott) 130, 194n. 10 phenomenon 71, 72–3, 78, 131 Philipse, Herman 17, 95 “The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism” (Heidegger) 32, 67 philosophical theology creationist 22–4, 148 philosophy Cartesian transformation 6 Heideggerian terms 5 history see history of philosophy physical stuff 48 Physics (Aristotle) 14 physis 43, 56, 137, 140, 141, 142–3, 150, 152, 163–4 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 22 Plato 1, 37, 39, 48, 55, 69, 81, 84, 107, 108, 118, 119, 121, 122, 134, 136, 138, 141, 142–3, 151, 152, 170, 179 good 59 Platonism 51, 131, 132 Plotinus 121, 122 Poetics (Aristotle) 179 poetic thinking 67, 162 poetry 132, 157, 165, 167 language and 167–9 Polt, Richard 49, 63, 103, 156, 163 potentiality 15, 52

216

Index

predication Aristotelian 24 Husserlian 81 Scotist 24–6 Thomist 23–4 transitivity 13 presence 74, 128, 130–1, 132, 134, 135, 138–40, 143–4, 153–4, 157–8, 171–3, 182 presencing 136, 137–8, 140–1, 161, 171, 176 present ecstasis 62–3 primal Christianity 30 primary substance 12, 13, 16, 21, 45, 48, 70, 143–4 primordial time 66, 114 The Principle of Identity (Heidegger) 141 “The Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy” (Heidegger) 29 pros hen relation see paronymy Protagorean doctrine 7 Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite 23 pure perfection 190n. 12 transcendental status 26 pure subsistent being 119 qua summum ens 30 The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (Heidegger) 158 question of being see Seinsfrage Qur’an 121 ‘Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard Times’ (Sheehan) 52 real definition 70 reality metaphysical view 12, 21–2, 61 reduction 38–9, 72 Husserlian 82 paronymy 17 regional ontology 90, 94, 115 formal ontology vs. 96 representational thinking 5, 124, 131 res cogitans 36, 44–5, 85–6, 88 retrieval 14, 40, 62, 95 revolution 6, 154 Richardson, William J. 28 Rickert, Heinrich 30 Rosenberg, Alan 160 Russell, Bertrand 48

Sacred Doctrine 54 said-of-relation 12, 13 scepticism 77 transcendental arguments and 97 Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom (Heidegger) 149 schematism 44 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 30 scholasticism analogy 20 Aristotelian philosophy vs. 22 being 27–9, 36 createdness 44–5 existence 41, 84 Heideggerian critique 41, 49–50 Heidegger’s promotion 28–9 metaphysical framework 21–6 mysticism and 19, 32, 123 transcendals 75 see also medieval philosophy science Aristotelian 14–15, 22 scientific philosophy 36 Scotus Book (Heidegger) 29, 30, 80, 90, 165 Scotus, John Duns 51, 58, 79 analogy 24–5, 69, 184 critique of Henry of Ghent 24–5 Heidegger’s engagement with 3–4, 28, 29–30, 144 metaphysics 25–6 transcendentals 24, 75 univocity 2–3, 24–6, 34–5, 80, 91, 144, 147, 166, 180, 182, 184, 186–7 secondary substance 12–13, 21, 143–4 Seinsfrage (question of being) 52–3 Aristotelian 45 epistemological interpretation 48–9 Heidegger’s preoccupation 1–2, 10, 27–32, 52–3, 68–9, 71, 101–2, 107–8, 119 Husserlian 90, 96 tradition’s neglect and failure 90, 102, 118–19, 141 self 97–8, 139 sensuous intuition 41–2, 57 Sheehan, Thomas 3, 158 reading of Heidegger 52–7, 58–60, 62, 91, 173–4, 180 sky 175–6 Smith, Daniel W. 187 Socrates 123, 179

Index Sophist (Plato) 108 soul 22, 33, 77, 118, 140, 166–7, 179 space 78, 130, 131 see also time-space species 12, 13, 135 Spinoza, Baruch 51, 161, 187 Stambaugh, Joan 37 ‘step back’ 132 ‘stringent aporia’ 33–4, 55, 90, 91, 141 Suarez, Francisco 38 subject birth 6 knowledge 76–8 subjective relativism 148–9 subjectivity 88, 133, 151–2 substance (ousia) 45 Aristotelian 12, 13–14, 17–18, 20, 45–6, 55, 70, 84, 126, 138, 143–4 Cartesian 44 Heidegger and 48, 87, 88 highest genus 17 permanence 44 in the tradition 86 substantial predicate 24 Supplements, From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond (Heidegger) 28 synonymy 11–12, 15, 21 univocity and 13 Taminiaux, Jacques 20, 41, 52, 62, 81, 91, 125–6 technology (Gestell) 131–2, 134, 144, 145, 147–8, 175, 176 temporality 37, 64 being and 4–8, 66 Dasein’s 20, 21, 47–8, 53, 62–3, 66, 91, 92, 102, 104–7, 115–16, 122, 133, 174, 177, 180 ecstatical 62–4, 66, 106, 171 Kantian 44 temporal motion (kinesis) 33 theology Aristotelian 15, 22 Heidegger and 20, 30, 34, 75 medieval 22–6 natural 54 thinking being-historical 67, 74 essential 124 forms 5–6, 30–1

217

Heideggerian 122–5, 132–3, 134–5 non-representational 6, 7, 67, 132, 183, 184 openness to being 118 Parmenidean 141 representational 5, 124, 131 Thinking After Heidegger (Wood) 130 time beingness and 57–8 four dimensional 135, 171–2 Heideggerian 65–6 Husserlian 66 ontological function 65–6, 91 univocity 8, 21, 33, 111–12 time-space 130, 135, 171–2 ‘to be’ Aristotelian 45 Heideggerian 46, 53, 59, 66, 91, 136 Husserlian 89, 96 transcendence 33, 63, 89 God 23–4, 25 transcendental 24 Scotist 26, 75 transcendental anthropocentrism 92 transcendental argument 97 transcendental consciousness 83–4 transcendental ego 95, 97 transcendental horizon 27, 46, 53, 64, 66, 107, 115–16, 122, 177, 180, 182 transcendental idealism 77–8, 83, 94–5 transcendental philosophy 50, 74–9, 97, 160–1 transcendental realism 76–7, 78 Heidegger’s rejection 97–8 transcendental reduction see epoché transitivity of predication 13 truth 42 Aristotelian 42–3, 129 being 15, 73–4, 132–3, 161 Heideggerian 67, 129 Husserlian 42, 129 see also aletheia ‘turn’ 58 understanding Heideggerian 66–7 unity of analogy 10, 21, 69, 84, 91 universality 10, 68–9, 70 univocity 2–5, 12, 58, 172 analogy vs. 86, 114–16 Deleuze’s 51, 185–8

218

Index

univocity (cont’d) Heideggerian 3, 65, 66, 67, 71, 79–85, 87, 111–12, 114–16, 144–5, 157, 172–4, 180, 181–3 phenomenology and 35–7, 107–13 Scotist 2–3, 24–6, 34–5, 80, 91, 144, 147, 166, 180, 182, 184, 186–7 synonymy and 13 time 8, 21, 33, 111–12 Van Buren, John 4, 28, 33, 79 ‘The Way to Language’ (Heidegger) 167 Western tradition of philosophy 1, 127–8 Heideggerian critique 127–8 neglect of and failure to raise the question of being 90, 102, 118–19, 141 neglect of Dasein 79, 100, 111

presupposition 48–9 see also ancient philosophy; modern European thought ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (Foucault) 160 ‘What is Metaphysics?’ (Heidegger) 100, 123 What is Philosophy? (Heidegger) 37 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 118 Wood, David 130 work of art 158–9, 164–5, 167, 173 world 45, 163–4 consciousness and 83, 94 Dasein and 73, 120 external 96–7 self and 139 transcendent 86 worldhood 87, 88, 111 Young, Julian 175