philip tonner heidegger, metaphysics and the univocity of being

8/12/2019 Philip Tonner Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

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Heidegger, Metaphysics and theUnivocity of Being


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Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophyis a major monograph seriesfrom Continuum. The series features rst-class scholarly researchmonographs across the eld of Continental philosophy. Each work makesa major contribution to the eld of philosophical research.

Adornos Concept of Life, Alastair MorganBadiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam MillerBeing and Number in Heideggers Thought, Michael Roubach

The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, Robert PierceyDeleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-RihanDeleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe HughesDeleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon OSullivan

and Stephen ZepkeDerrida, Simon Morgan WorthamDerrida and Disinterest, Sean GastonEncountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison

WeinerFoucaults Heidegger, Timothy RaynerGadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter LammiHeidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. ElkholyHeidegger and Aristotle, Michael BowlerHeidegger and Happiness, Matthew KingHeidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard

Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael LewisHeidegger on Language and Death, Joachim L. OberstHeidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth IrwinHeidegger, Work, and Being, Todd S. MeiHeideggers Contributions to Philosophy, Jason PowellHeideggers Early Philosophy, James LuchteHeideggers Platonism, Mark A. RalkowskiThe Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas

Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology, Kirk M. BesmerNietzsches Ethical Theory, Craig DoveNietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James LuchteThe Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia DttmannWhos Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari?Gregg Lambertiek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman


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Heidegger, Metaphysics andthe Univocity of Being

Philip Tonner


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Continuum International Publishing Group

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Philip Tonner 2010

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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.

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Contents

Acknowledgements viiAbbreviations of Heideggers Works ix

Introduction 1 General Introduction 1 The Univocity of Being 2 The Modern Predicament 5

1. The Problem of Univocity in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy 10 From Heidegger to Aristotle 10

Medieval Philosophy 19 Scholasticism 21

2. Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity 27 Section One 27 The Question of Being 27 Analogy, the Medieval Experience of Life 32 Univocity and Phenomenology 35

Destruction and Tradition 37 Metaphysics 39 Phenomenological Philosophy and Aletheia 41 Descartes, Scholasticism and Time 44 The Presupposition of the Tradition 48

Section Two 49 Scholasticism, Analogy and the Interpretation of Heidegger 49 The Phenomena of Beingness and Time 57 Beyond Being 58 The Analogical Interpretation of Heideggers Text 60

3. Univocity and Phenomenological Philosophy 65 Being and Some Other Key Terms 65 The Phenomenology of Being and the Question of Dasein 72 Transcendental Philosophy 74


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vi Contents

Univocity from 1916 to 1927 79 Cartesian Connections and the Medieval Ontology 85 Dasein, Univocity and the Question of Analogy 89

4. Univocity and Fundamental Ontology 94 Husserl and Heidegger 94 Phenomenology, Being and Univocity 107 Univocity and Analogy 114

5. Univocity and Heideggers Later Thought 117 Section One 117

Mysticism 117 The Present Age 125 The Later Heidegger 126 A-Letheia,Ereignisand Epochal Immanence 128 A History of Being 133

Section Two 137 The Tradition 137 The History of Metaphysics 140

The Medieval and the Modern 145 A History of the Modern: Subjectivity 151

6. Univocity and the Problem of History 153 History and Civilization 153 Art and History 157 Fractured History 161 Language and Poetry 167

The Fate of Univocity 169 The Re-enchanted Forest 174 Being Mortal 177

Conclusion 180

Appendix: The Univocity of Being: Deleuze 185Notes 189

Select Bibliography 196Index 209


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Acknowledgements

The original idea for this book occurred to me while I was studying phil-osophy at the University of Warwick. I would like to thank all the members

of staff and postgraduate students of the Department of Philosophy whomade my time there enjoyable. Particularly, I would like to thank Miguelde Beistegui, Peter Poellner, Stephen Houlgate and Keith Ansell Pearsonfor their early encouragement and advice.

While conceived at Warwick, this text was written in Glasgow. I wouldlike to extend my considerable thanks and warm gratitude to AlexanderBroadie for his sustained help and guidance over the years. The argu-

ment of the present work has certainly beneted from his input. I wouldalso like to extend my warm thanks to David Campbell, formerly of theDepartment of Philosophy at Glasgow. David kindly met with me to dis-cuss some difcult points of interpretation and his comments on an earl-ier draft undoubtedly improved the text as a whole. Later comments fromBrian Elliott and Richard Stalley have proven invaluable in improving theoverall coherence of my argument. I owe both of them thanks for theircontinued support of my projects. I would like to thank Gerald Moore and

Michael Nix, both of whom gave me helpful comments on aspects of thepenultimate draft. I would like to thank Sarah Campbell and Tom Crickand the team at Continuum for their help and support with the nal prep-aration of the manuscript. Of course, any errors or omissions in the bookas a whole remain my fault.

I would like to extend my thanks to the Department of Philosophy atthe University of Glasgow, staff and students, for making my time thereunforgettable. Particularly, I would like to thank Dudley Knowles, Philip

Percival, Paul Brownsey, Robin Downie, Susan Stuart (now at HATII), ScottMeikle, Anne Southall and Susan Howel.

I would like to extend my warm thanks and gratitude to my family andfriends, all of whom have made their contribution to my thought overthe 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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viii Acknowledgements

encouragement throughout this and other projects. Also, I would like tothank 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 TonnerGlasgow

2009


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Abbreviations of Heideggers Works

BPOP The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Trans. A. Hofstadter, IndianaUniversity Press, 1988.

BT Being and Time, Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, BasilBlackwell, 1962.

BT (2) Being and Time, A Translation ofSein 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, YaleUniversity 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, IndianaUniversity Press, 1992.

WIP What is Philosophy?, Trans. W. Kluback and J. T. Wilde, Vision Press,1963.


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Introduction

General Introduction

Heideggers philosophy is guided by one question: what is the meaning ofbeing? Despite the fact that it was this question that stood out in antiquityas thequestion of philosophy, Heidegger holds that this question has beenforgotten in modernity. Today we do not have an answer to this questionand we are not even concerned about our inability to comprehend it. It wasthis question that Heidegger posed in Being and Timeand that, in one wayor another, guided his thought throughout his life.

In recent years much ink has been spilt trying to come to terms withHeideggers thinking. Partly because of his style of doing philosophy, astyle that goes back to the texts of past philosophers in the Western tradi-tion and attempts to elicit what he calls the unsaid from their works, com-ing to terms with his thought is, in an important sense, inseparable withcoming to terms with the entirehistory of philosophy. In any attempt to dothis, 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 Platoand Aristotle, has in Heideggers view, become over the years calcied into

what we now know generically as the Western tradition of philosophy. Since anadequate answer to the question of being is not to be found in this tradition wemust, Heidegger maintains, reawaken our sense for the meaning of this ques-tion 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 fateof the question of the meaning of being. Heidegger attempted to reawaken

our sense of urgency in the face of this question, together with raising thequestion itself, in Being and Time.This work constitutes the rst stage of a life-long quest for an appreciation of the question of the meaning of being; all ofhis 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 trad-ition of philosophy has been massively inuenced by Aristotles thought.Perhaps one of his most important insights was that there is a kind of


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2 Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

science whose remit is being qua being.1 Despite the fact that in thehistory of philosophy, from antiquity through medieval ontology down tothe present, there has been an engagement with this science, nowhere,

from Heideggers point of view, has there been given a satisfactory answerto the question of the meaning of being. This is a problem for Heideggersince it is his conviction that all ontology, no matter how internally con-sistent and apparently useful its categories are, will persist visionless andcorrupted from its raison dtreif it fails to clarify the meaning of being andto understand this clarication 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 differencebetween being and beings. The ques-tion of being refers to being and not to beings. Nevertheless, Heideggerholds that in order to elucidate this question we must take an entity as aparadigm and make its being transparent. Since posing the question ofbeing is a fundamental possibility of our being, it is appropriate that it isus, quaDasein, that is rendered transparent. In fact, for Heidegger, the

very posing of this question isDaseins 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 inmany ways Aristotle searched for a unitary meaning of being that foundedall of the various ways in which it is said. How can there be a unied senseor meaning of being when being is said in many ways? A concern with aunied sense or meaning of being was a major concern of Heideggers andthere is an afnity between his thought and Aristotles, in so far as boththinkers, ultimately, open a spacefor the univocity of beingto emerge as theproper expression of the meaning of being.

The Univocity of Being

My central aim in this book is to develop an interpretation of Heideggers

philosophy in terms of the univocity of being. Achieving this is impossiblewithout reference to Aristotelian-scholastic substance ontology in general,and to the philosophy of John Duns Scotus in particular. Scotus raisedphilosophical univocity to its historical apotheosis. Minimally, the univocityof being entails that there is a fundamental concept or sense ofbeing under

which falls anything whatsoever that exists. Such a view plays a distinctiveand crucial role in both Scotuss and Heideggers philosophy.


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Introduction 3

For Scotus the univocity of being is expounded in terms of beingsopposition to nothingness: all being is opposed to nothingness regardlessof the determinations of being into innite being and nite being. In

Heidegger, the univocity of being emerges as the temporal congurationof being, understood as meaningful presence. Attributing the doctrineof philosophical univocity to Scotus is not controversial. With regard toHeidegger, things are more complicated.

Hitherto, univocity has not played an important role in Heidegger inter-pretation. On the face of it at least, this is signicant because early in hiscareer Heidegger wrote a book-length study on what he took to be philo-

sophical texts of Scotus. To that extent, you might expect a brief discus-sion of this notion in the literature: but you would be disappointed. Theword univocity rarely features in the index to translations of Heideggersworks, if it gures at all, and most scholars do not note univocity as a pointof interpretation let alone discuss its signicance to Heideggers thought.This is not to say that interpreters of Heideggers works have not comeclose to raising this question.

Signicantly, Thomas Sheehan has interpreted Heideggers text in terms

of the analogy of being. Accordingly, his work will form an important pointof reference. It is my view that, employing a Scotist move, analogy is impos-sible without a prior univocity. For Scotus, a fundamental sense of beingas opposed to nothing underscores any further determination of that con-cept and for Heidegger time emerges as the horizon for the understandingof being. While different in important respects, both these views uphold afundamental univocal sense of being and it is just this parallel that I shallhave cause to explore.

Among the few exceptions to the rule of passing over the concept ofunivocity with reference to Heidegger have been the partial readingsput forward of his thought by Deleuze in Difference and Repetitionand by

Allers in his Heidegger on the Principle of Sufcient Reason.2 For hispart, Deleuze interprets Heidegger in terms of the thesis of univocity. Onthis reading, Heidegger follows Duns Scotus and gives renewed splen-dour to the Univocity of Being.3Part of my project here will be to gain

a fuller understanding of what this statement means for the interpreta-tion of Heideggers philosophy of being. Doing this will involve discussingHeideggers relationship to Duns Scotus and to traditional metaphysicsmore generally.

In recent years, the early Heideggers relationship to Scotus hasemerged as an area of novel scholarship in terms of the renewed inter-est in Heideggers earliest philosophical engagement. As witness to this


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there is the work of Theodore Kisiel, John Van Buren and John D. Caputo.The young Heidegger based his Habilitationthesis on what he took to bethe work of Scotus and scholars have explored this area thoroughly. One

consequence of this has been that Heideggers relationship with Scotusbeyond this text has remained largely unexplored. Whereas the attentionpaid to the early Heideggers engagement with Scotus has remained largely

within the connes of scholarly intellectual biography, my engagement willseek to place the entirety of Heideggers thought in a critical relation to theunivocity of being, and thus unavoidably, to Scotus.

Two initial questions are prompted by this approach: rst, is the doc-

trine of the univocity of being explicitly signicant for Heidegger? Second,even if being is univocal for Heidegger does his concept of univocal beinghave anything in common with Scotuss view of being? My answer to therst question is that univocity, while not explicitly thematized in his work,remains an implicit commitment and as such can serve as an interpretivetool for characterizing his philosophy. Howsoever Heidegger characterizeshis philosophy of being explicitly; his concept of being is, implicitly, univo-cal. My answer to the second question is that while Scotuss and Heideggers

concepts of being differ radically from each other, they do nonetheless havesomething in common. That is, Scotus and Heidegger share a commitmentto being having one prevailing sense. This is enough to characterize bothphilosophies of being in terms of univocity. Also, for both thinkers, albeitin different ways, to uphold univocity, implicitly or explicitly, is not a matterof opposing their doctrine to an alternative view that claims that being hasa plurality of senses. For both thinkers, it is a matter of as well as ratherthan in opposition to.

I am pursuing univocity in connection with Heidegger because it hasbeen suggested that Heideggers view of being follows the path of analogy.

While certain commentators have intimated that Heideggers view upholdsunivocity, and so have begun to chart this territory, I propose to go all outafter 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 hasoffered a sustained discussion of this theme. Allers, for example, afrms:

a . . . fundamental conviction which is, perhaps, never stated explicitlybut is clearly basic to Heideggers philosophy . . . [is that] . . . BEING isan univocal term.4

This remark when taken with Deleuzes pronouncement that Heideggerfollows Scotus, motivates my project. I will be comprehensive in my


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Introduction 5

reading of Heideggers philosophy and I will show the limit and extentof 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 Heideggers thought to con-temporary European philosophy such a project is necessary. I will providea reading of Heideggers thought as a whole taking the thesis of the univoc-ity of being as my point of departure. I will show that, from his beginningsin the Scotus dissertation through to Being and Timeand then to his latercritique of representational thinkingand ontotheology, the thesis of the univoc-ity of being, properly interpreted in terms that uphold being asmeaning-

ful presence, is a central guiding concern of his thought.

The Modern Predicament

Philosophical univocity, as present in Heideggers text, entails a commit-ment to a kind of thinking without recourse to traditional ontotheologicalgrounds. Philosophy is, and should be, committed to a certain form of

immanence. It should not have recourse to a ground or foundation outwithexperience. To put this in Heideggerian terms, philosophy cannot baseits program on any foundation beyond the epochal play of the conceal-ing and revealing of being. All historical human beings are entitled to istheir limited nite interpretations of things and any appeal to principlesof order which, in one way or another, make a claim to atemporal univer-sality, should be treated with a degree of suspicion and scepticism. It isthis problematic that is at stake when Heideggers thought is interpreted

in terms of univocity. The univocity of being, as I understand it, impliesimmanence.

As such, philosophy contains within it a response to the condition ofmodernity, a modernity characterized by three coordinate concerns or cir-cuits of interpretation, all of which take their point of departure from theconviction that metaphysics, broadly understood, has been and must besurpassed. 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 ofthe Human and (3) other forms of thought.5

Modern European philosophy can be understood in terms of its pointof departure. From a point of crisis, the death of God and/or the human,

which amounts to a destabilization of traditional metaphysical points ofdeparture, be they theological or humanist, modern European philoso-phers have attempted to oppose a novel response in terms of an other


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form of thought, not bound by the same fate as metaphysics. In Heideggerscase this new manner of philosophizing was initially phenomenology.Phenomenology represented a method by which Heidegger could answerthetraditional metaphysical problem, the question of being. Later, with hisnon-representational thinking, which, from a biographical point of view,is the successor of phenomenology, Heidegger sought further to abandonany commitment to traditional metaphysics in order to think the event ofthe revelation of being to and for thought.

This issue of crisis and of thinking differently connects with other cur-rents in European thought throughout the 20th Century, particularly with

philosophies that emphasize innovation and revolution in contradistinc-tion to those that emphasize traditionalism and conservatism; the issueof the extent to which Heidegger abandoned conservatism in favour ofinnovation, or vice versa,shall be intimated in my discussion of his so calledlater philosophy.

The death of God heralds for philosophy the abolition of the distinc-tion between two worlds: one of being and the other of becoming and itheralds also the loss of any recourse to a transcendent ground that would

provide the foundation for this temporal world of becoming. The death ofGod heralds the loss of the ultimate principle of order and source of all

value in the universe that was prevalent in the metaphysical tradition. Oneresponse to this loss has been, reasonably enough, the substitution for Godof another source of value and order. Historically, this has been the ideaof humanity or the human, and this substitution has been bound up withthe rise of consciousness and the birth of the subject.

From this point of view, the broadly Cartesian transformation of phil-osophy, whereby the subject is rmly at the centre of things, takes on afurther signicance. When, in modern European philosophy, the sub-

ject is destabilized as the source of meaning and value, the death of thehuman is intimated: the death of the human means that it is no longer pos-sible simply to replace God with another idea. In principle, other replace-ments are possible, which would then act as the source of order and valuein the universe, but such a move is, from the point of view of the post-

traditional thinker, an illegitimate appeal to transcendence. Such a substi-tution does not require us to think differently, which is one of the centralmotifs of modern European philosophy. In effect, with the substitutionof the idea of the human for God there has only been the substitutionof one point of order and value for another and as Deleuze has put thepoint, nished is the belief in the substitution of humanity for God, thebelief in the Human-God who would replace God-the-Human.6 This is


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Introduction 7

the crisis of modern European thought. Without recourse to some tran-scendent source of order and value it may seem that the task of the thinkeris 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 isphenomenology, must remain atheistic.Later, Heidegger conceives himself as preparing the way for a return of theHoly. This is not the return of the Christian God, but it does herald thereturn of the divine or the most high in human affairs. From Heideggerspoint of view, the indifference to the divine and the Holy, which is charac-

teristic of modernity, is something to be lamented rather than applauded.Integral to Heideggers response to modernity was the attempt to aban-don the will to powerwhich he took to be central to the modern metaphysicsof subjectivity. The modern age of technology, which for Heidegger is mod-ern humanitys way of relating to being, is the end product of modernsubjectivism/humanism/anthropocentrism. In modernity, the generalcurrent of thought which asserts the Protagorean doctrine that man isthe measure of all things takes the form of the will to power: the unceas-

ing attempt, individual or communal, to subordinate the earth to humancontrol. Heideggers response to the condition of modernity is boundup with a manner of thought that attempts to let beings be. Several con-sequences 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 thinkwithout why.

One theme that I will return to repeatedly is Heideggers thematizationof death and nitude. It is his view that in the anticipation of death, beingis revealed to Dasein. Now, in fundamental ontology Dasein is at the cen-tre of Heideggers ontological universe but Dasein is not the subject in theCartesian sense. Heideggers view is that, in anticipation of death, the wayin which things can be meaningfully there or meaningfully present foryou becomes revealed. Being is nothing less than the meaningful pres-ence which things can have for a Dasein or for a community. Death is that

fundamental non-relational certainty which serves to individualize theDasein in its concrete existence. In this fundamental experience being,in its univocity as meaningful presence, is revealed. What things actuallymean for a Dasein will of course be different, but, for the univocity ofbeing to obtain in Heideggers text, what is important is that they mean some-thing. The univocity of being obtains at the level of meaningful presence,and this has a temporal connotation.


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According to Heideggerian existential phenomenology, the individualis a practically engaged agent and, as conned by nitude and death, thelife of the individual has a certain tragic essence. The individuals task in

a world that precludes any recourse to a founding transcendence is one ofcoming to terms with the inherent nitude of existence and the inevitabil-ity of death. The nitude of existence and the inevitability of death isthetragic essence of existence. This fact, considered alongside the claim thatbeing is revealed in the anticipation of death, provides the rationale for myrepeated return to this theme. It may be that Heideggers mature responseto the meaningful world of things, that we let them be, is sensible; given our

inherent nitude, the would-be master of the earth seems to be overplay-ing his hand.Being, the meaningful presence which things can have for Dasein, is

unied by care (Sorge). In Being and Timecare is dened as ahead-of-itself-already-being-in (a world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). In section 65 of that text Heidegger reveals that the ontologicalmeaning of care is temporality. Thus, when revealed ontologically, Daseinisits temporality. As he puts it: Dasein . . . is time itself.7

Daseins temporality is revealed as the transcendental horizon for theunderstanding of being. As such, allbeing is understood in terms of time.To that extent, being is univocallyunderstood in terms of time and beingitself is temporal. For Heidegger, the univocity of being in terms of timeis theconception of being in his thought. In History of the Concept of Time(atext that Kisiel has called the phenomenological draft of Being and Time)Heidegger accuses Descartes of reformulating an analogical conception ofbeing. As always, Heideggers critique of previous positions centres aroundthe two fundamental terms of his own thought, being and Dasein.

In Being and TimeHeidegger takes up the various issues surrounding theCartesian philosophy and nds weaknesses in its conception of being. Thecritique of the philosophy of analogy is an important aspect of Heideggersthought 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 thatHeidegger will determine in his own terms, that functions as the guiding

principle for his critique of the tradition of philosophy and the thought ofbeing in terms of analogy alone. From Heideggers point of view, all pre-vious philosophers have passed over both his sense of being as meaning-ful presence and his understanding of the being who understands being,Dasein. In what follows, I will explore Heideggers critique of the traditionof philosophy in terms that allow the univocity of being to emerge in itsproper place as an expression of his radical philosophy of being.


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Introduction 9

Heidegger came to employ the wordEreignis, which can be translated asthe event of appropriation, rather than being to name his central concern.This concern is the revelation of being quameaningful presence together

with the opening up of Dasein as nitude. This is a temporal event andbeing is revealed in the anticipation of death. Being may essentially unfold asappropriationbut, as meaningful presence, it is still univocal.


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Chapter 1

The Problem of Univocity inAncient and Medieval Philosophy

From Heidegger to Aristotle

The prelude to Being and Time, which is headed by a quotation from PlatosSophist, inaugurates the question of being. From these passages it is possi-ble to elicit two readings of the meaning of this question. Heidegger refersto the meaning of the word being and to a phenomenon of being. He isconcerned with both. In spite of the importance of this question in the

history of philosophy Heidegger notes that he faces three prejudices inhis day against raising it again. He proposes to bring these to light at theoutset of his enquiry. In the discussion of these prejudices the importanceof Aristotles philosophy of being for Heidegger emerges.

The three prejudices are: (I) being is the most universal concept;(II) as a concept, being is indenable; and (III) as a concept, being isself-evident.

(I) Being is indeed the most universal concept but its universality is notthat of a class or genus. The universality of being transcends the uni-

versality of a genus. Heidegger notes that in medieval ontology beingwas denoted as a transcendens in that it transcends the categories. Heagrees with this, being is the transcendens pure and simple. He notesthat Aristotle put the problem of the unity of this transcendens on anew 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 Aristotlesproblem of the unity of being as over against the multiplicity of cat-egories the place it deserves in ontology. The concept of being, despiteits universality, remains the darkest of all and we must discuss itfurther.


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The Problem of Univocity in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy 11

(II) The prejudice of the indenability of being is parasitic upon theprejudice of its universality. Being cannot be conceived as an entityand can never have the concept of denition in traditional logic

applied to it. This is the problem of the ontological difference, thedifference between being and beings. The fact that being is inden-able does not dispel the question of the meaning of being, nor doesit mean that it is permissible to overlook this question. Rather, thisindenability demands that we face up to this question.

(III) The prejudice of beings self-evidence is based upon the idea thatwhen any thinking, speaking and comporting of oneself towards

beings or ones self, the notion of being is made use of and is, there-fore, intelligible without effort. But this, as Heidegger calls it, averagekind of intelligibility, in fact demonstrates beings unintelligibility. Inany comporting of oneself towards beings as beings there is a priorian enigma, for despite this pre-understanding of being the mean-ing of being is shrouded in darkness and so it is necessary to raise thequestion of the meaning of being again.

The centrality of Aristotles problem for Heidegger emerges most clearlywith regard to the rst prejudice. Aristotle attempted to answer the ques-tion of the meaning of being and Heidegger notes that this put this questionon a new basis. However, from Heideggers point of view, Aristotle failedto satisfactorily deal with this question and this fact makes it necessary toraise the question of being again.

The question concerning being perplexed Aristotle from the timehe wrote the Categories through to his mature works that were collectedtogether under the title of Metaphysics. This problem is rmly in mindat the opening of the Categorieswhere he begins with denitions of thenotions of homonymy, synonymyandparonymy. What is at stake for Aristotleis far more than the meanings of words. Rather, Aristotle saw denition asa way to tackle and illuminate the metaphysical structure of reality itself.He is concerned with things, not words, and the denitions 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 dis-closes 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 samename applies to each in the same sense each time. Synonyms are thus sus-ceptible of a general denition. Homonyms are not. For Aristotle, manyphilosophical 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 particu-lar things to be both homonymous and synonymous because there maybe names that apply to both but in different senses and other names that

apply to both in the same sense. From these denitions follow the de-nitions of equivocaland univocal terms corresponding to homonymy andsynonymy respectively.

Paronymy is slightly different although it is, along with homonymy,another case in which things are said in many ways. Things are parony-mous if their names are related in a certain way. Paronymous things aredenoted by either the same name or a modication of that name and they

are almost identical with regards to denition. This is so because bothname and denition are related to some further thing in afocalway.The second chapter of the Categoriesbegins 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. Hethen divides up the things that are (beings) into four kinds. Whereas therst division seems to apply to subjects and their various acts, propertiesand 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) somethingor not and either inhere in (are in) something or not. With this schemathere is the rst hint of a division between the notions of universal, particu-lar and the crucial notion of substance (ousia).

In the CategoriesAristotle distinguishes between primary substancesandsecondary substances. Primary substances are the ultimate subjects of predi-cation, they are individual particular things which are numerically one.

Aristotles 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 primarysubstances 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 ina species, man, and animal is a genus of the species; so these both manand animal are called secondary substances.1

Secondary substances exist in a less fundamental way than primary sub-stances and could not exist without them. The remaining two divisions of theschema are occupied with non-substantial beings that inhere in substances.


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Chapter three of the Categoriesintroduces the transitivity of predication,the said-of relation. Thus, if P is said-of Q and Q is said-of R then Pis also said of R. Applying this it is the case that if Socrates (primary sub-

stance) isa man (species) and man (i.e. if that species) isan animal (genus)then Socrates, by dint of his substantiality, isan animal (i.e. is a member ofthat genus) in addition to beinga man (i.e. a member of that species). For

Aristotle, the said-of relation is denitional of the individual particularthing. So, for example, an individual man is subsumed under the generaldenition of animal.

Species, by contrast with genus, reveals the natureof the individual par-

ticular thing. Each genus, provided that it is not subordinate to another, hasits own particular set of differentiae; such as footed, winged or aquaticfor the genus animal. The characteristic feature of substances and differ-entia is that all things called from them are so called synonymously.2Thisis so since all the predicates they admit are predicable both of the indi-

vidual particular things and of the species.Synonymy is also involved when, in the said-of relation, a secondary sub-

stance is invoked in the denition of a primary substance since in such a

case the primary substance is indicated by the name of their species. In con-trast to homonymy and paronymy, which are both cases where things aresaid in many ways, synonymy is an example of things being said in the samesense of every thing of which it is said. Synonymy corresponds to univocity.This is important because Aristotle assumes a harmony between languageand reality to the extent that synonymy and homonymy are properties ofthings. Thus, the order of being with which Aristotle is concerned withexistsin a univocal way. So, when an individual particular man (Socrates) isdened by the secondary substance man (species) he is being dened bythe name of his species, with the strict denition of that species rmly inmind, and in so doing a space of univocity opens up between the differentorders of being.

Chapter four of the Categories makes a return to the division betweenthings that are said with and those said without combination. Those thingssaid without combination comprise the famous list of the ten categories.

These ten categories rene those things that are said (predicates) and givemore information about the things that are (beings). They are, in effect,numerous ways in which a particular existent met with in our experiencemay be characterized. The ten categories are: substance, quantity, quality,relation, place, time, position, state, activity and passivity. The rst categoryof substance is rather different than the other nine. Substance is never inanything 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. Nosubstance can ever be in anything else because somethings being in some-thing else precludes it being denitional of that thing.

In the MetaphysicsAristotle develops the problematic of the Categories.As we shall see, Heidegger derived his question of being from Aristotle, inwhat must be regarded as an Aristotelian-scholastic setting, but he main-tained that Aristotle never managed to clarify and develop the problemof being, never mind solve it. Heidegger does not simply reject Aristotle.Rather, in keeping with his general approach to gures in the history ofphilosophy, Heidegger seeks to trace Aristotles conceptual creations back

to the fundamental experiences to which they are a response. From thishe hopes to be able to reinvigorate and reawaken the urgency of theseproblems and concepts so as to exhibit their limits and possibilities. Thisprocess is known as retrievaland it is conceived as following the destructionof the history of philosophy which he called for in the early stages of Beingand Time.

The destruction of the tradition of ontology is crucially importantsince:

the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question ofBeing is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation.3

So, this destruction is only possible in terms of the formulation of thisquestion. Within this destruction and retrieval Greek ontology is particu-larly important since it determines the conceptual character of philoso-phy from antiquity right down to the present day. Aristotles ontology is inmany ways the apotheosis of Greek ontology in general and the referentof Heideggers text. Destruction and retrieval will ultimately lead to ourliberation from the calcied tradition and allow for a proper understand-ing of Daseins being and ultimately to a proper understanding of beinggenerally.

Aristotles Metaphysics is made up of 14 books that hold together morelike a selection of related essays rather than one systematic treatise. The

Metaphysicscan be seen, to a large extent, as seeking to resolve the philo-sophical problems that are left over from the Physics, which drew heavily onthe Categories.

Book Gammaof the Metaphysicsopens with the proclamation that thereis a kind of science that investigates being quabeing. This science is radi-cally different from all other sciences for it does not rst mark out a spe-cic region and then examine the ontological constitution of the things


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that fall within its bounds. The science of being quabeing, metaphysics,engages in general speculation about that which is quathat which is. Assuch, metaphysics turns out to be the science that studies the primarycausesof that which is quathat which is.4In this context we can interpret

Aristotles notion ofrst philosophyas ontology. Taken this way, rst philoso-phy quaontology, is the primary science. First philosophy is also character-ized as theology.

Essentially, the problem that Aristotle faced was how is rst philosophy,conceived as ontology, the science of being quabeing, possible? Sciencesare generally concerned with particular regions of beings. These par-

ticular beings are unied under a highest genus. Being, however, is nota genus. The particular axioms of the regional sciences do not applyacross all sciences in a straightforward manner. Rather, their application isanalogically determined in that they mean something slightly different

when applied to a different subject matter. This problem is made all themore complicated by the fact that being is spoken of in many ways. In orderto show that rst philosophy was possible Aristotle had to show that themany ways that being is said ultimately reduce to one primary way.

InDeltaVII Aristotle distinguishes between four ways in which being issaid. The rst way accidental being, is where beings are denoted in termsof an accidental or coincidental/contingent way of being. The second wayin which being is said is in terms of substance and the ten categories. Thethird is in terms of truth and falsity. The fourth way is in terms of potenti-ality and actuality. Now, Aristotle sought to reduce this plurality of ways in

which being is said to one generic unity. The rst stage of this reductionis the elimination of the ways in which being is said in the rst way andthird. The result is that the problem of being is concerned with how beingis said in the sense of the categories and in the sense of potentiality andactuality.

Books ZetaandEtadiscuss being in the sense of the categories. Potentialityand actuality receive treatment in Theta. Because potentiality and actual-ity are in fact modes of substance the problem of being turns out to beconcerned 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 differentways in each of the categories. Recalling the denitions at the start of thetext of the Categories, if being were said simply synonymously across all tenof the categories then we would be dealing with one genus and Aristotlesproblem would not arise. If being is said simply homonymously across theten categories the problem of being could not be solved since, between themultiplicity 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 besome kind of relation between the ways being is said across the ten catego-ries. There are two candidates for this relation. In addition to paronymy,

introduced in the Categories, there is analogy. Paronymy and analogy areoften 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 relationsbetween 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 instan-

tiated 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 bookDeltaVI Aristotle uses analogy to designate the rela-tion of paronymy those things are one by analogy which are related assome further thing is to some yet further one.6Analogy is different fromparonymy in that it is based on similar relations between terms that areheterogeneous. Paronymy, by contrast, is a relation of naming based upon

things having different relations to one focal thing that is so named in anultimate way. Paronymy is sometimes referred to as thepros henrelation.

Analogy is somewhat inappropriate in regard to a solution of the prob-lem of being despite the fact that Aristotle does hold that there is a relationof analogy between all categories. Aristotle needs to ground the scienceof being quabeing. Analogy is inappropriate because it is not genus spe-cic; it is used across different genera. For example, a relation of analogyholds between the following Henry is a man and Prodigality is a vice,for in both cases an individual particular thing is subsumed under a gen-eral name. This kind of analogy may be called analogia entis. If the tencategories are conceived as highest genera (substance would then be thehighest genus of all substances and quantity would be the highest genus ofall quantities etc.) it would follow that such analogy could never designateonly 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 thisway then it follows that being is used in each of the ten categories in sucha way that the notion of being in each category is related to the way beingis used in the fundamental category of substance. The primary substancesare neither said-of anything else nor are they in anything else. They are theultimate subjects and exist in the most fundamental way and all other usesof 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 andas highest genera then the use of being in categories other than thatof substance will be, following Philipse in his Heideggers Philosophy ofBeing, paronymically related to saying being in a singular highest genus,substance. This is precisely what Aristotle does in Gamma 2 where hesays:

Now that which is is indeed spoken of in many ways. But it is spoken ofwith regard to one thing and a single kind of nature. It is notspoken ofby homonymy.

Its position is similar to that with health. Everything that is healthy isspoken of with regard tohealth. So, one thing is said to be healthy by dintof preserving health, another by dint of producing it, another by being asign of it, another by being capable of having it. [100 3b] . . . this . . . willnot exhaust the examples of things spoken of with regard to somethingin this way.7

In line with the interpretation of the categories as highest genera, sub-

stance becomes the highest genus. Therefore, since all ways in whichbeing is said are pros hen related to the focal case of substance (ousia) itfollows that the domain or subject matter of rst philosophy or ontology issubstance.

There is a further reduction in Aristotles Metaphysicsof rst philosophyas 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 outbecause of the requirement that true scientic knowledge (episte-me-) bedirected towards eternal objects. Since true scientic knowledge is immu-table, so too must be its object. Since primary substances, which, in theMetaphysics, are seen as compounds of form and matter, are mutable andultimately perishable, something else has to full this requirement. Thescience of substance has to reduce to theology since the object of theology,the Deity, is immutable. Central to Aristotles 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 TimeHeidegger puts forth the thesis thatthere are different regions of being each with their own set of catego-ries. This radicalizes Aristotles thesis that being is said in many ways. ForHeidegger, being is indeed said in many ways, but not simply across tencategories. Rather, it is said across a plurality of regions of being each withtheir 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 applythroughout the sciences. Heidegger objects to this universalization of oneset of categories to t all regions of being. In particular, the Aristotelian

notion of substance is inappropriately applied to Dasein. Dasein is not athing at all.

Heidegger accuses Aristotle of erroneously universalizing ontologicalconcepts derived from the sphere of artefacts over all other regions ofbeing, most problematically to Dasein. When, in production, a tool is cre-ated, matter is formed. When this process is nished there exists, for exam-ple, a knife where once there was just formless matter. The manufacturer

conceives of the form of the knife prior to production. Once production iscompleted and the form of the knife has been actualized there is nothingfurther for the knife to do. The essence of the knife can be stated as awhat; this can never be the case with a Dasein. By applying concepts likeform and matter to human existence Aristotle analysed human existencein inappropriate terms. Instead of universalizing one set of categories tot all regions of being Heidegger argues that the limitations of this setshould be realized and new appropriate sets of categories should be forged

that apply to the various regions of being. Most notably, we should forge aset of categories, what Heidegger calls existentialia, that are appropriatelyexpressive of Daseins mode of being.

With Aristotle all the categories are related to the fundamental categoryof substance and the fundamental category of substance is inappropriatelyapplied to Dasein. By contrast to Aristotle, Heidegger conceives of Daseinas the ultimate ontological centre to which all other regions of being arerelated. This view, in conjunction with his misunderstanding of ontologyas concerned with substance, led Heidegger to reject Aristotles furtherreduction of ontology to theology.

Aristotles ontology provided the basis for the development of traditionallogic. For example, a subject-predicate sentence is the linguistic expressionof the ontology of substance-property metaphysics. Yet, Aristotle did notmanage to raise the question of being properly because the being of allbeings 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 furtherreduction to the being of some other being, God. By this, Aristotle failedto recognize the ontological difference, the difference between being andbeings, and with this fateful error being fell into oblivion and the ontologyof presence (substance) began. Heidegger had to overcome Aristotelianmetaphysics and reawaken the question of being.


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Medieval Philosophy

Medieval philosophy is distinguished by the fact that the Christian world-

view dominated the lives of its exponents. For the medieval philosopherfaithwas the space of philosophy. There is no better statement summingup the nature of questioning in this period than that of St Anselm ofCanterbury: Fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. Thetask of the medieval philosophers was bound up with the task of interpret-ing their world and the dictates of their faith. Faith grounded the intel-ligibility of the world.

Consideration of the medieval and particularly the Scotist doctrine ofbeing is important for an appreciation of Heideggers view of being. Fromthe perspective of Being and Timethe term Dasein can be applied to anyhuman being. Daseins world is a context of signicancein which it goes aboutits business. For the most part Dasein understands itself in terms of its

world and the objects of its circumspective concern. Accordingly, there canbe a Dasein of differing contextual congurations. To be Dasein is to bethere, here and now in a world and to understand oneself in terms of that

world. There are many possible worlds which Dasein could inhabit andunderstand itself in terms of. The world of the medieval philosopher andthe Dasein of faith is just one such conguration.

Many have dismissed medieval philosophy on the grounds that it ismerely a grand rationalization of faith. But the very early Heidegger, theHeidegger before Being and Time, clearly saw the remarkable character ofmedieval philosophy. Writing to Father Engelbert Krebs (1919) he afrmedthat:

I believe that I perhaps more than those who work on the subject of-cially 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 fromdogmatic Catholicism this letter bears witness to the lasting inuence

medieval thought was to have on him and to the understanding of it heclaimed for himself. Somewhat earlier, Heidegger gave this expression to aview of the religious character of medieval scholastic thought:

Scholasticism and mysticism belong together essentially in the medievalworldview. The two pairs of opposites rationalismirrationalism andScholasticismmysticism do not coincide with one another.9


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Heideggers thought was always bound up with certain religiousconcerns. One can read Heideggers text in terms of his changing reli-gious views from an early concern with demythologizing the mythic scrip-

tural world to remythologizing the world in terms of a Greek neomythology.Heideggers move away from dogmatic Catholicism in 1919 represents, forCaputo inDemythologizing Heidegger, the rst turn or change in orientationin his thought. It is the turn from Catholicism to Protestantism.

The middle ages are an epoch in Heideggers sense of that term.They are a historically dened conguration of meaning. The highestconceptual expression of this age was the philosophy of analogy. In

Being and Time Heidegger held that much of what needed destroyed inthe tradition arose out of the philosophy of Aristotle. Aristotles mostfundamental mistake was taking the question of being to be aboutsubstance (ousia). Against this and from the perspective of funda-mental ontology, Dasein is rmly placed at the centre of Heideggersontological universe. All possible regions of being must in some wayrelate to Dasein. In an Aristotelian universe all the categories relate tosubstance, and ultimately to the Deity. This relation is understood in

terms of focal meaning. Ultimately, for Aristotle, the Deity is at the centreof the ontological universe and there is an analogy of being between thecategories.

Analogy and paronymy are both instances where being is said inmany ways. Heidegger, when dealing with Aristotle, tends not to distin-guish between analogy and paronymy. As noted, Aristotle uses the termanalogy at least once for the relation of paronymy. Many scholastic philos-ophers followed Aristotle in their doctrine of analogia entisand regardedparonymy 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 deter-mines 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 ofbeing. On this reading, the discrete reappropriation of the doctrine of

analogia entisthat commentators like Taminiaux read into Heidegger wouldbe more properly described as a reappropriation of paronymy. Both paron-ymy 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 ontol-ogy, makes no sense since the propositions of ontology carry a temporalsense, grounded as they are in the transcendental horizon of being, whichis Daseins temporality.


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On a Heideggerian ontology, the univocity of being in terms of timeimplies that time is the common sense in all discourse and comportmentregarding being. For Heidegger, a concept is univocal if what is intended

by it is intended in the same sense. In Aristotles Categories, univocity/synonymy is implied when a secondary substance is predicated of a pri-mary substance since there is a common content of meaning (specically,denition) intended between the two regions. Similarly, in Heideggersontology, univocity will be implied between various regions of being since

when they are intended they will be intended temporally, with reference toDaseins temporality. All the propositions of ontology are temporal propo-

sitions. The univocity of being is rooted in Daseins temporality.Within the Aristotelian philosophy of being, it is by virtue of their focalreference to substance that the diverse categories of being are intelligi-ble as categories of being. Their unity is a unity of analogy. Now, fromHeideggers perspective, there are two interrelated problems with

Aristotelian philosophy. First, Aristotle does not thematize Dasein in itstrue nature. On Aristotles view, a human being is a thing of a particulartype. The Aristotelian categories may be applied to objects; but they cannot

arrive at the kind of being appropriate to Dasein. Dasein is never just onemore thing amongst others. Dasein is always a whoand never a what. As faras Heidegger is concerned Dasein is not a thing at all. Dasein has its beingto beand is possessed of a self-relation in a way that no thing is. Heideggeralso holds that in order to avoid carrying over all the pre-suppositions ofthe traditional discourse an entirely new vocabulary is required that can beappropriately applied to Dasein.

Second, Aristotle fails to note the crucial differencebetween being andbeings: he is the father of the forgetfulness of being and of the traditionHeidegger sought to destroyin Being and Time. Aristotelian ontology couldonly present an ontology of things that are simply there or present-to-hand.

Aristotelian substance ontology instantiated the metaphysics of presencethatHeidegger sought to overcome.

Scholasticism

The metaphysical framework within which the medieval philosophers oper-ated was profoundly inuenced by the Aristotelian heritage. That frame-

work included the doctrine that reality can be divided up into substancesand accidents. Corporeal substances are composites of matter and form.Particularly, the form of a living corporeal substance, such as Socrates,


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if it is to apply to all beings and if it is to apply across all the categories ofbeing? His answer is that being is predicated analogically and not purelyunivocally nor purely equivocally.

Analogy is the middle ground between univocity and equivocity. Aquinasmaintains the Aristotelian principle that being is said in many ways againstthe Parmenidean principle that being (or, that which is) is used in just asingle way. For example, by the Aristotelian-Thomist view, the term beingmay be said to mean substance and it may be said to mean accident,nonetheless, the term being applies to both.

It is Aquinass view that in reality there are different degrees or levels of

being (entitas). Essentially, there are different kinds of substance that existwithin the created universe. This is the doctrine of the hierarchy of being,and underpinning this view is a metaphysics of participation.11Existence,the act of being or esse, is participated in by beings but essedoes not partici-pate in anything else and there is only one being that does not participatein essebut is esse: this being is God. Every other being receives its perfectionby virtue of its participation in esse.

The metaphysical view of a hierarchy of being was widespread in medi-

eval philosophy. The view itself originates in the pagan ancient world andpredates Aquinas in its elaboration by Christian philosophers. The princi-ple thinker in this regard is perhaps Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (orDenis the pseudo-Areopagite) who elaborated the Celestial HierarchyandtheEcclesiastical Hierarchy. In the most general terms the hierarchical viewof being holds that there is a scale of being that ranges in ascending orderfrom inanimate beings, through living beings to purely rational beingsand ultimately to the most self-sufcient, rational being, God. Aquinashimself accepted this view and held also that the highest degree of being ina particular genus participated in the lowest degree of being in the genusimmediately above it.

The philosophy of analogy elaborated by Aquinas was a natural ally ofthis vertical, hierarchical conception of reality. Since, it is held, the doc-trine of analogy maintains Gods 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 ofGod and creatures univocally. If this were the case, so holds the analogicalthinker, God would not be transcendent. Also, Aquinas rejects the equivo-cal predication of names of God and creatures since, by equivocity, there

would be no common ground or sense between these names and any hopeof natural knowledge of God would disappear. Therefore, Aquinas defendsanalogical predication of certain names of God, particularly of the pure


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perfections.12Names are applied both to God and creature analogically,because of the relationship of the creature to God, God is both the prin-ciple and cause of the creature. Despite the absolute gulf separating the

being of God from the being of creatures, so holds Aquinas, every effectis like its cause. This likeness of creature quaeffect of God quauncausedcause is the metaphysical ground for the predication of divine names byanalogy.

In his CategoriesAristotle had argued that predicates are either substan-tial (essential) or accidental. Substantial predicates treat of the kind ofthing 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 classication was limited. In the Metaphysics, beingand unity emerge as features of things which exceed the classicatoryscheme of the Categories. In medieval thought such features came to beknown under the title of the transcendentals. Duns Scotus was one of themost signicant of the scholastics to pursue a philosophy of being in termsof the transcendentals.

When Heidegger wrote his Habilitationthesis, it was a different, though

related, aspect of Scotuss philosophy which would prove decisive. This wasthe concept of haecceitas. Scotuss concept of haecceitas provided Heidegger

with the insight into individuality that he had begun to investigate throughhis early engagement with Aristotle. Any individuals haecceitas, on Scotussontology, is its principle of individuation and unrepeatability by virtue of

which it is absolutely singular. The mature Heidegger recongured thisprinciple of individuation and unrepeatability in terms of his account offacticity and death. On Heideggers fundamental ontology, what is abso-lutely singular about any individual Dasein is its death. Death is non-relational and concretizes Dasein in its very factical being-there: death is theexistential principle of individuation.

This is not substance ontology; nor is it transcendental realism; andHeidegger, in his account of death, is not giving an account of the individu-ality ofpresent-at-handobjects. Rather, he is giving an account of Daseins

way of being. In addition to the important account of haecceitas, Scotuss

philosophy of being also establishes a coherent augmentation of the phi-losophy of analogy by establishing the univocity of being.Although Scotuss philosophy can be read in relation to the Thomistic

philosophy of analogy the critical bent of his work was aimed primar-ily, not at Thomas, but at Henry of Ghent (121793).13Henry was a neo-

Augustinian critic of Aquinas and the most important theologian of thegeneration 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 phil-osophy of analogy but it is true that Scotus forged his own position in reac-tion to Henrys, particularly with regards to Henrys philosophy of being.

In large part Scotus takes Henrys positions as his point of departure ratherthan Thomass.

Radically, Scotus broke with the view that being was analogical andargued that there must be a notion of being (and the other transcenden-tals) that is univocal to God and creatures and also to the ten categories.Scotuss theory of univocity is particularly concerned to respond to Henrysphilosophy of analogy that, so Scotus believed, made explicit the problems

facing the doctrine in accounting for the human beings natural knowl-edge of God. A central dimension of this debate was one of the recur-ring issues of the medieval period. This was the problem of reconcilingthe possibility of attaining at least some knowledge of Gods divine naturefrom our knowledge of creatures while at the same time maintainingHis absolute transcendence of them. In order to preserve Gods absolutetranscendence it is important to stress that His divine nature has noth-ing creaturely about it. God has no reality in common with creatures. The

problem then becomes, how can any knowledge of God be gained from thecreature?

Scotus does not atly reject analogy. Rather, there must be some ground-ing concept of being shared univocally by analogous and proper notionsas 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 andnatural knowledge of God would be impossible. What Scotus rejects is thetheologians reliance on analogy as sufcient for determining a conceptof God.

For Scotus, the subject matter of metaphysics is being and its goal is God.By correctly elucidating the transcendental attributes the existence of Godcan be inferred. Scotus held there to be a certain number of facts thatcould be known about God independently of revelation. Metaphysics is theparticular science which proves these facts. Given that particular sciencesdo not prove the existence of their subject matter and given that the meta-

physician proves facts about God (for example, His existence) God cannotbe the subject matter of metaphysics. Metaphysics proper subject is beingasbeing. Being, as far as Scotus is concerned, denotes all that is intelligi-ble and the human mind is, in principle, capable of knowing all that isintelligible. Being, then, is the rst object of the intellect. Our concept ofbeing quabeing is our most abstract concept. It is arrived at by abstractionfrom 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 asopposed to nothingness.

For Scotus, metaphysics is the science of the transcendentals and the

transcendentals are precisely those attributes of a thing that transcendtheten Aristotelian categories. Being is the most fundamental transcendental.The other transcendentals unity, truth and goodness/desirability arecoextensivewith being. In a sense, they are properties of being. Of any par-ticular existing being it is possible to say that it exists, that it is one, that ittruly is what it is and that its being what it is, is desirable. As well as thesetranscendental attributes, there are also the disjunctive attributes. These are

attributes, also coextensive with being, such as necessary-or-contingentand nite-or-innite.The pure perfections also have transcendental status. Some pure perfec-

tions, such as the divine attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, canonly be said of God. Other perfections, such as knowledge and will,

which also have transcendental status, can apply to God and creatures. Ifthese transcendentals are correctly elucidated, so Scotus thinks, the exist-ence of God can be inferred. As such, a proof of the existence of God is the

goal of metaphysics. So construed, metaphysics isnatural theology.For Scotus, the univocity of the concept of being has a basis in reality.

This is so since every actual being whether nite or innite is actuallyopposed to nothingness. So, the univocity of the concept of being has afoundation in reality since being itself is conceived as the opposite of noth-ingness. But Scotus does not hold that there is an actually existing beingthat is neither nite nor innite, neither contingent nor necessary and soon. He believes, however, that univocal being does exist, though existingonly at the conceptual level. That is, there is a concept of univocal beingneutral to the alternatives of innite and nite. This concept of univocalbeing can be predicated of both alternatives. Thus, the doctrine of univo-cal 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 logicrather than of metaphysics.


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Chapter 2

Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity

Section One

The Question of Being

It has often been said that Heideggers thought exhibits a unity. Frombeginning to end he was motivated by a single question. My main con-cern in this chapter will be to raise a problem regarding the interpretationof his philosophy with respect to the notions of analogy and univocity.Heidegger is in important respects a thinker ofpaths. He conceived of his

thinking as preparatory and less grand than traditional metaphysics. Thetime of systems is over he remarks in his Contributions to Philosophy, and assuch he does not offer us one. Rather, he offers us different paths to treadthrough the forest of thought. Such paths may be dead ends (Holzwege), butthey are not in vain. As he says of Being and Timein the preface to the sev-enth German edition the road it has taken remains even today a necessaryone, 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 ques-tion of being as present in Being and Time: that is, with the transcendental-horizonal approach as opposed to the being-historical thinking (seinsge-schichtliches Denken) of Heideggers later style of thinking. Before and afterthe shift in orientation in his approach, Heidegger was concerned withthe same fundamental question: the meaning of being. In order to under-stand how that question was rst stirred in Heideggers imagination I shallreturn to his earliest philosophical engagement. This will show why he

became interested in Scotuss philosophy.In 1907 Heidegger received a copy of what had been Franz Brentanosdoctoral dissertation rst published in 1862 On the Several Senses of Beingin Aristotle. Heidegger described this text as the rst philosophical textthrough which . . . [he worked his] . . . way, again and again from 1907.2Signicantly, one of the distinguishing features of Brentanos book was thatthe reading of Aristotle put forward there was inuenced by his medieval


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commentators. In this respect the question of being was rst brought toHeideggers attention in an Aristotelian-scholastic setting.

Heidegger agreed with Aristotle that the fundamental question of phi-

losophy was the question of being. As we have seen, this question is nosimple matter. The problem that motivated Aristotle and Heidegger wasthe search for a unitary meaning of being and it is with a discussion ofthis problem that Brentano begins his discussion in his text. This ques-tion (how is it possible for there to be a unied sense of being when it issaid in many ways?) Heidegger inherited from Aristotle and this question

was rst roused in him by his reading of Brentano. As he says in his letter

to Richardson, the questionthat determined the way of my thought [was]what is the pervasive, simple, unied determination of Being that perme-ates all of its multiple meanings?3

Prior to his abandonment of dogmatic Catholicism that he announcedin his 1919 letter to Krebs Heidegger had shown considerable interest inthe philosophy of the middle ages, as witness his Habilitation(post-doctoralteaching qualication) on John Duns Scotus, a text which can be read asthe culmination of the very early Heideggers philosophical and theologi-

cal interests. Many of the writings that express these early interests are nowpublished in the volume Supplements, From the Earliest Essays toBeing andTime and Beyond. This collection also reprints the authors book notice tothe published version of the Habilitationthesis together with the conclusionto that work that was written as a supplement for the published version. Italso reproduces the letter to Krebs.

Recently, Van Buren has distinguished four possible phases thatHeideggers thought passed through on the way to the publication of Beingand Time. They are: the anti-modernist neo-Scholastic phase (190913),the mystical neo-neo-Scholastic phase (191416), the free Protestantmystical phase (1917early 1920s) and a possible fourth phase that sawHeidegger begin to identify with the death of the Christian God as this isintimated in Nietzsche and Hlderlin. This identication with Nietzscheand Hlderlin, suggests Van Buren, includes the cognate identication

with their aspiration that a new more Greek God will be born.4

The earliest period of Heideggers engagement displays his interest tobe essentially theological, moral, aesthetic and cultural. His outlook wasessentially anti-modernist and philosophically Aristotelian-scholastic. This

was in line with the milieu of the Catholic Church at this time. In thesevery early writings Heidegger distances himself from the subjectivistic andhistoricist position of modern philosophy and culture as this is expressedin the writings of gures like Nietzsche. Further, he demands a return to


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Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity 29

the realist Aristotelian-scholasticism of medieval Europe that upholds aview of being as objective, timeless and grounded in the being of God. Inhis rst published article in an academic journal, The Problem of Reality

in Modern Philosophy (1912), Heidegger promotes Aristotelian-scholasticphilosophy, that has always been realist and declares that Positive, pro-gressive work must be its main concern.5 Such positive and progressive

work will entail a fresh confrontation of the problem of the intentionalrelation of consciousness to being.

On Van Burens chronology, the Scotus Book, Heideggers Habilitation, waswritten 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 ofproblemsultimately has a systematicgoal: the theory of categories, whose fundamental establishment andorganic development has today been made one of the clearly recognizedtasks of philosophy.6

In this text the categories of being are approached as a timeless ideal frame-work by virtue of which intentional judgements access real being; and thisreal being is ultimately grounded by Gods absolute being. It is preciselyin terms of its focus on problems that this text engages the philosophy ofDuns Scotus. As far as Heidegger was concerned Scotus presented one ofthe most philosophically complete and intellectually satisfying paradigmsof medieval Scholastic thought and while ostensibly about logical matters,the Scotus Bookalso displays Heideggers appreciation of Scotuss philoso-phy in terms of its nearness to real life:

Duns Scotus doesnt receive our direct attention just because he is right-fully famous for a kind of thought which is unusually apt and criticalfor logical problems. His striking individuality as a thinker characterizeshim in general as having unmistakably modern traits. He has a moreextensive and accurate nearness (haecceitas) to real life, to its manifold-

ness and possible tensions than the scholastics before him. At the sametime, he knows how to turn, with the same ease, from the fullness of lifeto the abstract world of mathematics.7

Heideggers engagement with Scotus was motivated by the possibility ofretrieving a philosophy of radical singularity expressed in the conceptof haecceitas. In Heideggers hands this concept would become facticity.


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Haecceitas/facticity is precisely that excess by virtue of which something isabsolutely singular and unrepeatable. Heideggers early engagement withthis concept in the philosophy of Scotus is pregnant with signicance for

his later philosophy. Heideggers interests in logic and metaphysics dur-ing this phase of his thinking were complemented and complicated by histheological interests and by the more general interest in developing a phe-nomenology of religion, which he had intimated in the Scotus Book and

which became bound up with a destruction of the essentially Greek con-cepts 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 begin-ning (which in this context is a new beginning of both philosophy and the-ology) that he will return to in his so called later thought. Such conceptsbegin to appear in his thought at this time because of his interest in think-ers like Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard and themedieval mystics, his interest in whom had been mooted in the Habilitation.Through his engagement with these thinkers together with his interest ina phenomenology of religion Heidegger sought to gain access to the life-

world of primal Christianity (Urchristentum) and to fashion an adequateconceptual expression of it. He took Christian categories such as mystery,the coming (parousia), the moment (kairos), wakefulness and falling to beontic (that is, regional and/or particular) examples from which generalontological categories could be drawn. Such categories would found a newbeginning for ontology.

Through this engagement, Van Buren argues, the neo-neo-Scholasticbecomes anti-philosopher and the Scholastic interpretation of the pres-ence of God qua summum ensis deconstructed back to the primal Christianexperience of the New Testamentand the experience of the divine qua deusabsconditus, accessible only in terms of an alert and anxious faith within thetime of the moment.

Returning to the Habilitation: this text was written under the supervi-sion of the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert to whom the work is dedicated.Reading the Habilitationas 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 falselyattributed to Scotus. Practically nothing is known about Erfurt except thathe was active in the early 14th century. The anti-relativist and anti-psycholo-gistic speculative grammarians of the middle ages held that the way thingsaredetermines how the human being can think about them. Thought, inturn, determines human language. Human grammar and language are,


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Heidegger, Scotus and Univocity 31

in effect, a function of universal forms of thought which reect the waythings are. As such, every natural language has to obey ultimate grammat-ical 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 HusserlsLogical Investigations. There, contrapsychologism, Husserl says:

Modern grammar thinks it should build exclusively on psychology andother empirical sciences. As a

philip tonner heidegger, metaphysics and the univocity of being

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