Abstract

Philipse argues that in place of a coherent ontological theory, Heidegger weaves together five “leitmotifs.” There is a meta-Aristotelian theme: philosophy aims at discovering the unity of being beyond its diversification into subordinate categories. In the early thought, the diversity of being is spelled out in a phenomenological-hermeneutic leitmotif: we access being through a series of regional ontologies that expose the holistic patterns of unity within various domains of entity, such as nature and Dasein. This “diversity pole” is complemented by a transcendental “unity pole:” the unity of being is uncovered through a regional ontology of the human, which simultaneously serves as an investigation of the possibility of the understanding of being in general. After Being and Time the transcendental unity for which Heidegger strove gets historicized, yielding a neo-Hegelian deep history: Western culture is grounded in a series of global epochs of being, each of which makes possible a distinctive, transcendental sort of being. This “diversity pole” is then itself complemented by a postmonotheist mythology: each epoch of being is a dispensation of Being as a transcendent, concealed non-phenomenon, from which Western culture has been falling away since the time of the presocratics and for a second coming of which we must prepare ourselves by way of a radical, non-rational form of “thinking.”