Abstract

Undoubtedly, Heidegger’s concept of the history of being belongs among the most inspiring, but also the most problematic, themes of his entire intellectual work. At its analysis in the professional literature there often emerges the impression that, in the framework of his philosophy, Heidegger “overlooked” most thinkers in favor of his obvious “favorites.” The text presented here belongs to a series of thought experiments that attempt, together with Heidegger and an imaginary “on behalf of him,” to figure out how this or that supposedly “neglected” thinker would have figured in his conception of the history of being. Viewed from the point of view of time, it might seem at first glance that Pascal belongs to the epoch of the history of being, which Heidegger authorially associates primarily with René Descartes, labeling it with the term “perceptio.” However, upon closer and more careful reflection (Besinnung in German, a term by which Heidegger himself refers to his thinking “method”), it becomes clear that Pascal belongs – like Hobbes and Spinoza – more to the epoch referred to as “actualitas,” which is authorially associated primarily with Thomas Aquinas.