Philosophical Atheology
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Peter S. Dillard
Continuum International Publishing Group
www.continuumbooks.com
B3279.H49D55 2008
193--dc22
2008017846
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
Conclusion 121
Notes 126
Index 153
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank several people who have played a special role in shaping
my philosophical and spiritual development. Though they may disagree with
much of what I say, I hope they will discern some value in it.
Thanks to Richard Aquila, the late Bruce Batts, Kathleen Bohstedt, Gary
Ebbs, Gary Levvis, John Nolt, Harrison Pemberton, and James Ross.
Special thanks to Pastor Gerald Bultman, Father William C. Casey, Father
John Martin, Mary Alice Dillard, Joan Howard, Father Andrews Kollannoor,
Tom and Brenda Macaluso, Mark Mussari, Father Richard Troutman,
Charles Tunstall, Reverend Dr. Steve Weisz, Father Matthew Williams, and
James Winfree.
This work is dedicated to Father William P. Lane.
Introduction
modi significandi are bestowed on dicta so that the latter become genu-
ine parts of speech. In the Etymologia, Erfurt lays out in specific detail
how the modi significandi of each traditional part of speech—nouns,
pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and
interjections—are derived from corresponding features of reality, or
modi essendi. The Diasynthetica elaborates the syntactic principles by
virtue of which parts of speech as constructibles combine to form
complete constructions of sentences capable of expressing judgments.
I will discuss each of these sections briefly, calling attention to several
philosophically salient points.
For Erfurt and other Scholastic realists, the mind is capable of
apprehending modi essendi through the modes of understanding, or
modi intelligendi. Each of the latter is either an active mode of under-
standing (modus intelligendi activus), whereby the mind conceives
things, or a passive mode of understanding (modus intelligendi passivus),
whereby the mind perceives or apprehends things.7
Similarly, the modes of signification are divided into active and pas-
sive. An active mode of signification is directly derived from a passive
mode of understanding when the mind’s ability to track an appre-
hended feature of reality is bestowed on a sign.8 Erfurt does not
discuss the passive mode of signification, but it might be identified
with hearing or seeing an expression already functioning as a part of
speech. There is a two-sided process, in which a vocal expression (vox)
becomes a sign (signum) and then a word (dictio) with semantic con-
tent; and in which an active mode of signification derived from a
passive mode of the intellect that has apprehended a mode of reality
is bestowed upon the dictio so that it becomes a part of speech possess-
ing the potential to combine with other parts of speech in grammatical
constructions.9
Erfurt’s realism requires that for every part of speech and gram-
matical difference there is a distinct mode of signification derived
from a mode of the intellect which in turn has apprehended a distinct
mode of extralinguistic reality. This has led some commentators to
complain that Erfurt’s theory exhibits an ontological profligacy that
makes “even Meinong seem parsimonious.”10 This complaint insinu-
ates the misconception that modes of signification are an ontologically
distinct category of objects or meanings, whereas these modes are
10 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
and infinitive.19 The accidental mode linking verbs with noun objects
is the mode of signification (significatio), which reflects the voice of
the verb and is also differentiated into five modes: active, passive, neu-
ter, deponent, and common.20 The other accidental modes of the verb
are quality, conjugation, number, form, tense, and person—though
these modes are not as important syntactically as the modes of compo-
sitio and significatio.
Interestingly, though the mode of compositio is said to be partly
derived from the mental states of the speaker, Erfurt also notes that
every verb implicitly contains a copulative element (“est ”) “which can-
not be understood without some [nominal] term.”21 Symmetrically,
although the mode of significatio also reflects mental states of the
speaker, it too derives from an implicit requirement in certain verbs
for “the mode of an independent entity in any post-posed oblique
[nominal object].”22 Thus, we see that not every grammatical property
is explained in terms of a distinct mode of signification derived from
a corresponding feature of extralinguistic reality. This will become
increasingly apparent in Erfurt’s account of syntax, and the point has
important philosophical ramifications to which I shall return at the
end of this section.
Erfurt elaborates three main principles of syntax in the Diasyn-
thetica. The first of these is the principle of construction. For Erfurt,
each construction is a union of two constructibles. For example, the
construction homo albus currit bene is a union of the constructibles
homo albus and currit bene; in turn, the former construction is a union
of the constructibles homo and albus, and the latter construction is
a union of the constructibles currit and bene. Each construction con-
sists of a dependent constructible and a determinant constructible
upon which the former depends.23 Erfurt then proceeds to distin-
guish between transitive constructions, in which the first construct-
ible is the dependent and the second constructible the determinant,
and intransitive constructions, in which the converse relation holds
between the first and second constructibles. Additional divisions
Erfurt makes within both transitive and intransitive constructions
need not concern us here.24
The second main principle is that of congruity. Among the several
requirements for congruity, the most important is that either concord
Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 13
common to the sentence, the judgment, and the fact. Rather, parts of
speech in their various modes of signification mirror features of
extralinguistic reality by virtue of the mind’s prior ability to “track”
these features through passive acts of the intellect.29 The point of cor-
respondence is not between sentences and facts but between the
mind and the world it directly apprehends.
As Heidegger sees it, one problem with the ten traditional Aristote-
lian categories is that they apply only to actual spatiotemporal objects
and their properties.31 It is unclear how mental states, numbers,
fictions, privations, and putatively logical objects such as meanings fit
into this traditional classification.
From Scotus, Heidegger extracts a new taxonomy of domains of
beings. The two major domains are sensory beings and extrasensory
beings. The sensory domain comprises what Heidegger calls natural
reality and is further divided into the domain of physical objects and
the domain of psychical acts. The extrasensory domain comprises
what Heidegger calls metaphysical reality and is further divided into
the domain of mathematical beings and the domain of logical beings
(and perhaps the domain of supernatural beings, if God and angels
exist).32 This Scotus-inspired taxonomy seems preferable to the
Aristotelian categories in two respects: it applies to beings not easily
classified by the traditional conception; and, supplemented by Scotus’s
theory of the trans-categorical attributes, it holds open the possibility
Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 15
What then becomes of the question of the nature of being qua being?
In Being and Time, attention shifts from being as something our
minds can directly apprehend to the understanding of being pos-
sessed by Dasein and embodied in its linguistic practices and other
activities. The question of being is thus postponed until a phenome-
nologically adequate account is obtained of Dasein as the only being
that has an understanding of being, at which point Heidegger hopes
to extend the analysis to encompass being in general.58 The serious
metaphysician can be forgiven for regarding this as a colossal red her-
ring. After all, if one wishes to clarify the nature of quantum reality or
numbers, then it is highly circuitous—if not entirely irrelevant—to
study humans merely because they have a conception of quantum
reality or numbers. Certainly an inquiry into the nature of being in
general should explain the place of human beings, but focusing on
human beings and their conception(s) of being threatens to skew the
search for a univocal, phenomenologically rich account of being into
something unrecognizable.
For this reason, I believe that we must turn to later Heidegger’s less
anthropocentric inquiry into the nature of being. Later Heidegger
collapses the distinction between being and the human understand-
ing of being by identifying being as such with successive collective
understandings of being that make up the history of Western philoso-
phy. There is nothing more to being than the linguistically articulated
“dispensations” of being shared by humans in different historical
epochs.59
We shall explore this view in greater detail in the next chapter. For
now, it is important to appreciate how the later, historicized approach
to being apparently conflicts with early Heidegger’s commitment to
an antipsychologistic conception of judgment and logic. If judgments
made by humans living in a particular epoch reflect not extralinguistic
reality but the linguistic conception of being defining that epoch,
then since different epochs are defined by different conceptions of
being it follows that humans living in different epochs make judg-
ments in accordance with the prevailing metaphysical conception of
their day. Consequently there is no common set of logical principles
governing all possible thought; indeed, on the later Heideggerian
view logic is a relic of a particular conception of being, with roots in
Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 23
Plato and Aristotle but clearly emerging with Descartes and flowering
in Hegel, in which being is understood as objectivity comprehensible
to representation (Vorstellung). There are only the different ways of
thinking characteristic of distinct historical epochs.60 The evolution
of Heidegger’s philosophy seems to vindicate rather than to refute
psychologism.
Does Heidegger abandon his earlier antipsychologistic conception
of judgment in favor of historical psychologism or cultural relativism?
To understand why the answer to this question is no, the next stage in
the dialectic of thought must turn to the atheology of Appropriation
that can be extracted from Heidegger’s very late writings. First I will
describe the elementary meontology, or theory of nonbeing, that
emerges from early Heidegger’s analysis of the transcendental of
unity (unum). Heidegger’s meontology in the Habilitationsschrift is
important because it foreshadows the very different atheology of
nothingness that can be recovered from his middle period.
Unity is that by virtue of which a being is the unique being it is. Hence
unity is a transcendental because it applies to beings in all categories:
there are unique substances (e.g., Socrates), unique quantities (e.g.,
the number 5), unique qualities and relations (e.g., whiteness and
being larger than), and so forth. Heidegger argues that the unity of a
being is not itself a being; otherwise, every unique being would con-
sist of two beings—itself and its unity—instead of just one.61 The fact
that the unity of a being is not a being also establishes that the being’s
unity is not a number, since numbers are beings.62 Nor is the unity of
a being a privation, since a privation “doesn’t posit an object”63—for
example, a person who comes to suffer the privation of blindness
doesn’t thereby become a different unique being. What then is
unity?
Heidegger answers that the unity of a being X is the contrariety in
virtue of which X is not any other being Y: “Unum bestows a determina-
tion on the object through the privative mode of meaning. An object is one
object and not any other object.”64 The contrariety whereby X is not
any other being Y is not the same as the “pure negation” or nonbeing
24 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
Heidegger’s Atheology
of Appropriation
Throughout his later writings, Heidegger stresses the need for a kind
of post-metaphysical thinking that “explicitly enters Appropriation
in order to say It in terms of It” in such a manner as “to overcome any
obstacles that tend to render such saying inadequate.”1 Heidegger’s
reflections on post-metaphysical thinking culminate in the atheology
of Appropriation (Ereignis) that can be extracted from the very late
lecture “Time and Being.” I take Heidegger to conceive of “thinking”
as a normative discipline intended to serve as a nonmetaphysical
successor to traditional logic, in which judgments made solely in
accordance with logical principles are replaced or at least augmented
by “sayings” assessable as adequate in some sense.2 Ideally, such think-
ing leads those who pursue it to “overcome” all metaphysics, so that
no further dispensations of being will be “sent,” and to embrace a
common and radically nonmetaphysical vision of the world as a
“fourfold” of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals.3 Furthermore, though
avowedly post-metaphysical, Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation
purports to engage traditional metaphysical concerns. Therefore,
presumably post-metaphysical thinking is a disciplined linguistic
activity that nonetheless maintains some sort of continuity with tradi-
tional metaphysics.4
The philosophical content of Heidegger’s atheology of Appropria-
tion will concern us in this chapter, and some of its far-reaching
consequences will be traced in Chapter 3. We will see that the very
late view not only escapes many of the objections raised in the previous
chapter but also makes substantial progress toward early Heidegger’s
goal of a univocal, phenomenologically rich account of being.
Heidegger’s Atheology of Appropriation 27
We saw that Scotus identifies the proper attributes of being with the
transcendentals of being itself, unity, truth, and goodness, as well as
with disjunctive transcendentals such as finite or infinite and contin-
gent or necessary. In distinction from other attributes such as wisdom
and spatiality, the transcendentals apply to all beings. Later Heidegger’s
maximally general conceptions may be viewed as transcendentals,
though radicalized in two respects: first, maximally general concep-
tions are not static attributes of being but dispensations which unfold
in history and define separate epochs from the ancient Greeks
onward.14 Second, Heidegger’s historicized transcendentals differ in
number and content from the traditional transcendentals. Instead of
being, unity, truth, and goodness, we have each of the epochs in the
history of being described in the previous paragraph.
As a maximally general conception of being, a given historicized
transcendental or dispensation is how beings are unconcealed (aletheia)
or show up for humans in a particular epoch. Heidegger speaks of
being’s effect on beings as a “marking”:
It is the temple work that first fits together and at the same time
gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which
birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endur-
ance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human beings.
The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the
world of this historical people. Only from and in this expanse does
the nation first return to itself for the fulfillment of its vocation.22
An interim Quodlibet
***
Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation requires careful scrutiny,
especially the idea of Appropriation as a potentiality to “send” being
qua the history of being and time qua true time. Nevertheless, the
atheology of Appropriation is a step forward in the dialectic of
Heidegger’s thought because it not only provides answers to the
contemporary objections canvassed above but also addresses the
difficulties with Heidegger’s early view. I conclude this chapter by
revisiting the three philosophical motifs in the Habilitationsschrift in
light of the very late atheology.
Whatever additional content Heidegger attributes to it, post-meta-
physical thinking includes basic logical principles and conceptual
distinctions (e.g., the formal interdependence between language and
language users) that are metaphysically neutral between rival con-
ceptions of being because they are common to all such conceptions.
Our “sayings” need not accord with the conception of being defining
the epoch in which we happen to find ourselves, as on historical psy-
chologism/relativism, but merely with these minimal principles and
distinctions. Heidegger’s earlier metaphysical notion of extralinguis-
tic reality consisting of actual or nonactual affair complexes is thus
discarded, but not the idea of a normative discipline which governs
all human thinking. Consequently, post-metaphysical thinking can
be said to be antipsychologistic.
In his later model of the knowing subject, Heidegger replaces
Erfurt’s view of the mind apprehending features of extralinguistic
reality independently of language with the formal interdependence
between language and language users. Admittedly, this is not a full
account of human subjectivity. However, the formal interdependence
seems congenial to a more plausible approach to human subjectivity,
according to which the interplay between human conceptualizing
Heidegger’s Atheology of Appropriation 45
Heideggerian Atheology
and the Scotist Causal Argument
Someone who says, “still, maybe such a line [of essentially ordered
causes] does not twist up to a first” is committed to a contradiction.
For this person has to say that at every stage a sufficient condition
[for the final effect] is absent and one is never reached by stepwise
regression; so one is always absent. And at the same time, he has to
postulate the final effect, and, so, that there is a sufficient condition
for it. That is explicitly contradictory.8
C causes S by causing both the being and the causal activity of the
causes that make up S; in other words, all the causes in S are essen-
tially ordered to C. Either it is possible for C itself to be caused or it
isn’t. If it isn’t possible for C to be caused, then we have Scotus’s
desired conclusion that it is possible for there to be a first uncausable
cause. On the other hand, if it is possible for C to be caused—both its
being and its causal activity—then it is not only possible for the other
causes in S to be essentially ordered to C but also for C itself to be
essentially ordered to yet another cause. But then C itself is a member
of S, since by definition S is the series of all the essentially ordered
causes producing the effect.12 Since C causes the being and causal
activity of the causes that make up S it follows that C causes itself and
its own causal activity (is essentially ordered to itself), which is impos-
sible.13 Therefore, an infinite series of essentially ordered causes is
also impossible, so that the lemma is true. And as we’ve seen, if the
lemma is true then the possibility of a first uncausable cause—that is,
of a First Being that is not essentially ordered to anything else—is
established.
From the possible existence of a First Being, Scotus argues for its
actual existence as follows: if a First Being doesn’t actually exist (¬p)
then it can’t exist (¬◊p). For suppose it doesn’t actually exist. Then it
can only exist by being caused by another being, caused by nothing,
or self-caused. None of these three possibilities is compatible with the
nature of a First Being, which by definition is uncausable. Yet it has
been already established that the existence of a First Being is possible
(◊p). Therefore, by modus tollens, a First Being actually exists14; in
terms of variables for the relevant propositions:
¬p ⊃¬◊p
◊p(i.e., ¬¬◊p)
¬¬p (i.e., p)
Scotus holds that properties such as goodness apply to God and cre-
ated beings univocally yet in different modes since, for example, God
is infinitely good while created beings are finitely good. Heidegger
compares Appropriation qua sending or giving to the dimensions of
true time qua what he calls “extending”:
(1) The past and the future are modes of withholding because past
beings which no longer exist and future beings which don’t yet
exist nevertheless become phenomenologically accessible to us
(e.g., we can think about the last World Series or the next one);
in other words, this phenomenological accessibility is made pos-
sible by a withholding of actual being.16
(2) Appropriation is a mode of withholding (“Expropriation”)
because by remaining phenomenologically inaccessible to us it
allows the historicized transcendentals with their intrinsic tempo-
ral structure to become phenomenologically accessible to us
(e.g., we can be aware of the fact that we conceive of all beings as
standing reserve); this phenomenological accessibility is made
possible by a withholding of Appropriation.17
parallel tracks in which the matters of being, time, and now Appro-
priation are understood in the distinctive modes characteristic of
these respective disciplines. His idea seems to be that by picking up
clues from the poetry of the preferred poets, the atheologian can tri-
angulate to a sufficiently comprehensible “saying” of the nature
Appropriation that enables us to understand Its sending of being and
time.
How? In another late essay, Heidegger considers some verses from
Hölderlin.20 At one point, Heidegger speaks of the relation between
the sky, which Hölderlin describes as “lovely blueness,” on the one
hand, and “Everything that shimmers and blooms in the sky and thus
under the sky and thus on earth, everything that sounds and is fra-
grant, rises and comes—but also everything that goes and stumbles,
moans and falls silent, pales and darkens”21 on the other. Heidegger
calls this relation between the sky as one being and the beings revealed
in and under the sky the dimension. Concerning the dimension he
says,
The poet calls, in the sights of the sky, that which in its very self-dis-
closure causes the appearance of that which conceals itself, and
indeed as that which conceals itself. In the familiar appearances,
the poet calls the alien as that to which the invisible imparts itself in
order to remain what it is—unknown.22
than in terms of God and His creating, the One and its emanating,
the Absolute and its dialectical progression toward total self-con-
sciousness, or the Will to Power and its striving. Far from overcoming
metaphysics, the atheologian of Appropriation seems to have become
more deeply enmeshed in it.
In this chapter, we will see that, rather than securing a new founda-
tion for metaphysics, Heidegger’s essay and subsequent writings from
his middle period supply the materials for constructing a powerful
atheology of nothingness which escapes the problem of sufficient
comprehension. In short, what explains being and time isn’t Appro-
priation but literally nothing. There might not have been any beings
or any being or any time. There might not have been anything at all!
The fact that there are and have been beings disclosed to us through
constant temporal dimensions and varying transcendentals in a his-
tory of being, as opposed to there being nothing whatsoever, is a
brute, inexplicable, uncausable cosmic occurrence or event. Since
nothing “sends” being and time, there is nothing to understand
about this cosmic event except its radical contingency. For the Heideg-
gerian atheologian of nothingness, then, in fully appreciating the
fundamental possibility of total nothingness “we liberate ourselves
from those idols everyone has and to which they are wont to go cring-
ing.”6 That is, we can set aside once and for all the metaphysical
theories we cobble together to explain reality in terms of essential
structures, particularly God as the First Being. In this way, I will argue,
the atheology of nothingness reinvigorates the Heideggerian chal-
lenge to Scholastic metaphysics.
where the variable “x” ranges over all “present-at-hand” objects (sub-
stances, forms, essences, etc.).
Therefore, negation and related logical concepts play some role in
the elaboration of Heidegger’s position.
In Being and Time, Heidegger develops a localized antimetaphysical
attitude centered on a particular kind of being—namely, Dasein. In
“What is Metaphysics?”, this antimetaphysical attitude is extended to
Heidegger’s Atheology of Nothingness 77
include the being of all beings: “The nothing does not merely serve
as the counterconcept of beings; rather, it originally belongs to their
essential unfolding as such. In the Being of beings the nihilation of
the nothing occurs.”18 What is the content of this all-encompassing
antimetaphysical attitude?
We have seen that for later Heidegger, the being of beings is just
the history of being as the sequence of historicized transcendentals.
Hence, to say that the nihilation of the nothing occurs in being is to
say that the nihilation of the nothing is related to the unfolding of
the history of being. How? Instead of the possible projects open to
an individual Dasein, think of the transcendentals as possible ways
of conceptualizing beings open to humans in various epochs of
Western history. Just as we may ask whether there is any metaphysi-
cal essence beyond Dasein’s activities and projects, we may ask
whether there is any metaphysical structure beyond the history of
being. In “What is Metaphysics?”, Heidegger’s answer is “No”: “In
the clear night of the nothing of anxiety the original opening of
beings as such arises.”19 Parallel to how anxiety reveals Dasein as an
individual “thrownness” whose choices aren’t grounded in any fixed
essence, Heidegger thinks that the same anxiety can somehow
reveal being qua the history of being as a cosmic “thrownness” in
which
When anxiety reveals that nothing underlies not only Dasein’s being
but also the being of all beings, only then “can the total strangeness
of being overwhelm us” and “arouse and evoke wonder.”20 We are left
hanging with the history of being and nothing else.
That is the content of Heidegger’s broader antimetaphysical thesis
in “What is Metaphysics?”
78 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
The claims (A) and (B) may be coalesced into the “cosmic” negative
existential claim that nothing justifies any particular transcendental
in the history of being or explains the history of being itself. Now that
we have a better grip on Heidegger’s more general antimetaphysical
thesis, let us ask why we should accept it.
The emphasis on anxiety as originally revealing the being of all
beings might suggest that Heidegger is appealing to purely phenome-
nological considerations to justify the thesis. That would be unfortunate.
For it is difficult to understand how a particular mood or experience
can reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt the nonexistence of God, the
Forms, substances possessing common natures, things-in-themselves,
the Dialectic of Spirit, the Will to Power, Appropriation, or any other
conceivable metaphysical or post-metaphysical explanans. In particular,
many such posits—for example, the Forms or Appropriation—are
admitted to be phenomenologically unavailable but accessible only to
reason or “thinking.” Hence, the fact that they aren’t revealed by the
experience of anxiety hardly proves that they aren’t real.
An indirect argument for the general antimetaphysical thesis
can be extracted from Heidegger’s remarks concerning Dasein’s
transcendence:
Holding itself out into the nothing, Dasein is in each case already
beyond beings as a whole. This being beyond beings we call
“transcendence.” If in the ground of its essence Dasein were not
80 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
rationality and agency are similar, except that these are circumstances
in which all (normal) human beings find themselves and which they
didn’t choose. If so, then intellectual and volitional capacities aren’t
part of Dasein’s nature either.
The problem with this reply is that possessing these capacities is
much more closely connected with the fact of being Dasein than are the
circumstances of being woman, being born in 1974, and so forth. With
each of these latter circumstances, it is logically possible for a being to
have Dasein without finding itself already in them. Is it logically possible
for a being to have Dasein without already being capable of rationality
or agency? Not at all—especially if “This being which we ourselves in
each case are and which includes inquiry among the possibilities of its
being we formulate terminologically as Dasein.”28 Clearly, a being which
includes inquiry among the possibilities of its being which it may or may
not pursue cannot exclude the capacity to reason and to act.
I conclude that anxiety doesn’t reveal Dasein’s essential nothingness
but in fact presupposes a rudimentary human nature consisting of intel-
lectual and volitional capacities. Rather than discouraging metaphysical
theorizing, the presence of this rudimentary nature invites further met-
aphysical and philosophical questions which aren’t settled by the
phenomenology of Angst. Do the intellectual and volitional capacities
of this nature operate merely in accordance with principles of rational
self-interest, as Hobbes thought? Or do they operate in accordance with
utilitarian or deontological principles? Do capacities reflect an external
norm, such as God as summum bonum or perhaps some overarching his-
torical process? Is Dasein’s exercise of these capacities determined by
prior circumstances, so that efforts at reducing crime should focus on
prevention, or is Dasein completely free to do otherwise no matter what
the prior circumstances are, so that crime-reducing efforts should focus
on punishment? Depending on what the answers to these questions
turn out to be, Dasein will objectively be a determinate way and certain
projects will accord with its nature while others don’t—just as given the
objective way a cherry tree is, growing and fruiting but not splintering
and bursting into flames accord with its nature.29
More to the immediate point, we still have been given no cogent
argument from (C) and the Dasein’s allegedly lacking a fixed nature
or essence to the cosmic negative existential that nothing lies beyond
84 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
the history of being that justifies any part of it over the rest or explains
it in its entirety. Heidegger’s broader antimetaphysical thesis remains
unsubstantiated.
The questions of Being and of the nothing as such are not posed.
Therefore no one is bothered by the difficulty that if God creates
out of nothing precisely He must be able to relate Himself to the
nothing. But if God is God he cannot know the nothing, assuming
that the “Absolute” excludes all nothingness.33
Heidegger seems to be arguing that for God qua First Being to cre-
ate the world from nothing, He would have to relate Himself to
nothingness understood as a contingent state of pure negation in
which no other being besides God exists. Since ex hypothesi only God
exists then, the contingent state of negation out of which God creates
would have to be included in God. Yet negation cannot be included
in God, since He is a pure plenitude of being. Therefore, God cannot
create the world ex nihilo.
On the surface, the Scholastic has a straightforward reply to this
argument. Any universe God might create He would do so contin-
gently. Suppose God creates a universe U that has no beginning or
end. U is still contingent, since it might not have existed. There is no
state of pure nonbeing, negation, or nothingness independent of U
out of which God creates U and to which He somehow has to relate
Himself without including nonbeing in His own being. The U is
metaphysically dependent on God’s existence and His eternal choice
to create U. To say that God creates U ex nihilo is merely to say that
God’s choice to create U is not caused by anything. Mutatis mutandis
88 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
for any other universe God might create, including one which begins
and/or ceases to exist. Even though there is “nothing” besides God
before and/or after such a universe, God doesn’t have to relate Him-
self to some contingent state of pure nonbeing in order for such a
universe to be metaphysically dependent on His being and creative
choice.
However, the Heideggerian atheologian may be expected to latch
onto the claim that God’s choice to create any universe He might cre-
ate is uncaused. The divine choice to create the actual universe is
contingent, since according to the Scholastic conception of God
there is no necessity that God create any universe. Furthermore, the
divine choice is not only uncaused but uncausable, for it were caused
by God’s nature then it wouldn’t be contingent and if it were caused
by something else then God wouldn’t be God. Admittedly, the divine
choice to create the actual universe isn’t an event in time; nonethe-
less, it is an uncausable contingency. Nothing can explain this choice.
It simply obtains.
It is easy to see where the Heideggerian atheologian is going here:
if the Scholastic explanation of the contingency of the universe rests
on a radical contingency in the heart of the divine being, then con-
tingency is never really explained but merely taken as a bedrock
fact.34 But then there is no reason why contingency can’t be taken as
a bedrock fact, not about the timeless choice of a First Being, but
about the universe understood in Heideggerian terms as the history
of being. Instead of explaining the contingency of the history of
being by appealing to the inexplicable contingency of a First Being’s
choice, we should stop trying to explain the contingency of the his-
tory of being and accept it as ultimately inexplicable. Nothing causes,
sends, or explains the history of being. It just happens.
Chapter 6
At the end of the last chapter, we were left hanging over an abyss.
Taking being and time as its subject matter, Heideggerian atheology
radically reworks these traditional metaphysical concepts. In its sim-
plest terms, being (ens) is understood as disclosure. Disclosure is
further explicated in terms of the maximally general conceptions or
historicized transcendentals constituting the history of being. Intrin-
sic to each transcendental is a certain temporality whereby future
possibilities already latent in the past emergence of the transcenden-
tal unfold in a present in which beings are encountered. Being is
then identified with the history of being as a protracted cosmic event
characterized by a series of dispensations structured by time.
The Heideggerian atheologian initially analyzes this cosmic event
or “happening” as the actualization of an atemporal potentiality
known as Appropriation. Yet the fundamental incomprehensibility of
Appropriation renders his analysis untenable, leading the Heidegge-
rian atheologian to jettison It and settle for saying that the protracted
cosmic event that is the history of being is itself purely contingent
and uncausable. That is a felicitous step, since after all Appropria-
tion’s alleged “sending” of the history of being is purely contingent
and uncausable. By adopting the view that nothing explains the his-
tory of being, the Heideggerian atheologian is able to drop the
epistemological baggage associated with Appropriation while retain-
ing the basic idea that reality is ultimately inexplicable. Thus, we have
the atheology of nothingness.
The result turns High Scholasticism topsy-turvy. Rather than pro-
viding a firm foundation for natural theology, Heidegger’s radical
reworking of metaphysical concepts paves the way for its destruction.
90 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
God is no longer the goal but now the casualty of the new “metaphys-
ics.” There is no First Cause of all contingent being, only uncausable
contingent being/time in which we find ourselves interacting with
other beings. Even if Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness doesn’t
sabotage all forms of traditional metaphysics, with regard to the Scho-
lasticism of Scotus and Aquinas it certainly seems fair to say that
nothingness itself nihilates.
What is the proper response to this post-metaphysical challenge?
Several possibilities might tempt us but shouldn’t.
One is to sever the essential connection Heidegger sees between
being and disclosure. As we learned in Chapter 1, he is motivated by
the desire to endow being with rich phenomenological content, a
desire that eventually culminates in his radical reworking of the
traditional transcendentals we find in his very late writings. Phe-
nomenology isn’t everything, but it is something—particularly when
we are dealing with a concept like being which, no matter how
vague it is initially, nonetheless applies to things of which we can be
aware. If we wish to resist Heideggerian atheology yet hold on to
some version of Scotus’s doctrine of the transcendentals, then we
will need to find a way of endowing being and related transcenden-
tals with suitable phenomenological content without treating them
merely as dispensations in a radically contingent history of being.
That is a matter I will take up in the Conclusion; my reasons for
addressing it there and not in the main body of this work will only
become clear later.
A more drastic response denies that metaphysics and natural theol-
ogy play any role in clarifying religious belief. This response, which
has its roots in Luther and Calvin’s antiScholasticism and finds
expression in contemporary theological trends such as Reformational
philosophy and Radical Orthodoxy, takes its rationale from the appar-
ent fact that using metaphysical concepts to explicate theistic beliefs
allows the Heideggerian atheolgian to upset the applecart by reinter-
preting those concepts in a radically nontheistic way. Instead, we
should take Christian religious beliefs revealed to us through Scrip-
ture, as in Reformational philosophy, or by various liturgical and
poetic practices, as in Radical Orthodoxy, themselves to be founda-
tional. The trouble with this kind of approach is that there are other
Nothingness and the Problem of Possibility 91
how we can form any sufficient comprehension that reveals the actual
series of historicized transcendentals, or the same transcendentals
ordered in a different series, or some series of entirely different
transcendentals, to be brute possibilities. A commitment to totally
unknowable brute possibilities is no better than a commitment to
a totally unknowable Appropriation.
Our work is not done, however. At the end of the last chapter, we
confronted a puzzle about the Scholastic view that the contingency of
the universe is ultimately explained by God’s contingent choice to
create it. One doesn’t have to accept Heideggerian atheology to be
gripped by this puzzle—a pesky mouse that has been rattling around
in the basement of the cathedral for a long time, so to speak. The
puzzle may be approached either from the direction of contingency
or from that of necessity. From the direction of contingency, it may
98 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
A Positive Application
undermine the initially plausible view while pointing the way toward
the correct view.
Where does this leave the status of pure numbers? Unlike Frege,
who defines numbers as extensions of certain concepts, Heidegger
offers no explicit definition of pure numbers. Instead, he is content
to say that pure numbers are quantities governed by what he calls
“the law of series”:
Neo-Fregean platonism
they articulate in specific cases the only criteria we have for some-
thing’s being 2, 4, or any other pure (natural) number.
There is a nugget of truth in the rule-based conception of mathe-
matical truth, but before we can extract it, we must appreciate what is
wrong with its attempted reconfiguration of necessity. The center-
piece of the conception is certain conditional necessities which may
be expressed in a variety of ways:
For the entire world, (1)–(3) sound like conceptual claims, or even
some species of necessary truth! Although their verbs are in the
present tense, clearly such claims are intended to carry modal force:
certain rules guarantee that certain statements must be true; attribu-
tions of arithmetical truth can’t make sense or have meaning except
in the context of our arithmetical rule-following practices; purchase
on rules and the truths they underwrite is impossible apart from our
ongoing activities, practices, and lives. Let us inquire after the basis
for the truth of these claims.32
Just as with “F = ma,” we can project (1)–(3) into a situation in which
no contingent beings exist and ask whether these claims would be
true or false. Even if there were no contingent beings—and hence no
human practices, activities, and lives—it would remain the case that if
there were such-and-such rules embedded in such-and-such practices,
then such-and-such statements would be true; that there could be coher-
ent attributions of arithmetical truth only in the context of the right
sort of rule-following practices; and that if there were human beings
who had a purchase on arithmetical rules and the truths they under-
write, it couldn’t be so apart from the relevant activities and practices
interwoven with their lives. Therefore, (1)–(3) would be true in the
A Positive Application 115
A Scotist elaboration
be God, Who is a necessary being.42 Because God qua direct and infal-
lible knowledge of intrinsic ideas is different from the direct and
fallible knowledge our practices afford of those ideas, the existence
of the former is metaphysically independent from the existence of
the latter. And because the idea expressed by (1)–(3) is also intrinsic
to the divine essence (as the necessity of a certain possibility), it is
also necessary that our grasp of arithmetical truth is only possible via
our quotidian rule-following practices. In a very real sense, then,
divine necessity is constitutive of our rule-following practices’ aptness
for revealing the truths of arithmetic.43
A Thomist “Coloration”?
other marvelous entities don’t shrink from the hard questions raised
by their theories of the universe or deny that they have at least some
answers. Nor should we, as metaphysicians, shy away from the hard
questions raised by our inquiry into the necessary architecture of
reality or deny that we have found some answers. Let us move for-
ward with renewed purpose.
Conclusion
the idea of arithmetic and our mastery of how to apply the rules it
embodies. We can then in principle determine the correct answer to
any arithmetical calculation (except for extremely long ones) either by
performing the calculation ourselves or by building a machine that
does. Is it the same with the idea of goodness we apply in ranking the
value of beings?
Here we run up against a striking discrepancy. Throughout history,
and continuing into our own day, many brilliant people have lived their
entire lives with an understanding of goodness and its basic rules—
don’t steal, don’t cheat, treat others with respect, and so forth—while
making grievous errors in applying this standard to specific beings.
Other humans of both sexes have been devalued (slavery), women
have been devalued (sexism), children have been devalued (child
labor), animals, the environment, and even one’s fellow drivers on the
road have been devalued—all by individuals, including at times each
one of us, who understand the difference between good and bad, right
and wrong. There is no reason to believe that we would have avoided
these errors by thinking harder about goodness or by building a
machine that could crank out an answer to what values we should assign
to a being in any given situation. The very idea of a “value calculator” is
ludicrous.
Yet there are fleeting moments when an individual experiences a
radical inversion of his/her value ranking of beings. For a flash, per-
haps the realtor sees that the rainbow colors of the pebbles gleaming
in the morning light or hears the strange whir of the bird’s wings
passing above as connecting him with something more encompass-
ing, ineffable, and mysterious. In the blink of an eye, perhaps the
consumer sees simple acts of kindness as possessing infinitely more
value than the SUV she drives or the baubles and trinkets she pur-
chases. At these rare times, one’s experience of the world in terms of
a customary pattern of values undergoes something like a gestalt shift
where what was first is last and what was last is first.
The Gospel of Luke recounts how Jesus challenges his disciples to
experience the world in terms of a radical inversion of values:
child and placed it by his side and said to them, “Whoever receives
this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives
the one who has sent me. For the one who is least among you is the
one who is greatest” (Luke 9:46–48).3
union with God—is even the briefest prayer a secret jewel more valu-
able than all the precious minerals in the universe?—must be
revealed to us. Whether others from different faith traditions—or
even outside any faith tradition—have their own secret jewels beyond
our ken must be revealed to us. Soli Deo Gloria.
Notes
Chapter 1
1
Originally published as Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus
(Tübingen, 1916). Translated in a doctoral dissertation by Harold Robbins
(Chicago: DePaul University, 1978). All references in the text will be to
this translation, hereafter cited as Theory of the Categories and of Meaning.
2
All references to Erfurt are taken from Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas of
Erfurt, trans. G.L. Bursill-Hall (London: Longman, 1972).
3
See Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 95.
4
In the Habilitationsschrift, Heidegger focuses primarily on the transcendentals
of unity and truth. Scotus also holds that there are also disjunctive transcen-
dentals, such as infinite or finite, necessary or contingent, and act or potency
which divide the totality of being. Heidegger does not discuss disjunctive tran-
scendentals in any detail.
5
Ibid., p. 252.
6
For a good historical overview of the Modists, see Bursill-Hall’s introduction to
the Grammatica Speculativa, especially pp. 20–28.
7
See Grammatica Speculativa, p. 141. All references are to the English translation
which occurs on odd-numbered pages alongside the original Latin text.
8
Ibid., pp. 141–143. I will return to the notion of tracking later in this section.
9
Ibid., pp. 147–149.
10
Jack Zupko, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Thomas of Erfurt
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erfurt/).
11
Zupko suggests that the charge of ontological profligacy is unfair, since “the
Modistae were not ontologists and had no interest in the metaphysical conse-
quences of their theories” (ibid.). I prefer to say that the complexity of Modist
theories of grammar is a natural consequence of the Modist assumption
that distinct grammatical properties track or mirror a great variety of distinct
features of reality.
12
A more serious issue concerns words for fictions and privations. If grammati-
cal properties are derived from reality, and if nothing in reality corresponds to
words for fictions and privations, then how are the grammatical properties of
these words derived? Erfurt proposes that the modes of signification for fictive
expressions (e.g., “chimera”) are drawn from properties of really existing
things: though there are no beings which are part lion, part goat, and part ser-
pent, there are lions, goats, and serpents upon whose properties the mind may
draw to form a fictional composite (Grammatica Speculativa, p. 139). Concerning
Notes 127
privations, the matter is less clear. Erfurt denies that the modes of signification
for words like “blindness” are drawn from “the mode of being of their fea-
tures,” which I take to mean the conditions that cause blindness; otherwise,
“blindness” would signify these conditions rather than the actual blindness
they cause (ibid., p. 141). Instead Erfurt suggests that privations “are however
positive entities in the mind” (ibid.) from which modes of signification may be
drawn. Certainly, our naive idea of blindness seems to be that of something
positive interfering with the eye’s proper function. However, since blindness is
really nothing positive yet merely the absence of sight, Erfurt seems commit-
ted to the unattractive conclusion that the modes of signification for
“blindness” and other negations systematically distort or misrepresent the real
situation.
13
Ibid., p. 153. The mode of an entity is the “matter” nouns share with pro-
nouns, whose essential general mode of signifying is the mode of an entity and
indeterminate understanding; ibid., p. 197. Hence determinate and indeter-
minate understanding serve as “forms” which differentiate the common
“matter” of nouns and pronouns into distinct parts of speech.
14
Ibid., p. 157.
15
Ibid., pp. 157–171.
16
Ibid., pp. 179–195.
17
Ibid., pp. 209–211. By “separation,” we may understand that the activity
described by the verb is something more than the substance(s) involved in it.
18
Ibid., pp. 215–219.
19
Ibid., pp. 221–227.
20
Ibid., pp. 229–237.
21
Ibid., p. 221.
22
Ibid., p. 229.
23
Ibid., pp. 275–277. Erfurt also applies the four Aristotelian causes to construc-
tions. The material principle of a construction is its constructibles; the formal
principle is the union of these constructibles; the intrinsic efficient principle is
the respective modes of signification of the constructibles, while the extrinsic
efficient principle is the speaker’s act of mind whereby these modes are com-
bined; and the final principle is the speaker’s goal of expressing a judgment by
means of a sentence construction which may then be grasped by the hearer.
24
For these details see ibid., pp. 283–307.
25
Ibid., p. 311.
26
Ibid., pp. 313–321.
27
Chomsky’s notion of deriving some syntactic structures from others via trans-
formation rules is foreign to Erfurt’s speculative grammar. This precludes
Erfurt from arguing that nonbasic syntactic structures (e.g., “Plato is pursued
by Socrates”) are derived from basic structures (e.g., “Socrates pursues Plato”)
whose modes of signification corresponding to features of extralinguistic real-
ity are then inherited by the nonbasic structures. For a discussion of Erfurt’s
grammar in light of more recent developments in linguistics see ibid.,
pp. 118–126. Nor does Erfurt have any notion of an underlying logical form
shared by active and passive sentences which itself might mirror a feature of
extralinguistic reality.
128 Notes
28
Specifically, among the special essential modes of the verb are the active mode,
which is derived from the mode of reality whereby one thing acts on another,
and the passive mode, which is derived from the mode of reality whereby one
thing is acted upon by another; see ibid., p. 217. However, the fact, for example,
that Plato is pursued by Socrates just is the fact that Socrates pursues Plato, so
that there are no distinct modes of reality from which distinct significative modes
of grammatical structure for active and passive sentences can be derived.
29
I take the distinction between “fitting” and “tracking” theories of correspon-
dence from Donna M. Summerfield, “Fitting versus Tracking: Wittgenstein on
Representation.” In The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. Hans Sluga and
David G. Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 100–138.
30
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 24. Heidegger goes on to comment
that “everything that will be presented belongs to the realm of thought of the
philosopher [Scotus] and this alone is what matters” (p. 25). Hence, the fact
that Erfurt rather than Scotus authored the Grammatica Speculativa is irrele-
vant to the issue of whether these thinkers’ common philosophical milieu can
yield a viable account of the categories and of signification.
31
“Not every special object of cognition is in fact determined by the ten cate-
gories (non quodlibet intelligibile), but only actual objects (Objekte).” (Ibid.,
p. 108).
32
Ibid., pp. 106–107, where Heidegger summarizes his conclusions from the
first part of the Habilitationsschrift.
33
Ibid., p. 29.
34
Ibid., p. 45.
35
Ibid., p. 31.
36
Ibid., p. 86.
37
Ibid., p. 94.
38
Ibid., p. 88.
39
For these objections see ibid., pp. 89–90.
40
In particular, it might be replied that in denying any relevant similarity between
true judgments and the facts that they describe Heidegger is just being dog-
matic; and that the regress Heidegger describes isn’t vicious because for a
judgment to be true on the copy theory merely requires that it copies reality,
not that we ascertain that it does.
41
Ibid., pp. 95–96.
42
See Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay (London: Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 330. For a critical discussion of Husserl’s view
see Richard Aquila, Intentionality: A Study of Mental Acts (University Park and
London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), pp. 108–109.
43
Heidegger seems to express this commitment in the following passage, where
“form” and “the material” are his terms for universals and the particulars
which instantiate them: “Form is a correlative term. Form is form for the mate-
rial. All material is in form. Moreover, the material is always in a form
commensurate with it. Put in another way, form gets its meaning from the material.”
(Ibid., p. 67, second emphasis added).
44
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, pp. 104–105.
45
Ibid., p. 113.
Notes 129
46
Heidegger himself contrasts the homogeneity or uniformity of mathematical
and logical beings with the heterogeneity or diversity of empirical beings.
Ibid., pp. 69–82.
47
Heidegger’s remarks on homogeneity and heterogeneity lead him to flirt
with an analogical conception of being; see ibid., p. 74. He does not explain
how an analogical conception can be reconciled with a Scotist metaphysics,
which construes being as univocal.
48
Heidegger introduces the notion of an affair complex to address the following
criticism of Erfurt’s account of verbs: the mode of separation cannot be essen-
tial to the verb, since the content intended by the verb “is” in sentences such
as “Being is” and “God is” cannot be separated from the objects designated by
the subject terms. For Erfurt’s discussion of this objection, see Grammatica
Speculativa, p. 211. Heidegger replies that the content intended by “is” is capa-
ble of occurring in other affair complexes—for example, the complex
described by the sentence “Socrates is”—indicating a sense in which this con-
tent is separable from the objects designated by “Being” and “God.” See Theory
of the Categories and of Meaning, pp. 221–224.
49
Ibid., pp. 108–109.
50
Such a theory provides Heidegger with a prima facie plausible analysis of the
truth-conditions of at least some fictive judgments and judgments about priva-
tions: the fictive judgment that the sphinx preyed on Thebans is true because
it presents as nonactual an affair complex that has nonactual being; and the
judgment that Stevie Wonder is blind is true because it presents as nonactual
an affair complex—namely, that Stevie Wonder possesses normal sight—that
has nonactual being. Exercise for the interested reader: might false fictive
judgments, such as that the sphinx preyed upon Spartans, be analyzed as judg-
ments presenting as nonactual affair complexes having nonactual being yet
which are not presented as nonactual or as actual by the story or myth in ques-
tion? (To distinguish false fictive judgments from false literal ones, perhaps
the former would have to quantify over at least one nonactual object men-
tioned in the story or myth.)
51
Ibid., p. 123, emphasis added.
52
The inconclusive character of the inquiry into being in the Habilitationsschrift
may stem in part from Heidegger’s uncertainty about how to develop a univo-
cal and phenomenologically adequate account of actual and nonactual being
that goes beyond this.
53
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 114.
54
Grammatica Speculativa, p. 137.
55
In his introduction to Grammatica Speculativa (p. 18), Bursill-Hall describes
how fourteenth-century nominalist grammarians inspired by William of
Ockham supplanted the Modists. Ockham postulates a purely mental lan-
guage that is not derived from any natural language. Dissatisfied with the
Modists’ failure to explain how complex thought of reality is possible indepen-
dently of language, the nominalist grammarians may have been drawn to the
notion of a mental language as a medium for such thought.
56
Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1996), p. 150.
130 Notes
57
See the essays in On the Way to Language, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971).
58
“But being-in-a-world belongs essentially to Da-sein. Thus the understanding
of being that belongs to Da-sein just as originally implies the understanding of
something like ‘world’ and the understanding of the being of beings accessi-
ble within the world . . . Thus fundamental ontology, from which alone all
other ontologies can originate, must be sought in the existential analysis of
Da-sein.” (Being and Time, p. 11)
59
A compact statement of Heidegger’s later view can be found in On Time and
Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). See also The
End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1973),
p. 82: “the history of being is being itself.”
6o
At times Heidegger seems to embrace this relativist consequence: “Plato’s
thinking is no more perfect than Parmenides’. Hegel’s philosophy is no more
perfect than Kant’s. Each epoch of philosophy has its own necessity” (On Time
and Being, p. 56).
61
See Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 36.
62
Ibid., pp. 37–38.
63
Ibid., p. 45.
64
Ibid., p. 42.
65
For this argument see ibid., pp. 42–43.
66
Ibid., p. 45.
67
I am not attributing this view to Scotus, who analyzes nonactual being in terms
of what is merely logically possible and the latter in terms of there being a
certain divine idea which is the same as the divine nature.
68
Ibid., p. 44.
69
Do pure negations and privations have uniqueness, so that the transcendental of
unity applies to types of nonbeing as well? What of the contrariety whereby X is
no other actual or nonactual being? Is that contrariety itself unique? If so, does
this render Heidegger’s analysis of uniqueness in terms of contrariety circular?
Or, is the uniqueness a given contrariety distinguished from other contrarieties
by yet further contrarieties, leading to an infinite regress? A fuller account of
Heidegger’s discussion of unity and negativity should address these questions.
Chapter 2
1
On Time and Being, p. 22.
2
Presumably post-metaphysical thinking need not abandon basic logical princi-
ples, such as modus ponens and the law of universal instantiation, provided
that they are not given a metaphysically loaded interpretation. In this regard,
Heidegger’s attitude toward logic as a technical device is of a piece with the
post-metaphysical approach to technology he recommends: “We can affirm
the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dom-
inate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.” See Discourse on
Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper &
Row, 1966), p. 54.
Notes 131
3
See, for example, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New
York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 149–151.
4
“Yet a regard for metaphysics still prevails even in the intention to overcome
metaphysics” (On Time and Being, p. 24).
5
Ibid., pp. 39–40. The poets quoted are Georg Trakl and Arthur Rimbaud.
6
Ibid., p. 18.
7
Ibid., p. 40, where it is remarked that something “uncanny” is named in these
“It is . . .” statements. This uncanniness in the face of the being and temporal-
ity of beings is distinct from the more negative Sartrean intuition of being,
which is a visceral revulsion or “nausea” in the face of being per se.
8
Heidegger gives a partial list at ibid., p. 7. Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit are
discussed extensively in Being and Time, part one, section III. For buildings and
artworks, respectively, see “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “The Origin of
the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, and Thought, pp. 143–161 and pp. 15–87.
The nature of Dasein is discussed most thoroughly in Being and Time, though
Heidegger continues to pursue this question throughout his later work.
9
More precisely, the Scholastic realist may argue that his classification of beings
has an ontological foundation in the real common natures of beings.
10
Though neither Aquinas nor Scotus holds a crude correspondence theory of
judgment, they both accept a metaphysical notion of correctness as the proper
act of the intellect which Heidegger seeks to overcome.
11
In Scotist terms, there is a disjunctive transcendental finite or infinite that
divides the totality of being.
12
See On Time and Being, p. 7, for Heidegger’s sketch of successive conceptions
of being. It should be noted that what he calls idea, ousia, energeia, substantia,
actualitas, perceptio, and monad (along with other specific philosophical concep-
tions) are determinates within a determinable—that is, the determinable
conception of being as objectivity ultimately comprehensible to representa-
tional judgment.
13
Hence I disagree with Dorothea Frede when she writes that Heidegger follows
Scotus’s “division of being into different ‘realms of being and reality’ . . . that
exist more or less comfortably but unconnected side by side,” and that Hei-
degger “does not go beyond Scotus’s compartmentalization of being into
different realms with their separate meanings and systems of order.” See
Frede’s “The question of being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 50. As we have seen, Sco-
tus himself goes beyond such a compartmentalization by maintaining that all
beings of different kinds nevertheless have being in a univocal sense expli-
cated by the transcendentals. Earlier Heidegger follows Scotus on this point,
though with reservations about the phenomenological adequacy of Scotus’s
doctrine of transcendentals. And clearly later Heidegger understands being
univocally as a maximally general conception that applies to beings of differ-
ent kinds. Contra Frede, for neither Scotus nor Heidegger does a maximally
general conception merely concern “the conditions of subjectivity (how does
the subject grasp or interpret its objects?)” (ibid., p. 48). Such a characteriza-
tion turns Scotus and Heidegger into little more than proto- and latter-day
Kantians, respectively.
132 Notes
14
See On Time and Being, p. 7, where Heidegger speaks of “the unconcealment
of Being” as something that begins with the ancient Greeks and continues
with the advent of modern technology. Also, see ibid., p. 9, where he describes
this history in terms of “destiny.”
15
Ibid., p. 36.
16
This seems reasonable to assume, since in principle Heidegger’s classification
of beings as things of nature or equipment or dwellings or artworks or humans
could be made within any of the conceptions of being in the history of meta-
physics. Thus, Heidegger’s classification doesn’t seem committed to any of
these metaphysical conceptions, allowing it to carry over into a post-metaphys-
ical setting.
17
Ibid., p. 56.
18
The End of Philosophy, p. 82.
19
Hubert L. Dreyfus puts this point well in “Heidegger on the connection
between nihilism, art, technology, and politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Heidegger, pp. 289–316. See especially p. 298.
20
On Time and Being, pp. 14–15, emphasis added.
21
Ibid., p. 15.
22
Poetry, Language, and Thought, p. 42.
23
On Time and Being, p. 14.
24
In “Time and Being” Heidegger countenances the possibility that something
that is not a being—that is, Appropriation—is “metaphysically prior” to both
being and time. We shall investigate this claim of metaphysical (or better,
explanatory) priority presently. For now we can say that since Heidegger
thinks that a nonbeing X can be metaphysically prior to Y, his reason for
denying that time is metaphysically prior to being cannot be that such depen-
dency implies that time itself is a being. So, there must be some other
reason.
25
Ibid., p. 17: “Does this reference [i.e., to the poetic statements] show time to
be the ‘It’ that gives being? By no means. For time itself remains the gift of an
‘It gives’ whose giving preserves the realm in which presence is extended.”
26
What of the possibility of timeless beings, such as God on the orthodox con-
ception, or numbers? In the next chapter and the last chapter, respectively, we
will consider how the Heideggerian atheologian might address these cases.
27
Ibid., p. 13: “If we heed still more carefully what has been said, we shall find in
absence—be it what has been or what is to come—a manner of presencing
and approaching which by no means coincides with presencing in the sense of
the immediate presence.”
28
Ibid., p. 17.
29
This explains later Heidegger’s abiding interest in Heraclitus, whom Hei-
degger interprets as coming closer than any other thinker in the history of
being to understanding being in terms of becoming rather than vice versa. See
the essays on Heraclitus in Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and
Frank A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984).
30
I believe this is what the participants in Heidegger’s “Time and Being” semi-
nar have in mind when they describe the seminar as an “experiment” having
a tentative, speculative character. See On Time and Being, p. 25.
Notes 133
31
This objection is developed by Richard Rorty against early Wittgenstein and
later Heidegger in “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the reification of language,”
in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, pp. 337–357—especially p. 342. Rorty
shifts between seeing Heidegger’s reified explanans as being or as language.
Though Rorty doesn’t explicitly mention Appropriation, clearly he would
intend his objection to apply to the “It” that “gives” the phenomenologically
available explanandum of the being and temporality of beings.
32
I choose a naturalistic example since Rorty is a self-proclaimed naturalist.
While I have grave doubts about the accuracy of Rorty’s claim that later Witt-
genstein and Donald Davidson are naturalists in his sense, I will not air those
doubts here.
33
Thus when Heidegger dismisses the “transcendental making possible of the
objectivity of objects” (On Time and Being, p. 56), I do not take him to be ruling
out an explanation of phenomenologically available being/time in terms of
phenomenologically unavailable Appropriation, but only the use of tradi-
tional metaphysical notions in such an explanation.
34
This objection is hinted at by Rorty in “The reification of language” when he
expresses reservations about what he describes as Heidegger’s “metaphors of
depth and antiquity” and Heidegger’s worry about “whether he is being suffi-
ciently primordial” (p. 349). Also, see Rorty’s “Overcoming the Tradition:
Heidegger and Dewey,” in Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 37–59.
35
Hubert L. Dreyfus compares Heideggerian conceptions of being to Kuhnian
paradigms in “Nihilism, art, technology, and politics.” At one point Dreyfus
observes that “One natural way of understanding [Heidegger’s] proposal
[about technology] holds that once we get into the right relation to technol-
ogy, it is revealed as just good as any other clearing” (p. 308). But Dreyfus goes
on to remark that this “cannot be Heidegger’s whole story about how to over-
come technological nihilism,” since Heidegger seeks a new paradigm which
avoids the nihilism of the technological conception of being by revealing
“a new god” (p. 309 and following). Complete neutrality among rival concep-
tions of being is incompatible with criticizing one conception as “nihilistic”
and applauding another conception because it reveals “a new god.”
36
Heidegger speaks of both truth and “the indefeasible severity of error” as a
possibility of any “clearing” or conception of being. See Poetry, Language, and
Thought, p. 55.
37
Here we have an instance of what Heidegger describes as the failure to grasp
the “difference” between being and beings. For more on the technological
transcendental see The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans.
William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). Perhaps later Heidegger pre-
fers the early Greek conception of being, not because it “corresponds with the
nature of being” while the other historicized transcendentals do not, but
because he thinks that the early Greek philosophers were less likely their
counterparts in the history of being to treat their transcendental as just
another being to be represented, willed, or exploited as a resource.
38
Maybe one reason Heidegger urges us to cultivate the radical nonwilling and
nonthinking of Gelassenheit in preparation for “overcoming” metaphysics is
134 Notes
that then we will be less likely to fall back into the very conception(s) we are
trying to overcome. For more on Gelassenheit see Discourse on Thinking, trans.
John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
39
Charles B. Guignon voices this concern in his introduction to The Cambridge
Companion to Heidegger: “. . . [Heidegger’s] lifelong belief in the possibility of a
new dispensation of being leaves innumerable questions about why we
should think, once being is detached from Christian providence or Stoic
rationality, that such an event will be good in any sense” (p. 36). Though Gui-
gnon describes the sought-after event as a new dispensation of being rather
than as an overcoming of all such dispensations, I think that he would raise
this same objection against the possibility of Heideggerian overcoming.
40
See “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, and Thought, pp. 163–182. Dreyfus writes
that “Such things function like local, temporary works of art in giving meaning
to human activities, but they do not focus a whole culture and so do not
become the locus of a struggle between earth and world” (“Nihilism, art, tech-
nology, and politics,” p. 316).
41
John D. Caputo, “Heidegger and theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Heidegger, pp. 270–288, especially p. 288: “It is just for this reason [i.e., that
Heidegger’s history of being has nothing to do with actual history] that Charles
Taylor in an unpublished essay, quite rightly criticizes Heidegger for a ‘mono-
manic’ [sic] conception of the history of the West.”
42
It may also be observed that even in the history of being the actual picture is
more complex, with rival conceptions of being (such as the late Scholastic and
the early modern) sometimes overlapping in a given historical era.
43
See Caputo: “The mystical dimension of the later thinking is strictly a struc-
tural affair, a matter of a certain proportionality: the relationship of ‘thinking’
to ‘being’ [more precisely, Appropriation] is structurally like the relationship
of the soul to God in religious mysticism” (ibid., p. 283).
44
On Time and Being, p. 26.
45
Ibid., p. 47.
46
Ibid., p. 53.
47
Ibid., p. 24.
48
In Chapter 5, we will see that on the very different atheology of nothingness
that can be extracted from Heidegger’s middle period, Appropriation is not
the “event” in which the history of being and true time are “sent” (or the ulti-
mate potentiality for such “sending”) but rather the post-metaphysical world
in which we experience a profound sense of unity with earth, sky, divinities,
and mortals. On the atheology of nothingness, then, Appropriation is more
experiential. What “sends” the history of being and true time is literally noth-
ing. It will also become clear that Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness isn’t
motivated primarily by isolated phenomenological or mystical experiences
but by the dialectical progression of his thought.
49
The outline of such a genetic account is presented by P.F. Strawson in “Mean-
ing and Truth.” In The Philosophy of Language, ed. A.P. Martinich (New York:
Oxford, 4th edition: 2000), pp. 110–119.
50
For Heidegger’s overview of his earlier interest in phenomenology see On
Time and Being, pp. 75–82 (“My Way to Phenomenology”).
Notes 135
Chapter 3
1
John Duns Scotus, Reportio I A, prol. q. iii, art. i. Reprinted in Philosophical Writ-
ings, trans. Allan Wolter (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 11.
2
Scotus, A Treatise on God as First Principle. Trans. Allan B. Wolter (Chicago:
Franciscan Herald Press, 1966).
3
Peter King, “Scotus on Metaphysics,” and James F. Ross and Todd Bates, “Duns
Scotus on Natural Theology,” both in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2003), pp. 15–68 and pp. 193–237,
respectively.
4
A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 3.5.
5
Ross and Bates, The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, pp. 201–202. Since the
nature of a higher cause (e.g., genetically organized carbon molecules) differs
from that of a lower cause (e.g., the swallow), Scotus says that the higher cause
formally contains the being and the causal power of the lower cause, and
hence is more perfect or eminent. He also says that all of the causes in an
essentially ordered series must operate simultaneously to produce a given
effect; see A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 3.11.
6
More precisely, Scotus first argues for the possibility, actuality, and necessity of
a First Efficient Cause whose being and causal activity cannot be caused, then
constructs parallel arguments for the possibility, actuality, and necessity of a
First Final Cause (see ibid., sections 3.27–3.34) and for a First Eminent Cause
(see ibid., sections 3.35–3.42). The capstone of these arguments is the so-
called “triple primacy” of the First Principle, or the identity of the first cause
in each order, using the premises that each exists by necessity and that a plu-
rality of necessary beings cannot exist (ibid., sections 3.43–3.44). I will focus
on the argument for a First Efficient Cause, since the main contention with
the Heideggerian atheologian arises there.
7
Ibid., 3.12.
8
Ross and Bates, p. 203.
9
To say otherwise is to commit a version of the fallacy of composition that Ross
and Bates claim to have circumvented: see ibid., pp. 203–204. Ross and Bates
write, “A sentence with an infinite number of ‘if, if, if, if, . . .’ clauses cannot
be made complete by adding more; so too with a phrase inside brackets,
inside brackets, repeating without end, never coming to an assertion” (p. 203).
True—yet the authors don’t provide any independent reason for thinking
that an infinite series of essentially ordered causes is analogous to the impos-
sibility of a “conditional” with infinitely many antecedents or an “assertion”
with a phrase inside infinitely many brackets, rather than to the possibility of
an infinite set possessing some property lacked by all its finite subsets.
10
This is related to Ross and Bates’s point that the strongest modal operator of
a conjunction is that of its weakest conjunct; see “Duns Scotus’s Natural Theol-
ogy,” p. 204. Just as a conjunction is contingent if at least one of its conjuncts
is, so an infinite series of essentially ordered causes is contingent if at least one
of its members is.
11
“Some nature is contingent. It is possible for it to exist after being nonexistent,
not of itself, however, or by reason of nothing, for in both these cases a being
136 Notes
. . . C, the cause of the totality, is not part of the totality. For if it were, it
would belong to something of which it is the cause, and this is impossible
since nothing can be the cause of itself . . . . But if C is caused, then it must
belong to the totality of caused things (which would otherwise not be a total-
ity since it left C out). But, by the [preceding] argument, this is impossible.
(“Scotus on Metaphysics,” pp. 44–45)
I disagree with King that Scotus’s Causal Argument “is a piece of pure meta-
physics: it doesn’t contain any claim about contingent beings in the world”
(ibid., p. 45); like Ross and Bates, I see Scotus’s argument as proceeding from
actual cases of causation observed in nature—for example, the swallow’s flying.
Nor do I see the argument as requiring the claim that “the totality of caused
things that are essentially ordered itself has a cause” (ibid., p. 44) but only
weaker claim that a given series of essentially ordered causes, such as that pro-
ducing the effect of the swallow’s flying, is causable even if it is de facto uncaused
(because such a series is contingent and whatever is contingent is causable).
13
As Scotus says, “If the totality of essentially causes were caused, it would have to
be by a cause which does not belong to the group, otherwise it would be its own
cause. The whole series of dependents is thus dependent and upon something
which is not one of the group” (A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 3.13).
14
Ibid., section 3.19:
15
In A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 3.22, Scotus infers the necessity of
a First Being from the impossibility of “something either positively or priva-
tively incompatible with it” existing. To avoid begging the question of why it
isn’t possible for a First Being simply not to exist without anything positively or
privatively incompatible with it existing, I attribute the argument of this para-
graph to Scotus, which is available to him given the usual understanding of the
modal operators and the principle that whatever is possible is necessarily pos-
sible; see note 16.
16
I heed the advice—implicit in King (pp. 43–45), who discusses Scotus’s reason-
ing without utilizing a “possible worlds” semantics or quantified modal logic,
and explicit in Ross and Bates (p. 194), who observe that contemporary seman-
tic accounts of modality are foreign to Scotus—to avoid the anachronism of
saddling Scotus with modern conceptions of modality. The argument I attri-
bute to Scotus in this paragraph assumes only the usual understanding of the
modal operators applied to propositions and how they commute with negation
Notes 137
(e.g., p↔¬◊¬p, ◊¬p ↔¬p, and so forth), along with the basic principle that
whatever is possible is necessarily possible (◊p→◊p), accepted by Scotus (see
Ross and Bates, p. 194).
17
As Scotus puts it, a First Being is of itself necessarily existent, in that necessary
being is an intrinsic mode of its being. See A Treatise on God as First Principle,
section 3.21; also, see Ross and Bates, p. 205.
18
Suppose an objector like Hume denies the possibility of a series of essentially
ordered causes while maintaining the possibility of an infinite series of acci-
dentally ordered causes (e.g., son produced by father produced by grandfather
produced by great-grandfather, etc.). Scotus may reply that the causal activity
of each member in such a series is essentially yet not causally dependent on a
temporal duration extending infinitely into the past (ibid., section 3.14; for
other cases of essential but not causal dependence see ibid., sections 1.12 and
1.13). Furthermore, since the being of each member in the series depends on
the causal activity of a prior cause in the series, the being of each member is
also essentially dependent on an infinite past temporal duration. Since such a
duration is a contingent being and since whatever is contingent is causable, it
is possible for both the being and the causal activity of each member in the
series to be essentially dependent on some cause C of an infinite past temporal
duration. If C itself were a member of the series then C would be essentially
dependent on itself, which is impossible. Therefore, it is possible for the mem-
bers of an infinite series of accidentally ordered causes to be essentially
dependent on a cause which is not a member of the series.
19
For the uniqueness of the First Being see ibid., sections 3.23–3.26. For its sim-
plicity, intelligence, volition, and infinite being see sections 4.1–4.94.
20
Various commentators detect this causal assumption at different points in
the architecture of Scotus’s reasoning. I see it as a premise in Scotus’s proof
of the lemma, as does King (p. 44, with the caveat that Scotus’s argument
only requires the premise that, qua contingent being, it is possible for a series
of essentially ordered causes to have a cause; see note 12 above). Since their
inconsistency argument in favor of the lemma doesn’t require the causal
assumption, Ross and Bates don’t see it as a premise in Scotus’s proof but
rather as a presupposition that “needs to be true” if the First Being is to serve
as the necessary ground of all contingent being (pp. 206, 231, ftn. 50).
Despite these differences, clearly we all agree that Scotus’s natural theology
requires the truth—indeed, the necessary truth—of the assumption/presup-
position that whatever is contingent is causable.
21
The events in question are stick W falling to the right or particles X, Y, Z swerving
in such a way. There is no contradiction in saying that the actually random
events stick W falling to the right or particles X, Y, Z swerving could be caused, in
the way that there is a contradiction in saying that the events stick W randomly
falling to the right or particles X, Y, Z randomly swerving could be caused.
22
Instead of the actual sequence of transcendentals, there could have been a
different sequence containing some of the same transcendentals (e.g., the his-
tory of being ends with the medieval transcendental because the world is
destroyed by a giant asteroid), or a different sequence containing other tran-
scendentals (e.g., some radically new metaphysical conception of being that
138 Notes
has not actually unfolded), or different possible futures (e.g., one in which we
overcome metaphysics versus one in which we don’t), or just one transcenden-
tal, or none.
23
On Time and Being, p. 17.
24
I am treating the sending of being by Appropriation as a single contingent,
uncaused, and protracted event or happening in which the phenomenologi-
cal availability of being (and of time) is explained in terms of the sending by
Appropriation (though without identifying Appropriation Itself as a being or
cause). How Appropriation should be understood will be taken up in the next
chapter.
25
Even if the simplicity of the First Being is rejected, it would still be the case that
the disclosure of beings is essentially dependent on the disclosure of a being,
since the First Being’s act of self-disclosure is essential to it.
26
In more phenomenological terms, it would be as if one “explained” intention-
ality (consciousness of objects, mental directedness) by claiming that it is
essentially derived from the God’s intentionality and leaving it at that.
27
In terms suggested by Ross and Bates (p. 209), if the cosmos is taken to include
the sending of being/time by Appropriation, then the cosmos as a whole is an
unexplained and inexplicable phenomenon.
28
Merold Westphal, in “Aquinas and Onto-theology,” American Catholic Philosoph-
ical Quarterly 80, Spring (2006), pp. 173–191, underestimates the far-reaching
consequences of Heidegger’s attack on “onto-theology.” According to West-
phal, onto-theology involves using impersonal metaphysical categories to
arrive at an understanding of God as the ultima ratio or source of intelligibility
so that we may comprehend reality as He does, leading to an overly intellectu-
alized and religiously useless conception of the Supreme Being that destroys
its mystery. Westphal argues that although Aquinas couches his initial inquiry
into God’s nature in terms of metaphysical attributes, in the course of the
Summa Theologiae these attributes are “suspended” and eventually supple-
mented by moral attributes revealing “a personal, biblical, religiously relevant
God” (p. 184) not fully comprehensible by us, thereby allowing St. Thomas to
escape Heidegger’s charge of being an onto-theologian. Yet whatever else a
“teleological suspension” (p. 185) of God’s metaphysical attributes supposedly
involves, Westphal grants that these attributes—specifically, Aquinas’s initial
conclusion that there is First Cause of all contingent being—“are not aban-
doned but revealed as part of a large whole” (pp. 184–185) which includes the
initial metaphysical conclusions as well as the personal and moral attributes
ascribed to God later in the Summa. We have seen that the Heideggerian
atheologian challenges the very idea of a First Cause of all contingency, and
thus would reject any larger whole containing it. Contrary to Westphal, then,
Aquinas remains vulnerable to Heidedgger’s charge of onto-theology.
Chapter 4
1
The locus classicus of contemporary pragmatism is Richard Rorty’s Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). See also
Notes 139
Chapter 5
1
Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger
(Chicago: Open Court, 2000), p. 13.
2
“What is Metaphysics?” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), p. 93.
3
Ibid., p. 103.
4
Ibid., p. 108.
5
Ibid., p. 110.
6
Ibid.
7
To simplify my exposition I have assumed that individuals and properties
exhaust the kinds of things there can be. However, the fact that maximal pure
negation obtains can be expressed for richer ontologies which include modes,
relations, and perhaps other entities among the kinds of things there can be
by adding an additional unrestricted variable for each additional kind: e.g.,
¬(∃x)(∃F)(∃m)(∃R)(x = x • F = F • m = m • R = R) • (∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F =
F • m = m • R = R).
Dasein exists as thrown, brought into its there not of its own accord. It exists
as potentiality-of-being which belongs to itself, and yet has not given itself to
itself. Existing, it never gets back behind its thrownness so that it could ever
expressly release this ‘that-it-is-and-has-to-be’ from its being a self and lead it
into the there. (Being and Time, p. 262)
The “there” Dasein doesn’t give itself but is brought into not of its own
accord includes circumstances in which Dasein already finds itself but did not
choose or “expressly release” from its own selfhood.
28
Ibid., p. 6.
29
One needn’t deny the formal interdependence between language encoding a
certain conception of being and human language users conceptualizing in a
certain way (see Chapter 2), but only that there is a straightforward argument
Notes 143
This appropriating mirror-play of the simple onefold of earth and sky, divin-
ities and mortals we call the world. The world presences by worlding. That
means: the world’s worlding cannot be explained by anything else nor can it
be fathomed through anything else. This impossibility does not lie in the
inability of our human thinking to explain and fathom in this way. Rather
the inexplicable and unfathomable character of the world’s worlding lies in this,
that causes and grounds remain unsuitable for the world’s worlding. . . .
The mirror-play of world is the round dance of appropriating. (Poetry, Lan-
guage, Thought, pp. 179–180)
32
Recall that the global antimetaphysical position is expressed by the cosmic
negative existential claim that nothing justifies any particular transcendental
in the history of being or explains the history of being itself—including, for
example, Platonic Forms in which sensible particulars are said to participate.
Since the Forms aren’t conceived as temporal causes of the sensible world or
introduced as essentially self-disclosed beings to explain the very possibility of
disclosure, the Heideggerian atheological argument against a First Being
doesn’t obviously apply to this metaphysical theory. Whether Heidegger pro-
vides cogent grounds for skepticism about other forms of metaphysical
explanation besides that found in Scholasticism is an issue I recommend for
further study.
33
“What is Metaphysics?” pp. 107–108.
34
Scotus seeks to explain the contingency of created causes in terms of the con-
tingency of the First Cause’s willing: “there is no contingency about the
causation of any secondary cause unless the First Cause can be contingent in
willing” (A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 4.26; see also section 4.15).
Chapter 6
1
Radical Orthodoxy is associated primarily with the work of John Milbank, Cath-
erine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and James K.A. Smith. For a representative text
see Milbank’s Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Routledge, 2003).
144 Notes
For a synoptic overview and trenchant criticism of the movement see Wayne J.
Hankey, “Radical Orthodoxy’s Poie-sis: Ideological Historiography and Anti-
Modern Polemic,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 80(2006), pp. 1–21.
2
A presentation of the basic ideas of Reformation philosophy can be found in
Roy A. Clouser’s The Myth of Religious Neutrality, 2nd edition (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
3
For an effort along these lines see John D. Caputo’s The Weakness of God: A The-
ology of the Event (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2006).
4
For the example of the pair of peasant shoes (depicted in a painting by Van
Gogh) see Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 32– 37; for the farmhouse in the
Black Forest see ibid., pp. 160–161.
5
Here there is a similarity to the Tillichian notion of God as that which is of
ultimate concern to us.
6
If Dasein lacks an objective nature prior to its “throwness” and there are no
objective moral principles, why should we worry about counterbalancing a
monomaniacal Thing, provided that it gives our Dasein a situation in which
our lives and our interactions with other beings have direction and purpose?
Why is a monomaniacal Thing dangerous? Here it is natural to appeal to
moral principles that are incompatible with a monomaniacal Thing, such as
that the natural rights of an individual Dasein should not be gratuitously vio-
lated, or that only rules maximizing happiness and minimizing misery should
be adopted, or that no Dasein should be treated merely as a means to an
end. That Heidegger cannot do, given his repudiation of objective morality.
Presumably, we are just supposed to see that the emergence of a monomania-
cal Thing would be bad. But “bad” in what sense, and why?
7
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a q.2 a.3. English version translated and
edited by Timothy McDermott (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1991). p. 131.
8
In “Duns Scotus and Natural Theology,” p. 231, ftn 51, Ross and Bates sketch
this possible reading of Aquinas’s Third Way. The reasoning in this paragraph
is also similar to the argument for First Being’s necessary existence I attributed
to Scotus in Chapter 3.
9
More technically, a central claim of the Heideggerian atheology of
nothingness
is false. For, if the first conjunct inside the brackets is true, then the second
conjunct inside the brackets is false; and if the second conjunct is true, then
the first conjunct is false. Since the conjuncts cannot both be true, their joint
truth isn’t possible.
10
A question about such combinatorial accounts is whether they really offer a
noncircular analysis of modality. For p to be possible is for p to be a possible
combination of elements. But do we have any purchase on what it is for p to
be a possible combination of elements, apart from the fact that p is possible?
This issue lies beyond the scope of this work. A helpful discussion of the
Scotist notion of notae, which make up concepts in the divine intellect, is
Normore’s “Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,” (pp. 129–160). For a contemporary
Notes 145
[Scotus] thinks God has from eternity a complete idea (concept) of each
creature, say Adam, that includes everything Adam does, might have done,
had happen, and so on, but not with the effect that every feature of the crea-
ture is essential to it (as Leibniz later thought). (“Duns Scotus on Natural
Theology,” p. 215)
It should also be pointed out that Scotus’s account, while superficially simi-
lar to contemporary combinatorial accounts, differs from them in that he
believes the notae contained in the concept of a possible being aren’t merely
combinable but actually combined from all eternity in the divine intellect.
16
Ross and Bates attribute this view to Aquinas; see ibid., p. 214. Other commen-
tators regard Aquinas as holding more or less the same view as Scotus; for
example, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey
of Fontaines on the Reality of Nonexisting Possibles,” in Metaphysical Themes in
146 Notes
Chapter 7
1
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 62.
2
Ibid., p. 54.
3
This is the gist of the celebrated dilemma raised by Paul Benacerraf in “Math-
ematical Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 70(1973), pp. 661–680.
4
See Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 55. Presumably, Heidegger would
allow that nonsensory beings can be counted, or even pure numbers them-
selves (e.g., there are ten numbers in the set of integers from 0 to 9).
5
Ibid., p. 54.
6
Ibid., pp. 65–66.
7
Ibid., pp. 71–72.
8
See Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans. J.L. Austin (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1980), p. 59.
9
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, pp. 64–65.
Notes 147
10
Stated informally, these axioms are that 0 is a natural number; that every nat-
ural number n has a successor S(n); that no natural number n has 0 as its
successor; that distinct natural numbers have distinct successors; and that if a
property holds for 0 and for the successor of any natural number for which it
holds, then the property holds for all natural numbers (mathematical
induction).
11
A contemporary defense of structuralism can be found in Stewart Shapiro,
Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
12
For a critical discussion of mathematical structuralism as a proposed solution
to Benacerraf’s dilemma, see Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, “Benacerraf’s
Dilemma Revisited,” European Journal of Philosophy, 10, 1, April (2002), pp.
101–129. Later in this chapter, I will return to Hale and Wright’s positive
proposal.
13
For example, see Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 52.
14
Such a challenge is obviously inspired by Frege’s famous point in the opening
section of The Foundations of Arithmetic that if the number 1 is an object then
there must be a determinate answer to the question “What object is the num-
ber 1?”
15
Theory of Categories and of Meaning, p. 52. The “as if” rhetoric is reminiscent of
the neo-Kantian Hans Vaihinger’s influential Philosophy of “As If” (Philosophie
des Als Ob), originally published in 1911. Vaihinger argues that the theoretical
posits of natural science are constructs or fictions the scientist pretends exist
to explain observations. Such an attitude may be extended to mathematics as
well.
16
This objection is raised by Meg Wallace in “Mental Fictionalism,” unpublished
paper available online at www.unc.edu/~megw/MentalFictionalism.doc.
17
“Where, as in the present case, the indefinables [i.e., sets and functions] are
obtained primarily as the necessary residue in the process of analysis, it is
often easier to know that there must be such entities than actually to perceive
them: there is a process, analogous to that which resulted in the discovery of
Neptune, with the difference that the final stage—the search with the mental
telescope—is often the most difficult part of the undertaking.” (Bertrand Rus-
sell, The Principles of Mathematics, London: Allen and Unwin, 1937, p. xv.)
18
Here I draw mainly upon Bob Hale and Crispin Wright’s “Benacerraf’s
Dilemma Revisited.”
19
Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, p. x.
20
Frege shows how to define the concept of a one-to-one correspondence, or equi-
numerosity of concepts, without appealing to numerical terms such as “one.”
21
Ibid., p. 76.
22
More precisely, he regards the second- and first-order generalizations of (1)
and (2):
same meaning in these different situations. For at least part of the meaning of
a statement consists in the conditions under which it would be true.
35
See Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Anna S. Benjamin and L.H.
Hackstaff (New York: Macmillan, 1964), especially Book Two, sections
VIII–XVI.
36
Ibid., p. 71.
37
Does God have an idea of chess comparable to the idea of arithmetic so that
He could play a purely “mental” game of chess even if there were no contin-
gent beings? The issue is delicate, but there is a difference between imagining
possible moves in a game people might play and actually playing the game.
For God actually to play chess without merely conceiving a possible chess
game, in addition to the idea of a series of moves in accordance with certain
rules He must also know that He has created people who actually play a game
corresponding to His idea of these rules. (Similarly, God may consult His com-
plete idea of Mr. Stolzfus, but unless Mr. Stolzfus actually exists this isn’t
knowing Mr. Stolzfus but merely conceiving of him.) By contrast, there is no
gap between God’s or our imagining the sum of 7 and 8 and actually adding
7 and 8. That’s because there is nothing more to the actual necessary truth of
the divine idea of arithmetic than its presence in the divine intellect (= God as
necessary being). Only the possibility of chess, not its actuality, is a necessity of
the divine intellect.
38
This is similar to Scotus’s point that what natural reason teaches us about
God’s omnipotence isn’t sufficient to settle all questions about this power,
such as whether God can directly cause any effect caused by secondary causes,
but must be supplemented by revealed truth; see A Treatise on God as First Prin-
ciple, section 4.71. I am suggesting that whatever natural reason can teach us
about the eminence and formality of the First Cause isn’t sufficient to settle
the question of which features of its contingent effects provide us with knowl-
edge of God as the basis of necessary truth. Yet there are other things which
natural reason, not revelation, can teach us that settle this question, and
I think Scotus would agree: the account I develop below employs additional
notions from his natural theology.
39
For Scotus’s discussion see ibid., section 4.10, where he uses the example of
wisdom. Like the disjunctive transcendentals finite or infinite, contingent or
necessary, caused or uncaused, and so on, pure perfections apply to different
kinds of beings; unlike the transcendentals, pure perfections don’t apply to all
beings: for example, rocks aren’t wise.
40
Since the mistakes we make have to do with our physicality (weary eyes, tired
brains, sloppy handwriting, careless fingers on the calculator), in abstracting
from those mistakes God also abstracts from our physical being. Thus, we can
begin to understand why God’s knowledge of intrinsic ideas is purely
immaterial.
41
It might be objected that to comprehend the pure perfection directly knowing
intrinsic ideas is not a fortiori to know that the perfection is actually instantiated
in the mode of infallibility. True. Proving that there is a necessary being identi-
cal with its knowledge is the work of the Scotist Causal Argument, together
with supplemental considerations about the divine simplicity. Certainly there
Notes 151
is room for more discussion about this argument and the Scotist conception
of simplicity (on the latter see immediately below in the main text). Neverthe-
less, with the Heideggerian atheologian’s powerful objection to the argument
refuted, the argument is in much better shape and deserves to be taken quite
seriously. Moreover, the basic version of the argument doesn’t rely upon the
notions of eminent and formal causation (though Scotus goes on to devise
parallel arguments appealing to these notions). Our stance, I believe, should
be one of cautious optimism.
42
In light of Gödel’s incompleteness results, there are formally distinct arith-
metical truths in the divine idea of arithmetic that aren’t provable in any
formalization of arithmetic. The divine idea of arithmetic, which for Scotus is
included by identity in God’s being, encompasses all mathematical truths, and
hence isn’t completely captured by any formalization. This means that God
simply knows the answer to every mathematical question without deducing
the answer from the Peano axioms, though the latter and all their conse-
quences are certainly included in the total divine idea of arithmetic.
43
What of other necessities, such as logical ones? No doubt basic logical laws—
for example, the principle of noncontradiction—are intrinsic ideas in the
divine intellect and hence part of God’s essence (= God). In the case of other
logical principles—for example, the Law of Excluded Middle—there may be
nothing in the divine intellect that decides between this and, say, an intuition-
ist logic that eschews Excluded Middle. Different logics may be comparable to
variants of chess we might adopt for different purposes. If there hadn’t been
any humans, then there would have been no “fact” of the matter about which
of these logics is true because there is no intrinsic divine idea of any one of
them. However, in virtue of another intrinsic divine idea it would have been
necessarily possible that a particular logic is suitable for a given range of pur-
poses. (Perhaps the same is true for variants of set theory and some branches
of higher mathematics.)
44
Scotus thinks that there must be at least a formal difference here, for if the
perfections of, say, wisdom and virtuousness are really identical in God, then
they must also be really identical in creatures. Clearly they aren’t, since a crea-
ture can be wise without being virtuous and vice versa.
Conclusion
1
Theory of the Categories and of Meaning, p. 253.
2
Ibid., p. 255.
3
I am indebted to Father John Martin for this insight.
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Index