(Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy) Heidegger, Martin - Dillard, Peter S - Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology - A Neo-Scholastic Critique (2008, Bloomsbury Academic - Continuum)

Heidegger and
Philosophical Atheology
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
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Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach
Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett
Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller
Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson
Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan
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Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited
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Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham
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The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy
Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell
Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman
Heidegger and
Philosophical Atheology
A Neo-Scholastic Critique
Peter S. Dillard
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ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6451-5

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Dillard, Peter S.
Heidegger and philosophical atheology : a neo-scholastic
critique/Peter S. Dillard.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84706-451-6 (HB)
ISBN-10: 1-84706-451-5 (HB)
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 2. Metaphysics. 3. Scholasticism. I. Title.
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“May the First Principle of things grant me to believe,
to understand and to reveal what may please His majesty
and may raise our minds to contemplate Him.”
John Duns Scotus

A Treatise on God as First Principle
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1. Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 6
2. Heidegger’s Atheology of Appropriation 26
3. Heideggerian Atheology and the Scotist Causal Argument 46
4. Appropriation and the Problem of Sufficient Comprehension 57
5. Heidegger’s Atheology of Nothingness 71
6. Nothingness and the Problem of Possibility 89
7. A Positive Application 102
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
This work is not about Heidegger or the history of Heidegger’s phi-

losophy but about Heidegger’s philosophy itself and how it challenges
traditional metaphysics, particularly high Scholasticism.
I shall be mostly concerned with Heidegger’s later philosophy and
those portions of his earlier and middle thought which complement
it. Much of Heidegger’s later philosophy can be seen as part of a ven-
erable metaphysical tradition that includes Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas,
Scotus, Spinoza, and Hegel. Yet this shouldn’t lead us to conclude
that the later philosophy is intended to be a continuation of meta-
physics. For Heidegger’s principle aim is to “overcome” metaphysics,
and overcoming metaphysics involves repudiating traditional meta-
physical concepts, theses, and arguments as objects of serious
intellectual inquiry. In particular, then, overcoming metaphysics
means consigning Scholastic natural theology to the dustbin of dis-
carded ideas. Hence, Heidegger’s later philosophy can be described
as a kind of atheology.
Many contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion such
as Caputo, Milbank, Marion, and others embrace Heidegger’s repu-
diation of metaphysics yet also look to Heidegger’s atheology to
reconstruct at least some elements of orthodox theistic belief. One
upshot of the present work is that any such attempt is a grievous
mistake. For as we will see in Chapter 3, in rejecting what he calls
“onto-theology,” Heidegger means to reject the notion that the
universe is created by a metaphysically independent Creator: not
only are the traditional arguments for a First Cause flawed, but
from a Heideggerian perspective the very idea of a First Cause is
incoherent. Once the notion of a Creator is abandoned, it is obscure
what remains of orthodox theistic belief. One might say that drawing
upon Heideggerian atheology to elucidate faith is like parking the
Trojan horse inside the walls of the City of God.
2 Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology
The focus of this work is not primarily theological but philosophi-

cal. Its main target is the Heideggerian atheologian’s contention to
have “overcome” traditional metaphysics once and for all. In the
course of arguing that nothing could be further from the truth, I
hope to help reinvigorate certain aspects of the Scholastic tradition.
I write from a perspective that draws upon the impressive intellectual
resources of medieval metaphysics, aspires to analytic rigor, and
respects phenomenological insight while eschewing the rhetoric and
methodology of deconstructionism. Although my perspective isn’t
purely “Thomist” or “Scotist,” in places my preference for the Scotist
outlook is discernible. Perhaps this is fitting, since the Subtle Doctor
is the medieval thinker who influenced Heidegger most. Before out-
lining the structure of the work, I want to describe my approach to
metaphysics and to Heidegger’s philosophy.
Metaphysics and methodology
I take seriously the conception of metaphysics as a scientia in the

medieval sense: a linguistically articulated discipline whose sayings
may be evaluated according to whether they are adequate. Mathe-
matics, natural science, poetry, and literature are also such disciplines,
though they contain different kinds of sayings—theorems, hypothe-
ses, poems, stories—assessable by varying standards of adequacy. As
a scientia, metaphysics resembles mathematics and natural science
in that its standard of adequacy is literal truth. (I am aware that
Heideggerian atheology challenges metaphysical conceptions of truth;
we will come to that presently.)
Like mathematics, much of metaphysics is remote from empirical
evidence. Even if metaphysical arguments often don’t achieve it, or
even when they achieve it without their achieving it being recognized,
such arguments aim at the same level of certainty as mathematical
demonstrations or proofs (though some metaphysical proofs, such as
Scotus’s Causal Argument for God’s existence or Aquinas’s Five Ways,
proceed from at least some premises based on experience). Seeking
a proof for a metaphysical thesis isn’t the same thing as engaging in a
cost-benefit analysis of some philosophical problem, a contemporary
view of metaphysics familiar from philosophers such as David Lewis
Introduction 3
and David Armstrong. On the cost-benefit view, a given metaphysical

or philosophical claim—no matter how outlandish—may be endorsed
if doing so yields sufficient theoretical benefits. This would allow
the Heideggerian atheologian to argue that, despite the difficulties
I shall describe concerning philosophical assertions about Appropri-
ation and nothingness, we should endorse those assertions (or hope
for a nonwilled event of Gelassenheit whereby the assertions come to
be generally endorsed) because they provide us with the overwhelm-
ing theoretical benefit of radically simplifying our conceptual scheme
by “overcoming” all metaphysics. Such a view makes things far too
easy for the Heideggerian atheologian. Thus I am not interested in
whether a philosophical claim is cost-effective but in whether it is
coherent, and if so then whether it is true, and if so then why.
On the other hand, metaphysics also resembles poetry and litera-
ture in that it has a strong personal and creative component nourished
by a vibrant tradition. Each of the following chapters may be regarded
as an intellectual foray in which, drawing upon my understanding of
the relevant material and the excellent work of my predecessors,
I attempt to advance our knowledge of a specific topic. Ideally, other
metaphysicians should step in to evaluate a foray of mine by eliminat-
ing what is erroneous in it, consolidating what is correct in it, and
proceeding to make their own forays on the same or some related
topic. I hope that in time a comprehensive and plausible metaphysics
covering a broad range of topics—in older terms, a metaphysical
“system”—will emerge from this interplay among investigators. In
this way, metaphysics proceeds in fits and starts toward truth.
Alas, since the series of metaphysical forays presented here are
all my forays, and since the thrust of my analysis is largely critical
rather than constructive, the work doesn’t actually exemplify the
vision of metaphysical inquiry sketched in the previous paragraph.
Nonetheless, I beg the reader’s indulgence, for I am illustrating
the methodology as best I can in connection with the serious chal-
lenge Heideggerian atheology poses to traditional metaphysics. To a
certain extent, the critical commentary on earlier chapters by later
ones approximates the kind of intersubjective investigation I have in
mind, as do my remarks about what other metaphysicians have said
concerning the topics under discussion.
The dialectic of thought
I am more interested in the dialectic of Heideggerian atheology than

in the actual course of Heidegger’s intellectual development. This
dialectic is a quasi-logical progression from weaker to stronger philo-
sophical positions in response to possible objections. A philosopher’s
position at a given time may be strengthened by ideas he expresses
many years later, or even by ideas expressed in his earlier work; hence,
the dialectic of thought need not follow the historical succession of
ideas. As I see it, beginning with the seeds planted in Heidegger’s
early monograph on Duns Scotus, Heideggerian atheology progresses
to the very late writings, such as On Time and Being, where Heidegger
develops an atheology of Appropriation as the ultimate explanans of
the history of being. From there, the atheology progresses to
Heidegger’s seminal writings of the period from 1929 through 1935,
including “What is Metaphysics?” and An Introduction to Metaphysics,
which contain the materials for constructing a powerful atheology
centered on radical contingency, or nothingness. Being and Time is
conspicuously absent from this dialectic—an absence that, for rea-
sons given at the end of Chapter 1, is by no means accidental (though
as we shall see in Chapter 5, some of Being and Time’s ideas shape the
atheology that can be recovered from Heidegger’s middle period).
The force of an objection is directly proportional to the number of
background assumptions the objector can grant the opponent and
still refute him. Guided by this principle, I pursue an approach to
Heidegger’s texts that is critical and analytical rather than merely
exegetical: from a given text, I extract the strongest philosophical
position I can, doing my best to motivate Heideggerian views that
might otherwise seem odd. I then consider the most forceful objec-
tion against the position I have extracted before turning to other
texts in the Heideggerian corpus which supply the strongest possible
reply to the objection. My analysis culminates with a fatal objection to
the most powerful version of Heideggerian atheology.
Without ruining the suspense, I will conclude my introduction by
saying a bit about each chapter.
Chapter 1 explains how young Heidegger draws upon Thomas of
Erfurt and Duns Scotus in an ambitious attempt to reconcile an
Introduction 5
antipsychologistic conception of judgment and logic with Scholastic

realism, a plausible view of the knowing subject, and the possibility of
a univocal and phenomenologically rich account of the nature of
being qua being. After raising objections to Heidegger’s early Scho-
lastic view, in Chapter 2 I explain how the very late atheology of
Appropriation provides strong prima facie replies to the objections I
raise and also addresses young Heidegger’s lingering doubts about
the phenomenological veracity of Scotus’s univocal account of being
in terms of the transcendentals. Chapter 3 underscores the antimeta-
physical character of the atheology of Appropriation by showing how
it constitutes a formidable challenge to Scotus’s sophisticated version
of the Causal Argument for God’s existence. In Chapter 4, I develop
a Scholastic response which emphasizes what I will call the Problem
of Sufficient Comprehension. Then, in Chapter 5, from Heidegger’s
middle period I extract an atheology of radical contingency or noth-
ingness that avoids this problem. The stage is thus set in Chapter 6
for the Scholastic attack on Heidegger’s assumption that even though
there might not have been anything at all there still could have been
something. Finally, in the conclusion I incorporate one salvageable
aspect of Heidegger’s thought about nothingness within a Scholastic
framework to develop a solution to an outstanding metaphysical
problem: the status of mathematical truth.
Chapter 1
Early Heidegger and Scholasticism
In his Duns Scotus’s Theory of the Categories and of Meaning,1 the

Habilitationsschrift or dissertation he submitted in 1915 to qualify as
a Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg, the young Heidegger
appropriates certain elements of Scholastic metaphysics for his
own purposes. At this stage of his career, Heidegger is avowedly pro-
metaphysical. Yet a critical examination of the Habilitationsschrift will
teach us much about the dynamics of Heidegger’s later antimeta-
physical and atheological thought.
Heidegger refers primarily to De Modis Significandi Sive Grammatica
Speculativa, a work he incorrectly attributes to Scotus but which
was actually written by the fourteenth-century Modist grammarian
Thomas of Erfurt.2 Three dominant philosophical motifs shape
Heidegger’s treatment of Erfurt: an antipsychologistic conception of
judgment and logic, the concern to allow for a plausible view of
subjectivity which also allows for a robust form of objectivity, and the
question of the nature of being qua being.
On a psychologistic conception of judgment, judgments are partic-
ular psychic acts, and logical laws are general empirical descriptions
of how we actually think. Psychologism faces two objections. Intui-
tively, judgments (or their contents) are true or false independently
of any psychic acts occurring in individuals. If there is a cactus in my
backyard, then it is true that there is a cactus in my backyard even if
no one is perceiving or thinking about it; and it remains true that
there is a cactus in my backyard even after anyone has stopped per-
ceiving or thinking about it.3 Furthermore, a psychologistic conception
of judgment misses the normative nature of logic, since different
empirical laws may describe the thinking of other people, communi-
ties, and cultures. Yet logic governs all possible thinking: to think at
Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 7
all is ipso facto to think in accordance with logical principles. In his

doctoral dissertation of 1914, Heidegger vigorously defends an anti-
psychological conception of judgment and logic against writers such
as Theodor Lipps. The Habilitationsschrift continues and deepens this
antipsychologism.
Heidegger’s concern to harmonize subjectivity with objectivity
arises from his neo-Kantian inheritance and his desire to appropri-
ate aspects of medieval thought. For Scholastics such as Scotus and
Erfurt, categories are not mere mental structures but real natural
kinds existing independently of our minds. As we shall see, the phil-
osophical program of the Habilitationsschrift requires a robust
realism about some system of categories. However, following Kant’s
arguments in the Transcendental Dialectic that attributing a cate-
gorical structure to reality results in antinomies, the neo-Kantians
identify categories with structures of transcendental subjectivity.
Prima facie, a commitment to Scholastic realism cannot be squared
with a commitment to transcendental idealism. If a variant of real-
ism is to be adopted, then at the very least it must allow for a plausible
view of how the knowing subject apprehends categories of reality
that avoids paradox. For the young Heidegger, such a view promises
to emerge from Husserl’s exciting work in Logical Investigations
and Ideas.
The third motif, the question of the nature of being, is implicated in
any inquiry into categories of reality. It may be asked, not only whether
a given system of categories is metaphysically adequate, but also
whether there are any trans-categorical attributes which apply in the
same sense to beings falling under distinct categories—in Scotist
terms, whether being is univocal. The Scotist metaphysics in which
Erfurt grounds his grammatical speculations answers in the affirmative
and takes this univocal content to be expressed by the transcendentals
of being (ens), unity (unum), truth (verum), and goodness (bonum).4
Though the young Heidegger elaborates this Scotist position, he also
insists that to avoid collapsing into a system of empty and bloodless
classifications a theory of categories must capture the “depth and rich-
ness” of the life world inhabited by those for whom the categories
mark real distinctions.5 Whether there is a trans-categorical, phenom-
enologically adequate account of univocal being is not decided by the
conclusion of the Habilitationsschrift, though the possibility of such an

account is left open.
Although Heidegger develops an ingenious attempt to reconcile
these three philosophical motifs, the attempt ultimately fails. This
failure is instructive, however, for it allows us to see how details of the
very late atheology to be discussed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 address dif-
ficulties with the earlier view. Furthermore, Heidegger’s discussion
of negativity in the Habilitationsschrift lays the groundwork for the
atheology of nothingness that can be extracted from his writings in
the 1930s.
A Précis of Erfurt’s Speculative Grammar
Thomas of Erfurt’s Grammatica Speculativa, written probably between

1300 and 1310, is perhaps the best-known and most sophisticated
work in a tradition of medieval grammarians known as the Modists.6
Erfurt seeks to explain how signs become not only words (dicta) with
semantic content but also parts of speech (partes orationis) capable of
combining with one another to form grammatical sentences which
express complete judgments. In a brilliant synthesis of Scholastic phi-
losophy of mind, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, Erfurt
argues that the grammatical properties of linguistic expressions, or
modi significandi, are derived from features of extralinguistic reality
apprehended by the mind. One might say that, unlike the standard
reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, according to which the ontologi-
cal structure of the world can be read off from the logico-grammatical
structure underlying any possible language, Erfurt maintains that the
grammatical structure of any possible language can be read off from
the ontological structure of the world. Once the possibility of parts of
speech combining to form grammatical sentences has been explained,
the stage is set for an investigation of the logical relations among sen-
tences and the judgments they express in syllogistic reasoning. For
Erfurt and the other Modists, then, speculative grammar is a propae-
deutic to logic.
Erfurt divides his treatise into three sections: the Preamble, the
Etymologia, and the Diasynthetica or Syntax. The Preamble sets forth
Erfurt’s conceptual apparatus and describes in general terms how the
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
merely acts of mind. Moreover, if reality contains all the features

Erfurt and other Scholastics ascribe to it, then a theory of grammar
which posits a corresponding number of passive modes of intellect
and active modes of signification isn’t ontologically profligate but
merely accurate.11 We should expect a grammatical theory grounded
in a complex reality to be equally complex.12
In the Etymologia, Erfurt specifies the various modes of significa-
tion for the eight traditional parts of speech. In each case, he begins
with the essential modes, which are then further divided into gen-
eral, subaltern, and special modes. The general essential mode
provides the definition of the part of speech under consideration,
whereas the special and subaltern modes are specific differences
within this general essence. Erfurt then presents the accidental modes
of signification for the part of speech, which are nonspecific differ-
ences within the general essence. Working through a couple of parts
of speech should suffice to give us the flavor of Erfurt’s theory.
The general essential mode of signification for nouns is the mode
of an entity and determinate understanding.13 By this, Erfurt means
that the noun’s definitive mode of signification is derived from
the passive mode of the intellect which apprehends as modes of
extralinguistic reality the enduring through time of substances and
the definiteness of their properties. The two main subaltern modes
of signification for nouns are the common mode associated with
common nouns (e.g., “horse”) and the proper mode associated with
proper nouns (e.g., “Rome”). The common mode is derived from
the mode of reality whereby properties can be multiply instantiated
by particulars, while the proper mode is derived from the mode of
reality whereby particulars themselves cannot be instantiated.14
The common mode is further divided into the mode of independ-
ence associated with substantival nouns (e.g., “whiteness”), which is
derived from the mode of reality whereby properties are ontologi-
cally distinct from the substances in which they inhere, and the mode
of adjacency associated with adjectives (e.g., “white”), which is derived
from the mode of reality whereby properties nevertheless inhere
in substances. The mode of independence is then divided into five
special modes and the mode of adjacency is divided into 24 special
modes; the proper mode of the noun is divided into four special
modes. Each of these special modes corresponds with a distinct mode

of reality apprehended by a passive mode of the intellect.15
Erfurt completes his analysis of the noun by specifying six acciden-
tal modes of signification nouns may possess: type, gender, number,
form, case, and person. Unlike the subaltern and special modes, the
accidental modes do not yield different species of nouns but merely
differences among nouns which occur within the same general
essence. Like the subaltern and special modes, however, the acciden-
tal modes are derived from corresponding modes of extralinguistic
reality. For example, the first person of a noun is derived from that
mode of reality whereby a person is speaking of himself or herself.16
For verbs, the general essential mode of signification is derived
from the passive mode of the intellect which apprehends as modes of
reality the being (activity, flux, succession) in substances and the sep-
aration of this being or activity from substances.17 Erfurt divides this
general essential mode into three subaltern modes: the substantival
mode (e.g., “is”) derived from the general being that applies to
anything in reality, the vocative mode (e.g., “He is John”) derived
from the mode of reality whereby substances are named or identi-
fied, and the adjectival mode (e.g., all other verbs) derived from the
mode of reality whereby substances act or are acted upon. Erfurt then
specifies four special modes of the adjectival verb—active, passive,
neutral, common and deponent—each of which is also derived from
a particular mode of extralinguistic reality.18
A brief consideration of what Erfurt says concerning the accidental
modes of signification for the verb provides a transition to his account
of syntax. The verb has two accidental modes which enable it to link
with either a noun subject (NV) or with a post-posed oblique (VN,
where N is, e.g., a direct object), thus forming a single construction.
Since the essential mode of the verb contains the mode of separation,
Erfurt introduces these additional modes to explain how such syntac-
tic linkage is possible; the additional modes must be accidental, since
otherwise it would be impossible for meaningful verbs possessing syn-
tactic potential to occur outside of NV or VN constructions. The
accidental mode linking verbs with noun subjects is the mode of
composition (compositio), which reflects the mood of the verb differen-
tiated into five modes: indicative, imperative, optative, conjunctive,
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
or complementation must obtain between determinant and dependent

constructibles. In a construction where the dependent constructible
(e.g., a personal verb) derives its modes of signification (e.g., gender,
number, and person) from those of the determinant constructible
(e.g., a noun subject), there is concord between the dependent and
determinant constructibles. However, when the dependent construct-
ible (e.g., an adjective) derives its modes of signification not from
those of the determinant constructible (e.g., a noun subject) but
from a passive mode of the intellect that bestows those modes directly
on the dependent constructible, then the modes of signification of
the dependent and the determinant constructibles must be merely
complementary (e.g., the adjective’s mode of adjacency complements
the noun’s mode of independence).25 Once a speaker has united the
right congruent constructibles into a sentence with the intention of
expressing a judgment that can be grasped by someone who hears
the uttered sentence, the third principle of completion follows natu-
rally enough.26
Philosophically, it is important to notice that Erfurt’s theory does
not explain the grammatical structure of an entire sentence by intro-
ducing a new mode of signification derived from a corresponding
mode of reality. Though Erfurt isn’t explicit on the point, it is easy to
see why this is so. Grammatically distinct sentences such as “Socrates
pursues Plato” and “Plato is pursued by Socrates” nevertheless
describe the same (possible) fact. If the grammatical structure of
a sentence were itself a mode of signification derived from extra-
linguistic reality, then these sentences’ different grammatical modes
would either be derived from the same feature of extralinguistic
reality or not. Given Erfurt’s requirement that different modes of sig-
nification reflect distinct features of extralinguistic reality, the first
alternative is impossible. And allowing at least one of these grammati-
cal modes not to be derived from extralinguistic reality would violate
Erfurt’s requirement that all modes of signification be derived from
modes of reality.27 Instead, Erfurt explains the distinct grammatical
structures of these sentences in terms of congruity between the modes
of signification of expressions already analyzed in the Etymologia.28
Thus for Erfurt, a sentence expressing a judgment does not “fit” an
actual or possible fact in virtue of some logico-grammatical form
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.
Heidegger’s appropriation of Scotus and Erfurt
Heidegger devotes the first part of the Habilitationsschrift to a sympa-

thetic reconstruction of Scotus’s theory of categories, which serves as
a metaphysical basis for Erfurt’s speculative grammar and for
Heidegger’s own project:
We want to know what Scotus thinks is covered in the Grammar

(as a theory of meaning). The singularity of its domain of objects is
to be recognized. Thus, we are led back to something even more pri-
mordial, to the domains of objects; and in this is indicated the proper
direction, the sole one in which our task can be accomplished.30
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
of a univocal account of the nature of being common to beings in

different domains.
Concerning the transcendentals, Heidegger follows Scotus in char-
acterizing being (ens) as the minimal conceptualization prior to any
categorical conceptualizations of beings.33 Heidegger analyzes unity
(unum) as the “contrariety” whereby a given being is not any other
being.34 All the transcendentals are predicable of being itself, or as
Heidegger says, “convertible with ens.”35 We shall return to the tran-
scendental of unity later in this chapter. For now, the most direct
route into Heidegger’s early philosophy lies in his reflections on the
transcendental of truth (verum).
For Heidegger, truth pertains primarily to judgments: “Judgment is
that which admits being called true in the proper sense.”36 Wherein
does the truth of a judgment consist? In answering this question,
Heidegger wishes to steer between the Scylla of psychologism, which
he takes himself to have refuted in his 1914 dissertation, and the
Charybdis of traditional correspondence theories of truth.
The Habilitationsschrift is peppered with antipsychologistic passages
like the following:
As compared to the understanding and solution of logical prob-

lems in the psychologistic sense (a view that has only recently been
losing strength), scholastic thought has a maturity of view for the pecu-
liarity and proper value of the domain of logic that is not to be disregarded
or undervalued, no matter how much it restricts itself to generalizing
view points.37
Against the “copy theory” of truth, according to which there is some

kind of “copy, a sort of repetition in thought, of that which ‘lies in
things’ as if the judgmental relation also existed ontologically,”38
Heidegger objects that there is no more similarity between true judg-
ments and the facts they describe than there is between the hoop on
the tavern sign which signifies wine and the wine served inside; fur-
thermore, on the “copy theory,” to ascertain the truth of a judgment
J we must first ascertain whether J copies reality, and to ascertain this
we must first ascertain whether the further judgment that J copies
reality itself copies reality, and so on ad infinitum.39 Heidegger doesn’t
develop these objections sufficiently for them to be conclusive.40 Yet

given his endorsement of Erfurt’s speculative grammar, he has availa-
ble to him the deeper reason for rejecting traditional correspondence
theories described in the previous section: grammatically distinct
sentences can describe the same fact, so that there is no distinct mode
of signification derived from extralinguistic reality in virtue of which
a sentence “copies” a possible fact.
More positively, Heidegger maintains that a judgment is a psychic
act which nonetheless possesses a purely logical, extrasensory con-
tent (ens rationis) existing independently of the mind (ens in anima).
When I judge that there is a cactus in my backyard, I perform a
psychic act whose content is that there is a cactus in my backyard.
My judgment is true if and only if this content obtains—that is, there
is a cactus in my backyard. Since true judgments may be made about
any being, including judgments themselves, the transcendental of
truth applies to all beings. Moreover, by sharply demarcating between
psychic acts, which are studied by empirical psychology, and the con-
tents of such acts, which fall solely within the purview of logic,
Heidegger neatly avoids psychologism.
Here it may appear that Heidegger runs into a serious difficulty.
How do logical contents become the contents of psychic acts of judg-
ment? Heidegger echoes Scotus’s characterization of logical beings
as having ens diminutum or “diminished being,” implying that “logical
being doesn’t have the reality of actual existence and, for this reason,
the category of causality isn’t applicable to this domain either.”41 It is
then mysterious how a causally inert ens diminutum can “become” the
content of a psychic act, or how psychic acts subject to causes and
effects can “grasp” logical contents which aren’t. Heidegger seems to
avoid psychologism only at the cost of banishing the logical contents
of judgments to an epistemically inaccessible “third realm” of abstract
beings totally dissociated from empirical reality.
Might Heidegger circumvent this difficulty by appealing to some of
Husserl’s ideas? In Logical Investigations, Husserl claims that a logical
“meaning” stands to the mental acts of which that meaning is the
content as redness stands to red particulars. The logical content com-
mon to different psychic acts of judging would then stand to them as
a universal stands to a particular which instantiates it.42 Unfortunately,
this reply is not available to Heidegger. In line with Scotus’s realism,

Heidegger holds that real universals only exist ante rem, or in
particulars which instantiate them.43 Hence, if a logical content is a
universal, then it exists only if at least one psychic act instantiates that
content. Yet Heidegger is emphatic that “if the subject doesn’t think
and judge . . . that doesn’t mean that with the disappearance of the
act of judgment the content is destroyed too.”44 As noted earlier, if
there is a cactus in my backyard, then it is true that there is a cactus
in my backyard even if no one is judging this to be so.
Alternatively, Heidegger might relax Scotus’s ante rem realism in the
case of logical contents by construing them as something like inde-
pendently existing Platonic forms/properties, or he might identify
logical contents with abstract objects similar to Fregean thoughts
(Gedanken) which “are the same in timeless identity”;45 in either case,
he might urge that our ability to grasp logical contents is a primitive
capacity of the mind. Aside from the unattractiveness of taking such
a capacity as primitive, postulating a nonspatial and timeless realm of
abstract beings greatly complicates any inquiry into the nature of
being qua being—especially one seeking a univocal account of being.
For the being of nonspatial, timeless beings in the extrasensory
domain is entirely unlike the being of spatiotemporal beings in the
sensory domain.46 The mere fact that we can make true judgments
about beings in each domain hardly provides us with an informative
and phenomenologically rich characterization of their common
being; indeed, it is the epitome of the sort of empty and bloodless
classification Heidegger derides.47
It is precisely at this juncture that Erfurt’s realism offers Heidegger
an attractive way out of his quandary. Recall that according to Erfurt,
logic depends on grammar, and grammar itself depends on reality.
Specifically, sentences expressing judgments contain parts of speech
whose grammatical properties mirror distinct features of extra-
linguistic reality. Even though such sentences do not “copy” reality
in virtue of some shared logico-grammatical structure, they do pres-
ent reality as being a certain way. For example, the sentence “There
is a cactus in my back yard” presents reality as being such that there
actually is a cactus in my backyard—or as Heidegger puts it, as
“intending an affair complex of the object”48 consisting of there
actually being a cactus in my backyard. The judgment expressed by

this sentence is true just in case there actually is a cactus in my
backyard.
Furthermore, in the Habilitationsschrift Heidegger maintains that
being or reality is not limited to what is actual: “Not every special
object of cognition is in fact determined by the ten categories, but
only actual objects. . . . Thus the categories of the nonreal must nec-
essarily come into the horizon of the logician as is the case in fact
with Duns Scotus.”49 In addition to actual affair complexes, there are
nonactual affair complexes which nevertheless have being. One such
complex is that there is an oak tree in my backyard. The judgment
that there is an oak tree in my backyard is false because it presents as
actual an affair complex that has nonactual being. In general, on
Heidegger’s theory a judgment is true if and only if either it presents
as actual an affair complex that has actual being or it presents as non-
actual an affair complex that has nonactual being; otherwise, the
judgment is false.50
This Erfurtian theory allows Heidegger to embrace antipsycholo-
gism without relegating the logical contents of judgments to a
mysterious third realm. Logical contents are not causally inert abstract
beings; as Heidegger boldly asserts, “the meaning itself cannot in the
first place gain existence and reality through its act [of judgment]
because it does not really exist at all.”51 Rather, the logical contents of
judgments are affair complexes having actual or nonactual being.
Thus, judgments made in accordance with logical rules are ultimately
accountable to actual and nonactual features of extralinguistic reality
that is the way it is independently of whether anyone is making judg-
ments about it. Contrary to psychologism, there cannot be different
“logics” corresponding with different ways of thinking. There is only
one logic grounded in being itself.
Nor is there a problem of how we can grasp nonactual affair com-
plexes comparable to that of how we can grasp abstract logical
contents. To grasp an actual or nonactual affair complex is just to rec-
ognize that the affair complex is logically possible—or in Scotist terms,
that it is not repugnant to being as such. Certainly there are questions
about the nature of logical possibility, some of which we will take up
later in this work. However, recognizing the logical possibility of
a given affair complex seems much less daunting than “grasping” a

nonspatiotemporal, causally inert being.
On Heidegger’s view, perhaps it is also easier to see how one might
construct a univocal and phenomenologically rich account of being
than it is on a view that postulates abstract logical contents. There is
no domain of nonspatial and timeless beings standing over against
the domain of spatiotemporal beings of concrete empirical reality,
and thus it is not necessary to devise a substantive, trans-categorical
characterization that straddles these diverse domains. If anything,
nonactual affair complexes seem phenomenologically “closer” that
nonspatiotemporal abstract beings do to actual affair complexes con-
taining spatiotemporal beings, since nonactual beings are at least
presented “as if” they are in space and time, whereas purely abstract
beings are not.52
In a masterstroke, then, it seems that Heidegger has reached a
compelling solution to the philosophical problems taken up in the
Habilitationsschrift. Or has he?
The problem of subjectivity
One philosophical motif of the Habilitationsschrift is the concern to

allow for a plausible account of subjectivity. Does Heidegger’s appro-
priation of Erfurt meet this concern?
Erfurt explains the grammatical properties of parts of speech in
terms of the mind’s ability to apprehend distinct features of extralin-
guistic reality and to bestow corresponding modes of signification
on dicta. Hence, to avoid circularity, the mind must be capable of
apprehending these features of reality independently of possessing a
language containing grammatical expressions. What constitutes this
intellectual capacity? Erfurt does not say. And Heidegger’s remarks
about the possibility of thought without language are surprisingly
terse:
This separation [of the logical content of thought from language

content] must be looked at as a purely theoretical one. How far it
is possible to live in a completely logical framework, to compre-
hend without linguistic supports, remains a factual question left
over from the psychology of thought. However the problem is

solved, the validity of the separation carried out above is not affected
by it in the least.53
Thus, Heidegger is content to leave the question of how thought

is possible apart from language to future theoretical investigations.
The unsatisfactory nature of this promissory note becomes appar-
ent when we reflect that Erfurt’s speculative grammar attributes to
the mind the ability to apprehend a bewildering number of features
of extralinguistic reality independently of possessing a language: sub-
stances and their determinate properties; the fact that properties can
be multiply instantiated by particulars; the fact that particulars can-
not be instantiated; the fact that properties are ontologically distinct
from the particulars that possess them; the fact that these same prop-
erties necessarily inhere in particulars; the 33 modes of reality
corresponding to the special modes of signification for substantival
nouns, adjectival nouns, and proper nouns; the six accidental modes
of signification for nouns in general—and these are the modi essendi
corresponding to the modi significandi for just one part of speech! By
the time Erfurt has completed his Etymologia, the mind has been
attributed the nonlinguistic ability to apprehend an entire world of
substances, attributes, activities, persons, places, times, other minds’
mental states, and the complex welter of interdependencies among
all these features. Yet not even the barest sketch has been given of
how such cognitive apprehension is possible without already possess-
ing a fully grammatical language in which the fine discriminations of
sophisticated Scholastic metaphysics can be made.
Let us speculate about whether such a cognitive capacity might be
explained in terms congenial to Erfurt and Heidegger. One possibil-
ity is that the features of extralinguistic reality corresponding to
grammatical properties are first apprehended by the “mental words,”
or dicta, which are not yet grammatically functional. A problem with
this suggestion is that it remains obscure how a dictum can signify an
extralinguistic feature explaining some grammatical property with-
out the dictum itself becoming grammatically functional. More
seriously, Erfurt ascribes to the intellect “the faculty of signifying,
which can be called signification by means of which a sign or
significant is effected, and so it is formally a word”54—that is, the abil-

ity to convey semantic content upon a mental word. Thus even if dicta
could signify extralinguistic features explaining grammatical proper-
ties, their ability to do so would be derived from the mind’s prior and
still unexplained capacity to apprehend the requisite extralinguistic
features.
Another possibility is that apprehension of the extralinguistic fea-
tures initially occurs in a purely mental “language of thought” which
underlies every possible natural language and conveys the same deep
grammatical structure upon it.55 Obviously this raises the question of
how the parts of speech in the mental language themselves possess
grammatical properties which mirror features of extralinguistic reality.
Not in virtue of any mental acts, since on the proposal under consid-
eration all mental acts take place in the language of thought. It might
be suggested that parts of speech in the language of thought mirror
extralinguistic features in virtue of certain yet-to-be specified causal
or tracking relations between “mentalese” tokens and extralinguistic
features. But this suggestion threatens to render the mental language
superfluous, since we may ask why the same nonmental relations
can’t obtain directly between expressions of a natural language and
the requisite extralinguistic features. Moreover, from a Heideggerian
perspective, recourse to nonmental relations in an explanation of
how expressions become parts of speech is not an attractive option,
since it seems to allow no role for the mind in determining the gram-
matical properties of language, and hence provides no plausible view
of subjectivity.
Eventually Heidegger himself comes to repudiate the radical
independence of thought from language. In Being and Time, language
is understood as discourse (Rede) which is said to be “existentially
equiprimordial with attunement and understanding” and hence
not derived from the intellect.56 And in his later writings Heidegger
urges that any understanding of being is vouchsafed by language:
language is the house of being.57 Let us consider the repercussions
this repudiation has for the two other philosophical motifs of the
Habilitationsschrift.
Suppose it is conceded that thought of extralinguistic reality is
impossible apart from language as a fundamental mode of Dasein.
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
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.
Negativity in the Habilitationsschrift
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
of Y, for the nonbeing of Y is compatible with there being nothing

whatsoever, including X.65 Ultimately, Heidegger settles for a relational
analysis of contrariety as the relation X has to any other being Y in
virtue of which X is not the same as Y:
The sole relation which characterizes the nature of both terms of

the relation is contrariety. For it is proper to the terms of the relation
here that each of them posits another object with different
content.66
Any being, then, exemplifies a kind of relational nonbeing which is

distinct from pure negation and which distinguishes that being from
other beings.
Heidegger’s analysis of unity in terms of contrariety appears to have
the unwelcome consequence that it is impossible for only one unique
being to exist. For on the analysis, a being’s uniqueness consists its
not being other beings, so that if there exists a unique being there
must also exist at least one other being that it is not. Certainly, Scotus
and other Scholastics would reject this consequence, since it pre-
cludes God from existing as a unique even if nothing else exists (the
contingency of the created universe). Heidegger’s commitment to
nonactual beings and affair complexes might afford him some room
to maneuver here: the unity or uniqueness of a being consists in its
not being any other being, actual or nonactual. Then there can be a
unique being X even if there is no other actual being, since in that
case a contrariety still obtains whereby X is not any of the nonactual
beings which are also part of reality broadly considered.67
My point is not to resolve the problem of unity here but to call the
reader’s attention to early Heidegger’s taxonomy of negativity. Con-
tradictions, such as X’s being white and not white all over at the same
time, are not the same as pure negations, such as X’s not existing,
since contradictions cannot obtain but pure negations may or may
not obtain.68 A pure negation is also compatible with a total yet
contingent state of nothingness, which might be called “maximal
pure negation” as opposed to a minimal pure negation such as X’s
existing though other beings exist. Pure negations, both maximal
and minimal, are different from privations and from the contrariety
constituting the negativity of a given being.69 This taxonomy of nega-

tivity is another way Heidegger’s supplements Scotus’s theory of
categories. In a later chapter, we will take up the matter of whether
the nothing that “nihilates” and that serves as the crux of Heidegger
atheology of nothingness fits into this taxonomy.
Chapter 2
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
Opening moves in the discipline

of thinking
Traditionally, metaphysics begins with what is known as the intuition

of being, a minimally conceptualized awareness of beings not insofar
as they have shape, size, color, motion, or any other specific property
but insofar as they have being (which is usually not understood as a
property or genus). On the one hand, the intuition of being is more
than the vague and confused conception of being everyone possesses;
on the other hand, it falls short of allowing us to ascertain the nature
of being. For metaphysicians such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns
Scotus, the intuition of being is an intellectual cognition which guar-
antees that metaphysics has a definite subject matter which may then
be conceptualized more precisely.
Heidegger opens “Time and Being” by claiming that his thinking
has a “matter” too. However, he differs from Aquinas and Scotus on
this point in at least two respects. First, he holds that his thinking has
two matters: being and time. I will return to the nature of these matters
in the next section. Second, the minimally conceptualized intuition
of being and time at the outset of Heidegger’s thinking is not an
intellectual cognition but a form of awareness evoked and articulated
by poetic idioms of the form “It is . . .” or “There is . . .” in English (“Es
gibt . . .” in German, “Il y a . . .” in French). I will list a few examples
given in the series of notes taken during the seminar where “Time
and Being” was originally presented:
It is a vineyard, burned and black with holes full of spiders.

It is a hissing wind which circles around empty huts.
Il y a une petite voiture abandonée dans le taillis, ou qui descend le sentier
en courant, enrubannée. (There’s a little carriage abandoned in the
woods or rolling down the path, with ribbons all over it.)
Il y a une troupe de petits comédiens en costumes, aperçus sur la route
á travers la lisière du bois. (There’s a troupe of child actors, in
costumes, whom you can see on the road through the edge of the
wood.)5
These instances of poetic language aren’t merely bland statements

of ontological commitment for Heidegger. They perform several
functions at the outset of his inquiry:
(1) Grammatically they are subject-predicate sentences, but since

their subjects do not designate beings (just as the “It” in “It is
raining” doesn’t designate a being), the matters of thinking are
not automatically reified as special beings of which certain prop-
erties are predicated.6
(2) The poetic statements reveal beings of different kinds as inter-
connected: plants (a vineyard, a wood), animals (spiders), natural
phenomena (wind), buildings (huts), equipment (a carriage, a
road), works of art (plays presented by a troupe of child actors),
and humans (the children, those dwelling or who have dwelt in
the huts).
(3) The statements reveal beings as situated in a time that encom-
passes past (the vineyard that was burned, the carriage that was
abandoned or set into motion), present (the wind that is hissing,
the carriage that is rolling), and future (where the carriage will
roll, what the troupe of child actors will do next).
(4) A sense of uncanniness akin to that felt by someone who won-
ders why there is something rather than nothing is insinuated by
the poetic statements, making it legitimate to regard the state-
ments as calling our attention to the being and temporality per se
of the revealed beings.7
How, then, does thinking proceed from this quasi-poetic intuition

of being and temporality?
Following Aristotle, Heidegger offers a partial further conceptuali-
zation of these matters by first categorizing or classifying the kinds of
beings revealed in the poetic intuition of being. Yet Heidegger’s
kinds—things of nature (Vorhandenheit), equipment (Zuhandendheit),
buildings as dwellings, artworks, and human beings (Dasein)—differ
markedly from the traditional Aristotelian categories adopted by
Aquinas and Scotus.8 Here a possible point of disputation arises: which
classification is correct, Heidegger’s or his Scholastic opponents’?
Heidegger might urge that his classification is phenomenologically
accurate, since undeniably we experience beings of the kinds
he describes. To this, the Scholastic realist may object that the

Aristotelian categories (or some system of categories based on them,
such as the taxonomy of domains of beings early Heidegger extracts
from Scotus), in addition to being phenomenologically accurate, are
objectively correct because they exist not merely in our minds but
also ante rem.9 However, from Heidegger’s perspective, the notion of
objective correctness assumed here is tendentious.10 To see why, let us
consider the next stage of Heideggerian thinking.
It will help to provide some additional context from Scholastic met-
aphysics. For Aquinas, being is actuality which may or may not be
limited by potentiality. Different kinds of beings possess being in dif-
ferent yet analogous senses: God is pure actuality, whereas creatures
are a mixture of act and potency. Scotus agrees with Aquinas that
being involves actuality, but against St. Thomas he holds that being is
predicated univocally of God and creatures: God has being in the
infinite mode, creatures have being in the finite mode.11
In this dispute, which I shall not pursue here, we have seen that
early Heidegger sides with Scotus: to say that something has being
per se is to say the same thing, whether one is talking about rocks,
houses, or humans. These beings may have being in various phenom-
enologically manifestable modes, such as Zuhandenheit or Dasein, yet
there remains a univocal sense in which they have being. A commit-
ment to the univocity of being is retained in later Heidegger as well.
This is apparent from the various understandings of being later
Heidegger detects in the history of metaphysics. Whether being is
understood by the pre-Socratics as the unique unifying One (hen) or
the source of all intelligibility (logos), or by philosophers from Plato
through Hegel as objectivity ultimately comprehensible to represen-
tational judgment (Vorstellung), or by Nietzsche as objectivity ultimately
subjected to willing (the Will to Power), or as a “framing” (Ge-stell )
that culminates in modern technology, each of these understandings
is a maximally general conception which applies to all beings of every
kind.12 For example, according to Heidegger, on the modern techno-
logical conception of being trees, rivers, hydroelectric plants, airplanes,
and even persons are all disposable resources or “standing reserve” in
a complex, interlocking socioeconomic system. Thus, this conception
consists in applying the notion of standing reserve univocally to all
beings, despite the differences in their various modes of being.13
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”:
To mark—related to showing—points to the contour, the gestalt, so

to speak, the what-gestalt as it were, which is native to beings as
such. With regard to beings, Being is that which shows, makes
something visible without showing itself.15
Heidegger’s point is that each historicized transcendental in the

history of being has a rich phenomenological content: there is a
world of difference between seeing beings as precious focal points
abiding for a little while under the sheltering rule of logos and seeing
them as dispensable cogs in the machinery of Ge-stell. By historicizing
the transcendentals and imbuing them with rich phenomenological
content, Heidegger implicitly addresses his earlier worry in the Habil-
itationsschrift that the traditional transcendentals are empty and
bloodless classifications.
Is being itself distinct from the dispensations of being? Before
answering this question, let us return to the point of disputation
mentioned earlier.
By now, it should be clear that for Heidegger, the notion of
“objective correctness” assumed by the Scholastic realist who argues
that the Aristotelian categories exist ante rem is part of the historicized
transcendental in which beings are conceived as objects of represen-

tational judgment. The Scholastic realist takes the division of beings
into traditional categories to correspond with real properties or com-
mon natures of the objects; his nominalist opponent takes these
divisions (though not the objects themselves) to exist only in the
mind. An avowed post-metaphysical thinker, Heidegger rejects both
options in this debate. He regards any conceptualization of beings,
whether by a maximally general conceptualization of being (histori-
cized transcendental) or by a less comprehensive classification
(Aristotelian categories or Heideggerian kinds) as mediated by lan-
guage as “the house of being.” Against later Wittgenstein, who thinks
that ordinary language is metaphysically innocent, late Heidegger
maintains that some maximally general conception of being becomes
embedded or encoded in the language of any given historical epoch.
Language, along with the maximally general conceptions it encodes,
is dependent on human conceptualizers; however, it is no less true
that humans who conceptualize in a definitive mode are dependent
on language and the specific maximally general conception it encodes.
I will return to the latter dependence in the next section.
Thus, Heidegger posits a purely formal interdependence between
language encoding a certain conception of being and human lan-
guage users conceptualizing in a certain way. In fact, I see this formal
interdependence as akin to Scotus’s formal distinction, whereby X
(e.g., the haecceity in a given individual) and Y (e.g., that same indi-
vidual’s common nature) cannot exist independently of each other
and are even really the same, yet can still be conceived independently
of each other in a manner that isn’t purely subjective. We have here
an example of continuity between Heideggerian post-metaphysical
thinking and traditional metaphysics. By seeing the interdependence
between linguistically encoded conceptions of being and a definite
mode of human conceptualizing in language as a formal distinction
between two aspects of the same real and unitary phenomenon,
Heidegger avoids the potential circularity that results from trying to
define the former in terms of the latter (nominalism) or the latter in
terms of the former (realism). Furthermore, the minimal formal
interdependence between language and language users seems meta-
physically neutral, in that it is not committed to any one conception
of being in the history of philosophy. This in turn would allow the
division of beings into Heideggerian kinds to survive the “overcom-

ing” of metaphysics Heidegger seeks, provided that the language in
which humans conceptualizing the world in accordance with Heide-
gerrian kinds does not itself encode a particular metaphysical
conception.16 At least provisionally, then, the Heideggerian atheolo-
gian can set aside the point of disputation.
If the notion of objective correctness or “correspondence with reality”
(as either fitting or tracking) is internal to a given epoch in the his-
tory of being, then it does not afford the thinker an external criterion
with which to evaluate the Truth or Falsity or various epochs:
Not only do we lack any criterion which would enable us to evaluate

the perfection of an epoch of metaphysics as compared with any
other epoch. The right to this kind of evaluation does not exist.
Plato’s thinking is no more perfect than Parmenides’. Hegel’s phi-
losophy is no more perfect than Kant’s. Each epoch of philosophy
has its own necessity. We simply have to acknowledge the fact that a
philosophy is the way it is. It is not our business to prefer one to the
other, as can be the case with regard to various Weltenschauungen.17
Heidegger goes even further, insisting that “the history of being is

being itself.”18 In any given epoch, being as how beings are concealed
for humans collapses into the dispensation of being which defines
that epoch. Here Heidegger seems to flirt with the sort of historical
psychologism or cultural relativism described toward the end of
Chapter 1. Does the absence of an external criterion of correctness
imply that there is no way to criticize a particular conception of being,
or that human “sayings” are accountable to nothing but the concep-
tion of being prevailing during epoch in which they are made? I will
take up these questions later in this chapter. For now, rather than
defending Scholastic realism or the traditional doctrine of transcen-
dentals, let us hold out for a deeper refutation and proceed to the
next stage of Heidegger’s thinking.
The matter of time
Commensurate with each maximally general conception of being is

a certain range of possible modes of being human. For example,
commensurate with the ancient Greek conception of being are the

possible modes of being a hero, a slave, the ruler of a city-state, or a
barbarian. Commensurate with the medieval conception of being are
different possible modes of being human: saints, sinners, believers,
and pagans. Being a saint would have been impossible in the ancient
Greek epoch, just as being a hero in the distinctively ancient Greek
sense would have been impossible in the medieval epoch.19
Implicit in a range of modes of being human—and hence in the
formally interdependent conception of being commensurate with it—
is a kind of time. We have seen how the poetic statements which for
Heidegger articulate the intuition of being reveal beings as situated
in a time encompassing the temporal dimensions of past, present,
and future. This same time applies to us as we work out the possible
modes of being human made available to us by a given historicized
transcendental of being. I take this to be the point of the following
difficult passage:
. . . what is germane to the time-space of true time consists in the

mutual reaching out and opening up of future, past and present.
Accordingly, what we call dimension and dimensionality in a way
easily misconstrued, belongs to true time and to it alone. Dimension-
ality consists in a reaching out that opens up, in which futural approaching
beings about what has been, what has been brings about futural approach-
ing, and the reciprocal relation of both brings about the opening of
openness.20
Humans immersed in a given conception of being aren’t merely

gazing at the passing show but are actively engaged in working out
the possible modes of being human commensurate with that concep-
tion. Consider a stage in the life of an ancient Greek man who is
working out the mode of being a hero. At that particular time, the
stage is the man’s immediate present. Since the possibility of being a
hero was already latent in the genesis of the ancient Greek concep-
tion of being, the present stage is dependent on the past. Yet since
the possibility of being a hero also depends on the final outcome of
the man’s life (e.g., whether he succeeds in being a real hero, and
hence whether the earlier stages of his life are steps on the path to
living a completely heroic life, depends on whether he lives the rest

of his life courageously), the present stage is also dependent on the
future. Any given stage in the trajectory of the man’s life exemplifies
this kind of unity among the three temporal dimensions. The unity is
not static but has a definite direction determined by the interplay of
the man’s ongoing agency with the various circumstances in which he
finds himself over the course of his life. Heidegger sometimes speaks
of this interplay as “the fourth dimension” of true time.21
It is important to observe that Heidegger sees the working out of
possible modes of being human commensurate with a historicized
transcendental not just as an individual affair. A community, culture,
or nation that arises within a given dispensation of being also has pos-
sible modes of being or “vocations” open to it which it then works out
in the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future. The possibil-
ity of these modes may be revealed by works of art, such as an ancient
Greek temple.
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
From the last sentence, it is apparent that Heidegger has in mind

not merely individual destinies but also collective destiny. The time
implicit in working out modes of being human is not itself something
worked out by humans, nor is it applicable only to humans; it applies
to all beings unconcealed or disclosed through a given historicized
transcendental. Whether we are faced with a vineyard or a carriage,
and whether we understand it as an object of representation or as
standing reserve, the being is revealed to us in a unity of past, present,
and future.
What is the relation of being qua historicized transcendentals and
time? A possible answer is that being and time are identical. However,
we have now sufficiently developed Heidegger’s later thinking to reject
this answer. For suppose that being is time. Since being is nothing but
the history of being as the succession of distinct historicized transcen-

dentals, it would follow that time has a history of distinct manifestations.
Yet “time itself is nothing temporal.”23 Furthermore, the basic struc-
tural unity of the temporal dimensions implicit in any conception of
being and its commensurate range of possible modes of being human
always remains the same. Since there is no succession of distinct man-
ifestations of time in the way that there is a succession of distinct
conceptions of being, time remains the same while being doesn’t.
Therefore, time is not identical with being.
Another possible answer is that time is metaphysically prior to being
and explains how it is possible for there to be any conception of being
at all. This answer, too, should be rejected.24 For if time explains how
there can be any conception of being, then to avoid circularity time
must be comprehensible apart from being. Yet the poetic statements
articulating intuition of being make it clear that time and being are
given together.25 Time, as the working out of possibilities latent in a
particular conception of being, is no less dependent on being than
being is dependent on time. Therefore, time is neither metaphysically
nor explanatorily prior to being.
In my reconstruction of this stage of Heidegger’s thinking, I hesitate
to say that time and being are formally interdependent in the same way
that a certain conceptualization of being and humans conceptualizing
in a certain way are. For at least one term of the latter interdepend-
ence—humans conceptualizing in a certain way—consists of beings,
whereas Heidegger holds that neither time nor being are beings.
Instead, I suggest that for Heidegger the dimensions of true time are
structural principles of all being, similar to the way in which actuality
and potentiality are structural principles of all being for Aristotle,
Aquinas, and Scotus. We have already seen how true time applies
equally to human beings (in working out possible modes of being
human) and to all nonhuman beings which are disclosed to us.26 More-
over, like actuality and potentiality, the dimensions of true time aren’t
themselves beings but are intrinsic to beings: just as the potentiality of
a being consists in what it hasn’t yet become but may become, so the
past and the future of a particular being consists in what it no longer is
but once was and what it isn’t yet but may be.27 Thus, it is reasonable
to view the dimensions of true time as implicit in any conception of
being—that is, as structural principles of being itself.
So far, I’ve stressed some continuities between the concerns of tradi-

tional metaphysics and Heidegger’s very late thinking. We come now
to a major contrast, the so-called “overcoming” of metaphysics. Specifi-
cally, in “Time and Being” Heidegger aims at understanding time and
being in radically different terms by arriving at nonmetaphysical “say-
ings” about these matters which are assessable as adequate. How does
he propose to do this?
It is at this point that Heidegger introduces the notion of Appro-
priation as the “It” that “gives” both time and being. As such,
Appropriation is explanatorily prior to time and being. To allow for
the “overcoming” of metaphysics, though, Appropriation cannot be
understood in substantive terms drawn from any historicized tran-
scendental in the history of being. In particular, Appropriation is not
“an indeterminate power which is supposed to bring about all giving
of being and of time,”28 since then Appropriation would be a being
like the God of Aquinas and Scotus, only stripped of all determinate
attributes. It would be more accurate to say that unlike these meta-
physicians, Heidegger reverses the explanatory priority of being and
becoming: Appropriation is an ultimate form of becoming lying at
the heart of reality, through which being and time are to be under-
stood and, ultimately, set aside as matters for philosophical analysis.29
Or, since describing Appropriation as an ultimate form of becoming
may insinuate the misunderstanding that Appropriation is something
temporal—which It can’t be since It “gives” time—perhaps a better
description is that Appropriation is a certain potentiality for being
qua the history of being and the structural dimensions of true time, a
potentiality whose realization is radically atemporal and contingent.
In any case, if Heidegger can succeed in thinking of Appropriation in
a radically nonmetaphysical way, then he will also have shown how we
can dispense with natural theology as a branch of traditional
metaphysics.
Evaluating Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation will occupy us
in Chapter 4. For now, we may ask why we should believe there is any
Appropriation. Aquinas and Scotus would certainly demand an answer
to this question, since Appropriation serves as something like a First
Principle for Heidegger just as God serves as the First Principle for
them; and in any discipline, whether metaphysics or post-metaphysical
thinking, that there is a First Principle at all stands in need of demon-

stration. As is well known, in his version of the Causal Argument for
God’s existence Scotus argues from actual cases of causation to the
possibility of God as First Cause, and from that to His actuality and
necessity; whereas in his Five Ways Aquinas also infers God’s existence
in various ways from the existence of creatures. Heidegger utilizes nei-
ther of these methods to justify belief in Appropriation. Nor does
there seem to be a direction “intuition of Appropriation” comparable
to the intuition of being and time evoked and articulates by certain
poetic statements. Does Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation
immediately founder?
I conclude this section by sketching a reply on Heidegger’s behalf.
Consider the historicized transcendentals, each of which discloses
beings in true time. These transcendentals with their intrinsic tempo-
ral character aren’t metaphysically necessary (in the way the Platonist
construes numbers and other mathematical objects to be) but rather
come to be and pass away. Therefore, phenomenologically it is unde-
niable that there is some sort of coming to be and passing away here.
Let that coming to be and passing away—whatever its precise nature—
be the First Principle of Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation.
Whether there is nothing more to say about “It”, so that Appropria-
tion reduces to the sequence of historicized transcendentals in each
of which beings are disclosed in a certain away in accordance with the
same dimensions/structural principles of true time, or whether there
is something more to say remains an open question to be investigated
further.30
An interim Quodlibet
To deepen our preliminary understanding of Heidegger’s atheology

of Appropriation, it will help to consider several objections raised
against it in the contemporary literature. Thus in this section I will
play the devil’s advocate by defending the atheology. Once these
objections have been set aside, we may focus on more difficult issues
in the next two chapters.
Objection: In claiming that Appropriation is the “It” that gives being
and time, Heidegger is positing a transcendental explanans to explain
the phenomenological availability of the being and temporality of

beings. (Here “transcendental” signifies a condition of possibility,
not a proper attribute of being.) Call this a type A explanans, and call
the phenomenon whose availability is to be explained a type B
explanandum. Either the type A explanans is directly available to us
without the mediation of some further transcendental explanans or
it isn’t. If it isn’t, then we must posit some further transcendental
explanans to explain the availability of the type A explanans, leading
to an infinite regress. On the other hand, if the type A explanans is
immediately available to us without the mediation of some further
transcendental explanans, then it is obscure why the original type B
explanandum itself can’t be immediately available to us without the
mediation of the type A explanans. Therefore, since Appropriation is
a type A explanans, positing Appropriation either leads to an infinite
regress or is superfluous.31
Reply: The objection confuses the order of phenomenological
availability with the order or theoretical explanation. In general, it
does not first have to be demonstrated that a theoretical explanans
(whether physical, metaphysical, or post-metaphysical) is phenom-
enologically available to us before the explanans can be posited to
explain the phenomenological availability of some explanandum.
Photons, molecules involved in neurochemical reactions, atoms,
subatomic particles, and perhaps even more fundamental quantum
events are posited to explain the phenomenological availability of
ordinary objects in the world; yet it isn’t necessary first to show that
these theoretical posits are phenomenologically available (indeed,
some of them may never be!), provided that they genuinely explain
what is phenomenologically available.32 Similarly, Appropriation
may be introduced as a theoretical explanans, provided that it gen-
uinely explains phenomenological availability of being and time
without appealing to traditional metaphysical notions.33 Perhaps
no such explanation is forthcoming, but prematurely dismissing
it without carefully considering Heidegger’s texts is mere hand-
waving. If it turns out that the Appropriation reduces to the history
of conceptions of being then the explanans is the same as the
explanandum, trivially avoiding the problem envisaged by the
objection.
Objection: Heidegger doesn’t treat all conceptions of being in the his-

tory of being equally, for he maintains that the understanding of being
by early Greek philosophers like Heraclitus, Anaximander, and Parme-
nides is more “primordial” than the modern conception of being as
“standing reserve.” Contrary to the interpretation of Heidegger’s very
late thinking presented here, Heidegger’s preference makes no sense
apart from some metaphysical notion of “objective correctness” or
“correspondence” in virtue of which one conception of being may cor-
respond better with reality than another.34
Reply: I agree that Heideggerian “primordiality” is hard to under-
stand apart from some metaphysical notion of “objective correctness”
or “correspondence with reality.” However, though Heidegger may be
inconsistent in rejecting “objective correctness” while preferring a
certain conception of being because he thinks it is more “primordial”
than its rivals, it doesn’t follow that the atheology of Appropriation is
committed to this inconsistency. Remember that we are concerned
not with Heidegger, but with Heidegger’s later philosophy. Logically,
there is nothing to prevent the Heideggerian atheologian from
rejecting the notion of “primordiality” as metaphysical and maintain-
ing a neutral stance toward the various historicized trancendentals in
the history of being which he seeks to overcome—including the early
Greek one.
Objection: The interpretation of Heidegger’s atheology of Appropri-
ation as neutral toward rival metaphysical conceptions leads to
something like Kuhn’s relativism of paradigms, any one of which is as
good (or as bad) as any of the others. This is problematic for the
atheology of Appropriation, which obviously includes a critique of
the modern technological conception of being as “standing reserve.”
More generally, a Kuhnian reading is unattractive because it precludes
the Heideggerian atheologian from criticizing any conception of
being except from the perspective of another conception. That in
turn would make “overcoming” all metaphysics impossible.35
Reply: The objection offers a false dilemma between requiring the
atheologian to appeal to a metaphysical notion of “objective correct-
ness” in criticizing a conception of being and barring the atheologian
from criticizing any conception of being because all such concep-
tions are on a par. A path between these horns is opened up by the
possibility of criticizing a conception of being without appealing to

any metaphysical notion of “correctness.” This can be done in a
number of ways:
(1) A conception of being may be criticized on the ground that it is

internally inconsistent.
(2) A conception may be criticized on the ground that those concep-
tualizing within it erroneously believe that certain beings are
disclosed by the conception.36 For example, the atheologian of
Appropriation may object that medieval philosophers errone-
ously believed that the existence of God was disclosed by the
Cosmological or Ontological Arguments that were part of their
conception of being. Conversely, a conception may be criticized
because it makes no attempt (i.e., “forgets”) to understand Appro-
priation as what “sends” the historicized transcendentals which
constitute the history of being. These alleged errors can be exhib-
ited without recourse to any metaphysical notion of objective
correctness or correspondence between representational judg-
ments and features of extralinguistic reality.
(3) A conception may be criticized on the ground that it encourages
humans conceptualizing within it to treat the conception itself as
a being. For example, the technological transcendental of “stand-
ing reserve” treats everything as a being which is capable in
principle of being manipulated or engineered by human beings
either individually or collectively, including the technological
transcendental itself. This in turn can lead humans to misunder-
stand the origin and the ultimate fate of that transcendental,
which they see as a being (a “view”) they have deliberately chosen
to accept which they can just as easily choose to abandon—
whereas in fact the rise and fall of any conception of being is not
a factor entirely under human control.37
(4) A conception can be criticized on the ground that it misleads
humans conceptualizing within it to think that they’ve escaped it,
when actually they’ve become more deeply enmeshed in it. For
example, in his “Manifesto” the Unabomber decries modern
technology as an impersonal system that destroys human individ-
uality. Yet in attempting not just to “overcome” but also to overturn
it, he devises his own terroristic system involving threats and

letter bombs that is no less destructive of human individuality.
Should such a system take hold, the resulting new order and the
means necessary to enforce it would be just as impersonal and
destructive as modern technology; indeed, the new order would
merely be another version of the technological system the
Unabomber abhors, disguised as neo-Ludditism.38
Each of these criticisms merits further discussion; part of the sec-

ond criticism will be the topic of the next chapter. My point here is
not to prove that the Heideggerian atheologian is right about them
all but that, whether he is right or wrong, in advancing these criti-
cisms nothing commits him to a metaphysical conception of
“correctness” or to any conception of being. Like the notion of for-
mal interdependence between a certain conception of being and
humans conceptualizing in a certain way, the notions of internal
consistency/inconsistency, of having failed to show something
claimed to have been shown, of having confused something not
under our control with things under our control, and of believing
that one has abandoned a certain conception when one really
hasn’t, all seem metaphysically noncommital, and hence, along with
basic logical principles, available to the post-metaphysical thinker.
In this way, then, the atheology of Appropriation offers an alterna-
tive both to traditional metaphysical realism and to Kuhnian
relativism.
Objection: The “overcoming” of metaphysics sought by the Heideg-
gerian atheologian is said to involve an “event of Appropriation.” Yet
it remains uncertain why this “event” would be valuable rather than
detrimental for us.39
Reply: Certainly, freedom from philosophical confusion is valuable.
To the extent that definite errors and misunderstandings are latent
in each of the maximally general conceptions which constitute the
history of being, “overcoming” metaphysics frees us from all errors
and misunderstandings, and therefore is valuable rather than
detrimental.
Nevertheless, I don’t wish to gloss over the ethical difficulties raised
by the atheology of Appropriation. In the aftermath of “overcoming,”
the world will be free of any past, present, or possible transcenden-

tals; instead, beings will understood through true time in what
Heidegger calls the “fourfold” of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals.
Heidegger’s tentative description of this post-metaphysical world
raises unanswered questions about its moral character. Specifically,
even if “overcoming” enables us to avoid metaphysical confusions,
would a post-metaphysical world still allow morally objectionable
practices such as authoritarianism?
The atheologian might reply that such practices are themselves the
result of metaphysical confusion, and that in a post-metaphysical
world powerful decentralizing tendencies would block the emer-
gence of any centralized absolute authority. As an example, Heidegger
describes how our appreciation of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities
in true time can be focused by local and intimate things such as a jug
of wine, rather than by One Central Thing that defines an entire cul-
ture or nation.40
Unfortunately, this reply is inconclusive since it leaves open the
possibility of a local authoritarianism in which a smaller community
becomes focused around particular things in an intolerant way—for
example, the tyranny of a xenophobic majority in a hamlet whose
appreciation of the fourfold is focused by things carved from wood
taken from the nearby Black Forest. In my view, the ultimate resist-
ance to authoritarianism, whether national or local, comes from a
commitment to individual rights which are in some sense nonnegoti-
able. Since the Heidegerrian atheologian would probably regard any
commitment to individual rights as inherent in some metaphysical
conception he wishes to overcome; this antiauthoritarian mode of
resistance is unavailable to him. Even so, the fact that the atheology
of Appropriation doesn’t rule out morally objectionable practices
like authoritarianism hardly deprives it of all intellectual value, any
more than the fact that Aristotle’s political philosophy condones
slavery renders it devoid of intellectual value. We can still learn some-
thing from these thinkers. Let us acknowledge the ethical difficulties
raised by their views and move on.
Objection: Later Heidegger’s history of being is a “monomaniac” his-
tory of the West that has no basis in actual political, social, or economic
history.41
Reply: Let it be granted that Heidegger’s history of being neither

explains the entire history of Western civilization nor takes into
account the findings of various historical disciplines.42 Nonetheless,
the sequence of historicized transcendentals Heidegger describes
roughly conforms to the history of Western philosophy. Furthermore,
the alleged “monomaniac” of Heidegger’s description doesn’t prove
the illegitimacy of the philosophical issues which interest us here:
whether these transcendentals are possible conceptions of being,
whether they can give rise to definite kinds of confusion, and whether
there is Appropriation qua ultimate potentiality that (1) explains the
phenomenological availability of conceptions of being in which
beings are disclosed in true time, and (2) can be adequately assessed
in purely post-metaphysical terms. Even if Heidegger is wrong in
believing that all history can be explained in terms of the history of
metaphysics, these issues and the need to address them remain.
Objection: The claim that Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation is
a linguistic discipline whose sayings are assessable as adequate ignores
the fact that the Heideggerian atheologian is trying to move beyond
thinking to a mystical experience of Appropriation.43
Reply: At times Heidegger toys with a conception of post-metaphysi-
cal thinking as more like mystical experience than a speculative
discipline. The “Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture ‘Time and
Being’” contains the remark, presumably approved by Heidegger,
that the seminar “is thus the attempt to speak of something which
cannot be mediated cognitively, not even in terms of questions, but
must be experienced.”44 And later in the same “Summary” what is
described as “the step back” required to think Appropriation in non-
metaphysical terms is likened to the apophatic method of negative
theology.45 Yet Heidegger ultimately rejects what he sees as a false
dichotomy between thinking and experiencing:
Indeed, thinking and experiencing cannot be contrasted with each

other in the manner of alternatives. What happened in the seminar
remains an attempt at a preparation for thinking, and thus for
experiencing. But this preparation occurs already in a thinking
manner in that experiencing is nothing mystical, not an act of illu-
mination, but rather the entry into dwelling and Appropriation.46
Whatever experiencing “the entry into dwelling and Appropriation”

will be, preparing for it “in a thinking manner” is said to be the task
“to overcome the obstacles that render such saying [of Appropriation]
inadequate.”47 Thus thinking remains the attempt to arrive at an
adequate, linguistically articulated understanding of Appropriation.
At least that is Heidegger’s aim.48
***
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
and linguistic meaning involves a kind of “bootstrapping”: a few non-

linguistic mental capacities (e.g., perception of colors, shapes, sounds,
the simple inductive reasoning involved in learning language) make
it possible for the developing subject to grasp basic linguistic mean-
ings. In turn, these basic meanings make it possible for the subject to
have more complex, language-dependent mental states. By means of
such states, the subject may proceed to grasp more complex linguis-
tic conventions and practices, eventually coming to understand the
world as the mature members of her culture do.49 At most, only a
handful of primitive mental capacities are required at the outset of
this exponential process; from that point on, conceptualizing and
language go hand in hand. Obviously, this “bootstrapping” approach
needs to be developed in much greater detail, but it seems more
promising than the view of subjectivity to which Heidegger’s earlier
view is committed.
Finally, by replacing the static transcendentals of traditional meta-
physics with the historicized transcendentals constituting the history
of being, Heidegger can claim to have moved beyond a system of
empty and bloodless classifications to trans-categorical characteriza-
tions of being possessing rich and distinctive phenomenological
content. For each of the historicized transcendentals is a definite
way beings show up for humans in a particular epoch. The history
of being as the history of how beings have been disclosed to humans
provides the link between Heidegger’s later thought and his earlier
phenomenological concerns.50
Nevertheless, exactly how is Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation
supposed to “overcome” metaphysics—specifically, the metaphysics
of high Scholasticism and its attendant natural theology?
This question will occupy us in the following chapter.
Chapter 3
Heideggerian Atheology
and the Scotist Causal Argument
According to Scotus, the proper subject matter of metaphysics is

the transcendentals, including the simple transcendentals of being,
unity, truth, and goodness and the disjunctive transcendentals (e.g.,
finite or infinite, caused or uncaused) which are said to be coextensive
with the simple ones. Using his knowledge of these trans-categorical
attributes, the metaphysician then proceeds to demonstrate the exist-
ence of God as the First Being: “If an effect represents something
posterior, possible, or finite, such properties imply their cause enjoys
an unqualified primacy, actuality, infinity, and the like.”1 For this
reason, Scotus says that God is not the subject but the goal of meta-
physics, which provides the roots for natural theology as one of its
branches.
Up to a point, Heidegger’s later thinking parallels the Scotist pic-
ture before radically subverting it. In the previous chapter, we saw
that the proper subject matter of Heideggerian thinking includes
being as well as time. From the initial poetic intuitions of being and
time, Heidegger proceeds to understand being in terms of the histor-
icized transcendentals constituting the history of being and to
understand time in terms of the unified temporal dimensions of past,
present, and future. This sets the stage for arriving at adequate “say-
ings” about Appropriation as what “sends” the history of being but
Itself isn’t any kind of being or cause and can be understood in wholly
nonmetaphysical terms. Unlike Scotus, then, Heidegger takes his
own reworking of traditional metaphysical concepts to pull the rug
out from under all metaphysics—including any attempt to demon-
strate the existence of a First Being. We are left not with a natural
theology but with an atheology of Appropriation.
Heideggerian Atheology and the Scotist Causal Argument 47
My purpose in the present chapter is to bring the confrontation

between the Heideggerian post-metaphysical thinker and the Scho-
lastic metaphysician/natural theologian to a head by pitting the
atheology of Appropriation against the Scotist Causal Argument for
the existence of a First Being. I choose the latter because it is perhaps
the most sophisticated version of the argument to be found in the
history of philosophy, and possibly the closest a Scholastic metaphysi-
cian has come to proving a substantial theoretical result in natural
theology. My analysis will be guided by Scotus’s detailed presentation
of the argument in A Treatise on God as First Principle2 and by two excel-
lent recent discussions of Scotus’s argument.3 I will not examine every
controversial point raised by the argument but only those issues that
have a direct bearing on our assessment of Heideggerian atheology.
Formulating the causal argument
Scotus’s proof proceeds from actual cases of causation observed in

nature rather than from purely a priori premises: “something can be
produced and therefore something can be productive.”4 Such cases
are understood in terms of the metaphysical notion of essentially
ordered causes, where both the being and the causal activity of a given
cause depend on the next cause in the series. For example, a swallow
and its flying (i.e., displacing air molecules) depend on the swallow’s
nature and its causal activity; the swallow’s nature and its causal activity
depend on genetically organized carbon molecules and their causal
activity, which depend on certain atoms and their causal activity, and
so on.5 Based on actual cases of essentially ordered causes, Scotus
argues for the possibility of a First Cause whose being and causal activ-
ity cannot be caused. He then argues from the possibility of a First
Cause to its actuality and from its actuality to its necessity.6
In considering an actual case of causation, it is helpful to distin-
guish two questions:
(1) Might the series of essentially ordered causes producing a given

effect go on ad infinitum?
(2) Might the series of essentially ordered causes producing a given effect
terminate in a cause which, though uncaused, could be caused?
A negative answer to (1) amounts to Scotus’s claim that there can-

not be an infinity of essentially ordered causes.7 Call this negative
claim the lemma.
The lemma has generated much controversy over the centuries.
Ignore that controversy for now; what is important to see is that if the
lemma is granted, then the answer to (2) must also be “Not unless a
first uncausable cause is possible.” Suppose for the sake argument
that the series of essentially ordered causes producing a given effect
(e.g., the swallow’s flying) terminates in a cause C (e.g., the behavior
of certain quantum particles, perhaps) that is actually uncaused but
could be caused. Scotus may then reason as follows: if it is possible for
C to be caused, then either it is possible for the cause of C to be
caused (even if it actually isn’t) or it isn’t possible. If it isn’t, then it is
possible for there to be a first cause which cannot be caused—which
is Scotus’s desired conclusion. On the other hand, if it is possible for
the cause of C to be caused (even if it actually isn’t), then the ques-
tion arises whether it is possible for this additional cause to be caused.
Either at some point we reach the possibility of a first cause that can-
not be caused—again, Scotus’s desired conclusion—or we don’t. In
the latter case, it is possible for there to be an infinite series of essen-
tially ordered causes. But by the lemma, this is impossible. Therefore,
given the truth of the lemma, we obtain Scotus’s desired conclusion:
it is possible for there to be a first uncausable cause.
Everything then appears to rest on the lemma. Can it be demon-
strated? In their discussion of Scotus’s Causal Argument, Ross and
Bates give the following 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
The idea here is that the possibility of an infinite series of essen-

tially ordered causes entails an inconsistency. Since every stepwise or
partial regression in such a series contains causally necessary but not

causally sufficient conditions for the effect, the entire series lacks
causally sufficient conditions for the final effect. Yet obviously, there
is a final effect, and thus causally sufficient conditions for it. Conse-
quently, there are causally sufficient conditions for the final effect
and there are not causally sufficient conditions for it, which is a
contradiction.
I would like to accept this argument but I can’t. The trouble is with
the fallacious inference from the premise that every stepwise regres-
sion in an infinite series of essentially ordered causes lacks a sufficient
condition for the effect to the conclusion that the infinite series itself
lacks a sufficient condition for the effect. In general, from the fact
that every finite subset or subseries of an infinite set or series lacks a
certain property, it doesn’t follow that the infinite set/series lacks
that property. For example, consider the set W of whole numbers.
Every finite subset of W (each of whose members may be ordered in
a series) lacks the property of possessing the same cardinality as the
set of natural numbers. But clearly W (whose members may also be
ordered in a series) itself possesses this property; in more Scotist
terms, we may say that every finite subset/subseries of W lacks a suffi-
cient condition for being equinumerous with W, but that W itself
does not lack this sufficient condition.9 Correlatively, though every
finite series within an infinite series of essentially ordered causes lacks
a sufficient condition for the effect, it is obscure why the entire series
of causes can’t constitute a sufficient condition for the effect. To rule
out this possibility with complete certainty, it seems we must assume
that there can’t be an actual infinity in an essential order of causes –
which is the very issue at stake.
Fortunately, all is not lost. Suppose that it is possible for there to be
an infinite series S of all the essentially ordered causes (i.e., an infi-
nite series of causes in which each cause and its causal activity is
caused by another cause) producing a given effect, such as the swal-
low’s flying. The series S itself a contingent being, since S might not
have existed because any one or more of its members might not have
existed.10 Scotus observes that any contingent being, even if it is actu-
ally uncaused, might have been caused.11 Hence, even if S is uncaused
it is possible for S to be caused. Call this possible cause C. Presumably
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)
Furthermore, a First Being necessarily exists.15 For suppose that

although a First Being actually exists its nonexistence is possible.
Since a First Being actually exists, its existence is possible (◊p). And
since whatever is possible is necessarily possible, the existence of
a First Being is necessarily possible (◊p). However, by the reasoning

sketched in the previous paragraph, if a First Being doesn’t exist then
its existence is not possible (since it would have to be caused by
another being, caused by nothing, or self-caused, all of which are
impossible). Hence, if it is possible for a First Being not to exist, it is
possible that its existence is not possible (◊¬◊p). But then its exist-
ence is not necessarily possible (¬◊p).16 Thus from our supposition
that the nonexistence of a First Being is possible we have obtained a
contradiction: the existence of a First Being both is and is not neces-
sarily possible (◊p and ¬◊p). Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum,
the nonexistence of a First Being is not possible, in which case a First
Being necessarily exists.17
Contingency and causation:

a Heideggerian counterargument
Though there is room for further discussion, Scotus seems to have

succeeded in constructing a prima facie powerful proof of the possibil-
ity, actuality, and necessity of a First Being, as well as in anticipating
typical objections.18 He goes on to argue that there can be one and
only one First Being, so that we may speak of the First Being which is
the uncausable cause of all contingent being, is simple, intelligent,
endowed with a will, and infinite.19 I shall not pursue these arguments
here. Rather, I call attention to an assumption that is central to
Scotus’s proof: whatever is contingent can be caused even if it is in
fact uncaused; not only are there are no contingent beings or events
which in their very nature are uncausable, but also there cannot be
such uncausable contingencies.20 For if there could be, then a series
of essentially ordered causes producing a given effect (such as the
swallow’s flying) could terminate in a cause that is uncausable yet
contingent, undermining Scotus’s inference from actual cases of cau-
sation observed in nature to a First Being that is both uncausable and
noncontingent. More generally, the universe then contains or could
contain ultimate contingencies which are in principle unexplainable
in terms of anything—including the First Explanatory Being that is
supposedly the necessary ground of all contingency. Is Scotus’s
assumption true, or are there counterexamples to it?
It is tempting to look to the micro-level for counterexamples.

Perhaps the series of essentially ordered causes containing the swallow
and its flying, the swallow’s nature and its causal activity, genetically
organized carbon molecules and their causal activity, and so on termi-
nates in the behavior of certain quantum particles or events. Presumably
these quantum events are not only contingent because they might not
have happened but also purely random. If the quantum events in
which the series terminates are essentially random—if their random-
ness is somehow intrinsic to their nature—then such contingent
events cannot be caused. However, there seems to be no reason why
a contingent event can’t be random, and hence actually uncaused,
yet still be causable. This is clear from cases of randomness at the
macro-level: according to mathematical chaos theory, whether a stick
balanced on end falls either right or left is indeterminate, so that if
the stick falls right the event is both contingent and purely random.
Yet certainly, it is possible for something to cause the stick to fall right
even if when the stick actually falls right it does so randomly. The pos-
sibility of random events being caused, at either the macro- or the
quantum level, doesn’t imply that such events aren’t really random.21
Let us refocus our question: does the Heideggerian atheologian
propose any counterexample to the assumption that whatever is con-
tingent can be caused? Yes. Rather than looking to the micro-level,
later Heidegger looks to the big picture for an uncausable contin-
gency. Specifically, he claims that Appropriation “gives” or “sends”
being, where being is just the entire history of being or the series
of conceptions of being dominating different epochs of Western
culture, in which humans work out their understandings of them-
selves and of other beings in accordance with the three dimensions of
true time. Heidegger is no Hegelian; he thinks the sending of being
by Appropriation is contingent, since it might have happened in
another way or even not at all.22 As we’ve seen, he also denies that the
sending is caused or brought about by some indeterminate power.23
If there actually is an event or happening which is the sending of
being by Appropriation24 then even though the sending is contingent
and uncaused, can it be caused? The answer must be “No.”
For if it is possible for the sending of being by Appropriation to be
caused, then it is possible for something to cause the sending of the
entire history of being by Appropriation. Whatever is a cause is a

being, and whatever is a being has being. Moreover, causation itself is
an event or happening, and a cause is temporally prior to its effect.
Thus if something causes the sending of the entire history of being,
then there is an event or happening in being prior to the entire
history of being. Yet any event or happening in being is part of the
history of being. Consequently, if it is possible for the sending of
being to be caused, it is possible for there to be something in the his-
tory of being before the entire history of being. But that is impossible.
Therefore, it is also impossible for the sending of being to be caused.
Whatever else it involves, the sending of being by Appropriation is
contingent, uncaused, and uncausable. It just happens. Accordingly,
it seems we must reject Scotus’s assumption that everything contin-
gent can be caused.
When we speak of an event that has occurred, such as a Neander-
thal getting mauled by a saber-tooth tiger, we are describing something
that really happened then and hence is part of human history, broadly
understood, that was already unfolding though only conceptualized
as such much later (as when we find the skeleton of the Neanderthal
bearing marks of a saber-tooth tiger attack). So it would be with any
cause of the sending of being by Appropriation: something is really
happening in being then and hence is part of the history of being that
is already unfolding, though only conceptualized as such much later
(in the pages of Heidegger’s later writings). But if a cause of the send-
ing of being (i.e., the unfolding history of being) itself requires that
the history of being already be unfolding, then plainly there can be
no such thing as a cause of the sending of being, since that would
involve the impossibility of a history of being unfolding before its
unfolding.
The Heideggerian atheologian’s counterargument can be stated in
another way: suppose that the sending of being qua history of being
by Appropriation is caused. In addition to being, this sending also
“gives” time. Hence, the giving of time would also have to be caused.
But since causation is in part a temporal process, the causing of the
giving of time occurs in time. Therefore, time is temporally prior to
the giving of time, and hence time is temporally prior to itself—which
is impossible. Again, the past causing of the giving of time may only
be conceptualized as such in some subsequent epoch, yet that still

amounts to conceptualizing the causing as past and thus as in the very
time that the causing is supposed to “give.”
Because the Heideggerian counterargument is aimed at the natu-
ral theology of Scotus and other Scholastics, a natural reply suggests
itself. Suppose that there is a sending or giving of being/time, where
the phenomenological availability of being/time is explained in
terms of Appropriation. Then even if this sending or giving is actually
uncaused, it certainly can be caused. For the First Being which is the
uncausable cause of all contingency could cause the sending or
giving—not by exercising an agency that unfolds in history or time,
since on the orthodox view the First Being isn’t in time, but by exer-
cising an atemporal causal agency. Recognizing the First Being as the
atemporal cause of the sending or giving of being/time avoids
the impossibility of the history of being already unfolding prior to the
history of being unfolding, or of time before itself. Even Heidegger
admits that time is nothing temporal, and so there is no reason why
he shouldn’t extend the nontemporal character of time to the First
Cause of the sending or giving of being/time.
This reply misses the full force of the Heideggerian atheologian’s
counterargument. Being, for Heidegger, fundamentally involves
unconcealment or disclosure (aletheia) of beings—that is, how beings
are phenomenologically available at all. The disclosure of any being
is to be explained in terms of the sending or giving by Appropriation
of the history of being as the history of ways in which beings have
been disclosed; nonetheless, the proper explanandum here is any dis-
closure of beings per se. If the sending or giving of being/time could
be atemporally caused by the First Being, then this sending or giving
could be caused by something that already has intellectuality, and
hence to which some being is already disclosed: namely, itself (since
the First Being is completely intelligible to itself). Thus, the disclo-
sure of beings in the various epochs of the history of being would be
essentially dependent on a First Being which is disclosed to itself. By
the simplicity of the First Being, the First Being is the same as its act
of being disclosed to itself. Hence, the disclosure of beings would be
essentially dependent on the disclosure of a being.25 But for both
Heidegger and Scotus being is univocal: being qua disclosure is being
qua disclosure, regardless of whether we are talking about a First

Being or some other being. Consequently, on the supposition that
the sending or giving of being/time could be caused by the First
Being, being qua disclosure could be essentially dependent on being
qua disclosure, which is absurd. The point can also be expressed in
terms of explanatory failure: because the Heideggerian atheologian
demands an explanation of all disclosure or phenomenological avail-
ability of beings, no real progress is made by postulating a First
Cause/Being whose being is somehow self-disclosed to itself. For
then at least some being qua disclosure of beings (the First Being’s
essential self-disclosure) would remain totally unexplained.26 The
Scholastic natural theologian might reject the Heideggerian atheolo-
gian’s demand for an explanation of all disclosure of beings. Yet in
the absence of detecting some conceptual flaw inherent in the atheo-
logian’s demand, such a rejection seems worrisomely ad hoc. On the
other hand, the Scholastic might deny that being should be under-
stood in terms of disclosure or unconcealment of beings and insist
that, although being is univocal, finite beings are nevertheless essen-
tially dependent on a self-explanatory infinite being. But this invites
the charge that being has been stripped of any phenomenological
content. At this point, then, it is by no means apparent that the
Scholastic natural theologian can turn aside the Heideggerian atheo-
logian’s claim that the sending of being/time by Appropriation is an
uncausable contingency, and thus a fatal counterexample to Scotus’s
assumption that whatever is contingent must be causable.
Where does this leave us? In contradistinction to the Scotist view
that a First Being necessarily exists as the ultimate causal ground of all
contingency, we have a view in which there is no such cause. Indeed,
if Heidegger is right then the very idea of a necessary cause of all
contingency, including the sending of being/time by Appropriation,
is incoherent: there cannot be such a cause. To the extent that
Heidegger’s very late atheology provides any philosophical explana-
tion of contingent beings, it consists in the observation that beings
are disclosed through the series of historicized transcendentals
constituting the history of being, each of which is characterized by
unified dimensions of true time as structural principles. The possibil-
ity of anything being disclosed by some historicized transcendental
or other in accordance with true time is further explained in terms

of the sending of being/time by Appropriation. However, there is no
explanation of this sending itself. At the very heart of any possible
disclosure of beings lies a radically contingent, uncaused, and uncaus-
able happening.27
Undermining Scotus’s proof of a First Being and replacing it with
the ultimate contingency of Appropriation sending being and time
would be substantial steps toward overcoming traditional metaphys-
ics.28 By no means is this the end of the matter, however, but rather
the exciting point at which the battle between the Scholastic natural
theologian and his Heideggerian opponent truly begins. The very
late atheology explains the history of being in terms of the sending of
Appropriation. Let us see whether this explanation makes sense.
Chapter 4
Appropriation and the Problem

of Sufficient Comprehension
Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation postulates the sending of

being and time by Appropriation as a bedrock contingency that is in
principle inexplicable. As we saw in the last chapter, this sending
event is held to be not only contingent and uncaused but also
uncausable: the fact that there is no causal explanation for the send-
ing isn’t a problem because the sending isn’t the sort of thing that
can be caused. It just happens. To persist in demanding a causal
explanation here is misguided. If there really is such a bedrock con-
tingency, then the Heideggerian atheologian can only try to make
us aware of it. At best, we can hope for a final phase of the “sending”
in which it happens that we refrain from all metaphysical thinking
and cultivate a postmetaphysical appreciation of the world and our
place in it.
Still, Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation doesn’t forego all
attempts at explanation. For it purports to explain being and time—
that is, the coming to be and passing away of the historicized
transcendentals in the history of being, each of which discloses beings
structured by the dimensions of true time—in terms of the sending
of Appropriation, even though the latter in principle cannot be
explained. From later Heidegger’s post-metaphysical perspective, in
addition to satisfying the usual requirements of comprehensibility,
consistency, noncircularity, and so on, to be adequate this explana-
tion must refrain from drawing upon any traditional metaphysical
notions embedded in a particular historicized transcendental; other-
wise, achieving Heidegger’s avowed aim of overcoming all metaphysics
would be impossible. How might a nonmetaphysical explanation of
being and time in terms of the sending of Appropriation proceed?
In Chapter 2, we noted that if Appropriation reduces to the

sequence of historicized transcendentals, then the explanans is
trivially the same as the explanandum. Appropriation is then no dif-
ferent from being and time. Such a result may be viewed as the
recognition that nothing deeper can or need be said about being,
disclosure, or the phenomenological availability of beings in time
than by summarizing the history of being as the history of ways
beings have shown up for humans and pointing out its attendant
philosophical confusions. Once that is done, we may disown meta-
physics and turn our attention to more serious intellectual tasks.
This deflationary understanding of Appropriation is similar to the
contemporary pragmatist view that the history of philosophy
amounts to a series of vocabularies whose contingency gives us the
option of overcoming all philosophy, including metaphysics, by
abandoning the terms which seem to make philosophical problems
compelling.1
Suppose, though, that Appropriation is more than the history of
being, so that Appropriation and being/time are not the same. This
presents a different picture of Heideggerian overcoming, in which
metaphysics as the history of being is overcome not by recognizing it
as something contingent but by thinking something different from
the history of being that explains it and is understood in purely non-
metaphysical terms. Appropriation is then conceived as an explanans
that is genuinely distinct from the joint explanandum of being (the
history of being) and time.2 To borrow a term from early Heidegger,
on this picture we have something like a cosmic affair complex con-
sisting of Appropriation and the temporally structured historicized
transcendentals which are somehow explanatorily dependent on the
sending of Appropriation, though this sending isn’t caused by Appro-
priation or by anything beyond the cosmic affair complex.3 The goal
of post-metaphysical thinking is then to understand as fully as possi-
ble the aspects of this affair complex and precisely how they are
related. That in turn requires arriving at a linguistically adequate
understanding of Appropriation and its relation to the history of
being.
Appropriation and the Problem of Sufficient Comprehension 59
The relation between Appropriation

and Being and Time
It was also suggested in Chapter 2 that Heidegger’s atheology of

Appropriation countenances the possibility that Appropriation is
“metaphysically prior” to being and time. In line with the aim of over-
coming metaphysics, we must be careful not to understand this notion
of priority in traditional metaphysical terms, or at least not in meta-
physical terms which are embedded in some epoch in the history
of being. For example, Appropriation is not metaphysically prior
to being and time in the way that God is metaphysically prior to
His creation in Scholastic metaphysics. Not only would that reduce
Appropriation to a particular being, but it would also make Appro-
priation in its nature wholly independent of being and time in a
manner that Heidegger rejects. He views Appropriation as essentially
a “giving” or “sending” of being and time.4 Since X cannot be a giving
or a sending unless X gives or sends some Y, it follows that Appropria-
tion is also in some sense dependent on the being and time It sends.
Can we clarify this mode of dependency?
One possibility is to deploy the metaphysically neutral notion of
formal interdependence introduced in Chapter 2: Appropriation
and being/time qua the actual sequence of intrinsically temporal
transcendentals which make up the history of being are formally
interdependent in the same way that a particular conception of
being encoded in language and humans conceptualizing in language
in accordance with that conception are formally interdependent.
However, contrary to the nondeflationary view of Appropriation we
are exploring, this reduces Appropriation to the actual history of
being. In particular, since Appropriation is dependent on the actual
sequence of transcendentals, if the sequence had been different then
there would have been no Appropriation. This consequence is coun-
terintuitive, for even if the history of being had unfolded otherwise
than it actually did, presumably there would still have been a “giving”
or “sending” of being and time. One might propose that different
Appropriations or “sendings” correspond to different possible histo-
ries of being—but then we may ask what these different Appropria-
tions have in common that makes them “sendings.”
In explicating the relation between Appropriation and the history

of being, it is useful to utilize another Scotist notion. Scotus intro-
duces the idea of signa or instants of nature to explain how the will
can choose other than it does even at the very moment of its actual
choice, which Scotus thinks is required for genuine freedom.5
Instants of nature are ontologically distinct aspects present in the
same temporal moment. For example, consider the case in which at
time t I choose to turn right instead of left. According to Scotus,
t itself contains at least two instants of nature: my power to turn right
or left, and my actualizing this power by turning right instead of left.
One instant of nature is naturally prior to another instant if and only
if mention of the former is required in an explanation of the latter.6
Since an explanation of actualizing my power to turn right or left
must mention my power to turn right or left, my power to turn right
or left is naturally prior to my turning right instead of left. Yet both
of these instants of nature exist in t. Hence even though t contains
an instant of nature at which I turn right instead of left, t also con-
tains a naturally prior instant of nature at which I have the power to
turn right or left, so that my choice at t to turn right instead of left
is genuinely free.
Think of the entire unfolding of the history of being as a single
protracted cosmic event7 containing at least two instants of nature:
Appropriation and the actual sequence of historicized transcenden-
tals It sends. Since, according to Heidegger, an explanation of the
sending of being qua the history of being (i.e., the actual sequence
of historicized transcendentals) must mention Appropriation as
what sends that history, the instant consisting of Appropriation is
naturally prior to the instant consisting of the actual history of being.
However, Appropriation is not temporally prior to the history of being,
since both instants of nature are contained in the same protracted
cosmic event. We then have a cosmic affair complex consisting of
two instants of nature, one of which—viz., Appropriation—is natu-
rally prior to the other—viz., the actual sequence of historicized
transcendentals which disclose beings through the dimensions of
true time.
We have come closer to capturing Heidegger’s view, but we haven’t
quite. For a time t may contain an instant of nature (e.g., my power
to turn right or left) that is naturally prior to another instant (e.g., my

actually turning right) while being in no way dependent on the other
instant (i.e., my power to turn right or left doesn’t depend on my ever
turning right or left).8 Yet we saw that Heidegger takes Appropriation
in some sense to depend on Its “sending” or “giving.” A more accurate
statement of Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation includes the
following pair of claims:
(1) Appropriation is naturally prior, in Scotus’s sense, to the actual

sequence of historicized transcendentals.
(2) Appropriation is formally interdependent, not with the actual
sequence of historicized transcendentals, but with the more gen-
eral fact that there is some sequence or other of historicized
transcendentals.
Claim (1) maintains that an explanation of the actual history of

being must mention Appropriation and Its “sending.” To avoid treat-
ing Appropriation as a cause, this explanation must be noncausal.
Claim (2) allows Appropriation to depend on some history of being
or other without depending on any particular such history.9 Appro-
priation should not be conceived as a sort of pre-metaphysical “Big
Bang” that gives rise to the history of being, but rather as an atempo-
ral potentiality that must be actualized by “sending” some sequence of
historicized transcendentals in a protracted cosmic event, though
which particular sequence is actually sent is radically contingent (not
only uncaused but also uncausable).10
Heidegger speaks of the “finitude of Appropriation” as “finitude in
itself.”11 What does he mean by that? We might take him to be claim-
ing that the number of historicized transcendentals Appropriation
can send is finite—that is, that the atemporal potentiality of Appro-
priation can be actualized in only a finite number of ways. However,
this claim is impossible to evaluate in the absence of a clearer under-
standing of the nature of the potentiality Appropriation supposedly
“is.”12 A more cautious interpretation links the finitude of Appropria-
tion to the possibility of overcoming metaphysics: if it is really possible
for humans to experience a Gelassenheit in which no more histori-
cized transcendentals are ever sent and the history of being ends,
then the actualization of Appropriation as the potentiality to send

conceptions of being will have a limit, and hence will terminate in
finitude.13 On this interpretation, Heidegger is not saying that the
sending of metaphysical conceptions by Appropriation must termi-
nate, but only that it may.
Using the notions of formal interdependence and of instants
ordered in terms of natural priority to characterize the relation
between Appropriation and being/time has its advantages and its
drawbacks. An advantage is that the abstractness of these notions
makes them appear innocent of metaphysically controversial con-
cepts drawn from any particular historicized transcendental. The
formal interdependence of X and Y implies only that X and Y are
equally real and necessarily interrelated; the natural priority of an
instant N1 to N2 implies only that an explanation of N2 must mention
N1 since the former essentially depends on the latter. Heidegger is
then free to utilize these notions in his post-metaphysical explication
of Appropriation and the sending of being and time. A drawback is
that these notions are too abstract to provide us with any positive
insight into the nature of Appropriation itself. Without this insight it
is difficult, if not impossible, to understand how Appropriation qua
atemporal potentiality for “sending” can serve as a viable explanans
for the history of being as explanandum.
It is important to state the problem clearly: the Heideggerian athe-
ologian need not provide a complete comprehension of the nature
of Appropriation. But he does need to provide a comprehension of
Appropriation sufficient to understand how Its “sending” can func-
tion in genuine noncausal explanation of being and time. And to
allow for the overcoming of metaphysics, the sufficient comprehen-
sion must not make use of any metaphysically loaded concepts from
the history of being. For the sake of argument, let us concede the
metaphysical neutrality of the notions of formal interdependence
and of instants ordered by natural priority. Nonetheless, so far all
we’ve learned about the alleged explanation of being/time in terms
of Appropriation is that it can’t be a causal explanation. Is there any-
thing else to say beyond that? I take Heidegger to be aware of the
problem of sufficient comprehension, and I discern two strategies he
outlines for addressing it.
The quasi-Scotist strategy
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”:
This determination showed itself as we look ahead through the

interjoined modes of giving: sending and extending. Sending of
Being lies in the extending, opening and concealing of manifold
presence into the open realm of time-space. Extending, however,
lies in one and the same with sending, in appropriating.14
Thus, Appropriation qua sending is said to be an extending in pre-

cisely the same (univocal) sense that the dimensions of true time
extend to each other to constitute any stage in the life of an individ-
ual or of a culture encountering a world of beings. Yet Appropriation
and the temporal dimensions possess extending in different modes,
since the dimensions are phenomenologically accessible to us whereas
Appropriation is not. Evidently, Heidegger thinks that by understand-
ing a property of phenomenologically accessible temporal dimensions
we can form some understanding of phenomenologically inaccessi-
ble Appropriation, just as Scotus thinks that by understanding certain
perceptible properties of created beings we can form some under-
standing of imperceptible God.
Unfortunately, the drawback in utilizing the notions of formal
interdependence and instants ordered by natural priority to charac-
terize Appropriation as sending is now pushed back to the extending
allegedly shared by Appropriation and the dimensions of true time.
So far, such extending has been given no positive content. Interest-
ingly, Heidegger seems to acknowledge this shortcoming:
Even assuming that in our discussion of Being and time we aban-

don the common meaning of the word “event” and instead adopt
the sense that suggests itself in the sending of presence and the
extending of time-space which opens out—even then our talk
about “Being as Appropriation” remains indeterminate.15
Even more interesting is the fact that, in his subsequent discussion,

he analyzes the notion of extending said to apply univocally to
Appropriation and to the temporal dimensions—particularly the
past and the present—as withholding:
(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
Hence the quasi-Scotist strategy hopes to glean a sufficient compre-

hension of the nature of Appropriation, which makes being/time
accessible to us by remaining inaccessible Itself, through the manner
in which past and future beings become phenomenologically accessi-
ble to us by having their actual being withheld.
Immediately a difficulty arises. What is withheld when a past or future
being becomes phenomenologically accessible to us—namely, its actual
being—is nevertheless phenomenologically accessible to us: past and
future beings are still disclosed or “show up” for us as nonexistent
beings (beings which are no longer or are not yet) of which we are
aware. By contrast, what is withheld when being/time becomes phe-
nomenologically accessible to us—namely, Appropriation—is thereby
concealed, and thus remains phenomenologically inaccessible to us in
Its very nature.18 Consequently, there is a fundamental discrepancy
between temporal withholding and the withholding (withdrawing,
expropriating) of Appropriation, making it hard to see how the former
can be used to form a sufficient comprehension of the latter. I con-
clude that, at least at this stage of inquiry, the quasi-Scotist strategy
doesn’t solve the problem of sufficient comprehension.
The quasi-Thomist strategy
According to Aquinas, properties such as goodness apply to God and

created beings in neither a univocal nor an equivocal sense but only
in an analogical sense: by understanding how these properties which
we first encounter in perceptible creatures apply analogically to God,
we can form some positive understanding of imperceptible God. To
understand the nature of Appropriation, we must understand the
relation between Appropriation and the being/time which Appro-
priation sends.
One strand in Heidegger’s later writings explores the manner in
which poetry discloses beings to us. Might we attain a sufficient com-
prehension of the relation between Appropriation and being/time
by seeing it as analogous to a certain relation between poetically
revealed beings?
Initially, the prospects for this strategy seem promising. Recall that
the poetic idioms instrumental in conveying the intuition of being
and time serve as the starting point for the atheology of Appropria-
tion. The absence in these poetic statements of a subject term
designating a particular being allows them to disclose particular
beings in their being/temporality without reifying being/time as a
particular being. Thus such statements—or more generally, certain
kinds of poetry—might disclose a phenomenologically accessible
relation between beings and being/time that is analogous to the phe-
nomenollgically inaccessible relation between Appropriation and
being time without reifying either Appropriation or being/time.
That Heidegger may be thinking along these lines is indicated by
his increasing interest in the poetry of Rilke, Trakl, and Hölderlin. In
the late essay “Language,” Heidegger studies Trakl’s poem “A Winter
Evening.”19 There Heidegger claims to find a poetic rendering of
concepts central to his own thinking: “the threshold” for the “dif-
ference” between being (world) and beings (things); “pain” for the
“rift” between world and earth in which humans strive to work out
possibilities latent in their historicized transcendental; bread and
wine shown in “limpid brightness” for the “stillness” in which meta-
physics is overcome and the “fourfold” of a post-metaphysical world
holds sway. To Heidegger, poetry and thinking appear to proceed on
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
As Hölderlin’s “lovely blueness,” the sky makes various beings in

and under it phenomenologically accessible to us, allowing us to
measure them against each other and against ourselves in the funda-
mental way in which poets take the measure of life. In doing so, the
sky itself is a being that becomes partially yet not totally phenomeno-
logically accessible to us. For no one perspective can reveal the sky in
its plenitude: breadth and depth, dusk and dawn, night and day, all
types of weather.23 Trying to step back and reveal the sky in its entirety
would require a trip to outer space, where there is no “lovely blue-
ness” whatsoever.
Heidegger’s thought seems clear: the sky qua “lovely blueness” is to
the beings it allows us to see and to measure poetically as Appropria-
tion qua Expropriation is to the history of being which It allows us to
see as a sequence of historicized transcendentals structured by true

time. The relation between Appropriation and being/time isn’t the
same as the dimension between the sky and the beings it reveals,
since the sky is a spatiotemporal expanse that is partially phenomeno-
logically accessible to us whereas Appropriation is not. Yet the two
relations are analogous, so that understanding the dimension allows
us to form some positive understanding of Appropriation and Its
sending. (To understand Appropriation’s sending relation to being/
time is to understand Appropriation, since It essentially involves
sending.)
Here we find ourselves treading on familiar ground. As in the meta-
physics of Aquinas, some notion of analogy is exploited in an attempt
to render sufficiently comprehensible a reality that is not directly
accessible to us. This isn’t the place to review Aquinas’s theory of
analogy and subsequent developments by Cajetan and others, so
I will confine my remarks to a few salient points.24
The analogy between the sky and Appropriation appears to be that
of proportionality. In an analogy of proportionality, X and Y are anal-
ogous because they stand in analogous relations to other relata. To
take Aquinas’s classic example, the mind and the eye are analogous
by proportionality because the mind is to the soul as the eye is to the
body. The mind–soul relation is not the same as the eye–body rela-
tion, since mind and soul are immaterial but eye and body are
material; as Aquinas would say, these two sets of terms do not have
a common nature. Rather, the mind–soul and eye–body relations are
analogous. Similarly, the sky and Appropriation do not share a com-
mon nature; indeed, one is a being while the other is not! Thus, the
relation between sky and the beings in and under it cannot be the
same as the relation between Appropriation and being/time. Yet
according to the quasi-Thomist strategy, these two relations are
analogous.
A question about analogy is whether it has a real basis or is merely
a human projection. To understand this question, it is helpful to
compare analogy with counterfactual possibility. Other than extreme
modal realists, few philosophers are comfortable saying that for some-
thing to be possible is a primitive fact. Most philosophers prefer
either to analyze counterfactual possibility in terms of some more
basic reality, such as real powers in nature (Aquinas) or combinato-

rial properties of certain concepts (Armstrong), or to treat
counterfactual possibility merely as a form of imaginative projection
(Quine). A similar concern might be raised about analogy. It is diffi-
cult to fathom how it can be a primitive fact that two nonidentical
relations are nevertheless analogous. One might be tempted to say
that the analogy between such relations is a human projection, so
that it is nothing real but only a simile or metaphor. Neither Aquinas
nor Heidegger would take this route, since it would reduce our talk
about God or Appropriation to merely figurative language and thus
preclude us from forming any positive comprehension of God or
Appropriation as real. Additionally, Heidegger’s atheology of Appro-
priation would collapse into poetry and no longer be a distinct
discipline.
From a Thomist perspective, one approach is to understand the
analogy between God and created beings not as an analogy of pro-
portionality but as an analogy of causation: a created being’s goodness
is analogous to God’s goodness in virtue of the fact that God is the
proper cause of the created being’s essence and existence and the
fact that any effect (e.g., a healthy complexion) resembles its proper
cause (e.g., healthy food) in some respect.25 Note however that there
remains an analogy between relations here—specifically, causal rela-
tions—since God is not the cause of created beings’ essence and
existence in exactly the way that created causes cause various effects
in the world. Then in virtue of what is there an analogy between
divine causation and worldly causation? Either Aquinas must take
this as a primitive fact, in which case it is obscure why the initial anal-
ogy between God’s goodness and the goodness of created beings
can’t be taken as a primitive fact. Or he must analyze the analogy
between these causal relations in terms of some more basic reality,
which he can’t do because he denies that there is any reality more
basic than God. Or he must ultimately explain the analogy between
divine and worldly causation in terms of God as the most basic
reality.
I mention these points, not to distract us with Scholastic subtle-
ties, but to drive home what is at stake in the Heideggerian
atheologian’s commitment to Appropriation as what sends being/
time. The quasi-Thomist strategy hopes to solve the problem of suf-

ficient comprehension by postulating an analogy between relations:
Appropriation is to being/time as the sky is to the beings revealed in
and under it. Call this the Central Analogy. If we are to avoid taking
the Central Analogy as a primitive fact, then there must be some
more basic reality in virtue of which it obtains. From the perspective
of Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation, what might serve as
this more basic reality? Not causation. For not only is Appropriation
not the cause of being/time, but plainly the sky isn’t the cause of the
beings revealed in and under it. Might there be some reality more
basic than Appropriation, being/time, and beings that ground the
Central Analogy? Obviously, we would then have to ask about the
comprehensibility of this more basic reality. Finally, just as the Tho-
mist might try to explain the analogy of causation in terms of God as
ultimate reality, the Heideggerian atheologian might try to explain
the Central Analogy in terms of Appropriation as ultimate reality.
Yet then we are running in a circle, since a sufficient comprehen-
sion of Appropriation requires the Central Analogy and a sufficient
comprehension of the latter requires a sufficient comprehension of
Appropriation. As with the quasi-Scotist strategy, I conclude that at
this stage of inquiry the quasi-Thomist strategy doesn’t solve the
problem of sufficient comprehension.
We are left bereft of any positive insight into the nature of Appro-
priation that enables us to understand how Its sending can serve as a
noncausal explanans for the explanandum of being/time as the
sequence of historicized transcendentals structured by true time. All
we’ve been told about this “sending” is that it isn’t a causal relation,
and that’s not enough.26 The consequences for Heidegger’s atheol-
ogy of Appropriation are disastrous.
No account of “sending” means no account of the explanatory role
of Appropriation. And no account of the latter means that the view of
a cosmic affair complex or a protracted cosmic event containing
Appropriation (N1) and being/time (N2) as instants of nature where
N1 is naturally—that is, explanatorily—prior to N2 collapses.
Without the sending of being and time by Appropriation as a clear
case of an uncausable contingent event, the Heideggerian atheolo-
gian is unable to raise a convincing counterexample against the
assumption, central to Scotus’s proof of a First Explanatory Being,

that every contingent event is causable. To overcome Scholastic
“onto-theology” one should consider its most sophisticated version,
and Scotus’s proof is arguably the most sophisticated attempt to
establish the foundations of Scholastic natural theology. Since the
Heideggerian atheologian fails to undermine this proof and the met-
aphysics/natural theology it supports, he fails to overcome Scholastic
“onto-theology.”27
Or does he? Any good story contains more than one chapter. In the
following one, we will consider the next stage in the dialectic of
Heideggerian thought: the atheology of nothingness that can be
extracted from some of Heidegger’s writings in his middle period. As
with the atheology of Appropriation, the atheology of nothingness
ups the ante and deepens the inquiry by developing cogent replies to
previous objections.
Chapter 5
Heidegger’s Atheology of Nothingness
In a recent book, Michael Friedman contrasts the respective attitudes

of Carnap and Heidegger regarding the place of logic and the exact
sciences in philosophy. On Friedman’s reading, for Carnap, logic
enables the overcoming of metaphysics by showing that its central
claims violate the rules of logical form. Heidegger agrees with Carnap
that metaphysical claims violate logical form, but rather than reject-
ing such claims as nonsensical pseudo-sentences Heidegger upholds
the rigor of metaphysics and denies the centrality of logic to serious
philosophical inquiry:
It is clear, then, that Heidegger and Carnap are actually in remark-

able agreement. “Metaphysical” thought of the type Heidegger is
trying to awaken is possible only on the basis of a prior overthrow
of the authority and primacy of logic and the exact sciences. The
difference is that Heidegger eagerly embraces such an overthrow,
whereas Carnap is determined to resist it at all costs.1
According to Friedman, Carnap wants to overcome metaphysics

and resists the overthrow of logic, Heidegger wants to overthrow
logic and resists the overcoming of metaphysics, and ne’er the twain
shall meet.
Given what we have learned so far, the idea that in his later writings
Heidegger eagerly embraces metaphysics is seriously mistaken. No
less than Carnap, Heidegger seeks to overcome all metaphysics.
Admittedly, Heidegger is less sanguine than his logical positivist coun-
terpart about the prospect of deploying modern logic as a weapon
against metaphysics, since Heidegger thinks that logic itself can all
too easily mask underlying metaphysical presuppositions that have
arisen in the history of being. By engaging in radically antimetaphysical
reflection or “thinking,” in his later writings Heidegger hopes to pre-

pare for a Gelassenheit in which the history of being comes to an end
and humans arrive at a post-metaphysical understanding of the world
as a fourfold of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. As for the “think-
ing” intended to facilitate this transition, it contains little more than
basic logical principles and a few metaphysically innocuous notions
such as formal interdependence and natural or explanatory priority.
Even so, in Heidegger’s famous—some would say infamous—1929
essay “What is Metaphysics?” it is easy to find support for Friedman’s
interpretation. At the beginning of the essay Heidegger says that his
goal is to “provide metaphysics the proper occasion to introduce
itself.”2 He proceeds to characterize both the natural and the human
sciences (the Naturwissenshaften and the Geistwissenshaften) as disci-
plines which investigate various kinds of beings, not nothingness.
However, it is this nothingness, understood not as a form of negation
but as an unsettling condition most primordially revealed by anxiety,
that first discloses the being of beings to us: as Heidegger puts it, Das
Nicht selbst nichtet; nothingness itself “nothings” or “nihilates.”3 By
originally disclosing being as such to Dasein, nothingness “awakens
for the first time the proper formulation of the metaphysical ques-
tion concerning the being of beings.”4 In particular, we are prepared
to pursue the fundamental question “Why are there beings at all, and
why not rather nothing?”5 Thus, Heidegger certainly appears to
believe that a primordial experience of nothingness inexpressible in
purely logical terms sets the stage for rigorous metaphysical inquiry
into the nature of being.
Yet appearances can be deceiving. In the current context, this
becomes clear when we approach “What is Metaphysics?” from the
perspective of Heidegger’s very late atheology of Appropriation and
the problems confronting it.
In the last chapter, we saw that in the absence of a sufficient
comprehension of the nature of Appropriation, it is impossible to
understand how being and time can be noncausally and nonmeta-
physically explained in terms of the essential sending of Appropriation.
Suspiciously, Heidegger’s very late atheology looks like a piece of
residual metaphysics—only now reality is to be explained ultimately
in terms of a mysterious “Appropriation” and Its “sending” rather
Heidegger’s Atheology of Nothingness 73
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.
Negation and nothingness
At the end of Chapter 1, we considered the taxonomy of negativity

Heidegger presents in his Habilitationsschrift to complement the tax-
onomy of domains of beings he extracts from Scotus’s theory of
categories. Heidegger’s elementary meontology includes contradic-
tions in being (e.g., X’s being white and not white all over at the
same time) which cannot obtain, pure negations (e.g., X’s not exist-
ing) which don’t obtain but may, privations (e.g., X’s being blind),
and contrarieties (e.g., X’s not being another being Y). We noted
that a special case of pure negations is maximal pure negation, which

is a total yet contingent state of nothingness in which no beings exist.
Symbolically, letting “x” and “F” be unrestricted variables for individ-
uals and properties, respectively,7 and assuming that self-identity is a
necessary condition for existence, we may express the obtaining of
maximal pure negation as follows:
(P1) ¬(∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F=F) • ◊(∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F = F)
Of course (P1) is false since there are self-identical individuals and
properties. But if there were no beings whatsoever even though there
could be, then the possibility (P1) describes would obtain. Thus, when
Heidegger speaks of pure negation in the Habilitationsschrift, he has
in mind the negation of all beings.
Early in “What is Metaphysics?” Heidegger takes up negation and
its relation to nothingness. Here he also speaks of negation as “the
negation of the totality of beings,” as well as “a specific act of the intel-
lect.”8 Presumably, this act of intellect or judgment is expressed by
(P1). Accordingly, in Heidegger’s later essay the term “negation” per-
tains to what we may call the ontological mode (the contingent state
of total nonbeing), the material mode (the judgment expressing this
contingent state) and the formal mode (the negation operator in the
sentence expressing this judgment).
Carnap, in “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical
Analysis of Language,”9 contends that the concept of nothingness is
completely articulated by sentences like (P1) containing the negation
operator and the existential quantifier. Heidegger vigorously disa-
grees: “We assert that the nothing is more original than the ‘not’
and negation.”10 No claim Heidegger goes on to make about noth-
ingness, such as “Nothingness itself nihilates,” can be equated with
(P1), for (P1) is actually false whereas Heidegger’s claims about noth-
ingness are supposed to be true. Since these additional claims cannot
be regimented into formal notation using negation and existential
quantification, Carnap dismisses them as pseudo-sentences. However,
contrary to what Friedman’s interpretation might lead us to believe,
Heidegger does not exclude the “not” and negation from his philo-
sophical speculations. To see why, let us consider what Heidegger’s
account of how nothingness is revealed by the mood of anxiety.
In anxiety, Heidegger says, we are not anxious or fearful about any

particular being but instead overcome by a certain unease in the face
of beings as a whole. Beings “recede” or “slip away” from us so that they
sink into a pervasive indifference. Notice that, like each of the histori-
cized transcendentals, this indifference applies to all beings of different
kinds. Yet unlike the transcendentals in the history of being, each
of which makes possible a distinctive form of metaphysical theorizing,
when beings as a whole recede from us “we can get no hold on things.”11
We experience a “bewildered calm”12 in which “all utterance of the ‘is’
falls silent”13 and the impetus to metaphysics is stymied. It is this slip-
ping away of beings as a whole in the face of anxiety that Heidegger is
getting at when he says that nothingness itself nihilates. If anything,
what we have here is a profoundly antimetaphysical attitude, not a
springboard for constructing yet another metaphysical system.
Heidegger describes in vivid terms a particular upshot of this
antimetaphysical attitude regarding the nature of human being, or
Dasein:
We “hover” in anxiety. More precisely, anxiety leaves us hanging

because it induces the slipping away of beings as a whole. This implies
that we ourselves—we humans who are in being—in the midst of
beings slip away from ourselves. At bottom therefore it is not as
though “you” or “I” feel ill at ease; rather, it is this way for some
“one.” In the altogether unsettling experience of this hovering where
there is nothing to hold onto, pure Dasein is all that it still there.14
Anxiety is said to disclose Dasein in such a way that “there is nothing

to hold onto.” Specifically, the human being of one who experiences
anxiety is not revealed as an “I”—that is, a Cartesian ego, a substantial
form in matter, or any other kind of “present-at-hand” object—but as
pure Dasein finding itself thrown in the midst of other beings.15 We
are left hanging with nothing to hold onto precisely because anxiety
reveals that there is no metaphysical entity which constitutes the
nature of our individual being.
These ideas stand out more clearly against the backdrop of
Heidegger’s discussion of authentic versus inauthentic human exist-
ence in Division II of Being and Time.16 Briefly, everyday Dasein is
absorbed in various practical activities and projects which it takes for

granted as the basic framework for making sense of itself and the
world. However, in anxiety (Angst), Dasein comes face-to-face with the
constant possibility of its own death. As such, Dasein is revealed as
nothing but a finite “thrownness” toward its own death that finds
itself in the midst of various activities and projects. “Thrown” Dasein
does not determine the range of possibilities open to it (e.g., being a
philosopher versus being a soldier or a doctor, etc.) but must choose
from among these possibilities. Anxiety reveals that there is no essen-
tial structure beyond the possibilities my individual Dasein chooses to
pursue that justifies my choice. For example, there is no immortal
soul whose salvation depends on obeying moral laws that justifies my
choice to be ethical. Nor is there a particularized essence which is
most fully actualized by being a philosopher that justifies my choice
to be a philosopher. As Heidegger puts it, “Ontologically, Dasein is in
principle different from everything objectively present and real”17
which might serve as an ultimate justification for Dasein’s choices.
Beyond the activities and projects, Dasein chooses to pursue there is
literally nothing. In the “moment of vision” (Augenblick) Dasein can
either accept its ultimate “thrownness” and exist authentically with-
out any metaphysical supports, or it can lapse back into its everyday,
inauthentic existence and console itself with the illusion that its
choices are ultimately grounded in some present-at-hand “nature.”
Note that the negation operator and the existential quantifier can
be used to express part of what Heidegger is getting at in his remarks
about anxiety and nothingness as they pertain to Dasein. In anxiety,
the truth of the following negative existential is allegedly revealed to
an individual Dasein D:
(P2) ¬(∃x) (x = D • x justifies D’s choice to pursue certain projects)
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
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
(A) There is ultimately no entity (e.g., Platonic Forms, Aristotelian

substances, a First Explanatory Being, Cartesian egos represent-
ing objects, etc.) that justifies one transcendental in the history
of being (or some possible transcendental) over the others.
(B) There is ultimately no explanans (e.g., Hegelian dialectic,
Nietzschean Will to Power, Heideggerian Appropriation) that
explains the entire history of being itself.
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?”
His reasons for maintaining it remain obscure. I will return to this

issue in the next section. For now, I want to round out this section by
returning to the role of negation in middle Heidegger’s thinking.
Heidegger claims that even when Dasein isn’t experiencing anxiety,
there can still be a distorted revelation of nothingness through nega-
tion.21 Someone may deny that humans beings are immaterial souls
or embodied substantial forms without embracing the truth of (P2)—
the “existential” negative existential, as it were—perhaps because
the denier still identifies human beings with some other object or
present-at-hand being, such as a stream of psychological states or a
biological organism. The denier’s use of negation partially reflects
Dasein’s nothingness while failing to express its full content. Similarly,
certain negative existentials partially express the content of the more
general antimetaphysical position Heidegger adopts in “What is
Metaphysics?”:
(P3) ¬(∃w)(w is a Platonic Form)22

(P4) ¬(∃x)(x is a First Being)
(P5) ¬(∃y)(y is a thing-in-itself)
(P6) ¬(∃z)(z explains the sequence of historicized transcendentals)
and so forth. Anyone who denies some kinds of metaphysical entity

while accepting others can be seen as revealing, albeit in an incom-
plete and distorted manner, the fact that there is nothing beyond the
history of being.
In this connection, Heidegger describes “possibilities of nihilative
behavior” which speak out “in the ‘no’ and in negation,” such as
“unyielding antagonism and stinging rebuke.”23 A Scholastic denies
that there are Platonic Forms while insisting that there is a First
Being. A Hegelian denies that there is a First Being in the Scholastic’s
sense or that there are Kantian things-in-themselves while insisting
that there is a dialectical process through which a pantheistic Spirit
unfolds in history. A Heideggerian atheologian of Appropriation
denies (P3) through (P6), since he thinks the various “entities” they
describe are mere shadows cast by different transcendentals in the
history of being, while insisting that there is something that explains
the history of being by “sending” it. In these disputes, which certainly
may exhibit plenty of antagonism and rebuke, a metaphysician

partially reveals nothingness by denying his opponent’s position yet
falls short of the total denial of all metaphysical entities.24 Negation
and existential quantification are thus equivocal between partially
antimetaphysical uses and their totally antimetaphysical use in (A)
and (B) above. Contrary to Carnap, then, Heidegger holds that
although such logical vocabulary—and more generally, logic itself—
plays a role in philosophy, that role cannot be a central one. For mere
logic does not bring us face-to-face with the fundamental fact that
nothing justifies any transcendental or explains the history of being.
Why accept the broader antimetaphysical thesis?
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
transcending, which now means, if it were not in advance holding

itself out into the nothing, then it could never be related to beings
or to itself.
Without the original revelation of the nothing, no selfhood and no
freedom.25
By “selfhood” and “freedom,” I take Heidegger to mean the possi-

bility that an individual Dasein exists authentically by accepting the
fact that nothing justifies its activities or projects. Heidegger links this
realization of Dasein’s essential nothingness to “the original revela-
tion of the nothing” beyond the history of being. He seems to be
saying that Dasein is nothing “present-at-hand” (has no fixed nature
or essence) only if nothing justifies any particular historicized tran-
scendental or explains the entire history of being. From this it follows
by contraposition that,
(C) If some explanans justifies a particular historicized transcen-
dental or explains the history of being, then Dasein is something
present-at-hand (has a fixed nature or essence).
By the more limited phenomenological considerations presented in
Division II of Being and Time, anxiety reveals that the negation of the
consequent of (C) is true: Dasein is no present-at-hand being but merely
a “thrownness.” Therefore, by modus tollens we may infer that the nega-
tion of (C)’s antecedent is true: there is no explanans that explains the
history of being or justifies any transcendental in it over the others.
A plausible case for (C) can be made when we recall that commen-
surate with any maximal conception of being is a range of possible
modes of being human. For example, the possibilities of being a saint,
a sinner, a monk, a nun, and so on are commensurate with the medie-
val conception of being. Suppose now that the medieval transcendental
is justified over the other transcendentals in the history of being
because there actually is a First Cause who creates everything else.
According to the medieval conception of being, the First Cause creates
human beings with a determinate essence or nature. Various modes of
being human are then different ways of actualizing this fixed nature.
An individual still faces a choice between different projects, but it is a
choice between projects which are equally justified as acceptable ways
of actualizing the individual’s divinely created essence, not a choice
between equally unjustified or ultimately baseless projects. Whichever

of these ways an individual chooses to actualize his/her essence in
accordance with moral precepts that are a reflection of God’s absolute
goodness is ipso facto a legitimate choice, whereas other “projects” are
simply not legitimate possibilities. Given that only one God exists who
is the author of all justice, striving to be an ancient Greek hero seeking
glory as a participant in a wider struggle between gods and goddesses
is not only wrong but also, strictly speaking, impossible.
On the other hand, suppose that the modern conception of being
as standing reserve is the only correct transcendental. Then there is
no God who is the ultimate source of value but only a vast interlock-
ing system of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human resources whose
value consists solely in the fact that they are made available for con-
sumption. To be human is then to consume, and the only legitimate
possible projects open to humans are manifold ways of consuming.
Whichever way an individual chooses is justified so long as it doesn’t
upset the system. By contrast, eschewing consumption and devoting
one’s life to God is not only an impossible way of being a consumer
but also indeed ridiculous, since there is no God and there is no
value in living a life of religious asceticism that makes no resources
available for widespread consumption.
Finally, suppose that instead of an explanans that justifies a particular
historicized transcendental, there is an explanans that explains the
entire history of being, such as Hegel’s Dialectic of the Spirit or
Nietzsche’s Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Human
nature is then understood in terms of some kind of goal-oriented
process. The goal of the Hegelian process is abetting the Spirit’s total
self-consciousness (which Hegel believed is realized in the history of
being). Hence, an individual or a group is justified in pursuing a par-
ticular project provided that doing so promotes greater individual and
collective self-consciousness. The goal of Eternal Recurrence is the
Dionysian one of completely affirming life (which Nietzsche believes
has been thwarted by the forces of traditional morality and resentment
as they express themselves in the history of being). Hence, an individ-
ual is justified in pursuing a project provided that doing so is part of
life he/she would be willing to live over and over again for all eternity.26
In the case of either Hegelian Dialectic or Nietzschean Recurrence, a
number of possible projects may be equally justified because they each

promote the desired goal. This stands in stark contrast to Heidegge-
rian Angst, the point of which is that there is no ultimate philosophical
justification for any project Dasein might pursue.
In the last few paragraphs, I’ve argued that there are good reasons
to accept (C). However, Heidegger’s broader antimetaphysical thesis
follows only if it is also true that anxiety reveals Dasein as having no
fixed nature or essence or any other present-at-hand element in its
being. Regarding even this more limited phenomenological claim,
there are good reasons to be skeptical.
For there to be any scenario in which an individual Dasein is spurred
by Angst to confront the possibility of its own death and to reflect on
whether there is any justification for choosing among the various pos-
sible projects available to it, the Dasein in question must possess at least
two fundamental capacities: an intellectual capacity and a volitional
one. The intellectual capacity allows the individual Dasein to distin-
guish among the possible projects available to it, as well as to grasp the
ultimate possibility of its own death/finitude and to reason about
whether it is justified in pursuing any project. The volitional capacity
enables the individual Dasein to choose some of its available projects,
such as being a farmer, over others, such as being a carpenter, even if
the choice is ultimately groundless. Since Heidegger believes that every
Dasein is capable of experiencing Angst, the requisite intellectual and
volitional capacities are part of the Dasein’s being. Certainly, they are
not possible projects or activities Dasein may reflect upon and decide
whether to choose, since all reflecting and deciding are impossible
unless these capacities are already firmly in place. If anything, the rele-
vant capacities seem to be fixed elements or “present-at-hand” structures
that are at least partially definitive of human nature.
Against this, Heidegger might reply that there is no principled dif-
ference between these capacities and other circumstances in which
Dasein finds itself already “thrown.” Being a woman, being born in
1974, being gay, being in a world where others hate you for your race,
creed, or country of origin are all circumstances in which different
individuals find themselves and which they didn’t choose.27 Certainly
such circumstances are in no way constitutive of the nature or essence
of an individual Dasein “thrown” into them. Perhaps being capable of
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
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.
Narrowing the focus
Although the writings from Heidegger’s middle period don’t estab-

lish the cosmic negative existential, there may be grounds for a more
limited antimetaphysical result aimed at the kind of Scholastic natu-
ral theology discussed in Chapter 3. Here it is helpful to leave behind
the dubious phenomenological assertions in Being and Time concern-
ing Dasein’s “nullity” and return to the threads left hanging by
Heidegger’s atheology of Appropriation.
Heidegger develops that atheology partly in response to his early
quest for a phenomenologically substantive account of being. By
identifying being as such with the sequence of historicized transcen-
dentals, the concept of being is rescued from barren abstraction. For
these transcendentals are precisely the ways beings in general have
“shown up” or been disclosed to humans in the history of the West.
Philosophically conscious humans can also become aware that a par-
ticular transcendental, such as that of standing reserve, dominates or
“holds sway” over the epoch in which they live. Thus in the place of a
system of empty and bloodless classifications, we have a cosmic affair
complex or a protracted cosmic event the various dispensations of
which are endowed with rich experiential content.
Heidegger further analyzes this protracted cosmic event as contain-
ing two main constituents or, in Scotist terms, instants of nature:
Appropriation and the actual sequence of historicized transcenden-
tals It “sends” through which beings are disclosed in accordance with
the dimensions of true time. In Its very nature Appropriation is a send-
ing that depends on there being some history of being, though not
necessarily the actual one, an atemporal potentiality that may be
actualized in a number of possible ways. The actual history of being
structured by temporal dimensions is noncausally explained in terms
of the sending of Appropriation, but nothing explains this sending
itself.
Using the example of the sending of history of being by Appropria-
tion, the Heideggerian atheologian can press a specific objection
against Scholastic metaphysics epitomized by the Causal Argument

for a First Explanatory Being. The Causal Argument assumes that
every contingent event, even if it is uncaused, can be caused. Clearly,
Appropriation’s sending of the history of being is contingent, since
it may not have happened at all (so that there would have been no
Appropriation) or may have happened differently (so that there
would have been another sequence of historicized transcendentals).
Furthermore, Appropriation’s sending of the history of being cannot
be caused. For any possible cause of it would either be a happening
in the history of being—in which case we have the absurdity that the
history of being is already unfolding before itself—or it would be an
atemporal cause that is totally self-disclosed—in which case we have
the absurdity that being qua disclosure is “explained” by being qua
disclosure. In embracing a view of ultimate reality as a radically con-
tingent, uncausable sending of being/time by Appropriation, the
Heideggerian atheologian hopes to overcome the view that there is
a First Cause of all contingent being.
However, we saw that the atheology of Appropriation hits a snag.
Precisely because Appropriation’s essential sending is phenomeno-
logically unavailable, we can form no sufficient comprehension of
how It can serve as a viable explanans for the history of being. Nor do
Heidegger’s attempts to meet this problem of sufficient comprehen-
sion succeed. The Scholastic metaphysician can then turn aside the
objection to the Causal Argument by observing that the Heidegge-
rian atheologian’s purported example of a contingent and uncausable
event is simply unintelligible.
It is here that the Heideggerian atheologian gains traction by
exchanging an atheology of Appropriation for an atheology of non-
being or nothingness. Consider the following passage from the 1935
work An Introduction to Metaphysics, where Heidegger is wondering
why there are any beings at all rather than nothing:
Instead, this essent [i.e., the totality of beings] through questioning,

is held out into the possibility of nonbeing. Thereby the why takes on
a very different power and penetration. Why is the essent torn away
from the possibility of nonbeing? Why does it not simply keep falling
back into nonbeing? Now the essent is no longer that which just hap-
pens to be present; it begins to waver and oscillate, regardless of
whether or not we recognize the essent in all certainty, regardless of

whether or not we apprehend it in its full scope. Henceforth the
essent as such oscillates, insofar as we draw it into question.30
Heidegger is taking seriously the possibility of total nonbeing.

There is something, and so there can be something. Yet even though
there can be something there might not have been anything; in terms
of our earlier symbolism for maximal pure negation:
(P7) ◊[¬(∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F = F) • ◊(∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F = F)]
Why then is there anything at all?

Nowhere in An Introduction to Metaphysics does Heidegger answer
this question. I suggest that is because, at least in his middle period,
Heidegger thinks the question neither has nor demands any answer:
there is and need be no explanation for why there is anything rather
than nothing—there just is. Specifically, there is a protracted cosmic
event whose sole constituent is the history of being as the actual
sequence of historicized transcendentals. Yet unlike the very late
atheology of Appropriation, no phenomenologically unavailable
explanans “sends” or explains the actual sequence. Nothing whatso-
ever sends or explains the history of being. There might not have
been anything at all. Or there might have been nonhuman beings
but no humans. Or there might have been some other possible his-
tory of being besides the actual one. That the actual history of being
occurs rather than any of these alternative possibilities is a radically
contingent and ultimately inexplicable fact.
Notice that this atheology of nothingness avoids the problem of
sufficient comprehension. If ultimately there is no explanans, causal
or otherwise, for the history of being, then obviously there is no
need to understand the nature of any such explanans. This effectively
deprives the Scholastic metaphysician of any toehold for his objection
that Heidegger postulates an explanans for which we lack sufficient
comprehension. The Heideggerian atheologian may then renew his
attack on the Causal Argument. As an example of a contingent and
uncausable event, the atheologian offers not the sending of being/
time by Appropriation but the actual sequence of historicized tran-
scendentals in the history of being. This history cannot have a cause
because if it did then in exercising its causality this cause would be an

occurrence in being, and hence be part of the history of being, and
hence be causing itself—which is impossible. Essentially the Heideg-
gerian atheologian’s objection to the Causal Argument is the same as
before minus any postulation of some mysterious “It” called “Appro-
priation.”31 At the very least, the atheologian of nothingness appears
to have made a case, if not for a global antimetaphysical position,
then for the more limited antimetaphysical thesis that there is no
First Being, and thus that Scholastic metaphysics/natural theology
should be abandoned.32
The case is deepened by reflecting on an intriguing passage from
“What is Metaphysics?” where Heidegger criticizes the Christian
doctrine of creation ex nihilo:
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
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
Nothingness and the Problem

of Possibility
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.
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
thinkers—Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheistic materialists,

Derridean deconstructionists, post-metaphysical Heideggerians, and
so on—who disagree with us. Each of these positions has its own
canon of texts, some of them tantamount to scriptures, and its own
accepted procedures and practices, some of them quite poetic. With-
out a shared set of overarching metaphysical and philosophical
principles, how is substantive debate among these divergent intellec-
tual traditions possible? In the case of Radical Orthodoxy, the answer
seems to be that it isn’t and an inquirer has to be lucky enough to be
indoctrinated into the right tradition.1 In the case of Reformational
philosophy, “philosophy” is reduced to the dreary prospect of point-
ing out how the foundational commitments of other positions differ
from those of Biblical thought. Apart from the unlikelihood of show-
ing that, for example, atheistic materialism is internally inconsistent,
serious criticism of that position seems impossible because either we
commit a petitio principii by assuming our own ultimate commitments
or we contradict ourselves by appealing to considerations whose ulti-
mate commitments conflict with ours.2
Another possible response is if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em by recon-
ceptualizing orthodox Christian beliefs in post-metaphysical terms.3
God is not construed as a timeless, necessary being but as a participant
in the “fourfold” of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals where beings are
encountered in accordance with the dimensions of true time yet free
from metaphysical distortion. Such a strategy is wrongheaded from
the start—and not because it places God in time, since God’s relation
to time is a legitimate question even for traditional natural theology.
Notice, rather, that “divinities” are said to participate in the Heidegge-
rian fourfold, not “divinity.” What are these divinities? Not Zeus, Hera,
Apollo, and so forth, since for Heidegger belief in the ancient Greek
gods is part of a metaphysical epoch in the history of being he wishes
to overcome. As we saw in Chapter 2, Heidegger thinks that particular
beings can focus our practices, giving our lives direction and purpose
to a lesser or greater extent. Lesser focal points like a jug of wine, a
pair of peasant shoes, and a farmhouse in the Black Forest do so inti-
mately or locally,4 while a monumental work of art, a political
movement, or a charismatic leader can exercise its focusing power in
a much broader context. These greater focal points, which I suggest
are what Heidegger means by “divinities,” can act as replacements for

traditional religious idols by engaging equally intense emotions and
commitments in us.5 However, their plurality is redolent of polytheism
rather than the monotheism that is the mainstay of the Judeo-Chris-
tian tradition. Heidegger needs a “polytheism” of greater focal points
counterbalanced by one another, as well as by lesser focal points that
decentralize the world’s “worlding,” to offset the danger of a mono-
maniacal Thing like Der Führer.6 It is no accident that later Heidegger
remains entranced by ancient Greek thinking with its plastic, multifac-
eted conception of divinity. Any such “polytheism” is alien to
Judeo-Christian monotheism, so that any attempt to recast theistic
beliefs in a Heideggerian mold at best changes the subject and at
worst lapses into incoherence.
If not down one of these unacceptable paths, then whither hence?
In Wittgenstein’s words, “Back to the rough ground”—only not the
ground of ordinary language, but that of our metaphysical heritage.
Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness is now complete before us, in
the cross hairs, so to speak. To assess this atheology let us draw upon
deeper Scholastic resources. A good place to begin is with St.
Thomas.
The third way revisited
Aquinas’s Third Way argues from the existence of contingent beings

to the existence of an intrinsically necessary being that is the ground
of all contingency. In the course of his argument, Aquinas makes the
following remarks:
If nothing was in being nothing could be brought into being, and

nothing would be in being now, which contradicts observation. Not
everything therefore is the sort of thing that need not be; some
things must be, and these may or many not owe their necessity to
something else.7
Aquinas proceeds to argue that a series of necessary beings which

owe their necessity to something else must terminate in an intrinsi-
cally necessary being, which is the First Cause or God.
In the quoted passage, Aquinas is considering the hypothetical case

in which absolutely nothing exists—or in Heideggerian terms, in
which a contingent state of maximal pure negation obtains. Nothing
can then be brought into being by something else because ex hypothesi
there is no “something else.” The Angelic Doctor need not be read
merely as saying that, as a matter of fact, there has always been some-
thing because otherwise there wouldn’t be anything now. Instead, he
may be read as saying that if absolutely nothing existed then nothing
would be possible, since there would be no “something else” to serve
as the ontological foundation for possibility.8
Let us relate Aquinas’s point to the Heideggerian atheologian’s
central contention that even though there can be something there
might not have been anything. Suppose that there hadn’t been any-
thing at all. Then there would have been no ontological foundation
for any possibility, in which case nothing would have been possible.
In particular, p wouldn’t have been possible, where p is the actual his-
tory of being (or some actual being conceptualized through a
transcendental in that history and the dimensions of true time). If p
isn’t possible (¬◊p) then it is possible that p isn’t possible (◊¬◊p). But
then it isn’t necessary that p is possible (¬◊p). However, since p is
actual, trivially p is possible. And by the basic modal principle that
whatever is possible is necessarily possible, it follows that p is necessar-
ily possible (◊p). Thus from the Heideggerian supposition that
there might not have been anything at all, we have derived the con-
tradiction that p is both necessarily possible and not necessarily
possible. Therefore, the Heideggerian supposition must be rejected.
More generally, nothing—neither the actual history of being nor
some other history of being nor anything else—would be possible in
a state of maximal pure negation, so that a state of absolute nothing-
ness would be necessary. By simple observation of existing beings we
know that to be false.9
The Heideggerian atheologian may resist this Thomist objection at
two points. He may challenge Aquinas’s apparent assumption that
something is possible only if something else can bring it into being.
Or, he may reject the “basic modal principle” that whatever is possi-
ble is necessarily possible.
Let us take up these points in order.
The ontological foundation of possibility
Aquinas seems to assume that for p to be possible there must exist an

actual power to bring about or realize p. At first blush, this completely
misses the point of Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness, according
to which some history of being (actual or otherwise) is possible even
though there is no actual power or potentiality, such as Appropriation,
to realize it. The Heideggerian atheologian needn’t claim that a max-
imal state of pure negation obtains prior to the history of being but
only that a maximal state of pure negation is possible, and that in
such a state it would still be possible for there to be some history of
being in the absence of any actual power or potentiality to realize it.
This reply underestimates the force of Aquinas’s insight, which can
be appreciated independently of an account of possibility in terms of
actual power. Suppose again that there hadn’t been anything at all,
and substitute some other account of possibility for the real power
account—for example, a combinatorial account, according to which
p is possible if and only if p is a possible combination of certain ele-
ments (perhaps simple objects as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus
thinks on some readings, or simple concepts/notae as Scotus thinks10);
or an ideational account, according to which p is possible if and only
if there is an idea of p in the divine mind; or a propositional account,
according to which p is possible if and only if the proposition express-
ing p is a member of a maximally consistent set of propositions. In the
case in which absolutely nothing exists, not only is there no power or
potentiality to realize p, neither are there any elements which can be
combined to form p nor a complex concept of p, nor any ideas of p,
nor any maximally consistent sets of propositions including the prop-
osition expressing p. There is nothing whatsoever. In particular, there
is no ontological foundation in virtue of which p is possible. Contrary
to the atheology of nothingness, then, if there hadn’t been anything
there couldn’t have been any beings, history of being, or anything else.
As a last-ditch effort, the Heideggerian atheologian might insist
that in a state of maximal pure negation there are certain brute pos-
sibilities with no ontological foundation: the brute possibility in which
the actual history of being unfolds, the brute possibility in which
some other history of being unfolds, the brute possibility in which no
history of being unfolds, and so forth. Furthermore, these brute pos-

sibilities are possibilities, not actualities, which are precluded from
existing in a state of absolute nothingness. The notion of “actuality”
is relative to a world, yet reality encompasses not only what is actual
relative to our world but also what is merely possible. This sort of
modal realism, familiar from the work of David Lewis,11 requires a
substantial metaphysical commitment incompatible with the global
antimetaphysical position the Heideggerian atheologian wishes to
espouse. Nonetheless, the atheologian may regard that as an accepta-
ble tradeoff if it allows for the overcoming of Scholastic theology.
In truth, this sort of modal realism is inimical to Heideggerian
atheology. Remember that on the latter view, every being disclosed
in the history is utterly contingent, not only on the sense that its
existence is contingent, but also in the sense that whatever attributes
the being possesses are contingent because the various historicized
transcendentals through which beings are disclosed are themselves
contingent. For example, it is a contingent fact that the pepper tree
in my backyard is standing reserve at current time t because it might
have been disclosed otherwise at t. Lewis’s modal realism actually
implies that this is not a contingent fact. A being X possesses an
attribute Y contingently only if there is some possible world in which
X exists but doesn’t have Y. But on Lewis’s modal realism, a given
being doesn’t exist in different possible worlds but only has counter-
parts in some other worlds. So the pepper tree in my backyard only
exists in this possible world, not in any others. Trivially, then, there is
no possible world in which that tree exists but isn’t standing reserve at
t, so that it is an essential attribute of the tree that it is standing reserve
at t. The Heideggerian atheologian would want nothing to do with
such necessitarianism. And is an account of possibility really “an
acceptable tradeoff” for the atheologian if in principle it prevents
him from ever developing a global post-metaphysical position in
which not only God but also Forms, Spirit, the Will to Power, and the
metaphysics of modal realism are all overcome?12
In addition to the difficulties raised by an extreme version of modal
realism like Lewis’s, an ontology of brute possibilities threatens to
erase the epistemological advantages the atheology of nothingness
has over the atheology of Appropriation. Specifically, it is obscure
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.
Is the “Basic Modal Principle” really basic?
The Thomist objection against Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness

derives a contradiction from the supposition that there might not
have been anything: if there hadn’t been anything then nothing would
have been possible, including the history of being. Thus the history of
being isn’t necessarily possible. On the other hand, the history of
being is actual, so trivially it is possible. By the basic modal principle
that whatever is possible is necessarily possible, the history of being is
necessarily possible. Therefore, the history of being is both necessarily
possible and not necessarily possible, which is a contradiction.
Based on this reductio ad absurdum, the Scholastic metaphysician
rejects the supposition that there might not have been anything. But,
the Heideggerian atheologian might respond to the reductio differ-
ently by rejecting the principle that whatever is possible is necessarily
possible. On this approach, in the hypothetical case in which abso-
lutely nothing exists the history of being wouldn’t have been possible.
But in the actual case, the history of being is possible. Just because
something is possible in one case doesn’t mean that it is possible in
all cases. In other words, something may be possible without being
necessarily so.13
This requires the Heideggerian atheologian to abandon the claim
that if there hadn’t been anything there still could have been some-
thing. That by itself isn’t so bad, for he can continue to maintain
against the Scholastic that the protracted cosmic event consisting of
the actual history of being is not only contingent, since there might
not have been anything, but also inexplicable, for the reasons
broached earlier. Yet there is a more serious problem. Consider again
the hypothetical case in which there isn’t anything at all. According
to the Heideggerian response under consideration, in that case
nothing is possible. So the actual history of being isn’t possible (¬◊p).

Trivially, any truth that obtains is possible (p→◊p). Hence, in the case
in which there isn’t anything at all, trivially it is possible that the actual
history of being isn’t possible (◊¬◊p). But now we are back to Aqui-
nas’s earlier point: in a state of maximal pure negation, ex hypothesi
there is absolutely nothing that constitutes the ontological founda-
tion for this or any other possibility. There is no metaphysical basis
whatsoever that secures the possibility of the impossibility of p as
opposed to, say, the necessity of the impossibility of p—or, for that
matter, any modal permutation on p. Nor, we have seen, does the
Heideggerian atheologian have the option of taking the possibility of
the impossibility of the history of being or any other possibility in a
maximal state of pure negation to be a brute possibility.
I conclude that we have a refutation of the Heideggerian atheology
of nothingness, courtesy of St. Thomas. It isn’t possible for absolutely
nothing to exist, since otherwise nothing would be possible, includ-
ing the actual history of being. And the actual history of being, along
with many other things, is obviously possible, since it is actual. The
view that instead of the history of being (or reality in its totality or
absolutely EVERYTHING—whatever you want to call it) there might
be nothing at all is fundamentally incoherent. The dialectic of
Heidegger’s thought teaches us that Heideggerian atheology culmi-
nates in the atheology of nothingness, and we have now learned that
the atheology of nothingness is a failure. It is thus Heideggerian athe-
ology, not Scholastic natural theology, that should be consigned to
the dustbin of discarded ideas.
God and contingency
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
be asked: if the contingency of the universe and everything in it is

ultimately explained by God’s contingent creative choice, what
explains this choice? Apparently nothing. But then it seems that
explaining the contingency of the universe in terms of the unex-
plained contingency of God’s creative choice is no explanation at all.
From the direction of necessity, it may be objected: on the Scholastic
conception, God necessarily exists. God is also absolutely simple. By
the divine simplicity, God’s will and so God’s creative choice is the
same as God. But then, the divine necessity, God’s creative choice is
necessary, not contingent.14
We are swimming in deep waters. My goal isn’t to resolve all ques-
tions about divine simplicity, the divine will, and God’s aseity or
necessary intrinsic being, but only to outline an initial solution to the
puzzle so that it doesn’t act as a stumbling block to further theorizing
about these questions within a Scholastic framework.
First, the direction from necessity. It is natural to begin by imagin-
ing God on the one hand and God’s creative choice on the other.
The former is said to be necessary, the latter contingent. So far so
good. The crunch comes when we imagine God’s absolute simplicity
as a coalescing of these two independently conceived components. It
then seems that the modal character of only one of these compo-
nents must prevail, so that God’s creative choice must be necessary
(or else God Himself must be contingent).
This is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Instead,
let us look through the right end and begin with God’s simplicity.
Think of it as a divine singularity of pure being, the mirror image of
the purely negative singularity at the center of a black hole. On the
Scholastic view of Scotus and Aquinas, this divine singularity exists by
necessity. Now consider the actual universe U as everything other
than the divine singularity. The existence of U is metaphysically
dependent on the divine singularity, in the sense that if, per impossibile,
the latter hadn’t existed, U wouldn’t have existed either. Further-
more, we can certainly imagine many different possible universes U*,
U**, and so forth, each of which is different from U yet which, like U,
would be metaphysically dependent on the divine singularity if it
actually existed. That’s all we have to imagine to make initial sense of
how a necessary and simple being like God can nevertheless
contingently create any number of possible universes. To say that God

is simple and necessary is to say that the divine singularity cannot not
exist. And to say that God can contingently create any number of pos-
sible universes is to say that the divine singularity is compatible either
with there being no universe or with there being any one of a number
of possible universes that is metaphysically dependent on it.
True, this is merely a heuristic aid, not a full theoretical account.
We may still ask whether the divine singularity implies that God’s
attributes are merely different ways we conceive His essence, as
Aquinas thought, or whether within the divine singularity there is a
formal (more-than-conceptual-yet-less-than-real) distinction among
God’s attributes. Even so, hopefully, the heuristic aid will encourage
us to pursue these questions rather than to throw our hands up in
consternation.
Now let us approach the same puzzle from the direction of contin-
gency. In precisely what sense is God’s creative choice the ultimate
explanation of contingency? We need to be careful here. Something
is contingent if and only if it is possible but not necessary. Further-
more, there are contingent beings, such as the universe and everything
in it, which, in addition to being possible but not necessary, are also
actual. Therefore, when we ask what ultimately explains contingency,
we may be asking (1) what explains the fact that a given contingent
being is possible, or (2) what explains the fact that a given contingent
being is actual.
Concerning question (1), the answer adopted by Scotus and Aqui-
nas is that a given contingent being p is possible in virtue of God’s
absolute essence. God Himself is the ontological foundation of all
possibility. For Scotus, the ontological foundation of the possibility of
p is the idea or complete concept of p existing in the divine intellect,
a concept which ultimately consists in a combination of simple con-
cepts or notae which are mutually nonrepugnant.15 For Aquinas, the
ontological foundation of p’s possibility is God’s power to bring
p about.16 On both views, since God always exists even if absolutely
nothing else exists, if p is possible then p is always possible. And since
God necessarily exists, on both views it also follows that if p is possible
then it is necessary that p is possible, in line with the basic modal
principle discussed above.
The point I want to make is that God’s contingent creative choice

plays no role in determining what is (necessarily) possible for either
Scotus or Aquinas. That’s because what is possible is a reflection of
God’s essence, understood in terms of the divine intellect (Scotus) or
in terms of the divine absolute will or power to bring things about
(Aquinas). And God does not determine His own essence by some
contingent creative choice.17 Rather, God’s creative choice is the
answer to question (2): the reason why any contingent being isn’t
merely possible but actual is that God freely decides to create it. If
God’s decision to create p were necessary, then p wouldn’t be merely
possible but necessary. Hence, to guarantee p’s contingency, God’s
creative decision must be contingent. Yet the ontological foundation
of p’s modal status (◊p) remains God’s necessary essence, not God’s
contingent creative choice.18
Though agreeing that God is the ontological foundation of possi-
bility, Scotus and Aquinas present two very different views of the
divine aseity. Let us contrast them in light of the question of how God
knows actually existing contingent beings.
On the Scotist account, God’s simplicity doesn’t preclude a merely
formal distinction between the divine intellect with its multiplicity of
complete ideas and the divine will. God knows an existing contingent
being by knowing His complete divine idea of that being and know-
ing His formally distinct decision to create it. Scotus thinks there
must be at least a formal distinction between God’s intellect and
God’s will, since otherwise He fears that the necessity of the former
would transfer to the latter. This requires a satisfactory account of the
formal distinction, particularly as Scotus applies it to the divine
attributes.19
On the Thomist account (or at least one way of reading St. Thomas),
God’s absolute simplicity is incompatible with any more-than-concep-
tual distinction, formal or otherwise, between the divine intellect and
the divine will. God is simply a fully actualized power. We can begin
to understand the divine power by analogy with our own power of
vision. Aquinas understands vision to be an immaterial power not
reducible to any material object or physical process: intuitively, one’s
power of perfect 20-20 vision isn’t decreased by losing an eye or
increased by gaining a hundred eyes, though exercising our power of
sight requires possessing at least one normal eye.20 God’s absolute

power is like that, unlike our cognitive powers it doesn’t depend
upon a physical medium. Just as the power of vision extends to colors
and shapes yet not to sounds and smells, God’s power extends to the
logically possible yet not to the logically impossible; in neither case is
this a defect or an imperfection, but rather an intrinsic determina-
tion of the power under consideration. In addition, just as we have a
degree of freedom in how we actualize our power of vision in what we
choose to see or even whether we choose to see, so God is perfectly
free in how He actualizes His absolute power in what—if anything—
He chooses to create. Finally, in seeing a proper object of vision we
know what we see; the seeing and the knowing are one and the same.
Similarly, in exercising His absolute power, God knows what He wills,
and indeed His will and knowledge of His will are one and the
same.
These remarks are not intended as the last word on these matters
but only as a propaedeutic to further inquiry concerning them. One
way forward from here is to develop the contrasting Scotist and Tho-
mist positions in greater detail, drawing upon the source texts and
informed commentary and relating the discussion to contemporary
philosophical concerns in both the analytic and continental tradi-
tions. The contrasting positions may then be evaluated along a
number of metaphysical and epistemological dimensions, including
but not limited to modality. Ultimately, a reinvigorated Scholastic
metaphysics should emerge. Perhaps it will be definitely Scotist or
Thomist in orientation.
On the other hand, perhaps it will be a hybrid combining the best
elements of both. Or perhaps it will be some as-yet-undreamt-of alter-
native that grows from Scotist and Thomist roots. Only the dialectic
of thought, now freed from the errors of Heideggerian atheology,
will tell.
Chapter 7
A Positive Application
Refuting Heidegger’s atheology of nothingness may give the impres-

sion that there is nothing of philosophical value in it, particularly for
Scholastic metaphysics. That is a mistake. Even if it is impossible that
absolutely nothing exists, certainly it is possible that no contingent
beings exist. In this chapter, I will suggest that reflecting on the possi-
bility of a state of pure negation restricted to contingent beings serves
as a useful metaphysical tool, for it allows us to develop a Scholastic
solution to the problem of mathematical truth. Whether the meta-
physical instrument Heideggerian atheology has bequeathed us has
other philosophical applications is a question I invite others to inves-
tigate for themselves.
In presenting the problem of mathematical truth, it is helpful to
turn to the discussion of number in Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift.
Recall that according to the taxonomy of domains of beings Heidegger
extracts from Duns Scotus, the domain of sensory beings is distin-
guished from the domain of extrasensory beings, which is further
divided into the domain of logical beings, such as the contents of judg-
ments, and mathematical beings, such as numbers and perhaps sets.
The status of mathematical beings is related to an issue we initially
encountered in understanding early Heidegger’s theory of judgment.
If the contents of judgments are causally inert abstract beings like
Fregean senses existing in a nonspatiotemporal “third realm,” then it
is obscure how we can grasp such contents in psychic acts of judgment.
We saw how Erfurt’s realism allows Heidegger to maintain an antipsy-
chologistic conception of judgment without positing causally inert
abstract beings. The logical contents of judgments are affair com-
plexes having actual or nonactual being, and to grasp a given affair
complex is merely to recognize that it is logically possible.
A Positive Application 103
What of numbers and other mathematical beings? Unlike logical

contents, Heidegger seems to regard them as abstract objects divorced
from empirical reality:
Number has its pure and genuine “existence” only as non-sensible

object, and as such it is related to the objects [in empirical reality]
to be counted. Just as there are real and non-sensory relationships,
so there are real and non-sensory quantities.1
Yet if numbers are nonsensible, causally inert objects in “the abstract

realm of pure number,”2 then since the proper exercise of our nor-
mal cognitive capacities involves causal interaction with the objects of
cognition it is wholly mysterious how we can ever know or even think
anything about numbers, let alone use them to count ordinary spati-
otemporal beings.3
A tempting response is to identify our grasp of mathematical
“objects” with our grasp of the contents of mathematical judgments.
These mathematical contents are a species of logical contents of judg-
ments, and thus may be treated accordingly: to grasp a mathematical
content is just to recognize the logical possibility of a certain affair
complex. However, this response falls short. For intuitively, the con-
tents of mathematical judgments (e.g., that 2 + 2 = 4; that 3 + 6 = 14)
aren’t merely logically possible but logically necessary: either necessarily
true or necessarily false. Hence, we are left with the problem of
explaining the necessity of mathematical contents without postulat-
ing an epistemically inaccessible realm of abstract beings whose
properties and relations not only are what they are but also somehow
must be what they are.
The plan of this chapter is to probe both the problem of mathemat-
ical truth itself and some proposed solutions to it. After noting several
views that might be attributed to Heidegger based on his remarks in
the Habilitationsschrift, I will raise a question about the manner in
which the problem of mathematical truth is usually formulated. This
will enable me to set aside one fashionable contemporary solution,
as well as to articulate the initially more plausible view that can be
extracted from Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift. Proceeding dialecti-
cally, we will see that middle Heidegger’s reflections on nothingness
undermine the initially plausible view while pointing the way toward
the correct view.
More on Heidegger’s discussion of number

in the Habilitationsschrift
Following Scotus, Heidegger distinguishes between pure numbers and

the counting of sensory beings, and he claims that pure numbers
are necessary for counting.4 Like sensory beings, each pure number
possesses unity or uniqueness as contrariety to other numbers; yet
unlike sensory beings, such as spots in a meadow, the contrariety of
pure numbers is well-ordered by arithmetical relations like =, >, <,
and so forth: “Here we come up against a sequence [of pure num-
bers] that has a direction which is completely determined, univocal,
and singular . . . a completely determined ‘path’ fixed by the determi-
nateness of these numbers.”5 For this reason, Heidegger says that
pure numbers “exist in a homogeneous ‘medium’” because they are
distinguished solely by their positions in the well-ordered sequence.6
By contrast, empirical reality consists of beings existing in a hetero-
geneous medium because they exemplify a different kind of determi-
nateness—for example, this tree has a particular shape, size, color,
temporal duration, and place that aren’t exactly the same as that
of any other tree. Pure numbers lack such determinateness or
heterogeneity.
How then is counting possible? Heidegger answers that there must
be some homogeneity in empirical reality. For example, we cannot
count trees if we view them merely in their determinate individuality;
however, counting trees becomes possible when they are “projected
into an homogeneous medium” in which “[o]nly a certain aspect of
objects is looked at”—namely, that the beings in question are all trees
and thus possess a common property.7 This is similar to Frege’s point
that a statement of number is an assertion about a concept: to say
that there are four trees in my backyard is to say that four objects
fall under the concept is a tree in my backyard.8 Heidegger echoes
this point, though in the context of an ontology of real properties
which particulars instantiate rather than one of concepts under which
objects fall.
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”:
With this we have come to see the determinateness of number

through the law of series. In that number in a series occupies (situ
distinguitur) a specifically definite position (situs), it is also suffi-
ciently determined as this one identical number . . . The individual
numbers are only distinguished by their position in the series (situ
recte distinguitur propter maiorem vel minorum replicationem talium
unitatum).9
This passage might be read as setting forth a kind of structuralism

about mathematics: pure natural numbers are totally determined by
their positions in a series governed by certain mathematical laws—
specifically, the five Peano axioms,10 supplemented with the standard
recursive definitions of arithmetical operations (addition, multiplica-
tion, etc.) which in turn can be used to define the total order ≤ on the
natural numbers (i.e., x ≤ y if and only if there is a c such that x + c = y).
Any ω-series of objects satisfying these rules can serve as pure natural
numbers: Russell type-theoretic sets, Zermelo-Fraenkel sets, von Neu-
mann sets, Quinean NF sets, and so forth. Alternatively, and perhaps
more in the spirit of pure structuralism, one might say that there are
no natural numbers, just the abstract mathematical structure speci-
fied by Peano arithmetic which may be interpreted in various
set-theoretic ways.11 Of course, for structuralism to provide a solution
to the problem of mathematical truth, it must be explained why
grasping an abstract structure is any less mysterious than grasping
abstract objects in a third realm.12
On the other hand, Heidegger’s characterization of pure numbers
as objects in no way dependent on empirical reality13 doesn’t sit well
with a structuralist reading. For if pure numbers are objects, then it
seems legitimate to ask exactly what objects they are. Merely being
told that various ω-series of sets satisfy the rules of Peano arithmetic
doesn’t tell us which of these series of sets actually are the pure natural
numbers.14 The force of this challenge might be blunted by denying

that pure natural numbers are objects—yet we have seen that
Heidegger is unwilling to do so.
Heidegger also flirts with a very different view. He claims that
“Mathematical demonstration of its objects is usually carried on ‘as if’
they exist in themselves,”15 his implication being that mathematical
“objects” such as pure numbers don’t really exist in themselves but
are merely fictions. One difficulty with mathematical fictionalism as a
solution to the problem of mathematical truth is whether it does jus-
tice to the necessity normally attributed to mathematical statements.
If the truth of “2 + 2 = 4” amounts to the occurrence of “2 + 2 = 4” in
the mathematical “story” told by humans, then since humans might
not have existed and hence might not have told this or any mathe-
matical story, there might have been no “fact” of the matter about
whether 2 + 2 equals 4 (just as there might have been no “fact” of
the matter about whether Achilles killed Hector if Homer hadn’t
existed and composed The Illiad as he actually did).16 Heidegger
doesn’t develop an “as if” approach to mathematics, and there is no
further mention of the idea in the Habilitationsschrift. Thus, we don’t
know whether he was aware of this difficulty or what he would say
about it.
At this stage, we should be cautious in attributing to Heidegger
mathematical platonism, mathematical structuralism, mathematical
fictionalism, or any other definite view of mathematical truth. Instead,
let’s step back and reconsider the problem of mathematical truth
itself. Is there really a problem here? And if so, what exactly is the
problem, and what would giving a solution to it involve?
The anatomy of a dilemma
The problem of mathematical truth is often stated as a dilemma

between what is required for mathematical truth and what is required
for mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical statements
apparently requires that there be abstract beings such as numbers or
sets. Knowledge of certain beings requires causal interaction between
our cognitive capacities and those beings. Since the abstract beings
required for mathematical truth are causally inert there can be no
causal interaction between them and our cognitive capacities, and

thus it seems that we cannot know or even think about these abstract
beings.
The situation envisaged by the dilemma is decidedly odd. It is as if
there is an unbridgeable gulf, on one side of which stand humans with
their cognitive capacities and linguistic practices, and on the other
side of which stand the inscrutable objects of mathematics. To bring
out this oddness, let’s think about both sides of the gulf a bit more.
Beginning with the far side, as it were, we are told that certain
abstract objects are required for the truth of mathematical state-
ments. The objects are “out there” in a mathematical system waiting
to be conceptualized by us, not unlike the way stars and planets of an
uncharted solar system are out there waiting to be discovered,
explored, and mapped by us.17 Yet clearly, a mathematical system isn’t
like a solar system, in that the objects of the latter aren’t causally inert
and thus are observable at least in principle. More significantly, stars
and planets are contingent beings that have been different or might
not have been at all. Yet the necessity of mathematical statements
implies that any objects required for the truth of such statements
must not only necessarily exist but also possess their properties neces-
sarily. The image of a system of abstract objects “out there” on the far
side of an unbridgeable gulf leaves it completely mysterious why those
objects must be there and why they must be a certain way.
Turning to the near side of the gulf, suppose that we become gripped
by the dilemma and worry about how we can know or even think any-
thing about pure numbers qua nonsensible, causally inert abstract
beings. Does our basic understanding of arithmetic evaporate forth-
with? Do mathematical equations suddenly become opaque to us, in
the way that “Green ideas sleep furiously” is opaque? No. Understand-
ing the dilemma doesn’t stop us from giving the answer “8” if a child
asks us what comes after 7 and before 9, or is obtained by adding 4 and
4, or is the cube of 2. It doesn’t cause us to stop comprehending the
Peano axioms. Nor does fretting about how cognition of mathematical
objects is possible prevent us from forming some conception of what is
allegedly on the far side of the unbridgeable gulf; indeed, the idea of a
distinctively mathematical system of objects “out there” awaiting our cog-
nition is indispensable to formulating the dilemma!
The oddness that pervades both sides of the unbridgeable gulf

might be taken to show that there is something wrong with the
dilemma itself. Perhaps the dilemma neglects another way of con-
struing pure numbers that avoids postulating an epistemically
inaccessible third realm while doing justice to the necessity of mathe-
matical statements. Or perhaps the dilemma itself presupposes an
understanding of pure numbers that isn’t threatened by the dilemma
and hence is immune to the problem of mathematical truth. Let us
consider two proposals, each of which develops one of these lines of
thought.
Neo-Fregean platonism
We saw that identifying pure numbers with abstract objects “out

there” awaiting our cognition makes it puzzling not only why these
objects must be but also why they must be a certain way. The neo-
Fregean platonist comes at this image from a different angle by
questioning what it means to say that pure numbers are out there
“awaiting our cognition.”18 It is as if we already have an idea of the
true statements—arithmetic, algebra, calculus, and so on—we want
to make about these and other mathematical objects, only we must
first succeed in “harpooning” the right objects by referring to them
with singular terms (e.g., “2,” “4”) before we can apply the proper
predicates and functional expressions (e.g., “is an even number,”
“x + x = y”) to the referents to yield the desired true statements (e.g.,
“2 is an even number,” “2 + 2 = 4”). And since the causal requirement
on reference, together with the noncausal nature of abstract objects,
makes using singular terms to refer to abstract objects impossible, we
are impotent to state any truths about pure numbers, mathematical
or otherwise.
Here it is assumed that using a singular term to refer to an object
must be an achievement or a fact that obtains independently of the
truth or falsity of sentences containing the term. Inspired by Frege’s
principle “never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only
in the context of a proposition,”19 the neo-Fregean platonist upends
this assumption by insisting that we have no coherent conception
of what singular terms and other referring expressions denote
independently of our understanding of what it is for sentences con-

taining such expressions to be true.
In particular, what it is for sentences about numerical identity to be
true is stipulated by biconditionals such as
(1) The number of Fs = the number of Gs if and only if there is a
one-one correspondence between the Fs and the Gs20
where F and G are concepts under which objects fall (Frege) or prop-
erties which particulars instantiate (Heidegger). Similarly, what it
is for sentences about direction identity to be true is stipulated by
biconditionals such as
(2) The direction of line a = the direction of line b if and only if a
and b are parallel.21
The neo-Fregean regards sentences such as (1) and (2) as implicit
definitions, respectively, of the expressions “the number of . . .” and
“the direction of . . .”22 For “the number of Fs” to refer to an object
that is identical to the object referred to by “the number of Gs” is just
for the sentence “The number of Fs = the number of Gs” consisting
of the two singular terms flanking the identity sign to be true; and
according to (1), that consists merely in there being a one-one corre-
spondence between the Fs and the Gs. The neo-Fregean claims that
nothing more is required for referring to pure numbers than the
truth of identity statements like “The number of Fs = the number of
Gs” whose truth-conditions are stipulated by the relevant bicondi-
tionals.23 In understanding such statements and recognizing that
their truth-conditions are met, we succeed in thinking about pure
numbers without requiring any causal interaction between abstract
objects and our cognitive capacities.
Neo-Fregeanism raises delicate issues about the status of Frege’s
context principle and the relation between truth and reference. One
might argue that truth is epistemically prior to reference, in that we
cannot know what expressions designate until we have understood
the truth-conditions of sentences in which they occur; but that refer-
ence is metaphysically prior to truth, in that the truth-conditions of
sentences are determined by what their constituent expressions
designate. If so, and if what the constituent expressions, including
singular terms, designate is partly determined by causal connections

obtaining between words and their referents, then the impossibility
of causal connections between words and abstract objects means that
the singular terms contained in mathematical statements can’t refer,
and so the statements themselves don’t have truth-conditions.
However, set that matter aside. A more immediate worry is whether
the scaled-down version of mathematical platonism recommended
by the neo-Fregean really resolves the difficulties faced by a more
robust mathematical platonism. Recall the perplexity we encoun-
tered in thinking about the far side of the dilemma’s unbridgeable
gulf: the image of a system of abstract mathematical objects “out
there” awaiting our discovery leaves it obscure why such objects must
be there at all or why they must be a certain way. Does neo-Fregean-
ism fare any better?
The appropriate generalizations of (1) and (2) are abstraction
principles in which the identity conditions of a kind of entity are
explicated in terms of an equivalence relation. Let these principles
be construed as stipulations, or implicit definitions, or analytic mean-
ing postulates, or necessary truths. The trouble is that the truth of the
abstraction principles doesn’t guarantee that the entities in question
exist at all, let alone that they exist by necessity and that there is a
body of necessary truths about them. For example (2) may be true
even if there are no lines whatsoever, or if there are lines none of
which are parallel, as in non-Euclidean geometries. Hence (2) may
be true even if there are no directions of lines at all. Of course, if it is
already a necessary fact that parallel lines a and b exist and that there
are necessary truths about them, then by (2) it follows that the identi-
cal directions of lines a and b exist by necessity and that there are
necessary truths about them too. But then clearly the necessary exis-
tence and nature of the entities in question—parallel lines a and b,
and thus their identical directions—are presupposed, not explicated,
by the (relevant instance of) the abstraction principle.24
Exactly analogous remarks apply to the necessary existence and
nature of numbers of concepts: (1) may be true even if there are no
concepts F and G at all and hence even if no identical numbers of F
and G exist by necessity or are characterized by a body of necessary
truths. Therefore, the appropriate generalization of (2) doesn’t
guarantee that pure numbers exist and possess certain properties

necessarily.25 No less than the perplexing imagery of robust platon-
ism, the abstraction principle at the heart of neo-Fregean platonism
fails to capture the necessary existence and nature of pure numbers.
Rules and objects
Returning to the near side of the unbridgeable gulf, we noticed that

worrying about how thought of abstract objects is possible doesn’t
lead to our understanding of arithmetic winking out. Even under the
sway of the dilemma we can still add, multiply, divide, and so forth.
This suggests that thinking about numbers has nothing to do with
the impossible feat of causally interacting with causally inert abstract
beings, but is something more down-to-earth, familiar, and innocuous.
In this respect, Heidegger’s remarks about the “law of series” point
in a different direction from neo-Fregeanism. Laws are rules, and
rules aren’t free-floating abstractions but are deeply embedded in
our ongoing activities, practices, and lives. This is part of what Witt-
genstein has in mind when he tells us that “there is a way of grasping
a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we
call ‘obeying a rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases.”26 For example,
we grasp the rules of chess by learning what obeying or going against
them in actual cases is, whereupon we can codify these rules and
write them down in a chess manual. There are plenty of actual cases
where our rule-following practices can be said to give us a purchase
on a range of objects. The rules of chess specify pawns, knights, rooks,
and other pieces. Chess pieces may have various physical realiza-
tions—wood, stone, ivory, crystal—but our understanding of what
such objects are, considered purely, is given by the quasi-recursive
rules of chess which describe their initial positions on the board and
legitimate moves from there. It is possible to play chess without any
board or pieces but entirely on paper or even (for chess geniuses) in
one’s head. We might imagine a variant of chess in which rules are
used to specify a potentially infinite number of chess pieces: once
player A’s piece P reaches the last row on player B’s side of the board,
an extra row is added to that side and a duplicate piece P* with the
same legitimate moves as P and under A’s control is added to the new
square immediately in front of P. None of this has anything to do with

causal connections obtaining between our chess terms and abstract
chessmen “in themselves.”
Just so, we grasp the rules of arithmetic by learning what obeying or
going against them in actual cases is, and the rules we grasp can be
said to give us a purchase on pure natural numbers as objects without
“harpooning” anything “out there.” Just as chess can be played on or
off the board, arithmetic can be practiced at different levels of abstrac-
tion from physical beings in concrete situations.27 And just as the
rules of chess can be codified and even adapted to allow for a poten-
tially infinite number of pieces, the rules of arithmetic can be codified
in the Peano axioms, which already allow for a potentially infinite
number of successors, and written down. All of this has nothing to do
with impossible causal connections between numerical terms and
abstract objects.28
Nevertheless, as in the case of neo-Fregeanism, there is a concern
whether a rule-based conception of mathematical objects does justice
to mathematical necessity. We can begin to bring out this concern by
comparing the rule-based conception with mathematical fictional-
ism. Recall that according to the latter, the truth of mathematical
statements consists in their occurrence in the mathematical “story”
told by humans. If humans hadn’t existed then there would have
been no “fact” of the matter about whether mathematical statements
were true, just as there would have been no “fact” of the matter about
the truths of chess if humans and their chess rule-following practices
hadn’t existed. This conflicts with the idea of mathematical state-
ments expressing necessary truths that obtain regardless of whether
humans exist. Let us place ourselves in a Heideggerian frame of mind
again and imagine a state of pure negation restricted to all contin-
gent beings. Then there would have been no humans; no ongoing
human activities, practices, and lives in which arithmetical rules are
embedded and in which obeying and going against such rules are
exhibited in actual cases; no agreed-upon methods of proof; no sta-
ble instruments of calculation (rulers that don’t expand and contract
willy-nilly, abacus beads that don’t capriciously multiply, etc.) With-
out this backdrop of contingent fact, there would be no mathematical
rules and hence no fact of the matter about whether, for example,
2 + 2 = 4. We might say that “the result would be no mathematics at

all,” or that mathematical judgments would “cease to have meaning or
sense,”29 or that mathematics wouldn’t be applicable. Whatever we say,
we seem to deny that there would be mathematical truths in the hypo-
thetical scenario, and consequently to reject mathematical necessity.
One possible response should be mooted up front. It might be
argued that our linguistic practices, broadly considered, are what
give meaning to mathematical statements which may then be pro-
jected into radically different counterfactual situations and evaluated
as true or false. Our linguistic practices convey a definite meaning
on the equation “F = ma.” Given the statement with that meaning, we
may consider whether it would be true in a Newtonian universe
devoid of us and our practices, and return a “Yes” verdict. However,
the parallel between laws of nature and mathematical statements
breaks down. After all, in a human-less Newtownian universe there
still would be a regularity in the behavior of physical objects that
conforms to “F = ma.” The objects and their properties determine
the regularities that make our statement “F = ma” true in the envis-
aged counterfactual situation. Yet in a situation in which there are
no human practices, what makes our statement “2 + 2 = 4” true?
Properties of physical objects which ensure the requisite regularity?
No, for those are merely contingent. The natural numbers and their
necessary arithmetical properties? Then we are back to the reified
realm of abstract beings postulated by robust mathematical
platonism.30
A better strategy for the proponent of a rule-based conception of
mathematics is to reconfigure the notion of necessity to suit his (our?)
purposes. The only real necessity is conditional or relative necessity:
given the rules of chess embedded in our ongoing practices and codi-
fied in our manuals, “The knight moves two squares vertically and
one horizontally or two horizontally and one vertically” is a necessary
truth. For the only criterion we have for something’s being a knight in
chess is afforded by the rules, and the only criterion afforded by the
rules is moves two squares vertically and one horizontally or two horizontally
and one vertically. In exactly the same way, given the rules of arithmetic
embedded in our ongoing practices and codified in the Peano
axioms, “2 + 2 = 4” and other arithmetical truths are necessary because
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:
(1) Given such-and-such rules embedded in such-and-such practices,

such-and-such statements are true.31
(2) Only in the context of our ordinary arithmetical rule-following
practices do attributions of arithmetical truth make sense or
have meaning.
(3) We have no purchase on the rules (of chess, of arithmetic) and
the truths (of chess, of arithmetic) they underwrite apart from
our ongoing activities, practices, and lives in which such rules
and truths are embedded.
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
envisaged situation.33 Since ex hypothesi there are no contingent beings

in that situation, there are no human practices in it either. Conse-
quently, the ultimate basis for the truth of these claims, at least in a
state of pure negation restricted to all contingent beings, has nothing
to do with human practices.34 Since (1)–(3) are necessary truths that
would remain true even if no contingent beings existed, the ultimate
basis for their truth must be a necessary being that would exist even if
no contingent beings existed. And the only being like that we have
encountered is the First Being. The ultimate basis or ontological foun-
dation for (1)–(3) and for all other necessary truths is God.
A Scotist elaboration
A venerable tradition in philosophical theology going back at least as

far as Augustine has is that mathematical and other necessary truths
are in some sense identical with God, Who is Truth.35 If humans are
created in the image of God, then it stands to reason that humans will
naturally evolve practices which reflect this Truth. Unfortunately, the
position is seldom spelled out in satisfactory detail. Even St. Augustine
writes, “This indubitable fact we maintain, I think, not only by faith,
but also by a sure though somewhat tenuous form of reasoning, which
is sufficient for the immediate question.”36
We can make substantial progress by drawing upon Scotist notions.
Corresponding to a necessary truth such as 2 + 2 = 4 is an idea in the
divine intellect. In light of Heidegger’s emphasis on the law of series
governing pure numbers, we may say that this is the divine idea of
arithmetic detailing the functional relations among natural numbers
as well as their proper ordering, an idea we would express using the
Peano axioms. (There is no reason why a Scotist account of the com-
plexity of divine ideas should be shackled to a crude compositional
model: for example, the concept BACHELOR is compounded from
the simpler concepts NOT, MARRIED, ADULT, and MALE.) For Sco-
tus, by the divine simplicity God is identical with (the multiplicity of)
divine ideas in his intellect. Since God exists, necessarily, the divine
ideas—including the divine idea of arithmetic—are in some sense
necessary. The catch is that different divine ideas are necessary in dif-
ferent senses.
In the case of the divine idea of a contingent being, such as Socra-

tes’s being short, God knows whether this idea is true by knowing not
only the idea itself but also by knowing His ordained will: if He knows
that He has decided to create a contingent being conforming to this
idea, then the idea is true; otherwise, it is false. Thus the divine idea
of a contingent being is not its own truth basis, so that its presence in
the divine intellect guarantees not the necessity of the contingent
being (p) but only the necessity of its possibility (◊ p).
On the other hand, in the case of other divine ideas, such as the
divine idea of arithmetic, God knows whether this idea is true merely
by knowing the idea itself. He doesn’t have to know anything besides
the idea, such as a creative decision of His ordained will or an exter-
nality such as a system of abstract objects “out there.” This is the
nugget of truth in the rule-based conception of mathematical truth:
to know that 2 + 2 = 4 it is sufficient to know the rules of arithmetic;
we don’t have to consult either empirical reality or some extrasensory
“third realm” of abstract beings. Thus, the divine idea of arithmetic is
its own truth basis, so that its presence in the divine intellect guaran-
tees not just the necessity of its possibility but its very necessity. And
the absence of an idea (e.g., 3 + 4 = 14) from the divine intellect guar-
antees its impossibility. Call an idea that is its own truth basis intrinsic,
an idea that isn’t extrinsic.37
In the dilemma between what is required for mathematical truth
and what is required for mathematical knowledge, the question of
how we can know abstract beings looms large. Is the Scotist account
any better off? It identifies God as the basis for all mathematical and
necessary truth. Hence our mathematical knowledge requires knowl-
edge of God—and God is the abstract (nonspatiotemporal) being par
excellence. It is true that, unlike the abstract beings postulated by the
robust mathematical platonist, God isn’t causally inert since He is the
First Cause of all contingent beings. If a creative cause resembles its
effect in some significant respect(s)—perhaps through the cause’s
eminence, whereby it contains formally the being and nature of the
cause—then we might infer that there is some respect of our created
mathematical practices that gives us knowledge of God as the basis of
mathematical truth. However, this assumes a suitable rehabilitation
of the notions of eminent and formal causation which has yet to be
developed. Moreover, even if these notions can be made tolerably

clear, they don’t tell us in exactly which respect our mathematical
practices provide knowledge of Truth.38
Fortunately, we have at our disposal another Scotist notion, that of
a pure perfection or a property that it is better to have than any prop-
erty incompatible with it.39 In grasping arithmetical truths, we too
consult the idea of arithmetic as it is expressed by rules grounded in
our ordinary activities, practices, and lives. There is no need to look
elsewhere. Even so, in applying these rules we sometimes make mis-
takes by misreading, miscounting, or forgetting to carry (e.g., when
I mistakenly conclude that 627 + 849 = 1466). Yet God makes no
mistakes.40 A pure perfection applies both to human mathematical
knowers and to God as mathematical knower: directly knowing intrinsic
ideas. But whereas God possesses this perfection in the mode of infal-
libility, we only possess it in the mode of fallibility. Certainly we
comprehend this perfection, just as we comprehend other perfec-
tions like wisdom. In comprehending what it is for us to know directly
the intrinsic idea of arithmetic codified in our rules, we comprehend
what it is for God to do so: it is exactly the same, except that God pos-
sesses this direct knowledge in the mode of infallibility. (Similarly, in
knowing what it is for Charles to be wise we know what it is for God to
be wise: it is exactly the same as what it is for Charles to be wise, only
God possesses this wisdom supremely and without any limitation.)
Because God is identical with His intellect, and hence with His direct
and infallible knowledge of the intrinsic ideas in His essence, it fol-
lows that in comprehending the aforementioned pure perfection we
ipso facto comprehend God as necessary Truth itself. The epistemol-
ogy of mathematical truth requires no impossible causal interaction
between human cognitive capacities and causally inert abstract beings
“out there,” but only human understanding of the appropriate
perfection.41
Our rule-following practices aren’t constitutive of arithmetical
necessity. Rather, in learning what counts as obeying or going against
the rules of arithmetic in actual cases, we come to understand the
divine idea of arithmetic, albeit imperfectly. Though we cannot
possess direct and infallible knowledge of this divine idea, we can
understand what it is to possess such knowledge, and thus what it is to
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”?
The Scotist elaboration of Augustine’s insight relies heavily on the

formal distinction. God’s necessity is transferred to the intrinsic
divine ideas by virtue of the God’s identity with them; our compre-
hension of the perfection directly knows intrinsic ideas in the mode
of infallibility secures our comprehension of God as Necessary Truth
by virtue of the God’s identity with His knowledge. The Scotist
maintains the compatibility of these identities with a less-than-real-
yet-more-than-conceptual difference between God, God’s ideas,
God’s knowledge, and God’s other perfections.44 In the polemic
against the Heideggerian atheologian, this formal distinction is per-
missible since Heidegger himself assumes some version of it. Yet now
that we have left the dialectic of Heidegger’s thought behind and are
propounding a Scotist account of mathematical necessity, we are
committed to this distinction. To the extent that it is puzzling or
unclear, so is the account.
The easy thing to say here is that this is a place where further inves-
tigation is needed. No doubt, that is correct—but then we risk
sounding like early Heidegger when he says on Erfurt’s behalf that
the possibility of complex thought apart from language is possible is
a matter for further theoretical investigation.
A less easy yet more interesting thing to say is that some marriage
between the basic Scotist account of mathematical necessity and
Aquinas’s conception of the absolute simplicity of God may hold the
key to resolving difficulties raised by the formal distinction. Accord-
ing to Aquinas, God is a fully actualized and immaterial power like
our power of vision, though not depending on any physical medium.

Certain necessities are intrinsic determinations of the divine power
as the power to know in accordance with basic mathematical and log-
ical necessities (1 + 1 = 2; nothing is P and not P simultaneously), just
as vision is the power to see in accordance with a visual logic of colors
and shapes (every perceived shape and color occupies some point in
the visual field; nothing has more than one shape or color all over
simultaneously). Our seeing and our knowing what we see are one
and the same, and what we see is not determined by the logic intrin-
sic to our visual power but is to some degree a matter of choice;
similarly, God’s power and His knowledge of it are the same, and
what God creates is not determined by intrinsic necessities but to
some extent a matter of choice. The appearance of plurality is an
artifact of our description or specification of the power in question;
the power itself is wholly simple, without any real parts or multiplicity.
On Aquinas’s view, there is no need for the formal distinction.
In this characterization, analogy seems indispensable in conveying
what we are trying to say: the divine power is like our power of vision
in that both are immaterial and exhibit a degree of freedom, yet dis-
similar in that the divine power is completely independent of matter
and doesn’t exercise its cognition or freedom in reaction to external
objects; just as visual logic is intrinsic to our power of vision, so basic
mathematical and logical necessities are intrinsic to the divine power;
God’s power is to God’s knowledge of it as our seeing is to knowing
what we are seeing. The main obstacle to incorporating Aquinas’s
conception of the divine power into a Scotist framework is that the
former appears to require some type of analogical predication,
whereas the latter requires univocal predication—a univocal predica-
tion crucial to the Scotist account of how we know God as the
ontological foundation of necessary truth. I’m not saying that these
commitments can’t be squared, only that I don’t yet know how to
square them and that I yearn for a better grasp of the issues at stake.
It is important to be honest, but it is also important to be realistic.
I have written what may be regarded as a manual for meeting the seri-
ous Heideggerian challenge to Scholastic metaphysics. With that
challenge defused, a multitude of difficult issues lies before us. In
light of this prospect, it is important not to be timid. Modern cosmol-
ogists who postulate black holes, curved space-time, quasars, and
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
Our study of Heideggerian atheology is almost complete. We have

followed the dialectic of Heidegger’s thought from the metaphysics
of the Habilitationsschrift to the atheology of Appropriation in the very
late works, and from there to the atheology of nothingness that can
be recovered from the thinker’s middle period. On behalf of the
Scholastic, we raised a fatal objection against the atheology of noth-
ingness. Then we salvaged one aspect of this atheology—the possibility
of nothingness limited to contingent being—to develop a Scholastic
solution to the problem of necessary mathematical truth.
A thread we left hanging is the phenomenology of being. Heidegger
relates being to disclosure, eventually identifying being with the series
of historicized transcendentals which are the ways beings have been
disclosed to humans in the history of the West. We have rejected
Heidegger’s historicism; and to avoid the charge that Scholasticism
makes being qua disclosure essentially dependent on itself, we have
also resisted understanding being in terms of disclosure. By doing so,
haven’t we stripped being of all phenomenological content and
reduced the transcendentals to “an inadequate, schematic table”?1
Let us return one last time to the Habilitationsschrift. As we saw,
Heidegger devotes most of his attention to the transcendentals of
unity (unum) and truth (verum). He has comparatively little to say
about the transcendental of goodness (bonum) until the conclusion
of his thesis. There, Heidegger contrasts the medieval worldview’s
“multiple differentiations in value” and its teleological orientation
with the “uncertainty” and “complete disorientation” of modern life.2
On the medieval view, every being—rocks, trees, animals, humans,
and so on—is good insofar as it strives to realize its proper end (telos).
By applying this notion to all beings of every different kind, medieval
humans construed striving to realize its proper end as a transcendental
coextensive with being (ens).
It is easy to dismiss medieval teleology as arcane and outdated. We

no longer believe that a rock is trying to achieve a goal by falling.
From dust motes to mountains, numerous beings behave in a man-
ner devoid of purpose. Since we have come to realize that striving to
realize its proper end doesn’t apply to all beings, this notion can no
longer be taken seriously as a transcendental.
Yet there is a residue of truth in the medieval view. For according to
it, the transcendental of bonum has to do with multiple differentia-
tions in value. And no less than their medieval predecessors, modern
humans rank all beings of every different kind, from starfish to oil
rigs to stellar systems, according to some scale of value. Moreover,
ranking beings according to a scale of value has a strong experiential
content for us. Imagine a rapacious realtor whose scale of value ranks
a being as more valuable the more market value it has. When he
walks across a prime tract of available land, he encounters various
beings in a particular way: the fresh running water and virgin timber
pop out as especially noticeable, while pebbles underfoot and birds
flying overhead fade into oblivion. (Not showing up at all is the same
being counted valueless.) Or imagine a chronic consumer who ranks
beings according to whether they satisfy her personal desires and
improve her status. The baubles and trinkets she encounters in shops
stand out as precious little treasures, the SUV she drives on her way
home as an impregnable rolling fortress, the other drivers as oppo-
nents to be beaten; meanwhile, the late winter fields and the early
spring sky of palest blue pass by unnoticed. Clearly, such rankings can
become habitual, a person’s fundamental way of perceiving reality.
These examples raise a troubling question for us: is the scale of
value we use to rank the beings we experience correct? Do we regard
certain beings as having less value than they really have, or other
beings as having more value than they truly do? Any ranking of beings
according to their value presupposes some standard of goodness or
perfection—possessing market value, satisfying one’s desires and
improving one’s status, eliminating needless suffering, or something
else. How do I know whether my standard of goodness is the right
one, or whether there even is a right one?
Perhaps the matter can be settled intellectually. In the case of mathe-
matical truth, we saw that our ordinary practices facilitate our grasp of
Conclusion 123
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:
An argument arose among the disciples about which of them was

the greatest. Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a
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
In Jesus’s day, children were valued as little more than chattels. In

the value ranking Jesus reveals, children are of supreme value
because receiving them allows us to receive him and his Father. We
have here what is known by scholars of Luke as a “reversal act”—only
it involves not merely upsetting the social and political order but
altering the fundamental terms in which we experience the beings
around us.
Ranking all beings in accordance with a scale of value fixed by a
standard of goodness is possible independently of special revelation.
However, the passage from Luke suggests that ranking all beings in
accordance with a scale of value fixed by true goodness is not. It is
Christ who reveals the right scale of value and its proper standard. We
might say that although our medieval forebears were wrong in think-
ing that all beings have a purpose, they were right in thinking that
some do—in particular, human beings. Our purpose is union with
God, and other beings have greater or lesser value according to the
extent they facilitate our union with God and thus with one another.
These aren’t matters we are taught by natural reason, but by God
Himself in the Person of His Son.
We know we have come to the end of our task because we have
passed beyond the province of philosophical or natural theology
and entered that of revelation. Only in the person of the Son and
other acts of divine grace is the full phenomenological content of
being revealed through the transcendental of bonum. Thus, reason
rests as we wait in faith. In our waiting, we must avoid all compla-
cency or haughtiness, instead striving always to persevere in a daily
attitude of humble openness to revelation in all its forms. Exactly
what constitutes union with God must be revealed to us. Whether
other beings besides humans—perhaps higher animals or life forms
we can scarcely imagine—have as their ultimate purpose union with
God in a mode distinctive to them must be revealed to us. Whether
we have fully appreciated the value of some beings in facilitating
Conclusion 125
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
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
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
would exist by reason of what is not a being. Therefore, it is producible by

another” (A Treatise on God as First Principle, section 3.5).
12
Here I am influenced by the following remarks by King:
. . . 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:
Anything to whose nature it is repugnant to receive existence from some-

thing else, exists of itself if it is able to exist at all. To receive existence from
something else is repugnant to the very notion of a being which is first in the
order of efficiency, as is clear from the third conclusion. And it can exist, as
is clear from the second conclusion.
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
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
his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1989). This sort of pragmatism itself raises important questions which are
beyond the scope of this essay, such as whether an intellectually satisfying over-
coming of philosophical confusions amounts to nothing more than training
ourselves not to talk in certain ways. I doubt that it does. To someone gripped
by the problem of whether there is a proof of a First Being that is the uncausable
cause of all contingent being, simple, intelligent, and infinite, a solution does
not consist in dropping the vocabulary containing the terms “First Being,”
“cause,” “contingent,” and so forth. Nor is the point confined to metaphysics:
we haven’t solved the problem of whether Y’s act violated X’s right to free
speech merely by jettisoning all talk of rights and free speech.
2
Heidegger explicitly adopts a nondeflationary view of Appropriation: “Appro-
priation is to be thought in such a way that it can neither be retained as Being
nor as time” (On Time and Being, p. 43).
3
Intuitively, if X is sent by Y then Y isn’t literally caused by X or by anything
else.
4
For example, see ibid., p. 19: “And yet, how else are we to bring the ‘It’ [Appro-
priation] in view which we say when we say ‘It gives Being,’ ‘It gives time’?
Simply by thinking the ‘It’ in the light of the kind of giving that belongs to it:
giving as destiny.” Characterizing the giving of being and time by Appropria-
tion as “destiny” strongly suggests that the giving is a necessary feature of
Appropriation. Furthermore, by definition appropriation is always appropria-
tion of something, and Appropriation is said to be what “appropriates Being
and time into their own in virtue of their relation [to each other]” (ibid.).
Hence, Appropriation essentially involves the appropriating of being and
time. But, since this appropriating is just the sending or giving of being and
time, Appropriation essentially involves the sending or giving of being
and time.
5
See especially Book 1, d. 39 of the Lectura trans. Allan B. Wolter in Duns Scotus
on the Will and Morality (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 1986). For a helpful discussion of Scotus’s view, see Calvin G. Normore,
“Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed.
William A. Frank, pp. 129–160 (especially section I). Scotus also explains
divine freedom by applying the notion of signa to God’s timeless choices.
6
Although Scotus focuses on causal explanations, there is no reason in princi-
ple why all such explanations must be causal ones.
7
Heidegger warns us not to understand the “event” of Appropriation “in the
sense of occurrence and happening” (On Time and Being, p. 20), and goes on
to give “the [recent] agreement reached within the European economic com-
munity” (ibid., pp. 20–21) as an example of such an occurrence or happening.
Here I understand Heidegger not to be rejecting the idea that Appropriation
is an event or occurrence in any sense, but only as an event or occurrence in
time. For the event of Appropriation is supposed to give time itself.
8
Similarly, in timeless eternity God’s power to create or not to create a universe
is essentially prior to His actually creating a universe, but in no way does His
power to create or not to create a universe depend on His actually creating a
universe.
140 Notes
9
See Chapter 3, note 22.
10
In Scotist terms, we might say that there is a formal distinction between Appro-
priation and the general fact that there is some history of being or other: these
are basically the same phenomenon, though there is a less-than-real-yet-more-
than-conceptual distinction between Appropriation, which is a potentiality, and
the general fact that there is some actualization or other of that potentiality.
11
12
Isn’t a potentiality still a being in some sense? Heidegger may feel that because
such an abstraction is so radically different from beings—it is neither a possi-
ble cause, effect, or (intrinsically self-disclosed) agent, nor is nonspatial and
atemporal—not describing It as “a being” is appropriate!
13
Heidegger describes the finitude of Appropriation in terms of “end” and
“limit” (ibid.).
14
Ibid., p. 20. Heidegger speaks of “time-space” because he holds that spatiality
is derivative from true time. See ibid., p. 14. I shall not discuss here Heidegger’s
later understanding of time-derived spatiality, except to observe that fully
appreciating a spatial expanse, such as a pasture, requires temporality—i.e.,
the time expended in walking it from fence to fence.
15
Ibid., p. 21.
16
Ibid., pp. 12–13.
17
Ibid., pp. 22–23.
18
Heidegger says, “Insofar as the destiny of Being lies in the extending of time,
and time, together with Being, lies in Appropriation, Appropriating makes
manifest its peculiar property, that Appropriation withdraws what is most fully its
own from boundless unconcealment” (ibid., p. 22, emphasis added).
19
In Poetry, Language, and Thought, pp. 187–210.
20
See “. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .,” ibid., pp. 211–229.
21
Ibid., p. 225.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., p. 226.
24
For a recent account of analogy see James F. Ross, Portraying Analogy (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
25
In more Scotist terms, a proper or per se cause formally contains all the being,
goodness, and so on, that is actually contained in its effect.
26
Writing from a Heideggerian perspective in Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on
Overcoming Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), John D.
Caputo argues that Aquinas falls prey to an “oblivion” in which he does not
think the nature of Appropriation as “sending” (see especially chapter 5).
Caputo also criticizes neo-Thomists like Johannes Lotz for attempting to
explain this “sending” in terms of the ipsum esse subsistens, or God, as meta-
physical cause of the esse and essentia of created beings (see especially pp.
212–229). Even if these points are granted, Caputo fails to consider the
Thomist rejoinder that in merely rejecting Aquinas’s metaphysics of causa-
tion, Heidegger still has not provided a satisfactory, noncausal account of
Appropriation as the “sending” of being/time. Thus from a Thomist perspec-
tive, until such an account is provided, Heidegger’s talk of the “event of Ereignis
that ‘sends’ being and time” is nothing but air.
Notes 141
27
There remains the Heideggerian atheologian’s objection, discussed in
Chapter 3, against making being qua disclosure essentially dependent on a
First Being who is its own act of self-disclosure. The Heideggerian might pro-
test that this “explanation” explains nothing, or even that it is viciously circular
because it makes being qua disclosure essentially dependent on being qua dis-
closure. In response, the Scotist metaphysician might deny that being should
be understood in terms of disclosure—either the disclosure of beings to us or
the self-disclosure of the First Being—but instead in terms of the disjunctive
transcendentals, one of which is uncaused (God) or caused (created beings).
Created being qua caused essentially depends on uncreated being qua
uncaused, which isn’t an absurdity but merely a truism. The residual content
of being is then explicated by the other simple and disjunctive transcenden-
tals, none of which involves disclosure. Although this response is available to
the Scotist, note that by severing being qua being from disclosure it threatens
to deprive being of any substantive phenomenological content. From our dis-
cussion in Chapter 1, we know that early Heidegger would be dissatisfied with
this result. I share his concern and will return to it in the Conclusion.
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).
I am also mindful that certain kinds of unrestricted quantification, such as

that over all sets in naive set theory, engenders Russell’s paradox. Though the
issue lies beyond the scope of this work, in the case of sets I am inclined to
allow unrestricted quantification while accepting something like Zermelo’s
rank hierarchy of levels in which sets are formed only from elements at previ-
ous levels, so that there is no set S of all sets and hence no subset of S that is
the set of all sets that aren’t members of themselves. For a similar view see
Richard Cartwright, “Speaking of Everything,” Nous 28 (1994), pp. 1–20.
142 Notes
8
“What is Metaphysics?” p. 97.
9
In Logical Positivism, ed. A.J. Ayer (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 60–81.
10
11
Ibid., p. 101.
12
Ibid., p. 102.
13
Ibid., p. 101.
14
Ibid.
15
See ibid., p. 105, where Heidegger mentions Dasein’s “thrownness” which it
sometimes fails to master in certain kinds of “nihilative behavior.” I will pres-
ent some possible examples of such behavior later in this chapter.
16
For the heart of Heidegger’s discussion see Being and Time, pp. 213–306.
17
Ibid., p. 281.
18
19
Ibid., p. 103.
20
Ibid., p. 109.
21
Ibid., p. 104.
22
Or perhaps, letting “F” be a variable for Platonic Forms, “¬(∃F)(F = F).”
23
Ibid., p. 105.
24
Heidegger contrasts the nihilative behavior of antagonism and rebuke with
the anxiety of “those who are basically daring” and “are sustained by that on
which they expend themselves—in order thus to preserve the ultimate gran-
deur of existence” (ibid., p. 106). This anxiety of the daring, I suggest, is the
attitude of those who reject any metaphysical explanans and accept the ulti-
mate inexplicability of the history of being.
25
Ibid., p. 103.
26
Nietzsche need not postulate the literal truth of the Eternal Recurrence but
only use it as a thought-experiment to determine whether a particular life is
worth living. As I see it, Heidegger’s most fundamental criticism of Nietzsche
is that, despite his tirade against traditional philosophy and morality, he
attempts to give some philosophical and moral justification for the value of a
living a certain way by appealing to the hypothetical notion of Eternal Recur-
rence, when in fact no such justification is possible. The matter deserves much
more attention that I can give it here.
27
As Heidegger puts it,
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
from this formal interdependence to Heidegger’s broader antimetaphysical

thesis. For, if Dasein conceptualizes and chooses by exercising objective
intellectual and volitional capacities, then these capacities must have a deter-
minate nature; and a full account of their nature must mesh with a specific
account of the ultimate reality, either one that is drawn from a particular tran-
scendental in the history of being or one that appeals to some process
underlying this history. Mere phenomenology cannot teach us otherwise.
30
Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987), p. 28.
31
To the extent that the term “Appropriation” plays any role in the atheology of
nothingness, it doesn’t designate a post-metaphysical explanans of being/time
but the possibility that we become “appropriated” into a post-metaphysical age
in which we accept the radical contingency of the world and appreciate the
interrelatedness of beings in it. For example,
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
(P7) ◊[¬(∃x)(∃F)(x =x • F = F) • ◊(∃x)(∃F)(x = x • F = F)]
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
combinatorial account, see David M. Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of

Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
11
Lewis elaborates and defends his modal realism in On the Plurality of Worlds
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
12
Though it also lies beyond the scope of this work, the assumption by Lewis and
other contemporary metaphysicians that there is a widely agreed-upon cost-
benefit metric for determining what is an acceptable tradeoff is nothing but a
canard. For one metaphysician, accepting extreme modal realism is an accept-
able tradeoff because (apparently) it allows for a systematic account of
properties, laws of nature, and other philosophical notions. For another meta-
physician, accepting extreme modal realism is not an acceptable tradeoff
because (1) it is outlandish and (2) it implies the highly undesirable result
that no being possesses any contingent attributes. Unlike the case of applied
economics, where there are clear principles enabling an entrepreneur to
determine whether an up-front cost is justified by the high likelihood of
greater profits in the long run, cost-benefit metaphysics is a farrago of conflict-
ing intuitions and subjective preferences.
13
Thus the Heideggerian atheologian might deny the axiom ◊p→◊p, which in
conjunction with other elementary axioms yields the system S5 as the standard
interpretation of propositional modal logic. In terms of “possible worlds,” on
the standard interpretation if a world W is possible relative to another world
W* then W is possible relative to all worlds. By contrast, on the nonstandard
interpretation the Heideggerian atheologian is proposing, if W is the actual
world containing the history of being as it has actually unfolded and W* is the
possible world in which absolutely nothing exists, then W is possible relative to
itself (and perhaps relative to some other possible worlds) but not possible
relative to W*.
14
As Scotus presents the objection, “The first being’s volition of other things is
not something other than the first being itself; therefore such volition exists
necessarily and consequently it is not contingent” (A Treatise on God as First
Principle, 4.26).
15
As Ross and Bates observe,
[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
Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American

Press, 1984), pp. 163–189. I won’t try to resolve this exegetical dispute here
but merely note that making God’s power to bring things about the ontologi-
cal foundation of possibility is one metaphysical option.
17
Wippel is quite clear on this matter: “Precisely because the divine essence
viewed as imitable in a given way is the ultimate ontological foundation for
any possible, possibles are necessarily such from all eternity. So much, then,
for the claim that the divine will intervenes in their constitution” (ibid.,
p. 171).
18
For this reason we must be cautious of Ross and Bates’s potentially misleading
remark that for Aquinas, “the possibilities, particularly the natural kinds, the
regularities of nature, and the individuation of things are not fully determi-
nate from the divine self-knowledge but are created along with the things and
the individuals” (“Duns Scotus on Natural Theology,” p. 214). Whatever the
status of natural kinds, the regularities of nature, and the individuation of
things, certainly for Aquinas not all possibilities are determined by God’s cre-
ative choice. For example, on Aquinas’s view a particular contingent being X
is possible because God can bring X about, and it is a necessary fact about God
(the divine power) that He can bring X about. Obviously, this necessary fact
about God, which amounts to the necessary possibility of X, isn’t “created
along with the things and individuals” but is absolutely uncreated.
19
He also applies it to the Persons of the Trinity; for example, see A Treatise on
God as First Principle, section 4.6.
20
Does this clash with Aquinas’s view that “mind is not a power of a bodily organ
in the way sight is the power of our eyes” (Summa Theologiae 1a q.76 a.1; p. 113 in
McDermott’s translation)? Not if we understand full-fledged vision to include
the mental power to abstract from particulars and grasp universals, such as
kinds of colors and shapes, or sequences of expression types, such as the last
line of the vision chart. For the mental ability to grasp universals (forms)
shared by particulars, see ibid., 1a q.75 a.5 (p. 110 in McDermott’s translation)
Chapter 7
1
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):
∀F∀G (the number of Fs = the number of Gs ↔ there is a one-

one correspondence between the Fs and the Gs)
∀a∀b (the direction of line a = the direction of line b ↔ a and
b are parallel)
148 Notes
as implicit definitions, respectively, of the expressions “the number of [a

concept]” and “the direction of [a line].” The second-order generalization
has come to be known as “Hume’s Principle.”
23
In addition, the Peano axioms may be proven in a suitably strong second-
order logic supplemented with Hume’s Principle. See Hale and Wright’s paper
for references to the proof, as well as to material exploring the issue of whether
the impredicativity of Hume’s Principle required for the proof is in any way
philosophically objectionable. There is also the important question of whether
the entities second-order quantifiers are taken to range over (functions, prop-
erties, perhaps certain sets) exist by necessity.
24
This point in an entirely general one about abstraction principles. The class
abstraction principle that class X is identical to class Y if and only if X and Y
have all and only the same members doesn’t guarantee that classes exist by
necessity; the “Thomist” abstraction principle that angel A is identical to angel
B if and only if A and B are the same species doesn’t guarantee that angels
exist by necessity; and so on.
25
Indeed, since it is an empirical question of contingent fact whether two lines
drawn in space are actually parallel or whether two concepts (e.g., trees in my
back yard and bushes in my front yard) are equinumerous, the abstraction princi-
ples projected from (1) and (2) guarantee that the truth of direction of line
statements and of numerical identity statements are empirical matters of con-
tingent fact. This makes it difficult to regard numerical identity statements as
mathematical in any important sense, since mathematical truths are usually
taken to be necessary, even a priori.
26
Philosophical Investigations, third edition, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York:
Macmillan, 1968), section 201, p. 81.
27
On a rule-based conception, we can even give sense to Heidegger’s remark
that “Number has its pure and genuine ‘existence’ only as non-sensible object”:
unlike tables, chairs, and trees, pure numbers are not grasped through sen-
sory experiences but through reflection on the “law of series” or rules such as
the Peano axioms.
28
The view described in this paragraph may have affinities with Wittgenstein’s
discussion of mathematical proof in Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics,
eds, G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe (Cambridge: The
M.I.T. Press, 1991). However, a consideration of Wittgenstein’s complex view—
or even whether Wittgenstein can be properly said to hold any philosophical
view about mathematics—lies beyond the scope of this work. Further study is
needed of the relevant material from Wittgenstein and from his commenta-
tors. For a development of the “no view” interpretation, see Juliet Floyd,
“Wittgenstein on 2,2,2 . . .: The Opening of Remarks on the Foundation of Mathe-
matics.” Synthese 87(1991), pp. 143–180. For a somewhat different reading of
Wittgenstein, see Steve Gerrard, “A Philosophy of Mathematics between Two
Camps,” in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, pp. 171–197.
29
Gerrard, “A Philosophy of Mathematics between Two Camps,” p. 189.
30
Of course, following the lead of philosophers like Quine, we could give up the
idea that mathematical truths are different in any interesting way from deeply
entrenched statements of natural science. At the risk of sounding jejune, such
Notes 149
an expedient seems drastic—if not downright unintelligible. Recalcitrant data

can and often have prompted a rational revision of our scientific theories in
which deeply entrenched laws of nature are abandoned in favor of new ones.
Can we even entertain a “rational revision” in which recalcitrant data prompt
us to abandon the statement “1 + 1 = 2” for some new arithmetical principle
governing 1, 2, and so forth? Hardly. That isn’t to say we can’t imagine a
human subject being conditioned through shock therapy to dissent vigorously
when queried with “1 + 1 = 2?” and to assent vigorously when queried with
“1 + 1 = 6?” Yet shock therapy is one thing, rational revision something else
entirely.
31
I do not understand the rule-based conception to be a form of conventional-
ism, at least as conventionalism is conventionally understood. For example, it
is no part of the rule-based conception that mathematical and logical truths
are true solely by virtue of certain rules adopted as conventions. For as Quine
explained in “Truth by Convention” (reprinted in The Ways of Paradox, Harvard
University Press, 1976, pp. 77–106), logic is required to deduce the truths
from the adopted rules, so that logical truths must already be in place before
the rules are adopted and hence, on pain of infinite regress, can’t be conven-
tional in the same sense as the rules. Nor is the rule-based conception the view,
criticized by Michael Dummett, that mathematical and logical necessity consists
merely in our decision to treat certain statements as unassailable, a decision we
can alter on a whim; see “Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics (reprinted
in Truth and Other Enigmas, Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 166–185). In
the rule-based conception, the emphasis is rather on the fact that the only cri-
teria we have for describing pure numbers as objects are those afforded by the
arithmetical rules exhibited in our practices—rules which have never been for-
mally “adopted” and which cannot be altered “on a whim.”
32
I take it that claims like (1)–(3) are specimens what Wittgenstein calls “gram-
matical remarks” or “reminders” assembled for a certain purpose; for example,
see Philosophical Investigations, section 127 and the immediately surrounding
text. Perhaps Wittgenstein would complain that I am distorting “claims” (1)–
(3) by not setting them forth merely as such reminders, and thus that I am
treating them as idle wheels which can be turned though nothing else moves
with them (ibid., section 271). Yet it is remarkable how we can all understand
(1)–(3), feel their modal force, and wonder about whether they are correct
and if so then why apart from any specific context in which our purpose is sim-
ply to remind philosophers of something they’ve forgotten or overlooked.
That suggests there is more to (1)–(3) than meets the Wittgensteinian eye.
33
Another way of putting this point: even if there were no contingent beings, it
would still be possible for there to be humans who grasped the rules of arith-
metic and the truths underwritten by them in the context of arithmetical
rule-following practices. Why would that still be possible? Because it is a neces-
sary truth that such practices are what would give humans their purchase on
arithmetical rules and truths; and whatever is necessary is possible.
34
Could the truth of (1)–(3) have one basis in the “null” situation and another
basis in the actual situation? It is hard to see how if (1)–(3) are to have the
150 Notes
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
2
Ibid., p. 255.
3
I am indebted to Father John Martin for this insight.
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Index
absolute nothingness, state of 93, 95 divine idea of 115–17, 150–1

abstract beings 16–19, 102–3, rules of 112–13, 116–17, 149
106–7, 111, 113, 116–17 arithmetical rules 112, 114, 149
abstract objects, system of 107, 116 arithmetical truths 113–14, 117–18
abstraction principles 110–11, 148 art 28, 34, 91, 131–5
adjacency, mode of 10 artworks 28, 131–2
affair complexes 18–9, 24, 102, 129 atemporal cause 54, 85
nonactual 18–19, 44, 129 atheology 1, 4, 5, 37, 70, 73, 84–5,
agency 34, 54, 83 92, 121
analogy 67–9, 100, 119, 140 very late 8, 44, 55–6, 72
of causation 68–9 Augustine, St. 115, 118, 150
of proportionality 67–8 authoritarianism 42
angels 14, 148
angst 76, 82–3 Bates, Todd 48, 135–8, 144–6
Anscombe, G. E. M. 148 Being and Time 4, 21–2, 75–6, 80,
appropriation 3, 26–7, 29, 31, 33, 84, 129–31, 142
35–41, 43–6, 52–69, 72–3, 79, belief, orthodox theistic 1
84–7, 89, 94, 132–4, 138–40 beliefs, religious 90
atheology of 4, 5, 23, 26, 36–7, 39,
41–7, 57, 61, 65, 68–70, 84–5, capacities
95, 121 intellectual 19, 82
event of 41, 139 volitional 82–3, 143
finitude of 61, 140 Caputo, John 1, 134, 140
inaccessible 63 Carnap, Rudolf 71, 74, 79, 141
intuition of 37 causal Argument 47–8, 85–7, 136
nature of 62, 64–5, 69, 72, 140 causal assumption 137
unknowable 96 causation 37, 47, 51, 53, 68–9, 136,
very late atheology of 5, 72, 86 140, 143
Aquinas, St. Thomas 1, 2, 27–9, central Analogy 69
35–6, 65, 67–8, 92–4, 97–100, classification 28, 131
119, 131, 138, 140, 144–6 cognition
Aristotelian categories 14, 28, 30–1 intellectual 27
arithmetic 108, 112, 114, 117–8, special object of 18, 128
123, 146–7, 150–1 colors 27, 45, 101, 104, 119, 146
154 Index
compositio 11–12 divine

conception, rule-based 112–13, ideas 115–17, 130
148–9 intrinsic 118, 151
congruity 12–13 intellect 99, 100, 115, 144–5,
conjunction 9, 135, 145 150–1
constructibles 9, 12–13, 127 simplicity 98, 150
construction, intransitive 12 divinities 26, 42, 72, 91–2, 134, 143
consumption 81 Dreyfus, Hubert L. 133–4
contingency 24, 51, 54–5, 58, 88,
92, 97–100, 138–9, 143 ens 7, 15–16, 89, 121
bedrock 57 epochs 22, 30, 32, 52, 54, 77
radical 4, 5, 73, 88, 143 Erfurt, Thomas of 6–14, 16–17, 19,
uncausable 51–2, 55, 88 20, 44, 118, 126–9
contingent beings 51, 55, 92, 99, essential mode, general 10–11
100, 102, 107, 112, 114–6, eternal Recurrence 81, 142
136–9, 146, 149–50 existence, necessary 110–11, 144
contingent event 52, 70, 85 experience, mystical 43, 134
contrariety 15, 23–4, 73, 104, 130 extralinguistic reality 9–14, 16, 18,
conventionalism 149 21–2, 44
correctness 32, 40–1, 131
objective 29, 30, 32, 39, 40 fictions 14, 106, 126, 147
correspondence 14, 39, 40, 128 fictive judgments 129
cosmos 138 finitude 61–2, 140
counting 104 First Being 46–7, 50–1, 54–6, 73, 78,
creative choice, contingent 98, 100 87–8, 115, 136–9, 141, 143–5
criteria, external 32 First Cause 1, 37, 47–8, 54, 80, 85,
curved space-time 120 90, 92, 116, 135, 138, 143, 150
First Efficient Cause 135
Dasein 21–2, 28–9, 72, 75–80, 82–4, First Principle v, 36–7, 47, 135–7,
131, 142, 144 143, 145–6, 150
death 34, 76, 82 formal distinction 31, 100, 118–19,
deponent 11–12 140
destiny 34, 132, 139–40 formal interdependence 31, 41, 44,
determinant constructibles 13 59, 62–3, 72, 142
dialectic 4, 23, 70, 79, 101 forms
dicta 8, 9, 19–21 logical 71, 127
dimensionality 33 ultimate 36
disclosure 54–6, 58, 85, 89, 90, 121, fourfold 26, 42, 65, 72, 91
138, 141, 143 freedom 60, 80, 119
dispensations 22, 26, 30, 32, 34, 84, Frege, Gottlob 104–5, 109, 147
89, 90, 134 Friedman, Michael 71
Index 155
Ge-stell 29, 30 historicized transcendentals 30–1,

Gelassenheit 3, 61, 72, 133–4 33–4, 36–7, 40, 45–6, 55, 57,
God 29, 36–7, 63, 65, 68–9, 73, 81, 61, 64–5, 75, 89, 95–6, 121,
87–8, 90–2, 97–101, 115–9, 133
124–5, 138, 140–1, 144–6, actual sequence of 60–1, 84, 86
150–1 particular 57, 62, 80–1
attributes 99 sequence of 37, 58, 61, 67, 69,
choice 87–8 77–8, 84–5
goodness 68 history
identity 118 contingent 90
knowledge 118–19, 150 economic 42
knowledge of 116, 150 human 53
nature 88, 138 monomaniac 42
power, timeless eternity 139 unfolding 53
timeless choices 139 Hölderlin, Friedrich 65–6
grammar 10, 14, 17, 126 homogeneity 104, 129
Hume’s Principle 148
Habilitationsschrift 6–8, 14–15, 19,
21, 23, 30, 44, 73–4, 103–4, identity statements, numerical 148
106, 121, 126, 128–9 implicit definitions 109–10
Hale, Bob 147 independence, mode of 10, 13
Heidegger, Martin i, ii, 1, 4–8, individuation 146
14–24, 26–37, 39, 42–6, 52–5, infallibility, mode of 117, 150
59–63, 65–6, 71–80, 84–7, infinite regress 38, 130, 149
91–2, 102–6, 128–34, infinity 46, 48–9
139–44 instants of nature 60, 69, 84
atheology 1, 25–6, 37, 39, 43–5, intuition 27–8, 33
57, 59, 61, 68–9, 84, 90, 92, of being and time 37, 65
94, 96, 134
dialectic of 44, 97, 118, 121 Jesus 123–4
interpretation of 39 judgments 6–8, 13–18, 22–3, 26, 31,
late 31 74, 102, 127–9, 131
meontology 23 antipsychologistic conception
young 4, 5, 7 of 5, 6, 22, 102
Heideggerian contents of 102
atheologian 3, 32, 39, 41, 43, 52, logical contents of 16, 18,
55, 57, 62, 69, 70, 84–6, 88–9, 102–3
93–7, 118, 132, 145 justice 81, 106, 108, 112
kinds 31–2
Heideggerian Angst 82 King, Peter 136–7
heterogeneity 104, 129 knowledge, infallible 117–18
156 Index
language 8, 19–21, 27, 31–2, 44–5, common 10

59, 65, 74, 118, 129–34, 140, definitive 10, 31
143–4 grammatical 13
mental 21, 129 passive 9–11, 13, 128
lemma 48, 50, 137 special 10–11, 20
Lewis, David 95, 145 subaltern 10–11
logic 5–8, 15–18, 22, 71, 79, 119, modi
130, 149, 151 essendi 9, 20
logical contents 16–19, 103 significandi 8, 9, 20
abstract 18–19 modists 8, 126, 129
logos 29, 30
Luke 124 natural kinds 146
natural numbers 49, 105, 113,
mathematical 115, 147
fictionalism 106, 112 natural reason 124, 150
judgments 103, 113 natural science 2, 147, 149
knowledge 106, 116 natural theology 1, 36, 45–7, 54, 70,
necessity 112, 118 84, 89, 90, 97, 124, 135, 137,
objects 37, 107–8, 112 144–6, 150
statements 106, 110, 112–13 nature 5–7, 15, 17–18, 20, 22, 24,
necessity of 107–8 27–8, 37, 50–2, 59–61, 68–9,
truth 5, 102–3, 105–6, 108, 113, 75–6, 82–4, 110–11, 130–3,
116–17, 121–2, 146, 148, 151 135–6
rule-based conception of 114, 116 human 82
mathematics 2, 105–7, 112–13, instant of 60
147–9, 151 laws of 113, 145
maximal pure negation 24, 74, 86, necessary truths 110, 113–16,
93–4, 97, 141 118–19, 137, 149–50
mental acts 16, 21, 128 necessity 32, 37, 47, 51, 88, 92,
mental words 20–1 97–8, 100, 103, 110, 113–14,
meontology 23 116, 118–19, 135–6, 148, 150–1
metaphysics ii, iv, 1–4, 8, 26–7, 29, logical 119, 149
32, 36, 39, 45–6, 57–8, 71–5, negation 24, 72–4, 78, 87, 127
85–6, 90, 131–2, 136 operator 74, 76
modal operators 135–6 negativity 8, 23, 25, 130
modal realism 95, 145 neo-Fregeanism 109–12
modality 101, 136, 144 Nietzsche, Friedrich 29, 81, 142
modes 9–14, 19, 20, 29, 33–4, 59, 63–4, nihilation 77
80, 117–18, 124, 127–8, 141 nihilism 132–4
accidental 11–12 nonbeing 23–4, 85, 87–8, 130, 132
active 9, 10, 128 notae 99, 144–5
Index 157
nothingness vii, 3–5, 71–81, 83, 85, practices, human 113–15

87, 89–91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, present-at-hand 76, 80
103, 121, 144 primordiality 39
atheology of 8, 23, 25, 70, 73, 86, priority, natural 62–3
89, 90, 92, 94–7, 102, 121, privations 14, 23–4, 73, 126–7,
134, 143 129–30
nouns 9–11, 20, 127 pronouns 9, 127
numbers, infinite 111–12, 135 proportionality 67–8, 134
propositions 50, 94, 108, 136
objectivity 6, 7, 23, 29, 131, 133 psychic acts 6, 16, 102
objects psychologism 15–16, 18
non-sensible 103, 148 pure negations 23–4, 73–4, 87, 130
present-at-hand 75–6 maximal state of 94, 97
onto-theology 1, 70, 138 state of maximal 93–4, 97
overcoming 3, 32, 36, 39, 41–2, pure numbers 103–11, 115, 146,
57–8, 62, 71, 95, 133–4, 139 148–9
overcoming metaphysics 1, 59, 61,
73, 133 quantification, unrestricted 141
quantum
particulars 10, 17, 20, 128, 146 events 52
past, temporal dimensions of 33–4 reality 22
Peano, Giuseppe Quine, W. V. 68, 148–9
arithmetic 105
axioms 105, 107, 112–13, 115, Radical Orthodoxy 90–1, 143
148, 151 rationality 83
perfections 32, 117–18, 122, 150–1 relations, causal 68–9
pure 117, 150 revelation 80, 124, 150
phenomenology 83, 90, 121, 134, 143 Rorty, Richard 133
plato 1, 23, 29, 128 Ross, James F. 48, 135–8, 144–6
politics 132–4 rule-following practices 111–12,
polytheism 92 114, 117–18
post-metaphysical 26, 38, 90 rules 42, 49, 71, 105, 111–14, 117,
terms 43, 91 123, 148–50
thinker 31, 41
thinking 26, 43–4, 58, 130 saints 33, 80
post-posed oblique 11–12 Scholastic 7, 24, 54–6, 70, 84, 87,
potentiality 29, 35–6, 44, 62, 94, 140 96–8, 121
atemporal 61–2, 84, 89 metaphysician 47, 85–6, 96
power metaphysics 6, 20, 29, 59, 73, 85,
actual 94 102, 119
divine 100, 119, 146 metaphysics/natural theology 87
158 Index
scientia 2 subjectivity 6, 7, 19, 21, 45, 131

Scotist Causal Argument vii, 46–7, substances 10–11, 20, 76, 79, 127
49, 51, 53, 55, 150 syntax 8, 11–12
Scotist metaphysics 7, 129
Scotus 1, 2, 5–7, 14–15, 27–9, 35–6, taxonomy, early Heidegger’s 24
46–51, 54, 60, 63, 98–100, technological conception,
128, 130–1, 135–7, 139, modern 29, 39
143–5, 150–1 technology 130, 132–4
Scriptures 90–1 modern 29, 40–1, 132
self-disclosure 55, 66, 138, 141 temporal dimensions 34–5, 63–4,
selfhood 80, 142 84
sending 52–63, 66–7, 69, 72, 78, thrownness 76–7, 80, 142
84–6, 89, 134, 138–40 time 10, 19, 27–8, 32–8, 44, 46,
sensory beings 14, 102, 104 53–4, 56–60, 62–3, 65–7, 69,
sentences 72–3, 88–9, 91, 132, 138–40
form grammatical 8 time-space 33, 63, 140
passive 127–8 transcendentals 5, 7, 15, 29, 30,
sign 8, 9, 20 37–8, 42–3, 46, 77–80, 84,
significatio 12 89, 90, 96, 121–2, 131, 133,
signification 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 127–8 137–8, 143
accidental modes of 10–11, 20 disjunctive 30, 46, 126, 131, 141,
active mode of 9 150
general essential mode of 10–11 technological 40, 133
modes of 9, 10, 13, 126–7 traditional 30, 90
simplicity 54, 137–8, 151 true time 33–7, 42–4, 55–6, 67, 69,
Socrates 23, 116, 128 134, 140
soul 67, 134 dimensions of 35, 52, 57, 60, 63,
spatiality, time-derived 140 84, 91, 93
spatiotemporal beings 17, 19 truth
speech, parts of 8–10, 14, 17, 19, 21 logical 149
Stambaugh, Joan 129–30 transcendental of 15–16
standing reserve 29, 34, 39, 40, 64, truth-conditions 109–10, 129
81, 84, 95
state, contingent 74, 87–8, 93 uncausable cause 51, 54, 139
statements, poetic 28, 33, 37, 65, 132 first 48, 50
strategy unconcealment 54–5
quasi-Scotist 63–4, 69 understanding
quasi-Thomist 65, 67, 69 passive mode of 9
structuralism 105, 147 post-metaphysical 72
structures, grammatical 8, 13, 21, 128 unity 7, 15, 23–4, 29, 30, 34, 46,
subaltern 10–11 104, 130, 134
Index 159
univocal predication 119 Western history 77

unum 7, 15, 23, 121 Westphal, Merold 138
wisdom 30, 117, 150–1
value Wittgenstein, Ludwig 31, 94, 111,
intellectual 42 128, 133, 148–9
market 122 world
scale of 122, 124 possible 95, 145
verbs 9, 11–12, 114, 127–9 post-metaphysical 42, 65, 134
accidental mode linking 11–12 Wright, Crispin 147–8

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John Duns Scotus

1. Early Heidegger and Scholasticism 6

2. Heidegger’s Atheology of Appropriation 26

3. Heideggerian Atheology and the Scotist Causal Argument 46

4. Appropriation and the Problem of Sufficient Comprehension 57

5. Heidegger’s Atheology of Nothingness 71

6. Nothingness and the Problem of Possibility 89

7. A Positive Application 102

This work is not about Heidegger or the history of Heidegger’s phi-

The focus of this work is not primarily theological but philosophi-

Metaphysics and methodology

I take seriously the conception of metaphysics as a scientia in the

and David Armstrong. On the cost-benefit view, a given metaphysical

The dialectic of thought

I am more interested in the dialectic of Heideggerian atheology than

antipsychologistic conception of judgment and logic with Scholastic

Early Heidegger and Scholasticism

In his Duns Scotus’s Theory of the Categories and of Meaning,1 the

all is ipso facto to think in accordance with logical principles. In his

conclusion of the Habilitationsschrift, though the possibility of such an

A Précis of Erfurt’s Speculative Grammar

Thomas of Erfurt’s Grammatica Speculativa, written probably between

merely acts of mind. Moreover, if reality contains all the features

modes. Each of these special modes corresponds with a distinct mode

or complementation must obtain between determinant and dependent

Heidegger’s appropriation of Scotus and Erfurt

Heidegger devotes the first part of the Habilitationsschrift to a sympa-

We want to know what Scotus thinks is covered in the Grammar

of a univocal account of the nature of being common to beings in

As compared to the understanding and solution of logical prob-

Against the “copy theory” of truth, according to which there is some

develop these objections sufficiently for them to be conclusive.40 Yet

this reply is not available to Heidegger. In line with Scotus’s realism,

actually being a cactus in my backyard. The judgment expressed by

a given affair complex seems much less daunting than “grasping” a

The problem of subjectivity

One philosophical motif of the Habilitationsschrift is the concern to

This separation [of the logical content of thought from language

over from the psychology of thought. However the problem is

Thus, Heidegger is content to leave the question of how thought

significant is effected, and so it is formally a word”54—that is, the abil-

Negativity in the Habilitationsschrift

of Y, for the nonbeing of Y is compatible with there being nothing

The sole relation which characterizes the nature of both terms of

Any being, then, exemplifies a kind of relational nonbeing which is

constituting the negativity of a given being.69 This taxonomy of nega-

Opening moves in the discipline

Traditionally, metaphysics begins with what is known as the intuition

It is a vineyard, burned and black with holes full of spiders.

These instances of poetic language aren’t merely bland statements

(1) Grammatically they are subject-predicate sentences, but since

How, then, does thinking proceed from this quasi-poetic intuition

he describes. To this, the Scholastic realist may object that the

a First Being is necessarily possible (◊p). However, by the reasoning