crowell. metaphysics, met ontology, and the end of being and time

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International Phenomenological Society

Metaphysics, Metontology, and the End of Being and TimeAuthor(s): Steven Galt CrowellSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Mar., 2000), pp. 307-331Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653488 .

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Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LX, No. 2, March 2000

Metaphysics,Metontology,and theEnd of Being and TimeSTEVENGALT CROWELLRice University

In 1928 Heidegger arguedthat the transcendentalphilosophy he had pursued in Beingand Time needed to be completed by what he called "metontology." This paperanalyzes what this notion amountsto. Far from being merely a curiosity of Heideggerscholarship,the place occupied by "metontology"opens onto a general issue concern-ing the relation between transcendentalphilosophy and metaphysics,and also betweenboth of these and naturalisticempiricism.I pursuethese issues in terms of an ambiguityin the notion of "grounding"n Being and Time andin the works of what I call Heideg-ger's "metaphysical decade" (1927-1937), defending a phenomenological conception(giving priority o the theoryof meaning)against what proves to be the illusoryidea thatmetaphysicalgroundsarepresupposed n such transcendentalphilosophy.

?1. IntroductionThe term "end" n my title should be understoodn three senses:

(1) Heidegger's unfinishedbook ends, concludes in ?83, with a series ofquestions that are to prepare he way for the sequel, an interpretation f themeaning of being in terms of time. This preparation consists, strangelyenough, in questioningthe appropriateness f the methodused in the previ-ous four hundredor so pages. The analysisof Dasein's ontological structureis, Heidegger now reminds us, "only one way which we may take."'Indeed,"whether his is the only way or even the right one at all can be decided onlyafter one has gone along it." At the end of Being and Time, then, can we say

The German reads: "Die Herausstellung der Seinsverfassung des Daseins bleibt abergleichwohl nur ein Weg. Das Ziel ist die Ausarbeitungdes Seinsfragefiberhaupt."MartinHeidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976), p. 436; Being and Time, tr.John Macquarrieand EdwardRobinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 487. Theapposition of emphasized terms-ein WegandZiel-suggests that Heidegger is empha-sizing not, as the Macquarrieand Robinson translationhas it, that this is one way amongothers, but thatit is in general only on the way, not yet at the goal. Some justification forthe translation s found, however, in the sentence I cite next in the text, which is sepa-ratedfrom this one by a paragraph.As shall be seen in what follows, Heidegger standshere at a moment of methodologicalcrisis. Future references to Being and Timewill begiven in the text, citing firstthe English and then the Germanpagination.I have modifiedthe translationswhere I saw fit, without furthercomment.

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whether the path has been the right one? Only if we know what was to beaccomplishedby its means-hence, a secondsense of "end":

(2) The end, or aim, of Being and Time s perhapsbestunderstood hrougha comparison that Heidegger himself increasingly employed in the later1920s, viz., with Kant'sCritiqueof PureReason,which Kantdescribed as "atreatiseon the method,not a system of the science itself."2"Method" n thistranscendentalsense means demonstrating he conditions of possibility forsynthetic aprioriknowledge, preliminaryto working out a system of suchknowledge. Construing Kant's synthetic aprioriknowledge as "ontologicalknowledge,"Heidegger views transcendental ritiqueas a reflection on the"ontological ground"of ontology. Similarly,the aim of Being and Timeis tolay the groundwork or ontological knowledge (of the "meaningof being"),but in place of Kant's focus upon the cognitive comportmentof judging,Heideggerturnsfirst to the interrogative omportmentof raisingthe questionof being.Where Kant ocatesthe groundof ontologicalknowledgein "apriorisynthesis," Heidegger locates it in the "understanding of being"(Seinsverstdndnis)presupposed n all questioning.For this reasonthe focusof reflection falls on "Dasein,"a terminus technicus indicating that beingwho, in a pre-philosophicalway, necessarilyraises questions about its ownbeing and therebyprovides the inescapablestartingpoint for philosophicalinquiry,"thepoint where it arises andto which it returns"(BT 487, 62; SZ436, 38).

But if, given the aim of showing how ontological knowledge is possible,Dasein has a peculiarclaim on our attention,by the end of Being and TimeHeidegger detects a "fundamentalproblemthat still remains 'veiled"' (BT487; SZ 436). For if the possibility of ontological knowledge lies inDasein'spre-philosophicalunderstandingf being, mustnot any such knowl-edge be limited to the particular,finite perspective occupied by the ques-tioner? Heidegger has all along acknowledged-indeed emphasized-thatphilosophical inquiryis nothingbut a "radicalization" f that everyday yet"essential" endencythat Dasein has to questionthemeaningof its being, andthat thus his own inquiryis ultimately "onticallyrooted [verwurzelt]" (BT35, 34; SZ 15, 13). But when Heidegger asks whether"ontology allows ofbeing ontologically grounded[begriinden],or ratherrequiresin addition anontic ground [Fundamentes]," he cannot be referring to the previouslydescribedpriorityof Dasein, forhe immediatelyappends he furtherquestion,"andwhich entity must take on this function of grounding?"This questionwouldmake no sense if "onticground"merelyreferred o Dasein,the inquirer,as the inescapablestartingpoint for philosophy (BT 487; SZ 436). It appearsrather hatwhen Heideggerasks for an "entity" n which to groundontolog-2 Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, tr. NormanKemp Smith (London:Macmillan, 1968), p. 25

(Bxxii).308 STEVEN GALT CROWELL


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ical knowledge he standspoised to makea move that hassince becomefamil-iar in philosophy,namely, to relativizesuchknowledge to some aspectof thecontext in which it arises. To ascribe a grounding function to the entity,"nature," or example, might yield something like that "naturalism"whichseeks to explain ontological knowledgein terms of causalrelationsbetweenenvironment and brainstates. Similarly,to embrace the entity, "history,"assuch a ground might yield a kind of "historicism" n which the content ofone's thought,one's ontological knowledge, is explained with reference tothe conceptualresources of one's historical milieu.3Othercandidatesfor thegroundingentity could be proposed-society, language, even God-but thefact that in entertaining the possibility of an ontic ground of ontologyHeideggermustask "which"entity or context is to serve this functionsignalsa methodological crisis that threatens the aim of Being and Time, viz., tomake the transition rom Dasein's understanding f being to the meaningofbeing.Hence, a finalsense of "end":

(3) The end of Being and Timealso means the collapse of its project,thedemise of fundamentalontology. Whathappened?Why was the announcedsequel to Being and Time never published?This question,deeply entwinedwith the problemof the so-called "turn"Kehre)in Heidegger'sthinking,hasoccasioned much commentary.Our angle on it shall be established by theobservationthat at first the idea of a turn was immanentto the project ofBeing and Time tself; only laterdid it take on, in Heidegger'sself-interpreta-tion, the status of a turnaway from thatproject,a rejectionof its grasponthe problem.Though examining the immanent turnsuggests an interpreta-tion of the turnin the broadersense, that is not my main quarry.Instead,Ishall show how the immanentturn at the end of Being and Timegets entan-

The execution and implications of these distinct explanatory proposals differ markedly,of course. Heidegger's ontological knowledge is knowledge of meaning. Appealing to acausal theory,the naturalistmight offer an account of such "ontologicalknowledge"thateliminates it altogether. See, for example, JohnMcDowell's accountof Quine's notion of"empiricalsignificance" in Mind and World(Cambridge: Harvard,1994), pp. 131-33.The historicist, on the other hand, typically argues that the intentional "content" of aclaim to ontologicalknowledgedepends uponlinguistic conditionsobtainingat a particu-lar time; and further(if she is a pragmatist) hat these conditions are themselves a func-tion of historically contingent social practices, and so on. Here meaning is not eliminated,but justification is tied to what the norms inherent in current conditions and practicesallow. Heidegger is often taken to espouse something like the historicist view, but if hedoes espouse it it is on the basis of phenomenologicalconsiderations.This means thatthedifferences between naturalismand historicism as ontic explanatoryproposals are notdecisive in context of the presentessay. For the pertinentquestion after 1927 is whetherthe situatedness of ontological knowledge, already attested phenomenologically, canbecome the theme of an ontic inquiry. Empirical inquiries into natural and historicalconditions are of course possible, but they cannot (on Heidegger's view) yield groundsfor ontological knowledge since they presuppose such knowledge. Heidegger's failedsearch for anothersort of inquiry into this situatedness-designated "metaphysical"or"metontological"-is the topic of the present paper.

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gled with the very different issue of an "onticground"of ontology. To askwhy Heidegger imagines that thereshould be an ontic ground of ontology isto expose a latentinconsistencyin his magnum opus. ThoughI analyze thisinconsistency in terms of an oppositionbetween phenomenology and meta-physics (the termsin which Heidegger formulates he turn), the problem canbe seen to have far widerprovenance.For "phenomenology"hererepresentsthat aspect of Heidegger's projectthat adheres to the critical-transcendentalformulationof philosophicalquestions,whereas"metaphysics"-the headingunderwhich an ontic groundis sought-turns out to be a virtualcipher forany appeal to "contextualizing"discourses with pretensions to provideindependent rounds or the transcendentalroblematic.

Though Heidegger did not immediately grasp the problem-indeed, heplaces great weight on his conviction that "ontology can only be foundedontically,"a fact that"noone before me has explicitly seen or stated"4-thecollapse of his projectresults fromthe inconsistentbelief that a turnis to bemade from phenomenologyto metaphysics. Kept at bay in Being and Time(1927), this inconsistency comes glaringly to light in an Appendix toHeidegger's last Marburg ecturecourse, TheMetaphysicalFoundations ofLogic (1928). Inorder o completehis project,Heideggerheredemandssome-thing called "metontology,"a "turningaround[Kehre],whereontology itselfexpressly runsbackinto the metaphysicalontic in which it implicitly alwaysremains."5To ask whatmetontologycould be is to uncoverthe precise pointwhere phenomenologicalandmetaphysical(pre-transcendental)motifs con-frontone another.This confrontationoccupies Heideggerfor a decade until,conceding in effect thatappealto an ontic groundinvolves what Kantcalls"transcendental illusion," he formulates his idea for "overcoming"(Uberwindung; Verwindung)metaphysics.Since Heidegger often seems tosuggest that overcoming metaphysics leaves importantaspects of the phe-nomenological projectin place, it mightbe said thatBeing and Timedid notaltogethercollapse andthatHeideggercontinued n the spiritof the claim that"onlyas phenomenologyis ontology possible" (BT 60; SZ 35).

?2. The Language of MetaphysicsPerhaps he best way of introducing he arguments to considersome famouspassages in which Heidegger explains why Being and Timewas nevercom-pleted. In his 1947 "Letteron Humanism"he writes that the crucial section

Letter to KarlLbwith (20 August 1927), in Zurphilosophischen AktualitdtHeideggers,vol. II, ed. Dietrich Pappenfuss and Otto Pbggeler (Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann,1990), p. 36.Martin Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgriindeder Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz,GesamtausgabeBd. 26, ed. Klaus Held (Frankfurt:VittorioKlostermann, 1978), p. 201;The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-versity Press, 1984), p. 158. Future references given in the text, with German (GA26)followed by English (MFL) pagination.

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on "Time andBeing,"in which the immanent urnwas to be made,was "heldback becausethinking ailed in the adequate ayingof this turningand did notsucceed with the help of the languageof metaphysics."6Crucially,the "and"here indicatesthatthethinking hatfailed did not alreadyemploythelanguageof metaphysics;rather,at a certainmomentit turned o the languageof meta-physics for help. The "and" hus distinguishestwo distinct phases of Heideg-ger's thought:on the one hand,the thinkingthat failedemployedthe vocabu-laryof hermeneuticphenomenology,as in thepublishedportionof Being andTime; on the other hand, the unhelpful language of metaphysics was thetraditional Kantian-Leibnizian-Aristoteliananguage (specifically excludedfrom Being and Timein favor of its notorious neologisms) which Heideggerbegan to speakaround 1928 and which he once more abandoned n the mid-1930s, when he called for overcoming metaphysics. Theodore Kisiel haslabeled the years between 1916 and 1927 Heidegger's "phenomenologicaldecade";I suggest that the years between 1927 and 1937 are Heidegger's"metaphysicalecade."7

Thoughcrucial to my argument, his readingof the conjunctionas indicat-ing two distinct phases of Heidegger's thought is not universally shared.Typically the reference to metaphysics is understood to include the wholetranscendentalprojectof Being and Time.So Jean Grondinwritesthat"whatthe 'Letteron Humanism' teachesor confirms s thatBeing and Timefails tosay this Kehre, remainingin a certainrespect prisonerof the horizon of theintelligibility of metaphysics"8-an interpretationsuggested by the laterHeidegger's tendencyto see theentiretradition, ncludinghis earlierthought,as partof the "historyof metaphysics"that needs to be overcome. Yet pre-cisely in our passage Heidegger seems interestedin preservinga nuanceofdifference.Morerevealing s David Krell's remark hat mmediately ollowingthe publication of Being and Time Heidegger "still hopes to rejoin" the6 The German reads:"Der fragliche Abschnitt wurde zuruckgehalten,weil das Denken im

zureichenden Sagen dieser Kehre versagte und mit Hilfe der Sprache der Metaphysiknicht durchkam."MartinHeidegger, "Brief uiberden 'Humanismus',"in Wegmarken(Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), p. 325; "Letteron Humanism," n Basic Writ-ings, ed. David FarrellKrell (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 231.Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1993), p. 59. Ryioichi Hosokawa, "The Conception of Being andTime and the Problem of Metaphysics,"Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters Kyushu Univer-sity, forthcoming(pp. 20-21), has seen this quite clearly:Duringthe late 1920s "thecon-ception of fundamental ontology in Being and Time is transformed nto that of meta-physics,"andthis "periodof Heidegger's own metaphysicscan be followed up to the firstand second lectureson Nietzsche (WS 1936/37, SS 1937)"; hence "it is a great mistakeifone maintains hatHeideggertries to overcome metaphysicsbeginningin 1930." See alsohis extremelyvaluable "Heideggerund die Ethik,"Phdnomenologieder Praxis (1989), p.256.Jean Grondin,"Prolegomenato an Understandingof Heidegger's Turn,"in Sources ofHermeneutics(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 64.

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"traditionof metaphysics" n a "positiveandfruitfulway"9-implying a cer-tain distancebetweenBeing and Timeand thattradition.Havingnotedthat inBeing and Timethe term"metaphysics" lmostalwaysoccurs in scare-quotes,JoannaHodge captures he decisive point:afterBeing and TimeHeideggeris"trying o retrievea disquotationaluse of the term 'metaphysics'."10 o sup-port my readingof the conjunction, hen,a brief look at the "quotational" sein Being and Time s necessary.

The tension between metaphysics and phenomenology in Heidegger'sthought goes back to his student years, when metaphysics was associatedabove all with neo-Scholasticism and its defense of Aristotelian realismagainst neo-Kantianepistemological idealism. In the debate over whetherlogic and theory of knowledge presupposeda metaphysics of the object, atheory of "ontological truth,"Heidegger took the "critical"side." ThoughHeideggerdid not think thatcriticalphilosophypresupposeda metaphysics,he did believe thatit led to one: transcendentalheoryof knowledge is to becompleted by "an ultimatemetaphysical-teleologicalinterpretationof con-sciousness."2 Rather handevelopingsuch a metaphysics, however,between1917 and 1927 Heideggerworked at the transformation f phenomenologyinto a "hermeneuticsof facticity," an ontology intended as an immanentdevelopmentof the critical-transcendentalmpulse.EvenHeidegger'srenewedinterest in Aristotle duringthis period should not be seen as an attempttorevive metaphysicsbut to recover a morephenomenologicalkind of question-ing concealed by the Scholastic tradition.Thus, while the projectof Beingand Timemay be interpreted s a "repetition" rretrievalof Aristotle's "firstphilosophy,""3hatretrievalcasts itself as a transcendentalnquiryopposedtothen-current onceptionsof metaphysics. Following Husserl, Heideggersawphenomenological method as a liberation from traditional metaphysicalpseudo-problems: mind-body dualism, doubts about the external world,realism/idealismdebates,and so on. In Being and Time the term"ontology"9 David Farrell Krell, Intimations of Mortality (University Park: The Pennsylvania State

University Press, 1986), p. 39.1 JoannaHodge, Heidegger and Ethics (London:Routledge, 1995), p. 177.In his 1914 review of Charles Sentroul's Kant und Aristoteles, for example, Heideggerrejects the theory of "ontological truth,"concluding that "even today the perspective ofthe theory of science is lacking in aristotelian scholastic philosophy."In contrast to theKantian theory of knowledge, Aristotle's is "from the beginning heavily burdened withmetaphysics."Fruhe Schriften(Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann,1978), pp. 52, 50.12 Heidegger, Die Kategorien-undBedeutungslehredes Duns Scotus, in Friihe Schriften,p.348. An inconsistency similar to the one that leads metontology to a dead end alreadyinfects Heidegger's earlier concept of metaphysics, however. A partial account can befound in my "MakingLogic Philosophical Again (1912-1916)," Reading Heideggerfromthe Start, ed. Theodore Kisiel and John Van Buren (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1994), pp. 55-72.

13 As has been shown in convincing detail by Ryioichi Hosokawa, "Sein und Zeit als'Wiederholung'der Aristotelischen Seinsfrage,"Philosophisches Jahrbuchvol. 94, no. 2(1987).

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does not "indicatesome definitephilosophicaldisciplinestanding n intercon-nection with others;"nor does it "have to measure up to the tasks of somediscipline that has been presented beforehand" (BT 49; SZ 27). Further,method demandsthat ontological language be scrutinizedfor metaphysicalprejudicesthrougha deconstruction Destruktion)of the history of ontology.As in Husserl's transcendentalphenomenology, such traditionalpreconcep-tions are to be put out of play.

There aretwo mainreasons, then, why Being and Timesurrounds he term"metaphysics" with scare-quotes. First, it serves notice that Heidegger'sprojectis not to be confused with the popularpostwarturnfromcritical neo-Kantianism toward neo-Hegelianism, Lebensphilosophie,and the like; andsecond, it points towarda new sort of inquirywhose naturecan be establishedonly on the groundof Heidegger'stranscendental-phenomenologicalroject.An example of the first is found in the claim that the question of being hasbeen forgotten"eventhoughin our time we deem it progressiveto give ourapproval o 'metaphysics' again" (BT 21; SZ 2), and the second in the claimthat"whatmightbe discussed under thetopic of a 'metaphysicof death'liesoutside the domain of an existential analyticof death"andpresupposes"anunderstanding...ofthe ontology of the aggregateof entities as a whole" (BT292; SZ 248). We shall see thatthe intelligibility of metontology hinges onwhether the "languageof metaphysics"can help articulatewhat an inquiryinto this "aggregateof entities as a whole" mightbe.

If it is thereforeplausible to suggest that the "and" n Heidegger's 1947recollection indicates a distinction, important to his thought in 1927,betweenphenomenologyandmetaphysics,it becomes possible to arguethatthe collapse of Being and Timehas less to do with phenomenologythan withwhat proved to be a transitory positive evaluation of metaphysics. Yet thesame recollectionalso seems to preclude he claimthatHeideggerresolvedtheinconsistency in Being and Time by overcoming metaphysics in favor ofphenomenology, for it suggests that the hermeneutic phenomenology ofBeing and Timefailed. Butwhat about t failed? Is there evidence for how weshould understandhefailure,especially given Heidegger'sstatement hat"thethinking that hazards a few steps in Being and Time has even today notadvancedbeyondthatpublication," r that "theroad it has takenremainseventoday a necessaryone"14 A clue is foundin Heidegger'sexplanation hat"inthe poverty of its first breakthrough"he sort of thinkingat work in Beingand Timefailed becauseit did not yet "succeed n retaining he essentialhelpof phenomenologicalseeing while dispensingwith the inappropriateoncern

4 The first remark is found in "Letter on Humanism," p. 246 (Wegmarken, p. 339); thesecond is from the 1953 "Author's Preface to the Seventh Edition" of Sein und Zeit, inwhich Heidegger announces that the promised second half of the text "could no longerbe added."



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with 'science' and 'research'."15he "concernwith 'science' and 'research',"tseems, and not "phenomenologicalseeing," spoils the projectof Being andTime.

It would be a lengthy task to unpackthis statement ully, but for the con-trastbetween phenomenologyandmetaphysicsit is not necessary to do so.Decisive is the connection between phenomenological "seeing"and the ideaof grounding philosophical practiceanddiscourse in the matter(die Sache)that calls for and authorizes hinking. Heidegger's appeal to phenomenolog-ical seeing recalls Husserl's "principle of all principles" underlying thephenomenological heory of evidence (Evidenz):"everyoriginarypresentativeintuitionis a legitimizing source of cognition"such that "everything origi-narily...offered to us in 'intuition' is to be accepted simply as what it ispresentedas being, but also only within the limits in which it is presentedthere.""6 he force of this principlefor Husserlis to insist thatgroundingorjustification in philosophy ultimately lies in direct confrontation,howeverachieved,with the matters n questionand not in dialectical or logical theory-constructionconcerningthese matters,however useful or even indispensablethese may at times be. Though Heidegger criticizes Husserl's view ofevidence in various ways-challenging the reliance on visual metaphors,bringingout its interpretive tructure-it remainsa significantelementof histhinkingto the end of his life.17 In contrast,as I shall now argue,Heidegger'stransitory positive evaluation of metaphysics afterBeing and Timeresultsfrom an "inappropriateoncern with 'science' and 'research',"an esprit desystem thatoriginates n his renewed enthusiasm or Kant andbringsto thesurfacea latent inconsistencyin Being and Time betweenphenomenologicalandmetaphysical enses of "ground."What eadsHeidegger'sprojectastray sits flirtationwith a "disquotational"ense of metaphysics largely motivatedby his desire to find a successor discipline-a "metaphysical ontic" or"metontology"-to the dogmatic metaphysicsruledout by Kant'sTranscen-dentalDialectic.

15 Heidegger, "Letteron Humanism,"pp. 258-59 (Wegmarken,p. 353).16 EdmundHusserl,Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenologyand to a PhenomenologicalPhilosophy, First Book, tr. F. Kersten(The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1983), p. 44.17 To argue the point fully would require a separate essay, but the basic idea has beensketched by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann,Der Begriff der Phdnomenologie beiHeidegger und Husserl (Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann, 1988), p. 51, who argues thatthe later Heidegger no longer reflects on phenomenological method or describes histhinkingin those terms, not "because he abandonedphenomenology but because he con-tinued to practice phenomenological seeing and demonstrationexclusively." Heideggerstill defends phenomenological seeing in his last Seminar in Zdhringen (1973), VierSeminare (Frankfurt:Klostermann,1977), pp. 110ff.



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? 3. Ontology and MetontologyIt was noted abovethat between 1926 and 1929 Heidegger came increasinglyto view his projectin Kantian erms. In particular,n his Kant and the Prob-lem of Metaphysics (1929, based on a lecture course from WS 1927/28),Heidegger tied Kant's transcendentalproject (and so also his own) to thedistinction between metaphysicalgeneralis andmetaphysical pecialis. Theformer ndicatestranscendentalnquiry ntothe groundsof ontologicalknowl-edge, while the latter is the system of such knowledge, viz., rationalpsy-chology, cosmology, and theology. In contrastto the previously cited state-ment fromBeing and Time,accordingto which phenomenologicalontologydoes not need to "measureup to the tasks of some discipline that has beenpresented beforehand," Heidegger's eagerness to see his project as a"'retrieval""8f Kant's now exerts a pressuretoward "system" on thatveryproject. For instance, according to Kant's TranscendentalDialectic, meta-physica specialis proves to rest on a "transcendentalllusion" (Schein) andcannotyield any genuine theoreticalknowledge. Because HeideggerviewsBeing and Time as carryingout Kant's Copernican urn at thedeeperlevel of"Dasein's finitude"20 nd thus as roughly congruentwith the task of meta-physica generalis, he must take a standon the Dialectic's negative judgmenton the possibility of metaphysical pecialis.The conclusion of the Kant-bookhints at such a stand.Having identifiedBeing and Time with a retrieval of the problematicof the TranscendentalAnalytic, Heideggerasks whether,"by extension,"he should not also be ableto retrieve "a positive problematic" in the apparently purely negative"characteristicof the Transcendental Dialectic." In a series of ellipticalremarkshe suggests that what Kantidentifiedas "transcendentalppearance[Schein]" or illusion needs to be rethoughtin light of Being and Time'stheoryof truth,such that the "infinitude" resupposed n raisingthe questionof Dasein's finitude can itself be broughtinto focus.21Thus, while sharingKant's stricturesagainst dogmaticmetaphysics (he does not deny that tran-scendentalappearance s an illusion, for example, calling it "transcendentaluntruth"),Heidegger nevertheless demandsa reassessmentof the Dialectic,18 See Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt:Klostermann,

1951), p. 199; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, tr. Richard Taft (Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1997), p. 154.19 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 297-300 (A293/B349-A298/B355). I leave out ofaccount here Kant's arguments for a kind of metaphysica specialis based on practicalreason, though it is perhaps not without relevance for the problemat hand. For valuablesuggestions (though with little analysis of metontology),see FrankSchalow, TheRetrieval(f the Kant-Heidegger Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).Most recently thereis SarahLilly Heidt,From Transcendence o the Open: FreedomandFinitude in the Thoughtof MartinHeidegger (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1997).

20 Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, pp. 208ff; English translation, pp.162ff.21 Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,p. 221; English translation,p. 172.



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one that entertains the possibility of some sort of metaphysical specialis,some legitimate form of metaphysical inquiry. Heidegger's turn to thelanguage of metaphysics for help in completing the project of Being andTimeseems intendedto occupy the terrainopened up by his reassessment oftheTranscendentalDialectic. Forhavingliberated hismetaphysicalproblem-atic from "thatarchitectonic nto which Kant forced it," it becomes possiblefor Heidegger to imagine that reflection on "infinitude"might stand in ahermeneuticalrelationship o the analysis of Dasein's finitudefrom which itsprang, thus providinga "metaphysical" roundfor ontology. Andjust herewe encounter he puzzlingidea of metontology.

WhenHeideggerintroducesmetontologya furtherconnectionwith Kant'sTranscendentalDialectic becomesexplicit.He distinguishesbroadlybetweenBeing and Time's ontological nquiry metaphysica eneralis)and another ortof inquiry,a "newinvestigation"that "residesin the essence of ontology it-self and is the resultof its overturning Umschlag], its PETa~oXu namely,"metontology,"a "special problematicwhich has for its properthemebeingsas a whole [das Seiende im Ganzen]"(GA26:199; MFL 157). Kant's Tran-scendental Dialectic is concerned precisely with inquiry into beings as awhole-that is, with reason's claim to be able to grasp the "totality"of aseries of conditions for every conditioned.22But where Kantjudges meta-physics cognitively wanting in this pretense, Heidegger, thanks to hisreassessmentof the Dialectic, seems to believe that an inquirywhich "makesbeings thematic in their totality in light of ontology" (GA26:200; MFL157)-hence an inquirywith the scope of metaphysical pecialis-is possibleafter all. Significantly, metontology cannot simply be equated with theimmanent urn called for in Being and Time,since thatturn was intendednotas an overturning(Umschlag) of ontology but as a move, within ontology,from Dasein's understandingof being to the meaning of being itself. Eventhough it is to be developed "in light of ontology" (i.e., phenomenology),metontologymust be a new kind of inquiry.As David Wood has argued,theidea of an inquiry into beings as a whole can arise only because "Heideggerthinks through again the idea of fundamental ontology."23Because thisrethinking exploits an inconsistency in Being and Time, however, Heideg-ger's attemptto rescue metaphysics from Kant's TranscendentalDialecticfails-or so I shall argue.

One clue to how metontology is supposedto relate to ontology is foundin Heidegger's 1928 characterization of the project of Being and Time:Because it aimed solely atelucidatingDasein's "understandingf being,"the"analysis of the existence of Dasein" was neither an "anthropologynor an22 Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, p. 318 (A326/B383).23 David Wood, "Reiterating he Temporal:Towarda Rethinking of Heidegger on Time,"

in Rereading Heidegger, ed. John Sallis (Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1993), p.139.



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ethics." It focused instead upon Dasein "prior o every factual concretion,"thus with a "peculiarneutrality"regardinga whole host of questions that,Heidegger now suggests, would fall within the scope of a "metaphysicsofDasein"-questions, for example, of sex andgender,embodiment,historicalparticularization,ocio-culturaldispersal,andentanglement n "whatwe call'nature' n the broadestsense"(GA26:171-74; MFL 136-38). This suggeststhatthe "metaphysicsof Dasein"would be a chapterwithin metontology asan inquiryinto beings as a whole-a returnto homo humanusthat appearsvery much like the philosophicalanthropologywith which Being and Timeis still too often confused.24However, this return s complicatedby the factthat Heidegger, turning to the "language of metaphysics" for help, hassignificantlytransformedhe questionhe is asking.

Duringhis Aristotelian-Husserlian henomenologicaldecade, Heideggerheld the basic questionof philosophyto be ontological:Whatis the meaningof being?Against this, Max Schelerobjectedthatphilosophybegins with the"absolutewonder"that "thereis anythingat all and not nothing,"and thisLeibnizian question-Why is there somethingratherthan nothing?-comesto dominate Heidegger's metaphysical decade.25Yet it stands in a certaintension with the centralargumentof Being and Time.26For instance, if thequestionasks aftera reasonor ground"for"beings as a whole, in Being andTimethis groundcan only be understood ranscendentally: eing, "thatwhichdeterminesentities as entities," is that "on the basis of which entities arealready understood";further,this "being of entities is not itself an entity,"i.e., not a ground n the ontic sense, an ens realissimumor totalityof entitiesof any kind (SZ 6; BT 25-26). The completion of Being and Time was toinvolve a turn from Dasein's understandingof being to the meaning ofbeing-and so was to remainwithin the scope of a groundof meaning.ButHeidegger's new question appearssuspiciously like the search for an ontic"explanation"for beings as a whole, one which threatens to annul hisgenuineinsightinto the difference betweenbeing (meaning)andbeings. Thequestion of why there is something ratherthan nothing thus forces a con-frontationbetweena transcendentalontologicalor phenomenological)and a

24 Krell,Intimationsof Mortality,p. 28.25 Cf. Otto Pdggeler, "Ausgleich und andereAnfang: Scheler und Heidegger,"Studien zurPhilosophie von Max Scheler, ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth und Gerhard Pfafferott(Mtinchen:KarlAlber, 1993), p. 178.

26 John Sallis, Echoes. After Heidegger (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1990), p.154, for example, notes that the 1935 lecture, which became EinfUhrung n die Meta-physik and which startsfrom this Leibnizianquestion,tries to "retrace he way from thequestion of metontology back to the question of fundamentalontology." The tensionbetween the two questions is also explored in William McNeill's essay, "Metaphysics,FundamentalOntology, Metontology 1925-1935,"Heidegger Studies, Vol. 8 (1992), pp.63-80. In what follows I show that this tension results from an equivocation on themeaningof "ground."

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metaphysicalconceptof grounding,and "metontology"names the confusionof the two.

The whole problem s that it is not at all clear whatstatusan inquiry intobeings as a whole could have within the frameworkof Being and Time. Thecare with which that text handles the questionof bringingDasein into view"asa whole"27mightlead us to expect an equally gingerly approach o ques-tions of metaphysicaltotalities. After all, Kantdid not deny that we some-how think of ourselves as belonging within what is as a whole; indeed, heanalyzed various experiences (e.g., the sublime) in which that sense over-comes us. He deniedonly thatwe could rationally nquire nto the "whole ofwhat is." So if Heidegger is to give a positive sense to the idea of meta-physical inquiryhe owes anaccount,consistent withBeing and Time,of howmetaphysical otalities can be comprehended ufficientlyto be inquired nto.28Some naturalcandidates or such an accountpresent themselves; none, how-ever, can standup to scrutiny.

First,the idea of an inquiry nto das Seiende im Ganzenas the ontic con-text for a metaphysicsof DaseinclearlytracksHeidegger'scurrent nterest nsomethinglike philosophical cosmology, stimulatedby Max Scheler's work.As P6ggeler argues, "it was through mpulses from Scheler's questioncon-cerningman's place in the cosmos thatHeideggerwas led to recontextualizehis fundamentalontology in a metontology or metaphysicalontic."29But ifHeideggersharedwithScheler the desire to "riskagainthe stepinto authenticmetaphysics,"he judged the latter's own attempta failure-not "authentic"metaphysical nquirybut mere Weltanschauung-preciselybecauseit did notaddressthe "centralquestion of general ontology" (GA26:165; MFL 132).Havingconfronted hatquestionhead-on n Beingand Time,does Heidegger'smetontology avoid Scheler's fate? Does he describe a plausible notion ofcosmological inquiry?27 See SZ 233; BT 276, but the first threechaptersof Division II are devoted to this question.28 In the 1929 essay "Was ist Metaphysik?" Wegmarken,p. 109; "What s Metaphysics?"

Basic Writings, p. 99) Heidegger insists on "an essential distinction" between"comprehendingthe whole of beings as such [des Ganzen des Seienden an sich] andfinding oneself in the midst of beings as a whole [des Seienden im Ganzen]. The former,"he continues, "is impossible in principle."This leaves the question of what inquiry nto thelatter might be. What Heidegger in this essay,calls "metaphysical nquiry" s really stillonly ontological in the sense of Being and Time and provides no evidence for whatmetontologymightbe.

29 Otto Poggeler, "Heideggers logische Untersuchungen,"Martin Heidegger: Innen- undAuJ3enansichten, d. Siegfried Blasche, et al. (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 92-93.P6ggeler further takes the term "metontology"to echo Scheler's proposal for a "met-anthropology"-an inquiry "concerned with metaphysical perspectives in the varioussciences." Otto Pbggeler, "Heidegger on Art," Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, andTechnology, ed. Karsten Harries and ChristophJamme (New York: Holmes & Meier,1994), p. 116. Others, however-e.g., Krell, Intimations, pp. 38-39, and Hosokawa,"Heideggerund die Ethik," p. 251-link the term with the idea of a "suddentransition"(pETapoXr, Umschlag) of ontology.



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A second candidateis suggested when one notes that the very languageHeidegger uses to describe metontology-that it cultivates a "metaphysicalontic" by way of "existentiell questioning" (GA26:200, 199; MFL 158,157)-poses a puzzle from the perspectiveof Being and Time, since therethese terms("ontic,""existentiell") efer to a pre-transcendentaloncern withentities from empiricallyparticularpoints of view.3"Might it be, then, thatHeidegger's cosmology is prepared o make the naturalizingmove that hasbecome familiar in late twentieth-centuryphilosophy?His remoteness fromall that becomes obvious, however, when he contrastshis proposalwith thethen-popular"inductivemetaphysics"of Oswald KUlpe,a positionHeideggerhadcriticizedalready n 1912. Kulpeheld thatthe goal of philosophy, meta-physics, couldbe achievedby projecting he findingsof the sciences of nature(physics and psychology) to the point where they intersected and formed aunified picture of the world. In 1912 Heidegger objected that the"hypothetical" asis of such naturalism ontradictedhe very idea of philoso-phy.31In 1928 he reiterates that even though metontology is like empiricalscience in having "beingsfor its subject matter," t "is not a summaryonticin the sense of a generalscience thatempiricallyassemblesthe results of theindividual sciences into a so-called 'world-picture,' o as to deduce fromit aworld-view and guide for life" (GA26:199-200; MFL 157). Heidegger thusimplies that metontology does not aim to naturalizewhat Being and Timecalls veritastranscendentalis,ranscendentalruth.

Indeed, metontology is to "makebeings thematicin theirtotalityin lightof ontology" (GA26:200; MFL 157)-i.e., in light of the transcendentallydisclosed meaningof being. Shouldwe see it then as supplyingthe complete"systemof categories"hinted at in Being and Time,the regional "ontologiesthemselves which are priorto the ontical sciences and which provide theirfoundations" SZ 11; BT 31)? This thirdcandidatewould be consistent withthe transcendentalstandpointof Being and Time and could, without muchsemanticstrain,be labeleda "metaphysical ntic,"since it would concerntheapriori constitution of the object-domains or ontic regions cultivated inanthropology, psychology, biology, history, and the like. Two considera-tions-one structural nd one substantive-tell againstidentifyingmetontol-ogy with regional-ontological nquiry,however.First,consideredstructurallyHeidegger's conceptionof fundamentalontology alreadycontains a place forregional ontologies, and that is not the place of metontology. Fundamentalontology consists of three phases (GA26:196; MFL 154). The first is a30 CompareKrell,Intimationsof Mortality,p. 41.31 MartinHeidegger,"DasRealitatsproblemn der modernenPhilosophie,"Frahe Schriften,

p. 15. This criticism should not blind one to the factthatHeidegger'sown positionin 1912is very much like that of Kulpe's so-called "criticalrealism," with all its attendantambi-guities, andthat it is not until his metaphysicaldecadethatHeideggercomes to terms withthis aspect of his thinking.

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"grounding hatestablishes the intrinsic possibility of the being question asthe basic problemof metaphysics-the interpretation f Dasein as temporal-ity" carried out in Being and Time. Second, there is "anexplication of thebasic problemscontained in the questionof being-the temporalexpositionof the problemof being," a task sketchedin what Heidegger called a "newelaborationof division 3 of part1 of Being and Time."32Here, in addition tothe move from Dasein's temporality (Zeitlichkeit) to the temporality(Temporalitdt) of being, we find the elaboration of four "basic problemscontainedin the questionof being."33One of these problemsis "clarificationof the existence mode of things andtheirregionalconstitution."Here is theplace for regional ontologies of "historyand artworks,"of "nature"and its"diverse modes: space, number, life, human existence itself," and so on(GA26:191f; MFL 151), but it is not metontology, i.e., not what Heideggermeans by a metaphysical inquiry.The latter is reachedonly with the thirdphase of fundamentalontology-"the developmentof the self-understandingof the problematic, its task and limits-the overturning [Umschlag]"(GA26:196;MFL 154).

The second, substantive,reason why metontology cannot be identifiedwith regional-ontological categorial) nquirywithinthe frameworkof Beingand Time follows fromthe last remark.Forcategorial nquiry nto the "unityof the idea of being and its regional variants"(GA26:191; MFL 151) stilloperateswith the phenomenologicalconceptof groundsof meaning.Meton-tology, on the otherhand,is not to be grounded n Dasein's understanding orthe "idea"of being) but is to provide grounds or Dasein. The "languageofmetaphysics"thus invokes a second, as yet unclarified,sense of "ground"whereby the phenomenology of Being and Timeis itself to be groundedinthat"metaphysicalontic in which it implicitly always remains"(GA26: 201;MFL 158). The inconsistencyin Being and Timeemerges with this idea of adoublegrounding.

?4. The Problem of Double GroundingWhat exactly is meant by "double grounding,"and why is it a problem?These questionsare best answeredby consideringa passagewhereHeideggerexplains why there is supposedto be an "intrinsicnecessity" that ontology"turnback"to its onticpointof origin. Heideggerwrites:Thebeing man'understandseing;understandingf beingeffectsa distinction etweenbeingandbeings;being s thereonlywhenDaseinunderstandseing.In otherwords, hepossibility32 That is, in the lecture course of SS 1927, Die Grundprobleme der Phdnomenologie,

Gesamtausgabe Bd. 24, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt: VittorioKlostermann, 1975), p. 1; Basic Problems of Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstadter(Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1982), p. 1.33 These four problems are discussed again, in somewhat different terms, at GA26:191-95;MFL 151-53.

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that being is therein the understanding resupposes he factical existence of Dasein, andthis inturn presupposesthe factical extantness of nature(GA26:199; MFL 156).The first sentence in this passage merely restates the thesis of Being andTime that the transcendental roundof ontological knowledge lies in Dasein'sunderstandingof being. Problems begin in the next sentence: how are we toread the first occurrenceof "presupposes"?f it means no more than thatthereis no thinking without a thinker, t is trivial. By introducing t with "in otherwords,"however, Heidegger signals that it too must be read in light of Beingand Time,wherethe term "facticalexistence"does not refer to the "fact"ofwhether a being of such-and-suchconstitution s currentlyfound among thefurniture of the universe, but to the constitution of that being itself.34"Facticalexistence"is shorthandor the full ontological characterof Dasein,the "facticity"and"existentiality"hattogetheraccountphenomenologicallyfor Dasein's understandingof being (SZ 191; BT 235). Read this way, thefirst occurrenceof "presupposes"s non-trivialbecauseit adumbrateshe tran-scendentalground.It is the second occurrenceof "presupposes"n this sen-tence, however, that signifies the supposed necessity of a passage fromontology to metontology, and here Heidegger seems to rely on the trivialsense when he claims that "the factical existence of Dasein.. .in turn pre-supposesthe factical extantness[faktischeVorhandensein] f nature."Ontol-ogy thus finds a second groundin the "factical extantness of nature"-it ispossible "only if a possible totality of beings is already there" (GA26:199;MFL 157). Metontology is to inquire nto this sortof dependency.

There is, then, an equivocationon the notion of "presupposition"n thispassage. The claim that "thepossibility thatbeing is there in the understand-ing" presupposes"thefactical existence of Dasein"refers to a transcendental-phenomenological sense of groundconcernedwith conditions of intelligibil-ity, while the claim that"the factical existence of Dasein"presupposes"thefactical extantnessof nature" efersto anentirelydifferentsense of ground-an ontic sense-whose relationto the first is by no means clear. By itself,the existence of this equivocationis not a problem;it becomes one only ifthe relations between the two senses of "ground"are not identified andrespected.In Being and Time the equivocationis presentbut is containedbyHeidegger'sHusserlianprocedureof bracketingall questionof ontic grounds,and overtinconsistency s avoided.It breaksoutonly when Heideggertriestoremove the bracketswithhelp from the languageof metaphysics.

That the problemof doublegrounding urksin Being and Timeis not hardto show. WhenHeideggerclaims that "readiness-to-hands the way in which

4 Heidegger makes a similar phenomenologicalpoint later in the text: "If I say of Daseinthat its basic constitutionis being-in-the-world,I am then first of all assertingsomethingthat belongs to its essence, and I thereby disregard whether the being of such a naturefactually exists or not"(GA26:217;MFL 169).

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entities as they are 'in themselves' aredefinedontologico-categorially" i.e.,phenomenologically), for example, he immediately notes that "only byreason of something extant [auf dem Grunde von Vorhandenem] is there'anything ready to hand." Hence the extant is presupposed. Nevertheless, itdoes not follow that "readiness-to-hands ontologically foundedon extant-ness" (SZ 71; BT 101), and an ontological groundmust thereforebe otherthan whatever sort of ground belongs to the presuppositionof the extant.Such examples could be multiplied,but they all yield the same distinction:ontological groundingconcerns the priority of meaning,that which enablesunderstanding, and in that sense we are able to grasp the extant only"through"he readyto hand,or better, throughthe "world"as the meaning-horizon of entities within the world. "Onlyon the basis of the phenomenonof the world can the being-in-itself of entities within-the-worldbe graspedontologically" (SZ 76; BT 106).35 To claim that "only by reason of some-thingextant 'is there' anythingreadyto hand,"however,is to invoke anothersort of priority,one thatdoes not concern relationsof meaningbutrelationsbetween those entities-of which "man" s one-that show up in the worldvia Dasein's understanding.36 ence the questionraised at the end of Beingand Time:Canontology be ontologically grounded,or does it also requireanonticground?WhatHeideggersays of Kantexpresses the paradoxof his own position:"Ontology is groundedin the ontic, and yet the transcendentalproblem isdeveloped out of what is thus grounded,and the transcendentalalso firstclarifies the function of the ontic" (GA26:210; MFL 164). Has Being andTime clarified the function of the ontic such that it becomes possible toinquire into an ontic groundof ontology? Heidegger has all along insisted,against subjective or empirical idealism, that entities are not reducible toDasein's understandingf being; theyhavea certain"independence."37nask-ing afteran ontic groundof ontologyhe seems to wantto makethis indepen-dence thematic in such a way that the phenomenological project can beclarified, grounded, n termsof it. But can ontology really be said to presup-pose nature in any non-trivialsense? Heidegger certainly cannot intend to35 Similar remarks are frequent in Heidegger's texts of the period; compare, e.g.,

GA26:194-5; MFL 153; Basic Problems of Phenomenology,p. 297 (GA24:421-22).36 CompareGA26:186; MFL 147: "Being is priorneither ontically nor logically, but prior na primordial sense that precedes both. It is prior to each in a different way; neitherontically norlogically priorbut ontologically."I interpret his to referto the transcenden-tal-phenomenological priority of meaning (the topic of Being and Time) over all empir-ical, formal, and metaphysical modes of knowledge or "encounter"of beings. And, asHeidegger elsewhere suggests, this ontological ground "implies nothing about...the onti-cal relations between beings, between nature and Dasein..." (Basic Problems of Phe-nomenology, p. 295; GA24:419).37 See, for example, BT 255, 272; SZ 212, 230; Basic Problems, pp. 169, 175, 219;GA26:194;MFL251.



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offer empirical-causal xplanations or what was presented n the transcenden-tal account, a story about how the naturalentity, man, evolved and how itsunderstanding f being can be explained n termsof natural aws-perhaps asan adaptationof neurological, psychological, or socio-cultural factors. Suchinquiriescan be carriedout, but to see them as groundsof ontological knowl-edge relativizes the latter n a way that Heidegger shows no interest n doing:"beingcannotbe explained throughentities"(BT 251; SZ 207). Yet a meta-physical appeal to entities, such as metontology is said to be, is no lessobjectionable.To see why, it will be useful to glance brieflyat how Husserlnegotiated he same impasse Heideggerreaches at the end of Being and Time,avoidingtheinconsistencythat underminesHeidegger's thinking.

As is well known, Husserl's breakthroughto phenomenology in theLogical Investigationscame with the idea thatno non-circular xplanationofknowledge as a factual occurrence is possible, hence that philosophicalgrounding of knowledge can only strive to clarify the meaning of cognitionby reflectionon cognitive intentionalexperiences (Erlebnisse). However, theLogical Investigations was still caught in a double-bind:on the one hand,while the structureof the Erlebnisse could be adequately graspedin directreflection, that appeared merely to be psychological immanence, shut offfrom the physical world. Phenomenology thus seemed to yield a kind ofskepticism. On the other hand, to speak of the "psychological"presupposesreferenceto the supposedlyunavailablereal world afterall, thusrendering hephenomenologicaldelimitationof its sphereof evidencedogmatic.38Husserl'sescape from this naturalisticdouble-bindcame throughhis theoryof the phe-nomenologicalreduction.

The reduction interests us here solely in relation to the idea of phe-nomenological grounding,and the main point to note is that throughit thefield of phenomenologicalevidence exploredin the Logical Investigations sfreed of those presuppositionsthat identify it, prior to philosophical criti-cism, with a particular egion of being, a particular lice of the world.This itdoes first by "bracketing"all scientific theories (including metaphysicaltheories) that seek to explain what is given to reflection,and togetherwiththese, all interpretationsof the given which depend on what Husserl calls"transcendent"ssumptions-for instance, the assumptionof an ontologicaldistinction between the mental and the physical. This move yields aspecificallytranscendentaldealism, distinguished romempiricalor psycho-logical idealismin thatthe latter,but not the former,makesfirst-order laimsabout the nature of objects (e.g., that they are really "mental"constructs).WhatHenryAllison says of Kant'sposition holds equally of Husserl's, viz.,that "transcendentaldealismmust be characterized rimarilyas a metaphilo-38 Cf. Theodore DeBoer, The Development of Husserl's Thought (The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1978).METAPHYSICS,METONTOLOGY,AND THE END OF BEINGAND TIME 323


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sophical or methodological 'standpoint,'rather than as a straightforwardlymetaphysicaldoctrineabout the natureor ontologicalstatus of the objects ofhumancognition."39WhatdistinguishesKant's fromHusserl'stranscendentalidealism is that the formerconsiders objects in light of what Allison callsepistemiccconditions," .e., conditions"necessary or therepresentation f anobject or an objective state of affairs,"40while the latter casts a wider net,reflecting upon groundsof intelligibility or meaningper se-thus upon theentire sphereof "intentionality" r conscious life in its meaningfulconnec-tions. Because these groundsconcernconditions that make entities intelligi-ble, there is no sense in which they could in turn be relativized(reduced)toone or anotherregionof entities.

Put otherwise, the relativityof meaning to transcendental ubjectivity isnot a case of causal dependence,an epistemologicalspecies-relativism,or ametaphysicalclaim about a peculiar"absolute" ntity. These are versions ofsubjectivism which transcendental dealism, as a metaphilosophical stand-point achievedthrough he reduction, eaves behind. Whetherone denies thepredicate "being"to this transcendentalubject,as Husserldoes, or exploitsthis standpointas a way of raising the whole question of the meaning ofbeing in a new way, as does Heidegger,the realdanger ies in misconstruingthese transcendentalrelations as ontic ones, thereby succumbing to whatHusserl calls "transcendentalealism."Transcendental ealismis the "absurdposition" into which one falls if one mistakes the sphere of transcendentalsubjectivityfor a "tagend of the world," i.e., an entity itself definedby theworldly nexus which is its phenomenologically disclosed correlate.41 Bybracketing he validityclaims of worldly being, the reductionyields a kind ofphenomenological evidence whose significance is priorto the mesh of theworld. There is no sense, then, in which such evidence presupposesthe facti-cal extantnessof nature.Now Husserl,no less thanHeidegger,saw thatthe transcendental roundis reached by reflecting upon the "naturalattitude"-on what Husserl callspsychological subjectivity or what Heidegger calls average everydayness.Thus bothrecognizedthat theirstartingpointwas entangled n the world, yetboth soughta distinctperspectiveon thatentanglement a phenomenologicalground)from which the meaningof thatentanglementcould be clarified.It istrue that Husserl appears more rationalistic in his belief that the naturalattitude can be thoroughly clarified,while Heideggerdoubts that the condi-

39 Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press,1983), p. 25.40 Ibid., p. 10.41 Husserl, CartesianMeditations, r. DorionCairns(The Hague:MartinusNijhoff, 1969), p.24.

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tions of meaningcan be made fully transparent.42 owever, these are inter-phenomenologicaldisputesaboutthe reach of phenomenologicalevidence (orgrounding) itself, whereas the real danger-one that neither Husserl norHeidegger can altogether resist-lies in the pull of traditional, non-phe-nomenological problems.43Ultimately, it is something like the phenomeno-logical reductionfrom entities to meaning thatenables Heidegger to thema-tize the ontological differencebetween being and beings, while the impassehe reaches at the end of Being and Time arises from a confusion about itsimplications for Existenz,Dasein's mode of being. Forexample, "world" nBeing and Time s a structuraleatureof Dasein's being, i.e., a transcendentalcondition of intelligibility and thus the meaning-groundof what shows upwithin the world. "Nature,"n contrast, is "anentity within the world" (BT254; SZ 211) andthus "can nevermake worldhoodintelligible" (SZ 65; BT94). To suggest that Dasein's understanding f being presupposes he facticalextantness of nature husimplies a shift towarda transcendental ealisticper-spective which is not just supplementalto, but inconsistent with, the phe-nomenological project. Empirical inquiries into "man's"entanglement innaturearecertainly possible, butonly on the groundof Dasein's understand-ing of being. Even the mere possibility of a metaphysical reading of thisentanglementthatcould avoid the objectionof transcendental ealism,how-ever, has yet to be shown.44

?5. The End of Being and Time and the Overcomingof MetaphysicsIf transcendentalrealism is the error of treatingbeing-in-the-worldas justanotherworldlyentity,we havealreadyencounteredHeidegger'sclosest brush42 This difference is nicely elaboratedby HubertDreyfus, Being-in-the-World (Cambridge:

MIT Press, 1991).43 In Husserl's case this is especially apparent n his collaborationwith Eugen Fink on the

so-called "SixthCartesianMeditation," n which traditionalmetaphysical ssues come tothe fore, largely, I believe, thanks to Fink's Hegelian way of formulatingphenomenolog-ical problems. See Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation,tr. with an introductionbyRonald Bruzina(Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1995).

44 One will object that this reading cannot be rightsince it imputesto Heidegger an accep-tance of the phenomenological reduction (in at least some of its aspects), when he mustsurely reject it. What is Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology, after all, if not arejection of Husserl's reduction of the world to transcendental ubjectivity? And doesn'the specifically repudiate he reduction n the lecture course from WS 1925, History of theConcept of Time: Prolegomena, tr. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 1985), p. 109? As I have argued elsewhere, the problem is a good deal morecomplicated thanany simple acceptanceor rejection; Being and Time is finally inconsis-tent on the issue. Since there is no room to repeat the argumentshere, I refer to my"Ontology and Transcendental Phenomenology Between Husserl and Heidegger,"Husserl in ContemporaryContext, ed. Burt Hopkins (Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1997), pp. 13-36, and "Husserl, Heidegger, and Transcendental Philosophy: Another Look at theEncyclopaedia Britannica Article," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research vol. L,no. 3 (1990), pp. 501-18.



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with it, viz., in his suggestion that the transcendental"neutrality"of theanalysisof Dasein be supplementedby a "metaphysicsof Dasein."There,thecategorialfeaturesof Dasein that n Beingand Timeweredefinedexclusivelywith reference to the transcendental rojectof groundingontological knowl-edge are to be reinterpretedn terms of the "factical extantness of nature."45Heidegger certainlyfelt that this metontologywould provide a distinctivelyphilosophical ground, for it was to be neither an empirical inquiry nor adevelopment of transcendental philosophy's implicit regional ontologies.Recallingour earlierdiscussion of Kant's TranscendentalDialectic, Heideggerseems to have hoped thatmetontology would restorephilosophicalcosmol-ogy andprovidea metaphysicalgroundfor the phenomenological projectofBeing and Time.Yet it is hardto avoid the suspicionthatcosmology of thissort is rather less inquiry than construction of what Heidegger himselfdescribes as worldview-an "all-inclusive reflection on the world and thehumanDasein,"one that s "existentiell," .e., "determined y environment-people, race, class, developmentalstageof culture";not so much "amatteroftheoreticalknowledge"as "acoherentconvictionwhichdetermines hecurrentaffairs of life more or less expressly anddirectly,"an outlook that "alwaysarises out of the particularfactical existence of the human being."46NowHeidegger's relation to the worldview question is complex,47but given hiscritiqueof Scheler we know thathe envisioned somethingmore for meton-tology; indeed, it must be something more since "philosophyitself nevergives a world-view,nor does it have the task of providingone" (GA26:230;MFL 179). If we ask what the relevantdistinctionbetween philosophy andworldview is, the preceding discussion suggests that where philosophyinquires into grounds or reasons, worldviews presupposesuch grounds andbuild upon them. Cosmology, then, seems to get us no furtherthan world-view; but perhaps the genuine metaphysicalgroundis to be found only bymoving throughcosmology to retrieverationaltheologyfrom Kant's Dialec-tic.

This wouldcertainlyprovidean answerto Heidegger's question, at theendof Being and Time, concerning what entity was to function as the onticgroundof ontology. If the factical existence of Dasein presupposesthe facti-cal extantnessof nature(beings as a whole), metontology might be seen asproviding the metaphysical-ontic ground for ontology by referring this45 David Wood, "Reiterating he Temporal," p. 141, correctly notes that what Heidegger

proposes here is something like "the unity of a differentiated set that he has alreadyanalyzedtranscendentally," take on Dasein that "cannot,however, be ontic [sc. empir-ical], nor can it be transcendental."He then expresses well-founded worries that in sodoing Heidegger threatens o "dispensewith certainconstitutiverulesof intelligibility."

46 Heidegger, Basic Problemsqf Phenomenology,pp. 5-6 (GA24:7-8).47 A sensitive treatment s found in RobertBernasconi, "'The Double Concept of Philoso-phy' and the Place of Ethics in Being and Time,"in Heidegger in Question (AtlanticHighlands:HumanitiesPress, 1993).



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cosmological whole to its ground in God. Many things speak in favor ofsuch a suggestion. For instance, Heidegger links metontology with meta-physica specialis, i.e., with "metaphysicsas finalpurpose,"and this, in turn,is identifiedwith that part of TpCOTT1 piXoaopia Aristotle called (EoXoyia(GA26:229; MFL 178). Fromthis angle, Heidegger's metaphysicsis essen-tially a retrieval of Aristotle's: Being and Time focuses upon ontology, aninquiry into being qua being (TO- Ov i O6v),while metontology takes uptheology or the "problemof transcendence," n inquiry nto "the highestkindof being" (TO TIlPICOTaTOV yEVOS Mival), TO ?Eiov.48A "metaphysical" roundwould thus be a theological one, and the relationbetween phenomenologyand metaphysicswouldbe the relationbetweentranscendentalhilosophyandtheology.

Even if this suggestion is right, however, it is hard to see how it avoidsthe charge of transcendental ealism: Appeal to God could no more consis-tently serve as an account of Dasein's understandingof being (ontology),independentof thatvery understanding,hancouldcosmologicalappealto thecontexts of natureor history. Heidegger's earlierpoint still holds: "beingcannot be explained throughentities."49But in fact the suggestion does notreally get us beyondcosmology at all, since Heidegger's readingof theologyis essentially cosmological: TO eElOV signifies "simply beings-theheavens:the encompassingandoverpowering, hat underanduponwhich weare thrown, that which dazzles us and takes us by surprise, the over-whelming"(GA26:13; MFL 11).Y(Heideggerdoes link this "understandingfbeing qua superiorpower [Ubermdchtig]"with "holiness"(GA26:211; MFL165), and Pdggeler is surely right to say that Scheler's way of asking thewhy-questionhas "stimulatedHeideggerto reopenthe questionof the divine[Giittlichen]in terms of which humanbeings have understood hemselves,"thus taking up againthe threadof his theologicalbeginnings.51 Nevertheless,Heideggeris not identifyingthe ontic groundof ontology with God. Almostas if he had the objection of transcendentalrealism in mind, he explicitlystates thatin discussing being as the overpowering he "dialectical llusion isespecially great"andthat it is therefore"preferableo putup with the cheapaccusationof atheismwhich, if it is intendedontically, is in fact completelycorrect"(GA26:211; MFL 165, my emphasis). The "being that must takeover the function of providing"an ontic ground, nvoked at the end of Beingand Time,cannotbe God.48 For full elaborationof this suggestion see Hosokawa,"The Conceptionof Being and Time

and the Problemof Metaphysics,"and"Heideggerunddie Ethik,"passim.49 This does not, of course, rule out an ontological theology; it only rules out taking suchtheologyas groundof ontology.

50 This view of Aristotle's "theology" predates Heidegger's metaphysical decade. It ispresentas early as the lecturecourse of WS 1924/25, Platon: Sophistes, GesamtausgabeBd. 19, ed. IngebordSchuBler Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann,1992), p. 222.51 Pdggeler, "Heideggers ogische Untersuchungen,"p. 93.



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There is, then, apparently nothing left but to see the ontic ground asDasein itself-not insofaras it understands eing, butinsofaras it finds itselfalreadyin the midst of a totality of beings "underand upon which we arethrown."52Heidegger claims that the two sides of Aristotle's first philoso-phy-"knowledge of beings and knowledge of the overwhelming"-corre-spond "to the twofold in Being and Time of existence and thrownness"(GA26:13; MFL 11). Having concentrated on a phenomenologicalclarification of Dasein's understandingof being-so the argumentgoes53-Beingand Timeconcludesby acknowledging hatthe "projection"rinterpre-tation of existence uponwhich such phenomenologydraws is itself compro-mised by ontic presuppositionsdue to the inquirer's"thrownness" r factic-ity, i.e., herbeing always already particularly ituated n the midst of beingsas a whole. Since, as Heidegger reminds us, Being and Time employs a"facticalideal of Dasein,"an "onticalway of takingexistence which...neednot be bindingfor everyone,"the "ontological'truth'of the existentialanaly-sis is developed on the groundof the primordialexistentiell truth."'54 t isplausible, then, to think that metontology turns back to investigate thisprimordialexistentiell truth n some way, as the ontic "ground"of the onto-logical project.

The value of this suggestion does not lie in any precise insight it givesinto whatmetontologicalor metaphysical nquirycould be; it adds-and canadd-nothing to what we havealreadyconsidered. ndeed,thoughthisappearsto be the interpretationof these mattersfavored by most commentators,Imention it only at this late stage because anyone adoptingit must alreadyhaveconcededthat therecan be no purelymetaphysicalgroundsdistinct fromphenomenological ones, hence that there can be no metaphysical(metontological) inquiryinto them. It is impossible thatmetontology couldinvestigatethrownness-in the sense of demonstratinghe natural,social, orhistorical imits of Dasein's understanding f being-since suchinvestigationwould alreadybe groundedin that very understanding.Further,Being andTime has alreadyanalyzed the finitude of Dasein's understanding,and ouraccess to it, by appeal to the existential categories of disposition(Befindlichkeit) and mood (Stimmung). If the "primarydiscovery of theworld" s by way of "baremood,"we do not have thebasis for aninquiry,butprecisely the reverse: "the 'whence' and the 'whither"'of our being in themidst of what is "remain n darkness"(BT 177, 173; SZ 138, 134). Whatmore can metontology hope to do but reaffirm this? And when Heidegger52 It is tempting to link this suggestion with a retrievalof rationalpsychology from Kant's

Dialectic.53 Versions of this view can be found in Hosokawa,"Heideggerunddie Ethik"; Krell, Inti-mations; Sallis, Echoes; McNeill, "Metaphysics,FundamentalOntology"; and Grondin,"Prolegomena"; mong others.

54 BT 358, 360, 364; SZ 310, 312, 316.328 STEVEN GALT CROWELL


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revisits these issues at the start of his metaphysical decade-in the 1929"What is Metaphysics?"-nothing has changed: the distinctive mood ofAngst is said to reveal the nothing (das Nichts), thatis, to bring us beforethephenomenological fact thatreasons-ontic answers to the question of whythere is something ratherthan nothing-give out."5Yet the fact that meta-physics or metontology represents, on this reading, less an inquiry than theimpossibility of one is, for those who adopt it, just the point: the onticgroundof ontology is understoodprecisely as something the recognition ofwhich undermines he project of ontology, signalingthe end, the collapse, ofBeing and Time.

Thus Jean Grondin thinks that "Dasein proves to be too finite and toohistorically situated to enable it to derive.. transcendentalstructuresof itsmost fundamental being," while John Sallis holds that appeal to the"overwhelming" in the midst of which we find ourselves leads to "thesacrificeof theunderstanding."56oremodestly,RobertBernasconiconcludesnot that Dasein's finitude,its ontic situatedness, precludesit from graspingtranscendentalontological)structures,butthat"Heideggers notreadilyableto sustain the purity of the distinction between the ontic and the ontologi-cal."57This, however, does not imply that no such distinction is to be made,or that such "impurity" equires"sacrificeof the understanding."Similarly,David Wood recognizes that "it may be vital to shift from ontic discourse,discourse about beings and their relation to each other, to discourse aboutbeing,"but we neverthelesscannot gnore"back-door ntanglementsbetweenthe ontic and the ontological"; ndeed, "the transcendental..is nowhere elsebut in the empirical."58But if that is what the collapse of Being and Timeamountsto, I would take it as good evidence for my earlier claim that what"failed" was not phenomenology ("phenomenological seeing"), but the"inappropriateoncernwith 'science' and 'research'."Forwhatmust be aban-doned in the face of ontic-ontologicalentanglements the espritde systeme-far moreevident in Heidegger'sappropriationf phenomenologythan it is inHusserl'soriginal59-thatdemandsa successor-discipline o traditionalmeta-physics. The hermeneutic phenomenology of Being and Time is already55 For this reason, as we saw above, Heidegger distinguishes here between

"comprehending he whole of beings"-which he sees as impossible for a finite being-and "finding oneself in the midst of beings as a whole"-which is accomplished all thetime through mood. The question of whether the phenomenonof mood can serve as thebasis for metaphysical inquiry is explored in the lecture course from WS 1929/30, DieGrundbegriffeder Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, esamtausgabeBd. 29/30,ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann(Frankfurt:Vittorio Klostermann, 1983). In myview it does not get beyond the impasse of 1928, but the issue is too complex to treat here.

56 Grondin,"Prolegomena," . 69; Sallis, Echoes, pp. 145, 148.57 Bernasconi, "'The Double Concept of Philosophy'," p. 33.58 Wood, "Reiterating he Temporal,"pp.-156-57.59 I mean by this perhapscontentious-sounding tatementonly that the "architectonic" rive

is more clearly present n Being and Timethanin anythingHusserlever published.METAPHYSICS,METONTOLOGY,AND THE END OF BEINGAND TIME 329


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nothing but the continual attempt to negotiate this impurity, seeking thetranscendental n the empirical. If philosophy can never constitute itself asabsolute, infallible, secured, unrevisable-a fixed system of permanentpos-sessions-the searchfor something ike transcendental onditionsof meaningis nevertheless inseparable from the project of philosophizing, a necessary"illusion"(GA26:201;MFL 158), as Heideggercomes to call it.

Why "illusion"?Perhapsbecause althoughwe acknowledge our finitude(the fallible, impure characterof ontological inquiry), after we arrivephe-nomenologically at what we understand to be necessary, apriori(transcendental) ruths, he claim that ourinsighthas arisen from ourlimitedabilities as thinkers "is no more exciting"-as J. L. Austin once put it6"-"thanadding 'D.V."' At a deeper level, though, reference to a necessaryillusion points to the confluence of ethical and epistemological motives inthe notion of philosophical grounding.The phenomenologicalproject, as aphilosophical practice, proves to be an "art of existing" (GA26:210; MFL158), andit is no accidentthat this art-the ontic ideal informingthe analysisof existence in Being and Time-exhibits whatBernasconicalls "anunstatedbias toward what.. might be called the 'virtues of the philosopher'. 61 Forthat ontic ideal reflects an ethics of philosophy, those motives, collected byHusserl underthe headingof the philosopher's"ultimate elf-responsibility,"that lead to the insistence on "phenomenological eeing"itself. Thus even ifphenomenology cannotprovide a systematic foundational science, the phe-nomenological concept of ground has a distinct-though ethical-priorityoverthe "adventure" f metaphysicalcosmology, theology,andpsychology.

It should be emphasizedthat Heideggerdid not consistently understandmetontology this way; at least duringhis metaphysicaldecade he remainedseduced by a kind of dialectical illusion. Faced with the phenomenologicalencounter with the nothing-with the fact that ontic groundsfor the wholegive out-he did not stay within the ethical space of phenomenologicalreasoningbutbelieved instead that the finitudeof thinkingdemandedanchorin onticpoliticalandhistoricalaffairs,"decision"aboutthe "meaning"of dasSeiende im Ganzen.To this extent, Habermas s right thatHeideggertrans-formed the transcendentalphilosophy of Being and Time into an inflatedhistoricism and decisionism, something like a worldview.62The notorious"political engagement"wouldthus be a consequencenot of the phenomenol-ogy of Being and Time,but of Heidegger' conflationof theethicalgroundofthinkingwith the ontic involvementsof the thinker.

60 J. L. Austin, "Other Minds," Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1961), p. 66.61 Bernasconi, "'The Double Conceptof Philosophy'," p. 37.62 Jurgen Habermas, "Martin Heidegger-Werk und Weltanschauung," Texte und Kon-texte (Frankfurt: uhrkamp,1991), p. 58.



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But one ought not to agree entirely with Habermas's further claim that,after his metaphysicaldecade,Heidegger retreatedever more into a mythicalself-indemnification. t took Heideggera decade to realizethatthere could beno Umschlag from ontology to metontology, that phenomenologicalgroundsneeded no supplementfrommetaphysics, or politics either. ThoughHeideg-ger nevergot so faras to see that the ontic groundof ontology is exclusivelyethical,63his laterwork no longermakes any appealto metontology, or to ametaphysical ground. Rather, n the midst of many different motives (someof themperhaps uspect),one findsHeideggerengagedin a phenomenologicalproject of getting back to the ground of metaphysics itself in order toconfront the metaphysical way of thinkingwhich "represents"beings as awhole.64Rather hanfollow the fruitlesspathtowardworldviewformation-apath that confuses being (meaning) with beings, phenomenological withontic grounds-Heidegger triesto thinkthe "truthof being,"to "experience"(i.e., bring to phenomenologicalevidence) thatwhich, in allowing access tobeings, conceals itself. To overcomemetaphysicsin this way is not to rejectphilosophicalreflectionon naturebutmerelyto deny thatphenomenology(orDenken) can be contextuallygroundedas a being among beings.65 f preserv-ing the radical impulse of phenomenologythusrequiresrejectingthe claimsof metaphysics,the demise of Being and Time,its end, was only the end ofthe inconsistency still infecting its concept of philosophical reason-giving.Paraphrasing acobi, then,Heidegger mightwell say that"Ineed the assump-tion of phenomenologyto get into metaphysics,but with this assumptionitis not possible for me to remainin it."66

63 It should be obvious that this paper has not tried to provide sufficient argumentfor thisclaim about an ethical ground.

64 See, for example, the 1949 "EinleitungZu: 'Was ist Metaphysik?'Der RUckgang n denGrundder Metaphysik,"Wegmarken,pp. 361-377.65 Thus I agree with McNeill, "Metaphysics,FundamentalOntology," p. 78, that the later

Heidegger has "no need" of metontology and does not thematize "'beings' as such, but,for example, people, things, and nature"-but I would say that this sort of inquiry("thoroughly existentiell" but not an "objectification")s nothingbut the practiceof phe-nomenological seeing freed from an "inappropriate concern with 'science' and'research'."

66 I would like to thank CharlesGuignonfor helpful suggestions on an earlier draftof thispaper.I would also like to thank Philosophy and Phenomenological Research's anony-mous referee for forcing me to clarify my argumentat crucialpoints.

crowell. metaphysics, met ontology, and the end of being and time

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