inter-defined: being always needs Dasein and cannot ‘take place’ without it, and Dasein cannot ‘take place’ without being (and its self-concealing).7 I would not know how to make sense of being—‘that on the basis of which entities are already understood’ (SZ: 6)—wholly independently of the entity that understands being. I have no objection to readers who are interested in making sense of such a thing and who see in Heidegger’s work resources for doing so. I read their work and I learn a lot from it. But I do not read Heidegger in the same way.
Third, and hopefully least controversially, I assume that Heidegger can be wrong—that he can mis-state his own points, misuse his own terminology, confuse things that should be kept distinct, and make all the mistakes that all philosophers make sometimes. Heidegger certainly erred politically; there is no reason to think that he did not sometimes err philosophically and rhetorically, too. Of course, attributing an error is always a last resort. But when I see no other option, I try to charitably and respectfully note the error and correct it. As we will see, much of what drives my argument in this book is my attempt to understand and correct what I take to be a rather substantial error on Heidegger’s part. I assure the reader that I did the utmost to exhaust all other options first.
Fourth, and finally, I assume that it is phenomenologically legitimate to attempt to illuminate the self-concealing of being. Of course, the goal is to bring being to light as self-concealing and not to destroy or undermine that self-concealing. Calling self-concealing ‘kruptesthai’ and being ‘phusis’, Heidegger says that ‘the kruptesthai of phusis is not to be overcome, not to be stripped from phusis. Rather, the task is the much more difficult one of allowing phusis, in all the purity of
7 E.g., ‘the clearing of entities is this supporting ground [of our humanity] only insofar as it is the clearing for the vacillating self-concealment [Sichverbergen], for the entrance of being itself into what is lighted up. On the other hand, [. . .] if the human being would not be, then neither could this clearing come to pass. The clearing for the self-concealing [Sichverbergen]—truth—is the supporting ground of humanity, and humanity comes to pass only by grounding and being exposed to the supporting ground as such. While the human being stands as an entity in the openness of entities, it must also at the same time stand in a relation to what is self-concealing [Sichverbergenden]. The ground of humanity must therefore be grounded through humanity as ground’ (BQP: 179/GA45: 212).