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ABSTRACT
There is relatively little comprehensive treatment of Heidegger’s theory of essences despite his ubiquitous use of essences. It is commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to view essences as the ground for true de re modal claims. I argue that Heidegger offers an account of essences that can best be understood as a type of relative essentialism. Relative essentialism is the view that more than one being can occupy the same space at the same time and those beings have distinct sets of de re modal truths about them. Heidegger’s account of essences allows for true de re modal claims about a wide variety of things including scientific and cultural entities. At the same time, Heidegger rejects absolute essentialism: the view that there is one privilege collection of beings whose natures determine the truth values of de re modal claims about them. Relative essentialism is distinguished from contextual essentialism.
Notes
1 Sam Wheeler has argued that relative essentialism is implicit in the works of Davidson and Quine. Wheeler claims that the relative essentialist reading of Davidson is suggestive of Heidegger’s distinction between Being and beings. This paper attempts to articulate precisely how Heidegger can also be understood as a relative essentialist. I follow Wheeler’s characterization of relative and absolute essentialism in this paper. See Wheeler.
2 Grieder 2.
3 Sheehan 86.
4 Sheehan 88.
5 Dahlstrom 121f.
6 Grieder 64.
7 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 79.
8 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 85.
9 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 85.
10 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 86.
11 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 100.
12 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 105.
13 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 105.
14 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 106.
15 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 108.
16 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 110.
17 Dahlstrom 122.
18 Dahlstrom 122.
19 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 123.
20 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 104.
21 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 104.
22 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 104.
23 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 105.
24 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 105.
25 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth” 125.
26 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth” 125.
27 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth” 126.
28 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth” 127.
29 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth” 129.
30 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 175–76.
31 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 175–76.
32 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 175–76.
33 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 55.
34 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 55.
35 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 55.
36 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 56.
37 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 56.
38 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 56.
39 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 61–62.
40 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 56.
41 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 56.
42 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 67.
43 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 68.
44 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 83.
45 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 83.
46 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 83.
47 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 83.
48 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 76.
49 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 76.
50 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 76–77.
51 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 76–77.
52 Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy 76–77.
53 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 175–76.
54 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 177.
55 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 179.
56 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 179.
57 Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art” 170.
58 Sheehan 90.
59 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 313.
60 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 318.
61 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 318.
62 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 329.
63 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 329.
64 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” 335.
65 Vallega-Neu 151.
66 Okrent 478.
67 Golob 174.
68 Blattner 249.
69 Schatzski, “Early Heidegger on Being, the Clearing and Realism”.
70 See Cerbone and Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World.
71 Dreyfus, “Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Realism”.
72 Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in Being and Time.
73 Lafont, Heidegger, Language and World-Discloser.
74 Gabriel, Fields of Sense 199.
75 Gabriel, “Is Heidegger’s ‘Turn’ a Realist Project?” 50.
76 Moore.
77 Heidegger, Being and Time 228.
78 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 113.
79 Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology 113.
80 Heidegger, Being and Time 231.
81 Golob 88.
82 Golob 109.
83 Golob convincingly argues that Heidegger believes Kant is the first to begin to understand the present-at-hand in terms of time. Heidegger sees Kant as claiming that familiarity with the pure image of time is identical to familiarity with the property of substantiality. In essence, time functions as a kind of prototype for Kant.
84 Blattner 254.
85 Dahlstrom 98.
86 Dahlstrom 99.
87 Dahlstrom 90.
88 Gabriel, “Is Heidegger’s ‘Turn’ a Realist Project?” 62.
89 See Dahlstrom chapter 2, for an explanation of this objectivity.
90 Cerbone explains this point well in his “Realism and Truth”.
91 Golob 169.
92 Golob 169.
93 Golob 170.
94 Heidegger, Being and Time 269.
95 Dreyfus, “How Heidegger Defends” 119.
96 Dreyfus, “How Heidegger Defends” 119.
97 Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground” 123.
98 Heidegger, Being and Time 255.
99 Dreyfus, “Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Realism” 105.
100 Dreyfus, “Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Realism” 107.
101 Dreyfus, “Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Realism” 106.
102 See Wrathall, “Unconcealment”, in Heidegger and Unconcealment for one account of this hierarchical structure of dependency.