Title

The early Heidegger, however, thought of his transcendental argument as distinct in two
ways. First, he thought that the thinkers prior to himself had skipped a critical step. They
had gone directly from a transcendental discussion of intentionality to attempt to ground
a metaphysicswithout pausing to consider what it meant to be an intender, without
discussing the conditions under which an entity can be one who intends or (in
Heideggers own terminology) without asking the question of the meaning of the being of
Dasein. Heidegger thought that because of this, all his predecessors had fallen into the
trap of thinking of the intentional agent as substance that happened to have an odd
range of properties: mental properties that involved thinking of things and itself, or of
being conscious and self-conscious. In contrast, Heideggers own analysis of the
meaning of the being of Dasein led him to assert that the meaning is temporality, that to
be an intentional agent of the sort we are is to be temporal. (Okrent, 1988, pp. 6-7)

The early Heidegger further thought that the subjectivism he found prevalent in modern
metaphysics all the way back to Ren Descartesthe emphasis on the character of the
intentional subject and its intentionality as the ground for all determinations in regard to
what it is for any entity to bewas itself a function of this Cartesian error in regard to the
ontology of the intender. In the completion of Being and Time, the early Heidegger
hoped to show how the appropriate answer to the question of the meaning of Daseins
being (that is, the pragmatic, anti-mentalistic, agency-centered answer to the question
what are the necessary conditions for being an intentional agent?) lead to the
appropriate, anti-subjectivistic answer to the question of the meaning of being (that is, to
a non-subject-centered account of the conditions under which any entity can
appropriately be said to be).
But the early Heidegger was wrong about all this. Whats more, he discovered that he
was wrong relatively quickly. Being and Time was never completed, although we do
have what Heidegger called a new working-out of Division I, Part 3. This volume, The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology, represents Heideggers best attempt to construct
the antisubjectivistic metaphysics that he then thought must follow from his pragmatic
analysis of intentionalityand it is a failure. In Chapter 6 I reconstruct the argument of

Basic Problems and show that it leads to an aporia. As a first approximation, the
problem consists in the fact that Heidegger had misidentified the source of metaphysical
subjectivism. It doesnt always arise out of Cartesianism; in some cases it arises out of
the transcendental mode of argument. All transcendental arguments, including the early
Heideggers own, are verificationist; and verificationism, even of a pragmatic sort, leads
to subjectivism in metaphysics, a commitment that cannot be supported by the argument
of Being and Time.
The rest of Part II develops the late Heideggers response to the collapse of the
metaphysical project of Being and Time. This response has two sides. First, Heidegger
came to believe that metaphysics had reached its end or completion in the present
age, a completion understood as taking place in the scientific attitude of socially active
humanity. That is, the question of what it means for some entity to be or for any entity to
be, and which ontological sorts of entities there are, are all questions that we now see
can be answered only pragmatically, either directly through seeing what kinds of
activities are successful or indirectly through the ontological commitments of a
pragmatically understood science. The late Heidegger isnt always happy that
metaphysics has been completed in this way, that philosophy has found its telos in
science and technology, but he is consistent in his assertion that it has. (Okrent, 1988,
pp. 6-8)
But there is a second side to Heideggers response to the collapse of the antisubjectivistic program of Being and Time. Late Heidegger thought that over and beyond
metaphysics, over and beyond the question concerning what it means for something to
be or which sorts of things there arequestions that he came to see as both definitive of
philosophy and capable of being answered only pragmaticallythere was another
question that has a unique status and cannot be answered either scientifically or
pragmatically. This is the question of the truth of beingthe aletheia, opening, or
lighting of being. In Chapters 7 and 8 I argue that with appropriate modifications this
question should be identified with Heideggers initial question concerning the necessary
conditions for the possibility of intentionality. I further argue that the late Heidegger
thought this question was neither metaphysical nor scientific, because the answer was
neither contingent and grounded in a scientific investigation of any entity or capacity of
any entity, nor analytic and grounded in a priori analysis of what it means for any entity

to be. Positively, this amounts to the claim that the answer to the question of the truth of
being

(the question of the conditions under which being can be understood or

intended) is derived from a transcendental argument that (1) has no metaphysical

implications whatsoever and (2) does not involve any a priori analysis of the being of any
entity, including any transcendental subject, subject of consciousness, or Dasein.
(Okrent, 1988, pp. 8-9)

El olvido del ser en ser y tiempo se entiende desde una perspectiva terica cuyas
consecuencias no escapan al terreno de la metafsica entendida como la investigacin
terica sobre el ser. Si bien es el motivo fundamental del proyecto inconcluso de ser y
tiempo, el olvido del ser no tiene ms que un tratamiento introductorio en esta y las
obras de este periodo. Se mantiene, sin embargo, en el pensamiento heideggeriano
posterior a la Kehre, al abandono del proyecto de Ser y tiempo, por la razn de ser una
fundamentacin trascendental de la metafsica, del adeduado planteamiento de la
pregunta por el ser.
Para una exposicin satisfactoria del olvido del ser que inaugura el proyecto de sery
tiempo hay que ir ms all de esta obra y reconstruir las referencias fragmentarias que
se encuentran en los conceptos fundamentales de la metafsica, Kant y el problema de
la metafsica, los problemas fundamentales de la fenomenologa, de la esencia de la
verdad, carta sobre el humanismo; con ayuda de los comentarios que sobre el tema
hacen Okrent, Dreyfus, Habermas, NI 22, 194, 654, 155, , NII 28, 402, LXV
(Grundfragen der Philosophie 45) 111, PT (Phenomenologie und Teologie en Weg
Marken) 53/10, 293, 115, 119, 138, 442, WMP (Nachwort zu Was ist Metaphysik? En
Weg Marken) 304/385.
The early Heidegger, however, thought of his transcendental argument as distinct in two
ways. First, he thought that the thinkers prior to himself had skipped a critical step. They
had gone directly from a transcendental discussion of intentionality to attempt to ground
a metaphysicswithout pausing to consider what it meant to be an intender, without
discussing the conditions under which an entity can be one who intends or (in
Heideggers own terminology) without asking the question of the meaning of the being of
Dasein. Heidegger thought that because of this, all his predecessors had fallen into the
trap of thinking of the intentional agent as substance that happened to have an odd
range of properties: mental properties that involved thinking of things and itself, or of
being conscious and self-conscious. In contrast, Heideggers own analysis of the

meaning of the being of Dasein led him to assert that the meaning is temporality, that to
be an intentional agent of the sort we are is to be temporal. (Okrent, 1988, pp. 6-7)

The early Heidegger further thought that the subjectivism he found prevalent in modern
metaphysics all the way back to Ren Descartesthe emphasis on the character of the
intentional subject and its intentionality as the ground for all determinations in regard to
what it is for any entity to bewas itself a function of this Cartesian error in regard to the
ontology of the intender. In the completion of Being and Time, the early Heidegger
hoped to show how the appropriate answer to the question of the meaning of Daseins
being (that is, the pragmatic, anti-mentalistic, agency-centered answer to the question
what are the necessary conditions for being an intentional agent?) lead to the
appropriate, anti-subjectivistic answer to the question of the meaning of being (that is, to
a non-subject-centered account of the conditions under which any entity can
appropriately be said to be).
But the early Heidegger was wrong about all this. Whats more, he discovered that he
was wrong relatively quickly. Being and Time was never completed, although we do
have what Heidegger called a new working-out of Division I, Part 3. This volume, The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology, represents Heideggers best attempt to construct
the antisubjectivistic metaphysics that he then thought must follow from his pragmatic
analysis of intentionalityand it is a failure. In Chapter 6 I reconstruct the argument of
Basic Problems and show that it leads to an aporia. As a first approximation, the
problem consists in the fact that Heidegger had misidentified the source of metaphysical
subjectivism. It doesnt always arise out of Cartesianism; in some cases it arises out of
the transcendental mode of argument. All transcendental arguments, including the early
Heideggers own, are verificationist; and verificationism, even of a pragmatic sort, leads
to subjectivism in metaphysics, a commitment that cannot be supported by the argument
of Being and Time.
The rest of Part II develops the late Heideggers response to the collapse of the
metaphysical project of Being and Time. This response has two sides. First, Heidegger
came to believe that metaphysics had reached its end or completion in the present
age, a completion understood as taking place in the scientific attitude of socially active
humanity. That is, the question of what it means for some entity to be or for any entity to
be, and which ontological sorts of entities there are, are all questions that we now see.

The early Heidegger further thought that the subjectivism he found prevalent in modern
metaphysics all the way back to Ren Descartesthe emphasis on the character of the
intentional subject and its intentionality as the ground for all determinations in regard to
what it is for any entity to bewas itself a function of this Cartesian error in regard to the
ontology of the intender. In the completion of Being and Time, the early Heidegger
hoped to show how the appropriate answer to the question of the meaning of Daseins
being (that is, the pragmatic, anti-mentalistic, agency-centered answer to the question
what are the necessary conditions for being an intentional agent?) lead to the
appropriate, anti-subjectivistic answer to the question of the meaning of being (that is, to
a non-subject-centered account of the conditions under which any entity can
appropriately be said to be).
But the early Heidegger was wrong about all this. Whats more, he discovered that he
was wrong relatively quickly. Being and Time was never completed, although we do
have what Heidegger called a new working-out of Division I, Part 3. This volume, The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology, represents Heideggers best attempt to construct
the antisubjectivistic metaphysics that he then thought must follow from his pragmatic
analysis of intentionalityand it is a failure. In Chapter 6 I reconstruct the argument of
Basic Problems and show that it leads to an aporia. As a first approximation, the
problem consists in the fact that Heidegger had misidentified the source of metaphysical
subjectivism. It doesnt always arise out of Cartesianism; in some cases it arises out of
the transcendental mode of argument. All transcendental arguments, including the early
Heideggers own, are verificationist; and verificationism, even of a pragmatic sort, leads
to subjectivism in metaphysics, a commitment that cannot be supported by the argument
of Being and Time.
The rest of Part II develops the late Heideggers response to the collapse of the
metaphysical project of Being and Time. This response has two sides. First, Heidegger
came to believe that metaphysics had reached its end or completion in the present
age, a completion understood as taking place in the scientific attitude of socially active
humanity. That is, the question of what it means for some entity to be or for any entity to
be, and which ontological sorts of entities there are, are all questions that we now see.