To understand the Heideggerian place for Thomism is to first understand the place for Heidegger’s philosophy itself. Principle to the early Heidegger’s project, to which this work is intentionally limited, is the discerning role of Destruktion. In Sein und Zeit [SZ], Heidegger aims to tear down the edifice of being, a concept contorted by the rust and corrosion of the Western normative tradition. The wrestling away of being from those who would keep it hidden is, in an important way, a stripping of the future by those who would seek to determine it [das Man]. The consequential result is that Dasein must take control of itself, it must in a way, become master of its own self so as to make a clearing [Lichtung] for disclosedness. In this way we are to be offered a glimpse into being. The order here is significant. It is through the existential analytic of Dasein that we peek into the hidden contours of being, it is not through being that we peek into the hiddenness of Man. For Heidegger, the stake of philosophy is not finally anthropology, but ontology. This has been obscured by those, especially the “children of Heidegger,” whom in their excitement for the existential analytic obscure the very understanding which stands center to the entire Heideggerian project. Thus, do we now have, in a precisely Heideggerian way, a contemporary obscurity of Dasein, ironically produced by those who have proclaimed Dasein the loudest.
What is being for The History of Ontology? Here Heidegger is instructive. It is the actus ens, the individual instances of being. The primordial grounding upon which any ens is given understanding is a nonsensical question to our history. Or at least so we are told. From Aristotle onward, Heidegger teaches, the drowning of being under the auspices of individualized ens results ultimately in a metaphysically-retarded nominalism that, in its rare logically consistent form, substitutes the ego for being. The disaster of English strict empiricism and the embarrassment of Continental occasionalism are merely symptoms of the larger disease of alienation, of separating the human person from the larger question of being. In short, we have forgotten how to think. We must learn anew how to think, and consequently, what to think on. We have stayed too long in the wilderness, we have substituted temporality for time, Being for being, Dasein for ego. This is the “onto-theo-logical” tradition.
So we turn back to the method of Destruktion. It is only by a process of clearing away that we can find a place and space for Lichtung, that is, for the illuminating light to find its way through the clearing. This is not always a pleasant experience, purification, even intellectual purification, is painful. There has been a tendency in some circles to belittle the pain involved in Destruktion, this is a mistake. There is a tearing down component to Destruktion that must occur if we are truly to seek out the unrealized potentiality of Dasein. How could it be any other way?
The reverse is also false. Heidegger does not teach anything so obstinate as to create rubble so as to create something entirely new out from its ashes. The equiprimordiality of temporality necessitates the threefold unity of historicality, contemporaneity and possibility. The critical-historical assessment of the past is a wrestling loose of non-contemporaneity, precisely so that it may impact contemporaneity. This is not blindness to the historical; it is the only way in which we see the historical as historical. This is an appreciation for the past as past, as non-contemporaneity. There is a criticism to be laid bare against Heidegger in terms of his larger use of the temporal unity, but I have done so elsewhere and is irrelevant to our aim.
What, then, is the Heideggerian place for Thomism? Heidegger places Thomas Aquinas as representative of the apex of scholastic ontology, of the fruition of Aristotelian ontology and the turning point that led to the Cartesian esse as res cogitans. To Heidegger, Thomas is another causal-ontological-philosopher which hangs on to the ens understanding of being. Is this true? Is Thomas merely the greatest of the ens philosophers?
