Capobianco's mystical Heidegger • gary e. davis • berkeley



		Richard Capobianco’s mystical sense of Heidegger re: RC’s “Heidegger’s ‘Mystical’ Vision of Being” gary e. davis		August 23, 2025
		This venture into RC’s admirable engagement (link to his essay is above) has four parts, here linking to part 2, re: pp. 5-11 of RC’s essay; part 3, re: pp. 12-16 of his essay; and part 4, re: pp. 16-23 of his essay. I’ve posted about this discussion. I expect that future discussion will draw together themes from here for the sake of new contexts. That will be noted at the “new in sites” spot on my home page. But the following discussion ends with engagement with RC's engagement.

		Part 1: pp. 1-4 of RC’s section I
			The capped ‘Being’ is not merely a matter of titling. It’s RC’s stipulation of exaltation before the first paragtraph, which begins (following an epigraph) “Heidegger and Being…” RC addresses that choice in early pages of Heidegger’s Being, 2022, p. 39ff. But there’s no good reason for the choice, I could detail, especially since it has caused so much mis- understanding, as if “Being,” for Heidegger (beyond Thomist thought), is a transcend- entalist notion, rather than (as Heidegger had in mind) about living immanence: being a life: existence. I’ll not give space to RC’s exalting choice here, except to say that RC has a preference which is his own, not Heidegger’s. RC’s chapter for the upcoming anthology, The Mystery of Being, is about his “Heidegger,” which suits his interest. Fine. I respect the integrity of pursuing one’s own interests. But what about Heidegger’s? RC’s exaltation of being is starkly affirmed by his opening deference to previous work of his. “Consequently,…I offer three reflections on…Heidegger’s thinking of Being—and ‘mysticism’.” The epigraph: “ ‘The original essence of joy is becoming at home in nearness to the Source’.” I’m quoting RC’s quotation. Keith Hoeller’s translation for the English publication of Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry is different: “The original essence of joy is learning to become at home within a nearness to the origin.” Learning to become at home has an association to indiviiduation which RC doesn’t indicate. But clearly Heidegger is engaged with Hölderlin’s engagement with a discovery process which enhances sensibility, the joy of a journey, not merely realization of a state of affairs. Well, learning is implicit to mere indication of becoming. But for Heidegger, the path making is explicitly interesting. Hölderlin is clearly in an existential venture. For Hoeller, it’s about the origin, for RC “the Source,” again an exaltating preference. However, a source is different from an origin. The source of a stream is not its origin. Likewise for Heidegger, the source of Western thought conceals the ground of its origin. That ground is immanent, commonly concealing itself by having been concealed through socialization which displaces the immanence of historized being transcendentally (deferring up to otherworldliness), especially authorized by Christianized metaphysicalism. It’s not the case that “this matter of Being was the fundamental or core matter of [Heidegger’s] lifetime of thinking” (RC 2). You will nowhere find Heidegger claiming that. (E.g., Heidegger’s emphasis on the question of being in his late-life Zähringen seminar was about the centrality of the question for Being and Time.) Rather, the fundamental or core matter of his lifetime was teaching thoughtful dwelling together with what matters. Proximal questions of being provide entrance into what calls for thinking, often difficult for a life (Why is there philosophy in the first place?), yet potentially inceptive. Heidegger is always oriented to the communicative place of “our” thinking. He is addressing students, not espousing a philosophy. Derivatively, the matter of “his lifetime of thinking” is what calls for thinking in teaching. This provides entrance into issues of phenemenology, linguistic relativity, truth, art, historicality, potentials for inception—Echo, Playing Forth, Leap, Grounding, and care for ones to come, beyond myths that some god will save us. Enowning our shared potential for being authentic futures is what matters. RC: His manifold descriptions of Being (and manifold “names” for Being) testify to his tireless effort to bring into language—fresh language—what is, ultimately, inexpressible” (2). GD: No. Nowhere will you find Heidegger saying that. His effort is indeed tireless, enthused to bring fresh understanding into given language. That was his ending thought to his 1969 TV interview: to give new meaning to the language we already share, for the sake of what matters. That is ultimately expressible because—I would argue—ultimacy itself is an open question, not mystical. We can express the openness as such, as profoundly mysterious: that we are here and can articulate how that’s so, and define why it matters. It’s not that Heidegger “always safeguarded Being’s unmanifestness” (RC 2). Rather being oneself, being itself, safeguards itself. I would explicate that in terms of each person’s developmental relativity of understanding and their integral capacity for mental health, such that being well naturally guards itself from too much stress, too much new experience too soon, but also (at best) avoids too little challenge (Developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky called that “the zone of proximal development,” the comfort zone of engaged exploration.) Our concealment of overwhelming degrees of experience keeps the potential of learning in reserve. For early Greeks, that modulated engagement with enlightenment was called aletheia. We properly call it emancipatory interest in enlightenment, which is a prelude to journeying onward with open-minded inquiry and creativity. RC: What is frustrating to some, including some Heidegger scholars, is that the later Heidegger offered no arguments for his manifold descriptions of Being or for our special“relation” to Being. (2) GD: Not true. Heidegger’s extensive focus on “saying as showing” brings to narrrative a formal rhetoric of close reading which he exhibited through teaching (documented by lecture course transcripts) for decades. As RC says, “Heidegger gave direct testimony about being and our experience of being” (2). An argument in rhetoric is demonstrative, exemplificative, in a manner posed to be exemplary of cogent conveyance, clearly thinking for the sake of instilling clarity of understanding. Argument is not reducible to answering calls for justification (rationalizing). Argument is proximally about—as rhetorician J. L. Austin wrote—"how to do things with words.” In teaching, that matters. Heidegger writing is always in a stance of teaching. At page 3 of RC’s discussion, he turns to young Heidegger’s interest in religious life, firstly regarding a statement by Heidegger about “a mysterious moment of the unarticulated unity of intuition and feeling, one is nothing without the other” as about “mystical insight” (3). (RC translates ‘ist’ as “being” rather than “is”—“one being nothing…”— which only serves RC’s preference.) RC: This line is important because it gives us a valuable clue to the later Heidegger’s manifold reflections on Being. (3). GD: It does not. It’s part of unused lecture notes on Schliermacher’s sense of religious life. Unevidenced and false is that… RC: The early Heidegger’s insight into the religious and spiritual life that he was considering in 1920 [no: 1918-19] remained a guiding insight for his later thinking of Being.” GD: So, a religious motif is stipulated at the outset for RC’s reflections, though there is no evidence from Heidegger that Schliermacher’s sensibility provided a guiding insight into anything. But RC would disagree, based on Heidegger’s 1929 letter to E. Blochmann, referring to “the truth of our existence” heartfully “open to grace.” RC: This heartfelt testimony portends his later reflections on Being as the Holy… (3) GD: No it doesn’t. RC makes the association, but in fact Heidegger’s later reflections are about holiness itself, not “Being as the Holy.” Holiness isn’t a face of Being (God, “however we shall name it,” MH). That which is holy is so because we hold it so and keep fidelity to its owning holiness. Holiness, to Heidegger, is not a metaphor for something else: RC: …and the “saving” “grace” of Being as the Holy,… RC: [That] reveal[]s] to us the young Heidegger who was enthralled by an unnamed Transcendence. (3) GD: It does not. Firstly, Heidegger in 1929 wasn’t young (40 years of age), author of the essay “Phenomenology and Theology,” which distinguishes his project from the integrity of theology’s engagement with whatever “we shall name it.” Secondly, RC shows that he stipulates an exaltation (enthralled… Transcendence) which is not implied by a quote from a letter. The larger context of his letters to Blochmann during that period is that he’s introducing Jewish Blochmann to aspects of Christian meaning, not doing nostalgic remembrance. RC: Nevertheless, one might understandably ask: But why is it that we find nary a trace of this “spiritual” and “mystical” Heidegger in Being and Time? GD: Surprise, surprise.

		Part 2: pp. 5-11 of RC’s section I
			After noting that “we find nary a trace of this ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ Heidegger in Being and Time,” which was actually expressed by Heidegger as “mysterious,” RC turns to a theme of “mortal existence“ and Nietzsche (5-6), though a reader isn’t told why, but soon finds out: “…the early Heidegger was no doubt also influenced by Nietzsche’s harsh and sobering account of existence.” No doubt, but that’s irrelevant to Being and Time, which only mentions Nietzsche in passing while discussing notions of historiology. However RC’s association is integral for his “negativist” sense of Being and Time. He puts B&T in a procrustean bed, distorting the aims of B&T: “We must live ‘authentically’ by resolutely accepting our wounded existence.” No, regardless of wounding (e.g., ordinary life), we begin to live authentically by opening life to its potential, thus engaging one’s futurity. That theme is enhanced across Heidegger’s career. But RC wants to stay with the “mysterious spiritual atmosphere of the Archabbey” (6), as if something essential was lost by “the significant differences [his italics]… between the Heidegger of Being and Time and the later Heidegger.” RC recalls his earlier quote which concealed that Hiedegger was writing about Schliermacher, not his own views. RC’s interest is distinctly religious, as he quotes Heidegger on religion, as if Heidegger is expressing religious experience (rather than doing analysis of religious life), then RC contrasts that with his distorting view of B&T as “sober and stern (and even scolding).” RC finds no “holy music” in B&T, because he’s unaware (apparently) that Heidegger, 1957, avowed that the poetry of Hölderlin and others was “all that was necessary” in his youth, no mention of Christianity or abbey life. A ”moment of vision” is the beckoning light of Being and Time. The entire venture there is a calling to care, and to engage with being fully. That calling to care flourishes into the essence of living truthfully (“The Essence of Truth” lecture, 1931), dwelling with the joyful poet (1934), and originating the work of art (1936). His calling is addressed to the immanence of life, to one’s ownmost potential. There is nothing mystical about the challenge of making a future matter. The mystery of the challenge is as articulable as one is able to articulate. There is nothing unspeakable about that, but satisfactory words in one’s educable individuation aren’t yet found. Every master teacher and elder psychotherapist knows that the yet-unspoken “awaits” within oneself to be formed. But RC baselessly binds Heidegger’s poetic thinking to “impressions of the religious and spiritual” (7). The reader is unwittingly brought into RC’s “Heidegger” as someone seeded by their youth, because RC is a religionist reader, not that Heidegger implied anything of the kind. RC is a wandering soul (aren’t we all): He now turns to George Trakl’s difficult odyssey which leads to homecoming (8), just as psychotherapy is. (Recall that B&T became a focused seminar topic only with psychiatrists, mid-1960s.) But Heidegger doesn’t call the odyssey a “spiritual ‘wandering’” (7). RC inserts his own frame (spiritual) onto Heidegger/Trakl’s quoted “wandering” and “homecoming.” RC recalls various traditions of “wandering,” then labels them “spiritual traditions.” Evidently, RC hasn’t lived the wandering which Trakl lived (and Heidegger highlights). It’s immensely existential, epistemic, ethical, and aesthetic. Much can be gained by understanding the wandering manifoldly. But calling it all spiritual is just talking to the wind about very different odysseys (various traditions). RC dissociates B&T from “what ‘heals’ us, what ‘saves’ us, from our trammeled existence,” though B&T is an odyssey of that, though its experiment in poetic thinking is relative to a conceptual rhetoric of those philosophical times. RC: What “heals” us is our “homecoming” to Being, especially through the language of the poem (8). GD: What heals us is dwelling in the world of our life through the language expressing our ownmost potential for being. RC: “Thrownness” and “facticity” is no longer the final word on our existence,… GD: But it never was, for Heidegger! Those proximal notions of B&T are preludes to letting oneself into primordial considerations. RC doesn’t see the difference between proximal and primordial engagement. He wants “…’stillness’ and ‘wholeness’…,” rather than engagement (care) and flourishing (actualizing one’s “ownmost potential for being”). RC wants exalted homeostasis, rather than flourishing care. So, by concealing the vision of Being and Time, he is “taken up into the Holy, Being as the Holy,” which actually conceals the immanent potential holiness of wholly being by splitting off a fictional “Being” from holiness, yet exalting both (thereby stipulating an exalted transcendental difference). RC: Let us put a finer pint on this… GD: Oh, let us. RC finds in the lines of Trakl that “a spiritual transformation has come upon us,” but actually a perceptual transformation has come upon Trakl, expressed in natural figuration. RC doesn’t attend to Heidgger’s engagement with Trakl’s poem, which is about exalting immanent experience of things as holy presences. Rather, we are graced with RC’s engagement with Christianizing implicature. RC: … a joyful happening (an Ereignis, we may say) .. GD: Joyful, yes. But enowning appropriation is a complex hermeneutical notion. It’s by no means “purely a gift to be received.” Trakl has worked (suffered in wandering) for his clearing. RC has a chilling view of Being & Time, “as indifferent or even hostile toward the human being” (10). So, for RC, “how remarkably different from [his sense of] Being and Time is this message” of Trakl’s poem. RC misses that the heart of holines for Trakl is an immanence; for Heidegger’s B&T: care in being; not being “disposed toward mortals” (10); rather, being engaged with each other (Mitdasein, with another, opening into Mitsein, wholly open engagement together). He asks: RC: ...how can we not hear in these words [holy, saving, loving] the fundamental Christian motif of the “unmerited” “grace” that is a gift to us humans and “saves” us? GD: because “we” can hear the fundamental care which preceded Christian appropriation of Jesus (no Christian), who expressed the care of the parent and teacher as presence (“kingdom”) within and among us—a care which is integral to the humanity of family, friendship, and good society. Being gracious and open-hearted emerges from being true to our potential for being with others and being with the heartfulness, the soul, of oneself truly. It was not that Schliermacher’s “’intuition and feeling’ of a mysterious Transcendence remained in the later work, albeit expressed in a poetic language”; rather that the poetry of his youth, as avowed in 1957, remained in the appeal of being. RC finds Christian motif in Trakl, but Heidegger finds the poetry speaking for itself sufficiently in terms of its language. But, in order for RC to bind Heidegger to a Christian youth he never claimed to stay with him in Christian terms, RC melds his Christian reading of Trakl into signs of Heidegger’s avowl of Christian “motif.” Yet, the essence of grace is immanent care. It’s pre-Christian (grounded in belonging together) and post-Christian (grounded in engaged belonging, as was pre-Christian Aristotle and the Renaissance humanism which the finally-recovered Greeks inspired). It’s not so much a “spiritual insight” (10) as an insightful belonging to immanently engaged caring. But here we have RC asserting his Christian interest: “this insight brings us close to the heart of what we might call Heidegger’s ‘mysticism’.” Or we might not. I do not, because I know better than to meld Christian motifs into Heidegger’s poetic appreciation of Trakl’s awe of living presence. Of course, Trakl is showing “a profession of truth, a testimony of a kind” (11), which Heidegger appreciates, for the sake of what language can do. But there’s nothing mystical about that (whatever RC means by ‘mystical’), which RC apparently equates with hidden Christian motifs in Trakl’s expressions: RC: …“the mysterious moment of the undivided unity of intuition and feeling” [Schliermacher again!]…is the “secret” to reading the later Heidegger….His later observations…flow forth primarily from “intuition and feeling”… GD: That is, for RC, from unused notes on Schliermacher. Well now, time for “the ‘mystical’ vision of Being” itself (12ff.)

		Part 3: RC’s section II, pp. 12-16
			RC: The later Heidegger had a distinctive vision of Being [which w]e may call a “mystical” vision of Being because it has so many of the features of a “mystical” seeing (12). GD: So, the prevailing trope is vision, foretold in the title of his essay. But when we normally refer to enlightenment, we’re not referring to visuality. The trope of light refers to the wakefulness or clearing which is wholly engaging. It is not that, as RC puts it, “Heidegger characterizes Being as the unique light that is the Source,” but that Heidegger heuristically characterizes source as light, but better: sourcing shows through openness to the immanence of given phenomenality, to “all beings” (persons) “and things” (13). The openness intimates high value, sacredness of there being who and what is. RC: When Heidegger declares that “Pindar’s song thinks Being [and not beings] with the name of gold” (GA 78: 94), we also hear an echo of the alchemists’ pursuit of “gold,”… GD: But Heidegger does not. Gold figures (symbolizes) sacred value of knowledge, which Pindar and alchemists seek. That is about epistemic potential relative to immanent inquiry. Of course knowing is “…’beyond’ all beings,” because it’s epistemic. Desire to know, the appeal of inquiry “calls for (and calls forth) thinking” (13). RC: Heidegger refers to …”concealed” “soil” or “ground”.. at the beginning of his 1949 “Introduction to ‘What is Metaphysics?’”… (13) GD: …because he’s addressing Descarte’s figuration which isn’t reflective enough. But RC wants “an echo of the ancients…” who were addressing pre-literate persons, thus back then being inevitably figurative about potentials actualized through inquiry and learning. That is the source: our ownmost potential. The mythical “…’Godhead of the God’…” (13) is an exaltation of potential actualized through gaining knowledge. That “allows all opposites to flow and unfold” because highly developed capacity allows for flexibility of thinking. Education enlightens highly! But RC repeatedly wants to turn away from the educational site: oneself actualizing potential through inquiry and learning which sophisticates—philo-sophy which enlightens. This normal venue for educational psychology was unavailable to the ancients, let alone articulable to pre-literate others as the odyssey beyond allegory which high individuation can be. That which is unspeakable (so far) is developmentally relative. There is “mystery” (14) in how one’s readiness to learn “holds itself in ‘reserve’ and ‘shelters itself’” in timely ways. Pursuit of knowledge about given reality (preceding one’s life) is dis-covery, as if reality is personified (like all things are for children—and for pre-literate tribal life), as if reality “…’hides itself’…” in reflections of one’s readiness for “revealing,” thus “holding itself back,” as if personified reality itself is “…’concealing’.” Yet, individuation through higher education is a long path to appreciating how under- standing conceals itself by yielding to a “…’primordial Logos as ‘the One’ (14), rather than as sophisticating flow, unfolding, and clearing of endless learning. Here, “unifying” is always transitional for the path of inquiry, not identifiable with a homeostasis of understanding. But of course, being on a path to higher understanding is different from there being beings: others to learn with (and from), things to learn about, along a way. RC: …all things emerge from out of Being itself… GD …because being oneself learns by open engagement which discovers. No wonder, then, that the Greeks, to which Heidegger is referring in his Heraclitus lecture, considered us to be “ensouled” (14). We know that oneself is deeply so (mysteriously potentiated), as well as proximally oneself capably. Reference to soul (one’s genius, as the Greeks also figured it) has always been an appreciation of inner potential emerging as capabilities of one’s worldliness. That inner potential gives way from birth, reproduced across generations. RC (14) quotes Heidegger on Greek confidence about the potential of the word to disclose (English p. 256): “For beyng is everlasting, but also on the way into its own truth.” The truth of being: A life exemplifies an actualization of potential which is integral to our being alive. MH: “There is nothing higher…that can be thought as beying itself” (14). There is no mysticism to be found in the mystery of what may be learned through engaged inquiry. We are It which gives way. So, it’s false to say about Heidegger that (RC) “the Es of Es gibt is itself beyond history and all historical epochs,” because that directly contradicts RC’s previous quotation of Heidegger from Hearclitus: “There is nothing higher.” RC: The Es “gives” all historical dispensations;… GD: because hisoricality emerges from the historicity of inquiring persons who make knowledge and care to be lastingly influential. RC: …the Es is the mysterious, ever-withdrawing “source” or groundless “ground... GD: because grounding is endless across an engaging life of inquiry, then teaching a new generation. Teaching. Learning. The dynamic is not very mysterious to educational psychology, though it was very mysterious to the Greeks, but precisely as avid engagement in understanding how being in time gains lastingness. Indeed… RC: Being as beyond “God” and “the gods”… GD: because we created the gods to reflectively personify the mystery of there being order disclosed through inquiry and learning. The power of being to venture and know can be, so to speak (relative to illiterate life) godly. Yet, true godliness (the master teacher, letting there be one’s ownmost way well guided) is gracious, patient, and full of figurative language for making good sense of inquiry and learning. High values of enlightenment deserve sacred holding. The master is joyful in serenity. There, no figurative god is referenced. There is no “god” in the heights, because the trope is no longer pragmatic. What matters is between “us”: your chance to care, learn, and know. Your potential might seem “inapparent” (15) to you, but every good teacher reassures a disheartened learner: Love of learning may emerge when you let yourself be open to the giving: to whom gives way, to what inspires. It’s not valid to regard (RC) “being as ultimately beyond language and inexpressible” (15) because the potentials of inquiry and articulation are always open. Again, that which is unspeakable is developmentally relative. But that truth can be dangerous to others who are insulted by disclosure: If you’re developmentally repressed or invested in misunderstanding (e.g., as a matter of career) or lack sufficient educational background, then of course you want to maintain self-esteem by defending The Unspeakable: unspeakability of what can’t yet be articulated; or what’s not to be said. Care. Dwell. Trust. Granting ultimacy to one’s horizon of undertanding is phony. “God”’s wrath is like the Wizard of Oz. Judgmental, decisionist, patriarchal voices insult. Yes, Heidegger’s (RC) “emphasis on our human task to peel away the many layers of philosophical and theological thought-forms... allow[s] for a radical openness and transparency” (15). Yet, there’s nothing really mysterious about (RC) “his call for our ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit) from our ego-prisons (Ichheit) of control in order to be ‘free’ for the appeal of being” potential for new beginnings, which are delightful, and promising fruitfulness, given engagement. Every good teacher knows that. And every master inquirer knows that enlightenment originates from the future, not from the unfolding of a seed. Originism, like Creationism, is a naturalistic myth, because souls at heart are drawn by receding horizons, inspiring ventures. To sea! To heights, to explorations which portend homecoming as if knowing home for the first time—though Odyssus would cry to be seen as merely a stranger, like a philosopher’s unnoticed despair over his times. (Heidegger used the allegory of the tears of Odysseus in his summer 1933 course on truth.) Higher educational articuation is what the ancients and the mystics could not yet fathom: the awing manifoldness of our capacity to inquire, care, learn, and know, which modernity has disclosed, ultimately open in evolving conceptions of that openness. The mystery of being a life can become enthralling, which ecstatic being in time constellates, as if night itself “neighbors the stars” (end of “Country Path Conversation”); or leading voices are brought into inceptions. “Heidegger took a special interest in the Christian mystics Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme” (16) early in his maturation because he surmised (from his earlier experience with poets and his own experiene) what they were trying to articulate, just as he saw Aristotle trying to be phenomenological. It’s not that the ancients had a profound originality that we should recover; rather that they were originating a love for endless learning which has become our better capability for understanding. We see in the ancestors intimations of our modernity. It's not that (RC) “these traditions…stand outside of [Heidegger’s] overarching narrative about the history of Western ‘onto-theology’”; rather, that those traditions can be better appreciated relative to our advances of understanding (educable individuation), antici- pating futures in ways that they could only prospect in naturalistic and supernatural terms, as if otherworldly powers had inhabited one’s inner self. The (RC) “’esoteric’ character of his thinking of being” belonged to its reception by others, not for Heidegger’s self-understanding. Contributions to philosophy from enowning his odyssey give him appreciations which are rare, to some others as if otherworldly (or hermetic). But strangeness of originary articulation pertains to all modes of inquiry: Historic scientists and artists are relatively few. The historical topography of philosophy is a small canon of high peaks, compared to the centuries of venturing. Teachers might starve for talent to enable. Love of teaching emerges from love of learning which a teacher may be eager to evince and joyously witness in every new year.

Part 4: RC’s section IIII, pp. 16-23

RC begins the third section of his discussion (16) by indicating a “…’reversal’…not thematized as such by Heidegger.”

On the one hand, “Being ‘is’ only insofar as there is human Dasein,” i.e., a person—s/he—is human.

On the other hand (supposedly other), “[Being] is never dependent upon existing humanity,” i.e., a person always owns her/his potential to be a basis (which is a keynote of Being and Time). “…’Being and the truth of being is essentially beyond all human beings and every historical humanity’….” Again, a person owns his/her potential.

No incongruence is there; no intimation of reversal. Heidegger is referring to different aspects of being a person: human (an objectivating perspective) and existential (an experiential or phenomenal perspective).

RC next quotes a passage (17) from Heidegger’s Heraclitis lecture where Heidegger is doing a summation on “the fate of metaphysics” (MH. GA 55: 378 / English: 281).

Notable is that the English translation of that passage doesn’t capitalize ‘being’, consistent with translation practices of the past couple of decades.

The passage is congruent with a distinction between person as human and person as ownmost potential. So, it’s unclear why RC quoted the passage to bolster a claim of incongruence in Heidegger’s thinking. Metaphysicalism has a “fate” which the potential of persons can avoid.

Indeed, there is a difference between “metaphysics as such” (18) and metaphysicalism about persons. Clearly, “Heidegger’s antagonism toward a metaphysics of substance or subject does not mean that he therefore ‘overcame’ metaphysics as such.” Heidegger was clear about that in his essay “Overcoming metahysics” (“Heidegger and meta-
physicalism,” 2013). There is a proper place for real metaphysics (i.e., metascience of physics, distinct from literal meta-physics, i.e., theoretical physics, and meta-mathematics of that), but not as a basis for understanding persons as such. RC seems to have a mythical sense of ‘metaphysics’ more associable with Thomism or Aristotle.

RC: “Being is not dependent upon the human being” (RC’s italics) in the sense that a person owns potential which belongs to being a person, beyond objectivation as being human.

Nonetheless—and quite congruently—“Being ‘is’ only insofar as the human being is” (18), because being a person implies being alive .

So, “human legein [conceptual sense] ‘safeguards’ Being’s ‘independence’” (18) inasmuch as a person’s potential is actualized. This is exactly what Being and Time sought, in part, to express.

RC: In other words, although we must think about the “relation” of Being and the human being afresh…

GD: …relative to metaphysicalist concealment of our potential for being a person…

RC: … and in new terms, we must, nevertheless, maintain the irreducible “difference”…

GD: …between objectivational considerations (person as human) and phenomenal or experiential difference (person as free potential). But that is not…

RC:… (“the ontological difference”…) between Being and beings…

GD: It’s the difference between perspectives on being a person.

So, I disagree about what is “proper understanding” (18).

RC: Yet we must press ahead.

GD: We must.

RC: Being’s “need” of the human being does not entail “dependence,”…

GD:... because it implies dependence which entails alive potential for self-actualization, which is mortal. “Being’s ‘pure needlessness’” (19) shows in potential freedom of self-actualizability for self-actualizing. One’s (MH) “self-contained composure of the richness of the simple” (19) expresses owning one’s potential as integral to being the person that one is.

There’s no “…’mystical’…” (19) character to that, no “Neoplatonic” intimation.

But a neo-Thomist arises in RC’s “reflections”: His “Heidegger” “dismissed” a set of medievalists “as proffering ‘onto-theology’... All “metaphysics” is not “onto-theology” (19).

GD: True, since the difference between onto-theological metaphysicalism and real metaphysics is acknowledged by Heidegger, as I indicated above.

RC: Indeed, are not his characterizations of Being as pure “self-contained composure” and “pure needlessness” metaphysical statements of a kind?

GD: No. The “everlasting” (19) person reproduces itself (as human) across generations as a new person, another person, “…’on the way into its own truth’…”

RC quotes the middle of a paragraph from Heidegger’s “Recollection in Metaphysics” (p. 76 of The End of Philoophy, above link). RC is claiming that “it reveals Heidegger’s distinctive (‘mystical’) vision of Being” (20).

But the paragraph does not reveal that. Being an authentically actualized person desires communication to be influential, known by others’ responsivenss. The figures of “shine” and “radiance” correlate with an expressive (happy, joyous, hopeful) interest of commun-
icative life with others’ engagement thereby reflected.

But RC has his own reading (20):

RC: The self-showing and shining forth of Being is “needless” in itself…

GD: Yes: An authentically actualized person acts from freedom rather than need.

RC: …and therefore not in need of the human being in the strict sense;

GD: As mortal person, the freedom of expression is a realm through shared language which is made to be “ours.”

RC: …yet we may say that the human being is “needed” by Being

GD: The person needs to be alive and capable of freedom to express.

RC: …—in the scope of the time of the human being—as a mirror reflecting back,..

GD: No. The time of the person, whose desire welcomes self-affirming engagement with others, at best influential lastingly.

RC: …magnifying, in language and art the sublimity and resplendence of Being’s emergence…

GD: a life’s emergence as authentically expressive person

RC: … and manifestation, that is, “the truth of Being.”

GD: presence with others relative to the full flourishing of the person’s life.

Then, RC associates his reading with “spiritual traditions.”

Fine. But that’s not relevant to reading Heidegger. Besides, mystified conceptions of those traditions can be understood in non-mystified ways, which scholars of cultural anthropology commonly do.

“The matter” is distorted by seeing that...

RC: Being’s “need” is this “appeal” or “calling” to the human being to magnify the splendor and sublimity of Being…

GD: Heidegger’s passage is about thinking ahead from capabilities granted by being human, not about calling to one’s background, not retrospective. The expressiveness of futural orientation, the shareable joy of flourishing, belongs to persons, but not to all beings. Being a person is not…

RC: … the by which, in which, and through which all beings “are.”

GD: Shared flourishing highlights our shared potential for being persons together. So, in that sense, we are…

RC: …magnifying the splendor and sublimity of Being…

GD: i.e., being persons highly flourishing. But the appeal of highly being is not a “need…of Being” (20). It expresses a freedom of being.

Apparently the mystical element in RC’s reading is wanting tradition revived, though Heidegger’s futural sense of being in time appealed for new beginnings. So, his “Heidegger”...

RC: ... is the spiritual or “mystical” Heidegger that, regrettably, many commentators overlook or avoid (or simply do not comprehend)..,

GD: Kudos to them!

RC: …and I suppose that one must share in a kind of mystical seeing to appreciate his own seeing,…

GD: “his,” so to speak.

RC: …that is, his “intuition and feeling.”

GD: You know, there’s nothing mystical about intuition and feeling. Insightful care and empathy, for instance, may emerge in genuine being with others and with oneself thoughtfully.

RC: Furthermore, we need not perfectly understand his vision of Being to appreciate it and find it compelling.

GD: For sure: Learning never ends for open minded love of being alive, love of endless flourishing.

But it’s not true that…

RC: Heidegger was enthralled by a vision of Being that unfolds all beings.

GD: ...that engages with beings, which—as Trakl found—“speak” for themselves finely, as if unfolding themselves, inasmuch as one is able to appreciate their presencing (the as-if self-showing of phenomena); and their withholding themselves in reserve as well (like anything which is richly symbolic to oneself due to its giving).

Persons, in light of highly self-actualized understanding, are more than “favorably inclined toward humans” (22). We enjoy the humanity of others, in both an ethical sense of ‘humanity’ and as our globally shared kind of life.

That not merely “offers us the ‘grace’ of ‘the saving Holy’...” (like a channeling priest); rather, We can be enough together to keep humanity holy. (Imagine principle-based international law secured by rich senses of human rights, including universal access to higher education, and U.N. effectiveness in preserving peace, thanks to sacred national fidelity to collaborative global political leadership legitimized by genuine democratic life.)

For persons in need, we seek to provide more than “reassuring us despite the deepest wounds.” We engage in serving need, and working to prevent that which causes need. (May global public health leadership be oriented by preventive programs.)

[Pope Benedict, a full professor, would reassure.
Pope Francis, a master teacher, went to the streets.
Who is the more authentic student of Jesus?
Now, Father Prevost, master teacher from Peruvian streets, has enowned
the papal name Leo XIV in direct recollection of Leo XIII, the pope
of Martin’s youth—the pope who originated Catholic Social Teaching.]

RC: And so let us return to that young boy Heidegger…(23)

GD: Martin.

There is no “beauty that is ultimately inexpressible,” no “unsayable.” There is finitude of any given life. There is developmental relativity of individuation, relative preferences in venturing.

For RC, “Catholic features from his childhood remained, at least as ‘signposts’ of the mystery or ‘gateways’ to the mystery” which remained appealing for RC, admirably so.

The gifted child is awed by the appeal of everything, before any concept of mystery.

Everything is inviting, yet withholding its fulfillment, because gifted learning finds neverending appeals for exploration.

For the adult, looking back, it was all “mystery.” But for a gifted child, it’s all enchantment of another awing day. “[E]verything…draws back into itself” (22), like receding horizons (like rainbows) for the traveler drawn into the vortex.

The world is full of “inexplicable depth,” as if all Earth, Sky, Divinities, and one’s mortality await the explorer’s advances.

Oh, (MH) “how it is that all true and inviolable treasure of [humanity] rests in the unattained, in the granting of the ever veiled gift” of each person’s open-ended life….

…which may be shared with others through expression, witnessing, engagement, belonging together, teaching, because expression we may share may bridge generations beyond the mortality of any given voice.


		Be fair. © 2025, g. e. davis.