Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being: An Analytic Interpretation of the Late Heidegger

197 Pages·2021·7.444 MB·English

by  Filippo Casati

“This provocative and challenging work by one of the foremost diale-
theic readers of Heidegger exposes failed attempts by contemporary
scholars to salvage Heidegger’s paradoxical claims about being (e.g.,
‘being is not a being’) and it makes a powerful case for the need and
possibility of countenancing the contradictions entailed by those claims.
The clarity and forthrightness of its arguments make Heidegger and the
Contradiction of Being an important and timely work that no scholar
grappling with Heideggerian paradox today can afford to ignore.”
Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University, USA
“In this wonderfully wide-ranging book, Filippo Casati explores cer-
tain paradoxes in Heidegger’s thinking about Being and argues that
Heidegger can tolerate these paradoxes by acceding to the possibility of
true contradictions. This argument has both an exegetical dimension,
in that Casati argues that Heidegger does in fact reject the Principle
of Non-Contradiction, and a philosophical dimension, in that Casati
argues that we can make due logical sense of his doing so. The book is
lively, provocative, and beautifully written. It will be of great value to
students of Heidegger and to anyone interested in the most fundamental
questions about the logical character of reality.”
Adrian W. Moore, University of Oxford, UK
“Filippo Casati’s intriguing book argues that a paradox concerning the
nature of being drove Martin Heidegger to reject commitments that have
been seen as fundamental – indeed even unquestionable – throughout
most of the history of Western philosophy. While other commentators
have argued that such paradoxes may lurk in Heidegger’s work, Casati’s
striking reading distinctively claims that Heidegger not only encoun-
tered these paradoxes but eventually came to embrace them. In doing so,
argues Casati, Heidegger recognized the radical move that this would
require, namely, questioning what is for most philosophers the most fun-
damental ‘law of thought’ – the law of non-contradiction.”
Denis McManus, University of Southampton, UK
“The appearance of Casati’s Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being
is a major event in Heidegger studies. With impeccable scholarship, un-
common clarity, and deploying state of the art tools of contemporary
logic, Casati presents and defends a radically new interpretation of this
major thinker. His book is set to become a classic in the area.”
Graham Priest, CUNY Graduate Center, USA
“Casati’s book interprets Heidegger’s question of Being, in connection
with his idea of ontological difference, as demonstrating the actuality
and potential truth of a fundamentally contradictory structure of reality.
Clearly written and accessible, the book will be sought out by all those
with an interest in the logical, ontological, and metaphysical implica-
tions of Heidegger’s thought, as well as those interested, more broadly,
in contemporary discussions of being, fundamentality, negation, and the
logical or ontological structure of the world.”
Paul Livingston, University of New Mexico, USA
“In this richly argued monograph, Filippo Casati focuses on the cen-
tral issues of Heidegger’s philosophy: the question of the meaning of
Being and the problems inherent in trying to answer it. Casati proceeds
systematically, first unpacking Heidegger’s accounts of Being and of en-
tities, then explaining and justifying Heidegger’s insistence that Being
must not be confused with any entity, and finally showing how trying to
philosophize about Being while respecting the difference between Being
and entities ineluctably generates paradoxes. Then, through perceptive
readings of several of Heidegger’s later works, Casati shows that Heide-
gger responds to these paradoxes by adopting dialetheism about Being.
In other words, Heidegger holds that, as regards Being, some contradic-
tions are true: Being is an entity and Being is not an entity; Being has
Being and Being does not have Being. For those inclined to object that
such a position is hardly a solution to the paradoxes inherent in philoso-
phizing about Being, Casati provides compelling arguments to show not
only that this is Heidegger’s stance in his later work, but also that it is
philosophically viable. This is a remarkable achievement. Casati’s inter-
pretation draws on a wide array of Heidegger’s works, while remaining
sensitive to each work’s place in the arc of Heidegger’s career. Displaying
an impressive command of the secondary literature, Casati carefully lo-
cates his major claims in relation to the work of other readers. His argu-
ment that Heidegger embraces dialetheism is one that anyone interested
in Heidegger now has to take seriously. This book pushes its readers to
think about why Being cannot be an entity and why it must be, why
Being is and why it is not. This makes the book relevant to all metaphy-
sicians, whether or not they have previously engaged with Heidegger’s
thought. The appearance of this monograph is an event that constitutes
a signal contribution to philosophy.”
Edward Witherspoon, Colgate University, USA
“In recent years, a number of authors have tried to make sense of Heide-
gger’s famous investigation into ‘Being’ by appeal to dialetheism, allow-
ing true contradictions, backed by paraconsistent logics. Yet few have
done it with the grace and precision of Casati who meshes painstaking
exegetical work with razor-sharp formulations to deliver a new and fas-
cinating picture of Heidegger’s lifelong study of Being, from the early
1920s through to 1966’s Heraclitus Seminar.”
Sacha Golob, King’s College London, UK
Heidegger and the
Contradiction of Being
This book offers a clear, analytic, and innovative interpretation of
Heidegger’s late work. This period of Heidegger’s philosophy remains
largely unexplored by analytic philosophers, who consider it filled with
inconsistencies and paradoxical ideas, particularly concerning the no-
tions of Being and nothingness.
This book takes seriously the claim that the late Heidegger endorses
dialetheism – namely, the position according to which some contradic-
tions are true – and shows that the idea that Being is both an entity
and not an entity is neither incoherent nor logically trivial. The author
achieves this by presenting and defending the idea that reality has an in-
consistent structure. In doing so, he takes one of the most discussed top-
ics in current analytic metaphysics, grounding theory, into a completely
unexplored area. Additionally, in order to make sense of Heidegger’s
concept of nothingness, the author introduces an original axiomatic
mereological system that, having a paraconsistent logic as a base logic,
can tolerate inconsistencies without falling into logical triviality.
This is the first book to set forth a complete and detailed discussion of
the late Heidegger in the framework of analytic metaphysics. It will be
of interest to Heidegger scholars and analytic philosophers working on
theories of grounding, mereology, dialetheism, and paraconsistent logic.
Filippo Casati is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh Univer-
sity (USA). His areas of specialization are Martin Heidegger and Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and he has a passionate interest in Meinong. He has pub-
lished in such venues as The British Journal for the History of Philoso-
phy, Synthese, Logic et Analyse, Philosophical Topics, and Philosophy
Compass. With Daniel Dahlstrom, he has edited a forthcoming volume
on Heidegger on Logic.
Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy
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Walter Benjamin’s First Philosophy
Experience, Ephemerality and Truth
Nathan Ross
The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter
Bataille, Deleuze, and Rosset
Lydia Amir
Heidegger’s Ecological Turn
Community and Practice for Future Generations
Frank Schalow
Lectures on a Philosophy Less Ordinary
Language and Morality in J.L. Austin’s Philosophy
Niklas Forsberg
Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being
An Analytic Interpretation of the Late Heidegger
Filippo Casati
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Twentieth-Century-Philosophy/book-series/
SE0438
Heidegger and the
Contradiction of Being
An Analytic Interpretation
of the Late Heidegger
Filippo Casati
First published 2022
by Routledge
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The right of Filippo Casati to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Casati, Filippo, author.
Title: Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being : an analytic
interpretation of the late Heidegger / Filippo Casati.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2021] | Series:
Routledge studies in twentieth-century philosophy | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021032620 (print) | LCCN 2021032621
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367230104 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781032158037 (pbk) | ISBN 9780429277924 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976.
Classification: LCC B3279.H49 C335 2021 (print) |
LCC B3279.H49 (ebook) | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032620
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032621
ISBN: 978-0-367-23010-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-15803-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27792-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429277924
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To my family
Papà Giovanni, Nonno Tino
Mamma Lorena, Nonna Lilly
Ricki and Barry

Contents
Introduction: A New Way to Navigate the
Heideggerian Archipelago 1
1 On Being and Entities 6
2 On the Difference between Being and Entities 35
3 On a Very Destitute Matter 64
4 On Beyng 93
5 On Beyng and the Nothing 123
6 On the Abyss 154
Conclusion: An Unaddressed Issue 181
Index 185