Being Is a Being

1 Heidegger and the Paradoxes of Being

There is a growing sense among Heidegger scholars and cognoscenti that Heidegger’s concept of Being is deeply paradoxical.

On the one hand, considering what Heidegger taxes this concept with, we have at least two reasons to think that Being is a being. First, however Heidegger’s concept of Being is to be analysed, it seems that there are assertions about Being – not least in Heidegger’s own work.^[1] But one might think that we can only assert anything about beings.^[2] So, Being is a being.^[3] Second, any analysis of Heidegger’s concept of Being will acknowledge that Being, as Heidegger conceives of it, plays an explanatory role of some kind: as Heidegger puts it, of “that which determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail”^[4] (this is the definition of Being he offers in Being and Time qua the “inquired-about” – “das Gefragte” – in the inquiry into Being he attempts in that book). But one might think that Being could not play this role unless it was itself a being:

[any determiners of beings] had better be, if we are to make sense of this determining relation, in that that would seem to require that there be determinate facts about these determiners – their possessing features that fit them to play the determining role, features that might give us a sense of how they perform that role, and of what that determining is. To do that, we seem to need to be able to make sense of these determiners as being thus-and-so. (McManus, ‘Heidegger, Being, and All That Is and Is So,’ 152)

So, again, Being is a being.^[5]

On the other hand, Heidegger consistently claims, however, that, as he puts it in Being and Time, “the Being of beings (das Sein des Seienden) “is” not itself a being (ein Seiendes).”^[6] Interestingly, Heidegger does not seem to argue for the “ontological difference”^[7] (as this claim is usually designated in the literature,^[8] hereafter “OD”), at least on the assumption that OD is to be understood literally – and that is to say, as denying that Being is a being in any sense of “being” (I will henceforth refer to this construal of Heidegger’s thesis as “OD^Lit”).^[9] However, Heidegger commentators stepped in to answer this challenge, and there is now a very substantial literature that fills this gap.

Thus, granted that OD is OD^Lit, Heidegger seems to be committed to a contradiction – a result that makes him an ideal recruit to Priest’s and Casati’s campaign for dialetheism, the view that some contradictions are true. (While Priest doubts whether Heidegger would join this campaign willingly, Casati argues, focussing mainly on the Contributions to Philosophy, that Heidegger actually embraced dialetheism in his late work.^[10])

My objectives in this article are generally philosophical rather than exegetical and generally critical rather than constructive (leaving matters exegetical and constructive to other essays^[11]). I hope to show that, even if Heidegger does accept OD^Lit, then we should not follow suit, as all arguments marshalled by Heidegger commentators contain serious flaws whilst the aforementioned reasons for thinking that Being is a being remain. I discuss: the argument from the functional difference arguably found in Crowell’s and Polt’s work (in Section 2, very briefly), the “grammatical argument” offered by Nicholson and Priest (in Section 3, focussing on the latter), the argument from infinite regress – found in the work of many commentators and indeed demanding the most of our attention (in Section 4), the argument from kind-instantiation proposed by Nicholson, Priest, and Casati (in Section 5), and finally, two further arguments offered by Priest: the argument from nothing (Section 6) and the argument from unity (Section 7). In Section 8, I take stock. Some of my conclusions are negative. OD cannot, with due respect to Priest and Casati, bear the weight of dialetheism, nor can it motivate either of the two “Wittgensteinian” moves some commentators consider in relation to the first of the two paradoxes of Being above: the abandonment of philosophical discourse that issues propositions in favour of philosophical discourse consisting in merely “showing” things,^[12] or, more recently, an alternative – “resolute” – approach attempting a “transformation of our fundamental relation to [B]eing” instead.^[13] Others are positive, however. They revolve around the notion that, pace these philosophers, the world is not “flat.”

2 The Argument from the Functional Difference

The first kind of argument offered in support of OD^Lit appeals to the functional difference between Being and beings. Its variants can arguably be found in Crowell’s and Polt’s work. Crowell and Polt observe – correctly – that Being (as Heidegger conceives of it) and beings play different inferential roles. Specifically, they hold, Being, as Heidegger conceives of it, plays the role of a meaning of a being. As Polt puts it, “meaning enables the self-showing of entities” whereas “those entities are other than meaning, or exceed it.”^[14] We can arguably speak of an argument for OD^Lit here, because each commentator claims that this difference in inferential roles is in fact equivalent to OD^Lit. Thus, Crowell proposes that “the ontological difference – at least as it appears in Being and Time – is best understood as the difference between an entity and ‘its’ meaning,”^[15] whereas Polt proposes that “[t]he [B]eing of an entity, as its essence or meaning, is not itself that entity.”^[16] So, they would presumably endorse a modus ponens to OD^Lit taking as it premises, first, a statement of the functional difference above and, second, a conditional statement whose antecedent is this functional difference and the consequent OD^Lit itself.

However, as Withy and Casati point out, the second premise above – the conditional statement – is manifestly false. No functional difference between A and B can assure us that A is not a B, as the following example shows:

that a mother must be distinct from her daughter does not entail that mothers are not daughters, that daughters are not mothers, that a mother is not also a daughter, or that a daughter is not also a mother.^[17]

Similarly, even though Being might play a role of meaning with respect to beings, this does not entail that it is not itself a being (while something else – perhaps time^[18] – plays the role of its meaning^[19]). So, the functional argument for OD^Lit fails.

3 The Grammatical Argument

The second kind of argument exploits grammatical facts about how we use “being” and its cognates. The first argument of this type that I am aware of has been offered by Nicholson in “The Ontological Difference.” However, I prefer to focus here on variants developed by Priest, as they are a little more focused and direct.^[20] Priest writes:

We say, for example: Heidegger is. ‘Heidegger’ refers to an object, a being. If ‘is’ referred to a being then the italicized phrase would simply be a list of two objects: Heidegger and being. But it is clearly not a simple list. In an obvious sense, it has a unity that a pair of objects lacks. (Priest, ‘The Answer to the Question of Being,’ 250)

Priest seems to appeal here to Frege’s account of the unity of propositions. As he explains in what appears to be an earlier version of the same argument, Frege accounted for the unity of propositions in terms of their talking about two kinds of items: objects (“the ontological correlates of names”) and concepts (“the ontological correlates of predicates”).^[21] Concepts, Priest continues, “are ‘unsaturated’ (inherently gappy),” according to Frege – which is to say, they require an object.^[22] And their ontological “neediness” is precisely what grounds the unity of a proposition Priest talks about above. Now, Priest seems to assume that Heidegger’s Being is, as a matter of necessity, an instance of a concept rather than an instance of an object in Frege’s sense (or at least that it is something like it). “For Heidegger,” he says,

the general form of a statement is ‘x is [y]’ (where the y is optional); and ‘is’, which expresses being, is, for Heidegger, the generic logical predicate.^[23]

Thus, just as Frege argued that “the concept horse” is not an object (so, one cannot say “the concept horse is not an object” without this sentence’s “misfiring”^[24]), so Heidegger’s Being is likewise not an object in this sense.^[25]

Unfortunately, as stated by Priest, the grammatical argument falls short of its conclusion, and this for at least three reasons.

First, while Heidegger’s statements of OD might certainly remind us of Frege’s distinction between objects and concepts, Heidegger otherwise shows little of Frege’s restraint about nominalising concepts with regard to nominalising Being. He asks – emphatically – the question of it; and most commentators would agree that, throughout his “early” work at least, he continues to assert things about it.^[26] This suggests that pace Priest, Heidegger’s Being is not the same as (nor even like) the concept being in Frege’s sense. For Heidegger is generally mindful of the sort of distinctions Frege makes between an object and a concept – distinctions, which he cashes out as distinctions between different “kinds of Being” (such as, for example, Dasein’s Being and “presence-at-hand”).^[27] So, even if the concept being is not an object in Frege’s sense (and so, what I have just said makes no sense!), this does not entail that Being, in Heidegger’s sense, is not an object in Frege’s sense. Heidegger’s concept of Being does not seem to be the same as (or even like) the concept being. While “is” in “the general form of a statement … ‘x is [y]’” might express Being,^[28] it does not seem to be the only kind of locution capable of this, as far as Heidegger is concerned.^[29]

Crucially, underlying this exegetical concern is a deeper – philosophical – anxiety. Why exactly should we assume that “that which determines beings as beings, that on the basis of which beings are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail”^[30] – which is how Heidegger defines, in Being and Time, the explanatory role Being is supposed to play – is (or merely is like) the concept being in Frege’s sense? There does not seem to be any inferential route going from the nature of the explanandum in Heidegger’s inquiry into Being to the placement of its corresponding explanans in (or in something like) Frege’s framework. Unless Priest shows how such a connection could be developed, then, even though he might offer us a perfectly correct exegesis of Heidegger, there would be still no philosophical reason to think that Being (in the sense of the “inquired-about” in Heidegger’s inquiry into Being) is (or merely is like) the concept being.

Thus, Frege’s distinction between the object and the concept seems irrelevant to Heidegger’s concept of Being.

Second, and more importantly, some reflection on what Frege actually tries to say with his object/concept distinction will show why it is prudent of Heidegger not to identify Being with the concept being (or with anything like it) – that is to say, on the assumption that OD is equivalent to OD^Lit (Priest makes this assumption in arguing that the paradoxes of Being motivate dialetheism: there is no contradiction between the claim that Being is a being and non-literal variants of OD that allow that Being is a being in some sense^[31]). By Priest’s admission, Frege’s intention is to make an ontological distinction of some kind – and that is to say, a distinction between two kinds of beings. Thus, to say that Being is not an object in Frege’s sense is not to say that Being is not a being. Rather, it is to say that Being belongs to one category of beings rather than to another. And this falls short of OD^Lit – of the claim that “[it] is not the case that Being is – at all, ever.”^[32]

Third – and finally – one might doubt how reliable a guide to Being can be found in any considerations of grammar, not just those we owe to Priest. Perhaps the grammar of natural languages we use to talk about Being obfuscates rather than illuminates the subject-matter of Heidegger’s inquiry into Being. At any rate, the assumption that it is not so seems to require some defending. Heidegger himself expresses such doubts, when he offers the reader of Being and Time the following apologetic note about that book’s notorious departures from ordinary language:

With regard to the awkwardness and ‘inelegance’ of expression in the analyses to come, we may remark that it is one thing to give a report in which we tell about beings, but another to grasp beings in their Being. For the latter task we lack not only most of the words but, above all, the ‘grammar’. (SZ: 38-39 [7C])

Arguably, this is the sort of thing Heidegger might say if, by OD, he meant to say that the concept being (or something like it) is not an object – considering the Fregean difficulties with saying anything about concepts (although, if these were Heidegger’s difficulties above, it is hard to see how they could be resolved by a little linguistic “awkwardness” and “inelegance”). But we have already seen that Heidegger does not deem Being the same as (or like) the concept being and that, on the assumption that OD is OD^Lit, he does not merely deny that Being is an object in Frege’s sense. For, Heidegger’s Being does often appear as an “ontological correlate” of a name (and his definition of Being qua the inquired-about in his inquiry into Being certainly does not censure such appearances); and, if OD is OD^Lit, what Heidegger denies is that it is any kind of being whatsoever rather than merely an object (as opposed to a concept or something like a concept) in Frege’s sense. So, by OD, Heidegger does not mean to say that the concept being (or something like it) is not an object. Thus, the most natural way of reading the passage above is as a warning that the grammar we have for talking about Being might not be the best guide to the “thing itself.”^[33] Rather, the “thing itself” mandates the invention of new vocabulary and grammar, the sort of vocabulary and grammar we see in evidence in Being and Time (and elsewhere in Heidegger’s work).

I conclude that Priest’s grammatical argument fails to establish the truth of OD^Lit and that our third reservation about this argument suggests that other arguments of its type, such as Nicholson’s, are likely to meet the same fate.^[34]

4 The Argument from Infinite Regress

The third kind of argument for OD^Lit tries to show that the negation of this claim generates an infinite regress of some kind. It is, by far, the most popular way of motivating OD^Lit. We find its variants in the work of Thomson, Carman, McManus, Haugeland, Gandellini, and, most recently, Withy and Casati.^[35] All aforementioned commentators observe that Being plays an explanatory role of some kind with respect to beings – a role expressed by Heidegger himself through the definition of Being as the “inquired-about” in the inquiry into Being cited earlier.^[36] And they all attempt to show that, had OD^Lit been false, Being could not play this role.

An “idealised” version of the argument from infinite regress – distilled from the bulk of scholarship just adverted to – might look something like this:

1. If something is a being, then there is something which determines that thing as a being, something on the basis of which it is already understood, however, we may discuss it in detail. (The Explanatory Role Premise.)

2. Anything that plays that explanatory role does not determine itself as a being, nor is it that on the basis of which it is itself understood, however, we may discuss it in detail. (The Irreflexivity Premise.)

3. Anything that plays that explanatory role is a being. (The Reductio Premise.)

4. Something is a being. (The Something-Exists Premise.)

5. There is something which determines that thing as a being, something on the basis of which it is already understood, however, we may discuss it in detail (call it “Being”) (1, 4).

6. Being is a being (3, 5).

7. Being does not determine itself as a being, nor is it that on the basis of which it is itself understood, however, we may discuss it in detail (2, 6).

8. There is something which determines Being as a being, something on the basis of which it is already understood, however we may discuss it in detail (call it “Being*” and note that Being* is distinct from Being) (1, 6, 7).

9. Being* is a being (3, 8).

10. Being* does not determine itself as a being, nor is it that on the basis of which it is itself understood, however, we may discuss it in detail (2, 9).

11. There is something which determines Being* as a being, something on the basis of which it is already understood, however we may discuss it in detail (call it “Being**” and note that Being** is distinct from Being*) (1, 9, 10).

    …

12. It is not the case that whatever plays the explanatory role characterized in the Explanatory Role Premise (“Being”) is a being (3, …).

The key difference between variants of the infinite regress argument in the literature lies in the phrasing of the Explanatory Role Premise – mine repeats Heidegger’s own phrasing of that role, and as such, it is intended to be neutral with regard to its available interpretations. Another important difference lies in whether the Irreflexivity Premise is explicitly stated. Actually, only Thomson, McManus, Withy, and Casati explicitly state it – and Casati rightly notes that its absence would make the argument invalid.^[37] Yet another difference lies in how the Irreflexivity Premise is stated. Withy phrases this premise as follows: “If anything is, then it cannot be identical with the Being or is-ing by virtue of which it is.”^[38] However, putting things this way, she argues, threatens to make the argument invalid or question-begging – depending on whether “identical” is understood as a matter of a token- or a type-identity (in the former case Being could still belong to the type “beings,” whereas in the latter case, the premise says essentially the same thing as the conclusion of the argument^[39]). Still, Casati suggests a phrasing that does not face this difficulty (for it prudently drops the talk of identity altogether).^[40] My version of the Irreflexivity Premise follows his.

Unfortunately, even with the Irreflexivity Premise added – and phrased in a way that answers Withy’s concern – the infinite regress argument remains invalid. Note that we actually lack the logical power to move from Step 11 to Step 12 above – i.e. to generate an infinite regress. For, whilst we currently can rule out that Being** is identical to Being*, we cannot rule out that Being** is identical to Being. Thus, it could still be that, while Being cannot explain itself, it can be explained by Being*, which in turn is explained by Being. This is some kind of regress, sure, but hardly infinite – in which case we cannot infer from this the negation of the reductio premise.

To remedy this, the argument also needs the Transitivity Premise:

The Transitivity Premise: If x plays the explanatory role specified in the Explanatory Role Premise with respect to y and y plays that role with respect to z, then x plays that role with respect to z.

The Transitivity Premise ensures that, if Being** determines Being* as a being and is that in terms of which Being* is already understood, however we may discuss it in detail, and Being* plays this role with respect to Being, then Being** plays this role with respect to Being. If we now call upon the Irreflexivity Premise, we can indeed infer that Being** is not identical to Being. The premises of the infinite regress argument – five rather than four in number – now have what it takes to generate more and more iterations of Being, making the argument valid at last. Still, while the addition of the Transitivity Premise repairs the argument with regard to its logical validity, it requires some philosophical justification – and it is not obvious what this could be, as the proponents of the infinite regress argument simply take that premise for granted.

My main concern with the infinite regress argument, however, regards the Irreflexivity Premise. Casati considers several ways, in which the proponent of OD^Lit could attempt to justify it. Unfortunately, I am now going to argue, they all fail – as does the defence of it attempted by McManus, to which I will turn thereafter. I will then offer two proactive philosophical arguments against the Irreflexivity Premise (rather than merely reactive, responding to the work of its defenders) and conclude by showing that Heidegger explicitly rejects this premise (at least in his late work), making the argument from infinite regress exegetically insensitive.

Casati opens his case for the Irreflexivity Premise by noting that some Heidegger commentators seem to think that it could be established by appealing to our philosophical intuitions. Thus, Withy entertains the thought that

[i]t might seem unwise to reject [the Irreflexivity Premise], inasmuch as it is implausible to think that things are identical to what accounts for them—in this case, that entities are (meaningful) by virtue of themselves.^[41]

(She actually dismisses this thought immediately, noting that the opponent of the Irreflexivity Premise need not hold that all entities account for themselves – they only commit themselves to the claim that some, perhaps just one, do, and this is no longer so implausible.) Similarly, Polt illustrates OD^Lit in a way that perhaps could also serve to motivate the Irreflexivity Premise: “[a] shoe is not the meaning of a shoe.”^[42] Casati offers several reasons – beyond the one we already find in Withy – why appealing to intuitions would be a dubious procedure in the present case.^[43] I agree with him all the way, as I agree with Withy (and McManus, who makes the same point^[44]), but I do not wish to repeat those reasons here. Instead, I want to argue that the Irreflexivity Premise is only intuitive if we consider it in relation to suitable examples like Polt’s shoe. Of course, what determines Polt’s shoe as a shoe isn’t itself a shoe. And what makes, say, a dog intelligible as a dog isn’t itself a dog. However, there are – admittedly much rarer – cases where intuitions point us in the opposite direction (they will remain philosophically instructive throughout this article).

Thus, consider the property of being expressed in English. This property might determine entities such as the concept of being loyal as a dog, or the proposition that dogs are loyal, as expressed in English. If the concept of being loyal as a dog lacked this property, it wouldn’t be expressed in English. Furthermore, this property grounds the intelligibility of this concept in some sense, for it is thanks to it that we can understand it as expressed in English. Now consider what has just happened: I have expressed the property of being expressed in English. So, let us ask: what has determined the property of being expressed in English as expressed in English? And what makes it intelligible as such? Clearly, it’s still the same thing, this property itself – or whatever we take it to amount to. Or consider the property of being thought about be me. This property might determine objects such as my next vacation or Heidegger’s philosophy as being thought about by me. If my next vacation and Heidegger’s philosophy lacked this property, they wouldn’t be thought about by me. It also makes these entities intelligible – as something I am thinking of. And, again, in the process of writing down these sentences, I have just thought about the property of being thought about by me. (This might be a strange thing to think about, but it wasn’t anything I – or anyone else – couldn’t do.) Now, what is it that makes the property of being thought about by me thought about by me – and what is it that makes it intelligible as such? Surely, it is, again, this property itself – or rather whatever it comes down to. As previously, it’s still the same old trick, so there is no need to call for a new magician.

Of course, this little exercise of imagination does not tell us on its own whether Being is more like a dog or more like being expressed in English. It could be that Being is more like a dog than like being expressed in English, in which case the Irreflexivity Premise would come out true. But our first justification of this premise has just collapsed regardless. For as soon as we consider a broader range of cases, our intuitions become inconclusive. So, it is much to his credit that Casati offers us three additional arguments for the Irreflexivity Premise that do not depend on them. Let us examine them in turn.

Casati notes that some philosophers writing about causation argue that nothing can cause itself, because any cause must occur earlier than its effect. His first – temporal – argument for the Irreflexivity Premise attempts to extend this reasoning to Heidegger’s concept of Being. Being cannot make itself be – nor can it make itself intelligible as a being – because each of these accomplishments would require that it occurs earlier than it occurs. But nothing can occur earlier than it occurs. Interestingly, Casati immediately rejects this argument himself, on the ground that it assumes that the relationship between Being and beings is diachronic. But this assumption is exegetically problematic. As Casati argues persuasively, for Heidegger, the relationship between Being and beings isn’t diachronic. It is not the case that Being precedes that which it makes be – and that which it makes intelligible as a being – in time.^[45]

Casati’s second – metaphysical – argument for the Irreflexivity Premise takes the temporal argument in a different direction. Casati maintains that the aforementioned difficulty can be overcome “by arguing that what is problematic is not the fact that Being needs to be before it actually is but the fact that Being needs to be in order to make itself be.” The “issue,” in other words, is that “Being needs to be metaphysically (and not temporally) prior to itself.” But this is impossible, “because, in order to be able to make itself be, Being already needs to be.”^[46]

I confess that it was not clear to me why “in order to be able to make itself be, Being already needs to be.” Nor was it clear to me what it might even mean for Being to “already be” (when I try to understand “already” in non-temporal terms). However, I do not need to understand Casati’s notion of metaphysical priority to see that the argument faces the following problem.

It seems safe to assume that, for Casati, the reason why, “in order to be able to make itself be, Being already needs to be” has to do with the very capacity of making anything be rather than with the capacity of making Being (but not other entities) be. Why? I just cannot think of any consideration that could persuade us that, when Being makes itself be, Being must already be, whereas, when Being makes anything other than itself be, it does not need to already be. By contrast, a consideration in favour of the claim that the very capacity of Being to make beings be – regardless of what they are – requires that it already is at least thinkable. Perhaps Casati simply wants to remind us here of McManus’s insight – feeding into the second paradox of Being – that if Being is to explain anything, we must make sense of its having some features in virtue of which it is fit to play this role, that we must make sense of its “being thus-and-so.”^[47] The problem is that any principle of this kind entails that, as long as Being makes anything be (thus including entities not identical to itself), it already is, and, that is to say, it is a being. But Being makes things be by definition (i.e. of Being qua the inquired-about in the inquiry into Being^[48]). So, if the concept of Being is non-empty, then, by that principle, Being is a being. Consequently, even if Casati’s metaphysical argument for the Irreflexivity Premise succeeds, this move makes the infinite regress argument invalid – again.

How so?

Consider that Step 12 of this argument – i.e. the application of the inferential rule of reductio ad absurdum – is justified only if all of the argument’s premises other than the Reductio Premise can be safely assumed to be true. The rule of reductio ad absurdum is applied to a contradiction as well as to one of the argument’s premises whose truth-value was left undetermined, which we call the reductio premise. The assumption here is that, because all remaining premises can be assumed to be true, the contradiction must derive from the falsity of the reductio premise. But in the present case, we cannot make this assumption, since the falsity of the reductio premise (i.e. the falsity of the claim that Being is a being) now deprives us of our reasons to uphold one of the remaining premises – i.e. the Irreflexivity Premise (as our justification of that premise depends on the principle that entails that Being is a being). So, the contradiction can be down as much to the falsity of the Reductio Premise as to the falsity of the Irreflexivity Premise. This means that the application of reductio ad absurdum in Step 12 of the infinite regress argument is illegitimate, making this argument invalid – if its Irreflexivity Premise is to be defended in Casati’s metaphysical way.

Still, I have only considered the variant of the metaphysical argument tailored to what Casati calls the “metaphysical interpretation” of Heidegger’s conception of Being. (Very roughly, this kind of interpretation focusses on the first half of Heidegger’s definition of Being from Section 2 of Being and Time as “that which determines beings as beings” and downplays the second half: “that in terms of which beings are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail.”^[49]) Perhaps, Casati’s argument could be made more persuasive in relation to its “intelligibility interpretation.” (Very roughly – again – this kind of interpretation focuses on the second half of Heidegger’s definition of Being and downplays the first half.^[50]) But in that case, the infinite regress argument could still succeed for the intelligibility interpretation. The intelligibility variant of the metaphysical argument goes as follows:

If Being is itself an entity, Being makes itself intelligible because, according to the intelligibility interpretation, Being makes all entities intelligible. At this point, we face a problem because, in order to be able to make itself intelligible, Being already needs to be intelligible. The reason being that, whenever we characterize Being as what makes itself intelligible, Being needs to be understood as what makes itself intelligible and, as such, it needs to be intelligible, that is, it needs to be intelligible as what makes itself intelligible. And, if so, Being cannot make itself intelligible because Being can make itself intelligible if and only if it is already intelligible.^[51]

Unfortunately, the argument faces the same difficulty. There has to be a reason why, in order to be able to make itself intelligible, Being needs to be already intelligible. And, for the same reason as before, this reason would have to do with the very capacity of Being to make anything intelligible rather than just to make itself intelligible. But any such reason entails that when Being makes even something other than itself intelligible, it is already intelligible. And this is tantamount to saying – on the intelligibility interpretation – that Being is a being. So, again, if our motivation for the Irreflexivity Premise is Casati’s metaphysical argument – now in its intelligibility-variant – the infinite regress argument becomes invalid due to an illegitimate application of reductio ad absurdum in Step 12.

Casati’s third argument for the Irreflexivity Premise – the explanatory argument – is, without doubt, his strongest and the most persuasive. The explanatory argument relies on the unassailable assumption that, however we are to interpret it, Being, as Heidegger conceives of it, plays an explanatory role of some kind with respect to beings as well as on the plausible principle that, for any explanation to be effective, explanandum must not figure in the explanans. Casati argues:

Now, if we assume that Being is itself an entity, it should follow that, according to the metaphysical interpretation, Being explains its being and, according to the intelligibility interpretation, Being explains its intelligibility. In both cases, since Being explains itself, the explanans is identical to the explanandum. However, if this is the case, the explanation which Being is supposed to deliver is not accomplished because the phenomenon for which we are seeking an explanation (i.e. Being) reappears as its own explanation (i.e. Being itself). In other words, since we explain something (i.e. Being) by appealing to the very same thing we try to explain (i.e. Being), such an explanation fails and, therewith, the possibility that either Being explains its being by making itself be or Being explains it is intelligible by making itself intelligible.^[52]

Not long before I started writing this essay, I would find this argument compelling. However, my opinion changed and what changed it are just my earlier counterexamples to the supposed intuitiveness of the idea that Being cannot determine itself, or make itself intelligible, as a being – i.e. properties such as being expressed in English and being thought about by me. Note that they also serve as counterexamples to the otherwise plausible principle that, for any explanation to be effective, explanandum must not figure in the explanans. The property of being expressed in English explains what it is for something to be expressed in English as well as what it is for it to be understood as such. Consider that it loses none of its explanatory power when we ask these questions (What is it for it to be expressed in English? What is it for it to be understood as expressed in English?) about itself. What it is for the property of being expressed in English to be expressed in English – or to be intelligible as expressed in English – is just itself (or rather whatever we take this property to amount to). The right answer is the same answer. And it’s not as if, upon receiving it, we have learned nothing. For there are wrong answers to each of these questions: anything other than the property of being expressed in English. Thus, it is strictly speaking wrong to say that, for any explanation to be effective, the explanandum must not figure in the explanans. There are – perhaps rare – cases where this does not hold true. They might be rare, but they show that this principle is not infallible. As such, it cannot be relied on, especially in an argument concerning as controversial a matter as OD^Lit. Thus, in the end, even the explanatory argument for the Irreflexivity Premise fails.

I know of only one other defence of the Irreflexivity Premise – the one attempted by McManus. McManus’s project (in “Heidegger, Being, and All That Is and Is So”) is to develop what he regards as an exegetically sounder alternative to the “ontological paradox” discussed by Priest (in Beyond the Limits of Thought and “The Answer to the Question of Being”) and Casati (in “Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being”), which is the paradox we get by combining OD^Lit with the first argument that Being is a being mentioned in Section 1 above (from assertions). More grounded in Heidegger’s philosophy, McManus argues, is the “ontological paradox” we would get by combining OD^Lit with the second argument that Being is a being mentioned in Section 1 (from the explanatory role). Now, McManus argues that the specific way in which Heidegger persuades himself of the truth of OD^Lit is a variant of the infinite regress argument. And, having briefly considered and – rightly – rejected the proposal to ground the Irreflexivity Premise in our intuitions, he resolves to ground it instead in an “ad hominem consideration that [OD^Lit], which is a commitment of the versions of the paradox that [he] wish[es] to challenge, seems itself to entail such irreflexivity.”^[53]

McManus is right in thinking that OD^Lit entails the Irreflexivity Premise. If “Being” stands for whatever plays the explanatory role described in the Explanatory Role Premise – and if whatever it stands for is not a being – then it follows that Being does not determine itself as a being, nor is it that on the basis of which it is understood; however, we may discuss it in detail. That is to say, as long as we can assume (as I believe we can) that to determine a non-being as a being – and to serve as the basis on which it is already understood, however we may discuss it in detail – would be to “turn” it into a being, so to speak. (Otherwise, Being could explain itself even though it is not a being.) Unfortunately, seeing that the infinite regress argument has no other job than to establish OD^Lit, making its Irreflexivity Premise dependent on OD^Lit results in that argument’s becoming viciously circular. Thus, exegetical issues aside, it seems that McManus’s Heidegger would be better off framing his ontological paradox in terms of the argument from the explanatory role and some other argument for OD^Lit. And indeed McManus himself continues to voice philosophical doubts about the Irreflexivity Premise (though not this one).^[54]

The infinite regress argument is already in bad shape, because I know of no other argument for the Irreflexivity Premise besides those discussed above and, as Casati is right to remind some of its proponents, this argument does not go through without it. But, in fact, matters are even more serious than that.

First, we already have at our disposal all that it takes to construct at least two philosophical arguments against the Irreflexivity Premise. Recall that we are in possession of at least two arguments that show that Being is a being. Now, consider that this claim, combined with Heidegger’s definition of Being qua the inquired-about in his inquiry into Being,^[55] entails that Being does determine itself as a being and that it is already understood on the basis of itself, and thus, that the Irreflexivity Premise is false. Consequently, we can say more than merely that no argument for the Irreflexivity Premise succeeds. In fact, there are at least two independent philosophical arguments to show that the Irreflexivity Premise is false, each based on a different reason to think that Being is a being and on the explanatory role played by Being.

Second, at least in his “late” work, Heidegger explicitly rejects the Irreflexivity Premise himself. As he puts it in the Identity and Difference, “the Being of beings reveals itself as the ground that gives itself ground and accounts for itself.”^[56] And further: “[t]he Being of beings is represented fundamentally, in the sense of the ground, only as causa sui” (“the cause of itself”).^[57]

One might object that, with these remarks, Heidegger is merely characterising “the essential nature of metaphysics”^[58] without being beholden to it himself. That is because “[t]he origin of the difference [between Being and beings]” to which he dedicates that essay – and which somehow makes metaphysics possible in his view^[59] –“can no longer be thought within the scope of metaphysics.”^[60]

However, while Heidegger does profess to “move[] out of metaphysics” in that essay, the move is precisely “into the essential nature of metaphysics”^[61] to which he thus remains beholden. Specifically, Heidegger defines “the essential nature of metaphysics” by two assumptions that are in tension with one another. On the one hand, the “metaphysical” concept of Being is the most general one that we have. On the other hand, metaphysics “thinks” of Being as the ground of everything, including (as we have already noted) itself.^[62] Now, Heidegger’s consideration of OD in Identity and Difference is not designed to challenge any one of these assumptions. Instead, it amounts to an attempt to reconcile them (how exactly is a question that cannot be addressed here):

The problem here is … the unity of what is in question, and in thought, in ontologic and theologic: beings as such in the universal and primal at one with beings as such in the highest and the ultimate. The unity of this One is of such a kind that the ultimate in its own way accounts for the primal and the primal in its own way accounts for the ultimate.^[63]

Thus, while Heidegger moves beyond the scope of (first-order) metaphysics, he retains and indeed cultivates what he regards as its key commitment – as well as of “Western thinking in its entire nature”^[64] – to the notion of Being as the ground of everything, including itself. (“Whatever and however we may try to think, we think within the sphere of tradition.”^[65]) As this notion is inconsistent with the Irreflexivity Premise, this makes the infinite regress argument exegetically insensitive, notwithstanding its popularity among Heidegger commentators.

It is time we moved on.

5 The Argument from the Kind-Instantiation Principle

Thales famously claimed that water is the arkhê of everything. In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger proposes that “at bottom [Thales] is seeking to determine [therewith] what that which is, is as a being” – and that is to say, to answer the question of Being. But since water is a being, he argues, Thales effectively “interprets Being as a being” – in this way violating OD.^[66] Nicholson suggests that buried in this rebuke is another argument for OD^Lit: “Thales answer … was not only wrong in detail, but in type: he attributed this power to another entity, water.”^[67] A similar line of thought appears in Priest’s work:

Being is the ground of beings. As such, it is not the kind of thing that can be a being. It can function as a ground only if it, itself, is beyond Being, and so not a being. (Priest, ‘The Answer to the Question of Being,’ 250)

But it is Casati who first gives these ideas the form of an explicit argument. Call it the argument from the kind-instantiation principle, inasmuch as the key assumption here is that “something cannot be explained by appealing to something of the same kind.”^[68] The argument goes as follows:

Suppose that we want to know why there are dogs, and suppose that someone tells us that there are dogs because, in the United Kingdom, there are thousands of them. At this point, we might start wondering about those dogs as well. And, of course, if the reason of those dogs is represented by other dogs, it is clear that we are left to ask the very same question ad nauseam. … In the very same way, it is possible to argue that, if we follow Thales in explaining why there are entities by appealing to another entity (i.e. water), we will start wondering about that entity as well. And, of course, if the reason of that entity is represented by another entity, it is clear that, as with the previous example, we are left to ask the very same question ad nauseam.^[69]

So, Being is not a being.

It might be noted that the argument from the kind-instantiation principle bears an uncanny resemblance to Casati’s explanatory argument for the Irreflexivity Premise, suggesting that the infinite regress argument in which it figures hides the true heart of the matter: whether or not it is possible for anything to serve as the explanans and at the same time the explanandum in the same explanation. And, unfortunately for OD^Lit, we already know that this is very much the case – it just does not happen in the sort of case Casati envisages. To answer the question of what it is for the property of being expressed in English to be expressed in English by invoking whatever we take that property to come down to is to give the right answer (as long as it is right for items other than the property of being expressed in English itself). To answer the question of what it is for the property of being thought about by me to be thought about by me by invoking whatever we take that property to come down to is to give the right answer (as long as it is right for other items thought about by me). Sometimes there isn’t more to know. And what more there is to learn is just that we already know the answer. And it’s fine. So, if Heidegger’s Thales said something false, it is not because his supposed answer to the question of Being is inconsistent with the kind-instantiation principle. This alleged principle clearly does not apply universally, in which case it is hardly a principle at all.

Finally, there are the already familiar doubts whether the argument from the kind-instantiation principle could be taken to be Heidegger’s reason to embrace OD^Lit. This principle entails (granted Heidegger’s definition of Being as the “inquired-about” in the inquiry into Being) that Being does not explain itself. But we have already seen that, for the late Heidegger at least, Being does explain itself.^[70] So, Heidegger’s denial of the Irreflexivity Premise in the infinite regress argument is at the same time a denial of the kind-instantiation principle in the argument from that principle.

6 The Argument from Nothing

The last two arguments for OD^Lit figure exclusively in the work of Priest. The first of these arguments exploits the connection between Being and nothing:

1. The nothing is not a being.

2. Being and the nothing are identical.

3. Being is not a being (1, 2).^[71]

Priest begins his defence of Premise 1 by citing from Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?” lecture:

What is the nothing? Our very first approach to the question has something unusual about it. In our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that ‘is’ such and such; we posit it as a being. But that is exactly what it is distinguished from. Interrogating the nothing – asking what, and how it, the nothing, is – turns what is interrogated into its opposite. The question deprives itself of its own object. (WM: 96)^[72]

“The nothing” is how Heidegger talks about nothing and that is to say, with the help of a noun phrase rather than – as is the standard in modern logic – of a quantifier phrase. While Carnap famously accuses Heidegger of confusing these two uses, Priest argues – convincingly – that not all of our nothing-talk can be stated in quantificational terms (e.g. “Heidegger and Hegel both talked about nothing, but they made different claims about it”) and that Heidegger is certainly free to focus on any aspect of our nothing-talk he wants.^[73] Nothing captured by the noun phrase, then, is the same as “the absence of all objects,” Priest claims, and, on his reading, Heidegger argues in the passage cited above that, as such, it is not a being – an argument Priest wants us to accept.^[74]

Priest admits that it is difficult to find a readily intelligible argument in Heidegger’s work for Premise 2. And so, he takes it upon himself to construct the following line of defence:

Being is what it is that makes beings be.

Nothing is what it is that makes beings be.

Hence, being is nothing (Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, 242).

The phrase “what it is that makes beings be” is a definite description, Priest points out.^[75] So, the two premises of this auxiliary argument should be read as identity statements involving respectively Being, nothing, and the one thing that makes beings be. Priest claims that the first premise is true by definition (presumably the one Heidegger offers in Section 2 of Being and Time ^[76]) and so, he confines himself to justifying the second premise. There are two points he makes in this connection. First, “a being is and can only be because it is not a nothing”:

It stands out, as it were, against nothingness. If there were no nothing, there could be no beings either.^[77]

Second, “if nothing negates itself, it produces what it is not: something. Thus, a being is exactly nothing nihilating itself.”^[78] So, the “[n]othing is what is that makes beings be.”

Thus, Being and the nothing are identical, and since the nothing is not a being, neither is Being.

My main concern is with Premise 1 of the argument from nothing (“the nothing is not a being”). I believe that there is a presumption to think that nothing is not a being only if “nothing” is interpreted as a quantifier phrase (i.e. as negated “something”). However, we are expressly asked to interpret “nothing” in Premise 1 as a noun phrase – and that is to say, as a phrase referring to something. Now, as we have already noted, Heidegger’s concept of Being is, as he explains in Identity and Difference, supposed to be the most general one that we have.^[79] It follows from this that “nothing,” understood as a noun phrase, refers to a being. For, if it did not, our concept of Being would not be as general as the concept of something, anything (AKA of an object in the domain of our language, of a value of a bound variable, and so on). Of course, it does appear paradoxical to say that the nothing is a being. But this appearance feeds on the ambiguity of nothing between its quantificational and substantive deployments, nicely analysed by Priest himself. How could whatever a quantifier – thus, non-referring (in the relevant sense^[80]) – phrase corresponds to be a being? It does not correspond to anything. Still, anything a noun phrase corresponds to is not nothing – since noun phrases generally refer in the relevant sense. And, granted the utmost generality of Being, anything is a being. Thus, pace Priest, there is no sense in which the nothing is not a being (once we resolve the quantifier/noun ambiguity in the appropriate way).^[81] (Finally, although offering exegesis of Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?” is beyond the scope of this article, it is also worth noting that, in the passage cited by Priest, Heidegger is clearly not speaking in his own voice, but reconstructing a line of reasoning he will subject to critical scrutiny later.^[82] So, I am not convinced that Heidegger partakes in Priest’s confusion of these issues, especially since, as Priest himself points out, he is well aware of the difference between employing “nothing” as a noun phrase and as a quantifier phrase.^[83])

Furthermore, while I believe that, exegetically speaking, Priest is essentially on the right track in claiming that, for Heidegger, Being and nothingness somehow belong together, his defence of Premise 2 is equally unsatisfactory. Suppose that it is true of the nothing that it makes beings be in two ways outlined by Priest above. Does it follow that it is “what it is that makes beings be”? This phrase, recall, is a definite description. Thus, to show that x is what it is that makes beings be we need to show not only that x makes beings be, we also need to show that nothing else makes beings be. (In the same way as, in Russell’s famous analysis, to show that something is a present king of France and it is bald is not enough to show that the present king of France is bald; we also need to show that no more than just one thing is a present king of France.) Unfortunately for Priest, Heidegger distinguishes between many ways in which different “things” make beings be. In Being and Time, for example, he breaks Being down into several “kinds of Being” like Dasein’s Being and presence-at-hand, each of which makes beings be in its own peculiar way.^[84] He also argues that Being is somehow dependent on time, and so, presumably, that time, too, makes beings be in some way. How do ways in which the nothing makes beings be relate to ways in which kinds of Being and time make beings be? So far, Priest has only shown (arguably) that, if Being is “what it is that makes beings be,” then the nothing is what Käufer calls “an aspect of [B]eing.”^[85] This is insufficient to support the identity between Being and the nothing needed for the argument from nothing to work.^[86]

7 The Argument from Unity

Priest’s final argument for OD^Lit – and the last one to be considered in this essay – exploits an interesting connection between Being and unity that was already spotted by Aristotle: our concepts of Being and unity are in fact both most general^[87] and thus necessarily co-extensive.^[88] Here is how Aristotle argues for this last point in Book Iota of Metaphysics:

that the one in some sense signifies the same as being, is clear in virtue of the fact … that ‘one human being’ does not add anything else in predication to ‘human being’ (as being, too, is nothing over and above being a certain something or of a certain quality or of a certain quantity), and in virtue of the fact that being one is being for each thing.^[89]

Priest offers an interesting account of unity, from which, given this connection, he hopes to extract OD^Lit.

Priest introduces his account of unity in the following words:

Take an object with parts. What makes them into a single thing? There must be something in virtue of which they form a unity. Quite possibly, this thing depends on the unity in question. If the unity is a house, its parts are bricks, and maybe what makes them into a unity is their geometric configuration. If the unity is a symphony, its parts are notes, and maybe what makes them into a unity is their arrangement. But whatever the binding agent is, there must be one. Let us call it, neutrally, the gluon of the unity.^[90]

Thus, every complex object has a “gluon” – and this term stands for whatever explains why different parts of any such object constitute a single object.

Now, gluons, Priest argues, have some puzzling features. In particular, he argues that, in order to do what they are supposed to do, they must both be – and not be – objects. If a gluon of the house in which I am writing these words was not an object, it could not explain why bricks and other materials make up a single object, a house. For, as argues McManus, a supposed explanans that does not exist – in any way – is not much of an explanans.^[91] Furthermore, Priest points out that “we can think about [a gluon], quantify over it, refer to it.”^[92] However, if a gluon of the house in which I am writing these words was an object, it could not explain why bricks and other materials make up a single object, a house, either. For then, “the totality comprising it and the other parts would be just as much a congeries as the parts themselves, and we would want for an explanation of how the unity is achieved.”^[93] So, gluon – that which explains the unity of a complex object – is not itself an object or a being.

Priest can now offer the following argument for OD^Lit:

1. “The being of any object/being, x, is its gluon.”^[94]

2. “A gluon … is not an object/being.”^[95]

3. Being is not a being (1, 2).^[96]

However, I do not believe that the unity argument works, either.

I begin with a minor objection to Premise 2. It is that Priest’s case for it above overlooks two ways in which a gluon could successfully glue a composite object (i.e. without any leftovers) while being a being. I have argued in Section 4 above that, pace Casati and McManus, Being both makes itself be and makes itself intelligible as such, thus explaining what it is for itself to be and to be intelligible as such. Why, then, could not a gluon glue itself, thus explaining why parts of a composite object, including itself, belong together? If gluons glued themselves, they could both do their job and remain beings. Thus, unless Priest somehow rules out that gluing is reflexive, the unity argument does not go through.

But that is not the only possibility he needs to rule out. Suppose that gluons do not glue themselves. They could still do their job and remain beings if it turned out that, instead of being immanent to composite objects they glue together, they are in fact transcendent with respect to them. It is only if we imagine a gluon as a part of the composite object it glues together (without gluing itself) that a portion of that object remains unglued. But if a gluon and the composite object it glues are apart, then nothing remains unglued, even if a gluon does not glue itself. The coinage of a “gluon” suggests that metaphysical gluing is just like commonplace gluing in that it is a matter of filling in some (now metaphysical) space between parts of a complex object. But even ordinary life is replete with cases where parts of a complex object are held together from without rather than from within. Take the molecules of water that make up a glass of water. A glass of water – in the sense of a glass of water one can drink – is held together by the glass that is not itself a part of this object. (When I say “I have just had a glass of water,” I do not mean to say that I swallowed the glass, too.) Thus, for the unity argument to work, Priest also needs to somehow rule out that gluons – like glasses – are transcendent.

Priest does not seem to rule out either the reflexivity of gluing or the transcendence of gluons even in his more thorough treatment of these issues in his monograph One. (In fact, a fully developed theory of gluons Priest offers there incorporates reflexivity.^[97]) This is a significant flaw in the argument, as stated above. Still, Priest’s fully fleshed-out theory of gluons in that book gives him a decent reply to my concerns (at least prima facie) – and that is why I regard the above objection to Premise 2 as (relatively) minor.

In Chapter 2 of One Priest develops a detailed account of how – exactly – immanent gluons can, in the context of dialetheism, explain the unity of a complex object. The key proposal is that gluons be taken as identical to themselves as well as to the remaining parts of the object they glue (and hence that gluing be taken as reflexive). The price of this account is steep. On top of presupposing dialetheism, it requires us to abandon the plausible assumption that identity is transitive (to avoid the absurd conclusion that parts of a supposedly complex object are identical to themselves, which would “simplify” that object). However, supposing that we are ready to make these sacrifices, gluons as they are ultimately conceived by Priest (immanent and identical to all parts of the object in which they figure, including themselves) – call them P-gluons – explain the unity of a complex object. They do so by taking it to be a matter of (a strange kind of) identity. By contrast, my suggestion to treat gluing as reflexive or gluons as transcendent – while keeping dialetheism at bay and the transitivity of identity close to our hearts – has not explained anything, yet. I merely offered guidance for how one might develop an explanation of the unity of complex objects (two different explanations, in fact).

A decent reply to my concerns Priest has, then, is simply to point out that, in One, he offers a proof that P-gluons are not beings^[98] (which is why his account of unity presupposes dialetheism, as it also entails that P-gluons are beings) and that, as things stand, only P-gluons can properly explain the unity of complex objects. While I regard Priest’s case for Premise 2 as stated earlier as flawed, I have no similar complaints about Priest’s proof with regard to P-gluons (so, to save space, I will not discuss it here). Furthermore, I am not going to offer an alternative explanation of the unity of complex objects here. So, I yield – at least for the time being. (But not completely: consider that I can still point out that, if the unity argument is our reason for accepting OD^Lit as true while the P-gluon account of unity is our reason for accepting that argument’s Premise 2, then, since the P-gluon account of unity presupposes dialetheism, OD^Lit cannot in fact motivate it, which is a claim of Priest. So, the minor objection retains some of its bite.)

Here, then, is another challenge for Priest to consider. Though it primarily targets Premise 1, Priest’s response to it significantly complicates what I said is otherwise a decent response to the minor objection to Premise 2 above.

The challenge: beings are a diverse bunch – in fact, the most diverse bunch that there is. They contain complex objects as well as simple objects (objects which have no proper parts). But gluons only figure in complex objects. So, gluons cannot explain beings. Thus, since Being is supposed to explain beings, the being of an object is not its gluon. In response, Priest toys with denying that there are any simple objects, but concludes that there is no decisive argument for this eliminative conclusion.^[99] So, instead, he broadens the job description of a gluon. Not only is a gluon what explains the unity of complex objects, it is, in the end, what explains the unity of any object, including simplexes: “we can take the simplex itself to be its own [P-]gluon.”^[100] To introduce some order, Priest resolves to call gluons that unify simplexes “improper gluons” and the remainder “proper gluons.”^[101]

So far, so good. But here is the promised complication. By his own admission, Priest’s proof that P-gluons are not beings already adverted to – and which I do not have space to discuss here – only works on the assumption that all gluons are proper: “for improper gluons, the argument … to the effect that they are not objects fails.”^[102] So, Priest needs – and indeed develops – another argument of this kind specifically for improper gluons. Unfortunately, I am going to show in a moment, that other argument fails. So, my second objection to Priest – and the first of the major kind – is going to be this. Either no gluons are beings (on account of Priest’s decent response to the minor objection) but all gluons are proper – and so, the Being of a being is not its gluon – or there are proper gluons and there are improper gluons, and so, the Being of a being is its gluon (let us grant), but some gluons are beings. Either way, the unity argument fails.

Priest’s argument that improper gluons (of simplexes) are not beings appeals to the substantive conception of nothing – already discussed in Section 6 – on which nothing is an object defined as “the absence of all things.”^[103] Nothing, Priest tells us, is a simplex – “[it] can have no parts (other than itself): if it did, it would not be the absence of every thing” – and so, its own improper P-gluon.^[104] And he claims – again – that although nothing is an object, it is also not an object (and not a being). For nothing is the absence of all things – and that sort of thing is not a being.

Unfortunately, we have already seen in relation to the argument from nothing that, as soon as we remove the ambiguity between “nothing” understood as a quantifier phrase and “nothing” understood as a noun phrase, there is no reason to think that nothing, as denoted by the noun phrase, is not a being. So, we have no reason to think that improper gluons are not beings, either.

More worryingly, the sort of argument Priest offers could at best hope to establish that some improper gluons are not beings. Consider that nothing is (allegedly) not a being explicitly on account of its character as nothing rather than on account of its character as a simplex. This does not rule out that other simplexes which do not share its character as nothing are beings. And what Priest needs to establish for the unity argument to work is that all improper gluons are not beings.

In consequence, Priest has no resources (presently) to show that Premises 1 and 2 of the unity argument can be true at the same time. Either no gluons are beings – but all gluons are proper and so, the Being of a being is not its gluon – or there are proper gluons and there are improper gluons, and so, the Being of a being is its gluon, but some gluons are beings. Unfortunately, in order for the unity argument to succeed, we should not have to make this choice.

But that is not the only difficulty with Premise 1. Let us grant that gluons explain – in some way – what it is for beings to be. Are they the only things that explain what it is for beings to be? Heidegger’s Being, recall, stands for the totality of what “explains” beings – in the sense of determining beings as beings and serving as that on the basis of which they are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail.^[105] Let us agree, then, that gluons belong in this totality. Are they all that there is to this totality? Arguably, they are not. As we have noted in Section 6, Heidegger argues for a number of alternative explanans of the relevant kind: “kinds of Being” and (arguably) time.^[106] And so does Priest himself, finding it in the nothing. So, Premise 1 fails until Priest is able to either identify gluons with those alternative explanans of beings or rule them out as such. Neither task is straightforward. Thus, my third objection to the unity argument – and the second one of the major kind – is that, like Priest’s argument from nothing, it fails to establish the identity between the entity it brings into focus (nothing, gluon) and Being. And for this reason – as well as other reasons discussed above – it fails.

8 The World Is Not Flat (Conclusions)

Thus, we have no compelling reason to accept OD^Lit as true – and this contrasts with at least two good reasons to regard it as false. First, there are assertions about Being. But we can only assert anything about beings. Second, Being plays an explanatory role of some kind. But Being could not play this role unless we could make sense of its having certain properties in virtue of which it plays this role, of its “being thus-and-so.”^[107] So, regardless of what Heidegger himself thought about these matters, we ought to take these arguments at face value: Being simply is a being. And OD^Lit simply is false.

Some conclusions to be drawn from this exercise are negative. We have already seen that Priest and Casati appeal to OD^Lit – and to arguments of the kind just adverted to – to motivate dialetheism, the view that some contradictions are true. It might be that some contradictions are true. Still, since OD^Lit is false, champions of dialetheism should look for reasons to embrace this view elsewhere. However, dialetheism isn’t the only exciting idea in philosophy defended in recent years in relation to OD^Lit.

In the first instance, Witherspoon (“Logic and the Inexpressible in Frege and Heidegger”) and Priest (Beyond the Limits of Thought) argue that Heidegger himself, facing the first of the paradoxes of Being above (concerning assertions), eventually took “a leaf out of the early Wittgenstein’s book” in transforming his discourse about Being into a matter of merely “showing” things rather than asserting anything about it.^[108] While both commentators express reservations about how successful this enterprise proved to be (nicely encapsulated by McManus in the remark of Frank Ramsey directed at Wittgenstein that “what we can’t say, we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either”^[109]), Moore seems to regard this strategy with some sympathy.^[110] Now, consider that even if it were possible to merely “show” Being, our argument in this article robs Heidegger of any reason to. Since Being simply is a being, there is no reason to think that it is ineffable. The “truth of Being” does not have to be whistled. It can be stated as much as any other truth. So, again, it might be that what cannot be said can still be shown. However, since OD^Lit is false, champions of philosophical exhibitionism in the style of Wittgenstein should look for reasons to adopt this manner of discourse elsewhere.

Other commentators are reminded here of a rather different idea also attributed to Wittgenstein. Namely, that instead of issuing any propositions about the limits of thought which his Tractatus is concerned with (since any proposition about the limits of thought, as operating beyond these limits, cannot itself be thought) – and instead of exhibiting these limits as per the Wittgensteinian idea above (as this arguably cannot be done, either) – Wittgenstein of the Tractatus wants to lead us away from thinking about the limits of thinking altogether, tempting though it might be, thus conducing a transformation of our thinking of some kind. This is known as the “resolute” reading of the Tractatus.^[111] Similarly, Nir has argued,

a reading of Being and Time can be offered according to which Heidegger resolutely avoids taking his philosophy to consist in providing his readers with an ontological theory. Heidegger’s purpose is to help us, his readers, overcome the metaphysical distortions to which we are all prone and which lead us to treat being in terms that only fit beings. He hopes to achieve this not by communicating a theory of being (which would either be inconsistent or involve the indirect communication of ineffable insights) but by promoting a completely different kind of philosophical activity, which is not theoretical but … ethical. The result of such philosophical activity is a transformative experience, not an epistemic achievement.^[112]

While Nir offers us some hints at how such a reading of Being and Time might go,^[113] Casati explores the possibility that, his own dialetheist reading of the Contributions to Philosophy and related essays notwithstanding, Heidegger might have considered the resolute approach to the paradoxes of Being in other works from the “late” period, notably in Bremen and Freiburg Lectures.^[114] Again, the present exercise casts doubt on both proposals. For, if Being simply is a being, Heidegger could – in principle – talk about it as much as he wants, leaving the project of abandoning the thinking of Being altogether undermotivated.

Of course, these negative conclusions do not entail that the dialetheist and the Wittgensteinian readings of Heidegger are exegetically incorrect. It might be that Heidegger himself was (mistakenly) persuaded of the truth of OD^Lit and that he toyed with some – perhaps all – of these responses to the resultant paradoxes of Being. But they do encourage us to seriously consider the possibility that Heidegger’s philosophy might, after all, be (the propositional) business as usual. For, in effectively abolishing the paradoxes of Being, the present exercise also abolishes the need for any of these sophisticated philosophical devices.

Still, alongside these negative conclusions, there is one that strikes me as positive – and no less exciting, I hope, than the ideas that some contradictions are true, that what cannot be said can still be shown, and that the thinking of Being must be somehow abandoned. In the course of our exercise, we have discovered that there is more texture to the world than most philosophers working in the tradition of Heideggerian metaphysics are disposed to believe. The world of these philosophers is “flat” – it consists of nothing but beings that are not Being. Either Being undergoes a complete ontological suppression – that is to say, it is not reckoned with as a being at all – even if this does not mean that it is completely pushed out of the picture (the Wittgensteinian reactions to the paradoxes of Being) or it does not undergo a complete ontological suppression… and yet it does (the dialetheist reactions to the paradoxes of Being). Either way, OD^Lit flattens reality in some respect. Our reflections show, however, that the world is not flat in any one of these respects. Being – and that is to say, “that which determines beings as beings, that on the basis of which beings are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail”^[115] – is itself a being.

Some readers might find our positive conclusion mind-boggling – perhaps even unthinkable – because, to quote Polt, “[a] shoe is not the meaning of a shoe.”^[116] But this sort of thing is thinkable. My advice to these readers, at least for the time being, is that a better model for thinking about the unflattened reality is provided by my earlier example of objects expressed in English and the property of being expressed in English (and the like). The property of being expressed in English can be expressed in English and, as such, become an object expressed in English. Nothing mind-boggling about this, I hope! My suggestion is that the relationship between Being and beings might be just like this (whilst in another work I develop a rather different suggestion, more sensitive to how, in my view, Heidegger himself thought about these matters).

Thus, Being is a being in some sense – and the world, just like the Earth, is not flat.