Dwelling in the enigma: Heidegger, Being and human finitude

ABSTRACT:According to Heidegger, the notion of Being represents an enigma. On the one hand, we always experience entities in relation to their Being. On the other hand, since the Being of all these entities is not itself an entity, any attempt to articulate Being, and our experience of entities in relation to it, runs the risk of failing. It is enough to glance over the secondary literature to notice that philosophers have identified two ways in which Heidegger seems to overcome such a failure. According to what I call the non-propositional approach, Heidegger aims at conveying ineffable truths about Being and our experiencing entities in relation to it. According to what I call the eliminativist approach, Heidegger either does or should understand such a failure as a reductio ad absurdum of his own account of Being. After showing that both these interpretations are problematic, I carve out a third exegetical position by developing an analogy between Heidegger’s enigma of Being and the notion of a great riddle as defended by Cora Diamond and, in particular, Stephen Mulhall. Furthermore, I argue that, not only does my interpretation avoid the issues affecting both the non-propositional and the eliminativist approaches, but it also helps us to see how, according to Heidegger himself, the impossibility of overcoming the enigma of Being casts an important light on our finitude and, therewith, the existential posture with which we inhabit the world.