Date of Completion
12-15-2023
Degree Type
Honors Thesis - Campus Access
Discipline
Philosophy (PHIL)
First Advisor
Ian Alexander Moore
Abstract
Within the unpublished collection of Heidegger’s writings, The Legacy of the Being-Question, is a complete essay and its corresponding notes, published together under the title “The argument against need (for the being-in-itself of entities).” Presumably a drafted but abandoned addition to the GA’s introduction, “The argument against need” and its discussion of the independence of entities-in-themselves reveals the importance of the topic within the broader corpus and the need for further elaborations. I argue that Heidegger’s discussion of entity independence in this document provides a viewpoint counter to his earlier claim that questions of entity individuation are unproblematic for his philosophy. In investigating the incongruency of an Aristotelian-influenced and a Kantian-influenced interpretation of individuation with Heidegger’s later view, I come to two main characterizations of Heidegger’s view: (1) To the question ‘how are entities independent from one another?’ Heidegger answers that entities are already independent from one another, ‘before’ the human and without being, and (2) to the question ‘what importance does individuation have on being?’ Heidegger answers that being does not cause entity individuation, but that entity individuation is not unimportant to being—as entities are needed by being, entity individuation becomes crucial for being as appearing.
Recommended Citation
Mlcek, Chester, "Entity Individuation & Independence in Heidegger's "The argument against need"" (2023). Honors Thesis. 508.
https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/honors-thesis/508
