Being : a dialetheic interpretation of the late Heidegger

Abstract

In my thesis, I present a novel interpretation of the so-called second Heidegger. In the first chapter I discuss the paradox of being, according to which talking and thinking about being leads to a contradiction. I also show that the late Heidegger endorses dialetheism, accepting the contradiction of being as a true one. In the second chapter, I present a comparison between Heidegger and Meinong. First of all, I discuss some similarities between Heidegger’s account of intentionality and Meinong’s account of intentionality, and Heidegger’s ontology and Meinong’s ontology. Secondly, I interpret Heidegger’s being as a special case in Meinong’s ‘Theory of Objects’. In the third chapter, after showing that, according to Heidegger, being is identical to nothingness, I present a paraconsistent mereological system that makes formal sense of Heidegger’s metaphysics. In this mereological system, the totality is taken to be the mereological sum of everything that is and the complement of the totality is interpreted as nothingness, namely what we obtain removing all things from the totality. Since, according to Heidegger, nothingness is being, the complement of totality is taken to be being as well. Finally, in the fourth and last chapter, I discuss Heidegger’s theory of grounding. I show that the early Heidegger endorses a particularly strong form of foundationalism. Moreover, I present two paraconsistent versions of foundationalism (called para-foundationalism 1.0 and para-foundationalism 2.0) that can accommodate the inconsistent views endorsed by the second Heidegger.