Onto-theologie

In the simplest of terms: Heidegger’s whole effort is to interrogate the positive-negative process of ἀ-λήθεια [a-letheia], insofar as it gives rise to metaphysics. The full import of this can be appreciated, however, only when we watch him at work. He meditates, for example, the formula τί τό ὄν ή ὄν [ti to on he on] and endeavors thereby to disengage the interior structure of metaphysics. Now the formula, he insists, is essentially ambiguous. To be sure, “beings as beings” means the whole ensemble (καθόλον [katholon[) of beings, considered in terms of that which makes them “be,” sc. their beingness (οὐσία [aousia]). The being-ness of the ensemble of beings, however, may be understood in at least two ways: it may mean the common denominator of all beings (ὄν καθόλον, κοινόν [koinon]), hence Being, as we say, “in general”; or it may mean some ultimate “ground” which lets the ensemble of beings be, where this is understood in the sense of some being, supreme among the rest (ὄν καθόλου ἀκρότατον), and, because supreme, often called “divine” (θεῖον [theion]). Insofar as the task of metaphysics is to make affirmations (λόγος [logos]) about beings (ὄντος [ontos]) meditated in this way, it is of its very nature onto-logy. When this word emerges in the seventeenth century, however, it is usually reserved for metaphysics in the first sense, sc. the interrogation of Being-in-general, whereas metaphysics in the second sense, the interrogation of a supreme Being (however this be conceived), is properly speaking a theo-logy, or, as we might better say, a theio-logy. The term “transcendence” shares the same ambiguity. It can mean the passage from beings to Being-in-general, from beings to the Supreme Being, or even the Supreme Being itself. What is capital, however, is to note that, since the formula ὄν ᾗ ὄν itself is ambiguous, metaphysics necessarily compasses both these modalities, its innermost structure is onto-theo-logical. [RHPT:9-10]