CRITIQUE OF HEIDEGGERS BEING (SEIN)

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2014.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)1 critiques the history of metaphysics from Plato onwards
as being guilty of formalism and essentialism, and of forgetting Sein or Being, the Being of the
1

Studies on Heidegger: M. GRENE, Martin Heidegger, Hillary House, New York, 1957 ; T. LANGAN, The
Meaning of Heidegger, Columbia University Press, New York, 1961 ; A. CHAPELLE, Lontologie
phnomnologique de Heidegger. Un commentaire de Sein und Zeit, Editions universitaires, Paris, 1962 ; W. J.
RICHARDSON, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1963 ; R. SCHMITT,
Martin Heidegger on Being Human: An Introduction to Sein und Zeit, Random House, New York, 1969 ; J.
MACQUARRIE, Martin Heidegger, John Knox Press, Richmond, VA, 1969 ; W. MARX, Heidegger and the
Tradition, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970 ; J. M. DEMSKE, Being, Man, and Death: A Key to
Heidegger, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1970 ; J. JAHL, Verso la fine dellontologia: studio
sullIntroduzione alla metafisica di Heidegger, Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1971 ; A. DE WAELHENS, La philosophie
de Martin Heidegger, Nauwelaerts, Louvain, 1971 ; M. STASSEN, Heideggers Philosophie der Sprache in Sein
und Zeit und ihre philosophisch-theologischen Wurzeln, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, 1973 ; C. F.
GETHMANN, Verstehen und Auslegung: Das Methodenproblem in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers, Bouvier
Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, 1974 ; G. PRAUSS, Erkennen und Handeln in Heideggers Sein und Zeit, Verlag
Karl Alber, Freiburg and Munich, 1977 ; G. STEINER, Martin Heidegger, The Viking Press, New York, 1978 ; M.
MURRAY (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1978
; R. WATERHOUSE, A Heidegger Critique: A Critical Examination of the Existential Phenomenology of Martin
Heidegger, Harvester Press/Humanities Press, Sussex/New Jersey, 1981 ; M. BLITZ, Heideggers Being and Time
and the Possibility of Political Philosophy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1981 ; C. GUIGNON,
Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Hackett, Indiana, 1983 ; J. J. KOCKELMANS (ed.), A Companion to
Martin Heideggers Being and Time, Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of
America, Washington, D.C., 1986 ; F.-W. VON HERMANN, Hermeneutische Phnomenologie des Daseins: Eine
Erluterung von Sein und Zeit. Band I: Einleitung: Die Exposition der Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein, Vittorio
Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1987 ; F.-W. VON HERMANN, Hermeneutische Phnomenologie des Daseins: Ein
Kommentar zu Sein und Zeit. Band 2: Erster Abschnitt: Die vorbereitende Fundamentalanalyse des Daseins, 927, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt, 1987 ; E. F. KAELIN, Heideggers Being and Time: A Reading for Readers,
University Presses of Florida/The Florida State University Press, Tallahassee, 1988 ; G. FIGAL, Martin Heidegger:
Phnomenologie der Freiheit, Athenum, Frankfurt, 1988 ; M. GELVEN, A Commentary on Heideggers Being and
Time, Northern Illinois University Press, De Kalb, IL, 1989 ; M. MARASSI, Ermeneutica della differenza: saggio
su Heidegger, Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1990 ; J. J. KOCKLEMANS, Heideggers Being and Time: The Analytic of
Dasein as Fundamental Ontology, Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of
America, Washington, D.C., 1990 ; W. BIEMEL, Heidegger, Rohwolt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg, 1991 ; H.
DREYFUS, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and Time, Division I, MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1991 ; M. FLEISCHER, Die Zeitanalysen in Heideggers Sein und Zeit: Aporien, Probleme und ein
Ausblick, Knigshausen & Neumann, Wrzburg, 1991 ; H. DREYFUS and H. HALL (eds.), Heidegger: A Critical
Reader, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992 ; G. BERTUZZI, La verit in Martin Heidegger: dagli scritti giovanili a Essere e
tempo, ESD, Bologna, 1993 ; T. KISIEL, The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1993 ; C. GUIGNON (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1993 ; J. GREISCH, Ontologie et Temporalit: Esquisse dune interprtation intgrale de Sein und
Zeit, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1994 ; T. KISIEL and J. VAN BUREN, Reading Heidegger from the
Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, SUNY Press, Albany, 1994 ; L. VOGEL, The Fragile We: Ethical
Implications of Heideggers Being and Time, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1994 ; S. MULHALL,
Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, Routledge, London, 1996 ; C. MACANN (ed.),
Critical Heidegger, Routledge, London, 1996 ; M. INWOOD, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford
University Press, Oxford and New York, 1997 ; J.-M. SALANSKIS, Heidegger, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1997 ; M.
INWOOD, The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries: A Heidegger Dictionary, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999 ; W. D.
BLATTNER, Heideggers Temporal Idealism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999 ; R. POLT,

things that are (das Sein des Seienden). Focusing on the Being of beings should be the chief
preoccupation of metaphysics, as did the pre-Socratics, Heidegger says, but instead, with Plato
onwards, the history of metaphysics shows that metaphysicians merely concentrated their efforts
on a description of being (ens) or substance (substantia). From Plato onwards, metaphysics,
claims Heidegger, was now firmly committed to the exclusive consideration of the to on or
ens of that-which-is, namely das Seiende. So, in the history of metaphysics Heidegger
asserts that we find metaphysicians claiming that they are investigating the nature of being,
whereas their affirmations really bear upon this being, a being, beings or the totality of thatwhich-is. In contrast, the Sein of beings (entia) has been obscured in the effort to explore and
universalize some particular region of being. In consequence, metaphysics, which is supposed to
be a study of Being (Sein), has instead, according to Heidegger, become an ontology, namely, a
study of that-which-is, when it should instead have been an einai-logy, i.e., a study of the to
be of being, as opposed to a investigation of beings (entia). For Heidegger, what this
unfortunate history of metaphysics from Plato onwards reveals is that, from almost the beginning
of the history of metaphysical speculation, the thought of Western man has been bound to things,

Heidegger: An Introduction, Routledge, London, 1999 ; M. WRATHALL and J. MALPAS (eds.), Heidegger,
Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, volume 1, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000 ;
G. PATTISON, The Later Heidegger, Routledge, London, 2000 ; M. WRATHALL and J. MALPAS (eds.),
Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, volume 2, MIT Press,
Cambridge, 2000 ; D. O. DAHLSTROM, Heideggers Concept of Truth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2001 ; A. LUCKNER, Martin Heidegger: Sein und Zeit: Ein einfhrender Kommentar, UTB, Stuttgart, 2001 ; C. E.
SCOTT, S. M. SCHOENBOHM, D. VALLEGA-NEU, and A. VALLEGA (eds.), Companion to Heideggers
Contributions to Philosophy, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2001 ; T. CLARK, Routledge Critical
Thinkers: Martin Heidegger, Routledge, London, 2001 ; G. CROWELL, Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of
Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2001 ; M.
KING, A Guide to Heideggers Being and Time, SUNY Press, Albany, 2001 ; T. RENTSCH (ed.), Heidegger: Sein
und Zeit. Reihe Klassiker Auslegen, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 2001 ; H. DREYFUS and M. WRATHALL (eds.),
Heidegger Reexamined, 4 volumes, Routledge, London, 2002 ; G. HARMAN, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the
Metaphysics of Objects, Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, IL, 2002 ; J. YOUNG, Heideggers Later Philosophy,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002 ; L. ALWEISS, The World Unclaimed: A Challenge to Heideggers
Critique of Husserl, Ohio University Press, Athens, 2003 ; T. CARMAN, Heideggers Analytic: Interpretation,
Discourse, and Authenticity in Being and Time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003 ; M. WRATHALL,
How to Read Heidegger, Granta, London, 2003 ; F.-W. VON HERMANN, Subjekt und Dasein: Grundbegriffe von
Sein und Zeit, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt, 2004 ; S. OVERGAARD, Husserl and Heidegger on Being in the
World, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004 ; F. RAFFOUL, chaque fois mien: Heidegger et la question
du sujet, ditions Galile, Paris, 2004 ; M. WRATHALL, How to Read Heidegger, W. W. Norton, New York, 2005
; S. MULHALL, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, Routledge, London, 2005 ;
R. POLT (ed.), Heideggers Being and Time: Critical Essays, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2005 ; C. J.
WHITE, Time and Death: Heideggers Analysis of Finitude, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005 ; H. DREYFUS and M.
WRATHALL (eds.), A Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006 ; C. GUIGNON
(ed.), Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006 ; H. CAREL, Life and
Death in Freud and Heidegger, Rodopi, New York and Amsterdam, 2006 ; J. MALPAS, Heideggers Topology,
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006 ; W. BLATTNER, Heideggers Being and Time: A Readers Guide, Continuum,
London, 2007 ; S. G. CROWELL and J. MALPAS (eds.), Transcendental Heidegger, Sanford University Press,
Stanford, 2007 ; R. SEMBRERA, Rephrasing Heidegger: A Companion to Being and Time, The University of
Ottawa Press, Ottawa, 2007 ; P. GORNER, Heideggers Being and Time: An Introduction, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2007 ; D. R. CERBONE, Heidegger: A Guide for the Perplexed, Continuum, London, 2008 ; J. J.
SANGUINETI, Il destino dellessere: Fabro in dialogo con Heidegger, in Crisi e destino della filosofia: Studi su
Cornelio Fabro, edited by A. Acerbi, EDUSC, Rome, 2012, pp. 353-377 ; P. P. RUFFINENGO, Differenza
ontologica e actus essendi: con san Tommaso oltre Heidegger, Divus Thomas, 116.2 (2013), pp. 171-209.

to objects. Hence, the task to re-discover the Sein of beings (entia) by means of Dasein (man or
human existence), who is the shepherd of Being.
Nevertheless, even though Heidegger is credited with the critique of the history of
Western metaphysics from Plato onwards as being guilty of essentialist formalism and of
forgetting Being (although these charges cannot be attributed to the metaphysics of St. Thomas
Aquinas as Heidegger wrongly maintains), Heideggers own version of metaphysics (which will
instead be for him a fundamental ontolology, which is a phenomenological ontology), like that of
most of modern philosophy, is nonetheless immanentistic. Fabro explains in Dallessere
allesistente (From Being to the Existent): Existentialisms program is essentially that of The
Critique of Pure Reason: restoring consistency to the doctrine of being by means of the
foundation of an experience of being itself; the method is also similar, this is the resolution of
ens or the immediate objectivity into the transcendental structure of the subject which makes the
appearance of the existent (essente) in being possible; the result is also similar, namely, the
recognition of the finiteness of the being of existents as a whole and of the constitution of truth
as freedom[]. All this is profoundly Kantian and is continually insisted on in recent
philosophy.2
Heideggers immanentism is manifested by his operating within the sphere of
phenomenological ontology in his philosophical elucidations of his fundamental ontology, which
critiques the history of essentialist and formalist metaphysics. He does not attain to being as act
in the manner of St. Thomas Aquinas, who works upon the principle of act bequeathed by the
Stagirite; rather, Heidegger remains on the level of being as given to thought. So, for Heidegger,
Being (Sein) would be phenomenological, the act of presence of the existent in Dasein (man or
human existence). It is not, for him, the act of being (actus essendi) of the existent being (ens) as
it is in St. Thomas.
In Heidegger, Being (Sein) suffers a reduction to presence to Dasein, a presence of
Sein is revealed in the form of an illumination (Lichtung). Being (Sein), for him, would be this
presence as illumination (Die Lichtung selber ist das Sein). However, the truth of Being (Sein)
remains veiled in the tradition of metaphysics (which deals with the ontic), he says, and must be
brought out by means of fundamental ontology, which is a phenomenological ontology.
From the perspective of Dasein (as subject), Sein is the primordial awareness of the
presence of all that is present to Dasein. From the perspective of the object, Sein is the
gathering together of the truth of Sein in the act of illumination (Lichtung). Insofar as Being
(Sein) involves a certain openness and aptness to manifest itself to Dasein, it belongs to the
essence of Dasein. Presence as such is always and in a certain manner presence to the essence
of Dasein, insofar as presence is a summons which in a certain way makes an appeal to the
essence of Dasein.
What then is Being (Sein, esse) for Heidegger? It is clear that Being (Sein, esse), for
Heidegger, is not the existent itself (the Seiende, ens), but is rather something that lights up the
existent, the being (ens), and grounds it. For Heidegger, Sein (esse) is the self-presentation of
the present, the hereand-now self-showing of something to Dasein or man. Heideggerian Sein
2

C. FABRO, Dallessere allesistente, Morcelliana, Brescia, 1965, p. 338.

(esse) is reduced to the present temporality lived by Dasein or man from moment to moment.
Ontic being is packed in the ontological being of Dasein, which is again a falling into the pit of
immanentism and historicism. So, the esse or Sein of Heidegger is very different from the act of
being (esse) of St. Thomas Aquinas. For the Angelic Doctor, esse can be infinite or finite; the
former is God the unparticipated Pure Act of Being by essence, whereas the latter regards finite
esse by participation. Concerning Heideggers approach, Fabro writes in Dallessere allesistente
(From Being to the Existent): With regard to the Aristotelian concept of , both
Heidegger and St. Thomas resist the formalistic temptation, but in opposed directions. For
Heidegger, the only meaning of being in its original position of is that of presence, of
the being present of something to consciousness, and Dasein or mans reality in act is the
finding oneself in this presence at the mercy of being. Therefore, the existentia of traditional
metaphysics, which was contingent and extrinsic, becomes Dasein, which is interior and
constitutive of the being of man and, in the new reality, gathers the demands of both ontological
realism and the Bewusstsein of modern thought. In this way, for Heidegger, only of man can it be
said that he ex-sists, insofar as he is a consciousness that insists in a finite being: minerals,
plants and animals are, they do not exist3
Heideggers presence of the present is the being-in-act of the consciousness of Dasein
and could benignly be interpreted as the being inasmuch as it is intentioned by thought, as is
the intellect described by the Stagirite comes to be brought to act thanks to the intentional
presence of the intelligible in act. Thus, Heideggers description of Being (Sein) is too much
rooted in human thought and unilaterally linked to the truth dimension of being relative to man,
not grounded in the primacy of transcendental being (ens). In the final analysis, Heideggers
phenomenological ontology is not capable of breaking out of the immanentism of the pervasive
and influential Kantian transcendentalism, wherein one remains within the internal cognitive
conditions of the appearances of being. Though he laudably wished to center his philosophy on
the Being (Sein, esse) of beings (entia) and break out of the long history of formalist
essentialism, nevertheless, the immanentist Heidegger, with his fundamental ontology which is a
phenomenological ontology, had been unable to accomplish an absolute surpassing of the
modern Cogito principle of immanence initiated by the father of modern philosophy Descartes.
Jason Mitchell explains that, in the end, Fabro judges that Heidegger arrests his
discourse on foundation after an ontic and ontological study and apparently goes no further:
Having thus exhausted the ontic and ontological discourse of foundation, the metaphysical
discourse of the act of being should begin: but Heidegger stops here and gives no indication of
wanting to go further. He stops, then, at being in the sense of presence, namely as being-in-act
and does not yet know the being-act which is esse in the sense of St. Thomass actus essendi.4
What is more, Heideggers presence of the present is the being-in-act of consciousness. So
when Heidegger critiques formalism and the principle of consciousness, his own conception of
the reality of presence is nothing more than the actualistic version of the identity of esse
essentiae and esse existentiae affirmed by anti-Thomistic Scholasticism (especially Scotistic).56
3

C. FABRO, op. cit., pp. 409-410.

C. FABRO, La determinazione dellessere tomistico, TPM, p. 259.
5
Ibid.
6
J. MITCHELL, Being and Participation: The Method and Structure of Metaphysical Reflection According to
Cornelio Fabro, Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome, 2012, p. 217.
4

Mitchell also observes, in his summary of Fabros interpretation of Heideggers Sein, that
Fabro also discerns a convergence-divergence between Heideggers Sein and St. Thomass
Esse. Fabro writes that both thinkers see being as act, yet Heideggers being is subject to the flux
of time, while St. Thomass being expresses the fullness of act: Being for Heidegger, as for St.
Thomas, is neither phenomenon nor noumenon, neither substance nor accident, it is simply act:
but while Heideggers being is given in the flux of time by the consciousness of man, Thomistic
being expresses the fullness of the act which possesses itself essentially (God) or which rests at
the heart of every being, as the primordial participated energy which sustains it outside of
nothingness.7
In conclusion, Fabro holds that Heidegger is a prisoner of an unauthentic conception of
being which has its poles in the scholastic plexus of essentia-existentia and in the Einstellung or
phenomenological framework (impostazione) of being as pure appearance, as presence of the
present.8 Secondly, One understands then how for Heidegger Sein (or Anwesen) is radically
finite. For St. Thomas, the existent is radically finite, but esse as emergent act (or esse per
essentiam) is absolutely infinite and only with respect to pure esse does one comprehend the
finiteness of the creature as participant in esse. Thus, Heideggers Sein is only presence and is
not founded on God, Ipsum Esse Subsistens: for Heidegger the foundation is the nothingness
that makes the being of presence as presence of the world emerge.910
James D. Collinss Critique of Heidegger on Metaphysics: As Heidegger now
understands this science, metaphysics is the general theory of that-which-is as such and in its
totality. This gives to metaphysics a valid but limited field of inquiry. It can no longer be
accepted at its face value as the study of being as being; rather, it investigates the nature and field
of that-which-is, die Seienheit des Seienden. In the course of such a study, being itself is
connoted but never formally considered under its own conditionsIn order to complete his
destruction or undermining of the history of ontology, Heidegger is sometimes compelled to
minimize the significance of conflicts among different metaphysical systems. He remarks that it
is futile to attempt to refute any particular system, since the pros and cons belong equally to that
strife of things and thoughts which the early Greek philosophers perceived to be at the heart of
the things that are. Hence Heidegger is unduly indulgent in accepting Hegels synthesis of all
previous doctrines as a successful accomplishment rather than as a one-sided claim. He is
anxious to recapitulate all Western speculation in a culminating philosophy and then to point out
that this philosophy, along with all its subaltern systems, remains within the restricted sphere of
that-which-is. No fair hearing is given to those who interpret the development of metaphysics in
terms of a number of fundamental challenges, shifts of viewpoint, and genuinely total
disagreements about being as well as about the things that are. Particularly unfortunate is
Heideggers failure to consult the effort of St. Thomas to resolve the dualistic Greek view of
metaphysics. In the Thomistic outlook, there is a fruitful and humanly unavoidable tension
between the subject and object of metaphysics. Our mind finds being as exhibited under the
7

C. FABRO, Partecipazione e causalit, SEI, Turin, 1961, p. 43.

C. FABRO, Intorno al fondamento dellessere, p. 234.
9
See C. FABRO, Dellente, dellessere, del nulla, p. 241; C. FABRO, Il posto di Giovanni, p. 57: Heidegger
himself, repeating Leibnizs unsettling question, has opted for nothingness. Nothingness is its founding reference
as the depth or being of the foundation.
10
J. MITCHELL, op. cit., pp. 217-218.
8

categorical modes of finite, sensible being (the subject of metaphysics). The object of the
metaphysical enterprise is to obtain as full an understanding of being as such, the diverse
realizations of the act of being, and the supreme causes of being, as is humanly possible from the
starting point in sense experience. A metaphysics of this sort is not a mere interlude between the
Greeks and Hegel. Hence it is not properly dealt with in Heideggers historical criticism of
metaphysics as a study of that-which-is.11
Cornelio Fabros Critique of Heidegger on the Act of Being (Esse): Heidegger includes
Thomist philosophy in his accusation of the formalization of Being effected from the time of
Plato and Aristotle (down to and including idealism and Sartre). (Cf. Sein und Zeit, 20, p. 93;
English translation, Being and Time, p. 126). Disoriented by Scotus, Heidegger has not managed
to notice the major and salutary upset effected by St. Thomas with his own notion of esse,
understood as an emergent intensive act, diametrically opposed to existentia, understood as
actualization of an essence(Verwiklichung einer Essenz); nor has Heidegger grasped the radical
implications of Aquinas concept of God as ipsum esse subsistens, when that concept is seen in
the light of this Thomist notion of esse. (Cf. M. Heidegger, PLBH, p. 71).12
Fabro on Why Heideggers Immanentism Makes Him Incapable of Answering the
Question Why is There Being and Not Non-being?: Heidegger stands entirely outside the
Christian tradition of a Creator-God and is therefore precluded from any clear assertion
concerning a creation on the part of God or on any question relating to the first origin of Being
and of the spirit. After devoting the whole of his labor and energies to the denunciation of the
forgetfulness of being occasioned by Western philosophys confinement of Being into the
subjectivity of essence, Heidegger has himself found no better solution than to entrust the truth to
a new form of subjectivitythe Hedeggerian Sein selbst (Being itself), as distinct from the
Hegelian Sein selbst presented as the definition of God, is atheistic in content, structure and
position, inasmuch as it is the coming-to-presence of the finite by the instrumentality of a finite
being condemned to a finite destiny like mans. Heideggers Sein (Being)simply affirms the
finite. Heideggers Being still remains finite in its very structure, which is the structure of the
phenomenal, of the coming-to-presence, of the appearing. And so the basic question: Why is
there being and not non-being?, remains unanswered.13
Fabro on the Roots of Heideggers Immanentism of His Fundamental Ontology in the
Immanentist Transcendental Idealism (Transcendentalism) of Kant: The Heideggerian
assertion that Being is not a product of thought but thought rather an event of beings, this is
not yet realism, although it is not idealism any more either, at least in the systematic sense. But it
is still immanentism or loyalty to modern-style transcendentalism, in the sense that it bases truth
on the a priori category of the subject who is man. The Heideggerian question itself already
virtually contains the confirmation of this modern-style transcendentalism, drawn directly from
Kant but identical with that radical doubt which forms the hidden ground of the principle of
immanentism, from which (as we have tried to show throughout the entire course of these, our
investigations) there flows the absence of God in modern philosophy.
11

J. D. COLLINS, The Existentialists: A Critical Study, Henry Regnery, Gateway edition, Chicago, 1952, pp. 182183.
12
C. FABRO, God in Exile: Modern Atheism, Newman Press, Westminster, MD, 1968, p. 927.
13
C. FABRO, op. cit., p. 929.

In classical realism, Being is not the posited but the positing in relation to
consciousness, to mind: consciousness is actualized by being, not just anyhow but in a fashion
clearly indicating that being is the true ground of consciousness: there is consciousness because
there is Being and to the extent that there is being and in accord with the forms of being. Thus
the primordial proposition of classical realism is an affirmation of being as self-sufficient and
radically primal: Being, as such, suffices unto itself and thereby is the act and ground with
respect to consciousness. In this first moment, wherein Being, as ground, actualizes
consciousness, there does not and cannot enter into the equation any shadow of non-being, of
nothingness, for Being is light and actuality of presence and therefore self-witnessing; and it is
the consciousness of being that is posited. A being that would lead the enquirer back to the
positing transcendentality of consciousness as its ground would necessarily be something posited
by consciousness; and if being is posed by consciousness, it is already de-posed or subordinated
to consciousness, to the mind as a function of consciousness, in accord with one or other of the
forms of the principle of immanentism.14

14

C. FABRO, op. cit., pp. 932.