Heidegger & Spinoza: Ontological Anticipation and Interpretation

Juxtapositions between Benedict De Spinoza and Martin Heidegger have been generally sparse in contemporary literature.[1] This is unfortunate because comparing them can help us understand both of them more comprehensively. This paper intends to establish that the ontology Heidegger presents in Being and Time was anticipated by Spinoza in Ethics. In light of this anticipation, we can come to understand Spinoza’s ontology more thoroughly through the concepts that Heidegger presents in Being and Time. The evidence to substantiate these aims is to be found in the generally unnoted ontological similarities between Spinoza and Heidegger. The structure of this analysis is as follows: explanations of Heidegger’s ideas from part I division I of Being and Time and, subsequently, an exegesis of how such ideas correspond to significant concepts in Spinoza’s Ethics. These analyses are labeled from 1–7.

Being-Itself & God:

In Being & Time (§1), Heidegger is attempting to understand the condition for the possibility of anything being intelligible to us. He calls this attempt fundamental ontology. Fundamental ontology is likewise concerned with the condition that makes specific modes of Being possible. “[The ontology] from which alone all other ontologies [inquiries] can take their rise.”[2] “Fundamental ontology…