Ontological Pluralism and the Being and Time Project

This paper identifies a problem which the project that Heidegger set himself in Being and Time aimed to solve. The problem concerns the unity of the concept of “Being in general,” the integrity of the very notion of “Dasein,” and the possibility of a perspective from which the philosopher can do her work. Heidegger’s own attempt to solve this problem turns on the claim that time is “the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being” (Sein und Zeit 1), time supposedly thereby ‘mak[ing] ontology possible” (Basic Problems of Phenomenology 228). I elucidate the problem by discussing how it emerges also in Russell (in reflecting on types) and Aristotle (in discussing whether Being is ‘said in many ways’), by identifying challenges that attempted solutions to it face, and by juxtaposing the issues it raises with ones faced by McDaniel’s and Turner’s recent attempts to defend what they call “ontological pluralism.”