[Nile577]

3 - The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being

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We have gained some insight into the unique character of the question of being. However, the true nature of this uniqueness will only become evident when we understand the function, intention and motives of the question.

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As yet the question of being (what is the meaning of being?) lacks an answer. What purpose, though, does our enquiry serve? Is the question mere "free-floating speculation about the most general generalities" or is it "the most basic and at the same time most concrete question?"

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Heidegger begins this paragraph by declaring, "being is always the being of a being." As this being of a being, being determines the being as the being it is. Put differently: being, as the being of a thing, determines that thing as the thing it is.

All beings taken together demarcate the realm of certain kinds of knowledge. The concepts of life, space, history and nature, for example, demarcate realms of knowledge about beings in total. “Space” is the positional relationship between beings, “history” purports to be the record of beings in time, “nature” is the natural order and law of beings.

Now, science can investigate these areas and try to establish theories about them but, to a certain extent, they are already understood beforehand. That is, we must already have some understanding of the being of “life” before we can devise a theoretical/scientific investigation into what it is to be a “living thing” as opposed to an “inorganic thing.” "Life" is a category, or type, of being. Categories of being are called ontologies. The specific results of scientific investigations are not particularly important; what is important is any subsequent ontological modification of its founding concept (in the instance under discussion: what it means to be “alive.”)

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The most developed sciences are capable of sustaining radical alteration of their foundational concepts. Quantum physics, for example, alters the concept of what it is for a being to be present in “space,” postulating that a subatomic particle can occupy numerous areas of “space” at once.

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Ontological concepts leap ahead and disclose a type of being (i.e. “life) that can then be thematised into a scientific enquiry. The area called “life” is disclosed by an ontological understanding of being that comes before scientific investigation. “Since each of these areas arises from the domain of beings themselves, [they are revealed by] nothing else than interpreting these beings in terms of the basic constitution of their being.” Interpreting beings in terms of their being, argues Heidegger, is something that human beings can do from pre-scientifically. It is this that gives rise to ontologies.

Science and scientific concepts, then, are not primary. The foundational areas of knowledge pertaining to the totality of beings are first disclosed as ontological regions of being. This understanding leaps ahead of scientific investigation and should not be confused with logic. Ontology founds and demarcates a region for scientific enquiry; logic comes later, investigating the methodology of the scientific enquiry.

“Thus, for example, what is philosophically primary is not a theory of concept-formation in historiology (the study of history, “History”), not the theory of historical knowledge, not even the theory of history as the object of historiology; what is primary is rather the (ontological) interpretation of genuinely historical beings with regard to their historicality."
That is, what is primary is the ontological demarcation of "historical beings" (as a type of being) to be interpreted in their historicality.

Ontology precedes scientific theory. Heidegger has demonstrated the ontological priority of the question of being. BUT:

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The question of being is not a traditional question.

Even if we established an ontological genealogy of every category of being possible and every way of being whatsoever, we would not have enquired as to the meaning of being in general. It is Da-sein’s understanding of being that allows us to understand beings as the beings they are. We understand the fundamental areas of knowledge (ontological regions) in the field of beings in their totality only in light of our understanding of being in general. Pre-scientific ontology, that is, is itself grounded in our preontological understanding of being. The ontological category "quantity," for example, can only arise as a region of knowledge if we first of all understand being in general.

As this preontological understanding of being is not something given in lived experience (as ontological understanding is), but is the grounding possibility of all experience whatsoever, it is prior not only to scientific theory but all formal ontology. Formal ontology interprets beings in regard to their kind of being; our preontological understanding of being allows beings to show up for that interpretation as the beings they are.

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“The question of being thus aims at an a priori condition of the possibility not only of the sciences which investigate beings of such and such a type – and are thereby already involved in an understanding of being; but it aims also at the condition of the possibility of the ontologies which precede the ontic sciences and found them.”

To elaborate: the ontic (concerned with the factual propertes of beings) sciences are founded by ontologies (disclosures of types of being). Biology is possible only once the ontological concept of life (the kind of being that living beings are) has been disclosed. Once the ontological region of “life” has been demarcated we can investigate living beings with regard to their specific attributes (and then possibly modify our initial demarcation). The initial demarcation arises from pre-scientific experience. [Note: the ontic sciences are not just the “hard” sciences. They are any theoretical mode of study.] Ontological regions of beings can only show up, however, only if we already understand being in general. To understand “living beings” we must first understand being.

Being and Time seeks to investigate the question of the meaning of being. Understanding the meaning of being is the a priori condition not just for science but for all ontologies whatsoever.

“All ontology, no matter how rich and tightly knit a system of categories it has as its disposal, remains fundamentally blind… if it has not previously clarified the meaning of being.”

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As an investigation into the ground of ontologies (which themselves ground scientific enquiry), the question of being achieves its ontological priority. This is the priority of fundamental ontology.