ABSTRACT
A persistent difficulty in interpreting Heidegger’s Being and Time has been the question of whether, and to what extent, his position is amenable either to realism or idealism. Two passages, which I will hereafter refer to as the ‘puzzle passages’, exemplify most pointedly the difficulty. The first of these passages is the following:
The first sentence of this passage suggests a realistic understanding of entities, since Heidegger declares their independence from human experience, from any of the ways in which we discover them, understand them, or determine them. If this were all Heidegger says regarding the status of entities, i.e. that they exist independently of human experience, then the question of whether he is a realist or idealist would be easily settled in favor of realism. The second sentence, however, gives one pause: although
402 David R. Cerbone
not the opposite of the first sentence, that the being of entities depends upon the being who has an understanding of being (Dasein or human beings)2 seems to qualify considerably any ascription of realism. This is so especially if we take seriously Heidegger’s explication of being as ‘that which determines entities as entities’ (BT 25) - if what determines entities as entities depends upon Dasein (i.e. on our way of being), then Heidegger (the first sentence of our first passage notwithstanding) seems to be offering a view more along the lines of idealism.
