ultimately I am indifferent whether“part”is polysemous. What matters is that there
is a generic sense of“part”which is in play (or can be in play) in both of these kinds of
ascriptions. This generic sense corresponds to a non-fundamental parthood relation
exemplified by objects of both sorts. (I’ll have more to say about the analogy between
compositional pluralism and ontological pluralism in section 2.3, where the varieties
of analogy will also be revisited.)
According to Heidegger, expressions like“being,”“existence,”“exists,”“is an
entity,”“some,”and“there are”are analogical. There is a multiplicity of modes of
being.^13 Heidegger (1962: 67) reserves the term“Existenz”for the kind of being had
by entities like you and me, whom Heidegger calls“Dasein.”Other ways of existing
includereadiness-to-hand, the kind of existence had by (roughly) tools (Heidegger
1962: 97–8; 1988: 304);presence-at-handorextantness, the kind of existence had by
objects primarily characterized by spatiotemporal features (Heidegger 1962: 121;
1988: 28);life, the kind of existence had by living things (Heidegger 1962: 285);
andsubsistence, the kind of existence enjoyed by abstract objects such as numbers
and propositions (Heidegger 1962: 258–9).
However, there is also a concept of being that covers every entity that there is. Let
us call this concept thegeneral concept of being. Heidegger (1988: 28) employs this
concept in many places, such as theBasic Problems of Phenomenology:
For us... the word“Dasein”... does not designate a way of being at all, but rather a specific
being which we ourselves are, thehuman Dasein. We are at every moment a Dasein. This
being, this Dasein, like every other being, has a specific way of being. To this way of being we
assign the term“Existenz.”.... Therefore, we might, for example, say“A body does not exist; it
is, rather, extant.”In contrast, Daseins, we ourselves, are not extant; Dasein exists. But the
Dasein and bodies as respectively existent or extant at each timeare.
The general concept of being appears early inBeing and Time:
But there are many things which we designate as“being,”and we do so in various senses.
Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport
ourselves in any way, is [a] being. [Heidegger 1962: 26]^14
If we have a Dasein and a table before us, we have two beings before us. Both Daseins
and bodies are, although each of themisin a different way from the other.The
Metaphysical Foundations of Logiccontains an explicit discussion of the function of
the general concept of being:
(^13) See Caputo (1982: 41, 80) and Inwood (1999: 26–8, 128–30) for discussion. Gibson (1998: 12–13)
notes that Heidegger both accepts that there are ways of existence and that the concept of existence is not
elementary. 14
An anonymous referee has called to my attention an interesting parallel between this passage in
Heidegger and a passage in Russell’s (1964: 43–4)Philosophy of Mathematicsin which Russell claims that
anything that can be mentioned or thought is aterm.