Philipp W. Rosemann

This article offers a reading of Eriugena’s thought that is inspired by Heidegger’s claim according to which being is constituted in a dialectical interplay of revelation and concealment (ά-λήθεια). Beginning with an analysis of how “causality as concealing revelation” works on the level of God’s inner-Trinitarian life, the piece moves on to a consideration of the way in which the human soul reveals itself in successive stages of exteriorization that culminate in the creation of the body, its “image.” The body, however, conceals as much as it reveals true human nature. Moreover, it is shown that for Eriugena all of reality, as theophany, possesses this character of (un)concealing its fundamental truth. These insights lead Eriugena to a recognition of radical human finitude, as genuine wisdom requires an acknowledgement of our fundamental ignorance.

Philipp Rosemann - Heidegger's Transcendental History - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 501-523 Heidegger's Transcendental History Philipp W. Rosemann 1. Introduction: "Aletheia Is Not A Greek Word" John D. Caputo has argued that Heidegger's account of the development of Western metaphysics—a story of continuous decline from heroic Greek times to the total oblivion of Being in the technological age—needs to be "demythologized." This does not mean to discard altogether Heidegger's often insightful historical analyses; yet it is necessary to recognize that his conception of history can be read at another level than that of the narrative of the ever-increasing logocentrism of Western thought. Read "critically," Caputo suggests, Heidegger makes claims about transcendental history; not about certain facts in the history of Being, but about the a priori structure rendering these facts possible. Aletheia, then, "is no longer a Greek word." Un-concealment is the "Wesen of history, the process of letting history be, which can never be itself something historical." Caputo's interpretation makes sense. The later Heidegger famously acknowledged that his etymological understanding of aletheia as un-concealment is not historically verifiable in even the earliest Greek texts: "[w]e must acknowledge the fact," he writes in 1964, "that aletheia, unconcealment in the sense of the clearing of presence, was..