Heidegger's fundamental ontology and the human good in Aristotelian ethics

Abstract

AbstractNeo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalists take the concept “human” to be central to practical philosophy. According to this view, practical philosophy aims at a distinctive human good that defines its subject matter. Hence, practical philosophy can survive neither the elimination of the concept nor its subsumption under a more general concept, such as that of the rational agent. The challenge central to properly formulating Aristotelian naturalism is: How can the concept of the human be specified in a way that captures the distinctive role that it is supposed to play in practical philosophy? For the view to be sustained, the concept “human” as it figures in practical philosophy must not designate rationality plus a set of facts that we learn empirically about ourselves and then consider from a detached standpoint of reason. Heidegger's existential analytic offers an approach to addressing the challenge to neo‐Aristotelian naturalism and, therefore, a way of capturing the sui generis human good. I aim to show that concepts of the existential analytic in Being and Time have their origin or parallels in readings of Aristotle and that they capture the distinctive character of the being that we are, exclusively, completely, and as a unity. I argue that fundamental ontology offers a way to grasp the integral unity and irreplaceability of the human that lies at the heart of the neo‐Aristotelian project.