Spinoza, Heidegger, and the Ontological Argument

Abstract

In spite of the prima facie differences between Spinoza and Heidegger, I argue that Heidegger's views in his 1929 lecture. Was ist Metaphysik?, are both consistent with, and supplemental to, the basic premise of Spinoza's ontological argument in Part One of his Ethics. According to this view, being held out into the nothing, in Heidegger's sense, is a condition without which substance can not be adequately conceived, while at the same time, being held out into the nothing does not preclude the possibility that substance, defined as an infinite being without negation, does exist.