Reconstructing Phenomenal Realism in Heidegger’s Ontology

This paper challenges speculative realism’s attempt to overcome correlationism by returning to Heidegger’s ontology of the phenomenon. While speculative realism rejects representationalism, it nonetheless remains bound to the metaphysical opposition between presence and absence, treating what is real as that which lies beyond all access. Against this view, I argue that Heidegger articulates a form of phenomenal realism in which reality is not opposed to appearance; rather, it is encountered through phenomenality itself. Reality can appear insofar as Being is held open within the finite and historical site of thought—that is, within Dasein’s way of being. Here, Being withdraws from fixation as determinate truth and remains as untruth, or as ceaseless becoming. Within this co-belonging of thought and Being, beings come to presence as beings, and phenomenality takes place as real. By clarifying this structure, the paper develops a nonmetaphysical realism that preserves the reality of beings without abandoning the correlation, thus reopening the question of Being beyond the anti-correlationist horizon

Metaphysics · Ontology · Philosophical realism · Realism · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science