On being as a whole and being-a-whole

This paper identifies a problem that Aristotle revealed and that Heidegger’s own insights, into the diverse forms that the Being of entities takes, exacerbated: the problem is whether there is sense to the idea of ‘Being in general’—‘Being as a whole’—and this is a problem because there not being such sense threatens the very possibility of the discipline of ontology. The paper proposes that Heidegger envisaged the project which a completed Being and Time would have carried out as an attempt to solve this problem. The project considers what the subject who intends ‘Being as a whole’ would have to be like; crucially this requires reflection on what it would be for that subject itself to be a whole; and we find such reflection in Heidegger’s discussion of authenticity. By looking in particular at his notions of ‘guilt’ and ‘Being-towards-death’, and the role that they play in identifying an ‘ecstatic’ form of temporality, we can identify a ‘horizon’ against which the authentic can be seen as ‘being-a-whole’ and as living in the light of an understanding of what might indeed be called ‘Being as a whole’.