Abstract

Like "being" according to Aristotle, Martin Heidegger can be spoken about in many ways. Caputo has chosen one of those ways, the fruitful path of a concrete elaboration of the analogies between Eckhart’s mystical breakthrough to a trans-metaphysical understanding of God, man, thought, and will and Heidegger’s overcoming of metaphysics. Precisely this analogical kinship of structure, but not content, between the overcoming of metaphysics and the mystical leap is what Caputo means by the "mystical element" in Heidegger, viz., his appropriation of Eckhart’s structural relationship between the soul and God to help in articulating the relation between Dasein and Being. The book does not try to reduce Heidegger’s thought to Eckhart’s mysticism, but rather uses the analogies and differences to highlight and criticize Heidegger’s uniqueness. Although the thinker found in Eckhart an ally whose language and structure he adapted to his own ends, the differences between them are "decisive", and "Heidegger remains his own man". In fact, speaking in criticism Caputo says: "The difficulty with Heidegger is not that he is a mystic but that he is not".