If, as Elkholy argues, authenticity is the prerogative of Da-sein's attunement to "the ground of its possibilities" and if this ground turns out to be discrete heritages, histories and traditions, then Da-sein, whether individuated or not (she never retrieves an individuated Da-sein), can hear only the call of its own kind, unable to bridge deep cultural differences. Moreover, the political and ethical vector that concludes Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling raises the provocative question of how collective responsibility toward an inherited past can be ethically and politically justified. Since the book does not set out to answer this question it is certainly not the book's fault for not addressing this problem. In fact, the book succeeds in accomplishing the difficult feat of tracing this problem back to its ontological roots.

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