Heidegger posed the question most influentially when he asked, following Schelling: Why is there Being rather than nothing? To him, the most urgent and overlooked question was what does it mean to “be” in the world, what does our existence mean, this recognition of nothingness, of our own impending non-being, our personal sense of uniqueness in the face of a world of mute and unconcerned objects? Heidegger posited that disconnection from this being, from Dasein, was at the core of our angst, of our disconnection from our authenticity in the universe to which we are thrown. This almost mystical conception, which has such a powerful hold on the imagination because it addresses that sense we have that there is something bigger and greater to our existence, became a full blown theological position in Heidegger’s later years, after the “Kehre”, when Being became essentially an independent existing thing that attempts to speak to us and through us (in Eco’s wonderful phrase: “this intensionally slippery being becomes a massive subject, albeit in the form of an obscure borborygmus wandering about in the bowels of the entities. It wants to speak and reveal itself”).

¶ 3:35 PM