Heidegger's goal in Being and Time is a "destruction of the history of ontology" in order to open a new of thinking about Being. The principle contribution of Scholasticism is their interpretation of essence in relation to existence. For Heidegger, this thinking presents essence as a mode of production in that all existence is actualized from the possibilities inherent in a thing. In other words, since all things are created by God, beings were conceived as modes of production. Heidegger explains that thinking about things as modes of production is what leads to the modern industrial age of science and technology. The seeds of beings as something produced goes back to Plato's ideas where the copy is produced from the ideal model. Heidegger's approach to linking Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the present is through a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Descartes and Kant. With Descartes begins the modern revolution of dualism that completely separates mind, the res cogitans, from body, the res corpora. This becomes the basis for the separation between subject and object which is the epistemological grounding for all later sciences. Descartes' dualism is further advanced with the transcendental philosophy of Kant and his formulation of Subjectivity. Heidegger's project in Being and Time can be read as an attempt to overturn the modern subject/object distinction which began with Descartes' cogito sum, "I think, I am."

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