Aranguren and Heidegger: Ontological Basis of “Morality as Structure”

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to establish a philosophical dialogue between Aranguren’s ethical proposal and Heidegger’s fundamental-ontological philosophy. The explanatory core of Aranguren’s “morality as structure” lies in the vital possibilities. The main thesis of our interpretation argues that such vital possibilities ultimately presuppose an ontological foundation, which consists in the transcendence of Dasein towards Being in its variety, that is, in its diverse ways of Being. We will show that the Arangurenian vital possibilities must go together with the ontic possibilities (of the entities that are not the person itself) and that both are based on the ontological possibilities (of Being), which Heidegger does not explicitly thematize in his texts, but which lie germinal in his philosophical proposal. Therefore, our investigation unfolds in two main steps. First, we explain the “vital” character of the possibilities correlative to “morality as structure”. Second, in the framework of the uncovering of the entity as entity, we address the ontic possibilities, which go hand in hand with these vital possibilities, and we prove that both are sustained in the tacit pre-understanding of ontological possibilities. In conclusion, we propose the plausibility of Aranguren’s proposal having a complementary impact on the fundamental ontology, to which it could open the ways of a normative ethics or, as Aranguren calls it, of a “morality as content”.