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Śaṅkara, Ibn ʿArabī and Heidegger on Being

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07.11.2026

With Martin Heidegger, we enter the philosophical landscape of the twentieth century and encounter a different kind of return to first principles. In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger argued that Western philosophy had neglected the fundamental question of the meaning of Being, becoming preoccupied with particular beings while leaving insufficiently examined what it means for anything to be at all. This forgetfulness of Being, as he understood it, could not be overcome merely by identifying a supreme entity or proposing another theory of ultimate substance. Heidegger therefore began his investigation with Dasein, his term for the distinctive being that we ourselves are, whose existence is characterised by an understanding of Being and by the fact that its own Being matters to it. Dasein is not simply the human organism considered as an object; it is human existence as Being-in-the-world, already involved in relationships, practical concerns, possibilities, and the understanding of itself. Central to this inquiry is temporality. Human existence is shaped by the possibilities towards which it projects itself, the past and inherited circumstances into which it has been thrown, and the present world in which it acts and encounters others. Temporality, for Heidegger, is not merely the succession of clock-measured moments but a fundamental structure through which the meaning of Being becomes accessible to philosophical inquiry. His project thus differs significantly from a search for an eternal substance behind changing appearances. Before deciding whether the ultimate ground of existence is Brahman, the Real, or some other absolute principle, Heidegger asks us to reconsider the very meaning of Being itself. This question will prove indispensable to our trialogue: while Śaṅkara investigates non-duality and Ibn ʿArabī explores divine self-disclosure,........

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