The project explores the concept of possibility in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. The concept in question is one of the central concepts in Heidegger’s thought. It lies at the foundation of the central concept of his main work Being and Time, the concept of „Dasein“, which is here relevantly understood as „being-able-to-be“ (Seinkönnen) while it forms the thinking background of Heidegger’s efforts regarding the „groundless“ (Ab-Grund) based grounding of being in free and allowing „ground“ (Grund) as a „non-ground“ (Un-Grund) after a so-called „turn“ (Kehre). All these efforts have in common that they don’t take possibility as a contradictory modal category, but as a kind of a „real possibility“, which, as freedom in Being and Time, is thought of as a rational essence of existence. In late Heidegger’s thought possibility is thought of as independent from existence.
Together with the role that possibility has within Heidegger’s work, the project will explore the broader historical and philosophical context of the concept of possibility. That part of the research is justified by the character of Heidegger’s philosophizing, which is, especially in establishing its foundational concepts, defined by continuous confrontation with the carrying moments of the history of philosophy. In that sense, the character, and the role of the concept of possibility, which it has in Heidegger’s thought, will be researched regarding the way it is, sometimes under different name, present in Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Kant’s, Schelling’s, Nietzsche’s and Scheler’s philosophizing.
Research project The Concept of Possibility in Martin Heidegger and in the wider Context of European Philosophy (acronym: MogMarH) is conducted at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb in the period 2024–2027, reviewed by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia and financed through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.