In the last week I’ve heard two accounts of Heidegger’s ontology that are wrong in opposite ways. 1) the psychologized pop-Heideggerianism of Est/Landmark (at least as represented by its students) that understands ontology to refer to the state of one’s own being. And now there’s 2) Graham Harman’s attempt at a human-independent ontology, which so far (page 23 of Tool-Being) appears to be a brilliantly systematic mismapping of Heidegger’s methodological idealism to a metaphysical materialism that has very little to do with Heidegger at all except for providing inspiration and a handy vocabulary to appropriate. Harman is working on something important, but it has little to do with Heidegger, and much more to do with Latour.

What I am getting from this error flanking is a renewed sense of indebtedness to Heidegger. I best feel how he thought from my indignation at hearing him misused. These visions of ontology are not the ones I want to challenge.