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On the Notions of Structure and Unity in Xavier Zubiri’s Philosophy of Apprehension

and Heidegger’s Phenomenology

In this piece I investigate the positions and concepts of, and the similarities and

differences between, Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri’s and German philosopher Martin

Heidegger’s notions of structure and unity. I undertake this analysis primarily on the basis of

Zubiri’s texts Sobre la esencia (1962), Inteligencia sentiente (1980) and Estructura dinámica

de la realidad (1989), and Heidegger’s texts Sein und Zeit (1927), Was ist Metaphysik

(1929), and a collection of his lectures on phenomenology and religion entitled

Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens (1918-1921). I do so for two reasons, both of which

frame my thesis.

The first reason is to stage a comparison between one of the most well-known and

controversial – that is, due to his having been a Nazi – philosophers of the 20th century and a

philosopher who, at least within the Anglo-American and perhaps also within the French and

German language contexts, is too little known – namely, Zubiri. I do so as to introduce

Zubiri’s thought to those familiar with continental philosophy broadly speaking in an

intelligible way, and the selection of these important texts, while admitting that I cannot

exhaustively treat them here, serves to further this goal of introducing Zubiri to a wider

audience. The second reason is constructive in that my comparative explication of the thought

of both philosophers is meant to illustrate a point regarding the language of structure and

unity more generally within philosophical treatments of mind and phenomenology.

My thesis is that Zubiri’s and Heidegger’s respective use of the concepts of structure

and unity cut to the heart of a core concern to which philosopher who desire to speak of

human being or the mind must pay attention – namely, that the form of what I will call

derivative referentiality constitutes the medium through which are inherently paradoxical

within the realm of what Zubiri intends when speaking, for example, of the unitary structure
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of apprehension, or when Heidegger speaks of the unitary phenomenon of being-in-the-world

as a structure of the being of Dasein. This is to say, these concepts are paradoxical if

understood from the point of view of one already caught up within said unitary structuration.

What is at stake is whether one can achieve a perspective that