Abstract

HEIDEGGER tells us "to think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world's sky." This is a theme to which Heidegger keeps returning in his late writings when he searches for various "pathways" that will enable us to elicit and disclose thinking in its purity. It is the mark of genuine thinkers to possess and be possessed by a single thought that shines like a star and radiates throughout their work and the pathways they pursue. Paul Weiss is such a thinker. Or to put the issue slightly differently, from his earliest work until his most recent book, there is a theme and variations that pervades all his speculative thinking. With nuanced subtlety he has persistently pursued the theme of the one and the many. Explicitly or implicitly, it is evident in everything he has written and is manifested in the entire range of his concerns whether they deal with the most speculative metaphysical and ontological issues or the most intimate aspects of human life.