ABSTRACT
As we have seen with Cooper’s philosophical defence of the idea, the concept of ine ability provides the measure for human concepts precisely by evoking that which is not invested with those concepts, including that of existence and cannot therefore be construed as an entity or object, bound by the nite conditions of time and space. When we consider the concept of ine ability, we must, in Heidegger’s language, be mindful of the ontological di erence. e philosophical analysis considered in Chapter 1 revealed the need for this in the form of the objection that claims of ine ability are self-stultifying. e way round this was to deny that the idea of ‘ine able objects’ makes sense and to claim, instead, that the meaning of the claim ‘x is ine able’ should be interpreted as ‘the word “x” refers to the concept of ine ability’. Concomitantly, when it comes to the experience of the ine able, it was suggested with the help of Cooper and Heidegger that we should think not so much of the experience of some object by a subject but rather of a situation in which subjective and objective dimensions to experience are undi erentiated.
