It All Makes Sense Now....

"it" being why Heidegger sounds like that. His dissertation was on Scotus.

Duns Scotus:

"Furthermore, what is a necessary condition for a cause's causing cannot be had from the caused. For in that case the cause, insofar as it is sufficient for the causing, would be caused by the caused. And so the cause would be the cause of itself and to that extent could give to its cause the causing of the caused itself" (par. 96. Ordinatio, II, d3, part 1, q4).

Heidegger:

"The human being is rather 'thrown' by Being itself into the truth of Being, so that ek-sisting in this fashion he might guard the truth of Being, in order that beings might appear in the light of Being as the beings they are" ("Letter on Humanism").

I don't actually think either of these is incomprehensible; only regrettable. I'm not sure how much of my disdain for this writing style has to do with substance. It's possible to force passages like this to make sense, but they always remind me of my teenage writing about "unities" and "transcendences" and other entities that bear no resemblance to anything in the world. Perhaps my very nominalism lies behind my disdain. (But to be a proper nominalist, I'd have to read a lot of people who write like this, and argue against them as if they're actually making claims.)