This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic temporality and freedom. It shows how a chronic illness can, in lived experience, manifest itself as a disturbance of our usual relation to ecstatic temporality and thence as a disturbance of freedom. This suggests that ecstatic temporality is related to another sort of time—“provisional time”—that is in turn rooted in the body. The article draws on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Heidegger’s Being and Time , (...) shedding light on the latter’s concept of ecstatic temporality. It also discusses implications for self-management of chronic illness, especially in children. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to the view that Heidegger is unable to account for the possibility of immediately experiencing others in their concrete particularity. Critics have argued that since Mitsein characterizes Dasein’s mode of being regardless of the presence or absence of others, Heidegger has essentially granted it the status of an a priori category. In doing so, they argue, Heidegger reduces the other to a mere interchangeable token whose uniqueness is subsumed under the generality of the established category. (...) In contrast, I argue that the Heideggerian ‘a priori’ must be understood as a living responsiveness to particularity, not a top-down imposition of abstract categoriality. The argument further shows that this responsiveness must be understood in terms of temporal particularity. The bulk of the paper then demonstrates the nature of such responsiveness when it is the temporal particularity of the other Dasein that is being encountered. I show that such encounters are a necessary condition for the possibility of world time and the worldly space of shared significance. Because my encounter with the other Dasein is a direct experience of her originary temporality—the fundamental expression of her concrete care-defined way of being—such encounters are not simple subsumptions of the other to an a priori category. They are, rather, a temporal responsiveness to the unique mode of intuitive givenness characterizing other Dasein. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss, in a Heideggerian context, the possibility of de-subjectivizing the notion of the transcendental time-horizon and reinterpreting it as a formally indicated ‘whereto’ of releasement. The structures of the time-horizon depict the way beings unfold in the fullness of time in their alterity, and they orient the subject’s activity of ‘projection.’ What results is a field-oriented (as opposed to self-oriented) transcendental philosophy which would survive Heidegger’s critique of his own transcendental project, and which would avoid mystification. (...) I take three steps. First, I point out that the problematization of ‘transcendental Heidegger’ is based on the subjectivist interpretation of the time-horizon. I problematize a recent account in the subjectivist vein, arguing that it is neither indispensable, nor very plausible, nor the most illuminative of Heidegger’s work. Second, with the help of Dahlstrom, Golob, Engelland, Sheehan, and Vasterling, I gradually dissociate the notion of the horizon from subjectivism, the visual metaphor, and the assumption of an absolute ground. I suggest instead that the horizonality of the horizon be understood temporally, i.e., as an interplay of presencing and absencing where what matter most are the structures, themselves affected by time, which the transcendental field displays when beings unfold themselves within it. Third, I identify three of those structures when performing a de-subjectivizing reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the threefold synthesis in Kant’s A-Deduction. These structures capture the way every being manifests itself, without themselves being necessarily grounded in the subject’s activity. This gives an example of how transcendental philosophy can clarify what the time-horizon is like while bracketing the question of its provenance. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este trabajo analizaremos las consideraciones sobre la neutralidad y la sexualidad del Dasein en sus articulaciones con la dispersión fáctica y la libertad en las elaboraciones de Heidegger entre 1927 y 1929.En este marco nos proponemos argumentar que tales consideraciones tienen como función poner de manifiesto el carácter primario de la estructura ontológica del Ser-con y el horizonte originario de la temporeidad, desde la cual circunscribe el empuje de las dinámicas respectivas. Para ello, en primer lugar analizaremos la (...) consideración de la neutralidad y la dispersión en Sein und Zeit en el marco de sus especificaciones respecto del Dasein cotidiano. Luego, distinguiremos las especificaciones y reelaboraciones en su curso de Marburg, respecto del estatuto ontológico que le confiere a la neutralidad en sus relaciones con la concreción fáctica y la libertad. Finalmente dedicaremos el último apartado al análisis e interpretación del sentido de la neutralidad y la dispersión que articula de modo diferencial en su curso de Freiburg. Junto a ello, buscamos aportar con la clarificación del lugar que ocupa las consideraciones de la corporalidad física en este período, en diálogo con interpretaciones relevantes de su obra. ABSTRACT In this work we will analyze the considerations about Dasein´s neutrality and sexuality in their articulations with the factual dispersion and freedom in Heidegger’s elaborations between 1927 and 1929. In this framework we propose to argue that such considerations have the function of highlighting the primary character of the ontological structure of Being-with and the original horizon of temporality, from which it circumscribes the thrust of the respective dynamics. To do this, we will first analyze the consideration of neutrality and dispersion in Sein und Zeit within the framework of its specifications regarding everyday Dasein. Then, we will distinguish the specifications and reworkings in his course from Marburg, regarding the ontological status that he confers on neutrality in its relations with factual concretion and freedom. Finally, we will dedicate the last section to the analysis and interpretation of the meaning of neutrality and dispersion that he articulates in a differential way in his Freiburg course. Next to it, we seek to contribute with the clarification of the place occupied by the considerations of physical corporeality in this period, in dialogue with relevant interpretations of his work. (shrink)