Discute-se o diagnóstico crítico da Modernidade proposto por Heidegger e Foucault enfatizando as suas continuidades. Em linhas gerais, pode-se afirmar que, em Heidegger, é a reflexão filosófica que se assume enquanto essencialmente histórica, ao passo que, para Foucault, é a investigação essencialmente histórica que assume o caráter de reflexão filosófica. No entanto, ainda que a partir de démarches teóricas distintas, ambos consideram que a compreensão a respeito de quem somos, hoje, depende de uma análise da constituição da modernidade como época (...) histórica determinada pelo humanismo, isto é, pela concepção do homem como senhor da totalidade do ente (Heidegger) e pela concepção do homem como sujeito e objeto de relações de poder-saber (Foucault). Tal mutação epocal na concepção do humano foi decisiva para a liberação da revolução científica que culminou na técnica moderna e na biopolítica. Se, como afirma Foucault, a biopolítica é a política de nosso tempo, ou seja, de uma época que politizou o fenômeno da vida por meio de sua gestão técnico-administrativa, então a técnica moderna, que implica a concepção do homem como sujeito assujeitado pela tecnologia, constitui a instância por meio da qual a vida humana pode ser simultaneamente produzida e aniquilada por meios científicos. (shrink)

Current interpretations of Heidegger's notion of das Man are caught in a dilemma: either they cannot accommodate the ontological status Heidegger accords it or they cannot explain his negative evaluation of it, in which it is treated as ontic. This paper uses Simmel's agonistic account of human sociality to integrate the ontological and the ontic, indeed perjorative aspects of Heidegger's account. Section I introduces the general problem, breaks the exclusive link of Heidegger's account to Kierkegaard and delineates the general form (...) of a solution. Section II then sketches Simmel's conception of sociology and sociality. Section III determines what Heidegger is trying to do in Chapter Four of Division I in Being and Time in order to formulate a strictly ontological account of das Man. Section IV uses Simmel's account of sociality to build into this ontological account an inherent tendency to display the negative features Heidegger ascribes to das Man. In conclusion, section V points to how the proposed account of das Man intimates the character of fundamental ontology as nascently a form of critical theory. It also explains the extent to which Heidegger's perjorative characterisations of das Man and the Man-selbst are legitimate. (shrink)

This article surveys the state of the literature in English‐language scholarship on Heidegger's early work (1919–29). The survey falls into roughly two halves. The first is devoted to scholarship on Heidegger's intellectual development during the 1920s, focusing on four themes: Heidegger's relationship to Husserl; Heidegger's early phenomenology of religious life; Heidegger's appropriation of Aristotle; and Heidegger's retrieval of Kant's First Critique. The second half focuses on work on the early Heidegger that has arisen out of the reception of his early (...) thought into mainstream Anglophone philosophy. It examines Hubert Dreyfus's interpretation of Heidegger, the status of “das Man” and social normativity, Heidegger's concept of death, Heidegger's conception of authenticity, and truth (with a very brief overview of further topics). (shrink)

This paper examines the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern deconstruction and ethics by elaborating upon the ethico-political dimensions of deconstructionism. It embarks on a critical assessment of postmodern discourse on ethics in view of its political implications by analyzing Jacques Derrida''s and Richard Rorty''s arguments with an assumption that their positions represent a certain logic in the postmodern discourse on ethics. Postmodern ethics is based on incredulity with regard to traditional metanarratives, and it defines ethics in terms of (...) sensitivity or responsibility to otherness and difference. Its proponents believe that the negation of modern metanarratives opens a way to the Other which has been marginalized and suppressed both in thought and in social practice. Derrida and Rorty represent this position with their emphasis on the ethical nature of deconstruction and the need to elaborate new languages for ethics. Despite postmodern appeal to ethics of this sort, however, postmodern thinking shows its limits in dealing with most ethical-political matters in the contemporary world. The postmodern approach to ethics, being restricted within the perspective of the individual, does not provide any determinate framework for deciding how to adjudicate conflicting ethical claims or how to link the unconditional affirmation of emancipatory ideals, enlightened social criticism, and democratic accountability in determinate political terms. In the main, this paper contends that philosophical deconstruction and responsibility to otherness undermine each other in the public sphere. (shrink)

Could there be a better instance of ethical conflict at the scene of the modern Western university than the case of Martin Heidegger, who in 1933 became a Nazi, arguably to elevate his own standing and career? In this article I examine the opposing ethical forces that animated Heidegger’s brief foray into Nazism, to ask whether the same forces continue to be found in the technocratized university described by Bill Readings. I address Heidegger’s own philosophy as a context in which (...) these conflicting ethical forces are confronted, using metaphorical references to Pollyanna and Cujo. This absorption of literary allusions within a contribution to educational philosophy seeks deliberately to break the stranglehold that empiricism has on the discipline of education. It regards the hegemony of empiricism as an ideological fetishism. I am using the work of Jacques Derrida to deconstruct the idea of the university, with Heidegger’s political opportunism as symptomatic of current patterns of self-marketing, self-promotion, and entrepreneurialism amongst academics. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Ernst Jünger rightly count among the signal examples of intellectual complicity with National Socialism. But after supporting the National Socialist movement in its early years, they both withdrew from political activism during the 1930s and considered themselves to be in “inner emigration” thereafter. How did they react to the end of National Socialism, to the Allied occupation and finally to the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949? Did they abandon their stance of seclusion and (...) engage once more with political issues? Or did they persist in their withdrawal from the political sphere? In analyzing the intellectual relationship of Heidegger and Jünger after 1945, the article reevaluates the assumption of a “deradicalization” of German conservatism after the Second World War by showing that Heidegger's and Jünger's postwar positions were no less radical than their earlier thought, although their attitude towards the political sphere changed fundamentally. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Richard Rorty’s views on intercultural hermeneutics as presented in his essay “Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens” and in his correspondence with the Indian philosopher Anindita Niyogi Balslev. In doing so, I focus primarily on Rorty’s presumption that instead of providing an “authentic” picture of another culture, the goal of intercultural studies or hermeneutics should be to look if there is anything “of use” that a given culture offers and that is not offered by ours.

This chapter provides an interpretation of the early Heidegger’s underdeveloped conception of the undistinguishedness of everyday human existence in Being and Time. After explaining why certain translation choices of some key terms in this text are interpretively and philosophically important, I first provide a concise argument for why the social constitution interpretation of the relation between ownedness and unownedness makes better overall sense of Heidegger’s ambivalent attitude toward the social constitution of the human being than the standard existentialist interpretation of (...) this relation. I then proceed to the heart of this chapter, which develops his inchoate conception of the undistinguishedness of everydayness by arguing that it specifies the third distinctive mode of concrete human existence in addition to ownedness and unownedness. Accordingly, I show how unownedness is actually a generic phenomenon with two distinct species, namely, undistinguishedness and disownedness, which are at once closely related to, but also differ in significant respects from, each other. Consequently, instead of taking for granted a one-dimensional and mutually exclusive opposition between ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’, I argue that we should adopt a two-dimensional and more nuanced understanding of the relations among undistinguishedness, disownedness, and ownedness that intersects with Heidegger’s underappreciated distinction between genuineness and ungenuineness. After raising and replying to some objections to this interpretation of undistinguishedness, I conclude this chapter by briefly sketching three of its philosophical consequences and pointing out its potential as an important resource for contemporary social theories. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of creative practices in organisation from a phenomenological point of view. To develop such an understanding of practice, this paper will first outline a phenomenological understanding of creative practice, understood particularly with Merleau-Ponty as an embodied and situated nexus of action. Subsequently, the paper will show the contribution of pragmatism to an interpretation of practice as an experience-based reality and will describe the significance of habits. After briefly (...) comparing common characteristics of both pro-experiential philosophies, some perspectives on a creative "inter-practice" and an inclusive "pheno-pragma-practice" will be explored. Furthermore, improvisation is discussed as a form and medium for the actual realisation of an embodied, situational inter-practice. Finally, some practical, political, theoretical and methodological implications and perspectives on creative pheno-pragmatic practices in organisation will be outlined. (shrink)

Through the critical examination of Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, this article seeks to make a wider contribution to contempor ary debates about postmodernism. It draws on a post-Cartesian, Heideg gerian philosophy to demonstrate the weakness of the concept of hyperreality and reveal its foundation in a Cartesian epistemology. The article goes on to claim that this same Heideggerian tradition suggests a way in which the concept of hyperreality and nihilistic postmodern sociologies more generally might be dialectically superseded. Instead of these (...) theories being seen as saying anything insightful about recent social transformations, the epistemological void in which they position themselves should be inter preted as the intellectual expression of the wider cultural and postmodern trend of transgression. Key Words: Baudrillard • Cartesianism • Heidegger • hyperreality • postmodernism. (shrink)

Persian translation by Seyyed Mostafa Mousavi A’zam of 'The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning' (Ratio 2003).

This book chapter shows how the early Heidegger’s philosophy around the period of Being and Time can address some central questions of contemporary social ontology. After sketching “non-summative constructionism”, which is arguably the generic framework that underlies all forms of contemporary analytic social ontology, I lay out early Heidegger’s conception of human social reality in terms of an extended argument. The Heidegger that shows up in light of this treatment is an acute phenomenologist of human social existence who emphasizes our (...) engagement in norm-governed practices as the basis of social reality. I then defuse a common and understandable set of objections against invoking the early Heidegger as someone who can make any positive contribution to our understanding of social reality. Lastly, I explore the extent to which the early Heidegger’s philosophy provides insights regarding phenomena of collective intentionality by showing how the intelligibility of such phenomena traces back to individual agents’ common understanding of possible ways of understanding things and acting with one another. With the early Heidegger, I argue that this common understanding is the fundamental source and basis of collective intentionality, not the non-summativist constructionism on which contemporary analytic social ontology has sought to focus with much effort. The lesson about social ontology that we should learn from the early Heidegger is that there is a tight connection between the social constitution of the human individual and his or her capacity to perform actions or activities that instantiate collective intentionality. (shrink)

The thesis of this dissertation is that the political dimension of Martin Heidegger's philosophical work has been widely misinterpreted in the United States, and that this misinterpretation has been caused by censorship, historical and political ignorance, and poor scholarship. ;This study reveals the extent to which Heidegger engaged in politically motivated editing of his work after the war, and shows how such edited German editions were used as a basis for many English translations of his work. It also shows that (...) Heidegger suppressed the publication of some politically sensitive texts while he was alive, and that archival materials in different parts of Germany have been manipulated so as to protect Heidegger from critical scrutiny. Such practices have also been employed by other philosophers who worked in Germany at the time; the manipulation of post-war editions of philosophical texts written in Germany between 1933-1945 seems to be a widespread phenomenon. ;To improve the US reader's understanding of the historical context of Heidegger's political thought, this study also relates Heidegger's professional and political actions to those of all of the other 213 professors of philosophy who taught at a German university between 1933 and 1945. Heidegger's political arguments are compared to those of the other philosophers who, as university Rectors, were in similar positions of political responsibility as Heidegger. The presentation of this new information allows the US reader to understand better the development of philosophy in Germany, and reveals the uniqueness of Heidegger's philosophical commitment to a particular version of National Socialist ideology. ;Finally, this study identifies the main sources of interpretive error in the US reception of Heidegger's political thought, and shows how philosophers can avoid such mistakes in the future. (shrink)

The thesis suggests a way in which the peace movement can make itself attractive to citizens. It begins with the assumption that the movement should satisfy some of their personal needs. One such need is that of relief from the pains of anxiety. Drawing upon Heidegger, the thesis outlines two of these pains--impotence and unheimlichkeit--and shows why we experience them. Then, using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, it explains why true friendship is a positive response to the pains. True friends further each (...) other's courage, a virtue whose possession helps them to weather impotence. True friends are, in fundamental ways, the same as one another: Their partial identity counters the effects of non-humans whose radical otherness makes the partners feel unheimlich. (shrink)