Patrick Heelan, with background in quantum theory and in hermeneutic phenomenology, investigated not only the hermeneutical philosophy of science but also the parallels between quantum mechanics and human experience in general and the logic of changes of worldview. Heelan’s closeness to Aristotle and Lonergan, often neglected, is discussed, and issues concerning Heelan’s treatment of the social context of science are raised.

This essay probes into the possibility of encountering the Deleuzian sense-event in four Tom Stoppard radio plays, Moon (1964), Boot (1964), Glad (1966) and Artist Descending A Staircase (1972). Itself an incorporeal – an occurrence of the interface – the wonderful and strange protagonist of Gilles Deleuze's 1969 Logic of Sense is approached in apophatic gestures, with a glimpse at the various vestiges it has left upon texts. Within this exercise in indirection, ‘empty forms’ present themselves as the texts’ circulating (...) words. Informed by and receiving infusions from two parallel flows of Deleuzian signifiers and signifieds, these entities are singled out as the texts’ pointers that open up a cleavage where the sense-event can issue forth. (shrink)

It is by way of the call that one is enabled to wake up to responsibility. What is the illocutionary mood of the ‘call’ of conscience, though? Is this transcendental enabler of responsibility an imposing demand or an invitational question? Both Levinas and Heidegger emphasize the impositional character of the call in conscience. The call seems to be the very essence of imperatives. I develop an apology for questioning by way of appeal to crumbs scattered throughout Jewish traditions as well (...) as throughout the works of Levinas and Heidegger. Perhaps we are invited to be rather than told to be. (shrink)

Wolterstorff defends the claim not only that ‘God speaks’ through the Bible but also that the reader gains ever new insights upon subsequent readings of it. I qualify this project with the philosophical hermeneutics he rejects—namely that of Gadamer and Ricoeur. Wolterstorff thinks what he calls ‘authorial discourse interpretation’ provides warrant for religious communities believing that ‘God speaks’ to them through a text. In developing this hermeneutic, he dismisses the viability of Gadamer and Ricoeur's approach because, Wolterstorff asserts, their form (...) of interpretation is merely an operation performed on an artifact. While a cursory study of Gadamer and Ricoeur might support such dismissal, particularly Ricoeur's emphasis on writing's obliteration of dialogue, a closer study guided by the hermeneutic priority of questioning complicates Wolterstorff's caricature. If writing obliterates dialogue, what happens to questions and responses? My thesis is that dialogue with another is preserved through the hermeneutical arc. I demonstrate this through specifying distinct logics of question and answer that occur in the reading process, and I delimit these logics by way of appeal to contemporary literacy pedagogy and its taxonomies of questions. A voice does speak with and listen to a reader in the event of reading, in this case a God who is not behind but before the text. Isolating this other who speaks and listens provides reinforcement for constructive theological work aligned with Gadamer and Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and answers for the experience of hearing ‘God speak’ differently through sacred texts. (shrink)

With almost a century of historical distance between Heidegger’s retrieval of the question of being and contemporary concern about the Other, we have accrued invaluable experiences for critical leverage about what it is to ask one another questions. I offer a sketch aimed at adapting Tillich’s theological system grounded in existential questioning to today by juxtaposing him with Levinas’ philosophical ethics. Tillich and Levinas provide motive for reflection on the topic of questioning in particular. In the case of Tillich, questions (...) constitute a crucial moment in the dialogue between our contemporary existential situation and religious symbols, or in what he called the ‘method of correlation.’ Furthermore, Tillich locates in the very structure of questioning the germ of our participation in our essential nature despite existential disruption. Beneath his more provocative and prophetic discourse on the absolute desolation and height of the Other, Levinas sees in questions a different kind of possibility. It is not our essential and existential selves, but oneself and the absolutely Other who come together in the question yet retain their infinite difference. Heidegger is the immediate predecessor from whom both Tillich and Levinas inherit a predilection for reflection on questioning. What is at stake is not merely the legacy of Heidegger’s construal of questioning, but, more importantly here, the fundamental sources Tillich and Levinas posit as the origin of our questioning. (shrink)

Phenomenological, process-based and post-Marxist approaches have stressed the immanent nature of the ontogenesis of our world. The concept of performativity epitomizes these temporal, spatial and material views. Reality is always in movement itself: it is constantly materially and socially ‘performed’. Other views lead to a pre-defined world that would be mostly revealed through sensations. These transcendental stances assume that a subject, although pre-existing experience, is the absolute condition of possibility of it. In this paper, we develop another view of performativity, (...) one that re-introduces transcendence in the analysis but sees in it something dialogical to the process itself. We draw from the notions of visibility-invisibility and continuity-discontinuity in order to show how everyday activity both performs and makes visible the world. From that perspective, modes of visibility appear as conditions of possibility of performativity itself. We draw some implications for the conceptualization of management practices. (shrink)

This article examines Heidegger’s account of dwelling while placing it in the broad context of a wide array of his lectures and the constellation of his collected writings. The focus on this question is primarily ontological in character, in spite of the spatial significance of the phenomenon of dwelling, and the bearings it has on a variety of disciplines that interrogate its essence, be it in architectural humanities and design or in geography, which probe the various elements of its architectonic (...) and topological underpinnings. The investigation of Heidegger’s reflections on dwelling will be connected in this line of inquiry with his consideration of what he refers to as “the gathering of the fourfold,” namely as “earth, sky, mortals and divinities,” and the manner they are admitted and installed into “things,” all to be set against the background of his meditations on the origins of the work of art, and on the unfolding of the essence of modern technology as en-framing. (shrink)

Online encyclopedia. 2011, revised, 2014: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gasset/.

The contemporary concept of wilderness, which is central to environmental theory and activism, is both a help and a hindrance to government policy and to popular environmental beliefs. The Judeo-Christian religious tradition and Locke's property theory provides much of the western cultural and historical basis of humans' environmental attitudes that basically engender exploitation. I argue that a more precise interpretation of Genesis and of Locke reveals that both sources actually promote environmental stewardship while decrying ecological abuse. Next I analyze the (...) history and shortcomings of various wilderness concepts. These shortcomings are all forms of an exclusionist mentality and result in some harmful theoretical and practical applications. Some of these applications include the separation of humans from nature, and the propensity of governments and the public to allow ecological degradation in non-wilderness areas. Yet there are beneficial aspects to wilderness that contribute to a deeper understanding of human nature and our place in the world. Wilderness helps us to remember our wild and primal aspects that provide a connection with nature. In light of the perils and power of wilderness I offer a new, radical, inclusive, and expansive notion of wilderness that I name "dwellness." Dwellness is a normative ethical position where all areas upon the earth ought to be viewed by people in the same way as wilderness areas are currently viewed, but with some modifications. Unlike wilderness, dwellness includes humans within nature and also contains the idea of sustainable living practices. To support dwellness I turn to Martin Heidegger. By identifying the world as a place where we dwell and in which we belong, we come to a more profound understanding of Being, or existence, in general and of our own particular modes of being. By learning to look at the world in this new, yet old, way we may then understand how important and central is the world, a mode of Being, to the existence and maintenance of our Being. Finally, I answer some possible objections to dwellness. These objections revolve around problems of industrial pollution, which, under dwellness, would have to be considered natural. (shrink)

Due to the the movements in European thought from the 16th-17th centuries that have generated enough controversy around the ideas of ʻnatural philosophyʼ and ʻexperimental philosophyʼ, I think it would be appropriate to focus our attention on the evolution of the idea of ʻsubstantialismʼ in ʻtranscendental philosophyʼ from the Islamic philosophy. Mulla Sadrā was the most important philosopher and he established a truly hermeneutics on the idea of the ʻBeingʼ. Due tot the new fields of research into the prejudicative hermeneutics, (...) I can say that I will follow in this paper to manage this idea. I will follow the similarities between the Kitab written by Mulla Sadrā and the european idea of ʻnatural philosophyʼ, I will show some similarities between the ″Kitab al-Mashaʻir″ and ″Treatise on Heavens of Kant″, and i will bring those perspectives into a hermeneutical field of interpretation.The ideas of Kitab are very close to Heideggerʼs perspective on Being and aristotelian perspective of non-Being. Because of this reason, we say is necessary to.open a prejudicative perspective to investigate how works the play between Being and non-Being. (shrink)

This paper analyzes international heritage conservation charters through the post-structuralist lens of relative and perspective-driven “truths,” fragmentation, and dramatic settings. The “SPAB Manifesto,” the Athens Charter, the Venice Charter, the Burra Charter, and the Nara Document on Authenticity are evaluated within the framework of discursive theories established by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, and Gilles Deleuze in regard to cultural meanings and absolute and relative truths. Preservation doctrine through the Venice Charter engages in a positivist truth based on the (...) substantiation of material fetishes. These early doctrines imbue the materiality of the object with truth as an absolute rather than relative truths existing in the realm of cultural meanings and values. In other words, the object communicates the one, single reality in which it should exist. Beginning with the Burra Charter in 1979, there was an unselfconscious shift toward post-modern relativism. The Nara Document built on the ideas of cultural relativism, expressing a strong desire to respect diversity as embodied in the discursive act of semiotic communication. It eschewed judging the authenticity of heritage as a fixed concept and instead encouraged an evaluative process within the context of individual cultures. The question of future interpretive acts within the dramatic scene of cultural heritage must reconcile the positivist past of pre-Burra Charter documents with the relativism of later documents. At some point the material fetish of the Venice Charter must give way to the pluralism of truth rooted in cultural and not material contexts. (shrink)

This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry (...) and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot. (shrink)

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena (...) accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh. (shrink)

The following remarks should be treated as a discussion of a semiotic claim posed in the quotation above. Kołakowski opted for this rather radical perspective to challenge semiotic views prevailing in the analytical philosophy of that day. No wonder that his intellectual opponents felt obliged to take a stand. I once tended to side with his opponents, which is one of the reasons why I would like to take the emerging opportunity and revisit Kołakowski’s argument. I won’t be discussing the (...) meaning of expressions in general, my purpose here is rather to, as the title suggests, bring into focus the meaning of non-literal expressions, particularly where they are supplied with inverted commas to imply their non-literal, metaphorical character. I chose to pursue this particular topic because there is little agreement as to what they actually mean. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore Heidegger’s approach to how educa- tion and reflection endeavor, which have been experienced through a vast variety of both regional and universal approaches, should be experienced. Hence, I’ll start with explaining Heidegger’s problematics. “Why he takes all philosophical problems into one question?”, “What is the meaning of be- ing?”, and then I will explain what we should understand by education and reflection process. Heidegger links it to an exploration process, investigation of the (...) truth. He believes that the primary responsibility in this process lies on universities and rulers. The process should be centered on reflection and individuals should be reflecting by challenging their own and other individ- uals’ existence. This leads us to two concepts: Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt- sein) and co-existence (being-with, Mitsein). The most remarkable ability of Dasein, as he calls, is the reflection, and it facilitates challenge. Through its capabilities, the individual (Dasein) will turn out to be self-conscious of its existence. Grounding on being-in-the-world and co-existence concepts, Das- ein can challenge the existence and starts exploring the being. This leads to reflection and questioning, which together form an educational and learning process. Education and learning are the two technical parts of exploring Da- sein’s existence. Due to scientific methods and methodological approaches of education, cultural, regional and local attributes are ignored. Heidegger believes that the individual coexists, which requires considering all the dif- ferences around it. Heidegger stresses the importance of reflection and says that the West has a flawed approach. Criticizing that flawed approach which is solely centered on the subject, Heidegger asserts an educational model which reckons many differences such as culture, challenge, etc. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the program of Deleuze’s work on Hume’s philosophy. Also, I plan to make clear the operational meaning of Deleuze’s own hallmark regarding his approaches to philosophy. I start to follow Deleuze’s plot by engendering three functions of his interpretation of Hume’s Treatise that will be the area of three thematic chapters. The first tries to sort the polemical function of empiricism that is launched through Deleuze’s Hume; the second attempts to figure the domain of subjectivity (...) as the inventive function of the book; the third searches the creative function by describing the role of the institutional theory. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

Despite a growing interest in atmospheric phenomena within management and organization studies, a distinct line of research on atmospheres can hardly be identified. The present article reviews existing concepts of atmosphere in management and organization studies to promote a common understanding of how to conceptualize atmospheres. On the uppermost level, dualistic and non-dualistic concepts of atmosphere are distinguished. This article shows that non-dualistic conceptions are more appropriate for researching atmospheres than dualistic conceptions, but still need further development. In case of (...) this paper, it is shown that considering the socialites of atmospheres is especially important to foster such a development. Furthermore, it is suggested that a full-range consideration of atmospheres needs to take both aesthetic and anaesthetic elements into account. In sum, the article pleads for a more systematic discussion of non-dualistic conceptions of atmosphere and seeks to mark a starting point for a distinct and coherent area of research on atmospheres within management and organization studies. (shrink)

This thesis inquires what it means to interpret non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM), and the philosophical limits of this interpretation. In pursuit of a scientific-realist stance, a metametaphysical method is expanded and applied to evaluate rival interpretations of QM, based on the conceptual distinction between ontology and metaphysics, for objective theory choice in metaphysical discussions relating to QM. Three cases are examined, in which this metametaphysical method succeeds in indicating what are the wrong alternatives to interpret QM in metaphysical terms. The (...) first two cases failed in doing so due to different kinds of underdetermination. In the third case, unlike underdetermination, where there are many choices to be made, a “null-determination” is proposed where there may be no metaphysical choices in the available metaphysical literature. Considering what has been discussed, an agnostic philosophic position is adopted concerning the possibility of interpreting QM from a scientific-realistic point of view. (shrink)

In this study I primarily deal with the problem of historical understanding in the work of Hannah Arendt. In doing so, I try to show that Arendt’s ideas concerning the problem of understanding history may be compared to the works of Heidegger and Gadamer and further developed using some hermeneutical insights as found in their works. I also try to address the topic of judgment; I attempt to show that for Arendt, judgment is an integral, indispensable part of the process (...) of understanding. (shrink)

Do we experience our thoughts and thinking, or are they subpersonal factors that functionally determine our experience without themselves being experienced? And if we do experience them, do they have a certain qualitative feel to them like pain or color sensations? Within philosophy of mind, these questions are seminal and have led to an ongoing debate over ‘cognitive phenomenology.’ Although both proponents and opponents of the existence and relevance of cognitive phenomenology have presented intriguing arguments, to this day the debate (...) does not yield a conclusive, encompassing, and convincing answer pertaining to the question of whether thinking does or can have an experiential character. (shrink)

Investigamos a possibilidade de pensar uma Filosofia da educaçáo a partir da obra do filósofo alemáo Martin Heidegger. Temos os objetivos específicos de esclarecer o que é o cuidado no campo teórico do autor, como ele poderia se relacionar com a educaçáo e como este poderia basear uma pedagogia que preza pelo exercício de ser si-próprio. Presumimos poder afirmar que o cuidado, entendido preliminarmente como a essência do existir humano, tornaria possível um modo do discente colocar-se diante de suas vivências (...) ressignificando sua existência. Etapas precedidas por uma apropriaçáo filosófica da educaçáo e das experiências existenciais dos que estáo envolvidos no processo de educar para a época atual. A filosofia de Heidegger, que sabemos resguardar muitos pormenores, será tratada aqui de maneira simplificada e, embora respeitando seu cânon, buscaremos traduzi-la em linguagem acessível, de modo a náo nos perdermos em especificidades que poderiam obstruir nosso caminho de argumentaçáo. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as “a/the greater good”? Could it be conceived in radically ecological terms? By critically drawing on skeptical insights presented by Slavoj Žižek and Hans Sluga, the article articulates what I am calling “a/the greater ecological good” as an end and as the ethico-political means to this end. I begin by describing this good as an aim: the survival-flourishing of earthly entities and environs. Its contours and limits are outlined, and various Žižekian objections are addressed. Next, (...) the ethical and political means for this good’s realization are delineated. We are summoned to allow things to survive-thrive. But the existing order excessively disallows things from surviving-flourishing, so we are compelled to struggle against it and foster a society of letting-be. The article concludes by proffering an outline of a possible strategy for this political struggle. It would involve the collaborative conception of a blueprint of this envisioned society; popularizing and building mass solidarity around the blueprint; and leveraging this solidarity to, ideally, peacefully implement the blueprint; otherwise, ethico-political violence may be required in order to realize this greater ecological good. (shrink)