This paper tries to read some structure into the perplexing diversity of the literature on Heidegger ’s concept of authenticity. It argues that many of the interpretations available rely on views that are false and cannot be Heidegger ’s. It also shows that the only correct interpretation of Heidegger ’s concept of authenticity emerges from a synthesis of Dreyfus ’ later interpretation and Haugeland’s interpretation of this concept. A synthesis of these interpretations yields an interpretation, according to which Dasein’s being (...) is authentic only if it is capable of using tools or language in radically new ways. (shrink)

This paper argues for a fundamental re-reading of Heideggerian philosophy, especially regarding the logical structures presented by Heidegger in the thirties and onward. The field, which this logic organizes, shows an explorative formal element of language in and of itself, and is therefore different from an analytic concept of logic. An analytic conceptualization of logic is understood here as a reflection on the inner structures of already existing notions. An explorative logic, on the other hand, explores the relations between already (...) existing notions and the possible, but yet unknown, development of new notions. The logic of Heidegger is explorative, as it describes the relational, formal structures between the already established semantic field and its virtual excess. This virtual excess, while formal, must be nonetheless considered the primary access to whatever we call external to language in the transcendental sense in Heidegger's philosophy. Therefore, the central question of this logical re-reading of Heidegger is the formal relation to the unknown real. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of the article is to characterize Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art, as accurately as possible, through what he wants to take distance from; and then we seek to outline a problem that seems structural. With the notion of enowning [Ereignis] Heidegger intends to distinguish his perspective on art especially from two other ones, namely that of Neokantian tradition and Hegel’s. This allows us to have a dimension of Heidegger’s conceptual radicalism, insofar as the enowning aims to point (...) to a poetic moment which is prior to language. This moment is conceived as a world disclosure. However, it escapes the reference relations foreseen in the notion of world, and becomes basically unspeakable. In addition, the work of art that opens up a world can also be identifed as something innerworldly, thus entangling Heidegger’s own perspective in a series of seemingly unsurmountable difficulties. (shrink)

Socrates can be said to have left the subsequent philosophical tradition with the problem of the relation between philosophy and politics. Already in the Republic the proposal of philosopher-kings represents more a tension than an identity. While Aristotle responds by insisting on a sharp distinction between politics and philosophical wisdom, this distinction proves on closer examination much less sharp than might appear. Heidegger characterizes philosophy as the only authentic politics and the philosopher as ruling just by virtue of being a (...) philosopher. In contrast, Foucault insists that, if philosophy can play a role in relation to politics by transforming the subject who lives politically, it plays no role within politics. In this contrast can be seen the 'fallout' of the tension bequeathed by Socrates through both Plato and Aristotle. Podría decirse que Sócrates le dejó a la tradición filosófica posterior el problema de la relación entre filosofía y política. Ya en la República la propuesta del rey filósofo representa más una tensión que una identidad. Mientras que la respuesta de Aristóteles insiste en una clara distinción entre la política y la sabiduría filosófica, un examen cuidadoso demuestra que esta distinción es menos clara de lo que parece. Heidegger caracteriza la filosofía como la única política auténtica y al filósofo como gobernante por el mero hecho de ser filósofo. En contraste, Foucault insiste en que si bien la filosofía puede desempeñar un papel en relación con la política al transformar al sujeto que vive políticamente, aquella no desempeña papel alguno dentro de la política. Este contraste ilustra el resultado de la tensión legada por Sócrates a través de Platón y Aristóteles. (shrink)

The “destructive” appropriation of the Aristotelian concepts of δύναµις and ἐνέργεια played a central role in Martin Heidegger’s own reflection on the meaning of being. While this has been generally known for some time, it is only now that we can understand the full scope, complexity and evolving character of this appropriation. One reason is the fairly recent publication of notes and protocols for seminars Heidegger led on Aristotle as late as the 1940s and 1950s. Another is the existence of (...) student transcripts in the Special Collections Department of Stanford University for a number of unpublished seminars on Aristotle that Heidegger led during the 1920s. Considering all of this material enables us to see both the significance of Heidegger’s interpretation of the δύναµις/ἐνέργιεα pair as well as how this interpretation evolved along with his own “Kehre”: from a “pandynamic” conception of being to being as “Ereignis.”. (shrink)

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive, structural forms of malaise: they are a ‘disaster’, a ‘moral calamity’, sites of ‘barbarism and darkness’. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments and so forestalling (...) the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with other critics of liberalism. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique. (shrink)

En este texto se estudia la lectura que Heidegger lleva a cabo en torno a la obra de Hölderlin tomando como eje la noción de “aporía”. Por ésta se comprende la imposibilidad de una respuesta o resolución con respecto a la cuestión del ser. Sin embargo, lejos de resultar paralizante, esta aporía leída y expresada a través de Hölderlin conduce a Heidegger a la afirmación de la experiencia de esa aporía, de su necesidad y de su dignidad cuestionante. De este (...) modo, se comprueba cómo Hölderlin aporta el aparato léxico y conceptual que Heidegger desplegará en los años siguientes en su camino del pensar. (shrink)

In Italian schools Philosophy is taught as History of Philosophy in the last three years of some courses of secondary schools. The aim of my research is to show that teaching Philosophy through some basic words can be a good approach to teach this subject at school. The words that are interesting for this approach are those that we use on a daily basis and do not consider problematic. Philosophy gives useful contents and methods in order to call into question (...) concepts that we give for granted or we often use without a critical approach. My research is divided in two parts. In the first part I illustrate the history of Philosophy teaching in Italian education with relation to the philosophical debate in our Country. In the second part I present the ‘teaching Philosophy through words’ approach and discuss its assumptions and theoretical implications. In this part I show that a concept’s analysis is not separable from historical perspective. At the end of my research, the ‘teaching philosophy through words’ approach shows to be a good approach to teach Philosophy beyond or beside the historical method. In fact, the ‘teaching Philosophy through words’ approach leads to the acquisition of conceptual competence, together with an historical comprehension of the philosophical debate. (shrink)

To be human is to be in the world with others, and so what it means to be goes to the root of ethical and political life. One would have to be exceptionally obtuse not to recognize that this age, which we now share as a planetary humanity, is indeed in crisis, despite all our apparent progress if not because of it: the economic and political upheavals that threaten to throw whole regions into uproar, the shifts in climate that threaten (...) the entire globe with unparalleled disruption, the “advances” in technology that threaten to lay waste to entire cities and reduce human beings to “human resources.” Despite these ongoing or potential disasters, what Heidegger’s work challenges us to think is that the most fundamental disaster is a failure to think what it means to be human, that these other dangers can only be addressed if we confront this question first. My argument here is that Heidegger misreads a form of thinking vital to ethical–political life, phronêsis, so-called practical wisdom, because his radical historicism prevents him from seeing the intersection of principled norms with life as we find it. (shrink)

In ‘Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time’, we explicated the crucial role that Martin Heidegger assigns to our capacity to affectively find ourselves in the world. There, our discussion was restricted to Division I of Being and Time. Specifically, we discussed how Befindlichkeit as a basic existential and moods as the ontic counterparts of Befindlichkeit make circumspective engagement with the world possible. Indeed, according to Heidegger, it is primarily through moods that the world is ‘opened (...) up’ and revealed to us as a world that is suffused with values and entities that already matter to us. In this companion essay, our aim is to expand our analysis of affectivity in the following ways: first, we revisit our discussion of Befindlichkeit in light of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of BT; second, we discuss the basic or fundamental mood of boredom and its ontological significance; we conclude by providing a brief characterization of how Heidegger's notion of mood changes in his later thinking. (shrink)

Modernity is not only the culmination of the “oblivion of being,” for it also provides, in the form of transcendental thinking, a way to recover the original relation of thought to being. Heidegger develops this account through several lecture courses from 1935–1937, especially the 1935–1936 lecture course on Kant, and the account receives a kind of completion in the 1936–1938 manuscript, Contributions to Philosophy. Kant limits the dominance of rationalistic prejudices by reconnecting thought to the givenness of being. He thereby (...) shows the way to overcome the West’s rationalistic oblivion of being. By returning to Kant and repeating him more fundamentally we prepare ourselves for Heidegger’s non-rationalistic thinking of being. This paper, then, reconsiders Heidegger’s relation to modern philosophy, demonstrating on the basis of his own texts that he appropriates modern philosophy but in a non-rationalistic way. Transcendental philosophy plays an essential though ambiguous transitional role in his thinking. (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation on the meaning of (the presence of) the present. Integral to this attempt is his critique of the understanding of the being of beings in terms of the objectivity of the object. In this paper, I trace Heidegger’s analyses of objectivity, through which Heidegger consistently establishes objectivity as non-primordial and derivative. In order to do this, however, Heidegger had to identify a specific, narrow (spatio-temporalized) conception of objectivity (in terms (...) of Gegenstehenlassen and Vorstellen) as the hallmark of modern philosophy. I show that it is unclear whether that conception is a justified result or rather an unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then suggest what meanings of objectivity might be lost after Heidegger, by pointing to several aspects of Hegel’s notion of objectivity that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account, to wit: the lack of ‘subject-object’-terminology in his definitions of objectivity; the special language of ‘forms of’ objectivity; Hegel’s critique of representation; his notion of Gegenstand as a content with a categorical form, and, finally, that Aristotle’s notion of hypokeimenon might provide a clue as to how Hegel’s notion of object can be understood. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2, Page 277-283, May 2011.

The present study aims to understand how temporality is the condition of possibility of that understanding-of-being which understands beings as present-at-hand. To do so, we will try to present an outline of the structure of temporality developed by Heidegger in Being and Time and in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. The exposition of such a structure will then allow us to show how presentness—and therefore the entity that has this mode of being—can only come to the fore in a present.

The aim of this paper is to analyze those passages of the Black Notebooks where Heidegger mentions Søren Kierkegaard and to see how Heidegger interprets Kierkegaard’s impact on his own philosophical thought. The paper intends to clarify whether, and to what extent, Heidegger’s rejection of an existentialist reading of his early thought is plausible and justified. The conclusions reached will be twofold. First, Heidegger tries to reinterpret his existential analytic by using the approach he has developed in his work after (...) Being and Time. In so doing, Heidegger tries to understate or diminish the Kierkegaardian background of his analytic of existence. Second, Heidegger’s retrospective self-interpretation argues for a continuity between the approach he develops in Being and Time and that which he calls the question of ‘the truth of beyng’. In so doing, he does not recognize the inconsistencies and mismatches that characterize his thought during the transition from the existential analytic to the philosophy of the event. The passages dealing with Kierkegaard in the Black Notebooks are important sources that allow us to note how problematic Heidegger’s self-interpretation is. (shrink)

The question of truth is one of the oldest philosophical topics, but perhaps it concerns the world today more than ever. Der Beitrag geht auf einen Vortrag zurück, der 2018 in verschiedenen Fassungen beim Nietzsche-Forum München e.V., beim Nietzsche-Forum der Tongji-Universität Shanghai und beim Nietzsche-Kolloquium der Stiftung Nietzsche-Haus in Sils-Maria und 2019 in Machatschkala, Dagestan, gehalten wurde. Nietzsche was a realist about truth and he sought to criticize and reject the idealizations and moralizations that continue to dominate philosophical thinking: he (...) wanted to see how truth really stands. Following Nietzsche we can recognize more clearly that we need illusions in order to live, but that these illusions also endanger the very lives they support. We demand a final truth on which we can rely at all times, and which allows us to live together, such as the truth of God, the truth of reason, or the truth of being. But searching for such a final truth, we face “nothing,” or what Nietzsche described as “nihilism.” At the same time, however, we keep on speaking about truth and truths. How to speak—after Nietzsche—about truth without succumbing to illusion? Starting from Nietzsche’s critique of truth and Heidegger’s metaphysical account of Nietzsche’s position, this article examines how Nietzsche, in contrast to Heidegger’s ontological commitments, allows us to decide about truth on the grounds of perspectivism. While Nietzsche’s position thus seems compatible with that of Niklas Luhmann’s constructivism, Nietzsche still holds on to his truth as the truth of “an evangelist the like of which there has never been” (EH, Destiny 1). (shrink)

En el presente texto proponemos realizar un primer trazado de una zona de correspondencia entre cuerpo y materialidad, para replantear esta materialidad a partir de ciertas categorías conceptuales. La hipótesis planteada es que hay determinadas concepciones del cuerpo en el pensamiento del siglo XX en adelante que suponen una materialidad no reductible a principios de determinación, una materialidad emparentada con la libertad, donde la necesidad se subsume a la contingencia concreta de los cuerpos. Nos proponemos bosquejar una construcción conceptual de (...) materialidad que pueda articular diferentes pensamientos que incluyen al cuerpo de un modo relevante, especialmente el de Jean-Luc Nancy. (shrink)

Traditionally, metaphysical notions of self and other presuppose a dualism that underlies much of Western philosophy. This dualism is opposed by accounts of self and other in recent continental philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy, which I compare. I argue that the self is seen in continental and Chinese thought as embedded in relations and language, and not as transcendent or prior in the metaphysical sense to them. I argue for this by focussing on three themes: self and language, self as (...) relational and embedded in the world or contextual environment, and self and the particular other. These three themes show that the complexity and dynamic of the self-other relation is much more realistically conveyed by continental and classical Chinese thought than by the traditional metaphysical account. (shrink)

Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

(2009). Fantasies and Fetishes: The Erotic Imagination and the Problem of Embodiment. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 40, Tradition, Art & Sexuality, pp. 66-82.

Being needs a rectification, that is the compensation of being for Being, which was only assumed, but not substantiated by reason of the influence of the logical fallacy petitio principii and due to the loss of the absolute status of the verb to be from the Greek times to Heidegger's project of ontology. The annulment of the Greek status of the verb to be caused an absolute disorientation of being regarding its own object and method of action, which ultimately led (...) to the indifference of the ontological background as such. As a result, being did not turn into the smallest semantic unit, like the active parts of speech, but its semantic content expanded to infinity in an eclectic manner, and therefore, being eventually lost the autonomy and limits of its own phenomenological manifestation. This article, which is a part of a larger study at the same time, is based on the idea that negativity is presented as an original characteristic of being in the very first of the judgments about being, namely being is. It turns out that being exists, but only within the utterance, while it is not directly presented, what means it is deprived with predicative features peculiar to it exclusively, except for such one: being is/exists (but) not (only) as something or being is not (only) as something. The aim of the article is to define the negative copula of being as the subject of Heidegger's project of radical ontology, only sketched in the Marburg lectures of 1927. Besides, the current revival of scientific interest in the direction of subjectivity and spatial localizations of Nothing requires the confirmation of its being-nature, that logically follows from acquisition of the negativity-feature by being-copula, and then –the interpreting of negation as a solely ontological mode of action among the perspectives of the transition to a new beginning, which occupied all scientific research of Heidegger’s later thought. In view of the above, the relevance of copula-studies is only increasing. (shrink)

The article expresses the philosophical thoughts of an Italian philosopher, G.Vattimo and his development of the philosophy of M. Heidegger and essential aspects of Vattimo’s philosophy of religion. In the first part, we clarify Vattimo’s interpretation of Heidegger’s destruction of traditional metaphysics, the occurrence of ontological difference and the historical process of the oblivion of Being. According to Vattimo, the oblivion of Being is Heidegger’s reaction to European nihilism. It brings with it his philosophical questions on metaphysics, the substance of (...) technology and course of technical civilisation. For Vattimo, it was only secularisation which enables one to pose questions about God, sense, and meaning. In a postmodern world, the world of technology and science has an ontological meaning for human beings and awakens them to who they are. In the article, we also focus our attention on some problematic points in his philosophy of religion. The first problem is a conflict among differentiated interpretations. Vattimo claims that kenosis has neither anything in common with “indefinite negation of God”, nor does it apologise for any interpretation of the Holy Scripture. In addition, he refuses radical demythologisation. In his opinion, there are no necessary reasons to follow this step. There are some authors who have serious reasons for it and the interpretation of kenosis leads to atheism. We will confront Vattimo’s philosophy with the thinking of the current Czech atheistic philosopher Otakar Funda. The next problem is a reduction of soteriology on the process of human being’s emancipation. There is no place for metaphysical evil here. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: first, to argue that Martin Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s state-of-mind has implications for a Heideggarian understanding of social atmosphere or “mood,” itself understood as the domain in which we realize our meaningful attachment to the world; second, to link Heidegger’s account of Dasein to sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s analysis of affective labour in order to underscore Hochschild’s critique of affective labour by showing it to occur at the very site of our free and meaningful (...) involvement in the world; third, to demonstrate the relevance of Heidegger’s analysis to concrete sociological analysis. I begin by arguing that Heidegger’s existential account of affective life reveals affective life as: an accomplished attachment to worldly specificities, grounded on socially constituted significance, and our responsibility. Second, showing Hochschild’s account of emotions to be compatible with Heidegger’s work, I consider Hochschild’s analysis of airline stewardesses, clarifying how the affective lives of individuals and the shared, public dimension of affective life are both undermined by affective labour, specifically in terms of the way that communicative interactions are manipulated in commercial settings. Resulting from the manipulation of affective life by companies are various challenges to our freedom: an inability to find meaningful projects; a lack of substantial measures in terms of which to choose our projects; and the inability to recognize such choices as constitutive of affective life and as our responsibility. Connecting these consequences to the three aspects of affective life noted above, it is concluded that affective labour threatens the inherently social character of freedom and also suppresses and inhibits the existential involvement in the world through which we realize meaningfully our freedom. (shrink)

Resumen: Espacio y tiempo son conceptos inseparables. La relación que los une es tan estrecha que el espacio puede considerarse la otra cara del tiempo, y viceversa. La unidad y a la vez alteridad espacio-temporal representa un problema fundamental tanto para la ciencia, especialmente la física, como para la filosofía y el arte. Aunque puede haber puntos de encuentro entre las concepciones de las diferentes áreas, se observan diferencias fundamentales en la manera de entender ambos conceptos y la relación entre (...) ellos. El espacio y tiempo de la física clásica y el espacio lógico de Wittgenstein, ligado al presupuesto de la simultaneidad, son presuposiciones teóricas necesarias para establecer leyes físicas o bien para lograr representaciones exactas. Frente a la noción científica y transcendental está la concepción ontológica de Heidegger y la artística de Chillida. Renunciando al ideal de la exactitud, de lo medible y comprobable, el filósofo y el escultor entienden la mutua pertenencia de espacio y tiempo como algo que tiene una importancia fundamental para la vida humana y que representa un reto que hay que buscar.: Space and time are inseparable concepts. The relationship that joins them is so close that one can understand space as the opposite side of time, and vice versa. Unity and otherness of space and time constitute a fundamental problem for science, especially physics, as well as for philosophy and art. Although there may be connecting lines between the conceptions those different fields hold on space and time, one observes fundamental differences in the way they understand these two concepts and the relation between them. The conception of space and time in classical physics, as well as in Wittgenstein’s notion of logical space connected with the principle of simultaneity, represent necessary theoretical premises in order to establish physical laws and precise representations. Opposite to the scientific and transcendental concepts, we find Heidegger’s ontological and Chillida’s artistic conceptions. Giving up the ideal of precision, of measurement and verification, the philosopher and the sculptor understand the mutual belonging of space and time as something that has a fundamental importance in human life, and that constitutes a challenge that one can only search for. (shrink)

The theory of use with which Giorgio Agamben concludes his Homo Sacer-series is introduced as an alternative to the concept of care. This article critically examines the ontological status of use a...

El artículo considera en primer lugar el papel asignado por Heidegger, en su análisis del viraje , al acontecimiento-apropiación como el punto medio entre el ser y el Dasein. En el carácter abismal de la oscilación entre el llamado del primero y la pertenencia del segundo reside la unidad originaria del tiempo-espacio que deja emerger ambos momentos hacia su separación. Esto permite a su vez el despliegue de un tiempo derivado y un orden para la medición. En segundo lugar, se (...) intentan encontrar puntos de vista similares en los análisis de Husserl sobre la temporalidad. Así, al abismo del ser corresponde un horizonte inicial originario; al tiempo-espacio abismal, la pretemporalización de una protohyle de la mano con kinestesias espacializantes; a la proyección del Dasein para captar la oscilación mediante una contraoscilación, el volverse del yo hacia la prototemporalización; a la separación del tiempo a partir del abismo, la constitución de las distinciones temporales; y a la derivación del orden del tiempo, la constitución del tiempo como forma. En tercer lugar, se expone la noción heideggeriana de decisión respecto de la pertenencia o no-pertenencia al ser a fin de criticar una parte componente de la historia del ser, esto es, la posición. En cuarto lugar, el artículo se ocupa de la noción husserliana de decisión en tanto ligada a la institución de un horizonte histórico. Por último, se destacan semejanzas y diferencias entre las nociones de acontecimiento-apropiación y presente viviente en la medida en que ambas desempeñan el mismo papel en la búsqueda de un nivel último que hace posible todo. (shrink)

The article deals with the recently published Besinnung, a work dating from 1938–1939, one among the unpublished treatises in Part III of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe. It follows the Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936–1938), taking up the same themes as that work, such as the last God, the first and the other beginning, etc. But whereas the earlier work, especially the notion of the last God, relates more to Schelling, this one muses on Kierkegaard. The article sets Besinnung within the context (...) of related works of the same period, not only the Beiträge but also Metaphysik und Nihilismus and Geschichte des Seyns. However, Besinnung also breaks new ground, finding a deeper ontological distinction between Seyn and Sein as the basis for the earlier ontological difference between being and beings. The work is part and parcel with Heidegger's destructuring of metaphysics, which he sees as really a freeing up of the beginning, as also the issue of onto-theology. Thus it is integral with Heidegger's program of getting God out of metaphysics and being out of theology. It is in virtue of the meaning he attaches to Seyn (Logos) in Da-sein that it is possible for him not only to retrieve the meaning of the other beginning, the en-owning (Er-eignis) of Da-sein, and with it the meaning of the first beginning (in the two senses the phrase has in this work), but also thereby to recover the forgotten meaning of being (Sein). The approach to Seyn, with Kierkegaard, is not through the thinking (Denken) that thinks being, which cannot really get beyond beings and/or the Supreme Being of metaphysics, but through a thinking, a musing, that thinks through to (Er-denkt) Seyn. The article concludes with some reflections on the significance of Heidegger as theo-logian. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit presents one of the most striking reflexions on human facticity, i.e. the fact that Dasein fundamentally exists in a world letting Dasein and world be co-extensive. By quoting two central personages in theology, Pascal and Augustine, Heidegger refers to a concept of love that is constitutive for Dasein’s facticity to truth and to knowledge. By investigating the claim that love is as good as absent from Sein und Zeit, the article intends to show that the (...) scanty references to love nevertheless have a central role in Heidegger’s early work and, furthermore, why Heidegger returns to it in his later thinking. Interesting in this regard is the connection between the theological concept of love and Heidegger’s concept of ‘world’. The article places Heidegger’s Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition in the realms of his Dasein analysis focussing on facticity. Taking its methodological cues from Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida, the article shows how the concepts of possibility and impotentiality (Ohnmacht) become essential in Heidegger via his reference to love. Lastly, the article examines to what extent Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit paraphrases the old angelology letting the Dasein concept become its secularisation. (shrink)

The majority of the contemporary literature on Schelling and Heidegger focuses on the direct connection between the two philosophers – Heidegger’s engagement with Schelling’s Freedom essay. This paper, however, explores an implicit link between them on the topic of creation by reading Schelling’s Ages of the World alongside Heidegger’s ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’. It brings God’s creation in Schelling together with artistic creation in Heidegger and argues that the two have similarities in their structures, sources, and aims: (...) both creations are dependent on a two-fold struggle, the sources are either the absolute (in Schelling) or being (in Heidegger), and the aims are to reveal the divine principle (in Schelling) or the truth of being (in Heidegger) in the world. In making these comparisons, I argue that, in spite of Heidegger’s esoteric neologisms, his account of artistic creation is not as radically new as he himself claims. It can be read and better comprehended in the light of a Schellingian metaphysics of creation and, more broadly, in the light of the history of philosophy in general. Eventually, Heidegger’s philosophy remains committed to the tradition of philosophical theology, despite his own attempt to move beyond this tradition. (shrink)

This paper is about the interconnectedness of the realm of language with that of social interactions, constitutive of all human communities. Arguing against the traditional and still present primacy of the rationally based understanding of language, I wish to stress the possibility of another approach to language, strongly related to the question of the Other. Relying on the idea that the Other is a constitutive part of any linguistic situation, I wish to inspect how it is possible for the voice (...) of the Other to be suppressed or silenced, and if that is the case, how we should understand the silence of the Other. The main result of my findings is that the silence of the Other is not only meaningful, but that it can have positive social and political effects, including the enhancement of the sensitivity for the various modalities of the voice of the Other. (shrink)

Is it possible to think about “the Greeks” without exposing oneself to what they call their gods? Feeling called upon to respond to this question, precisely within the constellation of Europe’s most gloomy hour, Martin Heidegger employs the instruments that come to him through his own “turn,” but also from further back: the “Fourfold” and the “Holy” may thus be studied in their crucial confrontation with Parmenides. A corollary resides in the link with the famous problem of “Hellenization” in Christianity.