Schnädelbach has maintained that the belief that to philosophize lies in the reading of other philosopher’s works is the illness of the contemporary philosophy. Taking Heidegger as the main source of this hermeneutical philosophy, this paper examines what is behind Heidegger’s confrontation with the history of philosophy. In particular, I analyse how Heidegger, during the second half of the 1930s, articulates his view that in order to understand the dynamics that govern our time we need to rethink the history of (...) philosophy thoroughly. (shrink)

Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time , I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which (...) belongs to the unpublished Being and Time , I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question. (shrink)

"Raymond Geuss is a major voice in contemporary philosophy, and this book will enhance his stature even further. Containing some of his best pieces so far, "Outside Ethics" reveals his impressive range as well as the depth of his thought.

My paper examines Derrida's attempts to resist, on the one hand, what he thought of as the increasing international hegemony of American English as the technolanguage of communication, and, on the other hand, forms of linguistic nationalism, when using the resources of the French language to deploy the syntagma: démocratie à venir. It does this by investigating what happens when claims about democracy are made in such a way as to be singularly idiomatic – made from a cosmopolitan point of (...) view that takes into account, rather than vitiates à la Kant, the singular poeticity of idioms. It contrasts Derrida's analysis of the relationship between the national, democracy and idiomaticity with Tocqueville's nationalistic claims; examining, in particular, the issue of how language supposedly binds people together, the role of singularity and generality in thinking about idioms, the divide between originary and techno-scientific idioms, and Derrida's practice of writing in plus d'une langue. It also outlines how, paradoxically, it is a form of idiomaticity and not linguistic instrumentality that disrupts the logic of appropriation, the logic inscribed in the neighbouring, though different, conceptual values of idion, proprius and le propre. (shrink)

This essay focuses on and attempts to uncover the truly radical character of Nietzsche’s early “philological” work, specifically asking after the benefit he claims the study of classical culture should have for our present, late-modern historical moment. Taking up his study of the Pre-Platonic thinkers in 1873’s Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen , the first section analyzes Nietzsche’s statement that history’s principle task is the uncovering of Persönlichkeiten . I argue that it is not at all the subjective character (...) of a psychologized individual that Nietzsche has in mind, but rather the moment of persönliche Stimmung or ‘being attuned’ to the world, which grounds and gives rise to thinking. In the second section, I show that the phusis or ‘nature’ to which the thinker is exposed in this attunement is comparable to the tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian natural forces in tragic poetry, as Nietzsche understands it. This dynamic conception of phusis does not provide a metaphysical substrate or an objectively real ground to which we might return via that Greeks, but is rather essentially phenomenal , i.e. it is nothing other than the movement into and out of appearance, which always entails and requires its reception by the human being to whom it appears. In the final section of the essay, this origin proves for Nietzsche not to be located in a distant past moment. Rather, it is the abyssal origin of the tradition that is always already effective in our present moment, informing our contemporary conceptions of our world and ourselves. (shrink)

What is a problem? What is problematic about any problem whatsoever, philosophical or otherwise? As the origin of assertion and apodeiction, the problematic suspends the categories of necessity and contingency, possibility and impossibility. And it is this suspension that is the essence of the problem, which is why it is so suspenseful. But then, how is the problem problematic? Only if what is suspended neither comes to presence, nor simply goes out into absence, that is, if the suspension continues, which (...) continues the problem. But what is problematic about suspension? As a consideration of language shows, the problem of suspension is the problem of implication. If being, for example, is merely implied, neither present nor absent, then it is the suspension of both, at least insofar as it is problematic. And this not only says something about language; rather, it has ontological implications as well — it speaks of being, and the being of anything whatsoever. For if being is implied, if that is the problem of being, it is because being is an implication. Then the being of things like problems is implied as well; or being is in things by implication. But what does it mean for being to be neither presence nor absence, but an implication? It means that being is implied in a way that is problematic — before it is necessary, or even possible. For being’s way of being is characterized by suspension — which has implications for thinking and speaking about being, and about things like problems, even about anything whatsoever. And this has implications for what being implies, namely, unity and time and aspect. (shrink)

The paper presents, firstly, a brief review of the long history\nof information ethics beginning with the Greek concept of parrhesia\nor freedom of speech as analyzed by Michel Foucault. The recent concept\nof information ethics is related particularly to problems which arose\nin the last century with the development of computer technology and\nthe internet. A broader concept of information ethics as dealing\nwith the digital reconstruction of all possible phenomena leads to\nquestions relating to digital ontology. Following Heidegger{\textquoteright}s\nconception of the relation between ontology and metaphysics, (...) the\nauthor argues that ontology has to do with Being itself and not just\nwith the Being of beings which is the matter of metaphysics. The\nprimary aim of an ontological foundation of information ethics is\nto question the metaphysical ambitions of digital ontology understood\nas today{\textquoteright}s pervading understanding of Being. The\nauthor analyzes some challenges of digital technology, particularly\nwith regard to the moral status of digital agents. The author argues\nthat information ethics does not only deal with ethical questions\nrelating to the infosphere. This view is contrasted with arguments\npresented by Luciano Floridi on the foundation of information ethics\nas well as on the moral status of digital agents. It is argued that\na reductionist view of the human body as digital data overlooks the\nlimits of digital ontology and gives up one basis for ethical orientation.\nFinally issues related to the digital divide as well as to intercultural\naspects of information ethics are explored {\textendash} and long\nand short-term agendas for appropriate responses are presented. (shrink)

The original proposal of H. H. Pattee (1971) of basing quantum theoretical measurement theory on the theory of the origin of life, and its far reaching consequences, is discussed in the light of a recently emerging biological paradigm of internal measurement. It is established that the "measurement problem" of quantum physics can, in principle, be traced back to the internal material constraints of the biological organisms, where choice is a fundamental attribute of the self-measurement of matter. In this light, which (...) is shown to be a consequence of Pattee's original suggestion, it is proposed that biological evolution is a gradual liberation from the inert unity of "subject" and "object" of inanimate matter (as "natural law" and "initial conditions"), to a split biological existence of them and, as a consequence, the "message of evolution" is freedom, rather than complexity in itself. Some classical philosophical systems are brought into context to show that the epistemologies of several strictly philosophical systems of the social sciences are well acquainted with the problem and their solutions support our conclusions. (shrink)

In modern continental thought, natural science is widely portrayed as an exclusively instrumental mode of reason. The breadth of this consensus has partly preempted the question of how it came to persuade. The process of persuasion, as it played out in Germany, can be explored by reconstructing the intellectual exchanges among three twentieth-century theorists of science, Heidegger, Habermas, and Werner Heisenberg. Taking an iconic Heisenberg as a kind of limiting case of “the scientist,” Heidegger and Habermas each found themselves driven (...) to place new constraints on their previously more capacious assessments of science, especially its capacity to reflect on its method. Tracing how that happened, through archival and historical contextualization and close readings of their texts, lets us make visible Heidegger and Habermas’s intellectual affinities and argumentative parallels, which derived not only from their shared grounding in earlier reactions against positivism, but also from confrontation with contemporary events. The latter included, for Heidegger, the rise of a technically powerful science exemplified by nuclear physics, and for Habermas, post-World War II controversies over science, technology, and their socially critical possibilities. (shrink)

Resumen: El siguiente artículo parte reconociendo el carácter protector de la téchne y sus momentos constitutivos. De acuerdo a esta determinación es posible advertir el límite de la téchne a partir de la cuestión socrática de la virtud. La virtud, en la medida que no es un asunto análogo a los objetos de la téchne, precisa de un especial acceso. Desde la constatación del diálogo como el único modo de conocer la virtud, se pone de relieve su sentido comunitario y (...) el carácter del examen socrático. En el diálogo socrático se anuncia, así, que la virtud no es nunca algo técnicamente clausurado ni epistémicamente conceptualizado, sino el mayor bien humano que se cumple en su aproximación a través del examen conjunto de la propia vida.: This article starts by recognizing the protective nature of téchne and its development. It is thereby possible to understand the limits of téchne based on the Socratic question of virtue. Virtue, insofar as it is not a matter analogous to the objects of téchne, requires a special access. The communitarian sense and the character of the Socratic inquiry are made plain, given dialogue as the only way of knowing virtue. Socratic dialogue discloses that virtue is never technically closed or epistemically conceptualized, but that this greatest human good is fulfilled through the joint examination of life itself. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Beitrag argumentiert, dass die mediterrane Mythenwelt, wie sie im philosophischen Werk Albert Camus’ begegnet, eine kritische Theorie sui generis – verstanden als eine rationalitäts- und ideologiekritische Position – in sich birgt. Als solche, so lautet die hier vertretene These, ist sie – zumindest unter bestimmten Gesichtspunkten – der Frankfurter Schule überlegen. Das griechische Denken à la Camus teilt mit jener zwar den wachen Blick für die Schattenseiten der Moderne, vermeidet dabei aber die allzu große Reserviertheit gegenüber Anthropologie, Ästhetik (...) und Mythos, wie sie im Umfeld der Kritischen Theorie häufig anzutreffen ist. Camus’ tragisches Denken, das an der mediterranen Mythologie – unter anderem am griechischen Nemesis-Mythos – geschult ist, erörtert die natürlichen Grenzen, die nicht verletzt werden dürfen, von modernen politischen Heilslehren aber in maßloser und folglich verhängnisvoller Weise überschritten werden. (shrink)

Two major twentieth century philosophers, of East and West, for whom the nothing is a significant concept are Nishida Kitarō and Martin Heidegger. Nishida’s basic concept is the absolute nothing upon which the being of all is predicated. Heidegger, on the other hand, thematizes the nothing as the ulterior aspect of being. Both are responding to Western metaphysics that tends to substantialize being and dichotomize the real. Ironically, however, while Nishida regarded Heidegger as still trapped within the confines of Western (...) metaphysics with its tendency to objectify, Heidegger’s impression of Nishida was that he is too Western, that is, metaphysical. Yet neither was too familiar with the other’s philosophical work as a whole. I thus compare and assess Nishida’s and Heidegger’s discussions of the nothing in their attempts to undermine traditional metaphysics while examining lingering assumptions about the Nishida–Heidegger relationship. Neither Nishida nor Heidegger means by “nothing” a literal nothing, but rather that which permits beings in their relative determinacy to be what they are and wherein or whereby we find ourselves always already in our comportment to beings. Nishida characterizes this as a place that negates itself to give rise to, or make room for, beings. For Heidegger, being as an event that clears room for beings, releasing each into its own, is not a being, hence nothing. We may also contrast them on the basis of the language they employ in discussing the nothing. Yet each seemed to have had an intuitive grasp of an un/ground, foundational to experience and being. And in fact their paths cross in their respective critiques of Western substantialism, where they offer as an alterantive to that substantialist ontology, in different ways, what I call anontology. (shrink)

It is argued that Heidegger should be seen as something of a Kantian Idealist. Like Kant, Heidegger distinguishes two standpoints (transcendental and empirical) which we can occupy when we ask the question whether natural things depend on us. He agrees with Kant that from the empirical or human standpoint we are justified in saying that natural things do not depend on us. But in contrast with Kant, Heidegger argues that from the transcendental standpoint we can say neither that natural things (...) do depend on us, nor that they do not. His reasons for saying this, however, represent an attempt to rework both Kant's temporal idealism and his temporal interpretation of the concept of an object (which shows up in Heidegger as a temporal interpretation of being). Heidegger suggests that Kant was led astray into a transcendental idealism about natural entities, because he did not understand the implications of transcendental idealism about being. (shrink)

With the consideration of some issues in contemporary philosophy, this thesis attempts to analyze being, thinking and language as philosophical subjects, and clear up the multiple meanings for each of them. It will also inquire the traditional methods in both Chinese and Western philosophy, and those in contemporary thinking. Finally, it puts forward a theory of "the critique without principles". The thesis aims to explore a new way to solve the problems of contemporary philosophy by changing its subjects and methods.

In their strife for designing a moral system where everyone is given equal consideration, cosmopolitan theorists have merely tolerated partiality as a necessary evil (insofar it means that we give priority to our kin opposite the distant needy). As a result, the cosmopolitan ideal has long departed from our moral psychologies and our social realities. Here I put forward partial cosmopolitanism as an alternative to save that obstacle. Instead of demanding impartial universal action, it requires from us that we are (...) equally responsive in all the relationships we stand in. That goes from the local to the cosmopolitan sphere, since I defend that we are related with strangers as co-members of the global community. Thus, partiality not only is accommodated by cosmopolitanism, but actually supports it: only by having meaningful personal relationships we become able to care for distant strangers. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. So far, philosophy (...) has been rehearsing our thoughts, our human-internal world, a grand painting of the outer world, how we comprehend subjectively our experience, worked up by the logos machine, but now we seek a wider horizon, how humans understand the world thanks to Darwinian evolution to adapt in response to the metaphysical gap, the chasm between the human animal and its environment, shaping the organism so it can deal with its variable world. This new horizon embraces global context coded in neural structures that support the noumenal cosmos, our inner mental world, for us as denizens of the outer environment. Kant’s inner and outer senses are fundamental ingredients of scientific philosophy. Several sections devoted to Heidegger, his lizard debunked, but his version of the metaphysical gap & his doctrine of the logos praised. Rorty and others of the behaviorist school discussed also. (shrink)

In this article, the Heidegger and Derrida controversy about the nature of questioning is revisited in order to rehabilitate questioning as an essential characteristic of contemporary philosophy. After exploring Heidegger's characterization of philosophy as questioning and Derrida's criticism of the primacy of questioning, we will evaluate Derrida's criticism and articulate three characteristics of Heidegger's concept of questioning. After our exploration of Heidegger's concept of questioning, we critically evaluate Heidegger's later rejection of questioning. With this, we not only contribute to the (...) discussion about why Heidegger rejected questioning in his later thought and whether this rejection is legitimized, but also to the rehabilitation of questioning in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Guided by key insights of the four great philosophers mentioned in the title, here, in review of and expanding on our earlier work (Burchard, 2005, 2011), we present an exposition of the role played by language, & in the broader sense, λογοζ, the Logos, in how the CNS, the brain, is running the human being. Evolution by neural Darwinism has been forcing the linguistic nature of mind, enabling it to overcome & exploit the cognitive gap between an animal and its (...) world by recognizing environmental structures. Our work was greatly influenced by Heidegger’s lecture notes on metaphysics (Heidegger, 1935). We found agreement with recent progress in neuroscience, but also mathematical foundations of language theory, equating Logos with the mathematical concept of structure. The mystery of perception across the gap is analyzed as radiation and molecules impinging on sensory neurons that carry linguistic information about gross environmental structures, and only remotely about the physical reality of elementary particles. The most important logical brain function is Ego or Self, guiding the workings of the brain as a logos machine. Ego or Self operates from neurons in frontopolar cortex with global receptive fields. The logos machine can function only by availing itself of global context, its internally stored noumenal cosmos NK, and the categorical-conceptual apparatus CCA, updated continually through the neural default mode network (Raichle, 2005). In the Transcendental Deduction, Immanuel Kant discovered that Ego or Self is responsible for conscious control in perception relying on concepts & categories for a fitting percept to be incorporated intoNK. The entire CNS runs as a “movie-in-the-brain” (Parvizi & Damasio, 2001), at peak speed processing simultaneously in a series of cortical centers a stack of up to twelve frames in gamma rhythm of 25 ms intervals. We equate global context, or NK, with our human world, Heidegger’s Dasein being-in-the-world, and are able to demonstrate that the great philosopher in EM parallels neuro-science concerning the human mind. (shrink)

According to Jacques Derrida, there is a différance – his infamous mis-spelling of the French différence – that ‘has no name in our language’ (‘Différance’, in Margins of Philosophy); its name is not différance, and it is not just nameless but ‘unnameable’. ‘The a of différance’, he also tells us, ‘remains silent, secret and discreet as a tomb’. My essay, which is haunted throughout by Derrida, seeks to address the following question: if the a of différance is like a tomb, (...) then who or what died? To Kzomil. (shrink)

Outside Ethics brings together some of the most important and provocative works by one of the most creative philosophers writing today. Seeking to expand the scope of contemporary moral and political philosophy, Raymond Geuss here presents essays bound by a shared skepticism about a particular way of thinking about what is important in human life--a way of thinking that, in his view, is characteristic of contemporary Western societies and isolates three broad categories of things as important: subjective individual preferences, knowledge, (...) and restrictions on actions that affect other people. He sets these categories in a wider context and explores various human phenomena--including poetry, art, religion, and certain kinds of history and social criticism--that do not fit easily into these categories. As its title suggests, this book seeks a place outside conventional ethics.Following a brief introduction, Geuss sets out his main concerns with a focus on ethics and politics. He then expands these themes by discussing freedom, virtue, the good life, and happiness. Next he examines Theodor Adorno's views on the relation between suffering and knowledge, the nature of religion, and the role of history in giving us critical distances from existing identities. From here he moves to aesthetic concerns. The volume closes by looking at what it is for a human life to have "gaps"--to be incomplete, radically unsatisfactory, or a failure. (shrink)

I offer a revised interpretation of Heidegger's ontological idealism, his thesis that being, but not entities, depends on Dasein ? as well as its relationship to Kant's transcendental idealism. I build from my earlier efforts on this topic by modifying them and defending my basic line of interpretation against criticisms advanced by Cerbone, Philipse, and Carman. In essence, my reading of Heidegger goes like this: what it means to say that "being" depends on Dasein is that the criteria and standards (...) that determine what it is to be, and hence whether an item (or anything at all) is, are conceptually interwoven with, and hence conceptually dependent upon, a structure that could not obtain without Dasein (namely, time). For this reason, to ask whether entities (e.g., nature) would exist, even if we (Dasein) did not, is either to ask an empirical question with an obvious negative answer (viz., According to our best current theories, does everything depend causally upon us?), or to ask a meaningless question with no answer (viz., If we suspend or discount the standards and criteria that determine whether anything is, does anything exist?). In short, Heidegger is an empirical realist, but neither a transcendental idealist nor realist. (shrink)

With the help of the natural history of “zero,” and the use of “zero” as a starting point, one may consider two types of metaphysics. On the one hand, the epistemological metaphysics, based on the perceptual/rational dichotomy, is related to the zero as a vacancy between numbers. On the other hand, the genetic metaphysics, based on the dichotomy of source-evolution (or origin and derivate), has much to do with the zero as a number between negative and positive numbers. In this (...) respect, zero represents the horizon of metaphysics: we can forever approach it, but we cannot ultimately arrive at it. Though serving as the point of convergence and divergence for all relationships, zero has no definable content of its own. Such is the essence of zero, and of metaphysics as well. (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)

Ṣadrā presents the usefulness of the faculties of perception governed by the intellect as a fitting paradigm for understanding man’s being in the world in relation to the divine purpose and source of this being. Perception raises challenging questions which, while peripheral to philosophy proper, have contributed to the debate on knowing and being. Dating back to the Presocratics, this debate came to a head in Islamicate civilization, where perception played a paradigmatic role that also put civilization, on a human (...) scale, at the forefront of the philosophical enterprise. Contemporary historians of thought obscure this role when their interpretations of past traditions are too heavily colored by the positivist conception of perception. (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)

Straipsnyje analizuojamas unheimlich fenomenas Heideggerio filosofijoje, keliamas klausimas tiek apie patį šį fenomeną, jo įvairius aspektus, svarstoma, kokiu būdu šis fenomenas pasirodo. Pirmoje straipsnio dalyje analizuojama, kaip šis slėpiningumas, svetimybė gali būti suprasta Būties ir laiko kontekste. Tai atliekama aptariant Dasein būtį pasaulyje – pamatinę baimės nuotaiką ir sąžinės fenomeną. Antroje straipsnio dalyje žmogaus slėpiningumas analizuojamas taikant Antigonės mito heideggerišką interpretaciją 1935 ir 1942-ųjų metų Heideggerio tekstuose.

Does the recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks require a re-evaluation of his thought? In the present text we will deal with this question and reach the conclusion that a change of theoretical perspective on Heidegger’s work is indeed justified. The franker and less cautious style of the Black Notebooks puts in the foreground stances that were already known, but were previously relegated to the background: it becomes possible thereby to establish that Heidegger’s philosophical views host a significant lot of (...) unwarranted prejudices, which are incorporated in his picture of the ‘history of being’. We argue that in his process of radical questioning Heidegger progressively drops all available rational methods and epistemic criteria, and that this paves the way to the unwitting reception of personal prejudices in his theoretical frame: Heidegger knowingly abandons all the theoretical instruments that could enable him to discriminate between deeply felt prejudices and proper philosophical intuitions. We conclude our analysis by proposing some criticisms that should be acceptable also to scholars sympathetic with Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s vindication of an ‘erratic’ way of thinking, where the journey is more qualifying than the result, turns out to be incompatible with the assertiveness of the many unjustified claims disseminated across the Black Notebooks. Moreover, Heidegger wants to show the narrowness of an overwhelmingly dialectical and argumentative attitude, while his late style of thinking unwittingly discredits an alternative philosophical style, that widely appeals to a ‘principle of charity’ in the collaboration between author and reader. (shrink)

In times of the Anthropocene, we are in need of philosophical anthropology, revisiting the question concerning the human condition. I suggest rethinking what one may call ‘human transcendence’ in terms of a responsivist paradigm. Drawing on Heidegger and Plessner, the idea is that we should think of the eccentric or ecstatic position of the human in terms of something we undergo, instead of it being a human capability or something we do. It is a gift, emplacing us to the time-space (...) of responsive embodied existence. The paper will follow this agenda in five steps. Having introduced what I take to be the challenge for a timely ontology, I will unfold the problem entailed in the very idea of philosophical anthropology according to Heidegger. I then focus on Heidegger’s (hidden) rapprochement to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropology, recalling Plessner’s analysis of laughter as a bodily expression displaying the ‘eccentric positionality’ of the human. I suggest rephrasing this kind of transcendence in a responsivist paradigm: Humans are responsive beings. (shrink)

“Thing” and “nothing” are metaphysical themes of thinking for major philosophers both in the West and in East Asia, such as Heidegger, Kant, and Laozi 老子. In light of a discussion of Heidegger’s understanding of thing-ing and no-thing and of his critical interpretation of Kant on the same issue, I shall in this essay reconstruct a Laozian theory of thing and nothing. My conclusion is that thing and nothing are not two “things,” as often assumed by an epistemological approach, but (...) ontologically one thing cut by an absolute limit set up by human rationality which is contained either in our consciousness or in our languages. (shrink)

During the past two centuries, and in particular during the inter-war period, American ways of living and of thinking have become one principal object of European reflections on modernity. This essay explores some of the ways in which the rejection or affirmation of modernity in Europe has been channelled through observations on America. It is argued that the variety of European ways of looking at America also demonstrates the range of forms available to social theory for thinking the social world (...) under conditions of modernity and that this European debate provided some seeds for the current discussion about `multiple modernities'. (shrink)

A partir de uma explanação inicial sobre o significado e os limites da ontologia fundamental de Martin Heidegger, este ensaio procura investigar a possibilidade de uma ontologia não-antropogenética por meio do conceito problemático de extramundanidade. Essa investigação toma como fio condutor a ideia do “perspectivismo cosmológico”, elaborada por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro através de uma interpretação filosófico-antropológica do pensamento ameríndio. Lida como correlato positivo da extramundanidade, a noção perspectivística de sobrenatureza é contrastada com o conceito existencial de ser para confirmação (...) e problematização de seu caráter antropogenético. O objetivo principal do ensaio consiste em desvelar, apoiado radicalmente em outro pensamento, o sentido “cosmopolítico” do discurso sobre o ser, aqui representado pela filosofia de Heidegger. (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.

El artículo expone y analiza la crítica de Heidegger al conceptismo de la metafísica clásica y a su teoría de la abstracción, que se fundarían según el pensador alemán en el desgaste del lenguaje y el uso impropio que de él se hace en la metafísica clásica, tergiversando y ocultando el auténtico sentido del pensamiento y del ser en lo genuinamente griego. Sobre esta base Heidegger postula la insuficiencia del concepto y de lo lógico a la vez que la necesidad (...) de un método hermenéutico. El artículo señala los puntos de coincidencia de esta perspectiva con la crítica zubiriana al idealismo y al conceptismo. Teniendo en cuenta todo ello, se trata de mostrar, no obstante, que son posibles conceptos descriptivos capaces de adecuarse a lo real, lo que supone en la realidad misma un momento sustancial de presencia de una cierta permanencia. Se hace una exposición y análisis de la magnífica crítica de Zubiri a la teoría clásica de la abstracción intentando conciliarla, empero, con la validez de los conceptos descriptivos y con momentos universales de la realidad. La tesis de fondo es que la filosofía primera no puede reducirse a hermenéutica. (shrink)

El artículo expone la crítica de Heidegger a la idea del pacto social de Rousseau, mostrando cómo ella conduce al pensador alemán a la afirmación de la facticidad por encima de la universalidad. Esta derivación explica por qué Heidegger cayó en el nacionalismo, y por qué simpatizó con el nazismo, alejándose con ello de los propósitos universalistas que conlleva toda filosofía. This article puts forward Heidegger's criticism of Rousseau's idea of the Social Contract and shows how it leads the German (...) thinker to affirm prevalence of facticity over universalism. This drift helps to explain why Heidegger fell into nationalism and why he sympathised with Nazi politics, moving away from the universalist purposes entailed by every philosophy. (shrink)

Scotus’ theory of univocity is described: his exact definition of univocity and his view of transcendental concepts that are ‘simply simple’. These concepts are said to be univocally applied to God and creatures. Next, we describe Scotus’ views on univocity in ‘being’ and the precise meaning of the infinite and finite ‘mode’ of being. Finally, we apply these results to work of Heidegger and Marion. It appears that they had an insufficient grasp of the intricacies of Scotus’ theory of univocity (...) and that Marion’s religious phenomenology could have benefitted from these scotistic tools. (shrink)

En este articulo analizamos el fenómeno del Ereignis en la obra de Heidegger posterior a la Kehre para confrontar su origen conflictivo. Para esto, presentamos la influencia de su lectura del πόλεµοç de Heráclito y una interpretación de la estructura y sus dimensiones gracias a la tensión de las partes que se mantienen en continua oscilación por la naturaleza abismal de la donación. Asimismo, revisamos el camino que presentan los ensambles del fenómeno a la luz de su obra Beiträge zur (...) Philosophie. De esto modo, comprenderemos un poco más el sentido complejo de este fenómeno y su aporte al problema de la diferencia. In this paper we analyze the phenomenon of Ereignis in Heidegger's work after the Kehre, in order to question his conflicting origin. To do this, we show the influence of his reading of Heraclitus' πόλεµοç as well as an interpretation of the structure and its dimensions, thanks to the tension between the parts kept in continuous oscillation due to the abysmal nature of donation. We also revised the path shown by the gatherings of the phenomenon, in the light of his work Beiträge zur Philosophie. This way, we may get greater insights into the complex sense of this phenomenon and its contribution to the issue of difference. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay tracks Heidegger’s thought from 1919 forwards to the decisive years of his political engagement, on behalf of the Nazi movement. Part 1 tracks how the question concerning Being devolves into the implicitly identitarian question of who “we” are. Part 2 addresses the “existential” of Befindlichkeit which Heidegger in Sein und Zeit positions as prior to understanding, and examines his esoteric mode of writing as the means to cultivate a prerational Stimmung. Part 3 examines Heidegger’s response to his 1929–1930 (...) questions of “What mood must we awaken?... Who are we, then?” in the decisive years of the Gleichchaltung, showing how Heidegger’s thinking elevates to ontological primacy a discriminatory and identitarian decision concerning who “we” are as the German volk. Part 4 examines in this light the Heideggerian “end of philosophy” in what the Black Notebooks talks of in terms of a “metapolitics ‘of’ the historical people”. (shrink)

Co jest większe, bycie czy nic? Anzelm dowodzi istnienia Boga przy pomocy nihil. Bóg jako to, od czego nic większego nie może zostać pomyślane przez skończony umysł. Właściwe dla Anzelma logiczne – i być może mistyczne – użycie słowa „nic” domaga się porównania z negatywną ontologią Heideggera i jej recepcją w ramach tzw. Szkoły z Kioto założonej przez Nishidę. Czyż jednak pustka buddyzmu zen nie odsyła nas do – niewypowiedzianej – boskiej obecności?