En este artículo me interesa abordar el carácter terapéutico de la filosofía socrática según los diálogos aporéticos de Platón. Considero que la terapia de Sócrates es un cuidado de sí mismo cuyo ejercicio se lleva a cabo con los otros de manera dialéctica, por lo cual la naturaleza de sí mismo no es nunca resultado de una reflexión aislada, sino una búsqueda constante a través del diálogo. Para ello es necesario aclarar el sentido de la relación que establece el diálogo (...) socrático, la estructura de la pregunta terapéutica y el objetivo que motiva la terapia socrática. (shrink)

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein consider the possibility of a philosophical inquiry of an absolutely universal scope—an inquiry into the being of all beings, in Heidegger’s case, and into the logical form of everything that can be meaningfully said, in Wittgenstein’s. Moreover, they both raise the worry that the theoretical language by means of which we speak of particular beings and assert particular facts is not suited to this task. And yet their own philosophical work seems to include many assertions of (...) ordinary, theoretical language. Are they being inconsistent? Or are they hoping to use theoretical language in a way that conveys what cannot be said in that language? Much of the scholarship on each of these thinkers takes the form of one of the two horns of this dilemma. In the context of Wittgenstein scholarship, however, a third alternative has been proposed: the Resolute Reading of the Tractatus. My aim is to establish the availability of a similar solution to Heidegger’s predicament. It will emerge that Heidegger rejects the possibility of a theoretical account of being and pursues a project of a radically different sort, whose goal is to bring about a transformation of our fundamental relation to being. (shrink)

In § 35 of Sein und Zeit Heidegger’s denunciation of Gerede, idle talk, is confident and scathing. It sounds so sinister and threatening. What could Heidegger be talking about? One could cite numerous fictional characters (e.g., Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Skimpole, Podsnap – all in Dickens), characters whose speech is very nearly an idiolect of bad faith. And yet there is something so fascinating and creative in their speech, an exuberance in their dissimulation, that one wouldn’t want to miss them. Could (...) idle talk in Heidegger’s sense contribute to the theoretization of Bakhtin's idea of the dialogic and heteroglossia and to the notion of discours as it has been developed by Benveniste, Barthes, and Genette? In prose fiction language is valorized (often implicitly) in terms of meaning/nonsense, serious/non-serious, full/empty. When in fiction language that is deemed low, formulaic, or “empty”-- gossip, chatter, prattle, idiotismes – comes to the fore the narrative elements falters, “nothing much” is said. But a kind of speech as act and process is foregrounded. It is this kind of inadvertence in language, its “idling” state, that Gerede points to. (shrink)

It can be tempting to think of affect as a matter of the present moment – a reaction, a feeling, an experience or engagement that unfolds right now. This paper will make the case that affect is better thought of as not only temporally extended but as saturated with temporality, especially with the past. In and through affectivity, concrete, ongoing history continues to weigh on present comportment. In order to spell this out, I sketch a Heidegger-inspired perspective. It revolves around (...) two claims. The first is that we should understand what Heidegger calls 'Befindlichkeit' (findingness) as radical situatedness. Affectivity is a matter of 'finding oneself' constellated – thrown – into the world in ways that outrun what an individual or collective might grasp and process. The second claim is that the temporal dimension, as a relatedness to the past, takes precedence in affect's situatedness. Key to affect is the way in which the past continues to hold sway over present comportment, collectively and individually. In order to articulate this perspective, it is important to overcome the idea that affect must be understood mainly in terms of feeling or experiential states of other kinds. Better suited to grasp the idea of findingness is the concept of 'disclosive posture', as proposed by Katherine Withy. I suggest that this notion should be put at the fore of a phenomenological approach to situated affectivity. (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 hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

Based on critical readings of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the paper offers a phenomenological study of the ontology of well-being that transcends the opposition between subjective and objective being. By interpreting the Heideggerian notion of Befindlichkeit as the fundamental way in which humans find themselves in the world, being affected by and faced with their own existence, the paper opens a way to understanding well-being that locates the possibility of elevating one’s own being not inside (...) or outside the I but in the affective bond to others called friendship. Aristotle’s reflections on philia play a crucial role in developing this understanding of well-being, according to which humans find themselves well by sharing joy with each other and making a vital contribution to the realization of their own possibilities. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger has retrospectively characterized his philosophy as “phenomenology of the invisible”. This paradoxical formula suggests that the aim of his thinking was to examine the origin of the phenomena. Furthermore, Heidegger has also stated that his philosophy is ultimately motivated by a theological interest, namely the question of God’s absence. Following the guiding thread of those remarks, this essay analyzes the essential traits of Heidegger’s thought by interpreting them as an attempt to develop a phenomenology of the invisible. Heidegger’s (...) attitude towards physics and metaphysics, his theory of truth, his reading of Aristotle, his concept of Dasein, his understanding of nothingness are all situated within the problematic context of the relation between the invisible and the revealed. Heidegger’s thought is thereby posited at the point of intersection of phenomenology, ontology, and theology. (shrink)

Esta investigación tiene por objetivo indagar el fenómeno de la huida (φυγή, fuga) tal como aparece en el libro IX, capítulo 4 de la Ética Nicomáquea de Aristóteles. La finalidad temática principal estriba en sacar a la luz que tanto su fundamentación teorética última, así como también su fundamento intrínseco radican en el principio metafísico del acto y potencia. Sobre la base de este principio metafísico mostramos que el “sí mismo” del cual el vicioso vive dividido en la huida consiste (...) en el entendimiento recto actual, revelándose este como el correlato preciso ante el cual huye el vicioso. Esta interpretación recupera la relevancia sistemática de la huida en el contexto de la amistad, ya que la huida hace visible concretamente la relación “amical” que el vicioso mantiene con sus prójimos, a quienes comprende tácitamente como medios-de-huida. (shrink)

In the early work of Martin Heidegger, I argue, we can confect a particular and particularly useful conception of rhetoric as a capacity to articulate situatedness by means, in part, of a more precise vocabulary for what I call the phenomena of everydayness. One aspect of this claim is that rhetoric is a diagnostic of established positions. Practicing what I preach, my first task here is to articulate as synoptically as possible the established positions on the topic at hand. In (...) the most general terms, that topic is “Heidegger and rhetoric.” We can identify eight stances in the literature. I articulate them in order of determinateness, as a series of specifications. First, before the publication in recent... (shrink)

O artigo discute conceitos da filosofia prática de Aristóteles e sua apropriação por Heidegger no período dos anos 1920. Para isso, o autor explora a interpretação heideggeriana do conceito de totalidade e sua relação com o particular, a fim de caracterizar a situação concreta como o solo hermenêutico das relações de compreensão. Investiga-se a conexão interna dos conceitos que se referem à praxis em Aristóteles, destacando-se a importância da phronesis na sua retomada ontológica por Heidegger. O artigo encerra indicando as (...) estratégias interpretativas de alguns intérpretes recentes da recepção heideggeriana de Aristóteles. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo se enfoca en la revisión de la Retórica de Aristóteles que Martin Heidegger ofreció durante el semestre de verano de 1924. Mi objetivo es destacar algunos aspectos de esa revisión que, a pesar de no haber repercutido mucho en el horizonte de la pregunta por el ser, contribuyen al redescubrimiento y revalorización del papel de la retórica no sólo para el planteamiento heideggeriano, sino en el ámbito filosófico contemporáneo en general. En concreto, se trata de la caracterización (...) de la retórica como hermenéutica, como posibilidad, como escucha y, sobre todo, como la primera investigación acerca del entendido λόγος como lenguaje. El artículo busca destacar aspectos que no enfatizan otras interpretaciones en torno a las contribuciones de Heidegger respecto del llamado “giro retórico”.This article focuses on the revision of Aristotle’s Rhetoric by Martin Heidegger during the summer semester of 1924. My objective is to highlight some aspects of this revision which, despite not having had a great repercussion on the horizon of the question of being, contribute to the rediscovery and revaluation of the role that rhetoric has played not only within the Heideggerian approach, but also in contemporary philosophy in general. Specifically, I comment on the characterization of rhetoric as hermeneutics, as possibility, as listening and, above all, as the first research on λόγος understood as language. I seek to highlight aspects not emphasized in other interpretations of Heidegger’s specific contributions to so-called “rhetorical turn”. (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)

El artículo analiza los rendimientos filosóficos del hecho de que el significado sea _por convención_ en Aristóteles. En el _kata syntheken_ quizá podrían resultar amalgamadas algunas de las apreciaciones que Heidegger entiende por facticidad. La facticidad a la que la filosofía no puede por menos de atender y que el de Messkirch vio ya anticipada por Aristóteles no sólo en su filosofía práctica sino también en cómo el Estagirita asumió el papel capital de la comunidad política en la determinación de (...) lo que sea todo _semainein_. (shrink)

The paper asks about the difficulty of reading Schelling's work today given the historical biases that dominate contemporary philosophical inquiry. But if we cannot succeed as the readers Schelling himself appears to be looking for, this does not already have to mean that his work cannot speak to our time. Such a possibility, however, presupposes that we consider Schelling's work as it is inseparably connected to a critique of the modern project and as it points thereby to the monstrous discord (...) that defines human philosophical discourse as such. In particular, the paper considers the Kantian opposition between faith and knowledge and claims that this opposition itself appears to establish a kind of limit for philosophical inquiry today. In this context, some reflections are offered on the history of European nihilism and the death of God. The paper concludes by giving several indications of how Schelling's thought promises to subvert this opposition and this limit. (shrink)

In my comments on Vardoulakis’s paper, I try to challenge the overall thrust of Vardoulakis’s argument, that Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics rests on a fundamental mistake, an inability to recognize the instrumentality, or the relation between means and ends, that is fundamental to the concept of phronēsis. Against Vardoulakis’s supposition that Heidegger for his own part is in search of a conception of action without ends, I suggest that a major aim of Heidegger’s early work is to clarify the (...) teleological structure of human action, with particular focus on the end or telos of action. Vardoulakis seems to think that Heidegger’s later critique of instrumental reason is in place already in the early work, but this is a view that I cannot share. Moreover, I believe that Vardoulakis’s own interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of action is problematic, and in particular the way he conceives of the difference between the end of action and that of production: namely, as a distinction between an instrumental, although provisional end on the one hand, and a causal or final end on the other. I devote the greater part of my comments to a critique of this distinction, such as it is used by Vardoulakis, and also to developing an alternative interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of action in a broader sense, which I hope can also contribute to making Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s ethics seem more plausible than it does on Vardoulakis’s account. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone exponer el fenómeno del existir humano, denominado por Heidegger “Dasein”, en íntima relación con el problema de la constitución de la realidad. Para ello, se entenderá lo real como aquella multiplicidad de entes con los que la vida se confronta diariamente. En este sentido, se plantea que esta multiplicidad no pertenece a lo percibido, sino que deviene más bien de la estructura de la percepción sensible. Mediante advertencias de Heidegger en torno a la filosofía kantiana y (...) a través del uso de ejemplos propios, se realzarán los momentos trascendentales de la sensibilidad: el espacio y el tiempo, hasta llegar al cuidado como ser del Dasein. Así, comprendiendo al cuidado en su sentido temporal, advertiremos que lo real se origina desde el futuro perteneciente al existir mismo. Con lo anterior, el estudio expondrá cómo es que el “Dasein” puede ser entendido como aperturidad o de-velamiento de nuestra realidad. (shrink)

El paradigma hermenéutico ha abierto un horizonte amplio a la hora de interpretar y comprender textos, pero ha cerrado las posibilidades existenciales que ya en Ser y tiempo abriera Heidegger. Lo que se intenta aquí es señalar esos presupuestos ontológico-existenciales que indicara acertadamente el filósofo alemán en su momento. El avance que se presenta hace parte del proyecto de investigación “Ontología en América Latina” que lidera el Grupo de Investigación Tlamatinime. La primera parte tiene como objetivo fijar cuatro lineamientos que (...) estructuran la propuesta de una hermenéutica existencial: 1. La disposición afectiva como afectación y responsabilidad. 2. El comprender afectivo. 3. El comprender como interpretación. 4. El sentido. La segunda parte, consiste en presentar lo que se vislumbra por hermenéutica existencial y cuál sería su propósito. (shrink)

This article discusses the tension between social relationality and self-relationality central to Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein and the possible ways of reconciling this tension. Arguing that this is a tension between communicability and existential commitments, the article poses the question: How are existential commitments responsive to communication? After problematizing the quasi-Kantian and communitarian ways of settling the tension, the article uses Heidegger’s early reading of Aristotle to develop a third hermeneutic model of ethical relationality according to which existential commitments are (...) shareable in communication, since ethos – the existential posture towards the good – arises out of pathos that exposes Dasein to coexistence. The account of ethical relationality found in Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle thus takes the world to be a shared and dynamic ontological condition and emphasize that the world constitutes selfhood in a way that is constantly at stake in ethical communication. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende realizar uma breve exposição acerca da crítica de Levinas à tradição filosófica até então vigente, cujos espectros, desdobramentos e necessidades giram ao redor e se sustém no alicerce da Razão ou do ser. Tal postura pode ser observada mesmo no início da filosofia ocidental, aponta Levinas, com Sócrates e a maiêutica, ou mais ainda, com os filósofos da physis e sua busca por um arché, o princípio regulador de todas as coisas. Haveria uma espécie de relação com (...) o conhecimento e o intuito “controlar” e ocultar nossas próprias fraquezas perante o desconhecido. Levinas rompe com a tradição, buscando colocar o humano no cerne da questão, bem como a investigação acerca da pulsão anterior à toda tematização, oriunda da alteridade radical. (shrink)

Crucial in Girard's Mimetic Theory is the notion of mimetic desire, viewed as appropriative mimicry, the main source of aggressiveness and violence characterizing our species. The intrinsic value of the objects of our desire is not as relevant as the fact that the very same objects are the targets of others' desire. One could in principle object against such apparently negative and one-sided view of mankind, in general, and of mimesis, in particular. However, such argument would misrepresent Girard's thought. Girard (...) himself acknowledged that mimetic desire is also good in itself, because is at the basis of love, and even more importantly because it's the opening out of oneself. Starting from the notion of desire as openness to others I will discuss from a neuroscientific perspective the implications for social cognition of mimesis against the background of Girard's Mimetic Theory, an ideal starting framework to foster a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human intersubjectivity. It will be posited that a different, not mutually exclusive, account of mimesis leads to social identification henceforth to sociality. Mimesis is neither good or bad, but has the potentials to lead not only to mimetic violence but also to the most creative aspects of human cognition. Results of empirical research in neuroscience and developmental psychology show that such account of mimesis finds solid supporting evidence. It will be concluded that a thorough and biologically plausible account of human intersubjectivity requires the integration of both sides of mimesis. (shrink)

Three metaphors appear to guide contemporary thinking about organ transplantation. Although the gift is the sanctioned metaphor for donating organs, the underlying perspective from the side of the state, authorities and the medical establishment often seems to be that the body shall rather be understood as a resource . The acute scarcity of organs, which generates a desperate demand in relation to a group of potential suppliers who are desperate to an equal extent, leads easily to the gift’s becoming, in (...) reality, not only a resource, but also a commodity . In this paper, the claim is made that a successful explication of the gift metaphor in the case of organ transplantation and a complementary defence of the ethical primacy of the giving of organs need to be grounded in a philosophical anthropology which considers the implications of embodiment in a different and more substantial way than is generally the case in contemporary bioethics. I show that Heidegger’s phenomenology offers such an alternative, with the help of which we can understand why body parts could and, indeed, under certain circumstances, should be given to others in need, but yet are neither resources nor properties to be sold. The phenomenological exploration in question is tied to fundamental questions about what kind of relationship we have to our own bodies, as well as about what kind of relationship we have to each other as human beings sharing the same being-in-the-world as embodied creatures. (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)

This paper returns to one of Heidegger’s pivotal references to ethics – his remarks in the “Letter on Humanism” – and attempts to follow up on a line of thinking in those remarks that Heidegger himself did not expand upon, namely, the link between ethics and Sophoclean tragedy. Reading Heidegger’s analysis of Heraclitus’s Fragment 119 on ἤθος with reference to Sophoclean tragedy and in conjunction with Heidegger’s thinking and his comments elsewhere on ethics and tragedy, the paper seeks to clarify (...) how the thinking of being is, as Heidegger called it, an “original ethics” and what that means for ethical thinking following Heidegger. (shrink)

This article studies an aspect of the relation between emotions and ethics that is usually neglected in the recent debate on moral emotions. By focusing on the contributions of common or everyday emotions to the development of moral behaviours and attitudes, the debate loses sight of the emotional side of the ethical attitude and the way it involves different, specifically ethical emotions. In contrast, such emotions play an important role in Aristotle’s and Heidegger’s thought. As will be shown, both authors (...) identify emotions that are intrinsically tied to ethics in a broad sense and are structurally different from everyday emotions. Moreover, both characterize the two kinds of emotion in a similar fashion: whereas everyday emotions involve a limited form of activity and refer to a more immediate objective domain, the properly ethical emotions result from a superior form of activity and open up to a vaster domain or even to the entire reality, thus having a metaphysical character. The study of this distinction and what it involves will allow for a better understanding not only of emotions in general, but also of the emotional dimension of ethical life. (shrink)

El presente artículo propone indagar el problema de nuestra ubicación espacial en términos existenciales. Para ello atenderemos a las consideraciones del espacio planteadas en la analítica del Dasein de Martin Heidegger, destacando un carácter de concernimiento según el cual el existir se despliega en cuanto relación ocupada con el mundo. Atendiendo a las descripciones de Oskar Becker, se planteará la pregunta si acaso una inclusión del fenómeno del cuerpo puede contribuir a una comprensión de nuestro particular «hallarnos en un lugar». (...) Una respuesta será esbozada realizando una caracterización de las cualidades sensibles en términos de un exhortativo «hablar de ellas mismas» y planteando nuestro ser cuerpo como posibilidad de escuchar la exhortación de las cosas singulares. Así, estableciendo una íntima unidad entre ubicación espacial, exhortación de las cualidades sensibles y el cuerpo como posibilidad de dejarse vivir en ellas, intentaremos ir más allá de los índices heideggerianos para proponer una comprensión concreta de nuestra posibilidad existencial de ocupar espacios. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to a philosophy of technics by proposing an answer to the following question: what is the nature of the human body as an element of technical systems? The argument focuses on an examination of the phenomenon of bodily technics. This examination is guided by the conviction that Pierre Bourdieu's social theory can be read as contributing significantly to an answer to the above question. However, since Bourdieu's project is not directly aimed at (...) enhancing our understanding of the technicity of the human body, a reading of Marcel Mauss's seminal essay on bodily technics is also discussed to set the stage for an examination of the technicity of the body and to justify the manner in which Bourdieu's theory is read here. Through a careful study of the key notions of habitus, field, practice, time and rule, Bourdieu's social theory is systematically presented and explored for its contribution to an understanding of the question raised in this article. In conclusion, a number of remarks are made on how the relation between Mauss and Bourdieu is to be understood and on the argumentative strength of Bourdieu's work. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 13-29, March 2012.

Este artículo puede ser considerado como un comentario de Física, I. En él se expone, por lo tanto, una interpretación de la investigación mediante la que Aristóteles intenta responder a la pregunta acerca de cuántas y cuáles son las archaí del saber relativo a la physis. A través de un análisis de la crítica aristotélica de las respuestas dadas a esa pregunta por los filósofos precedentes, buscamos además aclarar y facilitar la comprensión del desarrollo de dicha interpretación. This article may (...) be considered as a commentary on Physics, I. In it is expounded, therefore, an interpretation of the research by which Aristotle tries to answer the question about how many and which are the archai of the knowledge concerning physis. By an analysis of the Aristotle's criticism of the answers given to this question by the previous philosophers, we also try to clarify and make easier the understanding of that interpretation¿s development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Definition:A French InitiativeNancy S. StrueverRhetoric as TheoryIl y a quelque chose de démesuré et de prématuré à entreprendre une histoire de la rhétorique dans I'Europe moderne(Fumaroli 1999).When in his preface to the Histoire de la rhétorique Marc Fumaroli states that the project itself is overambitious and premature, he proceeds to justify his judgment by listing the complications of rhetorical definition: rhetoric is Protean in nature, and in this (...) it simply matches the fluidity of the phenomena of speech, parole ; it is oxymoronic as the science of the uncertain, trying to ally incertitude of topic with intelligibility of explanation; it intricates theoria and ergon, the concept of parole with an engagement with parole in act. Long a part of early education, it generates grace in adult expression, finesse. It is as well a primary source for reflection on communication phenomena. It is manifest in works of genius, yet, it is democratic in its accessibility; it is perdurable, remarkably persistent through change; and, it recognizes that the sharing and abusing of parole are intimately bound together. Finally rhetoric stimulates, for it may illumine the contemporary "exile" of literature and the arts, an exile that poses for us the issue of, perhaps intractable, cultural decline (Fumaroli 1999, 2–3). [End Page 401]These disparate elements of rhetoric, I would argue, by their very complexity justify rhetoric as mode of inquiry, and prompt our continuing consideration of the investigative protocols of rhetoric as hermeneutic. Roman rhetoric, subdivided into three communicative tasks—docere, delectare, movere —sponsors three investigative tasks: instructing requires command of the strategies of argument; delighting sponsors an ecology of desire, and moving requires a socio-pathology of community assent and dissent. The rhetorical interest in discursive effect, then, sponsors a second-order inquiry, the task of reviewing the basic assumptions of the communicative community: the beliefs, doxa, the shared opinions, endoxa, habits, dispositions. Rhetoric collects assumptions; thus Aristotle's Rhetoric has been characterised as a compendium of the collective wisdom of the polis. Rhetorical topoi, commonplaces, are the rubrics that organize common sense, sensus communis. Rhetoric has the task of understanding the means of asserting, rejecting, altering beliefs, the transfer of theory into practice, dealing with the transformations of idea into ideology.Rhetorical interests, in the Habermasian sense of motives that color knowledge initiatives, can correct careers of inquiry; a shift to a rhetorical investigative focus is pragmatic, to a most distinctive engagement with practice. And thus Martin Heidegger's aphorism: "Rhetoric functions inside politics." Rhetoric is framed, compromised by politics defined in the generous sense of discursive negotiations within the communal domain of beliefs, shared opinions, habits of action, dispositions. Rhetorical inquiry has to identify the beliefs and habits of action of a community in its efforts to preserve and extend its identity, and rhetoric must analyze the discursive negotiations for affirmation and alteration of beliefs vital to the continued existence of the polity.The work of Marc Fumaroli is of intrinsic interest to the historian of rhetoric as an instantiation of rhetorical interests driving an entire career, a practice shaped by rhetorical tasks and habits of action in inquiry; the effect is that of a kind of alchemy, of the transformation, at every turn, of the history of culture into the history of cultural politics. "Cultural politics" does not denote, of course, an exclusive focus on state policy, dirigisme in culture. Rather, we have a combination of a compendious notion of culture as all our inventions, artifices—political, theological, affective, aesthetic—with a generous sense of politics as all our discursive negotiations of differences of public import, a combination that sets a topic that Fumaroli prefers to call a "politics of the spirit" (Fumaroli 1992a, 80–81).1 If we distinguish rhetoric as discipline, oratory as product, eloquence as value, we [End Page 402] see Fumaroli's career is exemplary of a modern initiative that links rhetoric as disciplined inquiry to the politics of value. Thus, he will give us a rhetorical definition of the Académie Française's communal, historical duty to French "eloquence," to a pursuit of a national excellence (Fumaroli 1996a, 304, 1992b, 78). And... (shrink)

The Early Heidegger’s Philosophy of Life: Facticity, Being and Language offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of facticity as it is articulated in connection with the ideas of life and language in the lecture courses from 1919225. The book argues that facticity is both the source of vitality for theory and a source of deception and falsehood and therefore cannot be viewed in either positive or negative terms exclusively, but must instead be viewed as ambiguous. This essay argues that this (...) basic thesis is correct and is supported by drawing a distinction between everydayness and inauthenticity. It is also argued that the analysis of language the book offers can be useful in clearing up misunderstandings of Heidegger’s concept of discourse in Being and Time. (shrink)

It has often been noted that Leo Strauss developed his understanding of political philosophy through a critical engagement with Heidegger. Yet most analyses focus on Strauss’s American works while neglecting his earlier response during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic. The article seeks to overcome this limitation by ‘deconstructing’ Strauss’s American definitions of political philosophy in light of both his Weimar understanding of politische Wissenschaft and his 1922 discovery of Heidegger’s Aristotle. I argue that Strauss’s conception of political philosophy (...) originated in Heidegger’s subversion of the traditional distinction between theory and praxis. I thus propose a way to read Strauss from the start following his own changing views of that distinction. (shrink)