_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

This work is a revised version of my dissertation, originally presented in 2002. It explores questions of God and faith in the context of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, as developed in Being and Time. One problem with traditional philosophical approaches to the question of God is their tendency to regard God's existence as an objective datum, which might be proven or disproven through logical argumentation. Since Kant, such arguments have largely been dismissed as predicated on a priori assumptions whose legitimacy (...) cannot be substantiated. This dismissal has led to a widening divorce between 'faith' and 'reason,' as the rational grounds for faith have come under increasing, and radical, attack. Heidegger's phenomenological ontology provides us a new approach to the question of faith by showing that concernful relations lie at the heart of our apprehension of Being. This affords us a new way of approaching the question of God philosophically; one which pursues this question, not in terms of metaphysical categories, but in terms of the existential concerns central to human life. At the same time that Heidegger allows us this new approach, however, his existential analyses seem to deny any legitimacy to religious faith. For the Heidegger of Being and Time, the human being is 'Being-towards-death,' i.e., essentially enclosed in finitude, whereas for religion the human being has an essential relation to the infinitude of God. This work, then, has a twofold purpose: It seeks, first, to explore the meaning of God and faith as these may be understood in the terms provided by Heidegger's phenomenological ontology. It seeks, second, to examine the way in which that ontology might be challenged and revised through a religious conception of human Being. (shrink)

This article explains the value of Heideggerian thought for Lonergan scholars through an appreciation of the work of William J. Richardson, S.J. While Richardson is correct that a Heideggerian would see Lonergan's thought as onto-theological and subject-ist, there is an under-appreciated ontological dimension to Lonergan's thought that situates him closer to Heidegger, in some respects, than one might expect. The link below is to a pdf file of the entire Volume 19 of this journal.

This dissertation seeks to clarify the import of the transcendence problem in Heidegger and Derrida. The guiding suggestion of my interpretations of both thinkers is that following the development of this problem through their respective projects can help to demonstrate in each an underlying continuity in light of which their seemingly discrepant shifts in emphasis from early to late can be understood as moments of an ongoing hermeneutic task. ;My argument unfolds in four chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one (...) motivates the project in view of the contentious standing of the problem in continental philosophy as it is characterized in the competing narratives advanced by Richard Rorty, John Caputo, and Rodolphe Gasche. ;Chapters two and three trace the problem through Heidegger's Denkweg. While Being and Time might seem to be the obvious place to start, I argue that the character of the problem is difficult to see without recourse to both the context in which the problem first arises, and the future interpretations of the problem toward which Being and Time proceeds. Accordingly, I attend to the emergence of the problem in Heidegger's dissertation and early lectures, and then leap ahead to its more explicit appropriations in the writings of 1928 where the provisional standing of fundamental ontology becomes increasingly apparent. In view of its past and future trajectories, then, I return to Being and Time to exhibit therein what I take to be latent indications of Heidegger's later disposition toward transcendence. ;Chapter four situates Derrida in terms of his debts to and departures from Heidegger. I argue that Derrida's debts in fact compel his departures; since he concurs that the transcendence of predecessor discourses necessitates their destruction in the name of advancing their undeveloped possibilities, he must dismantle Heidegger to do justice to him. In applying this insight to Derrida's project, I maintain, the careful reader can find traces of his later injunctions to "absolute responsibility" in his early affirmations of "infinite play". ;I conclude with a few brief remarks as to how this investigation might contribute to a richer understanding of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper examines medicine’s use of technology in a manner from a standpoint inspired by Heidegger’s thinking on technology. In the first part of the paper, I shall suggest an interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking on the topic, and attempt to show why he associates modern technology with danger. However, I shall also claim that there is little evidence that medicine’s appropriation of modern technology is dangerous in Heidegger’s sense, although there is no prima facie reason why it mightn’t be. The (...) explanation for this, I claim, is ethical. There is an initial attraction to the thought that Heidegger’s thought echoes Kantian moral thinking, but I shall dismiss this. Instead, I shall suggest that the considerations that make modern technology dangerous for Heidegger are simply not in the character — the ethos — of medicine properly understood. This is because there is a distinction to be drawn between chronological and historical modernity, and that even up-to-date medicine, empowered by technology, retains in its ethos crucial aspects of a historically pre-modern understanding of technology. A large part of the latter half of the paper will be concerned with explaining the difference. (shrink)

This article explores Hannah Arendt's insights into the forms of social control operating especially in democracies, together with the possibility of resistance to such control. Since the way in which one defines freedom informs one's understanding of the techniques that suppress, regulate, and modify behaviour, the article begins by sketching Arendt's notion of freedom, and compares this to its liberal counterpart. That discussion leads to Arendt's conception of power, whose corollary is freedom, and whose suppression amounts to control. The institutional (...) and ideological infrastructure that accompanies the encroachment of ?the social? ? which Arendt links to the hegemony of liberalism ? is conceived as rendering the individual both powerless and apathetic. The article concludes with suggestions regarding resistance to modern forms of control, viewing Arendt's ontology as a source of tenable strategies for the deepening of democracy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant - two important pillars of contemporary philosophy-were proficient critics of traditional metaphysics in their time. They were known to be critical of a sort of metaphysical striving predisposed to grounding or representing an elusive concept of the universal.. Kant had earlier deconstructed a pre-eminent feature of Western metaphysics, namely, the socalled essence of thing, had it consigned to the noumenon evocative of the paradoxical nature of human knowing: it regulates the boundaries according to which any (...) notion of the infinite, the universal or the absolute can be reflexively thematized, or, thus strategically said, problematized. (shrink)

The paper will study an unpublished 1930–31 seminar where Heidegger reads Plato’s Parmenides, showing that in spite of his much-criticized habit of dismissing Plato as the progenitor of “idealist” metaphysics, Heidegger was quite aware of the radical potential of his later dialogues. Through a temporal account of the notion of oneness (to hen), the Parmenides attempts to reconcile the plurality of beings with the unity of Being. In Heidegger’s reading, the dialogue culminates in the notion of the “instant” (to exaiphnēs, (...) Augenblick)—a high point in the entire metaphysical tradition—where the temporal plurality of presence and un-presence converges into a unified disclosure. (shrink)

This paper traces the (de)formative force of Heidegger's thought on Blanchot's writing. In the paper, I attempt to show how the question of nihilism and the question of truth in the work of Heidegger impose on Blanchot what he calls the exigency of the fragment. This exigency arises more specifically from an affinity and attunement in Blanchot's work to Heidegger's sense of Aus-setzen, on the one hand, and a resistance in Blanchot's work to Heidegger's sense of Ent-wurf, on the other. (...) Fragmentation responds to the risk of ex-posure in a way that withdraws the horizon against which something like Entwurf might be "measured." This response can be characterized as a renewed atentiveness to the relation of errancy and withdrawal. (shrink)

It is a commonplace assumption that there are realities and types of experience words are just not able to handle. I find the recourse to ineffability to be an evasive tactic and argue that there is inherently nothing beyond words and that this fact has ethical implications. I offer three theoretical considerations in support of my claim. The first two deal with the infinite nature of language itself, as understood first in Chomsky and then Derrida. The third deals with the (...) linguistically structured nature of human experience. Expanding on Heidegger, I then draw some ethical implications from language’s inexhaustibility. (shrink)

This paper develops a new interpretation of Heidegger's concept of conscience in order to show to what extent his thought establishes the possibility of civil disobedience. The origin of conscience lies in the self's appropriation of language as inviting a reciprocal response of the other (person). By developing the social dimension of dialogue, it is showsn that conscience reveals the self in its capacity for dissent, free speech, and civil disobedience. By developing the social roots of conscience, a completely new (...) light is cast on the political implications of Heidegger's thought. (shrink)

Attempts to resolve the question of Foucault's relationship to Heidegger usually look for points of substantive correlation between them: the coincidence of being and power, the meaning of truth, technology, ethics, and so on. Taking seriously Foucault's claim in his final interview that he uses Heidegger as an 'instrument of thought', this paper looks for a correlation in practice. The argument focuses on a structural isomorphism between Heidegger's concept of the fourfold event (Ereignis) of being and later Foucault's critique of (...) 'problematization' (problématique). This isomorphism, I argue, indicates a covert philosophical confrontation between Foucault and Heidegger, which was determinative for Foucault in the period of the turn to ethics (1976-84). This is a confrontation over the meaning of the 'event of thought'. Such an interpretation not only permits a literal reading of Foucault's comments regarding Heidegger in his final interview, but also casts the developments in Foucault's later work in a fascinating new light. Foucault's critique of problematization, on this view, is founded in an historicized version of Heideggerian 'other' thinking, and pivots on a ontologically tempered enactment of the Heideggerian turn (Kehre). (shrink)

Freedom, conceived ontologically, is power's condition of possibility. Yet, considering that the subject's interests and identity are constantly shaped, one still has to explain how – theoretically speaking – individuals can resist control. This is precisely the issue I address in the following pages. Following a brief overview of Foucault's contribution to our understanding of power, I turn to discuss the role of visibility vis-à-vis control, and show how the development of disciplinary techniques reversed the visibility of power. While Foucault (...) illustrates that during different historical periods, distinct modes of visibility are produced by power in order to control society, I argue that the very same power that produces visibility is concomitantly dependent upon it. In addition, I maintain that visibility is a necessary component of resistance. But Foucault – perhaps due to his premature death – never adequately explains how individuals can resist the mechanisms of control in a world in which power is ubiquitous. To help clarify this enigma, I turn to Hannah Arendt's insights into power, freedom, plurality, and natality. These concepts, I claim, can serve as a corrective to Foucault because they make room for resistance without assuming that humans can exit power's web. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a passage from the addendum to “The Origin of the Work of Art” often ignored in the secondary literature, Heidegger expands on how art institutes the unconcealment of the truth of Being with reference to the ontological difference—the difference between Being and beings which cannot rely on the comparison of predicates for clarification. The relationship between art and the ontological difference is not immediately obvious and lacks further explication in Heidegger’s other texts. This paper argues that there are (...) two fundamental elements to the ontological difference that Heidegger focuses on that can be used to elucidate art as a strife of world and earth: “the Nothing” [das Nichts] outlined in “What is Metaphysics?” (1929) and world-projection described in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1929–30). Understanding these two elements of the ontological difference (world-projection and the Nothing) as present together in the event of unconcealment (aletheia) thereby clarifies for the notorious concepts of earth, world, strife, and rift (Riß) that characterize the work of art. Recourse to the ontological difference as an explanatory mechanism for conceptualising Heidegger’s philosophy of art is a useful way of avoiding common issues in the prevailing literature that will be laid out below. (shrink)

The narrative of Plato’s cave story is loaded with ‘some of the most suggestive opposites in the repertoire, namely the contrasts between down and up, darkness and light, chains and freedom’ (Hrach...

Josef Pieper’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s Wahrheitsbegriff has been virtually ignored in both Pieper and Heidegger scholarship; however, Pieper’s critique of Heidegger is both lethal and affirmative. On the one hand, Pieper makes a strong case against Heidegger’s Wahrheitsbegriff in “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” and yet on the other he affirms his thesis that “the essence of truth is freedom.” This paper attempts to mend this gap in the literature by first presenting Heidegger’s “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit,” the essay in (...) which Heidegger explicates his concept of truth. Second, I exegete the critique of Josef Pieper found in his “Heideggers Wahrheitsbegriff.” Third, I conclude the paper by contextualizing Pieper’s critique within Pieper’s Werke, and make a note of the philosophical insights derivative from Pieper’s less than simple relationship to Heidegger. (shrink)

If Martin Heidegger was a philosopher who poetized, Wallace Stevens was a poet who philosophized. In "The Sail of Ulysses," one of his later poems, Stevens speaks enigmatically of a "right to be." The phrase is straightforward, if taken to indicate the right to life. But Stevens is rarely, if ever, straightforward. The poem is much more understandable if we take "being" in a Heideggerian sense, as an understanding of what it means to be.

Our contemporary politics faces the paradoxical problem that while we are inundated with images on our screens, we nevertheless seem to lack creative political imagination to conceive of solutions to our global problems. One account for this paradox is Chiara Bottici’s suggestion that the constant stream of virtual images produced qualitatively alters them to such an extent that they become ends in themselves: thus, spectacularizing our politics. My claim, against Bottici’s, is that it is not the case that the increase (...) in images created causes a qualitative change; rather, the increase in images created results from an already occurred qualitative change that images are created for their own sake instead of as a response to the particular situation’s determining conditions. The concept of the imaginal, insofar as it is unhinged from these local conditions, is itself the precondition for the very problem of political spectacularization that we face. To support my claim, I utilize Aristotle’s concepts of imagination, desire, and practical truth to show that without truth conditions determined by the particular, the political imaginal ends up operating under the motive of image for its own sake—which is, at bottom, desire for its own sake—thus feeding into the creation of more images devoid of concrete solutions. (shrink)

Antisemitism is fun. This essay explains why and proposes a new approach to combating it.

There is relatively little comprehensive treatment of Heidegger’s theory of essences despite his ubiquitous use of essences. It is commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to view essences as the ground for true de re modal claims. I argue that Heidegger offers an account of essences that can best be understood as a type of relative essentialism. Relative essentialism is the view that more than one being can occupy the same space at the same time and those beings have distinct sets (...) of de re modal truths about them. Heidegger’s account of essences allows for true de re modal claims about a wide variety of things including scientific and cultural entities. At the same time, Heidegger rejects absolute essentialism: the view that there is one privilege collection of beings whose natures determine the truth values of de re modal claims about them. Relative essentialism is distinguished from contextual essentialism. (shrink)

This paper outlines the fundamental aspects of a Heideggerian-ecofeminist philosophy. It aims to be suggestive rather than definitive regarding the form and function of such a philosophy and will, consequently, be somewhat partial and incomplete. It is intended to highlight the enormous potential of such a hybrid philosophy. To this end it will provide a brief account of the philosophy of the later Heidegger, with particular emphasis on his analysis of technology and his account of the Greek concept of truth (...) as aletheia, or unconcealment. It will also focus on Heidegger’s account of the connection between the Greek concept of nature as physis and his own ontology of Being, “letting-be” as the appropriate attitudinal stance to existence, and the bearing of all the above on contemporary ecological concerns. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger devotes extensive discussion to medieval philosophers, particularly to their treatment of Truth and Being. On both these topics, Heidegger accuses them of forgetting the question of Being and of being responsible for subjugating truth to the modern crusade for certainty: ‘truth is denied its own mode of being’ and is subordinated ‘to an intellect that judges correctly’. Though there are some studies that discuss Heidegger’s debt to and criticism of medieval thought, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas, there is (...) no constructive reply to his assertions. As a result, Heidegger’s critique had an unprecedented effect on the credibility of medieval philosophy, whereby great portions of the philosophical community dismiss it altogether as an illegitimate Onto‐Theology. It is the aim of this study to offer a constructive reply that will fundamentally grapple with these allegations. By constructive reply we mean not only a reply that avoids the problems Heidegger raises regarding existence, essence and truth, but more importantly, one that uses Heidegger’s criticism in order to present a more insightful account of these notions. The present study is composed of two parts where the second serves as a sort of addendum. The first part, the core of this study, is an attempt to develop an understanding of the distinction between essence and existence that, on the one hand, accords with Heidegger’s criticism while on the other hand advances our understanding of how we think and understand reality. After presenting Heidegger’s depiction of Aquinas’s distinction between essence and existence (esse) as a real distinction, the study will present several views propounded by scholars of Aquinas regarding the status of this distinction. It will be argued that it is not clear whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual, and that different types of distinction are applied in different places, particularly in regard to the phantasm that Aquinas considers essential to the human act of thinking. The second part diverges from the first part and focuses on Heidegger’s criticism of Aquinas’s conception of truth as adequation, i.e., what it is that grounds the possibility of truth as adequation. This divergence is necessary in order to present a full metaphysical response to Heidegger’s criticism. Since the aim of the present study is to argue that Aquinas’s philosophical system can contend with Heidegger’s criticism, a partial reply would greatly diminish its effectiveness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at the state of the literature surrounding Heidegger and Nazism today. Part 1 focusses on Hassan Givsan’s remarkable work, Une histoire consternante: pourquoi les philosophes se laissent corrompre par le “cas Heidegger”, which looks at the different, mutually inconsistent forms of “apologetics” denying that Heidegger had been a Nazi, or that this commitment could have been shaped by his philosophy. Part 2 looks at five themes that emerge from the 2014 French-language collection Heidegger, le sol, la communauté, (...) la race, edited by Emmanuel Faye: Heidegger’s anti-semitism, before and in the Black Notebooks; Sein und Zeit and “the political”; Heidegger and his estate’s post-war “rewriting” of his Nazi-era texts; Heidegger’s esotericism; and his intellectual proximities to other Nazi thinkers. Closing reflections touch on the state of the debate, calling for increased scholarly awareness of the evidence, and debate of its significance. (shrink)

Experts in medical informatics have argued for the incorporation of ever more machine-learning algorithms into medical care. As artificial intelligence research advances, such technologies raise the possibility of an “iDoctor,” a machine theoretically capable of replacing the judgment of primary care physicians. In this article, I draw on Martin Heidegger’s critique of technology to show how an algorithmic approach to medicine distorts the physician–patient relationship. Among other problems, AI cannot adapt guidelines according to the individual patient’s needs. In response to (...) the objection that AI could develop this capacity, I use Hubert Dreyfus’s analysis of AI to argue that attention to the needs of each patient requires the physician to attune his or her perception to the patient’s history and physical exam, an ability that seems uniquely human. Human physician judgment will remain better suited to the practice of primary care despite anticipated advances in AI technology. (shrink)

This paper argues for an interpretation of what Heidegger means by 'angst' in Being and Time that begins from the methodological role angst is supposed to play in Division I as that which disrupts falling. It argues that angst is a distinctive kind of ontological insight.

Ernst Tugendhat’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s conception of truth is an ongoing topic in Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing exchange between defenders of Heidegger and those who are in agreement with Tugendhat. Specifically, I contend that Tugendhat’s criticisms fail to situate Heidegger’s account of truth within his broader phenomenological–hermeneutic project. In the end, Tugendhat’s critique is grounded upon philosophical assumptions that Heidegger is bringing under question by rethinking the concept of truth. I suggest that thinking (...) through Tugendhat’s critique and attempting to formulate an adequate Heideggerian response gives us a richer understanding of both Heidegger’s account of truth and his general philosophical project. (shrink)

The aim of what follows is to explore how to raise the question of Being by way of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology. Phenomenological ontology is a way of approaching and conducting philosophy exemplified in the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s, and specifically in his magnum opus Being and Time. In preparation to raise the question of Being a more nuanced understanding of Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses on truth and language are summarized. Following, the manner in which Being is referenced is analyzed (...) before considering the way of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology. In conclusion, existing attempts and continuing efforts into the question of Being in education through phenomenological ontology are shared. At a time when decontextualized and reductive ways of knowing and being are becoming the norm within education, phenomenological ontology offers new possibilities for scholarship and practice. The present inquiry does not offer solutions in the traditional sense but rather traces a path that opens and keeps in tension the question of Being in education in order to support further study. (shrink)

The notion of the heart is one of the most basic notions in ordinary language. It is central to Heidegger’s notion of thought that he relates to the primordial word Gedanc as underlying attunement that issues forth in emotional phenomena. He plays with all the etymological cognates of that word to zero in on the phenomena involved. The key experience of Erstaunen that grounds the first beginning of philosophy is paralleled by Erschrecken that grounds Heidegger’s “second beginning” and plays counterpoint (...) with the first. Along with Befindlichkeit as one’s basic attunement, these are key phenomena that belong to the heart, not to ‘intellect’ or ‘will.’ Thinking in terms of the intellect is das rechnende Denken¸ thinking in terms of the heart, besinnliche Nachdenken. It is the latter that provides the “poetic-intellectual” experience for both the arts and philosophy in which such “world space” is created that even the ordinary appears extraordinary. (shrink)

Although most scholars trace the Liar Paradox to Plato’s contemporary, Eubulides, the paper argues that Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Ladder of Love”. Thus, Plato may have (...) been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language—leading to the paradoxes. Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views. (shrink)

This paper attempts to mark out new ground in the connections between the philosophical writings of Martin Heidegger and Aristotle by posing an interesting question that has never been addressed. Both writers devote much of their early thoughts to questions concerning human beings' practical ways of understanding. However, in their later thoughts Heidegger and Aristotle suddenly seem to completely change the subject to ideal or transcendental ways of understanding. At first glance these ideal modes of human apprehension seem to have (...) nothing to do with each other. Yet, Heidegger and Aristotle seem to have similar motives for turning away from the practical realm and towards a transcendental realm, and they seem to have similar outcomes. My investigation of their respective motives and outcomes has led me to believe that although there are some similarities that are thought provoking, they are not strong enough to conclude that Heidegger's later writings are connected to his recovery of Aristotelian ideas. Given that the core of Heidegger's early questions of Being can be interpreted as a retrieval of Aristotle, to be able to demarcate the point at which Heidegger ceases his attempts at this recovery may allow us to examine the differences in Heidegger's later thought concerning Being. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy about justice, a contrast between empirical and transcendental approaches can be identified. Hillel Steiner represents an empirical approach: he argues for building an account of justice-as-rights out of the minimal inductive material of psychological linguistic and moral intuitions. From this opening, he ultimately concludes that persons have original rights to self-ownership and to an initially equal share of natural resources. Emmanuel Levinas represents a transcendental approach: he argues that justice arises from a transcendent ethical relation of responsibility-for-the-Other. (...) This relation underpins all subjective cognition, and makes rationality, reasoning, and rights possible.Analysis of each of these positions reveals certain problems. On the one hand, Steiner’s argument contains a number of latent methodological, conceptual, and structural presuppositions. These include the pretheoretical concepts of “person”, “equality”, and “consistency”. These presuppositions prefigure and condition the conclusions which Steiner reaches. On the other hand, Levinas fails to provide a convincing account of how the self comes to be an object of my own deliberations about morality and justice. This amounts to an annihilation of the subject which undermines his argument for the subject as a site of responsible action. As Steiner identifies, justice encompasses equal moral agents. Levinas’s hyperbolic description of the ethical relation’s asymmetry must therefore be revised.Nevertheless, what remains is the strength of Levinas’s argument for the priority of the ethical relation over thematization, rationality, and consciousness. The hidden presuppositions supporting Steiner’s work are evidence of Levinas’s plausibility in this respect. Steiner’s account of justice-as-rights requires a prior ethical relation in which we recognise one another as separate persons, each possessing an ethical status of their own; an attitude of justice motivates Steiner’s description of justice. This attitude is evident in language, which is communication before it is thought. In that individual rights can be conceived only on the basis of a relation of responsibility, rights are primordially the rights of the Other. (shrink)

The analysis of Dasein's struggle for authenticity will be the main focus of this article. By virtue of Dasein's ontological predispositions, selfhood is subjected to inauthentic existential modalities already constitutive of its Being. In the case of the false Dasein, fallenness is exacerbated in that Dasein constricts its comportment primarily to the modes of the inauthentic, thereby abdicating its potentiality-for-Being. The false Dasein results from ontical encounters within pre-existing deficient ontological conditions of Being-in-the-world that are thrust upon selfhood as its (...) facticity. These deficient ontological structures predispose Dasein to develop intrapsychic psychological deficits that further contribute to Dasein's false existence. Through the medium of Heidegger's existential ontology, Sartrean bad faith, and psychoanalysis, I will demonstrate that the throes of selfhood encompass a dialectical course meandering through experiential modes of authenticity and falsehood, in which this very process itself is an authentic enterprise, that is, it is the necessary constitutional structure of Dasein itself as Being-toward-becoming its possibilities. (shrink)

Blanchot's thought has often been understood as a critique and a reversal of Heidegger's. Indeed, many formulas of the former are construed as mere inversions of the latter. Yet, the philosophical problem raised by the encounter between Blanchot and Heidegger cannot be suffciently accounted for in terms of 'inversion' or 'reversal'. Focusing on the question of the secret in its relation to Geheimnis , this essay starts with a discussion of the notion of secrecy in relation to mysticism and argues (...) that this difference should not be construed in terms of a disjunction. Blanchot's relation to Heidegger is not on a par with Levinas' critical account of the latter; that to acknowledge the centrality of the secret does not commit one to mysticism; and that Blanchot's ultimate claims about the neuter commit him to a position that is much closer to Heidegger's than his apparent disavowal of the latter would seem to entail. (shrink)

The present article deals with Heidegger’s research into boredom. The phenomenon cannot be simply described as an emotion but as a fundamental attunement, which represented a pathway to being qua being for Heidegger. Many scholars have argued that the philosopher’s treatment of the phenomenon led to sublimation or transgression in describing it beyond its phenomenological limits. While I agree with the general assessment, I also believe that there is a need to expand the argument further. I will argue that the (...) cause of such transgression lies mainly in Heidegger’s inability to separate the truth from the notion of meaning or sense. (shrink)

This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the (...) Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology. (shrink)

The coincidentia oppositorum formula abbreviates a profound tendency of human thought, which is present in all times and cultures. In other words, the thinking has always felt that its supreme and sublime task is to “make peace” between Perfect and Imperfect, Transcendence and Immanence, Spirit and Matter, Good and Evil. Also, almost all ontological projects axiomatically stipulate the primordiality and the superior metaphysical competence of a feeling of being, a pre-thinking disposition of the human being. In this sense, the case (...) of Martin Heidegger can be brought forth, who argues that affective disposition, that is not “affects” or “feelings” or “state of soul,” pre-determines the entire perception, understanding and outlook on the world and ourselves, and it is one that provides, in the first instance, matching the Dasein with his being. This article examines how the coincidentia oppositorum and the feeling of being are assumed and operationalized in the ontological project designed by Mihai Șora, who is considered to be “the Philosopher par excellence” in Romanian culture. (shrink)

Many work on flushing out what our consciousness means in cognitive and phenomenological terms, but no one has yet connected the dots on how consciousness and truth intersect, much less how our phenomenal consciousness can form the ground for most of our models of truth. Here, I connect those dots and argue that the basic structure of our phenomenal consciousness grounds the nature of truth as concordance, to harmonize in agreement, and that most extant theories on truth are well explained (...) in that grounding. Said another way, the unifying and bifurcating intentional structure of phenomenal consciousness is the non-epistemic ground of truth, such that most theories of truth can be explained as particular expressions of concordance based upon the differing aspects of that ground. (shrink)

In Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer maintains that "tradition" and "prejudice" are constitutive of hermeneutic understanding, or the kind of understanding that is proper to the human sciences. This has led certain critics to accuse him of "conservatism" insofar as he appears to be ignoring, and thereby tacitly validating, the intellectual or political power structures that determine what counts as traditional, what it means to belong to a tradition, etc. On the other hand, there are those who charge him with (...) undermining the possibility for truth in interpretation, inasmuch as understanding is determined by the "prejudices" of the interpreter and is thus inherently subjective or relative. In the former case, the claim is that Gadamer's account of hermeneutical reflection merely involves the appropriation of what is simply "given" to us by tradition, and that he does not provide any room for critique. The other objection is that Gadamer's hermeneutics precludes the possibility of objective understanding, and is therefore arbitrary. In both cases, it is this appeal to tradition and prejudice that concerns his detractors. However, the irony is that he is accused of being both "too radical" and "not radical enough." How is this possible? This is the basic question I will be exploring. And, I believe that the answer ultimately lies in the fundamentally different conceptions of "truth," "objectivity," and "subjectivity" which are operative here. It is also unclear what Gadamer means by tradition and prejudice, and to what degree we are constituted by them or understanding is dependent on them. This is why I believe it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at these concepts, consider their relation to one another, and evaluate Gadamer's hermeneutics in light of the claims of his critics as well as in relation to those of whom he is critical. (shrink)

This article reflects on the received view of the rupture which constitutes the beginning of a critical, ethical, political and legal opening, the understanding of which inhabits the cry of, and response to, injustice. It takes the very critique that feeds into, and is distorted by, practical reasoning, as its point of departure. Grasping this rupture as the complementary relation between deconstruction and radical alterity, would entail unreflectively accepting a certain kind of truthfulness—truthfulness as [in]correctness, manifesting in a relationship that (...) involves rootless and controlling movement of making and unmaking of world. In closely reading Wittgenstein and Heidegger on the level of seeing, showing and saying, truthfulness is shown to contain an essential tension between, on the one hand, the Socratic, metaphysically-bound notion of beingness, correctness and meaning-steering and, on the other hand, the pre-Socratic notion of unconcealment (a-lethia), which, pointing even earlier than pre-Socratics into aboriginality, involves attentive letting of gliding in the inexpressible saying of language. While steering is about generating new possibilities of expressibility, gliding is about poetic dwelling, or enduring inexpressibility as a constitutive part of saying. Although aletheia is taken to be the key influence on rootless post-foundational thinking, it is argued that unconcealment involves letting and enduring the presencing inexpressibility of place and home-coming, that is, worlding-rootedness; thus showing Heidegger’s originary politics as the district of the uncanny to be about worlding that attentively lets the presencing inexpressibility of earth be as place. In reading Heidegger’s views on humanism, beginning and language, the argument links inexpressibility—essentially and historically—to the grasping of the belongingness together of world, earth and place, viewing this belongingness as key to both the saying of art and of mortals dwelling together temporally, spatially, materially in a manner always strange to, and nearer than, the steering/controlling of beingness, time, space and place that the very gesture and emergence of critique is captive of and is not capable of attuning to and capturing. Art always estranges the metaphysical cycle of correctness which preserves pain and suffering—a cycle that inhabits a double bind of responding to violence and injustice generated by the violence of metaphysics with metaphysical violence and justice. In showing essential strife within truthfulness itself, Heidegger points to even greater and earlier problematic than the pre-Socratics—to the painful core of inexpressibility between the ontology of steering time, spaces and material—steering places—and the gliding temporality, spatiality and materiality of ontology of place. (shrink)

Science teaching always engages a philosophy of science. This article introduces a modern philosophy of science and indicates its implications for science education. The hermeneutic philosophy of science is the tradition of Kant, Heidegger, and Heelan. Essential to this tradition are two concepts of truth, truth as correspondence and truth as disclosure. It is these concepts that enable access to science in and of itself. Modern science forces aspects of reality to reveal themselves to human beings in events of disclosure. (...) The achievement of each event of disclosure requires the precise manipulation of equipment, which is an activity that depends on truth as correspondence. The implications of the hermeneutic philosophy of science for science education are profound. The article refers to Newton’s early work on optics to explore what the theory implies for teaching. Modern science—as the event of truth—is a relationship between an individual student, equipment, and reality. Science teachers provide for their students’ access to truth and they may show how their discipline holds a special relationship to reality. If the aim of science teaching is to enable students to disclose reality, the science curriculum will challenge some of the current practices of schooling. If teachers base science teaching upon the hermeneutic philosophy of science, science will assert itself as the intellectual discipline that derives from nature, and not from the inclinations of human beings. Science teachers teach nature’s own science. (shrink)

In this article, I establish first the critical role of conscience in Heidegger's Being and Time . As the call of care, conscience attests to the authenticity of Da-sein as it discloses and "accomplishes" Da-sein as the being it is delivered over to be. Heidegger's interpretation of conscience also epitomizes the central aporias of Being and Time , which, with a view to revoking the Western metaphysical tradition, ultimately recalls it. At the heart of such aporias is the hermeneutic circle (...) in the attestation of conscience, whose voice only "reaches him who wants to be brought back." While the language of conscience and attestation was put away in Heidegger's later writings, I argue that the question concerning conscience is a leading question that will continue to guide us to build our way back and forth. (shrink)