In this article, I elucidate the significance of Heidegger’s ‘question of being’ from a topological point of view by explaining the relationship between his thought of place and language. After exploring various hermeneutic strategies of reading Heidegger’s oeuvre, I turn to Richard Capobianco’s interpretation of Heidegger and critically engage with his idea of the experience of being itself as the ‘luminous selfshowing of logos’. In doing so, I explain the later turn from ‘truth’ to ‘place’ and articulate why logos needs (...) to be conceived as the gathering site of the presencing of being. In arguing against the primacy of passive receptivity and active projection, I put forward the primacy of language as the topos and logos of being. In returning to the Capobianco-Sheehan debate, I conclude by explaining why Heidegger’s placerelated notions cannot be thought metaphorically. (shrink)

The philosopher is a fundamental mode of existence of the human being, yet it is experienced only by a minority, an elite. Those constitute, among themselves, a subspecies of Homo sapiens that is sometimes dubbed Homo philosophicus. Our goal here is to investigate, in depth, the philosophical foundations of this ontological-anthropological concept. We analyze the concept of the philosopher into three basic components: the thinker, the artist, and the mathematician, arguing that the three fundamentally participate in maintaining the operation of (...) the philosopher machine. The following text can be considered a contribution to metaphilosophy, written as a structured opinion piece, encompassing a series of reflections drawn from the writer’s own experience as a philosopher. The mode of the presentation is a mixture of personal and experimental writing styles, intentionally avoiding the rigid form of overtly analytical and argumentative discussions. Although numerous philosophers will be discussed below, four key figures, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, and Guattari, occupy a special position in our overall opinionated view on the nature of philosophy. (shrink)

The Heidegger–Deleuze relationship has attracted significant attention of late. This paper contributes to this line of research by examining Deleuze’s claim, recently reiterated and developed by Philip Tonner, that Heidegger offers a univocal conception of Being where there is one sense of Being that is said throughout all entities. Although these authors maintain that this claim holds across Heidegger’s oeuvre, I purposefully adopt a conservative hermeneutical strategy that focuses on two writings from the 1927–1928 period—Being and Time and the following (...) year’s lecture course translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic—and emphasize the lesson of the ontological difference that Being is always the Being of an entity, to argue that with regards to these texts, at least, an alternative equivocal interpretation is possible in which Being is always said differently. The conclusion draws out the implications of this for the relationship between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and Deleuze’s differential ontology. (shrink)

The Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics, which is approachable in third-person description, takes for granted tenseless time that does not distinguish between different tenses such as past, present, and future. The time-reversal symmetry grounded upon tenseless time globally may, however, be broken once measurement in the form of exchanging indivisible quantum particles between the measured and the measuring intervenes. Measurement breaks tenseless time locally and distinguishes different tenses. Since measurement is about the material process of feeding and acting upon the (...) quantum resources already available from any material bodies to be measured internally, the agency of measurement is sought within the environment in the broadest sense. Most indicative of internal measurement of the environmental origin are chemical reactions in the reaction environment. Temporality naturalized in chemical reactions proceeding as being subjected to frequent interventions of internal measurement is approachable in second-person description because of the participation of multiple agents of measurement there. The use of second-person description is found in the appraisal of the material capacity of generating, distinguishing, and integrating different tenses. An essence of the temporality to be naturalized is within the genesis of different tenses. A most conspicuous exemplar of naturalized temporality is sought in the origins of life conceivable exclusively on the material ground. (shrink)

I talked to my chair for hours, without it responding—and then I heard its voice, its desire, its rhetoric: sit in me.A new specter of materialist thought, conveniently cloaked in "realism," now haunts philosophy and rhetoric—object-oriented ontology and object-oriented rhetoric.1 Ostensibly, OOO arrives as the logical next step for theories of anti-, extra-, and post-humanism that have, over the past several decades, sought to destabilize the privileged position of human exceptionalism....

This essay provides an overview of the ways in which contemporary philosophers have tried to make sense of ineffability as encountered in aesthetic contexts. Section 1 sets up the problem of aesthetic ineffability by putting it into historical perspective. Section 2 specifies the kinds of questions that may be raised with regard to aesthetic ineffability, as well as the kinds of answer each one of those questions would require. Section 3 investigates arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the (...) object of aesthetic experiences, i.e. within aesthetic content. Section 4 discusses arguments that seek to locate aesthetic ineffability within the subject of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In the era of generative AI and specifically large language models (LLMs), exemplified by ChatGPT, the intersection of artificial intelligence and human reasoning has become a focal point of global attention. Unlike conventional search engines, LLMs go beyond mere information retrieval, entering into the realm of discourse culture. Their outputs mimic well-considered, independent opinions or statements of facts, presenting a pretense of wisdom. This paper explores the potential transformative impact of LLMs on democratic societies. It delves into the concerns regarding (...) the difficulty in distinguishing ChatGPT-generated texts from human output. The discussion emphasizes the essence of authorship, rooted in the unique human capacity for reason—a quality indispensable for democratic discourse and successful collaboration within free societies. Highlighting the potential threats to democracy, this paper presents three arguments: the Substitution argument, the Authenticity argument, and the Facts argument. These arguments highlight the potential risks that are associated with an overreliance on LLMs. The central thesis posits that widespread deployment of LLMs may adversely affect the fabric of a democracy if not comprehended and addressed proactively and properly. In proposing a solution, we advocate for an emphasis on education as a means to mitigate risks. We suggest cultivating thinking skills in children, fostering coherent thought formulation, and distinguishing between machine-generated output and genuine, i.e., human, reasoning. The focus should be on the responsible development and usage of LLMs, with the goal of augmenting human capacities in thinking, deliberating and decision-making rather than substituting them. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with Shawn Loht’s argument concerning film viewing as being-in-the-world, developed in his book Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience (2017), focusing on the aesthetics of mood with particular attention to boredom. I elaborate on a phenomenological ontology of the film experience and its perceptual “rules” which hinge on aesthetic choices: what kind of world does the film open up for the viewer? Loht’s account of viewing Dasein enables us to deepen phenomenological (...) approaches regarding the relationship between (cinematic) moods and (filmic) understanding, and through his engagement with Mitsein, to expand on film spectatorship conceived as a relation with a shared film world. I look at how Heideggerian boredom can elicit spectatorial experiences and disclosure of meaning, as well as allowing characters’ being in the film world. A broader engagement with cinematic moods is also conducive to exploring limits and potentialities of a possible Heideggerian film-philosophy. To illustrate some of these points, I discuss Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (2021), wherein boredom is consistently awakened through aesthetic strategies of dead-time, silence, slowness and repetition. In the film, the mood of boredom, but also that of love and grief as world-disclosing moods which produce a radical change in our being-in-the-world, is a way to establish a sense of our embeddedness, orient our understanding and disclose our finitude and solitude. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy is dependent upon translation, often translations that will help preserve some fundamental commitments: to linguistic mastery, to the recovery or preservation of an original, and to the protection of an authenticity that will ground these commitments. Such a view can sometimes obscure a nostalgia for questionable causes. Comparative philosophy, especially with continental affinities, often relies on two moves: first, a boundary must be found (or produced) between philosophy itself and other forms of writing (literature or fiction, say), to (...) ensure proper grounding. Second, it must be understood that this boundary depends upon an underlying philosophy of language: language speaks us, it speaks Being; to dwell in a different language is to dwell in a different house of being (Martin Heidegger). But how might this project – its historiography of return and grounding, and its mythologizing of linguistic and ontological recovery – be challenged by the very practice of translation itself? Perhaps this challenge is one of translation’s philosophical benefits. (shrink)

This essay joins the ongoing conversation comparing the thought of Bruno Latour to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology in particular and the phenomenological tradition in general. The article queries whether or not there is a metaphysics at work in Latour’s philosophy and, if so, whether this metaphysics would be at a sufficient distance from what Heidegger labelled as ontotheology, “grasping” and “comprehending” being and beings in its totality. The essay finds that at crucial stages Latour repeats features of ontotheological modes (...) of thinking that make for the fact that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Latour is not so distant from modern attempts that reveal beings as they truly are or even beings as they always will be. Throughout, we query what Latour’s account of scientific practice and its concomitant crossing of contingency and meaning can contribute to recent debates in phenomenology. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing (...) inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team. (shrink)

Scholars who are members of a generation descending from a founder of a philosophical school might be titled as “children.” Those members are characterized as scholars who continue the doctrines of the founder into the future. In the history of ideas there are many examples for such scholarly lineages. Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy was less suitable for generating a successorship in the sense of a filiation: That became dramatically obvious at the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and himself in Davos. Heidegger (...) seemed to be the philosopher of the future by developing a “new essentialism” which shall be expounded as the core-message of his doctrine; this is elaborated in the first chapter of this essay. Only in the post-war generations and long time after Cassirer’s death, eminent scholars working in different scientific disciplines and in different countries based their public research – more or less explicitly – on Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. The second section will discuss three famous examples: Nelson Goodman’s Semiology, Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Symbolic Forms and lastly the Political Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

Abstract It is widely recognized that Heidegger's analysis of Dasein outlines a novel dissolution of the epistemological problems of modern philosophy. However it has not been fully appreciated that this analysis presupposes a conception of human beings which radically separates them from all natural, animal life. Focusing on Heidegger's analysis of Mitsein it is argued that this separation prevents Heidegger from achieving a conception of human existence which avoids the distortions of the humanist tradition against which it recoils. Against Heidegger, (...) it is argued that a philosophically satisfactory conception of human existence must be more smoothly naturalistic. (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)

We might begin a search for the possibility of translation with a search for a common moral foundation for both the Eastasian world and the Western world. Answers come easily with a qualified yes or no; for example, we might make a list or table comparing how East and West think about adultery. This is unsatisfying; we ourselves are often unclear what we think and feel about these issues. So, a few of the more circumspect might ask where our own (...) sense of the moral arises. Perhaps we will seek the source of the OUGHT. Our friends from the Orient might ask us what these words moral or OUGHT mean. I do not think the West can as easily convey to the East what it means by sense of obligation as the West imparts technology. Try to translate our word obligation by the Japanese word giri; this translation is suspect since for the West, obligations are obligations only if they grate against the well ingrained inclinations of our being. The Kantian necessary test of authenticity of the true moral act will be if we act against the grain of our inclinations. (shrink)

In this article, I elucidate the significance of Heidegger’s ‘question of being’ from a topological point of view by explaining the relationship between his thought of place and language. After exploring various hermeneutic strategies of reading Heidegger’s oeuvre, I turn to Richard Capobianco’s interpretation of Heidegger and critically engage with his idea of the experience of being itself as the ‘luminous self-showing of logos’. In doing so, I explain the later turn from ‘truth’ to ‘place’ and articulate why logos needs (...) to be conceived as the gathering site of the presencing of being. In arguing against the primacy of passive receptivity and active projection, I put forward the primacy of language as the topos and logos of being. In returning to the Capobianco-Sheehan debate, I conclude by explaining why Heidegger’s place-related notions cannot be thought metaphorically. (shrink)

The Derridean standpoint has made it challenging for philosophy to affirm a non-dualistic view of the world. If signification is a process where linguistic signs are always postponed or in deferment, then it is impossible to cultivate experiences without recurring to metaphysical thought. However, third generation Kyoto School thinker, Ueda Shizuteru, complicates this viewpoint. What Ueda describes as “exiting of language and exiting into language” is the dynamic movement of Zen experience that instantiates how language can be torn through and (...) resurrected. As a reversal of Derrida who prizes linguistic signs over experience, Ueda’s view of Zen seeks to set limits to language without denying its inherent existence by clarifying how humans live in a two-fold world of the metaphysical and non-metaphysical. In order to make the latter visible, however, Ueda speaks of how absolute silence operates as a negation of Being, that which brings forth the world of infinite nothing, accompanied by an infinite stillness and openness that is undisturbed by the utterance of words. And yet the implications of Derrida’s method of critique are something Zen must also confront. Since human experience cannot avoid the world of metaphysics by virtue of existing as signs inscribed in the historical context, Zen must ethically examine the repressiveness of its inherited linguistic structure in the return to the world of signs. In the attempt to dispel this particular tension between Derrida and Ueda, this article, as a concluding point, will close the gap between their view of language and freedom by demonstrating how the compassionate vow of the bodhisattva can interrupt the problems of exclusion and marginalization brought on by linguistic production. (shrink)

This paper begins by elucidating two common features in the application from spirit to the material world of objective idealism: first, all main representatives take the Absolute as the way to think about the inner negative foundation of spirit and, second, the Absolute has a self‐negation processual structure, which exits itself and then returns to itself. The paper points out that the exit‐return model can explain the objective world very well and meanwhile maintain the integrity of the spiritual ontology, in (...) which the return to the Absolute is crucial. After the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and two world wars, however, followed by the development of irrational thinking, positivism, and practical philosophy, the Absolute ceased to be the foundation of spiritual functioning. The return to the Absolute points to emptiness, and exit without return creates persistent schizophrenia, while subverting the ontological foundation of concepts and language, objects and humankind. (shrink)

Досліджено екзистенційний аспект етики покликання особистості. На основі аналізу положень екзистенційної аналітики та подальшого осмислення ціннісного виміру буття людини у творчості М. Гайдеггера виокремлено цінності само-буття, необхідні для виявлення і розуміння феномена покликання. Показано, що цей ціннісний вимір задається такими поняттями, як екзистенційна совість, екзистенційна істина, цінність переживання конечності буття, цілісність, рішучість, онто-діалектична свобода екзистенції, турбота про автентичність існування. Обґрунтовано, що екзистенційні цінності визначають той спосіб буття людини, за якого можливі змістовні визначення моралі. Розглянуто, яким чином у розумінні покликання присутній (...) аргумент понадособистісної мети та істини буття. В аспекті аналізу феномена покликання розкрито обмеженість можливостей опертя на достеменності самосвідомості суб’єкта та індивідуального буття людини в європейській метафізиці. Результати дослідження доповнюють аналіз покликання як феномена людського буття в аспектах розуміння його ціннісного змісту, взаємозв’язку його екзистенційного та етичного осмислення. Представлені результати можуть бути використані у викладанні курсів філософії, етики, педагогіки та в подальших наукових дослідженнях. (shrink)

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it (...) is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”. (shrink)

The Philosophical Forum, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 65-78, Spring 2021.

The paper discusses the role of networks in cognition on two levels: on the level of the organization of ideas, and on the level of interpersonal communication. Any interesting system of ideas forms a network: ideas presented in a linear order (the order forced upon us by verbal expression) will necessarily convey a distorted picture of the underlying patterns of thought. Networks of ideas typically consist of a great number of nodes with just a few links, and a small number (...) of hubs with very many links; that is, they are, to employ Albert-László Barabási's term, "scale-free." Barabási fits into a specific tradition: Hungarians had an early influence on the philosophy of networks, and on the philosophy of communication as developed at Marshall McLuhan's Toronto Circle. In fact, this was the circle in which certain Hungarian and Austrian ideas on mediated collective thinking first came together—a telling testimony to the conditions of disturbed communication and idiosyncratic networking typical of East-Central Europe, past and present. The nodes-and-hubs pattern is characteristic, too, of social networks, in particular of scholarly and scientific networks. The paper analyses the role of "invisible colleges"—informal groups of scientific elites through whom the communication of information both within a field and across fields is channelled. By way of conclusion the notion of a new type of personality, the "network individual," is discussed: the network individual is the person reintegrated, after centuries of relative isolation induced by the printing press, into the collective thinking of society—the individual whose mind is manifestly mediated, once again, by the minds of those forming his/her smaller or larger community. (shrink)

Global metaphysical antirealism (or “antirealism”) is often thought to entail that the identity of each and every concrete entity in our world ultimately depends on us—on our adoption of certain social and linguistic conventions, for instance, or on our use of certain conceptual schemes. Drawing on the middle‐period works of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, I contend that metaphysical antirealism entails nothing of the sort. For Merleau‐Ponty, I argue, entities do not ultimately owe their identities to us, even though—as he puts it—their “articulations (...) are the very ones of our existence.” Once this is recognised, I maintain, certain interpretations of phenomenology are revealed to be caricatures and certain general objections to antirealism lose their force. (shrink)

There are two dominant contradictory approaches towards understanding the nature of language: one, the epistemological approach; two, the ontological approach. The epistemological approach understands language as a mere tool and denies the close relationship between a word and the actual thing for which that word stands. The ontological approach, on the other hand, understands language as the disclosure of world experience and professes a close relationship between a word and the thing it signifies. However, this approach opposes the epistemological approach (...) towards the understanding of language. In this article, we propose that Hegel, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, depicts an interesting relationship between language and spirit which points towards the consistency between the two contradictory approaches towards the nature of language. For Hegel, language not only plays a role in spirit’s pursuit of self-knowledge which signifies the epistemological approach, but also in spirit’s existence which signifies the ontological approach. Thus, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the epistemological approach and the ontological approach towards the nature of language coexist. In this article, by turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and through an analysis of the relationship between language and spirit, we not only attempt to seek some resolution to the epistemology-ontology contradiction, but we also reveal the homogeneity of language and spirit, which we take as the true nature of language in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

In a series of lectures on German philosophy ‘since Kant’, the names of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel and their critical reference to Kant are, of course, a must. No less a must, though, would seem to be Wilhelm von Humboldt, a philosopher and linguist who, together with Herder and Hamann, formed the alliterating triumvirate of a romanticist critique of Kant. The response, within the discipline, to transcendental philosophy from this side was, in contrast to the idealistic mainstream, long in the (...) coming but, in the end, rich in consequences. (shrink)

The article deals with the analysis of the experience of calling in the existential and phenomenological aspects. The phenomenon of call revealed in the experience of sensing and understanding of human being towards the world and as an event of a personal existence. The study proves that calling responds to the human need of going over the limits of own self towards the co-existence with people, serving the life-work and the ideals. The author analyses the problem of existential and religious (...) truth. The research discovers the meaning of voices and silence in the phenomenal field of calling. Analyzed the difference between the vocal and visual experience, between the feeling and seeing, the necessity of organization of a sound being in human self-consciousness. The meaning of silence is explicated as an internal space of human experience. Silence is researched as an existential phenomenon, as a special mood making possible for a personality to experience the fullness of being. Silence is revealed as an existential dimension of the origin of language, of the voice of conscience and as a reality of the experience of responsibility of a personality. Therefore, in silence takes place sensing of oneself and occurs the revelation of a call for a person. (shrink)

Провідними дослідницькими наративами статті є вплив мистецьких стратегій на полі- тичну комунікацію за умов постправди; політична уява і режим постправди; мистецтво і режим істини; раціональність ілюзій у політичній комунікації; техніки мистецької суґестії у публічному діалозі. Йдеться про використання принципу вірогідності ілюзії, зокрема, ри- туалів леґітимації у процесі боротьби за прихильність виборця. Аналізовано техніки мис- тецької суґестії у публічному діалозі. Особливе місце посідає аналіз міфологічного перетво- рення реальності на ґрунті мистецьких стратегій, тема раціональності ілюзії. Проведено аналіз міфологічного перетворення реальності на основі (...) мистецьких стратегій. Розглянуто зв’я зок таких понять, як поезія, мистецтво і технологія, з розгортанням процесів техноло- гічного вдосконалення у будь-якій сфері людської діяльності. (shrink)