This article reconsiders the relationship between Simmel and Heidegger. Scholars commonly argue that Simmel’s work on the topic of death and mortality influenced the early Heidegger’s work on the same topic, as evidenced in Being and Time. I argue however that Simmel’s work particularly in the Lebensanschauung should be read as challenging the basic presuppositions of Heidegger on death. I then compare the two on the issue of immortality in order to show that Simmel is much closer to the subsequent (...) critics of Heidegger than he is to Heidegger himself. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that phenomenal properties are contentless modes of appearances of representational properties. The essay initiates with examination of the first-person perspective of the conscious observer according to which a “reference to I” with respect to the observation of experience is determined. A distinction is then drawn between the conscious observer and experience as observed, according to which, three distinct modifications of experience are delineated. These modifications are then analyzed with respect to the content (...) of experience and from this the ground of the distinction between phenomenal and representational properties is identified. (shrink)

Bringing together a genealogy of authors, concepts, and aesthetic case studies, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on ordinary aesthetics by focusing on the tensions that are intrinsic to walking as a fundamental embodied action in everyday urban life. These tensions concern the movement of walking itself and its relation to one’s surroundings, but it also concerns a certain complementarity between home (familiarity) and wandering. Experiencing space and thresholds that disrupt one’s relationship with home and the everyday can (...) be understood as part of a modern “anti-home” tendency that lies at the core of several artistic and aesthetic practices. On the other hand, the study of walking and its relationship with the ordinary has also been enhanced and complexified by the mediation of images and technologies of reproduction. Approaching the paradoxes and ambiguities of everydayness from the perspective of walking allows us to better understand the ordinary as an in-between concept composed of evidence and mystery, familiarity and strangeness. Walking itself, as an ordinary element of life, is an unstable stabilisation, an unconsciousness that may become awareness, an immersive action that knows interruptions, a way of repeating paths that can also lead to detours and discoveries. (shrink)

The complexities of Heidegger’s early accounts of nature provide a privileged perspective from which to understand the evolution of his thought into the 1930s and beyond. This movement seems largely driven by his response to what Karsten Harries has called “the antinomy of being”. In Heidegger’s early writings, Natur is associated with the “theoretical” and the “intraworldly.” However, less attested is an “unworlded” and thus intrinsically “incomprehensible” sense of nature, as the abyssal ground of worlding. This thread is traced through (...) key Marburg period texts, into Being and Time, and beyond it into the 1928 “metontology” appendix and its surprising transformation in the 1929 inaugural lecture. Finally, some cursory observations are made about how this trajectory unfolds in later Heideggerian thought, taking the 1936 Artwork essay as an example, showing how both sides of the antinomy of being come to be incorporated within a more comprehensive framing of the Seinsfrage. (shrink)

The following essay seeks to deploy, from Husserl to Levinas, the centrality of the problem of temporality. In truth, the understanding of temporality constitutes, properly said, that which identifies and differentiates all the authors of the phenomenological tradition. Which means: temporality is that from which all phenomenological breakthroughs are signified and given their very possibility. Our task is thus, through a reading of Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas, to reveal how temporality is reassessed in the history of phenomenology as well as (...) to show how the philosophy of E. Levinas opens, beyond Husserl and Heidegger but by rendering justice to them both, to a novel and unedited temporality: an irreducible temporality of alterity from whence 'presence' is suspended by another source of meaning than the intentional constitution of phenomenality. (shrink)

Ostensibly, Heidegger’s notion of Befindlichkeit isn’t one of the really enigmatic concepts in his oeuvre—for everyone knows that on Heidegger’s account, this phenomenon, which bears at least some connection to what we normally call emotion, provides a basic disclosure of “the Dasein’s” worldly engagement. Nonetheless, there are enigmas here, given that Heidegger connects the phenomenon of Befindlichkeit with the disclosure of the Dasein’s past, as well as to its “thrownness” and its cultural heritage, none of which seems transparently true of (...) emotions. Some clarification is called for, then—and as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, this is possible only by interpreting the notion of Befindlichkeit in the context of an element of Husserl’s account of time- and self-consciousness that Heidegger incorporated as a central feature of his own, amended account of temporality—namely, Husserl’s notion of the protentional fulfillment that, on his reckoning, lies at the heart of this consciousness. Interpreting Heidegger’s account of Befindlichkeit in this fashion, I also show how, so interpreted, it can help us to make headway in both contemporary emotion studies and the currently developing critical theories of affect. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the emotional dimensions involved in the phenomenon of interpersonal violence, identifying various modalizations of affectivity occurring in the architectonics of this phenomenon. I will first concentrate on symmetrical violence, namely, on the emergence of irritation, annoyance, anger, and fury leading to fierce confrontation. Next I will explore asymmetrical violence, where the passive pole experiences the imminence of the other’s violence in fear and in being terrified. I will then focus on the experience (...) of the third in the face of violence, showing that here the affectivity is differently constituted each time, depending on the various situations of symmetrical and asymmetrical violence that the third witnesses. Finally, I will contrast the experience of real violence with the experience of violence-as-image, and I will pose several questions regarding the modifications of the affective experience of the third in the face of depicted violence. (shrink)

RésuméDans cet article, j'analyse deux approches du phénomène du geste, tel qu'il est constitué par l'incarnation, l'intersubjectivité, l'affectivité et le langage : tandis que Martin Heidegger affirme que le mouvement corporel humain dans son ensemble doit être compris comme geste par opposition au mouvement spatial des choses, Vilém Flusser intègre sous cette notion une multitude de pratiques et d'activités humaines que le sens commun hésite à appeler gestes. Le dilemme de la phénoménologie du geste consiste dans cette tension entre la (...) concrétude plurielle des apparences gestuelles et la tentation irrépressible d'identifier une couche unitaire qui leur permettrait de tenir ensemble. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the problem of body as it is developed in Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars, in contrast with its enigmatic concealment in Being and Time. In the first part, I emphasize the implicit connection of Heidegger’s approach of body with Husserl’s problematic of Leib and Körper, and with his phenomenological analyses of tactility. In the second part, I focus on Heidegger’s distinction between the limits of the lived body and the limits of the corresponding corporeal thing, opening (...) to an ontological understanding of the ecstatic bodying forth of the body. In the third part, I analyse this ecstatic bodiliness in relation to the problem of spatiality, exploring the tension between the here and the over there in the experience of the embodiment. Heidegger not only refuses to understand the space starting from the here of the body, but he also refuses to understand the body starting from the here of the space. Thus, there are two interconnected inversions that Heidegger operates in relation to Husserl: In the topic of spatiality, he rejects the pre-eminence of the here; in relation to the body, he contests the primacy of tactility. Finally, the conclusion stresses that, even if the bodying forth penetrates almost all behaviour of Dasein in the world, there is however a limit of embodiment, an unreachable frontier beyond any possibility of the bodying forth, namely the understanding of being. This also implies that the problem of body needs be understood in the context of the ontological difference. (shrink)

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

Phenomenology has remained a sheltering place for those who would seek to understand not only their own “first person” experiences but also the first person experiences of others. Recent publications by renowned scholars within the field have clarified and extended our possibilities of access to “first person” experience by means of perception (Lingis, 2007) and reflection (Zahavi, 2005). Teaching phenomenology remains a challenge, however, because one must find ways of communicating to the student how to embody it as a process (...) rather than simply to learn about it as a content area. Another challenge issues from the fact that most writings on applied phenomenology emphasize individual subjectivity as the central focus, while offering only indirect access to the subjectivity of others (for example, by way of analyzing written descriptions provided by the individual under study). While one finds in the literature of psychotherapy plentiful elucidations of the “we-experience” within which therapists form impressions of their clients’ experience, there is still need for a more thoughtful clarification of our rather special personal modes of access to the experience of others in everyday life. This paper will present “second person perspectivity” as a mode of resonating with the expressions of others and will describe class activities that can bring students closer to a lived understanding of what it means to be doing phenomenology in the face of the other. (shrink)

En este artículo se planteará, siguiendo a Heidegger, que el nihilismo, lejos de ser una consecuencia devastadora del tiempo de crisis es más bien una donación de este que posibilita realmente el acontecimiento del «pensar». En ese horizonte de significación se examinarán los orígenes de la palabra nihilismo y se abordará el nihilismo como espacio que prepara el acontecimiento del despliegue [Entfaltung] del ser. Por último, se estudiará brevemente la frase de difícil interpretación «solo un dios podrá salvarnos» pronunciada por (...) Heidegger en una entrevista en la revista Spiegel. (shrink)

The chief concern of the paper is to initiate discussion on the difference between the private and public power of judgement. The inspiration comes from Kant and his conception of the power of judgement, customs, morality and provisional law.

En este artículo queremos investigar la relación entre las filosofías de Edmund Husserl y Richard Avenarius. A pesar de que este tema ha sido prácticamente ignorado por los estudiosos de Husserl, es de suma importancia si uno quiere iluminar los orígenes del pensamiento fenomenológico de Husserl. Nuestra tesis es que el concepto de Husserl de actitud natural y su correlato, el mundo natural -tal y como ellos surgen en diferentes conferencias durante la década de 1910 y especialmente en Ideas I (...) con respecto a la reducción fenomenológica- se derivan de una temprana confrontación con el punto de vista del empiriocriticismo de Avenarius como fue expuesto en su libro Der menschliche Weltbegriff. Con el fin de mantener esta afirmación, discutiremos el acercamiento gradual de Husserl a las teorías del filósofo suizo-alemán así como su última crítica al mismo. Aunque, de hecho, Husserl concibió el punto de vista den Avenarius como un principio valioso, al final de sus reflexiones pone en cuestión algunas de las premisas de la filosofía empiriocriticista.In this paper I investigate the relationship between the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Richard Avenarius. Despite this tapie has been almost disregarded by Husserlian scholars, it is of uttermost importance if one aims at illuminating the origins of Hus­serl's phenomenological thinking. My thesis is that Husserl's concept of natural attitude and its correlate, the natural world -as they emerge in various lectures during the 1910s and especially in Ideen I with respectmto the phenomenological reduction- stem from an early confrontation with Avenarius' "empiriocriticist" standpoint as laid out in his book Der menschliche Weltbegriff. In order to up­ hold this claim, I will discuss in my paper Husserl's gradual approach to the theories of the Swiss-German philosopher as well as his late critique of the same. Although Husserl in fact conceived of Avenarius' standpoint as a valuable beginning, he was decisively prompted in his late reflections to call into question sorne of the premises of the "empirio-criticist" philosophy. (shrink)

RESUMENA partir de las problemáticas desarrolladas por Charles Taylor y su explí­cita adhesión al programa gadameriano de la hermenéutica se intentará desarrollar la noción de fusión de horizontes con respecto a dos cuestiones inherentes a ella. Por un lado el papel que cumple en el entendimiento entre esquemas comprensivos diferentes; y por otro lado, la ambigüedad del carácter de la misma fusión. Esto en referencia a lo siguiente: o bien se trata de la fusión de horizontes distintos o bien se (...) trata de una fusión interna en un solo horizonte, con lo cual lo primero resulta ser sólo una mera apariencia.PALABRAS CLAVEHERMENÉUTICA, GADAMER, FUSIÓN DE HORIZONTES, ALTERIDADABSTRACTIn this paper I analyse Charles Taylor’s notion of horizons fusion, which comes from Gadamer’s Hermeneutics (as Taylor avows). Two problems are discussed: on the one hand, the role of this notion regarding the understanding between different comprehensive schemes and, on the other hand the ambiguity of fusion in itself, insofar as it can be seen either as the fusion of different horizons, or as an internal fusion in the context of one horizon. Thus the first possibility becomes a mere appearance.KEY WORDSHERMENEUTICS, GADAMER, HORIZONS FUSION, OTHERNESS. (shrink)

The question of the identity or persistence of the self through time may be interesting for philosophers, but it is hardly a burning question for most individuals. On the other hand, the question of who I am, what or who I take myself to be, can be a vital, even burning question for most of us at some time in our lives. This is the notion of personal identity I take up in this paper. It is an identity that is (...) not pre-given a priori but is always in some sense an open question, never completely decided. Here the narrative conception of self is relevant, since it is often a question of what story or kind of story my identity instantiates. This notion of personal identity is inherently temporal, but not in the sense of temporal persistence but of temporal coherence of past, present and future. And here the question of personal identity is inevitably social, since it is largely a question of what group I identify myself with, what social role I take myself to embody. And what complications occur when I identify myself with more than one group? Here many social conflicts and also intrapersonal conflicts have their source. My topic thus turns on ideas of personal identity that are reflected in the popular expressions “identity crisis” and “identity politics.”. (shrink)

Frederick Olafson criticizes Hubert Dreyfus’s interpretation of BEING AND TIME on a number of points, including the meaning of being, the nature of intentionality, and especially the role of das Man in Heidegger’s account of social existence. But on the whole Olafson’s critique is unconvincing because it rests on an implausible account of presence and perceptual intuition in Heidegger’s early philosophy, and because Olafson maintains an overly individuated notion of Dasein and consequently a one-sided conception of the role of das (...) Man. Unfortunately, since Dreyfus confines his commentary exclusively to Division I, he in effect forgoes any attempt to explain how das Man might be understood as playing the simultaneously constitutive and destructive role Heidegger evidently envisioned for it. I conclude by arguing that the conformity and the conformism represented by das Man are bound together by Heidegger’s notion of standoffishness (Abständigkeit). (shrink)

The central question in Heidegger's philosophy, early and late, is that concerning the meaning of being. Recently, some have suggested that Heidegger himself interprets being to mean presence (Anwesen, Anwesenheit, Praesenz), citing as evidence lectures dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. I argue, on the contrary, that Heidegger regards the equation between being and presence as the hallmark of metaphysical thinking, and that it only ever appears in his texts as a gloss on the philosophical tradition, not as an (...) expression of his own ontological commitments. In his early work Heidegger seeks to confront and even correct the traditional interpretation of being by challenging its narrow preoccupation with presence and the present. By the 1930s, however, he abandons the idea that there is anything to?be intrinsically right or wrong about with regard to the meaning of being and turns his attention instead to what he calls ?appropriation? (Ereignis) or the truth of being, that is, the essentially ahistorical condition for the possibility of all historically contingent interpretations of being, including the metaphysical interpretation of being as presence. (shrink)

En el presente estudio, tratamos de aplicar las categorías de la reciente fenomenología francesa de la donación a las cuatro posibles figuras de la nada que Kant establece al final de la “Analítica trascendental”. Se examina, de este modo, cada una de tales figuras con el fin de mostrar el particular modo de donación que adoptan a la hora de aparecer y manifestarse. Se aborda, asimismo, la cuestión del “aún-no-ser” implícitamente contenida en la noción de “posibilidad” tomando en consideración la (...) teoría “ontológica” kantiana en la cual el Ser es identificado con la “posición” absoluta de una cosa”. Como conclusión, se muestran las implicaciones antropológicas derivadas de la consideración fenomenológica de las cuatro modalidades kantianas de la nada. (shrink)

Conrad-Martius’ philosophy can be defined as a non-orthodox position in phenomenological ontology. This position can be considered such in a different sense from Heidegger’s ontology and may be treated as an extension of Husserl’s phenomenology in view of the following three elements. (1) Seiendes (entity) is considered anything that has consistence in the larger sense of the word, including all entities, such as fantastical entities (spirits, fairy-tale beings), soul, ideas and others, that can be used to obtain the phenomenological description. (...) (2) The phenomenological description that occurs through a new definition of “phenomenological reduction” and epoché, in such a way that a realistic solution is emphasized in the analysis of being; being is not considered as the residuum of a system of noema, but, following medieval philosophy, as having the eminent character of reality, through which any of the others can be derived. (3) The analysis of being gives a stratification of various entities, through which each finds definition by means of its relative allocation in an “ontological space”. (shrink)

Neste artigo, pretendemos abordar a leitura heideggeriana da Ciência da Lógica, de Hegel, tomando a questão da finitude/infinitude como ponto focal. Para tanto, exporemos, num primeiro momento, a crítica hegeliana ao “pensamento finito” e, em seguida, apresentaremos a “controvérsia” instalada no texto A constituição Onto-teo-lógica da metafísica, buscando mostrar como a tarefa realizada por Heidegger, nesse texto, de marcar a diferença entre o seu pensamento e o de Hegel, tomando por referência a Ciência da Lógica, contribui para a destruição das (...) pretensões infinitistas da metafísica. Entremeando essa abordagem, procuraremos evidenciar também que, não obstante as diferenças dos seus empreendimentos filosóficos, as críticas que Hegel e Heidegger dirigem à tradição metafísica são, em última análise, críticas à linguagem que constitui e regula o discurso dessa tradição. (shrink)

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4–6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time (...) is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices. (shrink)

This article seeks to present for the first time a more systematic account of Edith Stein’s views on death and dying. First, I will argue that death does not necessarily lead us to an understanding of our earthly existence as aevum, that is, an experience of time between eternity and finite temporality. We always bear the mark of our finitude, including our finite temporality, even when we exist within the eternal mind of God. To claim otherwise, is to make identical (...) our eternity with God’s eternity, thereby undermining the traditional Scholastic argument, which Stein holds, that there is no real relation between the being (and, therefore, (a)temporality) of God and the being of human persons. Second, I will argue that Stein excludes the category of potentiality from her discussion of death as a relation between the fullness or actuality of being and nothingness. In fact, death is more a relation between possibility/potentiality and nothingness than a relation between actual fullness and nothingness. What Stein describes as fullness ought to be read as potential. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines critically the notion of reflection as self-objectification and points out its insufficiency in accounting for the pathological phenomenon of hyperreflexivity. It proposes an understanding of reflection as situated and motivated from within a world and having a normative aspect that concerns the very life of the reflecting person. On this account, the paper argues, on the one hand, that both phenomenological reflection and hyperreflexivity can be viewed as forms of reflection characterized by loss of the world. On (...) the other hand, by construing the phenomenological loss as imaginative vis-à-vis the real loss of hyperreflexivity, the paper emphasizes a difference between the two domains. (shrink)

The present article aims to illuminate a notion of finite freedom in both Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas criticizes the Heideggerian ontology for holding an egoistic, unconstrained notion of freedom. The article first responds to such a criticism by showing that the Heideggerian notion of freedom as self-binding involves normativity. It then argues that both Heidegger and Levinas propose a notion of finite freedom as the unity of autonomy and heteronomy. Finally, the article also sheds light on what different approaches to (...) the source of normativity separate the two philosophers’ understandings of freedom. (shrink)

The article is aimed at a philosophical study of the foundations/causes of war. Its background is a definition of the Russian-Ukrainian full-scale warfare as an irreconcilable existential conflict of the "Russian world" between the "Russian world" and the national world of Ukraine. Methodological specific of the article is reliance on the everydayness of a boundary situation of war to define the cultural world, as well as cultural identity as concepts that get existential meaning. Philosophy potential is used to clarify the (...) key question for today's war discourse about why the parties to the conflict are determined to take military actions, but not to resolve the conflict through peace negotiations. The answer is sought by comparing two ontologies of the world that there are in Habermas' communicative theory of action and Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Each of them provides an alternative concept of understanding and, accordingly, different foundations for its truth theory. This also provides a perspective, firstly, to distinguish two alternative positions of participants in the discourse of war – "internal" one as "being in a culture at war" and another of an "external" observer. Secondly, this distinction helps to explain why war as a conflict of cultural worlds could be considered from different philosophical points of view, namely from the position of the philosophy of communicative action, as well as in the context of existential analysis of being. Examination of the explanatory potential of both approaches is carried out on the basis of a comparison of different concepts of the world, fundamental to each of philosophers. It is done by clarifications of basics of two ontologies of understanding and, accordingly, of their theories of truth. The article indicates that the theory of truth in communicative philosophy is based on the regulative idea of the unity of the objective world. Instead, with reference to examples from Charles Taylor and Jean-Luc Nancy, the author claims that the fundamental ontology can be reinterpreted in terms of the plurality of being-in-common of people in sovereign cultural worlds. Accordingly, the interaction of representatives of different cultural identities under certain political conditions, i.e., official propaganda can turn into a radical disagreement of different existential understandings of the meaning of being, into a war of cultural worlds that cannot be overcome by just negotiations at the level of competent communication. The article ends with an open question about searching for ways to unify the mentioned ontological approaches. (shrink)

En el presente artículo proponemos un abordaje de los análisis en torno al cuerpo en trabajos fundamentales de Husserl y Heidegger, a partir de una distinción de diferencias y continuidades. Buscaremos demostrar que las especificaciones de la corporeidad de Heidegger remiten a una aclaración del entramado comprensivo y de significación en el que también se hallan articulados los análisis fenomenológicos de su maestro. Para ello, en primer lugar, especificaremos las consideraciones de Husserl sobre la corporalidad y la inter-corporalidad, distinguiendo su (...) perspectiva gnoseológica y ética. Luego, dedicaremos un apartado a las aclaraciones de Heidegger en la década de 1920 y otro, a sus descripciones específicas en sus seminarios de la década de 1960, donde desarrolla el carácter ontológico de la corporeidad. Finalmente, analizaremos algunas implicancias relativas a estas tematizaciones, distinguiendo sus enfoques y orientaciones comprensivas sobre el cuerpo. (shrink)

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

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

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering phenomena, (...) ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

The scientific and practical fields—especially high-performance sports—increasingly request a stronger focus be placed on individual athletes in human movement science research. Machine learning methods have shown efficacy in this context by identifying the unique movement patterns of individuals and distinguishing their intra-individual changes over time. The objective of this investigation is to analyze biomechanically described movement patterns during the fatigue-related accumulation process within a single training session of a high number of repeated executions of a ballistic sports movement—specifically, the frontal (...) foot kick (mae-geri) in karate—in expert athletes. The two leading research questions presented for consideration are (1) Can characteristics of individual movement patterns be observed throughout the entire training session despite continuous changes, i.e., even as fatigue-related processes increase? and (2) How do intra-individual movement patterns change as fatigue-related processes increase throughout a training session? Sixteen expert karatekas performed 606 frontal foot kicks directed toward an imaginary target. The kicks were performed in nine sets at 80% (K-80) of the self-experienced maximal intensity. In addition, six kicks at maximal intensity (K-100) were performed after each of the nine sets. Between the sets, the participants took a 90-s break. Three-dimensional full-body kinematic data of all kicks were recorded with 10 infrared cameras. The normalized waveforms of nine upper- and lower-body joint angles were classified using a supervised machine learning method (support vector machine). The results of the classification revealed a disjunct distinction between the kinematic movement patterns of individual athletes. The identification of unique movement patterns of individual athletes was independent of the intensity and the degree of fatigue-related processes. In other words, even with the accumulation of fatigue-related processes, the unique movement patterns of an individual athlete can be clearly identified. During the training session, changes in intra-individual movement patterns could also be detected, indicating the occurrence of adaptations in individual movement patterns throughout the fatigue-related accumulation process. The results suggest that these adaptations can be modeled in terms of changes in patterns rather than increasing variance. Practical consequences are critically discussed. (shrink)

Definition of the problemA myocardial infarction is often a vitally and emotionally threatening situation for the affected. Unconscious coping mechanisms in dealing with the heart disease may result in, for example, complete denial or emotional decompensation.ArgumentAn understanding of myocardial infarction as a borderline situation may provide theoretical enrichment for clinicians and point to a third coping avenue, described as “posttraumatic growth”. Affected individuals often refer to the event as a “wake-up call”. Clinical knowledge of these different coping mechanisms may in (...) turn lead to a relativization of primarily subjectivist positions and substantively hedonistic or preferentialist notions of good life or “quality of life”. Such a position would in turn be compatible with the deliberative model of physician–patient communication.ConsequencesIn the light of such a broader understanding of disease coping, the task of (psychosomatic) physicians would thus to accompany persons with heart disease, to be aware of the teachable moment and to enable a process of development for the patients. (shrink)

Personal recovery entails the idea of learning to live a good life in the face of mental illness. It takes place in a continuous dynamic between change and acceptance and involves the existential dimension in the broadest sense. With cognitive self-regulation and empowerment as central elements, however, current models of recovery mostly have an individual focus instead of a relational one. Furthermore, there seems to be an emphasis on the component of change. Little attention is payed to the role and (...) integration of dealing with loss in personal recovery. In this paper, the role of loss in mental illness will be elaborated from an existential perspective. This will be done by relating existential changes to possibly disruptive experiences of loss in wider experience. With the help of several perspectives on dealing with loss it will be argued this can be integrated in processes of recovery. Then, it will be elaborated how reexperiencing a state of being surrounded, or being included, being held is a necessary part of recovery. The result consists of a refinement of the view on personal recovery. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to arrive at a better understanding of what existential loss and loss in wider experience in the context of psychopathology entails, and (2) to further develop perspectives on recovery in mental health care. (shrink)

Summary This paper deals with the development of Husserl’s and Merleau-Pontys analyses of the affective lived experience of body and space. Both the concept of „flesh“ (Merleau-Ponty) and „Hyle“ (Husserl) stand for a sensuous principle that underlies the original givenness and solidarity of body and world and I claim that this interaction and the concomitant intertwining of body and place make up the existential dimension of architecture, i.e. the, being-here-in-a-place’. In this connection, I argue that the fact that bodily affective (...) experience endows the world with sense has led to a double break: On the one hand with representation and on the other with perspectivity and compossibility of the realms of being in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective approaches. Finally, I will exemplify this break and the development of genetic insights – from an anthropocentric, organic and harmonious space conception to a topologic space made up of incompossibilities expressing an ambiguous sense – with paradigmatic works of architecture, so as to make evident the explanatory potential of phenomenology for architecture. (shrink)

Die Bezeichnung „alt“ hat sich zu einem Wertbegriff negativer Konnotation gewandelt, so dass er synonym für alle möglichen Defizienzen bzw. als Chiffre für Defizienz schlechthin steht. Alt zu sein ist nun nicht länger eine Sache der Jahre, sondern von (verloren gegangenen) Qualitäten. Positiv ist daran, dass (fast wieder alles) möglich ist, negativ ist, dass gerade deshalb auch (fast) wieder alles ermöglicht werden muss. Denn der Alte ist selber schuld und will er es nicht bleiben, muss er etwas daran ändern. Die (...) Krankschreibung des Alters ruft seine Behandlung hervor, was nichts anders bedeutet als dass das Alter, das als Krankheit begriffen wird, kuriert werden muss, wobei die Kur nicht in seiner Heilung, sondern in seiner Überwindung, d.h. seiner Abschaffung besteht. Das Anti-Aging verfolgt eine radikale Abkehr vom Menschen, wie wir ihn kennen. Gerade am Alter lässt sich aber zeigen, dass der Mensch mit Mängeln leben kann, häufig trotz seiner Mängel glücklich wird und mit ihnen sogar seinen Frieden macht. (shrink)

Die Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach dem guten Leben hängt unmittelbar mit dem Bewusstsein der Zeitlichkeit des individuellen Lebens zusammen. Mit dem Altern und Alter gehen jeweils paradigmatische Weisen menschlicher Zeiterfahrung einher, die einen besonderen Zugang zur Endlichkeit und Vergänglichkeit der Lebenszeit ermöglichen. Neben der Darstellung dieser Zeiterfahrungen werden gängige Bewältigungsstrategien eines Leidens an der verrinnenden sowie endlichen Zeit besprochen. Abschließend wird aufgezeigt, weshalb gerade die zeitliche Konstitution menschlichen Lebens von ethischer Relevanz für die Frage nach dem guten Leben sein (...) kann. (shrink)

One of the starting points of Derrida’s deconstruction is the idea that metaphysics is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present. It is well known that Derrida took up this thesis of the ‘...

Generally attributed to Duns Scotus, as the correlate of formal distinction, and as the minimal component of being, the concept of reality is older than that. It arose during the twelfth century, u...

In this article an attempt is made to localize epistemological violence and to unravel and unmask power structures, including points of friction between the migrating individual and the local community. In addition, a new type of subject is presented, which, on the one hand, reveals the power structures inherent in the individual and in the society containing it, and on the other hand, through the extended model of existence, offers opportunities for a coexistence, which would be marked by solidarity and (...) fairness and would occur by way of interpersonal connections. Using examples of power structures in language courses, in universities, and in the loss of cultural values through migration, epistemic violence is tracked and presented not only theoretically, but also factually. (shrink)

The verb κενόω means ‘to empty’ and St. Paul uses the word ἐκένωσεν writing that ‘Jesus made himself nothing’ and ‘emptied himself’. Śūnyatā is a Buddhist concept most commonly translated as emptiness, nothingness, or nonsubstantiality. An important kenosis–śūnyatā discussion was sparked by Abe Masao’s paper ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Śūnyatā’. I confront the kenosis–śūnyatā theme with Vattimo’s kenosis-based philosophy of religion. For Vattimo, kenosis refers to ‘secularization’: when strong structures such as the essence and the fulfilment of the Christian message (...) are weakened. Parallels between Abe’s and Vattimo’s thought will be demonstrated with regard to themes current in East–West comparative philosophy: reality and emptiness, the overcoming of metaphysics, the position of the Self, the human and the divine, and the relationship between science and religion. The latter point is particularly timely because since the 1990s religious fundamentalism has pushed forward a curio.. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)