In this paper I analyze constitution embodiment, a particular conception of embodiment. Proponents of constitution embodiment claim that the body is a condition of the constitution of entities. Constitution embodiment is popular with phenomenologically-inspired Embodied Cognition, including research projects such as Enactivism and Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Unfortunately, PEC’s use of constitution embodiment is neither clear nor coherent; in particular, PEC uses the concept of constitution embodiment so that a major inconsistency is entailed. PEC conceives of the body in a (...) transcendental sense as a condition of the constitution of entities, and, in an ontic sense, as a scientifically describable entity. Yet, a condition of the constitution of entities cannot be itself an entity—rather, it is the very condition of the possibility of an entity. This inconsistency entails further problems, among them PEC’s misguided focus on the location of the embodied mind. In order to correct these mistakes, I develop a conception of constitution embodiment based on the work of Heidegger, Husserl and to a lesser degree Merleau-Ponty. This has two purposes. First, it provides the conceptual groundwork to secure the status of PEC as a consistent and coherent research project and to clarify PEC’s conception of the relationship between phenomenology and the sciences. In that spirit, my approach provides further guidelines for fruitful research alliances between PEC and other research programs such as Grounded Cognition and identifies current research alliances, such as those with Radical Enactivism, as undesirable. Second, my account provides an elaborate concept of constitution embodiment that can function as the basis for more sophisticated work in the future. (shrink)

The 'Metaphysics of Dasein ' is the name which Heidegger gave to a new philosophical project developed immediately after the partial publication of his masterwork Being and Time. As Heidegger was later to recall, an 'overturning' took place at that moment, more precisely right in the middle of the 1929 treatise On the Essence of Ground. Between the fundamental-ontological formulation of the question of being and its metaphysical rephrasing, Heidegger discovered that a 'metaphysical freedom' stood at the root of Dasein (...) 's relation to his world and, thus, at the basis of his whole ontological questioning. This article will show how the very structure of the 1929 essay clearly illustrates the path Heidegger followed between Being and Time and the new philosophical beginning of the mid 1930s. It will conclude with a few critical remarks concerning Heidegger 's attempt to free his thinking from traditional philosophy and to overcome metaphysics. (shrink)

Esta investigación aborda el tema de la diferencia ontológica desde la perspectiva de las maneras del ser (ser-cómo), uno de los momentos constitutivos de la idea complejo-unitaria del ser. Tema y perspectiva se complementan recíprocamente. Primero, la diferencia ontológica posibilita evidenciar el fenómeno óntico de las maneras de ser del ente y el ontológico de las maneras del ser. Segundo, ambas maneras proveen una palpable visualización sobre los términos de la diferencia ontológica, desbrozando el terreno para distinguir al ser, no (...) sólo del ente, sino de la entidad, la cual está determinada unilateralmente por el ser-dado-delante (Vorhandenheit) en sentido amplísimo. (shrink)

The article discusses the technical image, a central concept in Vilém Flusser’s later main work Into the Universe of Technical Images (1985a). After identifying its various dimensions, the analysis frames the concept as an amalgamation of disciplines, theories, and artistic practices the cultural philosopher Flusser explored during the 1960s and especially the 1970s. In particular, the field of information aesthetics developed by Max Bense and Abraham A. Moles, among others, as well as artistic video practices in France and the United (...) States played an important role in both Flusser’s biography and the formation of his technical image concept. At the same time, in Flusser’s cultural philosophy the technical image is the condition and result of a new kind of human imagination, which in this paper is specified as ‘projective imagination’. (shrink)

Les aspects polémiques et rhétoriques de la réhabilitation des préjugés chez Gadamer font non seulement violence à la pensee de Descartes, mais obscurcissent le sens véritable de la théorie gadamérienne sur ce point. Pour en arriver à une compréhension plus adéquate de la position de Gadamer, il faut rendre explicites différents éléments qui renvoient à des motifs de la Kehre Heideggérienne et mettre Vaccent sur le rôle de principes herméneutiques développés par Gadamer, tels la tradition et le langage. On peut (...) alors arguer que la pomme de discorde entre Descartes et Gadamer ne se trouve pas dans la théorie des préjugés, leur position sur cette question étant plus complementaire qu'opposée, mais dans la théorie de la subjectivité. (shrink)

Les aspects polémiques et rhétoriques de la réhabilitation des préjugés chez Gadamer font non seulement violence à la pensee de Descartes, mais obscurcissent le sens véritable de la théorie gadamérienne sur ce point. Pour en arriver à une compréhension plus adéquate de la position de Gadamer, il faut rendre explicites différents éléments qui renvoient à des motifs de la Kehre Heideggérienne et mettre Vaccent sur le rôle de principes herméneutiques développés par Gadamer, tels la tradition et le langage. On peut (...) alors arguer que la pomme de discorde entre Descartes et Gadamer ne se trouve pas dans la théorie des préjugés, leur position sur cette question étant plus complementaire qu'opposée, mais dans la théorie de la subjectivité. (shrink)

Moods are usually taken to be pre-intentional affective states that tune our experience and cognition. Moreover, moods are sometimes considered to not only accompany cognitive acts, but to be understanding phenomena themselves. The following paper examines the assumption that moods represent a specific interpretative skill. Based upon that view, the semantic content of moods seems to be self-determining and to elude conceptual articulation. By contrast, I defend the thesis that the alleged inarticulable intelligibility of affective experiences is possible only due (...) to its belonging to a comprehensive theoretical horizon. For that purpose, I first analyze Heidegger’s influential account on moods in Being and Time, in order to clarify his claim that moods have their own understanding. Although Heidegger asserts that attuned understanding becomes itself when it is interpreted, he nevertheless rejects conceptual unfolding as a legitimate disclosure of the intelligible content of moods. I amend Heidegger’s account by engaging Hegel’s approach to this topic in his Philosophy of Mind. In this text, Hegel argues that feelings cannot give an account of their purport by feeling alone. Affective states not only manifest the need and urge to express themselves, but they reach their full extent when their meaning is disclosed within the entirety of the mind. It may be the case that affective states cannot always be fully clarified, but, even within a non-cognitivist account of moods, their intelligibility requires our acquaintance with articulated understanding. (shrink)

This article explores how the thought that language is expressive, in the sense of bearing emotional or affective meaning, can be made sense of, with particular attention to two authors for whom this thought plays an important role. It begins by introducing the idea of language being “expressive” and using Charles Taylor's work to consider its potential interest, before showing how the expressiveness of language might be accounted for by a position that seems particularly suited to this task, namely Merleau‐Ponty's (...) view of embodied expression in Phenomenology of Perception. I then set out a significant challenge to that position based on Wittgenstein's “private language argument,” which implies there is no necessary connection between language use and a subject's internal (affective) states, thus contesting Merleau‐Ponty's explanatory emphasis on the body. I therefore propose a revised “complex” view of language's expressiveness that meets this Wittgensteinian challenge by reconceiving the body's role. Finally, I draw out some implications of this revised view, arguing that while language itself cannot be considered expressive, it remains significant that we can experience language as expressive. I also suggest that, although apparently threatened, Taylor's position can not only accommodate, but be better understood with, this revised view. (shrink)

Being and Time’s emphasis on practical activities has attracted much attention as an approach to meaning not modelled exclusively on language. However, understanding this emphasis is made more difficult by Heidegger’s notion of Rede, which he routinely characterizes as both language-like and basic to all disclosure. This paper assesses whether this notion can be both interpreted coherently and reconciled with Heidegger’s emphasis on intelligent nonlinguistic behaviours. It begins by identifying two functions of Articulacy – the demonstrative and articulatory – and (...) a potential source of incoherence in Heidegger’s analysis. Having reviewed some standard approaches to Heideggerian Articulacy, I show how Heidegger’s discussion of predicative judgements implies that language can be linked with different kinds of content. This allows Heidegger’s analysis to be read coherently, provided Articulacy is understood as having distinct purposive and predicative modes. The final section shows how this reading preserves a close connection between Articulacy and language while accommodating intelligent nonlinguistic behaviours. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in Hegel’s mature Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences contains the outlines of a philosophically rich notion of the constitutive temporality of subjectivity. The temporality of the being of Hegel’s concrete subject is intimately connected with embodiment and sociality, and is thus an essential element of its fully detranscendentalized inner-worldly nature.

This book review symposium aims to open a space for discussions and questions responded to the book Education between Speech and Writing: Crossing the Boundaries of Dao and Deconstruction, which is...

In his 1927 lecture ‘Phenomenology and Theology’, Heidegger claims that philosophy is the formally indicative ontological co-direction [Mitleitung] of basic theological concepts. For this claim, he...

What will philosophy of technology be as its practitioners depart from the cross- roads of the ideas of Don Ihde and Bernard Stiegler? Their two lines of thought confront and cross each other, giving rise to different ways of understanding technologies. Rather than following one or the other of these directions, I propose an Erörterung of such crossroads. As Heidegger’s commentary on Georg Trakl’s poetry insists, Erörterung means, first, “to point out the proper place or site of something to situate (...) it,” and, second, “to heed that place or site ”. This Erörterung has to be conducted at multiple times, on multiple levels, as each of them hermeneutically identifies its own site. I proceed first through an Erörterung of the crossroads of the thinking of technology after Ihde and Stiegler, and second through an Erörterung of the Ort or the site of the first Erörterung, where the Ort for Heidegger is the land of the evening, the Occident [Abendland], in the throes of globalization, or more precisely Americanisation, a form of disorientation, that obscures the unconcealment of the essence of the human-technology relationship central to Heidegger. In the third part, I propose that the way to integrate and extend Heidegger, Ihde, and Stiegler is to acknowledge the importance of historical, cultural, and geopolitical difference in the interrelationship between the cosmos, morality, and technical activities, what I call cosmotechnics. (shrink)

The chiasm is usually considered the key notion for Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy. I argue against a common conclusion, namely that ‘the chiasm’ is equivalent to ‘reversibility’. Even when the two terms are not taken as interchangeable, the precise nature of their relation has not been adequately established. Focusing exclusively on ‘reversibility’ has implications for a range of philosophical issues, including relations between self and other. The danger of substituting one term for the other is that existential relations are construed as (...) inversions, rather than as genuine exchanges. I examine two trajectories that can be discovered in ‘The Intertwining—The Chiasm’. The first is the inclusion of difference within a peculiar, extended sense of ‘reversibility’. The second is the development of a plurality of expressions, among which ‘reversibility’ is necessary but not sufficient. I go on to argue that Merleau-Ponty secures difference within the chiasm by supplementing the notion of reversibility with ‘imminence’, the idea that something has not yet occurred. I also propose that the figure of a threshold illuminates how the chiasm operates as a transition where both joining and differentiation occur. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

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

Since the seminal 1955 habilitation by Heidegger's pupil, Walter Schulz, it has become an open secret that Schelling's philosophy, more than that of any of the other German Idealists, is an immediate antecedent to Heidegger's thought. For this reason, it is all the more fascinating that to this day research is still lopsidedly concerned with the interpretation of Heidegger's reading of Schelling's Freedom Essay and that a thorough and overarching investigation into the idealistic inheritance of Martin Heidegger's thought remains wanting. (...) The same applies to the debates that Heidegger's students began in the twentieth century. The traditions of modern nature ethics and the criticism of technology, which derive from Schelling, were interpreted and mediated through Heidegger to his students Hans Jonas, Hannah Arendt, and Günther Anders. This essay attempts to delineate some of the basic features of a more bilateral or dialogical relationship between these two philosophers and to more fully appreciate Heidegger's relationship to German Idealism in general and Schelling in particular. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between critical distance and the idea of proximity. In times that are often described as ‘global’, ‘24/7’, ‘connected’, ‘networked’ and ‘immersive’, distance seems ever reduced and proximity omnipresent. The contemporary impression of ubiquitous proximity might constitute a threat to the survival of critical distance understood either as a cornerstone of enlightened and humanist critical practice or as a key metaphysical ‘technology’. The resulting ‘crisis of critical distance’ produces the question of how to position oneself with (...) regard to the ‘other’ in a time that lacks distance and privileges proximity? In tracking the ambiguity that surrounds proximity – the desire to be near and the need to maintain a distance – this article rereads some key Heideggerian and Derridean texts in order to attempt a deconstruction of the opposition of distance and proximity at work in the ‘metaphysics of presence’. (shrink)

This is a discussion of self-knowledge in Hugh of St. Victor. It will yield the following three systematic results. First, it will be shown that there is a clear sense in which human self-knowledge is knowledge of one’s own rationality, and therefore knowledge of the proper object of one’s rational capacities (dunameis meta logou). Second, a distinction will be drawn between perfect and imperfect self-knowledge. Third, it will turn out that under conditions of perfect self-knowledge, all our rational capacities would (...) work like our capacity for perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

This paper argues for a fundamental re-reading of Heideggerian philosophy, especially regarding the logical structures presented by Heidegger in the thirties and onward. The field, which this logic organizes, shows an explorative formal element of language in and of itself, and is therefore different from an analytic concept of logic. An analytic conceptualization of logic is understood here as a reflection on the inner structures of already existing notions. An explorative logic, on the other hand, explores the relations between already (...) existing notions and the possible, but yet unknown, development of new notions. The logic of Heidegger is explorative, as it describes the relational, formal structures between the already established semantic field and its virtual excess. This virtual excess, while formal, must be nonetheless considered the primary access to whatever we call external to language in the transcendental sense in Heidegger's philosophy. Therefore, the central question of this logical re-reading of Heidegger is the formal relation to the unknown real. (shrink)

At the beginning of Being and Time, Heidegger rejects Husserl’s classical phenomenology on three grounds: he claims that Husserlian phenomenology is impaired by indeterminate concepts, by naïve personalism, and by obscurities in its account of individuation. The paper studies the validity of this early critique by explicating Husserl’s discourse on human persons as bodily-spiritual beings and by clarifying his account of the principles by which such beings can be individuated. The paper offers three types of considerations. After a summary of (...) Heidegger’s early critique of Husserl, the second section of the paper distinguishes between two dimensions of Husserl’s discourse on human persons. It argues that Husserl does not put forward one analysis of the being of humans, but explicates two different accounts and then studies critically their mutual relations of dependency: on the one hand, the naturalistic account of human beings as layered beings and on the other hand the personalistic account of human beings as peculiar kinds of unified wholes in which the mental and the bodily are inextricably intertwined. The third section of the paper clarifies Husserl’s theory of individuation and its consequences for our discourse on human persons. Finally, the fourth section explicates the conceptual means by which Husserl develops his account of human beings as persons. The paper ends in drawing some conclusions for contemporary philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl argues that the only way to respond to the scientific Krisis of which he speaks is with phenomenological reflections on the history, method, and task of philosophy. On the assumption that an accurate diagnosis of a malady is a necessary condition for an effective remedy, this paper aims to formulate a precise concept of the Krisis of the European sciences with which Husserl operates in this work. Thus it seeks (...) an answer to the question: What exactly, according to Husserl, is “the ‘crisis’ [Krisis] of the European sciences”? There are two different tendencies in the literature on this question. According to the traditional interpretation, the Krisis of the European sciences lies not in the inadequacy of their scientificity but in the loss of their meaningfulness for life. According to an innovative suggestion, the Krisis lies not in the loss of their meaningfulness for life but in the inadequacy of their scientificity. These readings are mutually exclusive because each claims that the other misidentifies the Krisis as something that it is not. The argument of this paper, however, is that, given the many different senses of Krisis in The Crisis, an adequate understanding of the Krisis that Husserl identifies requires not a disjunctive but an inclusive approach. Therefore the paper proposes that Husserl’s Krisis of the European sciences is both a crisis of their scientificity and a crisis of their meaningfulness for life. The relevance of this result to Husserl’s philosophical and historical sense-investigations in The Crisis—as well as to the present critical situation of philosophy—is self-evident. (shrink)

Since Plato’s massive critique of the Sophists rhetoric’s ill repute runs through the history of western philosophy denunciating methods of rhetoric as in large part dishonest persuasion strategies which are at most marginally interested in dealing with truths. This judgement falls way too short insofar as it distorts the historically grown stock labeled “rhetoric” not only in the Aristotelian work. With reference to Olaf Müller’s philosophical book addressing the “controversy” between Goethe and Newton about the nature of light, I will (...) study the different rhetorical models and methods used by Newton and Goethe and also Müller himself. It becomes apparent that even works attempting to decide who was right in the long run do far more than trying to evoke true “representations” of facts or truths in the reader. The specific use of language patterns provides deeper insight into an author’s mindset towards the subject area discussed in his work and generally speaking the investigation of the rhetoric of science and philosophy leads to a better understanding of different epistemic cultures both in philosophy and science. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to responsible innovation by developing a conceptual framework for the processes of creativity and innovation. The hypothesis is that creative and innovative processes are similar in that both are affective in nature. I develop this conceptual framework through an interpretation of the insights of Henri Poincaré’s notion of the ‘four stages’ in the creative process and Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of the entrepreneur. Building on this framework, I analyze the creative and innovative practices (...) of the film director Lars von Trier and the entrepreneur Steve Jobs. The interpretation and analysis suggest that the processes of creativity and innovation are similar in nature in that both are based on the moods of disturbance and enthusiasm; but that they differ in that creativity is based on the feelings of interest and irritation, whereas innovation is based on the feelings of desire and anger. In the conclusion I discuss the implications of this for responsible innovation with regard to the social aspect of resistance towards innovation and the ethical aspects of anger in entrepreneurial leadership. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to contribute to the conceptualization of creativity in education. The article makes use of the self-Bildung perspective, which is an up-to-date version of the Neo-humanistic notion of the formation of the personality in order to interpret the original notion of the ‘four stages’ of the creative process. The conclusion is that in this perspective creativity can be understood as a state of transcendence and a practice of taste. Finally, the article seeks to sketch out (...) a suggestion of the creative capacities that are important to cultivate in education. (shrink)

Neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalists take the concept “human” to be central to practical philosophy. According to this view, practical philosophy aims at a distinctive human good that defines its subject matter. Hence, practical philosophy can survive neither the elimination of the concept nor its subsumption under a more general concept, such as that of the rational agent. The challenge central to properly formulating Aristotelian naturalism is: How can the concept of the human be specified in a way that captures the distinctive (...) role that it is supposed to play in practical philosophy? For the view to be sustained, the concept “human” as it figures in practical philosophy must not designate rationality plus a set of facts that we learn empirically about ourselves and then consider from a detached standpoint of reason. Heidegger's existential analytic offers an approach to addressing the challenge to neo‐Aristotelian naturalism and, therefore, a way of capturing the sui generis human good. I aim to show that concepts of the existential analytic in Being and Time have their origin or parallels in readings of Aristotle and that they capture the distinctive character of the being that we are, exclusively, completely, and as a unity. I argue that fundamental ontology offers a way to grasp the integral unity and irreplaceability of the human that lies at the heart of the neo‐Aristotelian project. (shrink)

Evolution seems tobe a perfect example of a historical process: It began with the earliest “living” units, progressed to massive diversity and disparity, and resulted in our recent lifeworld, the subject-matter of the evolutionary biologist. Yet some irritation remains considering the logical grammar of “history”, as it seems to introduce non-functional aspects into evolutionary theory – which is often addressed as contingency in evolutionary biology. But even reducing the “historical” aspect of evolutionary biology to a functional understanding of lifeworld, we (...) have to consider the specific historicity of the epistemic situation of the evolutionary biologist. This paper argues for the relevance of the explication of this peculiar epistemic situation, taking into account the recent systemic transformations of evolutionary theory.The argument is developed in three steps: first, a revision of the use of temporal expressions in (bio-)sciences, revealing the prevalence of a non-modal understanding of time, which leads to “thin” temporal characterizations of biological processes. Second, based upon biology’s shift toward system paradigms, the formal structure of recent evolutionary approaches is shown to result in a “loss of historicity”. Finally, the consequences for the self-understanding of humans as evolutionary lifeforms are explicated.This reconstruction of the difference between historical and evolutionary judgment emphasizes the relevance of the modal aspects of temporality, which is demonstrated by considering a significant shift of the underlying temporal frames. Accordingly to human beings as historical entities, the differences between natural history, prehistory and history proper are relocated within the concept of history itself. (shrink)

: Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's account of natality, Guenther argues that Martin Heidegger overlooks the distinct ontological and ethical significance of birth as a limit that orients one toward an other who resists appropriation, even while handing down a heritage of possibilities that one can—and must—make one's own. Guenther calls this structure of natality Being-from-others, modifying Heidegger's language of inheritance to suggest an ethical understanding of existence as the gift of the other.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 192-215.

In the present paper, I intend to systematically revisit Thomas Luckmann’s account of the relation between phenomenology and sociology and to assess its strengths and weaknesses in terms of constructive criticism. In order to achieve this aim, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will reconstruct the Luckmannian approach by means of an exhaustive analysis of his programmatic texts. Second, I will identify its strengths and merits. And finally, I will discuss its shortcomings and try to correct them in (...) two ways, namely, by bringing Luckmann into a dialogue with other sociological-theoretical and phenomenological accounts, and by counteracting some of his problematic claims with alternative insights contained in his own work. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz is, without a doubt, one of the phenomenologists that contributed the most to the reflection on how to apply insights from phenomenological philosophy to the, empirical and theoretical, human and social sciences. However, his work tends to be neglected by many of the current advocates of phenomenology within these disciplines. In the present paper, I intend to remedy this situation. In order to do so, I will systematically revisit his mundane and social-scientifically oriented account of phenomenology, which, as (...) I shall show, emerges from a theoretical confrontation with the Husserlian distinction between transcendental phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. (shrink)

The paper considers two problems related to the interpretation of S. Kierkegaard’s conception of Angest. Firstly, a tendency to interpret Kierkegaard’s Angest as a “fear without an object” and to posit its similarity to Heidegger’s Angst is put in question. Questioning this interpretation, an analysis of The Concept of Anxiety is undertaken, in order to reveal ambivalence as the primary feature of Kierkegaard’s conception of Angest. Secondly, the question of translating Angest into Lithuanian is addressed, criticizing the established tradition of (...) translating Angest as “baimė” and supporting translator’s I. Tomaševičiūtė’s choice of “nerimas”. The aforementioned ambivalence of Angest serves as the basis for the critique, revealing Angest as a paradoxical attraction to that, which frightens. The first part of the paper expounds on the moment of ambivalence in the descriptions of Angest, found in The Concept of Anxiety. The second part compares and underlines the differences between the philosophical approaches of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. It is shown that Kierkegaard’s attention to the ambivalence of Angest is related to the practical bent of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the problematics of personal individuation. (shrink)

The paper considers the phenomenological analyses of anxiety and fear found in Heidegger’s Being and Time. In his work Heidegger considers these moods as the conditions of possibility of everydayness. He claims that anxiety is a mood which, in a latent manner, constantly determines everydayness; however, he does not explicitly clarify the meaning of mood having a “latent” form. The paper argues for the thesis that Heidegger considered “being latent” in terms of the structure of forgetting, which is characteristic to (...) everydayness; the paper investigates the means of everyday forgetting described in Being and Time. The first part of the paper briefly discusses Heidegger’s conception of everydayness. The second part interprets the mood of fear as a primary mode of everyday forgetting and explicates the structure of fear as a self-forgetting participation in everyday concerns. In the third part, three main characteristics of everydayness – idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity – are presented as a means of everyday forgetting. In the course of the analysis, everydayness is revealed as a twofold structure of forgetting. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe important role played by Aristotle in Martin Heidegger’s path towards Being and Time during the 1920's is now well documented. Yet an important chapter of this story remains mostly unexplored: Heidegger's early attempt to develop an ontology of life in dialogue with Aristotle. This is because the early seminars in which Heidegger developed his important and highly original interpretation of Aristotle's De Anima remain unpublished : one seminar from the summer of 1921 and one spanning the winter semester of (...) 1922/23 and the summer semester of 1923. In the present paper, I reconstruct Heidegger's key interpretative moves in the latter seminar on the basis of a detailed handwritten transcript preserved among the papers of his student Helene Weiss held at Stanford University. What emerges is a dialogue between Aristotle and Heidegger that enables us better to understand and to question the thought of both philosophers on the phenomenon of life. (shrink)

The “destructive” appropriation of the Aristotelian concepts of δύναµις and ἐνέργεια played a central role in Martin Heidegger’s own reflection on the meaning of being. While this has been generally known for some time, it is only now that we can understand the full scope, complexity and evolving character of this appropriation. One reason is the fairly recent publication of notes and protocols for seminars Heidegger led on Aristotle as late as the 1940s and 1950s. Another is the existence of (...) student transcripts in the Special Collections Department of Stanford University for a number of unpublished seminars on Aristotle that Heidegger led during the 1920s. Considering all of this material enables us to see both the significance of Heidegger’s interpretation of the δύναµις/ἐνέργιεα pair as well as how this interpretation evolved along with his own “Kehre”: from a “pandynamic” conception of being to being as “Ereignis.”. (shrink)

The relationship between socio-constructionism and Christian theology has not been sufficiently explored. This paper critically analyses some of the main insights of socio-constructionist theories and suggests that a reinterpretation of the idea of social construction from a theistic perspective can avoid the unresolved problems of its radical versions. The paper argues that an order of meaning, whose origin cannot be reduced to human action, has to be presupposed for practices of social construction to work. This resonates with the belief in (...) God´s action in human reality. (shrink)

This paper challenges that Ihde’s and Stiegler’s approaches stand in radical opposition. It argues that ethos is prior to law, exposes a Heideggerian rift between technoscience and technics, and rejects separation of theory from practice in favor of logics of poiêsis.

As part of our exploration of a new conceptual framework for an economy that works for 100% of humanity, this conceptual paper asks why all talk about the purpose of organizations seems to suffer from a certain bias, namely the bias of scarcity, and how this myth of scarcity influences our understanding of corporate responsibility. The mainstream understanding of corporate purpose always contains partly normative and partly functional aspects designed to cope with the purported problem of scarcity. According to economic (...) and CSR reasoning, this bias concerning the purpose of business organizations triggers two quite distinct understandings of the essence of corporate responsibility. The economic view interprets it as responsibility towards the company, while CSR and business ethics argue that it reflects, or at least ought to reflect, a broader responsibility towards society. To overcome this responsibility gap, we need to affect a paradigm shift in economic reasoning, a shift which reconciles economic responsibility on the micro-level logic of raising profit with the greater demands of the meso, macro, and supra levels. Only then do we obtain a truly meaningful lever for changing real-world business practice from within the micro-logics of running a corporation. This paradigm shift requires a different mental model - a model of resource growth and natural abundance, rather than of scarcity - on the part of both economists and business ethicists. It can be labeled the economic model of future viability. This paper develops a conceptual argument for a future viable model of business practice which, first and foremost, takes seriously the need for the kind of micro-level decision-making which keeps individual organizations afloat, but which also, and crucially, delivers a solution for future viable business models and business behavior which breaks the apparent downward spiral of modern wealth creation, i.e. the spiral of continuous acceleration, disruption, concentration and resource exploitation, and which, thirdly, delivers a proper definition of purpose which can be applied in measurement systems which are free of biased assumptions of scarcity. (shrink)