“Thing” and “nothing” are metaphysical themes of thinking for major philosophers both in the West and in East Asia, such as Heidegger, Kant, and Laozi 老子. In light of a discussion of Heidegger’s understanding of thing-ing and no-thing and of his critical interpretation of Kant on the same issue, I shall in this essay reconstruct a Laozian theory of thing and nothing. My conclusion is that thing and nothing are not two “things,” as often assumed by an epistemological approach, but (...) ontologically one thing cut by an absolute limit set up by human rationality which is contained either in our consciousness or in our languages. (shrink)

Although scars never disappear completely, in time most people will basically get used to them. In this paper I explore what it means to habituate to scars against the background of the phenomenological concept of incorporation. In phenomenology the body as Leib or corps vécu functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenology prioritizes a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually dis-embodied. Endowing meaning to one’s world through getting engaged in actions and projects (...) is most successful indeed when one’s body is “absent,” “transparent,” or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Incorporation, so I explain, aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can only be understood partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces, the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning. (shrink)

Does the recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks require a re-evaluation of his thought? In the present text we will deal with this question and reach the conclusion that a change of theoretical perspective on Heidegger’s work is indeed justified. The franker and less cautious style of the Black Notebooks puts in the foreground stances that were already known, but were previously relegated to the background: it becomes possible thereby to establish that Heidegger’s philosophical views host a significant lot of (...) unwarranted prejudices, which are incorporated in his picture of the ‘history of being’. We argue that in his process of radical questioning Heidegger progressively drops all available rational methods and epistemic criteria, and that this paves the way to the unwitting reception of personal prejudices in his theoretical frame: Heidegger knowingly abandons all the theoretical instruments that could enable him to discriminate between deeply felt prejudices and proper philosophical intuitions. We conclude our analysis by proposing some criticisms that should be acceptable also to scholars sympathetic with Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s vindication of an ‘erratic’ way of thinking, where the journey is more qualifying than the result, turns out to be incompatible with the assertiveness of the many unjustified claims disseminated across the Black Notebooks. Moreover, Heidegger wants to show the narrowness of an overwhelmingly dialectical and argumentative attitude, while his late style of thinking unwittingly discredits an alternative philosophical style, that widely appeals to a ‘principle of charity’ in the collaboration between author and reader. (shrink)

This article re-orients Heidegger's analyses of things to cast light on two distinct ways of relating to things, one at the root of technological use and the other crucial to artistic creation. The first way, which we may call instrumental practice, denotes the activity of using something to accomplish some goal or objective. This practice underlies the analysis of use-things [Zeuge] that Heidegger presents in Being and Time. Heidegger's contribution there is twofold: to show how understanding things as zuhanden, there (...) for us, is prior to taking things as objects in "nature," and to clarify how the "phenomenon of the world" can show itself when a useful thing becomes dysfunctional. But Heidegger's focus on the thing as zuhanden leaves in the dark a second kind of practice that we engage in when we relate to things, the practice of attending to an activity for its own sake, as I illustrate by the using or making of four things: the hammer, the Daoist cook's cleaver, the Daoist-inspired empty jug or Krug, and the Japanese calligrapher's brush. Heidegger's dialogue on Gelassenheit anticipates but also cuts short this practice of attention: gelassenes Denken—the thinking that lets go of representations and expectations and simply lets things be—promises to open a way to experience our essential nature [Wesen], but the dialogue's focus on things as already there or already made distracts from the practice of attention that goes into the art of making things like jugs. By re-orienting Heidegger's thinking we are able to recast the question of technology: can the practice of attention performed for its own sake—caring for things simply to care for them, caring for the surrounding world simply to care for it—help salvage not only the environment but the very essence of being human? (shrink)

Things make sense to us. The identity of a thing is a meaningful style that expresses the usability of the thing. The usability is a dynamic order of the praxis in which the thing is embedded and in which we are ourselves de-centered. According to Merleau-Ponty, this sociocultural and psychosocial order is a formation of practical understanding and interpretation that rests upon and resumes the elementary, perceptual-expressive structuring of being. The Spiel is one of the three dimensions of corporeal intentionality, (...) in which this entire organization of meaning and experience unfolds. So, the Spiel of usability is a corporeal and practical intentionality that reaches from an aesthetic-ontological structuring of meaning to the order of the things in modern everyday praxes. (shrink)

A partir de uma explanação inicial sobre o significado e os limites da ontologia fundamental de Martin Heidegger, este ensaio procura investigar a possibilidade de uma ontologia não-antropogenética por meio do conceito problemático de extramundanidade. Essa investigação toma como fio condutor a ideia do “perspectivismo cosmológico”, elaborada por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro através de uma interpretação filosófico-antropológica do pensamento ameríndio. Lida como correlato positivo da extramundanidade, a noção perspectivística de sobrenatureza é contrastada com o conceito existencial de ser para confirmação (...) e problematização de seu caráter antropogenético. O objetivo principal do ensaio consiste em desvelar, apoiado radicalmente em outro pensamento, o sentido “cosmopolítico” do discurso sobre o ser, aqui representado pela filosofia de Heidegger. (shrink)

Na preleção de verão de 1923, intitulada “Ontologia: hermenêutica da facticidade”, Martin Heidegger estabelece seu programa filosófico em termos de uma investigação fundamental, nomeada por ele como hermenêutica fenomenológica da facticidade. De acordo com esta, a interpretação da vida fática não se realiza sem que se tome o ser e o falar como fenômenos privilegiados, ou seja, sem que se recupere o vínculo essencial em que nós, seres humanos existentes, já nos descobrimos sendo no mundo como seres capazes de fala. (...) Tendo em vista que é a partir do constructo ser-no-mundo que o filósofo alemão consegue dar um passo atrás no esquema sujeito-objeto, não é por acaso então que ele busca encontrar, desde muito cedo, modos de dizer o ser que não mais o entifiquem, com o intuito de pensá-lo para além do registro da referência e, portanto, da objetivação. É com base nessa situação que se torna premente que sua análise tenha início a partir do horizonte do ente privilegiado, uma vez que é para este que o sentido do ser se torna um problema. Assim, este artigo parte da hipótese de que a hermenêutica da facticidade se constitui por conta da tentativa de Heidegger de ater-se ao problema do ser que compreende ser, tendo como premissa uma ampla problematização em torno da significação da palavra vida. Palavras-chave: Heidegger; hermenêutica; facticidade.: In the summer lecture of 1923, entitled Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity, Martin Heidegger established his philosophical program in terms of a fundamental research, named by him as phenomenological hermeneutics of facticity. According to this, the interpretation of the factical life is not achieved without taking the being and the speaking as privileged phenomena, i.e., without recovering the essential bond in which we, existent human beings, have already discovered ourselves being in the world as being capable of speaking. Given the fact that it is from the construct being-in-the-world that the German philosopher is able to step back on subject-object scheme, it is not by accident that he tries to find, since the beginning, ways of expressing being that no longer turn it into an entity, with the intention of thinking it beyond the scheme and, therefore, any objectualization registry. It is based on this situation that it is pressing that his analysis starts from the horizon of a privileged entity, since it is for this the sense of being becomes a problem. In fact, this paper starts from the hypothesis that hermeneutics of facticity is constituted due to Heidegger’s attempt on holding to the problem of being that understands being, with the premise of a wide problematization regarding the significance of the word life. Keywords: Heidegger; hermeneutics; facticity. (shrink)

En este trabajo nos propondremos desarrollar tres tesis fundamentales: a) Mostrar que Heidegger concibe al mundo como una trama semántica de corte pragmático, anterior a la fijación en cualquier material fonético codificado culturalmente; b) Señalar que el fenómeno que Winnicott indica con el término transicionalidad puede ser equiparado al mundo de Heidegger; y c) En la medida en que ese espacio potencial se constituye como un mecanismo de frontera que posibilita el tránsito de lo exterior a lo interior, puede ser (...) comprendido como una estructura intencional. Así, el carácter de mediación del mundo se considera desde el punto de vista del correlato objetivo, es decir, desde el útil y la obra de arte. Ambos tipos de “objetos” son dispositivos que se sitúan en la frontera del sentido y posibilitan la transición de aquello que está por fuera del espacio semántico. (shrink)

Resumo: A transformação pragmática da filosofia é comumente apresentada como uma adaptação necessária à experimentação total do mundo e do homem. É mostrado aqui que ela está baseada numa ilusão: a exclusão do juízo de verdade no diálogo e uma armadilha técnica que culmina nas teorias de atos de palavras, sejam eles monológicos ou dialógicos. A antropologia da linguagem restaura o exercício do juízo de verdade ao descrever os modos de sua presença em toda comunicação.: The pragmatic transformation of philosophy (...) is usually presented as a necessary adaptation to total experimentation of the world and of man. It is shown here that such a transformation is based on an illusion: the exclusion of truth judgment in dialogue and a technical lure that culminates in theories of speech acts, whether monological or dialogical. The anthropology of language restores the exercise of truth judgment by describing the modes of its presence in all communication. (shrink)

In everyday life, we constantly encounter and deal with useful things without pausing to inquire about the sources of their intelligibility. In Div. I of Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes just such an inquiry. According to a common reading of Heidegger's analysis, the intelligibility of our everyday encounters and dealings with useful things is ultimately constituted by practical self-understandings. In this paper, I argue that while such practical self-understandings may be sufficient to constitute the intelligibility of the tools and equipment (...) specific to many practices, these “tools of the trade” are only a small portion of the things we encounter, use, and deal with on a daily basis. Practical self-understandings cannot similarly account for the intelligibility of the more mundane things—like toothbrushes and sidewalks—used in everyday life. I consider whether an anonymous self-understanding as “one,” “anyone,” or “no one in particular” —das Man—might play this intelligibility-constituting role. In examining this possibility, another type of self-understanding comes to light: cultural identities. I show that the cultural identities into which we are “thrown,” rather than practical identities or das Man, constitute the intelligibility of the abundance of mundane things that fill our everyday lives. Finally, I spell out how this finding bears on our understanding of Heidegger's notion of authenticity. (shrink)

We propose a reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the problem of Self-Affection in the first Kantian Critique. If the Time and the ‘I Think’ are unified is due to the notion of time as pure Self-Affection, that could capture the formation of Self without subordinating it to an extra-temporal connection. We attempt to show that Heidegger’s account considers time as a self-referential movement which however requires a delay and a retreat of itself to release what is coming. In order to (...) allow an encounter with another, the self-affective structure must give time to herself, which prevents the autarchic closure of herself. (shrink)

Male-to-female transsexualism manifests itself in the form of a discrepancy between the male sex assigned at birth and the subjective experience of belonging to the female gender, which in many cases also involves a somatic transition by cross-sex hormone treatment and genital surgery. Until now, no studies related to MtF transsexualism have been carried out within the framework of a phenomenological/existential approach. This paradigm would make it possible to better articulate the transsexual experience beyond the simplistic diagnostic criteria by which (...) it is currently defined. In this study, I will reread MtF transsexualism in the light of Ludwig Binswanger’s theories on Mannerism and Jean Paul Sartre’s remarks on the self and the body. I will do this largely by focusing on first-hand accounts of the MtF transsexual’s experience, in other words from a first-person viewpoint. Finally, I will present some considerations on the meaning of psychological intervention in this field. (shrink)

The paper contains a conceptual proposal, its key idea being that the successful functioning of a rule embedding artifact designed to regulate a practice (not pertaining to its use) produces the same result as the successful performance of the rule-invoking non-communicative actions belonging to the practice in case.

This article develops a phenomenological exploration of chronic pain from a first-person perspective that can serve to enrich the medical third-person perspective. The experience of chronic pain is found to be a feeling in which we become alienated from the workings of our own bodies. The bodily-based mood of alienation is extended, however, in penetrating the whole world of the chronic pain sufferer, making her entire life unhomelike. Furthermore, the pain mood not only opens up the world as having an (...) alien quality, it also makes the world more lonesome and poor by forcing the sufferer to attend to the workings of her own body. To suffer pain is to find oneself in a situation of passivity in relation to the hurtful experiences one is undergoing. In making the body and the world more unhomelike places to be in, pain also tends to rob a person of her language. Severe pain is hard to describe because it pushes the person towards the borderlines of imaginable experience and because it makes it hard to see any meaning and purpose in the situation one has been forced into. The analysis of chronic pain in the article is guided by the attempts made by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin Heidegger to understand the nature of human embodiment and existence, and also by descriptions of chronic pain found in the Swedish author Lars Gustafsson’s novel The Death of a Beekeeper. (shrink)

A human right to freedom of religion is not equivalent to a right to tolerance. Human rights and tolerance-rules serve for different purposes and are based on different justifications. Tolerance-rules serve to protect a peaceful living together with strangers who share no common values. Human rights serve to protect every individual’s personhood. Religion can only be a matter of human rights, if and so far as it is a condition of development and maintenance of personhood. Discussion about a human right (...) to freedom of religion makes sense only if we can identify a particular scope of protection which concerns only religion and if the freedom of religion is not embraced by wider-framed freedoms. The freedom of religious thoughts and the freedom of religious speech are embraced by the general human rights to freedom of thoughts and freedom of speech. Here, there is no need for a special human right to freedom of religion. The right not to be forced to act contrary to religiously founded moral rules is embraced by the general human right to freedom of conscience. And again, there is no need for a special human right. The target of religious practices in a narrower sense is to become flexible and porous and not to resist the threats of the sacral in order to avoid the destruction of personhood. Therefore, we have to recognize a human right to freedom of religious rites. It protects only the actions of accommodation to the overwhelming power of the sacral. It does not protect, however, any action with which it is intended to rule the world or to rule over others, to organize certain practical challenges, or to discover or to maintain scientific theories or technical means. (shrink)

The Mythography of Photography is written as a dialog with the Philosophy of Photography of Vilém Flusser, considering the Myths not simply as a primitive state of thinking, but as the dark residuum of all kinds of modern experience. Therefore, the present Mythography of Photography tries to reveal the main Myths which we cite when we are following the gesture of Photography and which we can find hidden in the photographical apparatus. This Mythography is strictly focused on the ancient Greek (...) Gods and shows a specified genealogy of photography initiated by the Titan Cronus – who has been confused since antiquity with Chronos – and ending with the monster Chimera, the symbol for all illusions and phantasms. Not only can we trace a genealogic connection between these two individual figures but within the mythical tale as a whole: a trace that illuminates the inner sense and some of the main concepts of Photography. (shrink)

This work analyzes the central role of interpretation in non-routine design. Based on this analysis, a theory of computer support for interpretation in cooperative design is constructed. The theory is grounded in studies of design and interpretation. It is illustrated by mechanisms provided by a software substrate for computer-based design environments, applied to a sample task of lunar habitat design. ;Computer support of innovative design must overcome the problem that designers necessarily make extensive use of situated tacit understanding while computers (...) can only store and display explicit representations of information. The automation techniques used for routine design are not applicable: techniques are needed to support creative, tacit human understanding with explicit computer representations. ;The process by which designers transform their tacit preunderstanding into explicit knowledge is termed "interpretation". Interpretation is necessary for solving design problems and collaborating with other designers. Considerable explicit knowledge is thereby generated in the natural course of designing. Often this knowledge includes the most valuable information that can be presented to designers who revisit these design projects or undertake similar projects in the future. If representations of this knowledge have been defined using computer-based design support systems, then the representations can be captured by these systems for the support of subsequent design work. ;A theory of computer support for interpretation in design is presented in three stages. First, the role of interpretation in design is explored by reviewing descriptions of design by Alexander, Rittel, and Schon; by conducting a protocol analysis of lunar habitat design; and by applying Heidegger's philosophy of situated interpretation. Second, this analysis of interpretation is extended to define a theory of computer support. The features of this theory--support for the situated, perspectival, and linguistic characteristics of interpretation--are used to evaluate previous work on software design rationale systems. Third, design principles are discussed for H scERMES, a prototype hypermedia substrate for building computer-based design environments to support interpretation in tasks like lunar habitat design. The hypermedia integrates a perspectives mechanism and an end-user language to capture and modify representations of the design situation, alternative perspectives on design tasks, and terminology for conceptualizing design issues. (shrink)

En este artículo se desarrollan las consideraciones heideggerianas acerca de la corporalidad expuestas en Zollikoner Seminare, atendiendo a la posición fundamental desde la cual estas se despliegan. Se discute acerca de la necesidad, por parte de Heidegger, de abordar el problema del cuerpo vivo al margen de las consideraciones científicas y, por consiguiente, se enfatiza el sentido íntimo de un eventual "cambio de método" que pareciera conducir la reflexión sobre el cuerpo a la aclaración de su modo de ser propio, (...) con el fin de clarificar cómo es que aquel puede ser entendido como un existencial. (shrink)

International education tests, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study , steer the debate about education, form the image of a school, and specify the goals and objectives of the curriculum. Thus praise, prizes and other positive reinforcements become common methods in school. Through Franz Kafka's Letter to his Father I examine encouragement and teacher praise, which are, when we look into it, held in the grip of (...) behaviourism. I take issue with this dominant thinking and make an attempt to go beyond praise and encouragement as positive reinforcements of desired behaviours that are postulated in advance. I make an educational argument out of Heidegger's phenomenological term, Ereignis, and suggest that teachers ought to praise that which the student is suited for and not only when they have fulfilled the demands of the curriculum. I also make an educational argument out of two Derridaean terms, hospitality and forgiveness, and claim that teachers ought to give back -- through praise and encouragement -- the students' self-respect, whatever their faults. Instead of being manipulative and serving narcissistic needs, praise ought to serve an education for democracy. (shrink)

The paper investigates the phenomenon of foreignness and its understanding in ethnographic and philosophical context. The role of a phenomenologicalhermeneutic conception of text and action in bridging the gap between the native’s and the observer’s points of view with respect to the description of cultural phenomena is elucidated by way of comparing the theories of anthropologist Clifford Geertz and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Hidden links between the two authors, who make sparse references to one another, but should be connected more thoroughly, (...) are followed. The methods of “thick description” and of taking the “text as a model” for understanding social and cultural performances are analysed to attain a new notion of culture as context. (shrink)

This paper argues against the view that the standard explanation of phase transitions in statistical mechanics may be considered a causal explanation, a distortion that can nevertheless successfully represent causal relations.

Intimacy and sexuality expressed by nursing home residents with dementia remains an ethically sensitive issue for care facilities, nursing staff and family members. Dealing with residents’ sexual longings and behaviour is extremely difficult, putting a burden on the caregivers as well as on the residents themselves and their relatives. The parties in question often do not know how to react when residents express themselves sexually. The overall aim of this article is to provide a number of clinical-ethical considerations addressing the (...) following question: ‘How can expressions of intimacy and sexuality by residents with dementia be dealt with in an ethically responsible way?’ The considerations formulated are based on two cornerstones: the current literature on older peoples’ experiences regarding intimacy and sexuality after the onset of dementia, and an anthropological-ethical framework addressing four fundamental pillars of human existence namely the decentred self, human embodiment, being-in-the-world and being-with-others. The resulting considerations are oriented toward the individual sphere, the partnership sphere, and the institutional sphere. The continuous interaction between these spheres leads to orientations that both empower the residents in question and respect the complex network of relationships that surrounds them. (shrink)

En este artículo se desarrollan las consideraciones heideggerianas acerca de la corporalidad expuestas en Zollikoner Seminare, atendiendo a la posición fundamental desde la cual estas se despliegan. Se discute acerca de la necesidad, por parte de Heidegger, de abordar el problema del cuerpo vivo al margen de las consideraciones científicas y, por consiguiente, se enfatiza el sentido íntimo de un eventual "6cambio de método" que pareciera conducir la reflexión sobre el cuerpo a la aclaración de su modo de ser propio, (...) con el fin de clarificar cómo es que aquel puede ser entendido como un existencial. The article examines Heidegger´s considerations of corporeality in the Zollikon Seminars, focusing on the fundamental position from which they are made, and discusses Heidegger´s need to address the issue of the living body separately from scientific considerations. Therefore, it emphasizes the profound meaning of a possible "change of method" that seems to lead the reflection on the body toward the clarification of its inherent mode of being, in order to explain how it can be understood as an existential. Neste artigo, desenvolveram-se as considerações heideggerianas sobre a corporalidade expostas em Zollikoner Seminare, atendendo à posição fundamental a partir da qual estas se realizam. Discute-se sobre a necessidade, por parte de Heidegger, de abordar o problema do corpo vivo à margem das considerações científicas e, consequentemente, enfatiza-se o sentido íntimo de uma eventual "mudança de método" que parece conduzir a reflexão sobre o corpo ao esclarecimento de seu modo de ser próprio, com o objetivo de esclarecer como aquele pode ser entendido como um existencial. (shrink)

The relevance of Kant to Plessner’s work was long all but ignored and there is hardly any mention of Plessner in the Kant literature. The Plessner renaissance beginning in the 1990s, however, has brought with it a stronger focus on the methodological construction of his theory, so that the Kant connection has at least been acknowledged, but the particular relevance of Kant’s Critique of Judgement has not been systematically explicated. In this essay, I investigate the connection between Kant’s notion of (...) reflective—specifically teleological—judgment and Plessner’s theory. I begin by setting out the characteristics of teleological judgment, with two points being of particular importance: the temporal structure of the final cause and Kant’s reference to an understanding other than the human, that is, to an ordering power other than the human. In a second step, I work out Plessner’s conceptualization of the spatiotemporal appearance of organisms and the way he understands the other of human understanding as nature’s—or history’s—historically evolved and mutable capacity for self-order. He arrives at these conclusions by way of a methodologically controlled process of questioning derived from Kant, which he calls the “principle of the open question.”. (shrink)

SÍNTESE - Este artigo apresenta uma análise da passagem sobre a voz do amigo, no § 34 de Ser e tempo, aproximando-a da temática da voz da consciência, tal como apresentada nos §§ 54 a 60. São destacados os pontos relevantes nas duas temáticas, que são aproximadas pelo papel central atribuído ao fenômeno do ouvir, enquanto forma essencial dó compartilhamento da própria existência com os outros existentes humanos. Tanto na voz da consciência, quanto na voz do amigo, está presente a (...) possibilidade de abertura do Dasein para o seu poder-ser mais próprio. Se a voz da consciência chama a vida humana diante de sua possibilidade autêntica, o ouvi-la, na forma do ouvir a voz do amigo, faz cada existente em particular aberto para tal possibilidade. Por isso, o central nesta voz não seria tanto o seu caráter amigável, mas o compartilhamento: um compartilhamento que não exclui o confronto. A conclusão central consiste em que esta afirmação sobre a voz do amigo pertence ao cerne da analítica da existência, não podendo ser vista como uma simples evocação poética. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit presents one of the most striking reflexions on human facticity, i.e. the fact that Dasein fundamentally exists in a world letting Dasein and world be co-extensive. By quoting two central personages in theology, Pascal and Augustine, Heidegger refers to a concept of love that is constitutive for Dasein’s facticity to truth and to knowledge. By investigating the claim that love is as good as absent from Sein und Zeit, the article intends to show that the (...) scanty references to love nevertheless have a central role in Heidegger’s early work and, furthermore, why Heidegger returns to it in his later thinking. Interesting in this regard is the connection between the theological concept of love and Heidegger’s concept of ‘world’. The article places Heidegger’s Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition in the realms of his Dasein analysis focussing on facticity. Taking its methodological cues from Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida, the article shows how the concepts of possibility and impotentiality (Ohnmacht) become essential in Heidegger via his reference to love. Lastly, the article examines to what extent Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit paraphrases the old angelology letting the Dasein concept become its secularisation. (shrink)

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

A vision of future daily life is explored in Ambient Intelligence . It contains the assumption that intelligent technology should disappear into our environment to bring humans an easy and entertaining life. The mental, physical, methodical invisibility of AmI will have an effect on the relation between design and use activities of both users and designers. Especially the ethics discussions of AmI, privacy, identity and security are moved into the foreground. However in the process of using AmI, it will go (...) beyond these themes. The infiltration of AmI will cause the construction of new meanings of privacy, identity and security because the "visible" acting of people will be preceded, accompanied and followed by the invisible and visible acting of the AmI technology and their producers.A question in this paper is: How is it possible to create critical transformative rooms in which doubting will be possible under the circumstances that autonomous 'intelligent agents' surround humans? Are humans in danger to become just objects of artificial intelligent conversations? Probably the relation between mental, physical, methodical invisibility and visibility of AmI could give answers. (shrink)

The relationship between body and mind is a classical ontological problem in the history of philosophy. To this problem can be added an epistemological question about the relationship between body and knowledge. In this article, I will discuss these questions delimited to one central area of education, that is, school. My point of view will be life-world phenomenology and in particular the theory of the lived body.

This essay presents an emerging conception of truth and shows how it appropriates Herman Dooyeweerd’s conception. First I compare my “critical hermeneutics” with other reformational models of critique. Then I propose to think of truth as a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. This conception recontextualizes the notion of propositional truth, and it links questions of intersubjective validity with Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on “standing in the truth.” While abandoning his idea of transcendent truth, (...) I seek to preserve the holism and normativity of Dooyeweerd’s radical conception. Theoretical thought never finishes its task. Anyone who believes to have created a philosophical system that can be adopted unchanged by every ensuing generation shows no insight into the historical contingency [gebondenheit] of all theoretical thought. (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)

In this paper I will discuss some interesting philosophical questions bound to color science, in its variant founded by Berlin and Kay’s linguistic and anthropological research. I will first refer to various criticisms, expressed by dissenting scientists. Further criticisms implied by a rather philosophical perspective will follow; a particular attention is paid to the question of synchronicity vs . diachronicity. The controversy about Berlin and Kay’s conception is paralleled by the development of Wittgenstein’s views on color that I will sketch (...) in short. Wittgenstein’s philosophy offers tools for illuminating the problem from yet another point of view. In the final part of the paper, I will try to point to the limits of the conception of basic color categories, but also to assess its relevance and possible philosophical contribution in terms of language games variety; especially with respect to the Color Incompatibility The orem and its implications. (shrink)