It is common to hear Māori discuss primordial states of Being, yet in colonisation those very central beliefs are forced into weaker utterances. In this process those utterances merely conform to a colonised agenda. ‘Mātauranga’, a tidy term that overwhelmingly refers to an epistemological knowing of the world, colludes nicely with its English equivalent, ‘knowledge’, to further colonise those core contemplations of Being. Its plausibility relies on an orderly regard of things in the world. In education, historical and current practices (...) of schooling pave the way for things in the world so that they amount to mātauranga for Māori, and even the term ‘ako’ will conspire in its own way. Both Novalis and Heidegger have the ability to identify subtly colonising philosophies, and may even propose some theoretical solutions for Māori. (shrink)

What is a problem? What is problematic about any problem whatsoever, philosophical or otherwise? As the origin of assertion and apodeiction, the problematic suspends the categories of necessity and contingency, possibility and impossibility. And it is this suspension that is the essence of the problem, which is why it is so suspenseful. But then, how is the problem problematic? Only if what is suspended neither comes to presence, nor simply goes out into absence, that is, if the suspension continues, which (...) continues the problem. But what is problematic about suspension? As a consideration of language shows, the problem of suspension is the problem of implication. If being, for example, is merely implied, neither present nor absent, then it is the suspension of both, at least insofar as it is problematic. And this not only says something about language; rather, it has ontological implications as well — it speaks of being, and the being of anything whatsoever. For if being is implied, if that is the problem of being, it is because being is an implication. Then the being of things like problems is implied as well; or being is in things by implication. But what does it mean for being to be neither presence nor absence, but an implication? It means that being is implied in a way that is problematic — before it is necessary, or even possible. For being’s way of being is characterized by suspension — which has implications for thinking and speaking about being, and about things like problems, even about anything whatsoever. And this has implications for what being implies, namely, unity and time and aspect. (shrink)

In this article, the Heidegger and Derrida controversy about the nature of questioning is revisited in order to rehabilitate questioning as an essential characteristic of contemporary philosophy. After exploring Heidegger's characterization of philosophy as questioning and Derrida's criticism of the primacy of questioning, we will evaluate Derrida's criticism and articulate three characteristics of Heidegger's concept of questioning. After our exploration of Heidegger's concept of questioning, we critically evaluate Heidegger's later rejection of questioning. With this, we not only contribute to the (...) discussion about why Heidegger rejected questioning in his later thought and whether this rejection is legitimized, but also to the rehabilitation of questioning in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

To address the question posed in the title, I focus on Heidegger's conception of linguistic communication developed in the sections on Rede and Gerede of Being and Time. On the basis of a detailed analysis of these sections I argue that Heidegger was a social externalist but semantic internalist. To make this claim, however, I first need to clarify some key points that have led critics to assume Heidegger's commitment to social externalism automatically commits him to semantic externalism regarding concept (...) use. I begin by explaining the independence of those positions, arguing that social externalism answers the question of whose concepts in a linguistic community are properly individuated, whereas semantic externalism makes a claim about what it takes for concepts to be properly individuated. Once these issues are distinguished, it is possible to see that Heidegger's intersubjectivist conception of language commits him to social externalism, while his conception of the ontological difference commits him to semantic internalism. (shrink)

Modernity is not only the culmination of the “oblivion of being,” for it also provides, in the form of transcendental thinking, a way to recover the original relation of thought to being. Heidegger develops this account through several lecture courses from 1935–1937, especially the 1935–1936 lecture course on Kant, and the account receives a kind of completion in the 1936–1938 manuscript, Contributions to Philosophy. Kant limits the dominance of rationalistic prejudices by reconnecting thought to the givenness of being. He thereby (...) shows the way to overcome the West’s rationalistic oblivion of being. By returning to Kant and repeating him more fundamentally we prepare ourselves for Heidegger’s non-rationalistic thinking of being. This paper, then, reconsiders Heidegger’s relation to modern philosophy, demonstrating on the basis of his own texts that he appropriates modern philosophy but in a non-rationalistic way. Transcendental philosophy plays an essential though ambiguous transitional role in his thinking. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to examine the link between the idea of language, being and nothingness by comparing 16th century Turkish-Azeri poet Fuzûlî’s poetry and 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s philosophy departing from the latter’s thinking of being. There are similarities between Heidegger and Fuzûlî’s respective thoughts concerning the role of the human being’s relation to finitude which grounds the relationship between being and nothingness. The article consists of three sections. The first section makes sense of (...) Heidegger’s early and late thought in terms of its ontological unity, explaining the ways in which being and nothingness topologically co-determine one another in poetic language. The second section focuses on clarifying the sources that nourish Fuzûlî’s poetry, such as Sufism and the literary style of “Rind” as observed in classical Ottoman poetry, elucidating how these influences underpin the philosophical foundations of Fuzûlî’s poetry. The third section offers a philosophical interpretation of Fuzûlî’s lyric poems by illustrating how and why being and nothingness are not to be thought as mere opposites, pointing out their ontological belonging together. In the concluding section, it is argued that a poetic mode of existence necessitates an authentic experience of human finitude both for Heidegger and Fuzûlî. Although Fuzûlî’s poetry involves onto-theological influences from Sufism, Fuzûli manages to form an original idea of poetic existence, emphasizing that the poetic agent needs to take a step back from the mundane world of multitudes in order to unify with Being itself. As for Heidegger, it is doubtful whether there is such a mystical idea of being. Nonetheless, for both figures the more originary experience of finite human existence lies in the poetic interplay between being and nothingness. The poetic meaning of being comes to manifest itself in the process of one’s existential annihilation, which takes place in the movement of being-towards-death. Accordingly, exploring how the meaning of being requires the poetic experience of nothingness and how such an experience appears through language in Fuzûlî’s lyric poems provides a more comprehensive account of his thinking. (shrink)

Although Heidegger’s explicit account of “poetic dwelling” belongs to his later philosophy, there are important indications that he was already engaging with the core matter of the notion in his early thought. Contrary to the idea that in Being and Time, “dwelling” amounts to mere practical coping with the environment, we would like to demonstrate that the notion is already a poetic issue in his early thought, as it requires the appropriation of our relation to the world via an authentic (...) experience of finitude. Following a topological mode of thinking, the paper thematizes the connections between Heidegger’s early and later thought, and elucidates the following three points: First, “freeing” and “letting” appears as the appropriate ethos of a poetic experience of finitude, one that maintains the “clearing” of meaningfulness. Second, a topological reading of Being and Time can explicate the notions of authenticity and inauthenticity as different disclosures of the clearing where human being-world correlation occurs. Third, the notion of “keeping-still” (Schweigen) can be interpreted as an authentic disposition that frees space for the disclosure of existence. The paper concludes that an authentic experience of finitude through “stillness” appears to reorient human ethos by releasing “discourse” from absorption in “idle-talk” and that such an act of existential re-orientation of one’s disposition towards the world is the essence of “authenticity,” and Heidegger’s early “poetic dwelling”. (shrink)

Kirjoitus tarkastelee Martin Heideggerin myöhäisajattelussa esiin nousevaa olemisen ainutkertaisuuden (Einzigkeit, Einmaligkeit) teemaa ja sen edelleenkehittelyä Jean-Luc Nancyn ajattelussa. Teeman osoitetaan kytkeytyvän Heideggerin välienselvittelyyn filosofian esisokraattisen alun, erityisesti Parmenideen ajattelun kanssa. Parmenides ajattelee olemista kaikkia yksittäisiä ilmentymiään, "kuolevaisten" äärellisiä "näkemyksiä" (doksai) yhdistävänä absoluuttisen homogeenisena ja itseidenttisenä ilmeisyytenä (alētheia), todellisuuden puhtaana läsnäolona ajattelulle. Tätä vasten Heidegger ajattelee olemisen nimenomaan yksittäisten ilmentymiensä kontekstuaalisena ainutkertaisuutena, mielekkyystilanteiden ainutkertaistavana kontekstualisoitumisena. Nancy jatkaa ajatusta kuvailemalla olemista "ainutkertaiseksi-monikolliseksi" (singulier pluriel), mutta täydentää Heideggerin ajatteluun tunnetusti jäänyttä aukkoa soveltamalla ajatusta (...) yhteisön ajattelemiseen ainutkertaisuuksien yhdessäolemisena ja keskinäisyytenä. Näin avautuva "ainutkertaisuuden politiikan" teema onkin viime vuosikymmeninä noussut mannermaisen poliittisen ajattelun keskiöön. (shrink)

After the publication of Jaques Derrida’s book, L’animal que donc je suis, anti-speciesism has been looking for a theoretical foundation for its ethical content. In my opinion, the defect of all these philosophical perspectives is that they still reduce animals to objects of human philosophy. Here, I develop a new framework in which animals are considered as subjects of their own philosophy. In analogy to the concept of ethnophilosophy, the concept of speciophilosophy is here introduced. The different ways of thinking (...) between humans and other animals are outlined, by explaining the difference between verbal reasoning and thinking through images. Human philosophies are shown to be anthropocentric ideologies, related to carnivorism. Subsequently, animal speciophilosophies are discussed and a dialogical symphilosophein among all living beings is proposed to be the extension of the so-called philosophy of dialogue. Finally, it is shown how this perspective was present in the original Christian ethics. (shrink)

De moderne filosofie lijdt aan muziekvergetelheid. Opvallend is echter dat filosofen, wanneer ze toch aandacht schenken aan muziek, hun aandacht bij voorkeur op één bepaald genre richten, namelijk de opera. Filosofen zoals Søren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche lieten hun gedachten over Don Giovanni, Parsifal en Carmen gaan, terwijl omgekeerd de filosofie van Arthur Schopenhauer de opera heeft beïnvloed via Wagner. Diens werk lijkt zich op het snijpunt van het grensverkeer tussen moderne filosofie en moderne muziek te bevinden. Het was zijn (...) ambitie de menselijke existentie en de menselijke geschiedenis in één panoramisch oeuvre te vatten, vanaf het primordiale begin tot en met de dramatische finale die ophanden leek: een catastrofale apotheose die een geheel nieuwe toekomst mogelijk zou maken. Dat is althans de verhaallijn van zijn meesterwerk Der Ring des Nibelungen. Aan het slot van Götterdämmerung lijkt zich een algehele verwoesting te hebben voltrokken: ‘Everything is destroyed and there is an enigmatic kind of hovering over the scene of destruction’ (Badiou 2010, p. 106), een ambivalente stemming van hoop en destructie zette Wagner op muziek. Voor Wagner is dan ook een hoofdrol in deze studie weggelegd: voor zijn muziektheoretische geschriften (waarin hij over een ‘muziek van de toekomst’ filosofeerde), maar meer nog voor de muzikale totaalkunstwerken die hij daadwerkelijk componeerde. (shrink)

En este texto se estudia la lectura que Heidegger lleva a cabo en torno a la obra de Hölderlin tomando como eje la noción de “aporía”. Por ésta se comprende la imposibilidad de una respuesta o resolución con respecto a la cuestión del ser. Sin embargo, lejos de resultar paralizante, esta aporía leída y expresada a través de Hölderlin conduce a Heidegger a la afirmación de la experiencia de esa aporía, de su necesidad y de su dignidad cuestionante. De este (...) modo, se comprueba cómo Hölderlin aporta el aparato léxico y conceptual que Heidegger desplegará en los años siguientes en su camino del pensar. (shrink)

Procuraremos investigar as condições filosóficas que permitiram que o pensamento de Heidegger tenha identificado, nos anos 1930, a questão da comunidade àquela da Alemanha. Trata-se de mostrar que isso se deve ao modo pelo qual ele compreendeu o contexto de surgimento de sua investigação. Na sequência de sua obra (em particular no conjunto de estudos sobre poesia da década de 1950, reunidos em A Caminho da Linguagem), Heidegger procurará interrogar uma transformação desse contexto que impedirá todo pensamento da comunidade em (...) termos de limites locais. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further understanding (...) Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between speaking and spoken speech, and the relation between the two, in his Phenomenology of Perception. Against a common interpretation, I argue on exegetical and philosophical grounds that the distinction should not be understood as one between two kinds of speech, but rather between two internally related dimensions present in all speech. This suggests an interdependence between speaking and spoken aspects of speech, and some commentators have critiqued Merleau-Ponty for claiming a priority of speaking over (...) spoken speech. However, there is a sense in which Merleau-Ponty is right to emphasize the priority, namely, in terms of the ontological priority of the speaking subject with respect to language understood as a constituted cultural ideality. The latter only maintains its ontological status insofar as it is taken up by a language community. I favorably contrast Merleau-Ponty’s views on this question to those of the late Heidegger and de Saussure, and suggest potential applications of this clarified position for contemporary discussions in philosophy of language. (shrink)

Two major twentieth century philosophers, of East and West, for whom the nothing is a significant concept are Nishida Kitarō and Martin Heidegger. Nishida’s basic concept is the absolute nothing upon which the being of all is predicated. Heidegger, on the other hand, thematizes the nothing as the ulterior aspect of being. Both are responding to Western metaphysics that tends to substantialize being and dichotomize the real. Ironically, however, while Nishida regarded Heidegger as still trapped within the confines of Western (...) metaphysics with its tendency to objectify, Heidegger’s impression of Nishida was that he is too Western, that is, metaphysical. Yet neither was too familiar with the other’s philosophical work as a whole. I thus compare and assess Nishida’s and Heidegger’s discussions of the nothing in their attempts to undermine traditional metaphysics while examining lingering assumptions about the Nishida–Heidegger relationship. Neither Nishida nor Heidegger means by “nothing” a literal nothing, but rather that which permits beings in their relative determinacy to be what they are and wherein or whereby we find ourselves always already in our comportment to beings. Nishida characterizes this as a place that negates itself to give rise to, or make room for, beings. For Heidegger, being as an event that clears room for beings, releasing each into its own, is not a being, hence nothing. We may also contrast them on the basis of the language they employ in discussing the nothing. Yet each seemed to have had an intuitive grasp of an un/ground, foundational to experience and being. And in fact their paths cross in their respective critiques of Western substantialism, where they offer as an alterantive to that substantialist ontology, in different ways, what I call anontology. (shrink)

Co jest większe, bycie czy nic? Anzelm dowodzi istnienia Boga przy pomocy nihil. Bóg jako to, od czego nic większego nie może zostać pomyślane przez skończony umysł. Właściwe dla Anzelma logiczne – i być może mistyczne – użycie słowa „nic” domaga się porównania z negatywną ontologią Heideggera i jej recepcją w ramach tzw. Szkoły z Kioto założonej przez Nishidę. Czyż jednak pustka buddyzmu zen nie odsyła nas do – niewypowiedzianej – boskiej obecności?

Tekst ma na celu bliższe zapoznanie Czytelnika z otwierającą cykl Aristotelica pracą doktorską Franza Brentano Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862), która znana jest głównie z tego, że miała zainspirować młodego Martina Heideggera i sprawić, że zajął się filozofią. Tekst bada naturę i siłę tej inspiracji. Część pierwsza opowiada historię powstania Von der mannigfachen … oraz przedstawia szerszy kontekst zetknięcia się Heideggera z filozofią Brentana, a także stara się przedstawić Heideggera na tle jego pozostałych uczniów (Kazimierz Twardowski, (...) Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, et al.). Część druga omawia piętnaście tez o bycie, które stanowią sedno dzieła O wielorakim znaczeniu bytu u Arystotelesa i tym samym umożliwia porównanie tomistycznej w duchu ontologii Brentana z ontologią fundamentalną Heideggera, o czym traktuje część trzecia. Część trzecia stara się również zweryfikować faktyczną wysokość „długu”, jaki Heidegger miał u Brentana zaciągnąć i odpowiedzieć na pytanie, do jakiego stopnia, o ile w ogóle, Martina Heideggera możemy nazwać „brentanistą”. (shrink)

Niniejszy tekst jest poświęcony kwestii nicości w myśleniu Heideggera. Dokonana w Byciu i czasie analiza struktury Dasein wydobywa na jaw wiele jej istotnych aspektów, a właściwie egzystencjałów, z których jednym byłaby trwoga. W trwodze świat „staje się” nicością, ukazuje się w sposób pusty i bezlitosny, ale zarazem odsłania to Dasein możliwość jego autentycznej egzystencji, możliwość zin¬dywidualizowanego bycia-w-świecie. W wykładzie Czym jest metafizyka? Heidegger powraca do problematyki nicości, rozumiejąc ją już inaczej niż czyniła to metafizyka: mianowicie nicość była warunkiem umożliwiającym jawność (...) bytu dla człowieka. Bycie: nicość: to samo – ogólnie rzecz ujmując, Heidegger będzie twierdził, że nicość przynależy do bycia, co syntetycznie wyraża właśnie ta jego późna formuła. Ponieważ kwestia bycia jest ściśle związana z kwestią czasu, stąd problematyka nicości łączy się najściślej u Heideggera z problematyką temporalności, temporalności ujmowanej – co koniecznie trzeba podkreślić – ekstatycznie. Temporalizacja byłaby według Heideggera wolną oscylacją pierwotnej czasowości otwartego horyzontu, co umożliwiałoby światowanie (Welten), czyli wchodzenie bytów w świat. Z tej perspektywy, w wykładzie Metafizyczne podstawy logiki, nicość jest określana jako nihil originarium. Świat to nicość, która wydarza się wraz i dzięki pierwotnemu czasowaniu się, co późny Heideggera będzie także rozumiał jako czwarty wymiar czasu (Czas i bycie). Nicość jest także tematyzowana przez Heidggera w Przyczynkach do filozofii, gdzie jest z kolei objaśniana jako istotowa wibracja (Erzitterung) Bycia (Sein). Podczas seminarium w Le Thor (1969) Heidegger powie, że w wydarzaniu (Ereignis) nie zostało już pomyślane nic greckiego. Wydarzanie nie „jest”, ale „daje”, „wydarza” bycie i czas. Bycie to jednak nie metafizycznie rozumiana obecność. Bycie to także nie nieobecność, nie sprowadza się ono bowiem do metafizycznie rozumianej nicości, nicości pojmowanej w opozycji do bytu, ale to nicość w sensie nihil originarium, nicość w sensie temporalnym, a może nawet i energetycznym. Tak ujmowana przez Heideggera nicość zdaje się i tak jednak „zanikać” w nieprzedstawianym, niewyrażalnym wydarzaniu, wydarzaniu uchodzącym za ostatnie „słowo” jego filozofii. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger has retrospectively characterized his philosophy as “phenomenology of the invisible”. This paradoxical formula suggests that the aim of his thinking was to examine the origin of the phenomena. Furthermore, Heidegger has also stated that his philosophy is ultimately motivated by a theological interest, namely the question of God’s absence. Following the guiding thread of those remarks, this essay analyzes the essential traits of Heidegger’s thought by interpreting them as an attempt to develop a phenomenology of the invisible. Heidegger’s (...) attitude towards physics and metaphysics, his theory of truth, his reading of Aristotle, his concept of Dasein, his understanding of nothingness are all situated within the problematic context of the relation between the invisible and the revealed. Heidegger’s thought is thereby posited at the point of intersection of phenomenology, ontology, and theology. (shrink)

The article first outlines Edmund Husserl’s idea of “complete transformation” (völlige Umwendung) and the philosophy of “the turn” (Kehre) of Martin Heidegger. In the following chapter it is shown that you can understand both Husserl as well as Heidegger in the light of “the essential turn” in the German mysticism of the fourteenth century. In this way it becomes clear that Husserl’s idea of a “complete transformation” seems to be a forgotten “mystical” impetus of phenomenology, which was much more realized (...) by Martin Heidegger than by Husserl. In this way Heidegger’s philosophy of “the turn” appears as an important modern approach of the mystical philosophy of transformation. (shrink)

It is still a popular philosophical position to call for a strict “separationism” concerning the private and the public sphere when it comes to religious convictions. Richard Rorty is one prominent supporter of this claim. The traditional critique against this division is mostly built on a particular characterization of religion that is at odds with Rortian assumptions. In this article, however, Rorty is criticized on his own terms turning pragmatically the objection to a fully internal one. What Rorty values most, (...) namely a tolerant and ironic liberalism as the capacity to describe oneself in new and interesting ways is precisely the role, I argue, that religious faith could play under “neo-liberal” conditions. (shrink)

With the help of the natural history of “zero,” and the use of “zero” as a starting point, one may consider two types of metaphysics. On the one hand, the epistemological metaphysics, based on the perceptual/rational dichotomy, is related to the zero as a vacancy between numbers. On the other hand, the genetic metaphysics, based on the dichotomy of source-evolution (or origin and derivate), has much to do with the zero as a number between negative and positive numbers. In this (...) respect, zero represents the horizon of metaphysics: we can forever approach it, but we cannot ultimately arrive at it. Though serving as the point of convergence and divergence for all relationships, zero has no definable content of its own. Such is the essence of zero, and of metaphysics as well. (shrink)

Eger's contribution towards a reapprochment of Hermeneutics, Science and Science Education is very welcome. His focus on the problem of misconceptions is relevant. All the same in our opinion some not minor points need a clarification. We will try to argue that: a) Hermeneutics cannot be reduced to a semantical interpretation of science texts; its phenomenological aspects have to be taken in account. b) Science has an unavoidable historical dimension; original papers and advanced textbooks are the real depositaries of scientific (...) research. Standard textbooks are a caricature not worth it of a hermeneutical analysis. c) A parallelism can be traced between two dicothomies: the lifeworld of hermeneutics and the scienceworld of epistemology on one side and the extraordinary and the normal science on the other. d) For an overcoming of the misconceptions' problem we propose that the previous dicothomies be bridged through a hermeneutical phenomenological approach to science education that stresses the alternative, historical interpretations of natural phenomena. (shrink)

The article « La Défenestration » by Belgian philosopher Marc Richir has been translated into Russian for the first time for this issue of the “Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology.” In his early work “The Defenestration” Richir raises the question of relation between the subject and conceivable world. Here, a philosopher is pictured contemplating the world through the window of his tower. In such detachment from the world the thinker finds himself according to all Modern philosophies of consciousness. Husserl’s phenomenology inherits (...) this detachment, since Husserl imposes the structure of transcendental ego as external to the world. Richir abolishes the concept of transcendental ego with the help of heideggerian Dasein, but analyzing Heidegger’s ontology he comes to the conclusion that the latter remains fixated on beings. Believing a person to live in the fundamental openness of Being, Heidegger places such a person in the secondary world of “truth.” In order to overcome the remains of traditional philosophy in Heidegger’s ontology Richir turns to Merleau-Ponty’ “cosmology of the visible.” The author takes the Merleau-Ponty’s thesis that everything visible has something fundamentally invisible in it. This allows him to discover the universe of “nothing”, which includes both the visible and what is “behind” it. As a result Richir overcomes the classical dualism of the sensual and the intelligible. The concept of defenestration places the subject and the world in the same universe. (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)

This essay engages ways in which the manifestation of ‘world’ occurs in poetry specifically through images, and how we can conceive of the imagination in this regard without reducing the imagination to a mimetic faculty of consciousness subordinate to cognition. Continental thought in the last century offers rich resources for this study. The notion of a ‘world’ is related to the poetic image in ways fundamental to the Heidegger’s theory of language, and may be seen in Continental poetics following Heidegger, (...) including Blanchot’s examination of poetry in his account of the space of literature. By means of images, I shall demonstrate, poetic language is exemplary in relation to ‘world’ in two ways. (1) Images, poetically arranged, generate and open up a sense or experience of a world, specific to that poem, for its reader. Poetic images then, exhibit a generative evocation of world. (2) Through images, a poem may evoke the way in which space and time are inhabited as a world of human dwelling in an ontologically or existentially meaningful way. The relation of images to world is, then, an illumination or a disclosure of world. The first of these relations remains, to a large extent, immanent to the poem, but may be seen as an analogue of the essentially human experience of inhabiting a world. The second relation transcends the poem and relates the poem immediately to the existential framework of human dwelling. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to criticize the reification of language present in Heidegger’s writings after the Kehre . The steps of the argument are as follows. First, it is argued that the specific features of Heidegger’s conception of language after the Kehre can be traced back to Heidegger’s conception of the ontological difference in Being and Time . The common element in both conceptions is the assumption that meaning determines reference (i.e. that the way entities are understood determines which (...) entities we can refer to). In the next step the implications of this assumption are shown through an analysis of Heidegger’s conception of designation in Being and Time and after the Kehre . Finally, this conception of designation is criticized with the help of the analysis of designation offered by the so-called theories of direct reference. Key Words: Donnellan • Heidegger • language • linguistic idealism • meaning • ontological difference • reference • referential/attributive distinction. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s thinking, a language is neither words nor expressions. The discussion of a language brings not the language itself but rather us into its essence, and makes us gather unto “the genesis of the very language itself.” With snows and vesper bells, Heidegger summoned both heaven and earth and gods and men, making them merge into a single world. Likewise, Zhuangzi used the words of Qixie to summon the fleeting clouds in an endless sky and a dusky earth populated (...) by living beings and dust. (shrink)

This paper carries out an intensive study of Heidegger's famous reflection on the word dao and of his citations from the Daodejing, with the purpose of elucidating his complex relation with Daoist thinking. First I examine whether dao could be said to be a guideword for Heidegger's path of thinking. Then I discuss Heidegger's citations, in six places of his writings, from five chapters of the Daodejing, by situating them in the immediate textual context as well as against the broad (...) background of the fundamental presuppositions and orientations of Heidegger and Laozi's thinking. My examination of Heidegger's citations from the Daodejing has for the first time gathered together all the relevant materials discovered so far. (shrink)

At the core of Heidegger's philosophy, there lies this nagging question: what is the link between language and being? Using a famous formulation by Heidegger as a guide (‘When we go to the well, when we go through the woods, we are always already going through the word “well”, through the word “woods”’), the analysis focuses on the connection Heidegger establishes between being (what woods and well ‘are’), understanding (something is understood ‘as’ woods or well), and temporality (human understanding of (...) woods and well has changed since ancient Greek times, for example). Language is both what grants things their way to matter to us and thus to ‘be’ for us to the extent that we understand them, but language is also linked to a ‘happening’ (Geschehen) or an event so that things are not bound to their Geek being or current being: things ‘become being’ (seiend werden). Language is both the means for things to materialize in historical times: ‘being woods’ or ‘being a well,’ as well as a testimony to their entry into being. This is why language in its poetic use can make beings ‘more being’ (seiender). (shrink)

Outside Ethics brings together some of the most important and provocative works by one of the most creative philosophers writing today. Seeking to expand the scope of contemporary moral and political philosophy, Raymond Geuss here presents essays bound by a shared skepticism about a particular way of thinking about what is important in human life--a way of thinking that, in his view, is characteristic of contemporary Western societies and isolates three broad categories of things as important: subjective individual preferences, knowledge, (...) and restrictions on actions that affect other people. He sets these categories in a wider context and explores various human phenomena--including poetry, art, religion, and certain kinds of history and social criticism--that do not fit easily into these categories. As its title suggests, this book seeks a place outside conventional ethics.Following a brief introduction, Geuss sets out his main concerns with a focus on ethics and politics. He then expands these themes by discussing freedom, virtue, the good life, and happiness. Next he examines Theodor Adorno's views on the relation between suffering and knowledge, the nature of religion, and the role of history in giving us critical distances from existing identities. From here he moves to aesthetic concerns. The volume closes by looking at what it is for a human life to have "gaps"--to be incomplete, radically unsatisfactory, or a failure. (shrink)

In this paper Russian Symbolist philosophy is represented primarily by Viacheslav Ivanov (1866--1949), but its conclusions are intended to be valid for other philosophers we classify as Symbolist, including Nikolai Berdiaev and S. L. Frank. It is posited that, by comparing Ivanov''s cosmology, aesthetics, and anthropology to those of Martin Heidegger, one can reconceive of Symbolist philosophy as an existential hermeneutic. This, it is claimed, can help to identify a common basis among the Symbolist philosophers, and also to place Russian (...) thought in the context of modern European philosophy and vice versa. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay shows how certain limit-points of Lacan's psychoanalytic discourse in his 1955–56 seminar on The Psychoses tangentially brush up against Maurice Blanchot's writing on the neuter, as presented in The Space of Literature from 1955. The effort is to strike up a conversation between Lacan's “clinical discourse” and Blanchot's “critical writing” on the topics of language, writing, authority, and madness. In this regard, the essay approaches an infinite point of approximation between the procedure of psychosis and the procedure (...) of literary writing by questioning whether, at some point in these different ways of proceeding, they may share a certain experience of language. Namely, this is an experience of a language that, as stated by both Jacques Lacan and Maurice Blanchot, “speaks all by itself” and does so incessantly and with a certain furious neutrality. (shrink)

Una crítica del concepto vulgar de tiempo busca explicitar los caracteres básicos de dicho concepto y fundamentalmente las aporías en el planteo. Con relación a lo primero, este artículo pone énfasis en el carácter “originario” del concepto vulgar, es decir, su conexión con el “tiempo del mundo” y en el nexo de fundamentación que conecta ambos –tiempo vulgar y tiempo del mundo– con la temporalidad originaria del Dasein. En relación con lo segundo, el artículo cuestiona los límites de una atribución (...) del concepto vulgar de tiempo a Aristóteles; se discute asimismo la homologación de espacio y tiempo, por un lado, y la relación entre tiempo y presencia por otro, dos presupuestos de la representación tradicional del tiempo como medida/parámetro de los cambios en general. (shrink)

Whole Set of Contents of Current Issue (for cross-reference reading and hard-copy preservation of the whole issue).

It is commonly believed that philosophica l comparison depends on having some common measure or standard between and above the compared parts. The paper is to show that the foregoing common belief is incorrect and therewith to inquire into the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical comparison. First, the ‘comparison paradox’ will be expounded. It is a theoretical difficulty for the philosophical tendency represented by Plato’s theory of Ideas to justify comparative activities. Further, the connection of the comparative paradox with the obstacles (...) met by cross-cultural philosophical comparisons will be demonstrated. It will be shown that to attribute the difficulty of cross-cultural comparisons to incommensurability of traditions is irrelevant and misleading. It is to be argued that the original possibility of comparison depends on the ‘comparative situation’, i.e., the mechanism of meaning-production that functions in a non-universalistic and anonymous way. A philosophical paradigm does facilitate the attendance of such a situation, but it is also possible for the situation to emerge between paradigms in a gamesome way. Accordingly, the genuine comparison at issue will not originate primarily and merely on the level of concepts and propositions, but can only be achieved through inter-paradigmatic conditions, where we have the sharp awareness of a paradigm’s boundary from which we can attempt to achieve situational communication with another paradigm. In light of this, the perspective of a philosophical comparison differs not only from the traditional or universalistic one, but also from Gadamer’s hermeneutics, such as the doctrine of ‘fusion of horizons’. The new perspective finds an illustration in Heidegger’s relations with Daoism. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s last seminar, which was in Zähringen in 1973, he introduces what he called a “phenomenology of the inconspicuous”. Despite scholars’ occasional references to this “approach” over the last 40 years, this approach of Heidegger’s has gone largely under investigated in secondary literature. This article introduces three different, although not necessarily conflicting ways in which these sparse references to inconspicuousness can be interpreted: The a priori of appearance can never be brought to manifestation, and the unscheinbar is interwoven with (...) the scheinbar as an active characteristic or form of “hiddenness”, therefore making inconspicuousness inherent within all phenomenology. Or, there is now a particular step or reduction within phenomenology that involves one’s being attuned to the various modes of potential hiddenness, of which “inconspicuousness” is a particular character trait. Or there are particular, unique, and specific phenomena that give themselves “inconspicuously,” and there is also thus a corresponding, particular phenomenology in which one must engage in order to gain some kind of access to these specific things’ phenomenal strata. This paper introduces Heidegger’s “phenomenology of the inconspicuous” most especially in his last seminar in Zähringen in 1973, engages related references to unscheinbar in his 1942/1943 Seminar on Parmenides, and then puts forward an interpretation of what these somewhat ambiguous references could mean when contextualized according to Heidegger’s overall interests. This essay brings these references to light, and puts forward a proposal as to what kind of phenomenology Heidegger was–somewhat inconspicuously–referring. (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)

O artigo começa dando uma visão panorâmica do processo pelo qual se passou, na modernidade, da libertação da palavra à industrialização da palavra, esboçando algumas reações a esse desenvolvimento, em particular a de Heidegger. Prossegue pelo exame detalhado da regra de verbalização do inconsciente, sobre a qual repousa a clínica freudiana, mostrando os limites teóricos e clínicos desse tipo de comunicação entre o analista e o analisando. Passa, em seguida, ao estudo da comunicação não-verbal, característica da clínica winnicottiana dos psicóticos, (...) para concluir: 1) que certos modos do inconsciente são comunicáveis, mas não verbalizáveis, 2) que a crise da comunicação verbal, detectada por Winnicott na psicanálise, apresenta paralelos notáveis com a crítica de Heidegger da palavra gramaticalmente - isto é, ciberneticamente - correta, como o único meio de falar sobre os seres humanos e seus assuntos.The article starts by giving an overview of the process by which the liberation of speech became the industrialization of speech in Modern Times, outlining some reactions to it, such as the one formulated by Heidegger. It continues with a detailed study of the rule for verbalization of the unconscious, upon which the Freudian psychoanalysis is founded, showing theoretical and clinical limits of this kind of communication between the analyst and the analyzand. It goes over to the examination of the different modes of non-verbal communication, characteristic of the Winnicottian clinic of psychotics, in order to conclude 1) that some modes of the unconscious are communicable, but not verbalizable; 2) that the crises of verbal communication, detected by Winnicott in psychoanalysis, exhibits noteworthy parallels to the Heideggerian critique of the grammatically, that is, cibernatically correct language as the only means of talking about human beings and affairs. (shrink)

In coming to words, language “reserves” itself: it holds back its event, keeping it illegible and silent. It is possible to see much of modern innovative or “experimental” poetry as such an experience of reticence and stillness, an experiment of language listening to itself “speaking” in order to allow the force of the illegible to come to speech. How this silence both limits what can be said and holds what has been written open to the possibilities of saying otherwise comes (...) from the “restraint” characteristic of the specific way in which language “speaks,” that is, arrives each time singularly as words precisely by withholding this very arrival from signification. Myung Mi Kim’s poetry stands out among contemporary American poets precisely for its specific attentiveness to this simultaneously “generative” and “constraining” force of silence. To understand better the workings of this force of silence, I examine Kim’s poetry in the context of Heidegger’s reflection on language, specifically his point about the withdrawal and restraint “essential” to the unfolding of language. I suggest that this withdrawal marks the poietic momentum of language, which can be traced, though, only by way of a listening response. This listening response becomes in turn a kind of constraint under which poetic thinking operates, a holding back of assertions and statements in favor of a listening which responds precisely to how the saying withholds itself from what comes to be said. Exploring the proximity between Kim’s poetry and Heidegger’s thinking, this essay examines how this withdrawal—a restraint at play in language itself--necessitates the attitude of poetic “reservedness.”. (shrink)

"Raymond Geuss is a major voice in contemporary philosophy, and this book will enhance his stature even further. Containing some of his best pieces so far, "Outside Ethics" reveals his impressive range as well as the depth of his thought.