By drawing on the insights of a number of continental as well as Asian thinkers, this article reflects on the "significance" of comparative philosophy—both in the sense of discussing the "meaning" and in the sense of arguing for the "importance" of this endeavor. Encountering another culture allows one to deepen one's self-understanding by learning to "see oneself from the outside"; this deeper self-understanding in turn allows one to listen to what the other culture has to say. These two moments, or (...) movements, are interdependent and mutually supportive. Without the step back to self-understanding, we unknowingly reduce the other to the unrecognized categories of our own thinking; but without encountering another culture, our understanding of our own culture remains shallow. This article argues that an engagement with non-Western philosophy, particularly with a set of traditions as rich and radically different as those of Asian thought, can and should take place as a hermeneutic circling between self-understanding and openness to encounter: the dialogical step back and step forward are mutually supportive endeavors. For only by way of such dialogue do we attain the concrete freedom and possibility for transformation and change, that is, the ability to critically and creatively develop old customs or modes of thought and to critically and creatively adopt new ones. Moreover, only through such dialogue can we learn to not only let others be, but to share insights with them, and to build together a global community which neither reifies nor abolishes cultural differences. (shrink)

The paper works out an account of the piety proper to philosophical thought. The investigation proceeds as a critical interpretation of three enigmatic claims made by Martin Heidegger about ‘the piety of thinking,’ but the paper is not simply exegetical; the interpretive work is constantly in service of an attempt to think through the phenomenon independently. Plato’s Euthyphro and Nietzsche’s critique of scientific piety both hover in the background of Heidegger’s pronouncements, and they are given special attention here. Through the (...) investigation, philosophical piety is shown to be a virtuous capacity to respond with fitting submission to the truth as what is insurmountably prior to us. To respond fittingly is, at least, to deal well with sameness and difference, which in the case of piety means to recognize two features of our situation: that philosophical questioning necessarily arises out of a fundamental listening, or affirmation, and that we always belong to being but only ever across a gap. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to begin to respond to the question of how to engage the presence of catastrophic climate change as a locus of philosophical thought. What has to be thought is the end of the world. Central to that project is Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and in particular, Heidegger’s thinking of the earth/world relation, both in itself and in terms of the limits it encounters. Heidegger’s use of “examples” of artwork, as well (...) as works by Nicolas Poussin and Anselm Kiefer, are deployed in order to begin to understand the role of art in thinking the end of the world. (shrink)

This paper compares two influential but conflicting contemporary models of politics as an activity: those of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou. It discovers the fundamental difference between their approaches to politics in their opposing evaluations of the contemporary political significance of the legacy of Plato, Platonism, and the Platonic Idea. Karl Popper’s and Arendt’s analyses of the inherently ideological nature of totalitarianism are contrasted with Badiou’s vindication of an ideological “politics of the Idea.” Arendt and Badiou are shown to share (...) an understanding of politics as a realm for the human deployment of novelty and world-transformation. Their key disagreement concerns the form of activity that accomplishes this deployment. For Arendt, political activity has the basic form of noninstrumental and nonteleological action (praxis), devalued by the Platonic tradition of political philosophy. Badiou, by contrast, follows Plato in regarding politics essentially as a process of production (poiēsis) oriented to an ideal end. (shrink)

Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

In this essay, I first analyze the extension of hermeneutical interpretation in the Heideggerian sense to products of contemporary technology which are components of our “lifeworld”. Products of technology, such as airplanes, laptops, cellular phones, washing machines, or vacuum cleaners might be compared with what Heidegger calls the “Ready-to-hand” (das Zuhandene) with regard to utilitarian objects such as a hammer, planer, needle and door handle in Being and Time. Our life with our equipment, which represents the “Ready-to-hand” in Heidegger's sense (...) of the word, is determined by temporalization (Zeitigung) which cannot be separated and isolated from the wholeness of things in the world. In the second part of my paper, I explore the positive achievement of material hermeneutics (Don Ihde) with regard to its extension to technoscience and the discussion of how such hermeneutics can contribute to the preservation of our threatened lifeworld, but also to explore the possibilities of how technical inventions, medical innovations could improve our way of life. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 6 Seiten: 802-804.

Straipsnyje siekiama atskleisti antikinės ir moderniosios technikos sampratos panašumus ir skirtumus. Moderniosios technikos analizė rodo, kad ši technika pasižymi svetima autentiškai kultūrai, gruobuoniška prigimtimi. Išryškėja esminis tradiciškai suprantamos technē ir moderniosios technikos skirtumas. Moderniosios technikos esmė, kuri įvardijama žodžiu „po-stata“, yra tokia: vietoj savaimingo esinių atsiskleidimo būties šviesoje, kai žmogus dalyvauja šiame atsiskleidimo procese tik kaip tarpininkas bei kūrėjas, vyksta grobuoniško-prievartinio pobūdžio atsiskleidimas, žmogui dalyvaujant kaip reikalaujančiai jėgai. Naudojantis moderniojo mokslo pajėgomis, kaskart vis labiau objektinama gamta šiais laikais tampa paprasčiausia (...) išteklių talpykla. Modernioji technika ir jos inicijuotas globalaus išteklių kaupimo ir vertimo preke procesas neišvengiamai gilina krizės tendencijas ir stiprina susvetimėjimo procesą. Straipsnis atskleidžia potencialios disharmonijos, siejamos su globalios, autonomiškos technokratijos iškilimu, horizontą. (shrink)

Artykuł porusza problematykę buntu człowieka przeciwko ograniczeniom ludzkiej, ziemskiej kondycji i odnosi się do poświęconych temu zagadnieniu prac Hanny Arendt. Autor wychodzi od analizy przypadku niemal 200 tysięcy osób z całego świata, które w 2013 roku zgłosiły się do projektu „Mars One” i tym samym wyraziły chęć bezpowrotnego lotu na Marsa. Następnie omawia przemiany w sferze nauki, technologii i zbiorowych wyobrażeń, które mogły do tego doprowadzić, pisząc o narodzinach wizji Ziemi jako „więzienia” związanych z eksploracją naszej planety, a także o (...) ujednoliceniu obrazu wszechświata, które dokonało się za sprawą newtonowskiej fizyki. Dalej autor przedstawia koncepcję „kondycji ludzkiej” w rozumieniu Arendt i wskazuje na inne współczesne przykłady zmagania się człowieka ze stałymi ograniczeniami ludzkiej egzystencji, takimi jak nasza śmiertelność czy przymus pracy. Na koniec autor powraca do wyjściowego pytania o przyczyny tak powszechnej woli „ucieczki z Ziemi” i zastanawia się nad możliwymi konsekwencjami jej realizacji, przywołując tezę Arendt o obniżeniu rangi człowieka postępującym wraz z rozwojem nowożytnej nauki. (shrink)

Is it possible to think about “the Greeks” without exposing oneself to what they call their gods? Feeling called upon to respond to this question, precisely within the constellation of Europe’s most gloomy hour, Martin Heidegger employs the instruments that come to him through his own “turn,” but also from further back: the “Fourfold” and the “Holy” may thus be studied in their crucial confrontation with Parmenides. A corollary resides in the link with the famous problem of “Hellenization” in Christianity.

RESUMO Este artigo busca levantar algumas questões a respeito da proposta do filósofo alemão Peter Sloterdijk ao Antropoceno, termo em debate que define a época na qual o ser humano se configurou como um agente de transformação geológica e climática. O debate faz-se pertinente por conta da proximidade de Sloterdijk com nomes como Bruno Latour e Yuk Hui, autores que, de forma central ou tangencial, se debruçam sobre este problema. Neste artigo, começaremos trazendo alguns dos principais conceitos sloterdijkianos de sua (...) obra recente para, em seguida, analisar suas propostas de ‘paradigma homeotécnico’ e de ‘coimunismo’, levantando, ao fim, questões pertinentes às propostas mencionadas. ABSTRACT This paper aims to raise some questions concerning the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s propositions regarding Anthropocene, a debatable term that serves to define the epoch in which human being made itself an agent of geological and climatic transformation. This debate is important because of Sloterdijk’s closeness with names such as Bruno Latour and Yuk Hui, authors that, in a more or less central manner, engage with such a problem. Here, firstly we will gather some of the main concepts of Sloterdijk’s recent work in order to analyze the ‘homeotechnological paradigm’ and the ‘co-immunism’ propositions, raising, at last, some relevant questions to the aforementioned propositions. (shrink)

This paper is motivated by Heidegger’s invitation to think the essence of technics through a dialogue between technics and art. This dialogue is approached with the help of several artworks belonging to what can be called the “technological turn” in art. First, I draw a schematic picture of notions of instrumentality, rationality, totality, and teleology inherited from classical philosophy of art and technology and challenged by contemporary art. I underline the Romantic claim that art overcomes these features thanks to its (...) freedom and ask, referring to the work of Gilbert Simondon, whether technology could also be liberated from its subordination to utilitarian ends. Second, I look at how certain contemporary works of art attempt to solve some of these problems. Artists who seize technical objects generally seek to make their functioning visible and problematic by distorting, interrupting, or otherwise modifying the technical dispositif—this is when a machine becomes a work of art. I show how this happens in certain works of Rebecca Horn, Jean Tinguely, Anaïs Tondeur, Eduardo Kac, and Tomas Saraceno. In conclusion, I show how art can liberate technology by liberating it from utility and instrumentality and by exposing it as such in its functioning. On the other hand, I argue that technology can liberate art, both through artistic techniques and nonartistic technological processes. (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)

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)

In this article, I elucidate Martin Heidegger’s interpretation of Soph-ocles’ tragedy Antigone from a topological point of view by focusing on the place-character of Antigone’s poetic ethos. Antigone’s decision to defy Creon’s order and bury her brother Polynices is discussed as a movement that underpins her poetic disposition as a demigod. Antigone’s situatedness between gods and hu-mans is identified as the place of poetic dwelling, and the significance of Antig-one’s relation to the polis is explained. The main argument of the (...) article is two-fold: 1) When we read Antigone focusing on the notion of dwelling, we can better make sense how Heidegger’s engagement with the question of finitude closes the envisioned gap between ontology and ethics. 2) The idea of poetic dwelling is a confrontation with spatio-temporal limits of human existence, and requires a more holistic way of thinking about the place of humans in the world, thinking beyond being-action dichotomy. (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)

Recent attempts by American theorists to produce a radical politics, characterized by the effort to translate the insights of Continental philosophy into a political register, remain trapped in that which they purport to transcend: the metaphysics of subjectivity. In their essential determinations, the works of William Connolly, Stephen White, Richard Ashley, etc. remain firmly anchored in a traditional liberal schema. The reason for this is that while these efforts have sought to de-center political identity by exposing its relational character they (...) have not re-thought 'rela tionality' itself. Our attempt to develop the more profound political impli cations of 'relationality' unfolds through a synthetic explication of Martin Heidegger's analysis of language, Jacques Derrida's logic of the gift, and Emmanuel Levinas' consideration of the Other. The emergent thematic of asymmetrical relationality reconfigures liberalism and provides for a rethinking of the structure of welfare. (shrink)

Proceedings of PhiloWeb 2012, workshop at WWW 2012, on the philosophy of the Web.

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)

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?

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)

Hay dos frases que quisiera comentar aquí: “No hay naturaleza”, de Jean-Luc Nancy, y “el ser es el Capital”, de Frédéric Neyrat. La intersección de ellas pasa por Heidegger y su idea de Gestell. No es objetivo de este texto hablar “sobre la naturaleza”, como lo hicieron los primeros griegos, ni hacer una historia del concepto; más bien intentaremos realizar un trazo entre naturaleza y técnica utilizando los conceptos de Gestell, Ecotecnia y consumación, de Heidegger, Nancy y Neyrat, respectivamente. Este (...) “entre” (al estilo heideggeriano) indicará una figura epocal: uno de los trazos de nuestro mundo globalizado marca esta fusión de naturaleza y artificio. (shrink)