Recent reconstructions of Heidegger's thoughts on ethics have a curious paradoxical feature. On the one hand, Heidegger, particularly in his Aristotle lectures of the 1920s, offers a view of practical reason on which Dasein has its “moral knowledge” in a fully perceptual, non-cognitive way. This generally sets Heidegger in opposition to the whole business of principled moral justification before the fact. On the other hand, the literature is peppered with what appear to be principled denunciations of immorality—particularly violations of other (...) Dasein—grounded in the analytic of Dasein. To see human life as having a stable ergon (“business” or “function”), with certain broad tasks to pursue and vices to avoid, is not necessarily counter-Aristotelian; on the contrary, it is basic to the kind of Aristotelianism Husserl pursued in his own lectures on ethics. Here I set Heidegger's Aristotelian model of practical reason amid the competing, though similar, Aristotelianisms of John McDowell and Husserl, which differ on their handling of the human ergon. I conclude that Heidegger's views on practical reason and moral knowledge certainly constrain and very much alter the business of moral justification, but they do not precisely rule it out. (shrink)

In his 2012 article Philosophy of Education for the Public Good: Five Challenges and an Agenda, Gert Biesta identifies five substantial issues about the future of education and the work required to address these issues. This article employs a Heideggerian reading of education to evaluate ‘Biesta’s truth’. I argue that Biesta’s point of view underestimates knowledge’s predominance and relativism; frames intentionality in pre-Heideggerian terms, which—although not a problem in itself because an individual is free to choose a particular perspective on (...) the concept—raises the issue of consistency in Biesta’s theoretical framework; and a final criticism concerns Biesta’s choice of tools for engaging with the identified challenges: The primary tools Biesta uses are intrinsic to the perspective he challenges. The use of a ‘first person perspective’ to frame pedagogy that focuses on the subject and ‘subjectification’ reaffirms the fundamental Western gesture that makes human beings subjects who ‘stand-over-and-against’ the world. I argue that it is possible to penetrate Plato’s ‘theoretical gaze’ and find a ‘weak’ alternative to an all-encompassing point of view of education through a Heideggerian approach that regards intentionality and thinking as ‘hearing’. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, numerous scholars have applied the thought of Heidegger to environmental ethics—in particular, his critique of modern technology and his concept of ‘releasement.’ In this paper, I argue that these are an insufficient foundation for environmental ethics because they overlook a violence and destructiveness that is inextricable from our finite existence. Despite this critique, I claim that Heidegger’s analyses of violence in the 1930s and guilt in Being and Time can address some of these insufficiencies. To further develop (...) the ethical potential of his philosophy, I bring it into dialogue with environmental virtue ethics. (shrink)

Research on the unrepresentability of death in Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre abound in Beckett scholarship, but little attention has been given to the artist’s representation of caregiving to the dying in his plays. With reference to Martin Heidegger’s concept of _care_ and Albert Camus’s idea of the _absurd_, this article analyzes _Endgame_ (1957) and _Footfalls_ (1976) by attending to Beckett’s dramatic representation of caregiving as undergirded by a sense of its absurdity. The almost 20-year gap between the writing of both plays (...) highlights the development of an understanding that this sense of absurdity is never about the caregiver’s questioning of one’s obligation to the dependent but about how one chooses to respond to caregiving as an absurd predicament. The pertinence of such a representation of caregiving by Beckett lies in its poignant articulation of a complex experience that is often left unexpressed by caregivers who prioritize their dependent loved ones over themselves. (shrink)

Since Plato, Western thought has framed knowing as a method within ‘some realm of what is’ and a predetermined ‘sphere of objects’. The roots and the consequences of this stance towards reason and truth were noted by Heidegger, who equates the history of Western thought with the history of metaphysics. Since Plato, truth has relied on definition, hierarchy and mastery. Discourse on the truth begins to be discourse on the limits of things and, thus, on who is able to set (...) these limits and discourse. This dominant position erases its own traces, presents itself as unique and unavoidable, and excludes all other ways of thinking. This exclusion includes violence, and this violence is not merely a philosophical matter. It is written in the history of the West, which is a history that includes conquest, genocide and war. However, we can also identify in Heidegger ways to transcend this inner violence by returning to the originating stance towards truth, namely, truth as aletheia, or world disclosure. This article provides the groundwork to argue that Heidegger's thought, based on a call for existential responsibility, requires education to remake our existence. (shrink)