The concept of guilt in relation to conscience and anxiety is not referred to as a feeling or an emotion in existential philosophy. Rather, the phenomenon of guilt is analyzed through the structure of existence. In Being and Time, Heidegger interprets guilt in the context of Dasein’s understanding of its own Being. The nature of Dasein as a finite entity permeates the analysis of guilt, which is based on the analysis of negation and the time structure of Dasein. An existential (...) interpretation of guilt, conscience, and anxiety offers a new dimension of the study of emotions with regard to the understanding of human Being. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines a convergence between Heidegger's reconceptualization of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and some recent work in feminist philosophy on relational autonomy. Both view the concept of autonomy to be misguided, given that our capacity to be self-directed is dependent upon our ability to enter into and sustain meaningful relationships. Both attempt to overturn the notion of a subject as an isolated, atomistic individual and to show that selfhood requires, and is based upon, one's relation to and dependence upon (...) others. The paper argues that Heidegger's notion of authentic Mitsein (being-with) rejects traditional notions of autonomy and subjectivity in favor of a relational model of selfhood. Ultimately, it provides a new point of entry into contemporary debates within feminist philosophy on Heidegger's thinking and defends Heidegger from certain feminist critiques. (shrink)

In ‘Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time’, we explicated the crucial role that Martin Heidegger assigns to our capacity to affectively find ourselves in the world. There, our discussion was restricted to Division I of Being and Time. Specifically, we discussed how Befindlichkeit as a basic existential and moods as the ontic counterparts of Befindlichkeit make circumspective engagement with the world possible. Indeed, according to Heidegger, it is primarily through moods that the world is ‘opened (...) up’ and revealed to us as a world that is suffused with values and entities that already matter to us. In this companion essay, our aim is to expand our analysis of affectivity in the following ways: first, we revisit our discussion of Befindlichkeit in light of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of BT; second, we discuss the basic or fundamental mood of boredom and its ontological significance; we conclude by providing a brief characterization of how Heidegger's notion of mood changes in his later thinking. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a useful methodology for describing and ordering experience. As such, phenomenology can be specifically applied to the first person experience of illness in order to illuminate this experience and enable health care providers to enhance their understanding of it. However, this approach has been underutilized in the philosophy of medicine as well as in medical training and practice. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of phenomenology to clinical medicine. In order to describe the experience of illness, we need a (...) phenomenological approach that gives the body a central role and acknowledges the primacy of perception. I present such a phenomenological method and show how it could usefully illuminate the experience of illness through a set of concepts taken from Merleau-Ponty. His distinction between the biological body and the body as lived, analysis of the habitual body, and the notions of motor intentionality and intentional arc are used to capture the experience of illness. I then discuss the applications this approach could have in medicine. These include narrowing the gap between objective assessments of well-being in illness and subjective experiences which are varied and diverse; developing a more attuned dialogue between physicians and patients based on a thick understanding of illness; developing research methods that are informed by phenomenology and thus go beyond existing qualitative methods; and providing medical staff with a concrete understanding of the impact of illness on the life-world of patients. (shrink)

War captivity is an extreme traumatic experience typically involving exposure to repeated stressors, including torture, isolation, and humiliation. Captives are flung from their previous known world into an unfamiliar reality in which their state of consciousness may undergo significant change. In the present study extensive interviews were conducted with fifteen Israeli former prisoners of war who fell captive during the 1973 Yom Kippur war with the goal of examining the architecture of human thought in subjects lacking a sense of body (...) (disembodiment) as a result of confinement and isolation. Analysis of the interviews revealed that threats to a normal sense of body often lead to a loss of the sense of time as an objective dimension. Evidence suggests that the loss of the sense of body and the loss of the sense of time are in fact connected; that is, they collapse together. This breakdown in turn results in a collapse of the sense of self. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to bring philosophical thinking closer to practice-based empirical work. Using Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, it offers a bridge between these two worlds, attempting to provide philosophical depth to the findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study. This process unfolded through the appearance of three intertwined, potential, meaningful modes of being in the lifeworld: space as a condition for being and being for worlding the world; temporal and spatial self-being, the existence of multiple selves in time (...) and space; and suffering and thriving as modes of being. The article extends the dialogue and concludes with key reflections and insight for research practice. (shrink)

While it is well known that the early Heidegger distinguishes between different ‘kinds of being’ and identifies various ‘structures’ that compose them, there has been little discussion about what these kinds and structures of being are. This paper defends the ‘Property Thesis’, the position that kinds of being (and their structures) are properties of the entities that have them. I give two arguments for this thesis. The first is grounded in the fact that Heidegger refers to kinds and structures of (...) being as ‘characteristics’ and ‘determinations’, which are just two different words for ‘properties’, in the broadest senses of these terms. The second argument is based on the fact that kinds and structures of being play three roles that properties are supposed to play: they are what account for similarities between things, they are what predicates express, and they are what abstract nouns refer to. (shrink)

Phenomenology has done more than any other school of thought for bringing emotions to the forefront of philosophical inquiry. The main reason for the interest shown by phenomenologists in the nature of emotions is perhaps not easily discernible. It might be thought that phenomenologists focus on emotions because the felt the quality of most emotional states renders them a privileged object of inquiry into the phenomenal properties of human experience. That view, in its turn, might lead one to think that (...) phenomenologists attend to emotional experience for its highly subjective character. On the contrary, it is the ability of emotions to engage with reality that makes them crucial for phenomenological analysis. Emotional experience is an opening to the salient features of a situation; undergoing an emotion is a way – and, for some phenomenologists, the principal way – in which the world manifests itself to us. The exact character of that manifestation will be the main topic of discussion in the present chapter. We look at the two major accounts of the way in which that manifestation is structured. The first account is due to Martin Heidegger, and the second is articulated in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

There is a striking similarity between the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Harry G. Frankfurt: they both argue that the temporal nature of human existence and agency is due to the fact that humans care about things. Even though Heidegger’s concept of care and Frankfurt’s concept of caring are very different, they are worth comparing because they play a similar role and have similar significance in their thinking. This comparison also offers an opportunity for a desired dialog between philosophers working (...) in those two different traditions. I argue that the two views can complement each other: Though Frankfurt provides a detailed psychological description of caring, his concept of caring is too mentalistic and leads to solipsism. Thus, his theory can be enriched with the help of Heidegger’s view based on the concept of Being-in-the-world. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Heidegger’s existential analytic of human existence challenges the traditional understanding of responsibility as lying in the power or mastery of the subject. In contrast to secondary literature that attempts to read Heidegger as showing that we take responsibility through some kind of self-determination or control, I argue that Heidegger’s account of our thrownness, and its first-personal manifestation in our attunement, contests such understandings and points to an account of responsibility that does not find its locus in (...) the power of the subject. In light of this, I argue that taking responsibility for our being-in-the-world should be understood as becoming attentive. By emphasizing the ‘movement’ of thrownness and the meaning of this as finding ourselves always already gripped by way of being attuned, my analysis demonstrates the pervasive power of that which is beyond the subject. I show that we must always already find ourselves submitted to particular possibilities and, more fundamentally, to the enigma of being Dasein. From this analysis, and via the work of Harry Frankfurt, I demonstrate how our thrownness speaks against seeing responsibility for our being-in-the-world in terms of choice, rational judgement, or wholeheartedness. A further analysis of anxiety, contrasting with accounts which read it as manifesting a privileged space for freedom and self-determination, emphasizes the revelation of the ‘I’ as essentially bound to what is beyond it. I then argue that a Heideggerian account of responsibility should be understood in terms of attention or attentiveness, a notion that is developed through phenomenological analysis, and in dialogue with the work of Iris Murdoch. Through the use of the examples of the film 'Locke' and the novel 'Disgrace', I propose that attentiveness, with its accent on that which is beyond the subject, is a more appropriate way of conceiving responsibility on a Heideggerian account. (shrink)

Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

Phenomenologies of sport predominantly focus on an analysis of the experience of participating in sport, either as a part of a team or individually. In this essay, the author argues that a vital avenue for the phenomenology of sport has not been adequately explored, that is, an analysis of the experience of the spectator. Taking up Heidegger’s phenomenological method as outlined in Being and Time, the author argues that Heidegger’s notions of the they-self, idle talk, and falling prey offer critical (...) insights into why sports-talk among fans comes to focus on truth and blame. The object of the phenomenology of sport is thus suggested to be not limited solely to the field of play but is also, as the title suggests, in the bleachers as well. (shrink)

Being and Time argues that we, as Dasein, are defined not by what we are, but by our way of existing, our “existentiell possibilities.” I diagnose and respond to an interpretive dilemma that arises from Heidegger's ambiguous use of this latter term. Most readings stress its specific sense, holding that Dasein has no general essence and is instead determined by some historically contingent way of understanding itself and the meaning of being at large. But this fails to explain the sense (...) in which Being and Time is a work of fundamental ontology, concluding in Heidegger's claim to have found the meaning of Dasein's being in the concept of originary temporality. On the other hand, readings that stress the general sense of “existentiell possibilities” find Heidegger on a fruitless quest for the transcendental conditions necessary for Dasein's existence, which seems to founder on the claims that Dasein is constitutively thrown, factical, and “in-each-case-mine” [jemeinig]. Both readings are problematic and, I contend, result from a failure to disambiguate and explain the ontologically unique relationship between the specific and general aspects of Dasein's essence. I argue that we can better explain this relationship, Heidegger's method for investigating it, and the sense in which Dasein has an essence that is open to philosophical investigation, if we read Being and Time's ontology of Dasein in terms of what Anton Ford calls “categorial” genus-species relationships. (shrink)

Heidegger has never been the darling of analytic philosophy. From Carnap’s (1931) dismissal of ‘the nothing noths’ and other remarks of Heidegger’s as paradigmatic examples of the kind of nonsense...

Authentic assessment has been proposed as having potential to enhance student learning for a changing world. Conventionally, assessment is seen to be authentic when the tasks are real-to-life or have real-life value. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s work, we challenge this conceptualisation as narrow and limited. We argue that authenticity need not be an attribute of tasks but, rather, is a quality of educational processes that engage students in becoming more fully human. Adopting the mode of authenticity involves calling things into (...) question, challenging public assumptions and striving to take a stand in the situations encountered. In addition to assessing student achievement, then, authentic assessment can enhance integration of what students know and how they act with who they are becoming. (shrink)