When elderly people are ideating on manners to end their lives, because they feel life is over and no longer worth living, it is important to understand their lived experiences, thoughts and behaviour in order to appropriately align care, support and policy to the needs of these people. In the literature, the wish to die in elderly people is often understood from a medical, psychopathological paradigm, referred to as cognitive impairment, depressive disorder, pathological bereavement, and suicidality. In this paper, we (...) evaluate this dominant paradigm by considering three serious limitations, namely: (1) the risk of epistemic transformation; (2) the risk of reduction; and (3) the risk of obscuring the social and cultural embeddedness. Drawing on insights from our empirical–phenomenological research on the issue of elderly and the self-chosen death, this paper argues for a phenomenological perspective to counteract the medicalisation of death wishes in elderly people. (shrink)

This paper provides an exposition and critical assessment of a fundamental disagreement between Løgstrup’s and Levinas’s otherwise closely aligned ethical phenomenologies. The disagreement concerns the putative compatibility of ethics and ontology, where in stark contrast to Levinas’s ethics, which proceeds from a critique of the ‘primacy of ontology’ in Western thought, Løgstrup brands his own ethical project as ‘ontological ethics’. First, I provide an interpretation of Løgstrup’s ontological ethics, clarifying in particular the influence of hermeneutic and existential analysis on Løgstrup’s (...) methodology. Second, I bring Løgstrup’s ontological ethics into critical dialogue with Levinas’s thought. Here, I home in on two Levinas-style worries that appear to have traction against Løgstrup’s ontological ethics. However, ultimately, I argue that both can be defused. (shrink)

It is often stated that the German twentieth-century philosopher Martin Heidegger never wrote an ethics while undertaking his critique and deconstruction of the Western tradition of metaphysics. It is, therefore, difficult to know what manner of normative ethics, if any, is consistent with his “hermeneutic of Dasein” such as articulated in his Being and Time. However, in his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger refers to the tragedies of Sophocles as “preserving the ēthos” more originally, thus better, than does Aristotle’s ethics. Hence, (...) one may examine Sophocles’s tragedies guided by the hermeneutic Heidegger provides, especially through the concepts of authenticity and authentic selfhood. Doing so, it is argued here that Sophocles’s Philoctetes presents one such opportunity for moral understanding in the interplay of authenticity and inauthenticity, in particular through a study of the moral dilemma that Neoptolemus must resolve as he moves from a situation of inauthenticity to a display of authentic resolve. (shrink)

McMullin argues persuasively that individualized interpersonal encounters entail the mutual recognition of the particularity of each participant’s temporalizing way of Being-in-the-world.

Martin Heidegger’s existential account of care in _Being and Time_ (2010) provides us with an opportunity to reimagine what the proper theoretical grounding of an ethic of care might be. Heidegger’s account of care serves to deconstruct the two primary foundations that an ethic of care is often based upon. Namely, that we are inevitably interdependent upon one another and/or possess an innate disposition to care for fellow humans in need. Heidegger’s account reveals that both positions are founded upon an (...) ontic (meaning factual existence), as opposed to an ontological (which refers to the nature of being), understanding of care. The distinctions between an ontic and ontological understanding of care are significant. Yet, I maintain that they are not completely incompatible. Both Heidegger and care ethicists contend that our existence with others is understood through a relational ontology. Furthermore, there are certain ontological structures from Heidegger which resonate with an ethic of care. Two key existential structures are leaping-ahead and being-guilty. These existential structures are latent in care ethics, and by explicitly revealing them I reinforce the connection between Heidegger’s account and care theory. Lastly, I develop the theoretical foundations of care ethics by proposing an existential ethic of care. (shrink)

RésuméL'authenticité et la diversité font aujourd'hui figure de slogans dans les sociétés contemporaines de part et d'autre de l'Atlantique nord. En revanche, on a peu exploré les liens entre ces deux idées. À cette fin, cet article aborde les écrits tantôt convergents, tantôt divergents de Charles Taylor et Martin Heidegger pour prolonger leurs réflexions respectives sur l'authenticité et montrer en quoi elles peuvent servir defondement à une nouvelle forme de diversité culturelle. Pour tous deux, l'être-au-monde authentique nous permet d'accider au (...) tréfonds du matériel culturel dont nous devons disposer pour que se nouent des rapports fructueux avec les autres cultures. (shrink)

Heidegger denied that his enquiries were concerned with ethics. Heidegger and Ethics questions this self-understanding and reveals a form of ethics in Heidegger’s thinking that is central to his understanding of metaphysics and philosophy. In our technological age, metaphysics has, according to Heidegger, become real- ity; philosophy has come to an end. Joanna Hodge argues that there has been a concomitant transformation of ethics that Heidegger has failed to identify. Today, technological relationships form the ethical relations in which humans find (...) them- selves. As a result, ethics is cut loose from abstract universal moral standards, and the end of philosophy announced by Heidegger turns out to be an interminable interruption of the metaphysical will to completion. In order to realise the produc- tive potential of this interruption, the repressed ethical element in Heidegger’s think- ing must be retrieved. (shrink)

Se trata de pensar y abrir el horizonte del ser-con desde los análisis fenomenológicos vertidospor Heidegger en la I Sección de su libro Ser y Tiempo, respetando y aceptando sus propiaslimitaciones intrínsecas y a pesar del carácter aparentemente negativo que rodea a este existenciario,a fin de radicalizarlo, extenderlo y ubicarlo en su posibilidad más genuina. Por esta razón, a través deuna interpretación de corte fenomenológico, se ha querido potenciar los posibles rendimientos de unser-con en propiedad, enfatizando la necesidad de interpretar (...) el opus magnum heideggeriano desdeel horizonte de la mismidad del Dasein. La conclusión apunta sobre dos vías temáticas, a saber: a) atomar la mismidad del Dasein, por cuanto constituye una posibilidad ejecutiva de existir conforme alo que este ente es, en tanto condición necesaria y suficiente para pensar un ser-con en propiedad; b) aestablecer, casi a modo de esbozo, una relación entre ser-con, libertad y mismidad, la cual tiene su basetemática en una presumible igualdad de orden pre-ontológico. (shrink)

Досліджено екзистенційний аспект етики покликання особистості. На основі аналізу положень екзистенційної аналітики та подальшого осмислення ціннісного виміру буття людини у творчості М. Гайдеггера виокремлено цінності само-буття, необхідні для виявлення і розуміння феномена покликання. Показано, що цей ціннісний вимір задається такими поняттями, як екзистенційна совість, екзистенційна істина, цінність переживання конечності буття, цілісність, рішучість, онто-діалектична свобода екзистенції, турбота про автентичність існування. Обґрунтовано, що екзистенційні цінності визначають той спосіб буття людини, за якого можливі змістовні визначення моралі. Розглянуто, яким чином у розумінні покликання присутній (...) аргумент понадособистісної мети та істини буття. В аспекті аналізу феномена покликання розкрито обмеженість можливостей опертя на достеменності самосвідомості суб’єкта та індивідуального буття людини в європейській метафізиці. Результати дослідження доповнюють аналіз покликання як феномена людського буття в аспектах розуміння його ціннісного змісту, взаємозв’язку його екзистенційного та етичного осмислення. Представлені результати можуть бути використані у викладанні курсів філософії, етики, педагогіки та в подальших наукових дослідженнях. (shrink)

In this article, I compare and contrast the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas with that of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher, Kuki Shūzō. In the resulting counterpoint, I put special emphasis on the conception of time espoused by each author. I argue that both go astray by mistakenly basing their ethics on the complete otherness of the other (diachrony) rather than recognizing that both the other (diachrony) and I (synchrony) are originally inseparable in experience before the conceptual separation of “me” and “you.” (...) The fetishization of otherness, which is associated with the feminine in the ethics of both philosophers, leads them to overlook how the details of our everyday concrete experience can provide a guide for action. This paper also explores the two East Asian ethical ideals that Kuki proposes–the Buddhist ideal and the ideal of bushidō, the code of the samurai warrior. In his ethics, Kuki prefers the ethics of bushidō to that of Buddhism. I explain how Kuki’s misunderstanding of Buddhism leads him to this choice, and I explore what he overlooked in Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

The claim that, in some nontrivial sense, nursing can be identified with caring has prompted a search for the philosophical foundations of care in the nursing literature. Although the ethics of care was initially associated with Gilligan's ‘different voice’, there has more recently been an attempt – led principally by Benner – to displace the gender perspective with a Heideggerian one, even if Kant is the figure to whom both Gilligan and Benner appear most irretrievably opposed. This paper represents the (...) first half of a double-edged project: initially, to point out that Heidegger explicitly disowns any ethical implications for his ontological thinking, and to argue that no ethical theory (including an ethics of care) can be derived from Being and Time; and then to argue that Kant's categorical imperative is not only compatible with the ethics of care but actively entails it. In this, Heideggerian, part of the argument, I consider three attempts to wrest an ethics from Being and Time– those of Benner, Olafson and Guignon – suggesting that, for different reasons, they all fail. Benner systematically confuses the ontological with the ontic, not recognizing that care, concern and solicitude have ‘deficient’ modes as well as positive ones, and that Heidegger's ontology retrieves the possibility of an ethics-in-general without at any point implying an ethics-in-particular (whether of care or justice). Olafson does recognize this, and to that extent admits his failure, but his efforts to amplify Heidegger's thought in such a way as to generate an ethical theory involve both the importing of Kantian premises, and an appeal to some rather doubtful empirical observations. Guignon resorts to Heidegger's discussion of authenticity, and the idea that authentic Dasein ‘may choose its hero’, suggesting a morally reassuring list of heroes who might fit the bill. However, there is nothing in Heidegger's account of this choice that justifies his confidence, and I conclude by proposing that we should take Heidegger at his word when he says that ontology has ‘no result, no effect’. (shrink)

Based on critical readings of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the paper offers a phenomenological study of the ontology of well-being that transcends the opposition between subjective and objective being. By interpreting the Heideggerian notion of Befindlichkeit as the fundamental way in which humans find themselves in the world, being affected by and faced with their own existence, the paper opens a way to understanding well-being that locates the possibility of elevating one’s own being not inside (...) or outside the I but in the affective bond to others called friendship. Aristotle’s reflections on philia play a crucial role in developing this understanding of well-being, according to which humans find themselves well by sharing joy with each other and making a vital contribution to the realization of their own possibilities. (shrink)

An important shift occurs in Martin Heidegger’s thinking one year after the publication of Being and Time , in the Appendix to the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic . The shift is from his project of fundamental ontology—which provides an existential analysis of human existence on an ontological level—to metontology . Metontology is a neologism that refers to the ontic sphere of human experience and to the regional ontologies that were excluded from Being and Time. It is within metontology, Heidegger states, (...) that “the question of ethics may be raised for the first time.” This paper makes explicit both Heidegger’s argument for metontology , and the relation between metontology and ethics. In examining what he means by “the art of existing,” the paper argues that there is an ethical dimension to Heidegger’s thinking that corresponds to a moderate form of moral particularism. In order to justify this position, a comparative analysis is made between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

Today, the improper is not only a philosophical issue; it is also a political question. In particular, striving to abandon the improper is central to the contemporary political agenda in many Western countries. Given the risks of a political agenda abandoning the improper in a proper way and realizing a “closed community,” contemporary philosophers such as Roberto Esposito and Jean-Luc Nancy have thought about the relationship between the proper and improper. It is remarkable that Martin Heidegger is an exemplary figure (...) in the analyses of both philosophers. I will analyze Heidegger's line of thought on this issue and how Esposito and Nancy have responded to it. Both Esposito and Nancy state that it is “impossible to abandon the improper in a proper way” in their writings on community. Every proper existence is always marked by impropriety, Nancy and Esposito argue; there is no “original” or “proper” commonality that would liberate us from all things improper. Even before one can appropriate one's property, it is already traversed by the improper. The question “how not to abandon properly the improper?” is in fact one of the imperatives behind their arguments: if indeed the proper is always already, in one way or another, related to or contaminated by the improper, it is indeed an illusion to think we can simply leave the improper behind. (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)

In my paper, by drawing on the writings Heidegger developed in the late 1920s, I wish to display what we may refer to as the thorough educational nature of Heideggerian reflection. It is my argument that the analysis of Dasein we find in the early Heidegger displays an extraordinary deep and dense reflection on selfhood and subjectivity, a reflection that is rooted in subject’s freedom and transcending. By paying attention to the interplay between these two features, I argue that in (...) the late 1920s, while challenging the notion of an all-encompassing consciousness as the place where everything should be understood and managed, Heidegger built a conception of selfhood and subjectivity in terms of freedom, responsibility, and ongoing transformation. Such a conception, I argue, is in and of itself educational. (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)

In this paper, I wish to offer insight into the role of paradox in teaching. I will do so by analyzing teachers’ everyday work, taking a qualitative approach and constructing a small-scale empirical study. Philosophically, my attempt is framed by Heidegger’s thought. Drawing from research data, I argue the following: paradoxes and dilemmas are the very basis of teaching, and a teacher cannot see paradoxes and dilemmas if she/he has already made an choice of disengagement from the profession. Stated otherwise, (...) the sense of dependency, laceration, and even helplessness experienced by teachers I met and interviewed are not occasional or unwanted outcomes, but rather the very nature of the ethics of teaching. The rationale of teaching – curricula, objectives, and learning outcomes – is framed by teachers’ intentionality, namely, by teachers’ ‘being thrown’ and involved in leaving teaching situations. Teachers are simultaneously thrown into the projecting and understanding that co... (shrink)

Relational structure is a primitive notion of Heidegger’s Dasein. By analyzing the concept of pros-ti as it emerges from the Heidegger’s 1924 course dedicated to Plato’s Sophist, I outline the Platonic and Aristotelic roots of Heideggerian Mitsein. Arguably the Mitsein makes explicit the instances of the pros ti — in other words, the instances of Aristotle’s concept of relatedness/intentionality that Heidegger ascribes to Plato’s heteron — but giving them an existential value, having Heidegger pursued the shift from realism to phenomenologyexistentialism. (...) The article concludes by emphasizing the relevance of these themes for social ontology. (shrink)