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)

It has generally been recognized that while Bruno Latour’s and Martin Heidegger’s respective philosophies of technology converge on key points there is also a significant difference of attitudes towards the themes discussed. To better appreciate the similarities and differences, I suggest that we seek to understand both Latour and Heidegger as philosophers of the event, who seek to rescue the novel emergence of beings from the sedimentation of reductive, explanatory frameworks. I take up this line of thought and compare Latour’s (...) and Heidegger’s theories of things and the types of experiences they presume. Latour’s metaphysics of the actant ensures that no actant’s activity is ever reduced to being the passive effect of another. Yet while the actant can be ‘applied’ to any entity, from a Heideggerian standpoint this strength is precisely its weakness. Latour’s metaphysics provides a horizon of thought that blocks an original experience of things that Heidegger’s thought points towards. By stepping back from the horizonal experience Latour’s metaphysical blueprint for entities imposes, one can enter into an original opening that stems neither from humans nor nonhumans, but an ineradicable mystery at the origin of being. This mystery is nothing more than the inability to give ultimate reasons for the presence of beings. While Latour’s actant as _Ding_ is simply an actant with innumerable relations, Heidegger’s _das Ding_ is the concrete experience of the dissolution of metaphysical reasons, first and last causes. Precisely because Heidegger’s _das Ding_ emerges from a prior mystery that suspends any overarching causal or purposive schema, things can more freely presence from themselves. (shrink)

This study develops a genetic phenomenological sociology of space from the phenomenology and phenomenological sociology of space. Based on relational ontology, it argues that social space is a social relationship in genesis. An Apple walk-in store and an Apple online store are examples to illustrate the essence of social space. Any Apple store as a social space represents a set of social relations. The genetic phenomenological sociology of space in both store types includes two parts: first, the social ontology of (...) space, that is, ‘being-in-the-Apple-store’ or ‘being-in-the-Apple-online-store’; and second, the social epistemology of space, that is, the act of ‘encountering’ in either store. Examining the existence of space ontologically and the mode of existence epistemologically clarifies that the actual ‘meaning’ of social space, an Apple store or an Apple online store in this study, emerges through the act of encountering. Three characteristics of encountering are placelessness, ‘de-distancing,’ and mediation. (shrink)

Confucianism can be analyzed at three levels of ideas: life as existence (Sein) itself; the Confucian metaphysics about metaphysical beings; and the Confucian doctrines about tangible existences. In the eyes of Confucians, life itself is displayed as the feeling of benevolence in the first place. To reconstruct Confucianism is to return to life and perceive it as a fundamental source. That means to historically return to the original Confucianism during and even before the Axial Period, in essence it is to (...) simultaneously return to our immediate life itself, and then on this basis to reconstruct both Confucian metaphysics and Confucian doctrines about tangible existences. (shrink)

The study of phenomenological Marxism in China can be divided into three stages up to the present. The first stage spanned from the 1980s to the second half of the 1990s. During this period Luo Keting consciously set up the project of combining phenomenology with Marxism, and the boom in Sartre studies brought about the wide spread of existential Marxism. The second stage spanned from the second half of the 1990s to the 2010s, when Marxist researchers and Western philosophical researchers (...) in China energetically attempted the combination of phenomenology and Marxism. The third stage has run from 2010s to the present, in which specialized teams of researchers have researched phenomenological Marxism, and Chinese researchers have gradually showed their own awareness of problems facing Chinese society. However, how a phenomenological Marxism based on subjectivity can construct a holistic view of history is a problem that still needs to be deeply explored. (shrink)

This paper explores Jean‐Luc Nancy's philosophical reflection on surviving his own heart transplant. In ‘The Intruder’, he raises central questions concerning the relations between what he refers to as a ‘proper’ life, that is, a life that is thought to be one's own singular ‘lived experience’, and medical techniques, shaped at this particular historical juncture by cyclosporine or immuno‐suppresssion. He describes the temporal nature of an ever‐increasing sense of strangeness and fragmentation which accompanies his heart transplant. In doing so, Nancy (...) opens up the concealed of transplantation in terms of the problematic ‘gift’ of a ‘foreign’ organ, the unremitting suffering intrusiveness of the treatment regimen, and the living of life as ‘bare life’. He uncovers and exposes the relentless uncanniness that pervades the post‐transplant experience, which for him is an example of our humanistic, never‐ending impulse, to alter ourselves. Nevertheless, Nancy offers no answer to this dilemma, but instead calls us to think about the meaning or ‘sense’ of the prolonging of life and deferring of death, which currently drives our medical interventions. (shrink)

Three clinical cases of very ill neonates exemplifying extreme ethical situations for nurses are interpreted through Arendt's concepts of life and natality, and Agamben's critique of bare life. Agamben's notions of form-of-life, as the inseparability of zoe/bios, and testimony are offered as the potential foundation of nursing ethics.

Camus published an essay entitled ‘Nietzsche and Nihilism,’ which was later incorporated into The Rebel . Camus' aim was to assess Nietzsche's response to the problem of nihilism. My aim is to do the same with Camus. The paper explores Camus' engagement with nihilism through its two major modalities: with respect to the individual and the question of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus , and with respect to the collective and the question of murder in The Rebel . While (...) a Nietzschean influence thoroughly suffuses both books, it is in the second that Camus' most explicit, and most critical, engagement with the German philosopher takes place. The crux of Camus' critique of Nietzsche is that the absolute affirmation of existence he proposes as a response to nihilism cannot say ‘no’ to murder. In the terms of Camus' discussion in The Rebel , Nietzsche's philosophy is thus culpable in the straying of rebellion from its own foundations and its slide into bloody revolution. First, the paper argues that Camus' criticisms of Nietzsche are misplaced. Camus focuses his analysis on sections of the problematic text The Will to Power and misses important sections of Nietzsche's published texts which in fact support the condemnation of revolution which is the project of The Rebel . However, the paper argues that Camus moves beyond Nietzsche in radically democratizing the response to nihilism. While Nietzsche's hopes for the creation of meaning are focused on exceptional individuals, Camus insists that any response to nihilism needs to be accessible to the average person. Such a move is laudable, but it raises a number of questions and challenges regarding the type of problem nihilism is, and how these might be addressed. (shrink)

This paper unifies the disparate analyses in Heidegger's lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, in a single therapeutic and philosophical project. By taking seriously the text's claim to lead us towards authenticity, I show how Heidegger's analysis of boredom works together with his comparative analysis of man and animal to diagnose and lead us out of our contemporary complacency about being. This reading puts both analyses in a new light, reveals the hidden strategic unity of the (...) lecture course, and brings out the therapeutic dimension of Heidegger's phenomenology. (shrink)

: John Haugeland's distinctive approach to Heidegger's ontology rests on taking scientific explanation to be a paradigmatic case of understanding the being of entities. I argue that this paradigm, and the more general account that Haugeland develops from it, misses a crucial component of Heidegger's picture: the dynamic character of being. While this dimension of being first comes to the fore after Being and Time, it should have been present all along. Its absence grounds Heidegger's persistent confusion about whether world (...) is an entity, as well as problems that both Haugeland's Heidegger and Heidegger's Plato run into with the ontological difference. Retrieving the dynamic character of being reveals the proper object of Heidegger's fundamental ontology as well as a distinctive feature of his metaphysics of normativity, which is all but impossible to see if we grasp Heidegger's account through the special case of scientific explanation—at least as usually understood. (shrink)

The self-concealing of being is a primary preoccupation of Heidegger's later thought, but neither Heidegger nor his interpreters have made clear precisely what it is. In this paper, I identify the self-concealing of being as the concealing of the worlding of the world, which is essential to and simultaneous with that worlding. In order to establish this, I sketch a taxonomy of the various phenomena of concealing and concealment in Heidegger's work by building on Mark Wrathall's four ‘planks’ of unconcealing (...) and concealment. Importantly, I distinguish the procedurally prior concealment that all unconcealing presupposes from the simultaneous concealing that Heidegger frequently confuses it with. This distinction not only allows us to get clear on what it means to say that being conceals itself but also reveals various confusions and obscurities in Heidegger's own thought as well as in that of his readers. (shrink)

Sophocles' Antigone is the only individual whom Heidegger names as authentic. But the usual interpretations of Heidegger's ‘authenticity’ either do not apply to Antigone or do not capture what Heidegger finds significant about her. By working through these failures, I develop an interpretation of Heideggerian authenticity that is adequate to his Antigone. The crucial step is accurately identifying the finitude to which Antigone authentically relates: what Heidegger calls ‘uncanniness'. I argue that uncanniness names being's presencing through self-withdrawal and that Antigone (...) stands authentically towards this in her responsiveness to the call of being and her reticence at the end of explanation. In conclusion, I consider Sophocles' own creative act, which bequeathed to the West an understanding of being and a vision of how to relate to it authentically. I argue that Sophocles' status as a world-historical creator does not provide a competing picture of authenticity but must itself be understood as responsive and reticent. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between moods and meteors or atmospheric phenomena in Heidegger’s thinking. The idea of the weather as something affecting our emotional state is not new but goes all the way back to Homer. However, the ontological basis of this connection is missing. In this paper, I argue that Heidegger provides exactly such an ontological account of moods and meteors not as two separate spheres but as a common atmosphere of attuned elementality—a (...) dynamic interface where beings bend into being. Being can no longer be understood solely as that which determines beings qua beings but beings inform/transform being as well. (shrink)

This essay is a response to John Milbank’s comparison of Kant and Aquinas’ theories of analogy in ‘A Critique of the Theology of Right’. A critique of Milbank’s essay forms the point of departure for my reconstruction of Kant’s actual theory of analogy. I show that the usual focus on the Prolegomena for this end is insufficient; in fact, the full extent of Kant’s theory of analogy only becomes clear in the Critique of Judgment. I also consider the significance of (...) the Analogies of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason. In conclusion, I draw on the work of Michel Guérin to designate Kantian analogy, ‘post-established harmony’. (shrink)

The kind of phenomenology that can be useful to theology will be a hermeneutical phenomenology, one that takes us beyond the Cartesian/Husserlian ideal of presuppositionless intuition. It will also be a phenomenology of inverse intentionality, one in which the constituting subject is constituted by the look and the voice of another. In light of these suggestions, the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion is defended against three critiques, namely that it compromises the boundary between phenomenology and theology, that the theology it serves (...) is a bad one to boot, and that it has an inadequate account of the subject. At the heart of this defense is Marion's clear distinction between phenomenology as a description of possible experience, and theology as the claim that a certain kind of experience, namely revelation or epiphany, is not merely actual but veridical. Phenomenology says, If revelation occurs it will be in the form of a saturated phenomenon. Theology says, for example, the burning bush was an epiphany, or Jesus Christ is a revelation. The attentive reader should have no trouble distinguishing Marion's phenomenological analyses, which should be persuasive to believer and unbeliever alike, from his theological claims. Marion's account of the subject falls under the heading of inverse intentionality, and there are hints that vision is aufgehoben in the voice. The seer is first of all the one seen, but above all the one addressed, called forth into response-able being. (shrink)

The kind of phenomenology that can be useful to theology will be a hermeneutical phenomenology, one that takes us beyond the Cartesian/Husserlian ideal of presuppositionless intuition. It will also be a phenomenology of inverse intentionality, one in which the constituting subject is constituted by the look and the voice of another. In light of these suggestions, the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion is defended against three critiques, namely that it compromises the boundary between phenomenology and theology, that the theology it serves (...) is a bad one to boot, and that it has an inadequate account of the subject. At the heart of this defense is Marion's clear distinction between phenomenology as a description of possible experience, and theology as the claim that a certain kind of experience, namely revelation or epiphany, is not merely actual but veridical. Phenomenology says, If revelation occurs it will be in the form of a saturated phenomenon. Theology says, for example, the burning bush was an epiphany, or Jesus Christ is a revelation. The attentive reader should have no trouble distinguishing Marion's phenomenological analyses, which should be persuasive to believer and unbeliever alike, from his theological claims. Marion's account of the subject falls under the heading of inverse intentionality, and there are hints that vision is aufgehoben in the voice. The seer is first of all the one seen, but above all the one addressed, called forth into response-able being. (shrink)

In times of the Anthropocene, we are in need of philosophical anthropology, revisiting the question concerning the human condition. I suggest rethinking what one may call ‘human transcendence’ in terms of a responsivist paradigm. Drawing on Heidegger and Plessner, the idea is that we should think of the eccentric or ecstatic position of the human in terms of something we undergo, instead of it being a human capability or something we do. It is a gift, emplacing us to the time-space (...) of responsive embodied existence. The paper will follow this agenda in five steps. Having introduced what I take to be the challenge for a timely ontology, I will unfold the problem entailed in the very idea of philosophical anthropology according to Heidegger. I then focus on Heidegger’s (hidden) rapprochement to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropology, recalling Plessner’s analysis of laughter as a bodily expression displaying the ‘eccentric positionality’ of the human. I suggest rephrasing this kind of transcendence in a responsivist paradigm: Humans are responsive beings. (shrink)

In recent work, Judith Butler has sought to develop a ‘new bodily ontology’ with a substantive normative upshot: recognition of our shared bodily condition, they argue, can support an ethic of nonviolence and a renewed commitment to egalitarian social conditions. However, the route from Butler’s ontological claims to their ethico-political commitments is not clear: how can the general ontological features of embodiment Butler identifies introduce constraints on behaviour or political arrangements? Ontology, one might think, is neutral on questions of politics. (...) In this paper I reconstruct Butler’s response to this challenge, arguing that there is an interesting and plausible path from ontology to politics. I draw on Heidegger’s ontological/ontic distinction to elucidate the central concepts of Butler’s ontology: vulnerability, precariousness, and interdependency. I argue that one of Butler’s central attempts to derive an ethic of nonviolence from ontology is unpersuasive, resting on a conflation of the ontological and ontic senses of ‘interdependency’. Nonetheless, I contend that Butler is right that genuinely acknowledging our vulnerability is likely to make us more responsive to the claims of others, loosening the grip of ideals of invulnerability and sovereign independence. These ideals and the violence they encourage amount to a disavowal of our ontological condition, while commitment to nonviolence is a way of acknowledgingshrink)

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being (...) in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion, in both its analytic and Continental streams, has been undergoing a renewal for some time now, and I seek to explore this transformation in the fortunes of the discipline by looking at how truth – and religious truth in particular – is conceptualised in both strands of philosophy. I begin with an overview of the way in which truth has been commonly understood across nearly all groups within the analytic tradition, and I will underscore the difficulties and (...) shortcomings of the analytic approach by comparing it with a Continental, and specifically Heideggerian, approach. I then proceed to a conception of truth that is even further removed from the analytic tradition, one that is prominent in the theology of Christianity and which identifies truth with Christ. The point of this detour through divergent understandings of truth is to show how philosophy of religion, whether analytic or Continental, remains entrenched in forms of thinking that will need to be overcome if it is to have a credible future. (shrink)

Plato’s dialogue Parmenides remains one of—if not, the—most perplexing text in the Platonic corpus. Specifically, it examines the difficulties surrounding the concepts of unity, multiplicity, and Being that are required for participation in the Ideas. One of the problems forced upon the young Socrates by Parmenides and Zeno in the second half of the dialogue concerns the relationship between Being (ὄν) and the One (ἕν), namely, how defensible is the oneness, or the unity, of the Idea if it also partakes (...) of Being? The text culminates in an aporia as to how to articulate the difference between the One (ἕν) and the many (πολλά), since if the one is, it becomes many. How do many beings share in the one mode of Being? Crucially, how are we to articulate the difference between the One and the many, or Being and beings? Where Plato’s answer invoking the enigmatic concept ‘exaiphnēs’ (ἐξαίφνης), the temporal becoming of the unity and plurality of the One, seems to contradict the privileging of presence that Heidegger charges him with, he nonetheless fails to offer an understanding of difference that has neither Being nor unity. I argue that Heidegger’s engagement with the problem of the ontological difference, and its development into the identification of Being with difference itself, offers solutions to this aporia in Plato’s Parmenides by addressing a difference that is irreducible to the one or the many, the relational or the derivative. This has significant consequences for understanding Heidegger’s critique of Plato as not just consisting of the privileging of presence but also the failure to respond to the problem of difference. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough grounded in different philosophical traditions, Alexander Nehamas and Hans-Georg Gadamer each return to Plato's idea of the beautiful, to kalon, in order to reclaim the relevance of beauty for our understanding of art today. Their appeal to Plato challenges the reign of aesthetics that both see inaugurated by Kant's aesthetic theory. Nehamas criticizes the Kantian notion of “disinterest” as a “pleasure bereft of desire” in order to reassert the passionate longing that draws us toward art. Gadamer criticizes Kant's analysis (...) for the way it divides the aesthetic from the cognitive, thereby alienating art and beauty from any claim to knowledge or truth. So Nehamas emphasizes the import of Platonic erōs to a phenomenological account of our experience of beauty. Love, so understood, elides any easy distinction between the sensual and spiritual, between the desire to possess and the passion to know—just as beauty cannot be captured in distinctions between what is and what appears. Gadamer draws out precisely the ontological dimension of the beautiful as self-presentation. In so doing he revives the intimacy of beauty and truth, alētheia, as the movement into unconcealment by which something comes forth into its presence. In the end, I suggest appropriating Nehamas's phenomenological analysis of the erotic to Gadamer's ontological understanding of the alethic in order to renew the relation of erōs and kalon into an account that recalls this Platonic legacy for a contemporary hermeneutics of art. (shrink)

This paper aims to argue that Jean-Luc Marion’s philosophical theology is an axio-meonto-Theo-logy which proposes a new way of approaching God. The traditional way of approaching God in theo-logy attained God by the predication and the predicate in the categories of being. However, Marion’s theology attempts to bring out the freedom of God from all categories of being. It provides a critique of the traditional way of approaching God and two arguments for Marion’s alternative approach. On the grounds of the (...) axiological argument and the meontological argument, I defend Marion’s theology from some recent criticisms. (shrink)

This article has an overall aim as follows: to develop an alternative understanding to a narrow view of education, and in particular teacher training—preparatory and continuing—in terms of economy, as well as the competencies needed for the teaching profession. It takes the view that such an alternative is or could be found in the ideas put forward by Paul Standish, where poetry, or a more poetic understanding of education, is necessary—particularly in regards to teacher training.

Until recently, there has been relatively little self-conscious reflection - from either environmental or continental philosophers - on the specific contributions which continental philosophy, insofar as it is a distinctive tradition, might make to environmental thought. This situation has begun to change with several recent publications, such as Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine's edited collection Ecophenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, and Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman's collection Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. This special issue aims to (...) continue the discussion of how the continental tradition might advance or transform environmental thinking, both by reconsidering authors such as Kant, Schelling, Nietzsche and Heidegger, and by considering how themes and concepts from continental philosophy and social theory - including Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh, Foucault's notion of discipline, and Bourdieu's social critique of taste - bear on environmental practice and theory. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the metaphor ‘darkness and light’ and its relevance to education through hauntological study. It draws on the ideas of Derrida and Fisher to reveal that the metaphor functions in binary form and holds significations of truth, goodness and knowledge to subordinate oppositional ideas of darkness. Despite the everyday usage of this metaphor, the subordination of darkness is shown to be less positive than it would appear. Darkness and light also shows itself to be an archetypal (...) metaphor, meaning that it is founded in our depth-experiences of the world and is applicable in many varied contexts, therefore granting it a power to remain in everyday usage. The archetypal nature of this metaphor is uncovered through its utilisation in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, thus opening a discussion about how it continues to haunt education today. Broadly, it is the faith in the supposed betterment available through education that is exposed. Finally, in a Derridean manner, this article explores how the metaphor of darkness and light could be overturned in relation to education, thus destabilising a foundational metaphor on which education currently lies. (shrink)

This article contributes to recent existentialist interventions in critical criminology (see Lippens and Crewe 2009) and offers the existential concept of ‘event’ as a guiding image for critical victimology. Whereas existential criminologists have examined crime and wrongdoing, very little attention has been given to victimization. I utilize the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Claude Romano to offer a critique of existing approaches to victimization within mainstream criminology and develop an evential analytic to understand the event of victimization. This paper (...) brings together existential philosophy and victimology to offer an alternative approach to victimization. I engage with the ‘problem of number’ in conventional victimology and offer a critique of quantitative approaches to victimization based on the unsubstitutability and singularity of existence. Through a discussion of selfhood and embodiment from an evential standpoint, this paper moves beyond existing victimological approaches to identity. I also consider the relationship between victimization and trauma. In the final section of the paper I carve out an alternative research agenda through a discussion of bearing witness and events of victimization. (shrink)

According to Jacques Derrida, there is a différance – his infamous mis-spelling of the French différence – that ‘has no name in our language’ (‘Différance’, in Margins of Philosophy); its name is not différance, and it is not just nameless but ‘unnameable’. ‘The a of différance’, he also tells us, ‘remains silent, secret and discreet as a tomb’. My essay, which is haunted throughout by Derrida, seeks to address the following question: if the a of différance is like a tomb, (...) then who or what died? To Kzomil. (shrink)

Phenomenologists usually insist that their approach involves going “back” to and “starting” with technoscientific experience—that is, returning to the actual existing or living through of technoscientific life—after centuries of privileging the analysis of how things are “objectively” known and denigrating accounts of how they are “subjectively” lived with. But then who says this and how is this understood? “Who” is really a phenomenologist, when so many diverse thinkers claim the title? This paper considers some of the reasons why this is (...) such a difficult question and argues that it is wrong to look for The Answer to it. (shrink)

In response to Shawn Loht’s 2017 project delineating a Heideggerian phenomenology of film, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, I examine how productive Loht’s Dasein-centric account of the film viewer might be for considering diverse film-viewer experiences. Starting from Loht’s premise that the film–viewer relation is the constitutive ground of filmic disclosure, I raise two concerns regarding Heidegger’s account of Dasein that might obscure an account of the diversity of film viewers and associated heterogeneity of filmic (...) disclosure: Dasein’s lack of concreteness with respect to lived experience, and Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment and bodily difference. I firstly argue that Dasein’s lack of concreteness is productive for theorising the diversity of film viewers by discussing the concept of Dasein through formal indication, a Heideggerian notion that Loht draws upon in order to account for filmic disclosure. I then examine a key objection, that Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment limits the productivity of a Dasein-centric account of film viewers for theorising diversity. I refer to Katharina Lindner’s interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world in a queer phenomenology of film, set out in “Questions of Embodied Difference: Film and Queer Phenomenology” (2012), to suggest a pathway for how Dasein’s being-in-the-world might offer an account of film viewing that takes into consideration the embodiment of diverse viewers. (shrink)

Straipsnyje analizuojamas unheimlich fenomenas Heideggerio filosofijoje, keliamas klausimas tiek apie patį šį fenomeną, jo įvairius aspektus, svarstoma, kokiu būdu šis fenomenas pasirodo. Pirmoje straipsnio dalyje analizuojama, kaip šis slėpiningumas, svetimybė gali būti suprasta Būties ir laiko kontekste. Tai atliekama aptariant Dasein būtį pasaulyje – pamatinę baimės nuotaiką ir sąžinės fenomeną. Antroje straipsnio dalyje žmogaus slėpiningumas analizuojamas taikant Antigonės mito heideggerišką interpretaciją 1935 ir 1942-ųjų metų Heideggerio tekstuose.

This essay considers the philosophical and theological significance of the phenomenological analysis of Christian faith offered by the early Heidegger. It shows, first, that Heidegger poses a radical and controversial challenge to philosophers by calling them to do without God in an unfettered pursuit of the question of being (through his ‘destruction of onto-theology’); and, second, that this exclusion nonetheless leaves room for a form of philosophical reflection upon the nature of faith and discourse concerning God, namely for a philosophy (...) of religion in a phenomenological mode (as exemplified most clearly in Heidegger’s 1920/21 lectures on the phenomenology of religious life). However, it is argued that the theological roots of Heidegger’s own phenomenological analyses subvert his frequently asserted claim concerning the incompatibility of Christian faith and philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Early Heidegger argues that a “homogenous space of nature” can be revealed by stripping away the intelligibility of Dasein's everyday world, a process he calls “deworlding.” Given this, some interpreters have suggested that Heidegger, despite not having worked out the details himself, is also committed to a notion of deworlded time. Such a “natural time” would amount to an endogenous sequentiality in which events are ordered independently of Dasein and the stand it takes on its being. I show that Heidegger (...) was indeed committed to such a temporal realism even though his treatment of these issues is somewhat scattered and pulled in different directions. In the course of my reconstruction, I renew an interpretation of Heidegger that stresses Dasein's thrownness into nature and I answer William Blattner's powerful interpretation of Heidegger as a failed temporal idealist who was unable to derive the sequentiality of ordinary time from Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality. Heidegger did not attempt to derive sequentiality; instead, he understood it as a built-in feature of the natural universe by which Dasein's activities are constrained. World-time turns out to be a co-production of Dasein's non-sequential originary temporality and the endogenous sequentiality of events in nature. (shrink)

The divide between the analytic and the continental philosophical traditions has been a major preoccupation of philosophers and historians of philosophy in the past few decades. Many attempts have been made to bridge the gap between the two traditions. Appel, Rorty, Cavell, and others, for example, have drawn to our attention profound affinities between Wittgenstein and Heidegger. But until now, it has nonetheless seemed that the divide remained firmly entrenched with respect to the thought of Heidegger and Carnap, between whom (...) there still appears to be deep alienation. Heidegger and Carnap themselves encouraged this view. Carnap’s notorious attack on Heidegger left no possibility of dialogue between the two, and for Heidegger, the conflict with Carnap continued to be momentous even in the sixties. He described the conflict between himself and Carnap as embodying the “most extreme counterpositions” of the time. (shrink)

In his work, Being Given, Jean-Luc Marion calls for a phenomenological investigation of the givenness (donation) of the phenomenon. As a phenomenologist of religion, Marion aims to give a philosophical account of the possibility of revelation, something which by definition is unconditionally given. In Being Given, he contends that his phenomenological reduction to unconditional givenness (in the figure of the saturated phenomenon) can account for religious phenomena in a way that respects the subject matter, all the while remaining philosophically neutral. (...) In this paper I argue that Marion's aim to maintain strict philosophical neutrality interferes with his attempt to respect the subject matter of his own investigation, i.e., the givenness of revelation, since revelation is recognizably given, even as possibility, only in the non-neutral context of an interpretive tradition. I establish the latter claim with recourse to Heidegger's early hermeneutic sketches of ‘primordial Christian religiosity.’ In turn, I call for a phenomenological Destruktion of Marion's work in order to release its potential as a non-neutral investigation of a distinctively Catholic religiosity. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s radical critique of technology has fundamentally stigmatized modern technology and paved the way for a comprehensive critique of contemporary Western society. However, the following reassessment of Heidegger’s most elaborate and influential interpretation of technology, The Question Concerning Technology, sheds a very different light on his critique. In fact, Heidegger’s phenomenological line of thinking concerning technology also implies a radical critique of ancient technology and the fundamental being-in-the-world of humans. This revision of Heidegger’s arguments claims that The Question Concerning (...) Technology indicates a previous unseen ambiguity with respect to the origin of the rule of das Gestell. The following inquiry departs from Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and connects it to a reassessment of ancient technology and Aristotle’s justification of slavery. The last part of the paper unfolds Heidegger’s underlying arguments in favor of continuity within the history of technology. According to these interpretations, humans have always strived to develop modern technology and to become truly modern in the Heideggerian sense. The danger stemming from the rule of das Gestell is thus not only transient and solely directed toward contemporary Western society, but also I will argue that humans can only be humans as the ones challenged by the rule of das Gestell. (shrink)

Heidegger and East-Asian thought have traditionally been strongly correlated. However, although still largely unrecognized, significant differences between the political and metaphysical stance of Heidegger and his perceived counterparts in East-Asia most certainly exist. One of the most dramatic discontinuities between East-Asian thought and Heidegger is revealed through an investigation of Kitarō Nishida’s own vigorous criticism of Heidegger. Ironically, more than one study of Heidegger and East-Asian thought has submitted that Nishida is that representative of East-Asian thought whose philosophy most closely (...) resembles Heideggerian thought. In words that then and now resound discordantly within the enshrined, established view of Heidegger’s relationship to East-Asian thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time… He…does not recognize that which is indispensible and decisive, namely, God.” This present study lays out for the first time in English, the significant differences between the metaphysical and political stances of Nishida and Heidegger, Nishida’s own critique of Heidegger, and Heidegger’s own rather dismal assessment of non-Western philosophy, all of which demonstrate a remarkable, hitherto unrecognized discontinuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought. (shrink)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required healthcare providers in the United States to adopt and demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) by January 1, 2014. In many ways, EHRs mark a notable improvement over paper medical records as they are more easily accessible and allow for electronic searching and sharing of medical history. However, as EHRs have become mandated by ARRA, many nurses now rely upon computers far more heavily during nurse–patient interactions, thereby decreasing (...) the level of direct interpersonal communication between the two. There is evidence that eye contact between nurses and patients positively affects patient satisfaction. Above and beyond the issue of patient satisfaction is the more basic ethical issue of respecting the patient as a person. The author argues that the templates used in electronic health systems have the possibility of eroding the respect for humanity that is the hallmark of nurse–patient relationships, as signalled by the American Nurses Association’s first principle in their Code of Ethics. Using concepts from philosophers Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, the author provides guidance as to what an ethical interaction between nurse and patient should look like in an age of EHRs. (shrink)

An important influence on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology is the work of Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Marion is particularly interested in Balthasar’s ‘phenomenological’ approach to the content of Christian revelation, centered on the metaphor of the work of art. Balthasar suggests in his Theo-Logic that the early Marion ‘concede[s] too much to the critique of Heidegger,’ moving too far away from the ‘transcendental’ metaphysics of Aquinas and the classical tradition. Yet Balthasar’s criticism is premature. Rather, Marion’s work, particularly (...) his emphasis on the ‘saturated phenomenon,’ paves the way for a postmetaphysical theological aesthetics that might renew Balthasar’s project in a cultural situation ‘after’ the death of God, while simultaneously opening a space for Christian revelation apart from a certain hegemonic tradition of onto-theology. (shrink)

In this article we offer an ontological theorization of care. The article interrogates the self-evident quality of everyday meanings for ‘care’ that might be generated from psychological or biological discourses; we aim to question the way that ‘care’ is applied in a technical or an emotional sense within the field of early childhood education. The article works towards offering a new theorization that does not treat the meaning of ‘care’ as self-evident. If ‘care’ is a way of addressing concern for (...) ourselves as human beings, we think that deepening the theoretical parameters of this concept will add to how we understand the complexity of gender and race relations. By articulating Heidegger’s use of ‘care’ and comparing it to Irigaray’s critique of Heidegger’s work on this concept, we hope to enable professionals and families to view conceptions of ‘care’ outside the familiar definitions applied in everyday discourse. The article treats early childhood education professional practice as an instance of how both gender and race delimit the way in which human relationships can be understood. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

Phenomenology speaks not directly of phenomena but rather of the appearing of phenomena. In so speaking it moves from the level of things with generic or proper names to the level of universal terms. In speaking and thinking the phenomenon Phenomenology comes “after” in the twofold sense of being too late and desiring for that which is to come. This paper explores this place of phenomenology with respect to the relation of faith and reason, the manner of speaking phenomenologically and (...) the affective and temporal situation of experience. Drawing on the pre-modern concept of the transcendentals and on an account of emphatic consciousness of things, this article argues that the future of phenomenology is as a form of metaphysics which remains focused on experience and the “promise” of things that guides and structures perception. (shrink)

Heidegger argues that for being x to count as ‘alive’ it must satisfy three metaphysical conditions. It must be capable of engaging in active behaviour with a form of intentional directedness that offers to us a “sphere of transposition” into which we can intelligibly “transpose ourselves.” Heidegger’s discussion of these conditions, as they apply to the being of animals, is well-known. But, if his argument is sound, they ought also to apply to the being of plants. Heidegger, unfortunately, does not (...) supply this part of his ontology of life in any systematic detail. However, my thesis is that it is possible to interpret the nature and activities of plants, along the lines of –, and thus to make good on Heidegger’s omission. The key to this reconstruction is a reconceptualization of plant movements as constituted by a form of representationally blind, motor-intentionality. (shrink)