Following the publication of the Contributions to Philosophy, Mindfulness and the History of Being, the question of the significance of Heidegger’s later work has been widely discussed. However, th...

In this paper, I argue against the interpretive view that locates an “undifferentiated mode” – a mode in which Dasein is neither authentic nor inauthentic – in Being and Time. Where Heidegger seems to be claiming that Dasein can exist in an “undifferentiated mode”, he is better understood as discussing a phenomenon I call indifferent inauthenticity. The average everyday “Indifferenz” which is often taken as an indication of an “undifferentiated mode”, that is, is better understood as a failure to distinguish (...) between the possibilities of authentic and inauthentic self-understanding. Dasein's average everyday self-understanding is indifferent to this distinction, and I show that this is precisely what renders it inauthentic. Recognizing this distinction, however, is not enough to render Dasein authentic. Rather, it opens up the possibility of a non-indifferent inauthenticity and what Heidegger calls the possibility of “genuine failure”. To read an “undifferentiated mode” into Being and Time is to misunderstand its methodological progression from Dasein's average everyday, inauthentic self-understanding to its authenticity – “to the thing itself”. A select few passages may at first seem to indicate otherwise. However, Being and Time – like both being in general and Dasein itself – cannot be properly understood “without further ado”.\. (shrink)

This thesis articulates a novel interpretation of Heidegger’s explication of the being (Seins) of gear (Zeugs) in §15 of his masterwork Being and Time (1927/2006) and develops and applies the position attributed to Heidegger to explain three phenomena of unreflective action discussed in recent literature and articulate a partial Heideggerian ecological metaphysics. Since §15 of BT explicates the being of gear, Part 1 expounds Heidegger’s concept of the ‘being’ (Seins) of beings (Seienden) and two issues raised in the ‘preliminary methodological (...) remark’ in §15 of BT regarding explicating being. §1.1 interprets the being (Sein) or synonymously constitution of being (Seinsverfassung) of a being (Seienden) as a regional essence: a property unifying a region (Region), district (Bezirk), or subject-area (Sachgebiet) – a highly general (‘regional’) class of entities. Although Heidegger posits two components of the being of a being, viz. material-content (Sachhaltigkeit, Sachgehalt) and mode-of-being (Seinsart) or way-of-being (Seinsweise, Weise des Seins, Weise zu sein) (1927/1975, 321), the unclarity of this distinction means that it does not figure prominently herein. §1.2 addresses Heidegger’s distinction between ontological and ontic investigations and his notion of ‘modes of access’ (Zugangsarten, Zugangsweisen). Part 2 expounds §15 of BT’s explication of the being of gear. §2.1 analyses Heidegger’s two necessary and sufficient conditions for being gear and three core basic concepts (Grundbegriffe) enabling comprehension of these conditions and therewith a foundational comprehension of gear. Heidegger explicates the being of gear through content of unreflectively purposeful, non-intersubjective intentional states. I term such states ‘mundane concern’, which is almost synonymous with Hubert Dreyfus’s term ‘absorbed coping’ (1991, 69). Heidegger’s explication highlights around-for references (Um-zu-Verweisungen) as the peculiar species of property figuring in mundanely concernful intentional content. §2.2 clarifies Heidegger’s position on the relationship between to-hand-ness (Zuhandenheit) and extantness (Vorhandenheit) in the narrow sense: two of Heidegger’s most widely discussed concepts. I reject Kris McDaniel’s recent reading of Heidegger as affirming that nothing could be both to-hand and extant simultaneously (McDaniel 2012). Part 3 develops and applies Heidegger’s phenomenology of mundane concern. §3.1 explains the phenomena of situational holism, situated normativity, and mundanely concernful prospective control. §3.2 undertakes the metaphysical accommodation of around-for references, which §3.1 posited as featuring prominently within mundanely concernful intentional content. This thesis thus contributes not only to Heidegger scholarship, but also to contemporary debates within the philosophy of action and cognitive science. (shrink)

The author wishes to thank Professor Larry Grossberg for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time , I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which (...) belongs to the unpublished Being and Time , I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question. (shrink)

This paper examines how Heidegger's view that language is poetry might provide a helpful way of understanding the nature of religious language. Poetry, according to Heidegger, is language in its purest form, in that it both reveals Being, whilst also showing the difference between word and thing. In poetry, Heidegger suggests, we come closest to the essence of language itself and encounter its strangeness and impermeability, and its revelatory character. What would be the implications for viewing religious language in this (...) way? Through examining Heidegger's view that poetry is the purest form of language, I suggest that it would also be possible to view religious language as poetry in this way, in that it also shows the transcendence of what cannot be brought to presence in language, except as concealed. Such a view of religious language does not regard it as a problematic type of language, deserving special treatment, but rather suggests that in religious language the inarticulable relationship between word and world is revealed. (shrink)

The central question in Heidegger's philosophy, early and late, is that concerning the meaning of being. Recently, some have suggested that Heidegger himself interprets being to mean presence (Anwesen, Anwesenheit, Praesenz), citing as evidence lectures dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. I argue, on the contrary, that Heidegger regards the equation between being and presence as the hallmark of metaphysical thinking, and that it only ever appears in his texts as a gloss on the philosophical tradition, not as an (...) expression of his own ontological commitments. In his early work Heidegger seeks to confront and even correct the traditional interpretation of being by challenging its narrow preoccupation with presence and the present. By the 1930s, however, he abandons the idea that there is anything to?be intrinsically right or wrong about with regard to the meaning of being and turns his attention instead to what he calls ?appropriation? (Ereignis) or the truth of being, that is, the essentially ahistorical condition for the possibility of all historically contingent interpretations of being, including the metaphysical interpretation of being as presence. (shrink)

This article critically exposes Habermas’ discussion of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Being and George Bataille’s heterology as a way of identifying the postmetaphysical stance as the guiding spirit of Habermas’ modernity. In his work The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas argues that whereas Heidegger’s Being sacrifices actuality in the name of interpretation, Bataille’s heterology sets up the unlimited experience which fails to provide an impetus for societal critique. Here a postmetaphysical approach is envisaged by Habermas as a way of going (...) beyond the confines of the metaphysical tradition, although it also needs to pay attention to charges of misreading in its attempt to deconstruct the discourse of the modern. (shrink)

Mitä oleva on? Omaisuus ja elämä pureutuu tähän filosofian peruskysymykseen seuraten kahta länsimaisen filosofian jättiläistä, Aristotelestä ja Heideggeria. Siinä missä Aristoteles kysyy olevaa substantiivina ja tilana, etsii Heidegger olemisen mieltä verbinä ja tapahtumana. Nämä kaksi merkitystä löytyvät myös suomen olla-verbistä: "omistaa jotakin" ja "olla olemassa, elossa". Omaisuus ja elämä antavat peruslähtökohdat olevan tulkitsemiselle. Kirja vie lukijansa filosofian kreikkalaisille juurille ja sen uusimpiin, Heideggerin avaamiin mahdollisuuksiin.

This article examines select correspondences between the physics and phenomenology of time that beg elucidation and position phenomenology to contribute to the scientific investigation of reality. Its analysis yields four observations. The inherent tendency of things to change asymmetrically is the basis of time and temporality. Physics calls this tendency the “arrow of time.” Phenomenology calls it “άρχή κινήσεος”. The physics and phenomenology of time posit isomorphic interpretations of reality. They both interpret reality as a unity of time, space, and (...) beings. They also posit isomorphic interpretations of space. An analysis of the notions contemporary physics sometimes appears to presume suggests it is not immune to the prejudices induced by an ontic appropriation of reality, however. It also suggests a potentially constructive role for phenomenology in the scientific investigation of time and space. Physics and phenomenology reveal time as a relation between one set of transformations measured against another set of transformations. The human tendency to fall into the everyday comprehension of time may be complicating the scientific investigation of. (shrink)

This essay advances an interpretation of early Christian codex books, which goes beyond Catherine Pickstock’s critique of Jacques Derrida. Firstly, it summarizes Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato’s Phaedrus and introduces his understanding of writing as différance. Secondly, it outlines Pickstock’s After Writing in order to understand her emphasis upon the liturgical nature of platonic dialogue. It is here that an ambiguity emerges between writing and codex books in Pickstock’s account. In response, the insights of book historians such as Roger Chartier will (...) be brought to bear in order to understand the longer history of the codex, which sees the printing press as a continuation of the early transition from roll to codex in the second century of the Common Era. It has long been noted that Christians of this period were early and pervasive adopters of codex binding for their sacred literature. By summarizing the reasons why, it will be shown how the codex expressed early Christian religious concerns. (shrink)

Atypical among Heidegger’s numerous discussions of poets is the condemnation of Rilke in the 1942-43 lecture course Parmenides. At stake is the definition of “the open” (das Offene): Rilke reserves the open for animals as freedom from conceptual determinacy, whereas Heidegger reserves it for human beings as the place of Being in which things first appear as what they are. The open, for Heidegger, names the existential conception of place (as distinct from a geographical point) and features in his life-long (...) attempts to articulate the relations between language, human existence, poetry and the everyday. By denying that human beings have access to the open, Rilke runs athwart this project and by denying it in a poem he confounds the expectations that Heidegger harbours with respect to the work of art as a site of the opening up of aesthetic experience, within the everyday, to ontological questioning. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse through an ontological approach the concept of φύσις/nature as the never-ending emergence of the beings and their being kept into steadfast appearance and presence. On the basis of Martin Heidegger’s interpretation, we will try to show that φύσις is not a mere sum of natural objects; φύσις could be better understood via our recognition of its pervading our own being and our own being/presenting as φύσις and through φύσις’ ceaseless eventuation in our (...) lives and thought. (shrink)

Recently the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger has been critiqued in nursing literature. However, this critique is based primarily upon an appropriation of Heidegger that does not reflect an understanding of meaning as grounded in temporality. Therefore, this paper aims to (1) explicate Heidegger's grounding of meaning, (2) briefly contrast Heidegger's and Husserl's notions of the origin of meaning, (3) describe how Heidegger was first introduced to nursing, and (4) illustrate through examples from a research study how the (...) philosophy of Heidegger might inform the phenomenological researcher. (shrink)

Se trata de pensar la noción Lichtung al socaire de la meditación El final de la filosofía y la tarea del pensar, ofrecida por Heidegger en el año 1966, a fin de entender como ésta conforma un concepto vital para la comprensión de la obra tardía heideggeriana. Lichtung se entiende como la presuposición a todo lo que es, esto es, a todo ente. Además, le servirá a Heidegger para replantear algunos conceptos vertebrales de su pensamiento: Kehre, resolución, olvido del ser, (...) alétheia. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIf we take Heidegger's ontology to be a philosophy of history, then, for Husserl, the problem of history is only one among the three major directions of his thoughts. After Husserl met Dilthey in 1905, he more and more attended to the problem of history and reflected upon the longitudinal intentionality of time-genesis-history. His basic idea is to grasp the condition of possibility of history by means of an eidetic intuition upon the longitudinal intentionality. However, because Husserl never explicates his (...) thoughts on history in his published works, he is often regarded as a “non-historical” philosopher. In fact, like Dilthey, Husserl purports to combine historical enlightenment with critique of knowledge. It is hence Dilthey-Yorck, Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer who established together the most important tradition of history of philosophy in the twentieth century, namely, phenomenological-ontological philosophy of history. (shrink)

This article argues that Christine Korsgaard gives two accounts of maxims, the identity-priority account and the form-priority account. There is a tension between the accounts because Korsgaard's form-priority maxims account cannot function apart from the identity of a well-formed agent that precedes and tests maxims to determine if they should count as reasons or laws, and Korsgaard's identity-priority maxims account needs the form of the maxim to precede, bind, and constitute the well-formed agent. This tension mirrors the two sides of (...) what Korsgaard has called the “paradox of self-constitution.” The article concludes that Korsgaard's paradox of self-constitution leads to an arbitrariness that undermines the formation of moral laws. (shrink)

This paper explores the human significance of crack cocaine abuse by submitting its manifestation (logos) to existential-phenomenological analysis. The author conducted over fifty, first-hand interviews of recovering and active crack cocaine abusers toward disclosing the meaning of his to-be.What is revealed is the way the addiction reacts upon the with-structure of existence. Active crack cocaine addiction is being-high-and-free-of-craving. The singularity of this event eclipses the interhuman significance that substantially constitutes concern, as the meaning and Being of There-being, and radicalizes existence (...) such that the “other” is unceasingly projected as a means to free transcendence. The crack abuser forsakes the existentials being-with and There-being-with-others, ways of to-be that accommodate and gear into the existence of “others,” to being-with-crack, a way of Being that is exclusively for the sake of the dependent’s “self.”. (shrink)

مارتین هایدگر در آثار متأخر خود تشریح می‌کند که متافیزیک به مثابه هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی چگونه با توجه صرف به هستندگان آنها را از یک سو به جهت چیستی یا ذات مورد بررسی قرار می‌دهد و از سوی دیگر به جهت بودگی و قرار گرفتن در زنجیرۀ علّی ذیل برترین هستنده یا همان خداوند. وی با نگاه نقادانه به ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی متافیزیک، بر آن است تا تبیین کند که رویکرد هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانه هم سبب از دست رفتن فهم هستی شده و هم در نتیجۀ (...) آن الوهیت را از جایگاه اصلی خود خارج کرده است. در این مقاله بر آنیم تا معنای هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی را در تفکر هایدگر متأخر بررسی کنیم و بدین منظور در پی آن هستیم که چگونه متافیزیک نزد هایدگر از نگاه همدلانۀ هستی‌شناسی بنیادین به رویکرد انتقادی هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسی تغییر جایگاه پیدا کرد و آثار دورۀ گذار و دورۀ متأخر وی را بدین منظور مورد تأمل قرار می‏دهیم. در این مقاله با تبیین ساختار هستی‌ـ‌خداشناسانۀ متافیزیک از منظر هایدگر نشان خواهیم داد که چگونه هستی مغفول واقع شده سبب تولد الهیات متافیزیکی شده است. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente trabajo intentaremos destacar la necesidad que existe hoy, para la terapia ocupacional, de entablar un diálogo con la filosofía, enfatizando la relevancia de plantear la pregunta concerniente al ser humano en cuanto ocupación. Se plantea que la terapia ocupacional se encontraría en una situación de crisis de los fundamentos que la orientan y le brindan sentido a su práctica, proponiendo como posible solución una revisión de los aspectos principales de la analítica del Dasein de Martin Heidegger, (...) con el objeto de clarificar por qué y cómo el fenómeno de la ocupación puede ser considerado como un momento constitutivo de cada existencia humana.: This paper aims to emphasize the current need for occupational therapy to have a dialogue with philosophy, to highlight the question concerning the human being as occupation. The article argues that occupational therapy could be in a crisis concerning its fundamental grounds that, on the one hand, guide it and, on the other hand, give it sense to its own practice, proposing as a possible answer following Martin Heidegger’s analytics of Dasein. In this context, we will try to clarify why and how the phenomenon of occupation can be considered as an essential and constitutive moment of each human person. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the Black Notebooks, Heidegger ascribes in 1938/9 to the Jewish race an “empty rationality and calculative ability,” in his view the cause of its “worldlessness.” To assess this characterisation, I present Heidegger’s theories of history as a decline in Being and Time and in his later history of Being. For this purpose, I discuss his notions of Rechnen, Machenschaft, and Geviert, several existentialia from Being and Time, and Heidegger’s identification of modern machination and modern technology. Furthermore, I examine Heidegger’s (...) attitude toward the Jews and the Holocaust. I present his alignment of the unconcealment of modernity and the Jewish race, and compare his theory of machination with the texts “Positionality” and “The Question concerning Technology”. Heidegger’s notes about the Jews in the Black Notebooks after 1944 confirm that he tried “to silence Auschwitz silently,” as I already argued in a paper from 1995. (shrink)

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things. (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, #370)[Heidegger's attraction to Nazism might be] internal to understanding Heidegger's wo...

This article aims at answering the following problem: since for Heidegger the historicity of Being presupposes the withdrawal of the transcendental source of such a historicity, then does Heidegger’s perspective lead to a form of relativism of the kind of an epochal historicism? If on the contrary one judges that for Heidegger there is after all, beyond the ordered unfolding of epochs in the history of Being, an ultimate transcendental or at least trans-epochal dimension, does Heidegger’s thinking lead back to (...) an ahistorical Absolute beyond historicity? In order to answer these questions, I propose to divide Heidegger’s philosophy in three stages, rather than the two stages that have usually been retained by commentators ever since the works of Richardson, in conformity with Heidegger’s own indications regarding the Turning (Kehre) of his philosophy. Indeed, Heidegger in the 1930’s develops the notion of machination (Machenschaft) and thus gives historicity a hegemonic function in Being’s essential occurrence (Wesung), itself understood as the intensification of the program of machination starting in the Greek inceptual thinking and developing itself until today’s planetary technological era. However, after 1945 Heidegger does not think anymore that the truth of Being is entirely determined by historicity and that Being essentially abandons Dasein to machination and to its gradual historical unfolding, because there is now according to him, beyond the epochs that are destined to Dasein, a trans-epochal giving (and perhaps generous) origin of presence that constitutes the supreme cause for thinking (Sache des Denkens). (shrink)

This article discusses the gap in Martin Heidegger’s ontology pertaining to the transformative affectivity arising in the interactions between beings, particularly how this affectivity is responsible for changes in those beings. It thus explores the possibility of bridging this gap by including an additional dimension of being. For this purpose, it draws upon Aristotle’s concept of affecting/being affected (On Generation and Corruption, Book I), which aims to explain the origin of alteration in beings. The Aristotelian juxtaposition of action and passion (...) serves as a backdrop for the incorporation of the concept of “shapeability” into Heidegger’s ontology. This involves a dimension of revealing being related to the active and passive aspects of beings’ capacity to shape and be shaped by others. Investigating the idea of shapeability, I shall argue, can shed some new light on the multidimensionality of how being is disclosed. (shrink)

This article cybernetically (isomorphically) investigates the causes of the Hellenic financial crisis. It (1) describes the crisis and its commonly assessed root cause: systemic corruption coupled to the decisions of ample numbers of Greeks to endure the problem rather than resolve it; (2) reviewsSYRIZA's 2015 anti‐austerity campaign and identifies incompatibilities within its apparent collective purposes that imply processes more fundamental than corruption and bad faith may be causing the crisis; (3) situates cybernetics within a sociological framework to analyze those processes (...) appropriately; (4) propositionally reduces them to a general rule—the tragedy of the commons—operating more or less within the collective conscience of the Greek people; and (5) and exposes the parameter's self‐similar manifestation in social actions that have contributed to the crisis. (shrink)

This article is about our relationship with things; about the abundant material geographies that surround us and constitute the very possibility for us to be the beings that we are. More specifically, it is about the question of the possibility of an ethical encounter with things (qua things). We argue, with the science and technology studies tradition (and Latour in particular), that we are the beings that we are through our entanglements with things, we are thoroughly hybrid beings, cyborgs through (...) and through – we have never been otherwise. With Heidegger we propose that a human-centred ethics of hybrids will fail to open a space for an ethical encounter with things since all beings in the sociomaterial network – humans and non-human alike – end up circulating as objects, enframed as ‘standing reserve’, things-for-the-purposes-of the network. We suggest that what is needed is an ethos beyond ethics, or the overcoming of an ethics – which is based on the will to power – towards an ethos of letting be. We elaborate such a possibility with the help of Heidegger, in particular with reference to the work of Graham Harman and his notion of ‘tool-being’. From this we propose, very tentatively, an ethos that has as its ground a poetic dwelling with things, a way of being that lets being be (Gelassenheit). We show how such a poetic dwelling, or ethos of Gelassenheit, may constitute the impossible possibility of a very otherwise way of being with things – an ethos of a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’ as suggested by Alphonso Lingis. (shrink)

Despite their strong spatial connotations, nearness, remoteness and distance are terms discussed in Martin Heidegger in connection to technology, interpretation, difference and lived time. In this paper, I investigate the nature of nearness, the possibility of its elimination and the meaning of such contingency via Bernard Stiegler's critique. In order to do this, I look into the nature of interpretation as a process of time-synthesis that brings the world near and is conditioned by technology. At the same time, I give (...) special attention to childhood as a unique but telling stage of this process. Furthermore, I look into technologies of nearness, now instantiated as digital technologies, and interpret them as processes that challenge the very notion they appear to promote, that is nearness and difference. Finally, I discuss these technologies in connection to education's possible response and impossible responsibility. Education is discussed as a technology of nearness that forms the child and their interp.. (shrink)

This paper argues for a fundamental re-reading of Heideggerian philosophy, especially regarding the logical structures presented by Heidegger in the thirties and onward. The field, which this logic organizes, shows an explorative formal element of language in and of itself, and is therefore different from an analytic concept of logic. An analytic conceptualization of logic is understood here as a reflection on the inner structures of already existing notions. An explorative logic, on the other hand, explores the relations between already (...) existing notions and the possible, but yet unknown, development of new notions. The logic of Heidegger is explorative, as it describes the relational, formal structures between the already established semantic field and its virtual excess. This virtual excess, while formal, must be nonetheless considered the primary access to whatever we call external to language in the transcendental sense in Heidegger's philosophy. Therefore, the central question of this logical re-reading of Heidegger is the formal relation to the unknown real. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo de investigación trataré de repensar, dentro de la intuición marcada por Heidegger en su interpretación de Kant, el papel que juega la noción de imaginación, en su vinculación inexorable, por un lado, con la apercepción trascendental, y con el tiempo, por otro, a fin de alcanzar, al menos, un esbozo temático de tal imaginación en términos de auto-afección radical del sí-mismo. Y todo ello para mostrar la posibilidad de una lectura interpretativa que haga valer la importancia, (...) justamente, de un sí mismo y/o mismidad.In this paper, I will try to rethink Heidegger’s interpretation of the role of transcendental imagination within his understanding of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. My paper focuses on the connection between transcendental apperception on the one hand and the time on the other. In this sense, I will try to develop a thematic outline of such imagination in terms of radical self-affection of Selfhood. And this in order to show the possibility of an interpretative reading that asserts the importance, precisely, of a self and/or selfhood. (shrink)

I advance a phenomenology of forgetting based on Husserl’s accounts of time-consciousness and passive synthesis. This theory of forgetting is crucial for understanding the transcendental constitution of the past. I argue that without forgetting, neither memory nor retention suffice for a consciousness of the past as past, since both are irreducibly connected to the Living Present. After an initial survey of the challenges that confront a phenomenology of forgetting, I provide a descriptive analysis of forgetting as a complex process that (...) integrates an accomplishment of retention that Husserl called “temporal contraction” with an accomplishment of passive synthesis that Husserl called “affective fusion.” Temporal contraction is the accomplishment that creates a qualitative distinction between near-retentions and far-retentions. Affective fusion enables us to provide a positive phenomenological description of the withdrawal of egoic investment in intentional experiences. Taken together, these two syntheses generate a double concealment in which consciousness both forgets its object and forgets that it has forgotten it, thereby constituting it as part of the truly absent past. (shrink)