Karl Löwith is heralded by Richard Wolin in his work, Heidegger's Children, as being “one of the most significant figures of twentieth century German philosophy” and was praised by Hans-Georg Gadamer as being the best German writer of his time. Löwith’s philosophy has, however, not received due attention since his death in 1973. The current project attempts to show Löwith’s continued importance for modern philosophy by pulling his various critiques together and showing their proper role in his work as a (...) whole. (shrink)

This essay focuses on and attempts to uncover the truly radical character of Nietzsche’s early “philological” work, specifically asking after the benefit he claims the study of classical culture should have for our present, late-modern historical moment. Taking up his study of the Pre-Platonic thinkers in 1873’s Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen , the first section analyzes Nietzsche’s statement that history’s principle task is the uncovering of Persönlichkeiten . I argue that it is not at all the subjective character (...) of a psychologized individual that Nietzsche has in mind, but rather the moment of persönliche Stimmung or ‘being attuned’ to the world, which grounds and gives rise to thinking. In the second section, I show that the phusis or ‘nature’ to which the thinker is exposed in this attunement is comparable to the tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian natural forces in tragic poetry, as Nietzsche understands it. This dynamic conception of phusis does not provide a metaphysical substrate or an objectively real ground to which we might return via that Greeks, but is rather essentially phenomenal , i.e. it is nothing other than the movement into and out of appearance, which always entails and requires its reception by the human being to whom it appears. In the final section of the essay, this origin proves for Nietzsche not to be located in a distant past moment. Rather, it is the abyssal origin of the tradition that is always already effective in our present moment, informing our contemporary conceptions of our world and ourselves. (shrink)

The difficulty to pin down the philosophical content of structuralism depends on the fact that it operates on an implicit metaphysics; such a metaphysics can be best unfolded by examining Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist critique of it. The essay argues that both structuralism and Derrida’s critique rely on holistic premises. From an initial externalist definition of structure, structuralism’s metaphysics emerges as a kind of ‘immanent’ holism, similar to the one pursued, in the contemporary analytic panorama, by Donald Davidson. By contrast, Derrida’s (...) deconstructionist critique appears engaged in a ‘quasi-transcendental’ version of holism, which the author analyzes in connection with Martin Heidegger’s notion of Verwindung, or twisted overcoming. (shrink)

My title is derived from Heidegger's 1936-37 lectures, The Will to Power as Art, and my discussion is keyed to two of the Nietzschean remarks on art which Heidegger discusses. The first is: "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous" (Nietzsche 69), and the second is: "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical,' than the will to truth, to reality, to Being" (Nietzsche 74). Heidegger reformulates them respectively as: "Art is (...) the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power," and "Art is worth more than the truth" (75). I propose to tease out what these aphorisms imply for Heidegger's answer to the panel question: "What is a work of art?/Was ist ein Kunstwerk? (shrink)

In this article, I demonstrate that Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a unique form of hermeneutic critique. In particular, I contend that when reading Nietzsche’s perspectivism and will to power in light of each other, they provide us with the tools to overcome habits of interpretation through the concepts of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. I show this in three sections. In section one, I introduce Nietzsche’s perspectivism and situate it within his concept of the will to power. In doing so, I (...) demonstrate that interpretations exist amidst a complex field of agonistic, reciprocal relations in life’s constant production of meaning. In section two, I then analyze how certain interpretations sediment into habits, forming harmful blind spots in interpretive activity. Such habits, Nietzsche shows, when privileged as prima facie ‘True’ and left uncontested exclude different ways of interpreting and existing, stagnating the production of meaning and denying the agonistic conditions of life. In the final section, I argue that Nietzsche critiques such habits in the two directions of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. Through the backward approach of genealogy, Nietzsche problematizes the habit, excavates its lowly origin, and deconstructs its supposed universality. Through the forward approach of creative hermeneutics, he overcomes and reinterprets them out of their origins, experiments with difference and multiplicity, and engages in an ongoing critique to open up new perspectives. (shrink)

Remiantis F. Nietzsche’s ir G. Deleuze’o tekstų analize, siekiama parodyti, kad pagal klasikinio mąstymo kanonus ypač problemišku dalyku tampa naujos minties pasirodymo galimybė. Klasikinis mąstymas traktuojamas kaip sėslios egzistencijos tipas ir jam priešinamas klajokliškas, nomadiškas mąstymas. Pasitelkiant Deleuze’s išskirtus atpažinimo ir susitikimo modelius, pirma, siekiama pagrįsti požiūrį, kad ir Nietzsche’s filosofiją galime vadinti nomadišku mąstymu ir atitinkančią susitikimo modelį ir antra, siekiama išryškinti naujybės specifiką ir jos steigties transcendentalines sąlygas. Reikšminiai žodžiai: valia siekti galios, interpretacija, simptomatika, sėslusis mąstymas, nomadizmas, atpažinimo (...) modelis, susitikimo modelis. F. NIETZSCHE AND G. DELEUZE: THE SEDENTARY LIFE SYMPTOMATICS AND NOMADIC THINKING CONFRONTATIONS Arūnas Mickevičius Summary The article deals with F. Nietzsche’s and G. Deleuze’s attitude to classical thought. Nietzsche’s theoretical constructs are based on the principle Wille zur Macht, where he emphatically praised active forces and accused all classical thinking of turning away from life and associating it with reactive, negative forces. Nietzsche’s philosophy denies the exceptionally unique true opinion of the world and offers, instead, a variety of interpretations, i. e. a perspectivist approach to the world. In describing architectural metaphors of classical thinking he shows that it is reactive, life-denying, that its assumed grandeur in fact hides the poverty of life. On the other hand, Nietzsche attempts to release the metaphoric power from the single axiom of Truth, to release creativity, to legitimize a perspective, interpretative view of the world, based on the mentioned “will-to-power” principle and related to assertive powers of active life. Also, there are analyzed two models of knowledge, recognition and encounter, proposed by G. Deleuze. The main aims of the article is to demonstrate first, that Nietzsche’s philosophy can be named as nomadic thinking which corresponds to the model of encounter and, second, reveal the transcendental conditions of innovation. Keywords: will to power, interpretation, symptomatics, sedentary life, nomadism, encounter model, recognition model. (shrink)

Many science teachers are presented with the challenge of characterizing science as a dynamic, human endeavour. Perspectivism, as a hermeneutic philosophy of science, has the potential to be a learning tool for teachers as they elucidate the complex nature of science. Developed earlier by Nietzsche and others, perspectivism has recently re-emerged in the context of the philosophy of science in the work of Ronald Giere. Giere presents a compelling case that scientific theories and scientific observation are perspectival by using science (...) itself. There are many tangible examples already present in science textbooks which, when approached in a certain way, offer an exciting opportunity for a realistic incorporation of philosophy of science into the classroom. Furthermore, introducing perspectivism to students necessitates an engagement with notions such as truth, reality, perception and experimentation, through a familiar medium, while painting a nuanced conception of the nature of science. (shrink)

The translation of the Guru Granth Sahib (GGS), or Sikh ‘scripture’, within the discourse of (European) colonial/modernity was enacted by the use of hermeneutics—which oversaw the shift from the openness of praxis to the closure of representation and knowledge. Such a shift demoted certain indigenous interpretive frames, wherein the GGS is assumed to enunciate an excess that far transcends the foreign demand to fix the text’s ‘call’ into singular meanings (beyond time), but rather transforms the hermeneutic desire into a process (...) of learning (Sikhi) through multiple meanings (in time). Thus the GGS is not translated according to a particular life-world, but actively transforms the life-world of those that respond to its excessive call. How should hermeneutics be reformed in this case? If the GGS as text demands interpretation, then the text as Guru demands engagement, and together they would necessarily call forth a radicalization of hermeneutics via a certain poetic reticence to all philosophical messengers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study bears upon the ‘Heidegger case,’ that is, the relation of Heidegger’s philosophizing to his political involvements as Rector of the University of Freiburg 1933-4, and his subsequent silences on the subject of the Holocaust. I use the phrase ‘bears upon’ for Heidegger’s political involvement will serve as the ‘horizon’ for the study, my concern being the genesis of Heidegger’s position. Grounded in a musical ‘intuition’ and attunement, I take up the Nietzschean cipher for understanding proposed by Heidegger (...) himself for the self-understanding of the German people: the Apollonian-Dionysian duality, which I apply to the ‘being’ of Heidegger’s own philosophizing. Through this approach I hope to make an original contribution to Heidegger scholarship by showing that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is overdetermined, evolving out of both the phenomenological demand for a rigorous method in establishing fundamental structures of existence and - at the same time – out of an Apollonian attempt to ‘tame’ Dionysian existence, including Heidegger’s own. Inextricably interlinked will be the argument that Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung, his ‘confrontation,’ with Nietzsche precedes the overt engagement of his ‘Nietzsche’ lectures of the 1930s, and, further, that this more pervasive concern with Nietzsche figures in the Apollonian-Dionysian strife within Heidegger’s thinking and within his ‘being.’ Heidegger’s silences in the face of the Dionysian - as well as the Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche - will be seen to precede his ‘silence’ in the face of the actuality and history of the Third Reich. What I am proposing one might characterize as Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung - through Nietzsche - with v Heidegger, in a disclosure of the ontic roots of Heidegger’s ontology, an exercise in his own hermeneutics of facticity. I will pursue the trace of the Apollonian-Dionysian duality: in the Western philosophical tradition which Heidegger confronts, using Husserl and Nietzsche as exemplars; in Heidegger interpretation; in the relation between his texts and his letters; and in the suppressions and intensifications within Being and Time. And I will propose that the fugue and the mutually generative duality of suppression and intensification within Heidegger’s academic thinking were conditions of the possibility of Heidegger’s ‘way’ towards political involvement. (shrink)