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)

Many feminist sociologists would agree that most breastfeeding research to date has been primarily undertaken from the perspective of medical and public health discourses. While there is evidence of a shift in research on breastfeeding to qualitative studies that focus on the lived experiences of breastfeeding women, this article addresses a number of concerns remaining in the literature surrounding breastfeeding. First, it questions the absence of breastfeeding as a legitimate philosophical topic, and, as a corollary, the invisibility of breastfeeding women (...) as moral or ethical subjects. Second, by drawing on Michel Foucault's account of ethics and Judith Butler's notion of performativity, it is suggested that breastfeeding is best conceptualized as a gendered and embodied ethical practice rather than an aspect of one's being. Finally, this materialist approach to theorizing breastfeeding is discussed in relation to the Lucy Lawless poster that was released in Aotearoa New Zealand to launch World Breastfeeding Week in August 2002. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the notion of “willing” in Heidegger’s politics with the notion of “dawning” in Heidegger’s philosophy. It argues that, in the political text, the attunement of Dasein to what-is is centred in the notion of Dasein’s “willing” of what-is, while in the philosophical text it is centred in the notion of what-is “dawning” on Dasein. It maintains that the attitude to anxiety essential to a “dawning” of what-is is not reached in Heidegger’s “The Self-Assertion of the German University”. (...) It concludes by maintaining that, rather than being attuned to what-is, the will in the “The Self-Assertion of the German University” is attuned to its own relationship to what is in a narcissistic rather than a philosophical way; that is, it territorializes “dawning” as a relation to “what is”, and makes “dawning” of “what-is” its “own” in the same way as any nationalism makes a culture, a language or a geographical region its own. In contrast to the narcissism of nationalism, philosophy, as outlined by Heidegger in the essay “What Is Metaphysics?”, is the experience of allowing what-is to “dawn” on Dasein rather than a preoccupation with “willing” of “dawning” as one’s own relation to Being. (shrink)

Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our (...) analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning. (shrink)

Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our (...) analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning. (shrink)

Drawing upon the practice of caregiving and the insights of feminist care ethics, I offer a phenomenology of caregiving through the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that caregiving is a material dialectic of embodied response involving moments of leveling, attention, and interruption. In this light, the Levinasian opposition between responding to another's singularity and leveling it via parity-based principles is belied in the experience of care. Contra much of response ethics’ and care ethics’ respective literatures, (...) this dialectic suggests that they are complementary in ways that productively illuminate themes of each. I conclude by suggesting that when response and care ethics are thought together through the experience of caregiving, such labors produce finite responsibility with infinite hope. (shrink)

Theorists have long argued that a process of individualisation is inherent in conditions of late modernity. Whilst individualisation has been acknowledged in the business ethics literature, studies have often overlooked the processes by which individuals are given greater responsibility for ethical decision making and the personal and institutional effects of this responsibility. This article develops a notion of ‘ethical individualisation’ to help one understand and explore how and why ethical responsibility is being devolved to employees in the UK consulting industry. (...) The article argues that an individualised ethics is incapable of preventing malpractice in the face of institutional conflicts of interest. (shrink)

This article examines Heidegger’s thoughts on Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal return and the self-overcoming power of thinking. Scholarly commentators argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche reduces the open possibilities of thinking about temporality, becoming and difference into a rigid metaphysical framework of being as a whole. However, a close reading of Heidegger’s thoughts on the eternal recurrence shows that his interpretive attempt to disclose the metaphysical ground of Nietzsche’s thinking reveals a deeper, dynamic dimension of Nietzsche’s recurrent efforts of self-overcoming. (...) In this light, I argue that Heidegger’s interpretive thinking intends to uncover an empowering ground of Nietzsche’s philosophical struggle to overcome the metaphysical limit of human thoughts facing the lively unity of difference. For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s thinking of the eternal recurrence is not to suggest a metaphysical doctrine of being but to grasp a determinate basis of one’s own existence, repeatedly seeking the greater possibility of being with others. (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)

This essay explores Foucault’s conception of the historical a priori through the lens of an archival ethics of eros. Highlighting the paradoxical nature of the historical a priori as both constitutive and contingent, it harnesses the temporal dynamism of experiences of the untimely as erotic. Drawing on the work of Anne Carson, the essay brings out the strangeness of eros as an ancient Greek word that remains unintelligible to us. That strangeness signals an ethics of dissonant attunement to the untimeliness (...) of the historical a priori. Such an ethics of eros names those experiences of connection and rupture that both bind and unbind us in relation to a biopolitical present that is radically unstable. Reading eros as strange thus ultimately allows us to find resources for an ethics of self-transformation in Foucault’s reflections on the temporal instability that the historical a priori names. (shrink)

Seeking to contribute to the recent emergence of critical phenomenology by clarifying the relation between ontology and ethics, this article offers a new account of the sources of normativity in the context of Heidegger’s critique of technological enframing (Gestell) and Derrida’s political philosophy. I distinguish three levels of normativity in Heidegger and show how moving between the levels permits the critical deployment of the affirmation (Zusage) in response to being’s address. On this view, not only are humans constitutively claimed by (...) being, but the claim calls for its express hearing and critical elaboration. I then show how Derrida reconceives Heidegger’s normativity by developing a notion of double affirmation that communicates with key concepts from his moral-political work, such as the gift, the advance, and friendship. I conclude by indicating what double affirmation entails for critique today. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault enjoy a privileged status in nursing academia as two thinkers who influence both nursing research and philosophical explorations of nursing practice. Most nurse authors, however, focus only on the earlier works of these two philosophers and, for example, base qualitative research methodologies on Foucault's genealogy and Ricoeur's hermeneutics. In their later years, both these writers talk more explicitly about being an ethical self. Ideas from their earlier writing is evident in their writing on ethics and (...) both writers could not discuss ethics without also exploring their ideas of the self and the other. I suggest that some of their thoughts on ethics connect with or complement each other quite well. I will first give an overview of Foucault's ethics, self and the other, and then do the same with Ricoeur's thought. In the third part of the paper I will describe how Foucault and Ricoeur complement each other, and conclude the paper by briefly suggesting how these writers influence my own practice as a nurse educator. (shrink)

This article examines a peculiarity dating from Classical times, namely, that democracy may be achieved, in practice, independently of and prior to its articulation as theory. This peculiarity has implications for the way in which the history of democratic theory is understood, and also for the place of the democratic theorist in society. Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Chantal Mouffe and John Keane are theorists of democracy, but they all depart, first, from the commitment to the universal truth‐claims that underpin other (...) schools of democratic thought, and, second, from the concomitant belief in the priority of theory over practice. In doing so, they make it difficult to theorise how democracy might be brought about, except, circularly, where it already exists. On the one side, Feyerabend, Rorty and, to a lesser extent, Keane, assume that ‘democracy’ already exists, so that its realisation requires no theory. On the other, Mouffe argues that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist in practice, but her attempts to theorise its realisation are not convincing. (shrink)

In Nietzsche and Embodiment Kristen Brown reveals the smartness of bodies, challenging the traditional view in the West that bodies are separate from and morally inferior to minds. Drawing inspiration from Nietzsche, Brown vividly describes why the interdependence of mind and body matters, both in Nietzsche's writings and for contemporary debates (non-dualism theory, Merleau-Ponty criticism, and metaphor studies), activities (spinal cord research and fasting), and specific human experiences (menses, trauma, and guilt). Brown's theories about the dynamic relationship between body and (...) mind provide new possibilities for self-understanding and experience. (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.