The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and (...) subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

Abstract In his discourses on ‘the lily of the field and the bird of the air,’ Kierkegaard presents faith as the best possible response to our precarious and uncertain condition, and as the ideal way to cope with the insecurities and concerns that his readers will recognize as common features of human existence. Reading these discourses together, we are introduced to the portrait of a potential believer who, like the ‘divinely appointed teachers’—the lily and the bird—succeeds in leading a life (...) that is full of care, but free of worry. Such a portrait, we claim, echoes Kierkegaard’s portrait of the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling . In this essay we suggest that faith, as characterized in the ‘lily and bird’ discourses, is a kind of existential trust that would allow us to overcome worry, while remaining wholeheartedly engaged in the finite realm of our cares and concerns. We claim that Kierkegaard’s goal in these discourses is not to belittle our earthly cares, but to invite us to develop a modified attitude toward all that we are susceptible to worry about. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9322-5 Authors Sharon Krishek, Department of Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Rick Anthony Furtak, Department of Philosophy, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047. (shrink)

Heidegger jamais considerou Ser e tempo como uma investigação ética nem dedicou qualquer de suas obras à discussão específica dessa questão, aspecto que vem sendo criticado como sintoma de uma insidiosa precariedade ética instalada no coração de sua reflexão ontológica. A crítica recorrente afirma que, em Ser e tempo, Heidegger teria inviabilizado a reflexão ética ao comprometer-se com o "solipsismo existencial", isto é, com o isolamento do "si-mesmo decidido" em relação aos outros, desconsiderando, ainda, a exigência de uma fundamentação última (...) da ação ética. O argumento deste texto considera que Ser e tempo não configura um tratado ético no sentido metafísico tradicional, mas traz consigo os elementos teóricos para a sua reavaliação pós-metafísica ao dar ensejo a uma ética da precariedade. Uma ética da precariedade é desprovida de fundamentos últimos ou procedimentos intersubjetivos capazes de assegurar critérios transcendentais infalíveis de validação da qualidade ética da conduta humana, pois se assenta no reconhecimento da finitude constitutiva do Dasein. A consideração do "ser-para-a-morte" como o "modo de ser mais próprio" do Dasein não implica a irresponsabilidade ética para com os outros, mas tem como seu aspecto positivo a liberação da amizade como o modo próprio da relação ética, inspirando um agir cauteloso e resistente a quaisquer sistemas teóricos que definam padrões últimos quanto à moralidade do agir.Heidegger did not dedicate his philosophical thinking to ethical questions and explicitly denied considering his major opus, Being and Time, as an ethical inquiry, a fact that has been interpreted by many critics as a symptom of a deep ethical failure at the heart of his ontological thinking. The recurrent criticism is that Heidegger's Being and Time avoids any ethical questioning by committing itself to the "existential solipsism" which isolates the authentically resolute self from the others, and by disregarding the requirement of a last foundation able to assure the ethical character of human actions in the world. This text argues that although Heidegger's Being and Time should not be viewed as an ethical treatise in the sense of metaphysics, it brings forth important ethical implications that may procure a post-metaphysical ethics, an ethics of precariousness. An ethics of precariousness does not depend on having access to first principles, foundations or inter-subjective proceedings aiming at transcendental criteria to evaluate and warrant the ethical character of one's actions in the world, since it is based on the acknowledgment of Dasein's essentially constitutive finitude. The consideration of "being-toward-death" as the most proper way of Dasein's being does not imply ethical irresponsibility toward others, but has as its positive consequence the liberation of friendship, understood as the proper mode of Dasein's ethical relation to otherness. Such a post-metaphysical ethics should inspire a cautious acting in the world as well as resistance against theoretical systems aiming at the foundation of absolute standards of morality. (shrink)

In this article I offer some existential-phenomenological reflections on the interrelationships among the forms of love, loss, finitude, and the human ways of being.

Presents the author's reflections on Derrida's philosophical insights concerning the interrelationships among friendship, fidelity, human finitude, and mourning, and the implications of these insights for "relationalizing" Heidegger's conception of finitude.

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

In this paper I offer some existential-phenomenological reflections on the interrelationships among the forms of love, loss, and human finitude. I claim that authentic Being-toward-death entails owning up not only to one’s own finitude, but also to the finitude of all those we love. Hence, authentic Being-toward-death always includes Being-toward-loss as a central constituent. Just as, existentially, we are “always dying already,” so too are we always already grieving. Death and loss are existentially equiprimordial. I extend these claims to a (...) discussion of the four forms of love identified by the ancient Greeks, contending that the nature of a loss experience will depend complexly on the forms or dimensions of love that had constituted the lost relationship. I argue that authentic solicitude can be shown to entail one of the constitutive dimensions of deep human bonding, in which we value the alterity of the other as it is manifested in his or her own distinctive affectivity, in particular, in those painful emotional states disclosive of authentic existing. Lastly, I explore the ethical implications of these claims. (shrink)

The question, what measures to address the shortage of transplantable organs are ethically permissible? requires careful attention because, apart from its impact on medical practice, the stance we espouse here reflects our interpretations of human freedom and mortality. To raise the number of available organs, on utilitarian grounds, bioethicists and medical professionals increasingly support mandatory procurement. This view is at odds with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, according to which ‘[o]rgan donation after death is a noble and meritorious act’ (...) but ethically impermissible absent consent. Those who concur with this position, but would oppose conscription on independent philosophical grounds, have not yet found a voice in the Western tradition comparable in strength to the utilitarian basis of the policy’s support, for Kantian and Aristotelian ethics, too, lend themselves to a requirement that we make our organs available to others when they can no longer serve ourselves. One finds an ethical wedge against conscription in an unexpected philosophical locale: the ‘fundamental ontology’ of Heidegger’s Being and Time, where pertinent individual choices arc protectively over what happens post mortem. Heidegger’s perspective on this issue thus meshes, not with other philosophical voices, but with Catholic doctrine—a surprising convergence of atheistic and theistic approaches to our flourishing whose ground I address in the article’s conclusion. (shrink)

Prior to having its authenticity and transparency examined the openness of human existence may be said to need preservation as is, regardless of its receptivity and responsiveness to the truth of Being. Paradoxically, in self-sacrifice the fulfilment of Dasein’s ownmost potentiality-for-being is dependent upon a most radical disowning of itself. This investigation approaches self-sacrifice on the basis of its analogy with the creation of the work of art – as the peculiar fixation of the existing, already disclosed world of everydayness (...) within Dasein’s final absence. Finally, the suggestion is made that the incommensurable greatness of the heroic self-sacrifice needs to be itself preserved from the degradation brought about by massive and compulsive reproduction. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)