Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy ended, failed even, in the German Idealist tradition. In The Culmination, Robert B. Pippin explores the ramifications of this charge through a masterful survey of Western philosophy, especially Heidegger's critiques of Hegel and Kant. Pippin argues that Heidegger's basic concern was to determine sources of meaning for human life, particularly those that had been obscured by Western philosophy's attention to reason. The Culmination offers a new interpretation of Heidegger, German Idealism, and the fate of Western (...) rationalism. (shrink)

The Eucharist, as a pillar of Christian life and faith, stands at the center of the Mass. It bears multi-dimensional meanings and functions, each of which addresses a different aspect of Christian life and mindset. The study resonates dialectically between the Eucharist as a unique religious affirmation of faith and philosophical strategies that are developed to meet its challenges, particularly the rational frameworks by which the believer affirms that the consecrated bread and wine are Christ’s body and blood. On the (...) one hand, the philosophical examination offers new perspectives to understand the Eucharist and its influence on the faithful; on the other hand, the Eucharist and the unique challenges it poses allow us to examine man’s relation to reality within the colors of faith. It will be argued that Edward Schillebeeckx’s discussion of the Eucharist, particularly his attempt to bridge between reality and the symbolic sphere, accords with Heidegger’s reevaluation of the question of Being. The present reading limits itself to the encounter between the mind and the phenomenon and does not proceed to the meaning of the Eucharist as part of the Mass and the crucifixion of Christ. However, the focus of the article is not on the phenomenon but rather on the existential position of the subject and his orientation toward reality. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss, in a Heideggerian context, the possibility of de-subjectivizing the notion of the transcendental time-horizon and reinterpreting it as a formally indicated ‘whereto’ of releasement. The structures of the time-horizon depict the way beings unfold in the fullness of time in their alterity, and they orient the subject’s activity of ‘projection.’ What results is a field-oriented (as opposed to self-oriented) transcendental philosophy which would survive Heidegger’s critique of his own transcendental project, and which would avoid mystification. (...) I take three steps. First, I point out that the problematization of ‘transcendental Heidegger’ is based on the subjectivist interpretation of the time-horizon. I problematize a recent account in the subjectivist vein, arguing that it is neither indispensable, nor very plausible, nor the most illuminative of Heidegger’s work. Second, with the help of Dahlstrom, Golob, Engelland, Sheehan, and Vasterling, I gradually dissociate the notion of the horizon from subjectivism, the visual metaphor, and the assumption of an absolute ground. I suggest instead that the horizonality of the horizon be understood temporally, i.e., as an interplay of presencing and absencing where what matter most are the structures, themselves affected by time, which the transcendental field displays when beings unfold themselves within it. Third, I identify three of those structures when performing a de-subjectivizing reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the threefold synthesis in Kant’s A-Deduction. These structures capture the way every being manifests itself, without themselves being necessarily grounded in the subject’s activity. This gives an example of how transcendental philosophy can clarify what the time-horizon is like while bracketing the question of its provenance. (shrink)

Against the consensus that Heidegger reads his own philosophical views into Kant, I argue that Heidegger takes up the main question posed by the first Critique and attempts to identify Kant's best answer to it. Heidegger's method resembles those of Gadamer and Davidson. But by reading the first Critique as offering two conflicting strands of argument, he abandons their aim of maximizing truth, and his theory of error explains why Kant offers the less-promising strand. Heidegger thus provides a distinctive model (...) of charitable, reconstructive interpretation that avoids hermeneutic ventriloquism—a failure to recognize differences of view between interpreter and text. (shrink)

Mise en abyme is a term from literary theory denoting a work that doubles itself within itself, for example a story placed within a story or a play within a play. Proliferating in experimental fiction in midcentury France, this technique had a strong impact on contemporary literary theory, but also, as this book project argues, on post-Heideggerian and post-structuralist philosophy. The Little Crystalline Seed focuses on how three of these thinkers invoke the concept of mise en abyme in order to (...) establish ontologies that deviate from that of Heidegger. Iddo Dickmann demonstrates how the concept served in modeling Derrida's logic of supplementarity, Blanchot's philosophy of "ambiguity" and mechanism of Désouvrement, and Deleuze's philosophy of difference, time and repetition. Exploring the interpretative and generative potential of the mise en abyme for continental thought, Dickmann illustrates points of resonance between various philosophical topics such as aesthetics, ethics, time, logic, mirroring, play, and signification. (shrink)

The role and place of transcendental psychology in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has been a source of some contention. This work presents a detailed argument for restoring transcendental psychology to a central place in the interpretation of Kant's Analytic, in the process providing a detailed response to more "austere" analytic readings.

Scientific narratives about cosmology often present black holes as frightening objects of both creation and destruction, the centres of which are concealed behind event horizons. According to studies, black holes are capable of distorting time and tearing apart anything that plunges toward them. This article asks what the latest knowledge about the properties of black holes can contribute to philosophical understandings of being and time. Drawing on both scientific and narrative constructions of black holes in books written by physicists, the (...) article analyzes black holes in relation to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of ontology in Being and Time. The article argues that the topics of concealment, time, and mortality form interrelated points of intersection among scientific constructions of black holes and Heidegger’s philosophy. First, scientific commentaries on the concealment of singularities speak to Heidegger’s interpretation of the ways being is concealed in modern society. Second, with regard to time, the phenomenon of gravitational redshift invokes Heidegger’s criticisms of clock time and, by extension, notions of infinitude. On the other hand, theories about Hawking radiation and the decay of black holes also invoke Heidegger’s thesis that time subsists predominantly as a passing away toward the cessation of existence. Third and finally, Heidegger’s renowned and controversial explication of mortality helps frame black holes symbolically as forward-projections toward the impossibility of existence. Bringing these three subjects together, the article concludes that, as Heideggerian symbols of being and time, black holes represent projections toward the possibility of impossible modes and forms of existence. In this sense, black holes emblematize a relationship between being and time that marks the potential limits of existence, as humanity and science understand it. (shrink)

Keskityn siihen miten Leibnizilla yksittäiset mielihyvän tai mielipahan tiedostamattomat havainnot voivat kasautua tai tiivistyä ja muodostaa vähitellen tunteita, joista tulemme tietoisiksi.

Whether and to what extent Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture contains a normative element for the proper evaluation of symbolic forms is a central question in Cassirer interpretation. In this paper, my aim is to specify the nature of this normative element. I not only assert the existence of a real normative dimension in the philosophy of culture, but also specify the nature of its main element: the concept of freedom. The concept of freedom in Cassirer is by no means (...) an explicit facet of his systematic thought. However, this does not indicate that this is not an important part of his system. Rather, it might mean that Cassirer either thought it so basic he didn’t need to explicate it or he thought that it would be made clear through his exposition of symbolic forms. I will proceed by arguing for a “normative space” in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. By “normative space” I mean a certain limitation to the philosophy of culture that makes room for the free act of the cultural agent for which she is responsible. In other words, by “normative space” I mean to suggest that Cassirer meant to leave room, and a prominent seat, for the normative element in the philosophy of culture. After establishing this, I will suggest that this normative task in the philosophy of culture is, from a first-person perspective, inevitably connected to the descriptive task, but from a third-person perspective, conceptually distinct. I will then move to better define what I take to be the main value of the normative task: freedom. The freedom that Cassirer defends is an ethical conception understood as both a constitutive norm for cultural action and a regulative ideal for the evaluation of cultural objects. Understanding freedom in this way allows us to conceive of it both as a fundamental phenomenon and an evaluative standard. (shrink)