Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme of (...) a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

Although Heidegger's relation to political philosophy is, at the very least, problematic, many figures who have contributed significantly to the field attended his courses in the 1920s (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Joachim Ritter, Gunther Anders and others). Heidegger's work at that time was marked by an extensive engagement with Aristotle, and above all with Aristotle's practical philosophy. This article approaches the question of Heidegger as a political thinker by returning to his reading of Aristotle's practical philosophy in order (...) to clarify the structural features of his thinking that inspired so many of his students to develop a political philosophy clearly influenced by him. Heidegger reads the Nicomachean Ethics as an ontology of human existence, centred on an interpretation of human existence (Dasein) as práxis. This reading inspired a renaissance of practical philosophy in Germany and beyond. However, as Arendt has shown, Heidegger's ontologization closes práxis within a solipsistic horizon that deforms its political sense. It is this closure, which proves especially damaging when Heidegger begins to understand Dasein in relation to history and community, that many of his students have sought to reverse in their own work, thereby restoring a political dimension to a philosophy profoundly influenced by Heidegger. (shrink)

For three decades Franco Volpi’s thesis concerning the Aristotelianism of Heidegger has been grounds for investigation. Nevertheless, it has remained pending until now the task of delving deeply into the motives for which Heidegger would measure his strength against the great philosopher Aristotle. This paper is a contribution to this line of investigation into the preoccupations of the young Heidegger in his first lessons in Freiburg, especially in the post-war semester of 1919, as well as the discussions he sustained with (...) the radical philosophies of Dilthey, Rickert, and Husserl. This will allow us to understand better why Heidegger was required to rehabilitate the practical philosophy of Aristotle. (shrink)

O artigo discute conceitos da filosofia prática de Aristóteles e sua apropriação por Heidegger no período dos anos 1920. Para isso, o autor explora a interpretação heideggeriana do conceito de totalidade e sua relação com o particular, a fim de caracterizar a situação concreta como o solo hermenêutico das relações de compreensão. Investiga-se a conexão interna dos conceitos que se referem à praxis em Aristóteles, destacando-se a importância da phronesis na sua retomada ontológica por Heidegger. O artigo encerra indicando as (...) estratégias interpretativas de alguns intérpretes recentes da recepção heideggeriana de Aristóteles. (shrink)

This article attempts to show that Heidegger’s phenomenology may shed light on political phenomena. It pursues this project by arguing that Heidegger’s phenomenology is an appropriation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and his conceptualization of phronesis. I argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger’s ‘circumspection’, which is a capacity for making sense of practical situations, is a translation of phronesis. Heidegger argues, though, that the sight of circumspection is foreshortened by the rules and norms of ‘the one’. In division 2, ‘conscience’ (...) becomes a sharpening of the vision of phronesis, which sees through the one. I then defend Heidegger’s appropriation of phronesis and argue that Heidegger’s concept of conscience, which takes up a critical stance toward plurality, may actually be a proper vision of practical wisdom under modern conditions. I substantiate this claim by turning to an unlikely source to bolster Heidegger’s reading of phronesis and the modern public, Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

From the beginning of the sixties untill the end of the seventies, an intense debate took place in Germany that has become famous under the title "The Rehabilitation of Practical Philosophy". Its origin is essentially found in the philosophical positions which, while fairly different from one another, were later brought together under the single designation "neo-Aristotelism". The recovery of the Aristotelian understanding of praxis and of the ethical and political knowledge with which it is concerned has offered itself as an (...) alternative paradigm for the unitary notion of science that characterizes modernity, and has opened a perspective from which it is once again possible to examine in a critical manner the identification of science with theory posited in modernity, as well as the paleomodern and modern notion of reason and its development in the direction of mere instrumentality and functionalism. Therefore, despite quite a few unilateral decisions, the considerations and problems brought to our attention by the rehabilitation of practical philosophy and the neo-Aristotelians retain a disturbing relevance. (shrink)