This chapter argues for a rapprochement between Heidegger and Freud to gain a more unified, comprehensive, and holistic account of the human condition. While doing so, it explores the impact of Heidegger's philosophy on existential analysis and therapy by considering his global critique of Freudian psychoanalysis, and more specifically Freud's concepts of the Unconscious and the body. After a brief synopsis of his philosophy and its relevance for existential analysis, the chapter delineates Heidegger's critique of Freud's unconscious and considers how (...) Binswanger, Boss, and Richardson try to preserve Freud's insights within the context of Heidegger's philosophy. The exploratory process then leads us to see bodily being as pivotal for the development of a truly holistic account of human existence. The chapter argues that Heidegger's humanism and neglect of the ontological primordiality of bodily being ultimately led him to a dualism he ubiquitously fought to avoid. (shrink)

This essay presents imaginary philosophical debates between Heidegger and Freud exploring their views on science, philosophy, their interrelationship and the fundamental philosophical presuppositions of Freud’s metapsychology. In the final section, Heidegger presents a series of criticisms of Freud’s theory, to which ‘Freud’ posthumously responds.

Heidegger’s failure to discuss ‘the body’ in Being and Time has generated a cottage industry of criticism. In his recently translated Zollikon Seminars, Heidegger provides a response to the critics by offering a thematic account of the body that is strikingly similar to Merleau-Ponty’s account in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article, I draw on the parallels between these two texts in order to see how Heidegger’s neglect of the body affects his early project of fundamental ontology and to determine (...) whether or not an account of the body is necessary to complete the project. I defend Heidegger by suggesting that any analysis of the body is ‘ontic’ or regional and is made possible only on the basis of Dasein, understood as a public ‘clearing’ or ‘there’ of intelligibility that determines in advance the way things emerge-into-presence as the kinds of things that they are. Heidegger’s core concern in Being and Time is to unearth the essential, ‘ontological-existential’, structures of Dasein that make it possible for us to begin regional investigations into the problem of the body in the first place. (shrink)

In this article is presented a reading of Heidegger in relation to the conception of desire, and its relation to various terms he uses frequently. I argue that the genesis of desire lies in the gap between the fullness of possibility and the poverty of actualization; that inauthentic desire aims at presence, possession, actualization (always insufficient); and that authentic desire aims at the conservation of the possibility-character of being. I also pay attention to the temporality of desire; to the analogy (...) between Kant's emphasis on respect for the law one has freely postulated and Heidegger's emphasis on Dasein's subjection to the possibilities it projects; to possibility as original abundance; and, in principle, to the turning in which desire is evoked in the event of granting, rather than simply produced in the act of projection. Special attention is paid on the German word 'Verlangen', which is related etymologically to the English 'long for', which stands for wanting something very much. But the word is also connected to the word 'long' which is important to get a grip on the notion of desire in Heidegger. (shrink)

Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics is central to his attempt to re-instantiate the question of being. This paper examines Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics by looking at the relationship between metaphysics and thought. This entails an identification of the intimate relationship Heidegger maintains exists between philosophy and metaphysics, an analysis of Heidegger’s critique of this association, and a discussion of his proposal that philosophy has been so damaged by its association with metaphysics that it must be replaced with meditative thinking. It is (...) not quite clear, however, how the overcoming of metaphysical thinking is to occur especially given Heidegger’s insistence that relying on human will to effect an alteration in thinking simply re-instantiates the metaphysical perspective to be overcome. While several critics have argued Heidegger has no solution to this issue, instead holding that thought must simply be open to being’s ‘self’-transformation if and when it occurs, I turn to Heidegger’s notion of trace and a number of scattered comments on the relationship between meditative thinking and willing as non-willing to show Heidegger: (a) was aware of this issue; and (b) tried to resolve it by recognising a reconceptualised notion of willing not based on or emanating from the aggressive willing of metaphysics. (shrink)

The theme of the possibility or impossibility of the compatibility between Heideggerian philosophy and Freudian metapsychology has been taken up in various ways. Without going into the details of this body of commentary, it is argued that there is a clear difference between the ways in which Heidegger and Freud think cultural crisis. By examining texts of both thinkers from the early 1930s, it is shown that whereas Freud conceives of the possibility of amelioration of crisis in terms of a (...) grappling with material necessity, Heidegger's philosophical conception of crisis seeks to bring about freedom's performative coincidence with ontological necessity. Heidegger's approach, it is claimed, is blind to the confrontation with material necessity that is its own condition of possibility. This blindness is evident in his ontological understanding of suffering. Key Words: crisis • critique • Sigmund Freud • Martin Heidegger • materiality • necessity • questioning. (shrink)

Long awaited and eagerly anticipated, this remarkable volume allows English-speaking readers to experience a profound dialogue between the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss.

"[Heidegger's] greatest work... essential for all collections." —Choice "... students of Heidegger will surely find this book indispensable." —Library Journal Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936-38 and first published in 1989 as Beiträge zur Philosophie, is Heidegger’s most ground-breaking work after the publication of Being and Time in 1927. If Being and Time is perceived as undermining modern metaphysics, Contributions undertakes to reshape the very project of thinking.

I am trying...to go back through all those places where I was exiled-enclosed so he could constitute his there. To read his text to try to take back from it what he took from me irrecoverably...I am trying to re-discover the possibility of a relation to air. Don’t I need one, well before starting to speak?

Using Jacques Lacan's work as a key, this groundbreaking work reassesses the philosophical significance of Freud's most ambitious general theory of mental functioning: metapsychology. Richard Boothby forcefully argues that this theory has been misunderstood, and that therefore Freud's impact on philosophy has been unjustly muted. Freud as Philosopher illuminates in a fresh and newly accessible way the central points of Freud's metapsychology-including the guiding metaphor of psychical energy and the final, enigmatic theory of the twin drives of life and death-through (...) the three cardinal Lacanian categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. This exciting and brilliant book will have a definitive impact on how psychoanalysis is conceived in relation to philosophy. (shrink)

In this book, Arnold Davidson elaborates a method for considering the history of concepts and the nature of scientific knowledge, a method he calls "historical epistemology." He applies this to the history of sexuality, with consequences for our understanding of desire, abnormality, and sexuality.

Este ensaio examina o relacionamento possível entre o pensamento de Martin Heidegger enquanto emerge no Zollikon Seminaire na sua troca de idéias com Medard Boss e a perspectiva da psicanálise como aparece através do prisma da releitura de Freud oferecido por Jacques Lacan. Heidegger entende Freud como vítima de uma compreensão positivista da ciência que procura explicar o comportamento humano patológico por um complexo de causas discerníveis conscientemente. Quando determinados fenômenos não podem ser explicados desta maneira, Freud postula um jogo (...) de causas psíquicas que não são conscientes, cuja soma ele chama o "inconsciente". Desde que todos os fenômenos humanos são, para Heidegger, discerníveis via uma profunda fenomenologia do ser humano como o ser-no-mundo, a construção hipotética de Freud é desnecessária e, a longo prazo, perniciosa. Mas Lacan propõe uma nova maneira de compreender o inconsciente descoberto por Freud, a saber, que não deve ser entendido como um sistema físico de forças hidráulicas, mas como um processo que seja estruturado como um idioma. A pergunta levantada neste ensaio é se Heidegger seria ou não igualmente hostil à hipótese de Freud, apresentada a ele dentro da forma de Lacan, como algo "estruturado como um idioma". O ensaio sugere que a resposta poderia ser "provavelmente não". Baseado num exemplo clínico altamente simplificado, este ensaio esforça-se para mostrar a compatibilidade entre determinados conceitos básicos de Heidegger e diversos, de Lacan, em especial as noções da verdade e da liberdade.This paper examines the possible relationship between the thought of Martin Heidegger as it emerges in the Zollikon Seminaire through his exchange with Medard Boss and the perspective of psychoanalysis as it appears through the prism of Jacques Lacan's rereading of Freud. Heidegger takes Freud to be victim of a positivist conception of science that seeks to explain pathological human behaviour by a complex of consciously discernible causes. When certain phenomena cannot be explained in this way, Freud postulates a set of psychic causes that are not conscious, the sum total of which he calls the "unconscious." Since all human phenomena are, for Heidegger, discernible through a thorough-going phenomenology of human being as being-in-the-world, Freud's hypothetical construct is unnecessary and, in the long run, pernicious. But Lacan proposes a new way to understand the unconscious that Freud discovered, namely, that it is not to be thought of as analogous to a physical system of hydraulic forces but rather to a process that is structured like a language. The question raised in the paper is whether or not Heidegger would have been equally hostile to Freud's hypothesis, if it had been presented to him in Lacanian fashion as something "structured like a language". The paper suggests that the answer could be "probably not". On the basis of a highly simplified clinical example, it endeavors to show the compatibility between certain basic Heideggerean concepts and several of those essential to Lacan, especially the notions of truth and freedom. (shrink)

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger's collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger's unique phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle's Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and Time. (...) Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology. (shrink)

Throughout history philosophers have relentlessly pursued what may be called "inaccessible domains." This book explores how the traditions of existential phenomenology relate to Freudian psychoanalysis. A clear, succinct, and systematic account of the philosophical presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory and practice, this work offers a deeper and richer understanding and appreciation of Freudian thought, as well as its antecedents and influences. With its unique perspective on Freud's work, Apprehending the Inaccessible puts readers in a better position to appreciate his contributions and (...) evaluate the relationship between his and other philosophical world views. The authors, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in philosophy and psychology, present balanced critical analyses of crucial developments in, for example, the evolution of the Freudian notion of the unconscious, and the engagement of existential phenomenology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Askay and Farquhar then consider-often for the first time-individual thinkers' reflections on and interpretations of Freud, ranging from the primary figures in existential phenomenology to the most prominent figures in the existential psychoanalytic movement. Even as their work offers a new approach to Freudian thought, it reasserts the importance of alternative views found in existential phenomenology as those views pertain to psychoanalysis and the question of apprehending the inaccessible. (shrink)

Prince of Networks is the rst treatment of Bruno Latour speci cally as a philosopher. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central gures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centred in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance.

Nietzsche and Heidegger were both lovers of language, and author Jean Graybeal argues that their writing styles demonstrate a relationship with the feminine dimension of language. Using as a framework the theories of Julia Kristeva concerning the "symbolic" and "semiotic" dispositions in language, Graybeal reads Nietzsche and Heidegger as writers and thinkers whose experimentation with language is directly relevant both to their quests for nonmetaphysical ways of thinking and to the feminist project of moving beyond male dominance. The chapters on (...) Nietzsche discuss portions of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Ecce Homo with the question of woman in the forefront of the analysis. The chapters on Heidegger deal, first, with Being and Time, describing the ways in which Heidegger evokes the feminine and semioitic dimensions in language. Finally, eight of Heidegger's later essays are read with attention to feminie, maternal, and erotic imagery. (shrink)