Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The latter (...) gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects. (shrink)

I focus on two questions: what is knowledge, and how is knowledge possible? The latter is an example of a how-possible question. I argue that how-possible questions are obstacle-dependent and that they need to be dealt with at three different levels, the level of means, of obstacle-removal, and of enabling conditions. At the first of these levels the possibility of knowledge is accounted for by identifying means of knowing, and I argue that the identification of such means also contributes to (...) a proper understanding of what knowledge is. (shrink)

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, or should you do lots of research? Should you make lists of (...) pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, this book focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, this book argues that to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, the book maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical; to be realistic; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience. (shrink)

This 2003 book offers an interpretation of Heidegger's major work, Being and Time. Unlike those who view Heidegger as an idealist, Taylor Carman argues that Heidegger is best understood as a realist. Amongst the distinctive features of the book are an interpretation explicitly oriented within a Kantian framework and an analysis of Dasein in relation to recent theories of intentionality, notably those of Dennett and Searle. Rigorous, jargon-free and deftly argued this book will be necessary reading for all serious students (...) of Heidegger. (shrink)

Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

A unique synthesis of the contemporary, Anglo-American philosophical approach with an abiding concern for classical philosophical problems. This book seeks to clarify the precise structure of self-consciousness and self-determination and elucidates their significance for our philosophical understanding of self-knowledge and human agency.The analysis challenges traditional models of theoretical self-knowledge and practical self-relation and elaborates an account of rationally grounded responsibility that jointly fulfills the demands of autonomy and authenticity.Tugendhat's study is a unique synthesis of the contemporary Anglo-American philosophical approach with (...) an abiding concern for classical philosophical problems. It brings the methods of linguistic analysis to bear on such epistemological, moral, and metaphysical issues as the meaning and interconnections of self-knowledge, ego identity, rational self-understanding, and freedom of the will. In this context, the views of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Mead, and Hegel are searchingly examined. The philosophical testimony of Kierkegaard, Freud, Habermas, and others is also presented and weighed. Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination is based on a series of lectures given at Heidelberg. The book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Charles Taylor; X*—The Validity of Transcendental Arguments, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 151–166, https://do.

This major study of Heidegger is the first to examine in detail the concept of existential truth that he developed in the 1920s. Daniel O. Dahlstrom critically examines the genesis, nature and validity of Heidegger's radical attempt to rethink truth as the disclosure of time, a disclosure allegedly more basic than truths formulated in scientific judgements. The book has several distinctive and innovative features. First, it is the only study that attempts to understand the logical dimension of Heidegger's thought in (...) its historical context. Second, no other book-length treatment explores the breadth and depth of Heidegger's confrontation with Husserl, his erstwhile mentor. Third, the book demonstrates that Heidegger's deconstruction of Western thinking occurs on three interconnected fronts: truth, being and time. Dealing with a crucial aspect of the philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, this book will be important to all scholars and students of Heidegger, whether in philosophy, theology or literary studies. (shrink)

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger's early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language and history. 'Unconcealment' is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger's work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense: first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. (...) The unconcealment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event, and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history. Heidegger's thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the understanding of Heidegger and a rare attempt to bridge the schism between traditions of analytic and Continental philosophy. Cristina Lafont applies the core methodology of analytic philosophy, language analysis, to Heidegger's work providing both a clearer exegesis and a powerful critique of his approach to the subject of language. In Part One, she explores the Heideggerean conception of language in depth. In Part Two, she draws on recent work from theorists of direct (...) reference (Putnam, Donnellan and Kripke inter alia) to reveal the limitations of Heidegger's views and to show how language shapes our understanding of the world without making learning impossible. The book first appeared in German but has been substantially revised for the English edition. (shrink)

Given Heidegger’s inflammatory remarks about the intellectual poverty of modern logic, it may come as a surprise to be told that he has something to contribute to the philosophy of logic. One of the rewards of Daniel Dahlstrom’s Heidegger’s Concept of Truth is its argument that Heidegger can illuminate such issues in the philosophy of logic as the character of propositions, the nature of bivalence, and the concept of truth. Dahlstrom focuses on Heidegger’s work in the years immediately before and (...) after the publication of Being and Time, with particular emphasis on the lecture courses from this period, especially the one published as Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit. (shrink)

With what right and with what meaning does Heidegger use the term 'truth' to characterize Dasein's disclosedness? This is the question at the focal point of Ernst Tugendhat's long-standing critique of Heidegger's understanding of truth, one to which he finds no answer in Heidegger's treatment of truth in §44 of Being and Time or his later work. To put the question differently: insofar as unconcealment or disclosedness is normally understood as the condition for the possibility of propositional truth rather than (...) truth itself, what does it mean to say - as Heidegger does - that disclosedness is the "primordial phenomenon of truth" and what justifies that claim? The central aim of this paper is to show that Tugendhat's critique remains unanswered. Recent Heidegger scholarship, though it confronts Tugendhat, has not produced a viable answer to his criticism, in part because it overlooks his basic question and therefore misconstrues the thrust of his objections. Ultimately, the paper suggests that what is needed is a re-evaluation of Heidegger's analysis of truth in light of a more accurate understanding of Tugendhat's critique. The paper concludes by sketching the profile of a more satisfactory reply to Tugendhat's critical question, advocating a return to Heidegger's 'existential' analyses in Being and Time in order to locate the normative resources Tugendhat finds lacking in Heidegger's concept of truth. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Heidegger, contrary to the view of many scholars, in fact endorsed a view of truth as a sort of correspondence. I first show how it is a mistake to take Heidegger's notion of 'unconcealment' as a definition of propositional truth. It is thus not only possible but also essential to disambiguate Heidegger's use of the word 'truth', which he occasionally used to refer to both truth as it is ordinarily understood and unconcealment understood as (...) the condition of the possibility of truth. I then show how Heidegger accepted that propositional truth, or 'correctness', as he sometimes called it, consists in our utterances or beliefs corresponding to the way things are. Heidegger's objection to correspondence theories of truth was not directed at the notion of correspondence as such, but rather at the way in which correspondence is typically taken to consist in an agreement between representations and objects. Indeed, Heidegger took his account of unconcealment as explaining how it is possible for propositions to correspond to the world, thus making unconcealment the ground of propositional truth. I conclude by discussing briefly some of the consequences for Heidegger interpretation which follow from a correct understanding of Heidegger's notion of propositional truth. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die wichtigsten kleineren philosophischen Arbeiten des Autors aus den Jahren 1960 bis 1990. Sie sind unterteilt in die Rubriken Sein, Wahrheit, Praxis und Kritik. Mit »Sein« und »Wahrheit« sind die wichtigsten Themen von Tugendhats früherer Arbeit genannt, ab ca. 1975 hat er sich weitgehend der praktischen Philosophie zugewandt. Sein Buch »Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie«, 1976 (stw 45), verstand sich als Alternativansatz zu Heideggers Frage nach der Struktur des menschlichen Verstehens. Die »Vorlesungen« orientieren diese Frage (...) an der Sprache, Heidegger hatte sie auf das Sein bezogen. Die hier gesammelten Aufsätze zum Thema »Sein« stützen seine Heidegger gewidmeten »Vorlesungen« negativ ab: sie sollen zeigen, daß das Sein nicht nur ein falscher Orientierungspunkt ist, sondern überhaupt keine einheitliche Thematik darstellt. (shrink)