Heidegger?s Thought and Nazism

This article rejects the idea that Heidegger's Nazism derives from his philosophical thought. No connection has convincingly been shown to hold between the ontological apparatus of Being and Timeand any political orientation. The elaboration of the concept of being in the later work needs to be understood as Heidegger's own reaction to the activism of his earlier thought which in the absence of any principle of respect for other human beings could provide no moral basis for resistance to Nazi ideology. The tensions between the circumstances of Heidegger's early life - rural, conservative, and Catholic - and the Nietzschean modernism of his philosophical thought are explored. It is suggested that there were analogous tensions between tradition and the modern world in Nazism and that it was Heidegger's hatred of that world that led him to respond favorably to some (but not all) of the themes of Nazi thought.     

The hypnotic use of language — a Heideggerian interpretation

Abstract

This paper shows that Heidegger's theory of language has implications for our understanding of hypnosis. A Heideggerian interpretation of samples of trance inductions brings to light the fact that the hypnotic use of language differs from the everyday language in two major dimensions: in hypnosis, language “call” things into being, thus becoming “something more than a simple, practical means of communicating with others and a means of controlling nature” and in hypnosis, humans enter into a reversed relationship with language, a relationship in which it is language, rather than the hypnotist, that “speaks.”     

How central are judgment and agency to epistemology?

Ernest Sosa’s Judgment and Agency marks an important change from his earlier work in epistemology. While belief was at the center of his earlier approach to epistemological issues, a far more sophisticated mental state, judgment, plays the central role here. This paper examines the significance of this change in focus, and argues that there is reason to favor the earlier belief-centered approach over this new judgment-centered account.     

Properties of Being in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Abstract

While it is well known that the early Heidegger distinguishes between different ‘kinds of being’ and identifies various ‘structures’ that compose them, there has been little discussion about what these kinds and structures of being are. This paper defends the ‘Property Thesis’, the position that kinds of being (and their structures) are properties of the entities that have them. I give two arguments for this thesis. The first is grounded in the fact that Heidegger refers to kinds and structures of being as ‘characteristics’ and ‘determinations’, which are just two different words for ‘properties’, in the broadest senses of these terms. The second argument is based on the fact that kinds and structures of being play three roles that properties are supposed to play: they account for similarities between things, they are what predicates express, and they are what abstract nouns refer to.     

Pre´cis of Heidegger,Language, and World-disclosure

It is argued that Heidegger should be seen as something of a Kantian Idealist. Like Kant, Heidegger distinguishes two standpoints (transcendental and empirical) which we can occupy when we ask the question whether natural things depend on us. He agrees with Kant that from the empirical or human standpoint we are justified in saying that natural things do not depend on us. But in contrast with Kant, Heidegger argues that from the transcendental standpoint we can say neither that natural things do depend on us, nor that they do not. His reasons for saying this, however, represent an attempt to rework both Kant's temporal idealism and his temporal interpretation of the concept of an object (which shows up in Heidegger as a temporal interpretation of being). Heidegger suggests that Kant was led astray into a transcendental idealism about natural entities, because he did not understand the implications of transcendental idealism about being.     

On the nature of language – Heidegger and African Philosophy

abstract

This paper explores links between Heidegger’s notion of language and views in African philosophy. My contention is that Heidegger’s daring phenomenology of language is also found and even radicalised within the framework of African philosophy, particularly the philosophy of myth. I argue that the exploration of the relation between these views of language offers the possibility not only to expand on the conventional conception of language but also to challenge the common notion of philosophical language and philosophy as such.     

Literature,Ethics, and Richard Rorty’s Pragmatist Theory of Interpretation

This article considers the validity and strength of Richard Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation in the light of two ethical issues related to literature and interpretation. Rorty’s theory is rejected on two grounds. First, it is argued that his unrestrained account of interpretation is incompatible with the distinctive moral concerns that have been seen to restrict the scope and nature of valid approaches to artworks. The second part of the paper claims that there is no indispensable relationship between supporting Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation and the important place that is attached to literature in the liberal society outlined by him. A reading of Donald Davidson’s texts on literary language and interpretation implies that an intentionalist theory of interpretation can accommodate those features that Rorty values in literature as well.

A Moment of Unconditional Validity? Schutz and the Habermas/Rorty Debate

Richard Rorty challenges Jurgen Habermas's belief that validity-claims raised within context-bound discussions contain a moment of universality validity. Rorty argues that immersion within contingent languages prohibits any neutral, context-independent ground, that one cannot predict the defense of one's assertions before any audience, and that philosophy can no more escape its contextual limitations than strategic counterparts. Alfred Schutz's phenomenological account of motivation, the reciprocity of perspectives, and the theoretical province of meaning can articulate Habermas's intuitions.Since any claim can be analyzed from an observer's perspective for its because-motives, it can always be shown to be context-related; but to the participant involved in the in-order-to project of establishing a claim's validity, the claim appears objectively valid until counter-evidence surfaces. Rorty, even when explaining what it is to make a truth claim, resorts to the observer perspective and omits reference to the in-order-to perspective, within which alone unconditional validity becomes visible. Furthermore, the expectation that one's claim is universally valid depends not on an empirical prediction that one's claim can survive hypothesized future possible audiences. Rather, because of the reciprocity of perspectives, making possible communication and a common life, theoreticians assume that others will recognize what they take to be objective or valid, independently of diverse biographical circumstances. Finally, within the theoretical province requiring relevances different from those of everyday life, philosophy articulates claims with a greater potential to arrive at universal validity than projects that aim less universally, in spite of the fact that its theoretical context is always susceptible to because motive analysis.     

Nuancing the Healer's art — The epistemology of patient competence

The programmatic thrust of Thomasma and Pellegrino [5] is clarified and underscored and is interpreted as an attempt to introduce a fixed point into the ethical dimension of medicine by specifying some regulative principles for the medical profession. Two important features of this type of enterprise are noted: on the one hand, it may lead the profession to distinguish between technically identical actions on the basis of the normative principles it produces, thus excluding some morally permissible actions as duties constitutive of the art. It is argued that the formulation of the grounds for this ethic given by Thomasma and Pellegrino is insufficient. In order to speak to the clinical situation, medical ethics must not be based on merely the ‘living human body’ alone, but on the patientqua person.     

On Chinese receptions and translations of Heidegger’s Dasein

Continental Philosophy Review - The essay examines three major Chinese translations of Heidegger’s Dasein as cizai (此在), yuanzai (緣在) and qinzai...     

Measure-taking: meaning and normativity in Heidegger’s philosophy

Following Marc Richir and others, László Tengelyi has recently developed the idea of Sinnereignis (meaning-event) as a way of capturing the emergence of meaning that does not flow from some prior project or constitutive act. As such, it might seem to pose something of a challenge to phenomenology: the paradox of an experience that is mine without being my accomplishment. This article offers a different sort of interpretation of meaning-events, claiming that in their structure they always involve what the late Heidegger called “measure-taking” (Maß-nehmen)—that is, an orientation toward the emergence of normative moments thanks to which what apparently eludes phenomenology becomes accessible in its inaccessibility. This is shown, first, on the example of conscience in Sein und Zeit and then on the example of the poetic image (Bild) in Heidegger’s later essays.     

Heidegger’s perfectionist philosophy of educationin Being and Time

Continental Philosophy Review - In Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, I argue that Heidegger’s ontological thinking about education forms one of the deep...