Speaking out of Turn: Martin Heidegger and die Kehre

' Speaking out of Turn : Martin Heidegger and die Kehre ' examines the difference between Heidegger's own understanding of 'the turning' and that understanding which originated with Karl Lowith and was later presented to English-speaking readers by William Richardson in Martin Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought . The study focuses on Heidegger's own introduction to Richardson's book, and argues that, far from confirming Richardson's view that there is a 'Heidegger I' and 'Heidegger II' connected by the 'reversal' or turning, Heidegger sought to indicate with (sometimes indirect) reference to his own works that the 'turning' is a movement in thought that it was part of the original project of Being and Time to carry through, but which he only succeeded in describing much later. The study attempts to illustrate this by a close examination of the works to which Heidegger alludes in his Foreword to Richardson's book. Many of these were not available when Richardson published (1963), and so it has only more recently been possible to amplify Heidegger's earlier published works with reference to his lecture courses. The study concludes that the horizon of time and the analytic of Dasein never really disappear from his later thinking, as many have claimed, and proposes that the relationship between the earlier and later Heidegger be re-examined. This re-examination takes the form of accepting that far from the 'turning' representing a fracture, where Heidegger abandons the existential-temporal analytic of Dasein in favour of an attempt to think only being ( das Sein ) as such, the 'turning' represents the point of unity in Heidegger's work. This point of unity shows how Dasein and being 'belong together' in 'the event' ( das Ereignis ).     

Hume and vital materialism

ABSTRACT

Hume was not a philosopher famed for what are sometimes called ‘ontological commitments'. Nevertheless, few contemporary scholars doubt that Hume was an atheist, and the present essay tenders the view that Hume was favourably disposed to the 'vital materialism' of post-Newtonian natural philosophers in England, Scotland and France. Both internalist arguments, collating passages from a range of Hume's works, and externalist arguments, reviewing the likely sources of his knowledge of ancient materialism and his association with his materialistic contemporaries are employed.     

'To walk the last bit on my own' - narcissistic independence or identification with good objects: issues of loss for a 13-year-old who had an amputation

This paper describes two years of psychotherapy with Michael, a 13-year-old boy who had undergone a recent emergency amputation of his leg and hip for bone cancer. The work follows Michael's struggle with the enormity of the loss, in the face of his, as well as the system's, use of denial. The amputation as an 'attack' on his physical and emotional autonomy strikes at his early adolescent development. The therapeutic process is aided by his capacity 'to go back to the unhappiness'. The therapy develops from his initial shock, to despair and self-blame, as he struggles with a tendency - in the middle period of the therapy - to lose his mind as well as his leg in a retreat to withdrawal and mindlessness, or to mania. He struggles between an omnipotent, at times self-destructive, wish to 'go it alone', versus a capacity to feel sad and to value life. His capacity to think about the trauma and to find meaning emerges. The paper raises questions about whether some trauma can ever be fully assimilated, and whether, for Michael, the mourning process could lead to a reintegrated sense of self and of a 'psychic intactness', dependent on the survival of his good 'internal couple'. Hospital and ward-based child psychotherapy and its limitations are explored.     

Painting Is Thinking on the Threshold of Being

With permission of the Finnish artist Juhana Blomstedt, a selection of his thoughts on art collected in the book ''Muodon Arvo'' (The Value of Form) and from an interview with the psychoanalyst Veikko Talvitie, have been translated and reproduced in this issue. Aphoristic sentences, reflecting his views on the value of form, on time and memory, art as communication, abstract painting, or on the artist and his role in society, build up some of the chapters of his book, but the same sentences can also be found time and again in longer and more coherent texts. They seem to contain the essence of the artist's reflections on art and on ''the enigma of being in the world''.     

On Denying the Right God: Aquinas on Atheism and Idolatry

Thomas Aquinas appears not to have been intellectually challenged by formal atheisms, nor are his 'five ways' of proving the existence of God best understood as arguments with formal statements of philosophical atheism. But his emphatically 'negative' theology does seem to offer a response to an over‐optimistic and potentially idolatrous 'affirmativeness', and we might see the relevance of this negative theology as challenging atheisms of our times to come up with more radical forms of denial than they customarily achieve. In the light of this account of Thomas' natural theology, how are we to view his 'five ways'? As on the one hand valid as rational proofs and at the same time as avoiding the pitfalls of a Scotist 'onto‐theological' metaphysics.     

A note on the sociological eye and the discovery of a new Durkheim text

The text consisting of recently discovered student notes taken during Émile Durkheim's 1883–1884 lycée lectures on philosophy bears few signs of the social realist perspective with which Durkheim's later work has been identified. Though some scholars have argued that Durkheim's thought was sociological almost from the start, the lectures suggest that Durkheim's sociological eye did not develop until well after the completion of his schooling at the École Normale Supérieure in 1882. This finding is consistent with accounts of Durkheim's intellectual development that stress the importance of his exposure to German scholarship, as well as his consideration of the work of Comte and Rousseau, in the years following 1885. However, these accounts have generally failed to distinguish between the development of Durkheim's philosophy of social realism and the unfolding of the practical worldview that constituted his sociological perspective. This failure is not unique to Durkheimian scholarship, as there exists no general theory of the sociological eye on which historians of ideas can draw. This short essay makes the case that Durkheim's lycée lectures should be used to help develop such a theory. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Discussion - Evidence Based Psychoanalysis: An Imperative and an Opportunity

Freud published his ''On Narcissism: An Introduction'' in 1914. The writing has many levels, including, among other things, Freud's criticism of his former colleagues, Adler and Jung. Psychoanalysts received the essay with reservations. Ernest Jones, among others, expressed his concerns in his history of psychoanalysis. The aim of this study is to place Heinz Kohut's ideas about narcissism into the context of the history of ideas. Especially, the paper explores, at a theoretical level, the status of the castration complex both in self psychology and Freud's essay as well as seeks reasons why the discussion on narcissism should be continued.     

Bowlby before Bowlby: The sources of an intellectual departure in psychoanalysis and psychology

John Bowlby's first scientific papers express a viewpoint of the etiology of childhood disorders that gradually developed during his university years and the first years of his professional life. As becomes clear from, among other things, Bowlby's private correspondence, it was the period spent as a student at Cambridge, his work as a teacher at two progressive schools, and his work at a child guidance clinic that allowed him to articulate a view on childhood deviancy that was at variance with the Kleinian variant of psychoanalysis. Bowlby's position as an ‘independent’ thinker in the British Psycho-Analytical Society can be understood against the background of these intellectual influences. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Heidegger,Hermeneutics and History: Undermining Jeff Malpas’s Philosophy of Place

Most works about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger either disregard Heidegger’s attachment to National Socialism or assume the ‘minimalist’ view that his attachment was a brief political aberration of no consequence for his philosophy. This paper contends that the minimalist view is not only factually wrong but also that its assumption promotes methodological errors and poor philosophy. To assess this contention we examine two important texts from one of the more fertile fields in current philosophy: Jeff Malpas’s Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World (2006) and Heidegger and the Thinking of Place (2012). Malpas claims that Heidegger’s rejection of National Socialism spurred, or was concomitant with, new directions in his philosophy. These claims are wrong. The paper concludes that any work about Heidegger’s philosophy must first acknowledge and understand his enduring attachment to National Socialism.     

Divine Activity and Motive Power in Descartes's Physics

This paper is the first of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some scholars – including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber – take Descartes to be a `partial' Occasionalist, who thinks that God alone is the cause of all natural motion. Contra this interpretation, I agree with literature that links Descartes to the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence. This paper surveys this literature, and argues that it has failed to provide an interpretation of Descartes's view that both distinguishes his position from that of his later, Occasionalist followers and is consistent with his broader metaphysical commitments. I provide an analysis that tries to address these problems with earlier `Concurentist' readings of Descartes. On my analysis, Occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. As I read him, Descartes thinks that bodies have active causal powers that are partly grounded in their intrinsic natures. But I argue – pace a recent account by Tad Schmaltz – that Descartes also thinks that God immediately causes all motion in the created world. On the picture that emerges, Descartes's position is both continuous with, and a subtle departure from, the Thomisitic theory of divine concurrence.     

The First Antinomy and Spinoza

Scholars commonly assume that Kant never seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism. However, in his later writings Kant argues several times that Spinozism is the most consistent form of transcendental realism. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the first Antinomy, debating the age and size of the world, already reflects Kant's confrontation with Spinozist metaphysics. Specifically, the position articulated in the Antithesis – according to which the world is infinite and uncreated – is Spinozist, not Leibnizian, as commonly assumed. In the second part of the paper, I raise the chief Spinozist challenge to the Antinomy, arising from Spinoza's reliance on a cosmological `totum analyticum' – an infinite whole which is prior to its parts. In conclusion, I begin to elaborate a defence of the Kantian position, confronting Spinoza's infinite whole with Kant's account of the absolutely infinite in his discussion of the sublime.     

Mandel'štam and Dante: TheDivine Comedy in Mandel'štam's poetry of the 1930s

Osip Mandel'?tam (1891–1938?) belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel'?tam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante's genius — theDivine Comedy. Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of each poet was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. Mandel'?tam's inner world was Judaeo-Christian, European, and rooted in classical and neo-Platonic philosophy, but his outer world, consisting of a new Marxist or pseudo-Marxist system, was totally at odds with it. Thus Mandel'?tam could not embody the epic impulse of the society he opposed. He was left with the tormented lyric impulse. The fundamental conflict between Mandel'?tam as a lyric poet and the society in which he had to live and work accounts for the fact that his vision of Stalinist society in a number of respects remarkably corresponds to Dante's vision of a perverted divine order in theInferno.     

Personal Identity and the Importance of One's Own Body: A Response to Derek Parfit

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irreducible ambiguities of human embodiment in order to show the presuppositions and the limitations of Parfit's view. Of interest is the conception of time and the model of continuity that is appropriate to an embodied subject's life. I employ Paul Ricoeur's concept of 'human time' to argue that the reflective character of human experience demands a model of temporality and continuity that differs significantly from the one Parfit employs.     

A Theistic Perspective on Ken Wilber's Transpersonal Psychology

Despite his disavowal of the 'transpersonalist' label, Ken Wilber remains the leading figure in the still evolving and ever-controversial field of transpersonal psychology. He has provided transpersonal psychology, seen by many in the academic community as a fringe discipline at best, with at least some degree of scholarly respect and philosophical and scientific legitimacy. Although Wilber's work has been the object of much criticism from fellow transpersonalists, little effort has been made to assess the value of his work from outside the transpersonalist community. This paper is an attempt to provide a 'non-transpersonalist' assessment. As a starting point, we will accept the reality, validity, and value of the transpersonal religious experiences that are the foundation of Wilber's work. However, in subjecting his thought to a philosophical and theological analysis, we suggest that his positions are seriously flawed. Specifically, we identify an ambiguous and inconsistent definition of 'God'; a flawed epistemology that privileges non-dualism without adequate justification; and faulty and selective use of textual sources to support his positions. Secondary issues include contradictory positions regarding the presence of a personal element in the divine nature, de-valuation of the individual self, and inadequate emphasis on the moral component of spiritual development.     

Aleksej Losev's Antiutopia

This article is devoted not only to Losev'sphilosophical works, but also to his fiction,which he created during 1930s and 1940s.Losev's eight books of the 1920s (his``octateuch'') combine into a single whole thatamounts to his philosophy of life and historydepicted in expressive images. At the same timeLosev's ``octateuch'' strikes one as having beenwritten at a single sitting and in a singlestyle, in a genre that can be identified as the``philosophical novel'' having as much right asSpengler's opus to be called an ``intellectualnovel.'' In his prose of the 1930s and 1940sLosev tries with artistic methods to resolvethe philosophical problems which he raised inhis works of the 1920s. Losev's ``octateuch'' andhis fiction are directed against thosecontemporary materialists who seek to embodyPlato's Republic, whom he christens``soil-less nihilist idealist utopians.'' All ofthis leads to the conclusion that Losev'sintellectual novel belongs to a definite andmore specific subgenre. It is undoubtedly ananti-utopia, full of the grotesque. In additionto its scientific and social orientation,Losev's anti-utopia is also religious innature. Thus Losev not only depicts the realconsequences of utopian dreams, but also turnsto the ``life of the artist,'' which is far fromany technological or social utopias but isfilled with another, no less terrifying ornihilistic utopia: that of the non-religiousexistence of the human person. Losev preservedhis anti-utopian and anti-nihilist viewsthrough his late period (1950s–1980s), despitethe care he took not to cross Sovietcensorship. Losev's anti-utopia is the kind ofChristian realism to which he appealedthroughout his life.     

The definition of sociology and the sociology of definition: Durkheim's Rules of Sociological Method and high school philosophy in France

Despite his attempts to break with philosophy and found a science of society, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was involved with philosophy throughout his career. Academic philosophy in France was a highly centralized institution that produced professors capable of teaching a standard curriculum. These professors made up a significant portion of the audience whose support Durkheim hoped to win for his sociological project. The concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and the literature on the rhetoric of the human sciences can help reconstruct the field of academic philosophy, Durkheim's relationship with it, and the ways in which he drew upon it to formulate his method and to persuade his philosophical colleagues. Durkheim's definition of the social fact in The Rules of Sociological Method can only be understood in the context of French academic philosophy. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The origins of Zermelo's axiomatization of set theory

What gave rise to Ernst Zermelo's axiomatization of set theory in 1908? According to the usual interpretation, Zermelo was motivated by the set-theoretic paradoxes. This paper argues that Zermelo was primarily motivated, not by the paradoxes, but by the controversy surrounding his 1904 proof that every set can be well-ordered, and especially by a desire to preserve his Axiom of Choice from its numerous critics. Here Zermelo's concern for the foundations of mathematics diverged from Bertrand Russell's on the one hand and from Felix Hausdorff's on the other.     

On being dropped and picked up: adopted children and their internal objects

The field of adoption has changed over the past years from one where there were babies available for many adoptive couples to one where increasingly the children who are needing adoption are those who have already suffered deprivations and difficulties in their families of origin, with disrupted attachments and a consequent traumatizing effect of their early history on their internal worlds. Professionals working with these children, who have in effect been 'dropped', face the difficult task not only of placing them appropriately but of supporting their adoptive families. With the new experience of a secure base the original trauma may be reworked, and the new framework tested by these damaged and consequently often damaging children as they replay their feelings of being unwanted and unwantable. In describing once-weekly work with a 6-year-old adopted boy, I suggest that the primary disillusion of his neonatal experience caused an internal catastrophe which was then reworked in his adoptive placement. This child did not experience what Winnicott (1971) called 'gradual disillusion' in terms of his belief that he creates the needed breast, and thus integration of love and hate of the primary object, but remained in a state of hyper-vigilance because of the deficits in his internal world. These deficits have been able partially to be addressed in psychotherapy treatment.