scholarly journals COVID – 19: A Critical Ontology of the present1

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moulay Driss El Maarouf ◽  
Taieb Belghazi ◽  
Farouk El Maarouf
Keyword(s):  
Critical Ontology

scholarly journals From devotion to commitment: Towards a critical ontology of engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-281
Author(s):  
Andrea Perunovic
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Critical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Light Darkness ◽  
History Of

This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement. From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to condition engagement in an ontologically disparate manner. While examining their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind, individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement.

scholarly journals Nicolai Hartmanns Critical Ontology and the Critical Realism of the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen P. Walter
Keyword(s):  
Critical Realism ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Gestalt Psychology ◽  
Gestalt Theory ◽  
Critical Ontology

Summary The author exemplifies the congruency of essential foundations between the critical realism of the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology (Gestalt theory) and Nicolai Hartmann’s Critical Ontology. For instance, this congruency manifests in the importance given to critical-realistic epistemology – purified from idealistic prejudices, not least prejudices such as production-theoretical ones – connected with an unconditional phenomenology. Altogether, it results in a shared critical distance from scholars of Brentano, such as Husserl and Meinong, as well as from Neo-Kantianism.

scholarly journals Nicolai Hartmann und die Gestalttheorie. Ein Vergleich unter dem Aspekt “Kausalität”

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-374
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen P. Walter
Keyword(s):  
Closed System ◽  
Physical Layer ◽  
Gestalt Theory ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
Physical Context ◽  
General Law ◽  
Critical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Nicolai Hartmann

Summary In 1919 Nicolai Hartmann (NH) convincingly justified that there cannot exist a “general law of causation” as A. Meinong had in mind. For him Meinong’s understanding of causation (linear, successive in time) was bound on the region of the physical layer of being, simultaneously postulating it as the only possible causation there. This is the starting point of the comparison between N. Hartmann‘s understanding of causation and that of the Gestalt Theory, for which neither in psychic nor in natural (physical) context linear-successive causality plays a part. Therefore NH’s conception of 1919 was still completely incompatible with that of the Gestalt Theory despite the fact that he was distancing himself from the “general law of causation” sensu Meinong. 20 years later he changed this by adding the “Wechselwirkung” (interaction) to the linear successive causation in the physical layer. In doing so he approached the Gestalt theoretical position but failed it insofar as for it his linear-successive understanding of causation generally has had its day with regard to natural processes, also consequently for the physical (instead interaction between system and border conditions applies, an interaction of field forces). Thus the term “causation“ had become free for a dynamic concept of causation which is equally appropriate for the physical and the psychic. NH makes this move not until 1949, shortly before his death, by writing: ... (see original quotation in the German summary above). It is the opinion of the author of this work that the ingenious systematics of NH‘s Critical Ontology (which is not a closed system) should make it possible to execute the necessary corrections in some details of his theory of layers without questioning the structure of his systematics, thus carrying out what NH was not able to do himself due to his death.

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