scholarly journals Otherwise than Identity, or Beyond Difference

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Jack Pappas

This paper locates in the philosophy of Maximus the Confessor a remarkable concern for the temporality, finitude, and historicity of the human soul, that at once anticipates Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology,” but which is also capable of overcoming the limitations of philosophical nihilism. In taking up Heidegger’s claim that the recovery of ontology (and philosophy itself) depends upon the understanding of Being always in relation to its self-revelation in the finite and historical reality of human existence, it becomes clear that contemporary philosophical expression requires a “turning away” from the conceptual unity of finite beings and eternal Being, and a movement toward a radically subjective negativity. In contrast to his Neoplatonic forebears, Maximus presents a mode of thinking which is capable of surpassing Heideggerian negation, not through a denial of human particularity or finitude, but rather through a transformation of the very categories of Being and non-being themselves through his understanding of divine personhood. For Maximus such personhood is conceived of as transcending both Being and time, and yet without any loss of transcendence comes also to partake fully of both through the mystery of the Incarnation. According to Maximus, this radical event of be-coming forever transfigures the sphere of beings, bringing the historical into the transcendent, non-Being into Being, and death into life.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson ◽  

Heidegger’s critique of ethics has been interpreted as an abolition of the ethical that nihilistically precludes the possibility of ethics. Yet Heidegger questioned ethics as systematizing discourses about hierarchies of values, prescriptions, norms, and axioms cut off from their worldly and factical contexts. I argue that this questioning of rule-based ethics does not necessarily entail a denial of the ethical, since it has its own ethical preoccupations in the sense of reflection on practical activity (praxis) and the formal indication of how Dasein factically exists. This reading is supported by Heidegger’s later depiction of the ethical as the ethos of an originary dwelling. Further, Heidegger’s practice of thinking indicates and enacts the ethical as confrontation and responsive encounter: (1) even if he did not formulate an ethical system, a universal prescriptive principle, or a moral code; and (2) despite his own undeniable ethical failures. This promising yet underdeveloped ethical dimension is visible both in the style, method, and event of his philosophizing and in his attention to the issue of individuation in the context of the Dasein’s conformity to the power of everydayness and the social. Individuation, a primary issue of Being and Time and other works of the 1920’s, occurs through the attuned comportment and understanding that Dasein each time is, yet as individuation it takes place in being-with others. The identity and difference of human existence is formed in social comportment and understanding—in addressing and being addressed, in the interdependent and interpretive setting apart of encountering and being encountered, in the responsive confrontation, differentiation, and separation of Auseinandersetzung.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-291
Author(s):  
Milotka Molnar-Sivc

Although the question of relationship between basic concepts of traditional ontology and central concepts of fundamental ontology is not a topic which is systematically dealt with in Being and Time, it is obvious that some of the theses which are crucial not only for Heidegger's interpretation of philosophical tradition, but also for the whole project of fundamental ontology, concern this 'conceptual scheme'. In fact, the backbone of Heidegger's critical confrontation with dominant philosophical conceptions is the question of relationship between the concept of 'substance' and the concept of 'Being', i.e. the discussion of philosophical doctrines in which 'Being' is reduced to 'substance'. Besides this context, which concerns the ontological problematics in the strict sense, it is possible to show that the refutation of the basic categories of traditional ontology is an issue which has a decisive role in more concrete phases of the realization of the project of fundamental ontology. This is especially confirmed in Heidegger's discussion of the concept of 'Being-There'. The interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of the relationship between the concepts of 'Being-there', 'existence' and 'existentials' on the one hand, and the concepts of 'substance', 'essence' and 'categories' on the other, shows that one of Heidegger's basic theses is that a transformation of concepts of traditional ontology is necessary for an appropriate understanding of human being.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 235-243
Author(s):  
Lucas Fain ◽  

It is often remarked that Heidegger’s Being and Time was originally proposed as a book on Aristotle, and that formative work for this initial expression of Heidegger’s existential ontology was developed through the early 1920s in a series of lecture courses and seminars on Aristotle’s practical philosophy. This paper examines select details from Heidegger’s 1924 summer course in order to question the presuppositions of Heidegger’s decision to found the project of fundamental ontology on a purely philological reading of Aristotle. At stake is the method of investigation which permitted Heidegger to think politics through ontology in his most controversial writings from the 1930s—and ultimately the meaning of philosophy itself.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 247-260
Author(s):  
Stefan Schmidt ◽  

According to Hans Ruin, there are two ways to approach the examination of freedom in Heidegger’s writings: One can use the notion of freedom as a heuristic concept to interpret the entirety of Heidegger’s work as a philosophy of freedom, which was famously done by Günter Figal, or one can reconstruct Heidegger’s actual use of the notion of freedom. In my paper I’ll focus on the second approach and show that although “freedom” or, rather, “being-free” can already be found in Being and Time, his more elaborate concept of freedom as transcendence is developed in the years 1928-1930. These years are part of a time period in which Heidegger tried to develop his own positive concept of metaphysics. The main texts which show this development are the lecture course The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and the essay On the Essence of Ground. Based on Aristotle’s twofold metaphysics—consisting of ontology and philosophical theology—Heidegger sketches his own concept of metaphysics. The fundamental ontology which plays the role of ontology is complemented by his cosmological interpretation of theology: metontology. Together, they form Heidegger’s novel notion of metaphysics: the metaphysics of Dasein. Whereas fundamental ontology is concerned with the question of Being, the main subject of metontology is world as beings as a whole. Heidegger develops his concept of transcendence, i.e., metontological freedom, which describes the connection between freedom and world, on the basis of the terms world-projection (Weltentwurf), world-view (Weltanschauung), and world-formation (Weltbildung), each describing an aspect of transcendence.


Author(s):  
◽  
VALTERS ZARIŅŠ ◽  

Book review focuses on two books by Gunther Neumann, dedicated to the thought of Heidegger and Leibniz. If one of the books deals specifically with the understanding of freedom in both of the two philosophers, then the other one deals more with Heidegger’s three approaches to Leibniz’s thought: (1) Interpretation of Leibniz in the context of the making of fundamental ontology and in Being and Time, as well as the reading of Leibniz after Being and Time; (2) Interpretation of Leibniz during the transition to Ereignis thought; (3) Interpetation of Leibniz in the framework of Ereignis thought. Author’s scrupulous close reading approach allows to show the changes in Heidegger’s approach to Leibniz’s philosophy, as well as sketch out the placement of Leibniz’s great themes on the horizon of Heidegger’s history of the truth of being. Author also shows that from metaphysics there stems a certain view in the modern philosophical discussions oriented on neurosciences—a certain view on the human being and on the freedom of will. On this background Heidegger appears as a thinker who has looked beyond the alloy of metaphysics and sciences, in which the concept of freedom has been greatly restricted. Heidegger manages (thanks to the radical questioning of Being) to turn the view on the problem of freedom, which appears in G. Neumann’s books as the main problem of philosophy—through the contact of Leibniz’s thought and Heidegger’s.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Cláudio Cledson Novaes ◽  
Aleš Vrbata

Aim of this paper is to demonstrate a proximity or even complementarity between James Hillman’s and Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s vision of  human soul and human condition. Even though their cultural and intellectual context differed significantly and they both used very different forms of expression, they repeatedly invoked intimate dimension of human existence as permeated by somehow pathological, peripherial or dark aspects of being. Nevertheless, both of them shared deep interest in bottom-line dimension of being which they called “soul” and which they linked with death, darkness, weakness and which they associated with  socially disapproved ways of being. Even though Hillman could be labeled as reformist and Céline as nihilist, for both of them modern society and its programming cut modern man off his deeper sense of meaningfulness or as Céline puts it in from “intimité des choses”. Questioning intellectual legacy of Enlightenment, both Céline and Hillman find soul of modern man as pathologized and threatened but at the same time as the very source of meaningfulness. Like that Hillman and Céline can be viewed not just as cultural critics but as actively deconstructing, questioning modern project and modern subjectivity


Metaphysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 38-46
Author(s):  
Sergei Anatol'evich Nizhnikov ◽  
Argen Ishenbekovich Kadyrov

Despite various interpretations of Heidegger's philosophy, he is undeniably a deep critic of the metaphysical tradition in European philosophy. His task of overcoming metaphysics once again aroused interest in the fundamental issues of life in the era of the total dominance of private sciences. In the article, the authors explore the concept of metaphysics and its criticism in the work of M. Heidegger, as well as subsequent interpretations, in particular by O. Peggeler (“New Ways with Heidegger”, 1992). Criticism of metaphysics was a necessary condition for overcoming it to build a fundamental ontology. Having experienced the influence of Nietzsche, Heidegger does not remain a Nietzschean, because he considers him the last metaphysician to be overcome. In this regard, Peggeler recognizes Heidegger's main work not as “Being and Time”, but as “Reports to Philosophy” (1936), where he sought to reveal the primary sources of the concept of metaphysics. Heidegger's views regarding the interpretation of the development of metaphysics in different historical eras are specially considered.


Author(s):  
Eugenio Trías

This essay tries to think with Plato (not against nor from him) the idea of justice, which structures the city and the human soul in the Republic, and the platonic self-critique displayed in several late dialogues, viewed as a basis for a philosophy that can make sense of human existence in the bordering city. The bordering city –itself a metaphor of Limit–, inhabited by intermediary characters (love and creation, reminiscence and reason, halfway between the Ideal city and the cave), is what makes possible the interchange between transcendent Being (the Good, Beauty, Truth) and Becoming (which characterizes human existence). The bordering city is Plato’s greatest discovery, through which we can think an alternative city and the corresponding human condition, and even the world (cosmos). Plato gave the necessary clues to come to this alternative conception, and his recourse to myth can be seen as a symbolic addition that allows access to truth. What is, what exists and happens, is an unceasing return of “archetypes” (ideas joined with symbols). This gives consistency to what is, what exists and what we ourselves are. Philosophical truth is the awareness of the fact that we live within these archetypes, relatively to which we determine and decide our existence. Still, Plato’s thought, as a philosophy of limit, remains distant from the sensible and changing individual, which can be recreated by Limit and the being of Limit. In fact, what is recreated in Limit is a being (perceptible by the senses, singular, and in change): a being of limit which, through ideas and symbols can become accessible to understanding.


Labyrinth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Ovidiu Stanciu

Subjectivity and Project. Patočka's critique of Heidegger's concept "project of possibilities" The purpose of this article is to lay out the way the main aspects of Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger's fundamental ontology. More precisely, I intend to restate the central arguments Patočka raised against Heidegger's characterization of "understanding" (Verstehen) as a "project". In the first part, I will single out Patočka's project of an "asubjective phenomenology" by distinguishing it from another asubjective project (that of Aristotle) and from the subjective phenomenology. In the second part, I will examine some central theses Heidegger puts forth in §31 of Being and Time in order to show the inescapable difficulties they bring about. In the final part, I will describe the tenets around which Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger revolves. I will explore the two directions of this critique that correspond to the double orientation of asubjective phenomenology: a) on the one hand, the priority of the phenomenal field with regard to any subjective sense-bestowal; b) the importance of the phenomenon of corporeity for an accurate apprehension of subjectivity.


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