Heideggerian philosophy of science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Rouse
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Everyday Activity ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Epistemological Conception ◽  
History Of ◽  
Purposive Activity ◽  
Philosophical Ontology

Heidegger’s importance in the philosophy of science stems less from his scattered remarks about science than from the larger conception of intentionality and ontology that informs them. Heidegger’s earliest major work, Being and Time (1927), displayed everyday practical purposive activity as the most fundamental setting for the disclosure of things in the world. Heidegger claimed that the traditional epistemological conception of a subject who represents objects was derivative from and dependent upon such ongoing everyday practical engagement with one’s surroundings. Science was then supposed to be the practice that allows things to show themselves shorn of their significance within the ’in-order-to-for-the-sake-of’ structure of everyday activity; nevertheless, the sense of scientific claims remained dependent upon the everyday interactions from which they were abstracted. Shortly after writing Being and Time, Heidegger revised his project in ways that also transformed his account of science. His overall project shifted from describing the transcendental structure of the meaning of being, to interpreting the ’history of being’. Science was reinterpreted as an activity (’research’) closely allied with machine technology, and oriented towards more extensive and intensive manipulation and ordering of things. Understood as such, science for Heidegger was an essential manifestation of the modern age. Whereas, earlier, he thought that science presupposed a philosophical ontology, he eventually portrayed science and technology as the conclusion of the philosophical tradition. While philosophical metaphysics and epistemology were thus naturalized, Heidegger was concerned with the possibility of a way of thinking outside this convergence of scientific and philosophical metaphysics.

Anthropocentrism without a centre?

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Unusual Structure ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Relationship ◽  
Made In ◽  
Number Of Authors ◽  
The Way

I am grateful to Håkan Karlsson for his thoughtful commentary on some of the issues concerning Heidegger and archaeology which were raised in a previous issue of this journal, and find myself fascinated by his project of a ‘contemplative archaeology’. However, one or two points of clarification could be made in relation to Karlsson's contribution. Firstly, as a number of authors have pointed out (e.g. Anderson 1966, 20; Olafson 1993), the gulf between Heidegger's early work and that which followed the Kehre may have been more apparent than real. While his focus may have shifted from the Being of one particular kind of being (Dasein) to a history of Being (Dreyfus 1992), the continuities in his thought are more striking. Throughout his career, Heidegger was concerned with the category of Being, and the way in which it had been passed over by the western philosophical tradition. It is important to note that in Being and time the analysis of Dasein essentially serves as an heuristic: the intention is to move from an understanding of the Being of one kind of being to that of Being in general. What complicates the issue is the very unusual structure of this specific kind of being, for Heidegger did not choose to begin his analysis with the Being of shoes or stones, but with a kind of creature which has a unique relationship with all other worldly entities. ‘Dasein’ serves as a kind of code for ‘human being’ which enables Heidegger to talk about the way in which human beings exist on earth, rather than becoming entangled in biological or psychological definitions of humanity. In this formulations, what is distinctive about human beings is that their own existence is an issue for them; Dasein cares, and this caring is fundamentally temporal.

The Naivety of Philosophy

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
William McNeill ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Resource ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

The present paper remains modest in its scope: It seeks only to undertake some exploratory and preparatory investigations with a view to addressing a more difficult and far-reaching question. The issue, in brief, is the following: In the 1920s, Heidegger engages in an incisive and comprehensive critique of techn!, which I shall render here as “production” or “productive comportment,” arguing that it furnishes the foundation and horizon for Greek ontology, and by extension for the entire Western philosophical tradition, a horizon that is problematically reductive because the ontology it gives rise to understands the Being of beings in general in terms of independent presence-at-hand, the appropriate mode of access to which is theoretical apprehension. Not only philosophy and ontology, but science and its outgrowth, modern technicity—itself a monstrous transformation of techn!—would be an almost inexorable consequence of this fateful Greek beginning. The project of a “destructuring of the history of ontology” announced in Being and Time would seek to retrieve and to open up an entirely other dimension of Being, a dimension foreclosed by the Greek beginning and yet awaiting us precisely as the unthought of that beginning and the tradition to which it gave rise. The destructuring would take as its guiding thread an understanding of the Being of Dasein—designating the being that we ourselves in each case are—as radically temporal, never simply present-at-hand, and essentially inaccessible to theoretical apprehension. Yet the critical resource for this analytic of the Being of Dasein was, for the early Heidegger, itself provided by Greek philosophy: It was Aristotle’s insight into the Being of the human being as praxis, and its authentic mode of self-disclosure, phron!sis, that led Heidegger to see the radically different kind of temporality pertaining to human existence, by contrast with the theoretically ascertained time of nature as something present-at-hand, and provided a key insight into the essence of “truth” (aletheia) as unconcealment. Aristotle’s insight into this more primordial sense of aletheia or “truth” as the knowing self-disclosure of our radically temporal Being-in-the-world as praxis, as opposed to truth conceived as a property of logos, judgment, or theoretical knowledge, was a forgotten thread of Greek philosophy that could shed light upon the limits and foundations of the theoretical tradition that dominates the subsequent history of ontology.

Being and Motion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nail
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Ontology ◽  
Fundamental Categories

Being and Motion offers an original philosophical ontology of movement. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold in the West? This book is the first major work of systematic ontology to answer this question and finally overturn this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from the ground up: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from the early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility, and yet we lack a single contemporary ontology that takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. Being and Motion sets out to remedy this lacuna in contemporary thought by providing a historical ontology of our present: an ontology of movement.

scholarly journals Heidegger and Hegel: The phenomenological method as the Topos of their confrontation (Studiæ Heideggerianæ I)

2015 ◽  
pp. 363-392
Author(s):  
Milan Brdar
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
Fundamental Ontology ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Philosophical Ontology ◽  
Individual Self

In this article the author examines Heidegger?s understanding of the phenomenological method and scrutinizes the coherence of its application in Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927). The explication of the method is elaborated by focusing on Heidegger?s critique of Husserl and a comparative analysis between Heidegger and Hegel, emphasizing aspects of their respective methods that they have in common and showing the differences. On this basis a critique of Being and Time is developed from the methodological point of view. The most important insight of this insistence on the consistency of the application of the phenomenological method in Being and Time would result in the analytical demarcations between the hermeneutics of facticity - as a procedure of individual self-interpretation of the everyday Dasein, existential analytics - as a philosophical reflection aiming at the universal conditions and limits of Dasein?s hermeneutic of facticity, and the fundamental ontology - as a basis for constructing the philosophical ontology that can address the being as such and its meaning. As it is well known, such distinctions are not present in Heidegger?s work and author argues that this is consequence of the inconsistent application of his proposed method. This is the main strategic weakness inherent in Being and Time as a Heidegger?s central work. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the conception of the phenomenological method as conceptualized by Heidegger leads directly to considerations that would become known only after 1930, that is after the turn (Kehre), as the domain of Heidegger II, which represent investigations into the history of being, and the Event (Ereignis) in the sense of the self-discovery of being.

Kuhn, Thomas Samuel (1922–96)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hoyningen-Huene
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Physicist ◽  
Important Publication

The early 1960s saw substantial turmoil in the philosophy of science, then dominated by logical empiricism. Most important was the confrontation of the prevailing philosophical tradition with the history of science. Whereas the philosophy of science was mainly normatively oriented, that is it tried to delineate what good science should look like, historical studies seemed to indicate that the practice of science both past and present did not follow those prescriptions. Thomas S. Kuhn was educated as a theoretical physicist but soon turned to the history and philosophy of science. In 1962, he published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR). This book was the single most important publication advancing the confrontation between the history and the philosophy of science; it is now a classic in science studies. SSR was most influential not only in the discussion within philosophy but also in various other fields, especially the social sciences. The central concepts of SSR, like scientific revolution, paradigm shift and incommensurability, have been in the focus of philosophical discussion for many years, and the term ‘paradigm’ has even become a household word (although mostly not in Kuhn’s intended sense). After SSR, Kuhn continued to develop his theory; apart from minor modifications it is mainly the explication of SSR’s more intricate philosophical topics, especially of incommensurability, which is characteristic of his later work.

Roshdi Rashed

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 279-295
Author(s):  
Mohammed Aref
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Great Book ◽  
Mathematical Language ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Elementary Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

This review essay introduces the work of the Egyptian scientific historian and philosopher Roshdi Rashed, a pioneer in the field of the history of Arab sciences. The article is based on the five volumes he originally wrote in French and later translated into Arabic, which were published by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and which are now widely acclaimed as a unique effort to unveil the achievements of Arab scientists. The essay reviews this major work, which seems, like Plato’s Republic to have “No Entry for Those Who Have No Knowledge of Mathematics” written on its gate. If you force your way in, even with elementary knowledge of computation, a philosophy will unfold before your eyes, described by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei as “written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” The essay is a journey through this labyrinth where the history of world mathematics got lost and was chronicled by Rashed in five volumes translated from the French into Arabic. It took him fifteen years to complete.

The Art of Chinese Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Goldin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Han Feizi ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crucial Characteristic ◽  
The Way

This book provides an unmatched introduction to eight of the most important works of classical Chinese philosophy—the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. The book places these works in rich context that explains the origin and meaning of their compelling ideas. Because none of these classics was written in its current form by the author to whom it is attributed, the book begins by asking, “What are we reading?” and showing that understanding the textual history of the works enriches our appreciation of them. A chapter is devoted to each of the eight works, and the chapters are organized into three sections: “Philosophy of Heaven,” which looks at how the Analects, Mozi, and Mencius discuss, often skeptically, Heaven (tian) as a source of philosophical values; “Philosophy of the Way,” which addresses how Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi introduce the new concept of the Way (dao) to transcend the older paradigms; and “Two Titans at the End of an Age,” which examines how Xunzi and Han Feizi adapt the best ideas of the earlier thinkers for a coming imperial age. In addition, the book presents explanations of the protean and frequently misunderstood concept of qi—and of a crucial characteristic of Chinese philosophy, nondeductive reasoning. The result is an invaluable account of an endlessly fascinating and influential philosophical tradition.

The Problem of the Formation of Philosophical Prose in Persian

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 126-137
Author(s):  
Tatyana G. Korneeva
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Texts

The article discusses the problem of the formation of philosophical prose in the Persian language. The first section presents a brief excursion into the history of philosophical prose in Persian and the stages of formation of modern Persian as a language of science and philosophy. In the Arab-Muslim philosophical tradition, representatives of various schools and trends contributed to the development of philosophical terminology in Farsi. The author dwells on the works of such philosophers as Ibn Sīnā, Nāṣir Khusraw, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, ʼAbū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and gives an overview of their works written in Persian. The second section poses the question whether the Persian language proved able to compete with the Arabic language in the field of science. The author examines the style of philosophical prose in Farsi, considering the causes of creation of Persian-language philosophical texts and defining their target audience. The article presents viewpoints of modern orientalist researchers as well as the views of medieval philosophers who wrote in Persian. We find that most philosophical texts in Persian were written for a public who had little or no knowledge of the Arabic language, yet wanted to get acquainted with current philosophical and religious doctrines, albeit in an abbreviated format. The conclusion summarizes and presents two positions regarding the necessity of writing philosophical prose in Persian. According to one point of view, Persian-language philosophical works helped people who did not speak Arabic to get acquainted with the concepts and views of contemporary philosophy. According to an alternative view, there was no special need to compose philosophical texts in Persian, because the corpus of Arabic philosophical terminology had already been formed, and these Arabic terms were widely and successfully used, while the new Persian philosophical vocabulary was difficult to understand.

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