This thesis is a study of the role of the phenomenon of death in Heidegger’s philosophy. The central argument is twofold. First, death is the fulcrum of Heidegger’s philosophy. As such, second, death is a crucial key to Heidegger’s thought in its entirety. Thus I claim is that a response to the question of being can be given, if one takes death into account. This thesis, therefore, investigates the four main blocks of Heidegger’s philosophy and the role of death in (...) them. I identify the four main blocks of Heidegger’s philosophy as follows. First, Heidegger’s early transcendental analysis of Dasein’s existence. Second, the thinking of being as event. Third, Heidegger’s critique of technology. Fourth, Heidegger’s engagement with language. The thesis is divided into four topical parts according to these blocks. In the first part I argue that death serves as Dasein’s utmost limit and as such death is constitutive of Dasein’s existential possibilities. The analysis of Dasein’s horizons of understanding is what leads Heidegger to turn to being itself. In the second part I identify the place of death in the thinking of the event and in Heidegger’s theory of history as the history of being. I argue that death becomes an interest of being as such and is testimony to its epochs. Third, I argue that death continues to play a significant role in Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. This is because the essence of technology is a mode of being itself in the sense that being allows for a certain understanding of the current technological age. Thus, technology is an interest of being itself, too, and the essence of technology is sheer availability. Heidegger begins to call death the refuge of being at this time, which indicates that death is as the utterly unavailable, the resting place of being. As such, I argue in parts III and IV, death coenables the fourfold, which is Heidegger’s response to the technological world. In the fourfold things are not manipulated but form the bedrock of a shared communal world. In part IV I develop Heidegger’s claim that there is an essential relation between death and language. In the information age language is reduced to a transmitter of information. Thanks to its relation with death as the utterly unavailable language retains other dimensions that elude the demands of technology. (shrink)

Recently, there have been attempts at offering new justifications of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. Blain Neufeld has suggested that the ideal of political autonomy justifies public reason, while R.J. Leland and Han van Wietmarschen have sought to justify the idea by appealing to the value of political community. In this paper, I show that both proposals are vulnerable to a common problem. In realistic circumstances, they will often turn into reasons to oppose, rather than support, public reason. However, (...) this counterintuitive result can be avoided if we conceive of autonomy and community differently. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In ita original form the present paper was presented to the American Mathematical Society, April 2k,, as a companion piece to the writer's ...

The introduction of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD) protocols is by some regarded as controversial and ethically troublesome. One of the main concerns that opponents have about introducing NRP in cDCDD protocols is that reestablishing circulation will negate the determination of death by circulatory criteria, potentially resuscitating the donor. In this article, I argue that this is not the case. If we take a closer look at the concept of death underlying the (...) circulatory criterion for determination of death, we find that the purpose of the criterion is to show whether the organism as a whole has died. I argue that this purpose is fulfilled by the circulatory criterion in cDCDD protocols, and that applying NRP does not negate the determination of death or resuscitate the donor. (shrink)

The vital status of patients who are a part of controlled donation after circulatory death (cDCD) is widely debated in bioethical literature. Opponents to currently applied cDCD protocols argue that they violate the dead donor rule, while proponents of the protocols advocate compatibility. In this article, we argue that both parties often misinterpret the moral implications of the dead donor rule. The rule as such does not require an assessment of a donor’s vital status, we contend, but rather an assessment (...) of whether procurement of organs in cDCD cause the death of the donor or not. We then argue that commonly practiced cDCD protocols do not violate the dead donor rule, since the donation does not trigger or cause the death of the donors. (shrink)

Investigates the assumptions of such philosophers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and Sartre regarding Jewish existence.

In Professional Ethics and Civic Morals , Emile Durkheim outlined the core of his theory of morality and social rights which was to dominate his work throughout the course of his life. In Durkheim's view, sociology is a science of morals which are objective social facts, and these moral regulations form the basis of individual rights and obligations. This book is crucial to an understanding of Durkheim's sociology because it contains his much-neglected theory of the state as a moral institution, (...) and it provides an understanding of his critique of anomie and egoistic individualism. The growing interest in cultural revolution and moral regulation make this edition of Durkheim's classic work especially timely. The new preface by Bryan Turner sets the book in its intellectual and historical context, and illustrates the relevance of this work to present day debates on the state, society, and moral regulation. (shrink)

" -- Franklin H. Littell In To Mend the World Emil L. Fackenheim points the way to Judaism's renewal in a world and an age in which all of our notions -- about ...

Selections from Durkheim's writings focus on the nature of his conception of society and its moral context.

We investigate the computational complexity of deciding whether a given inference rule is admissible for some modal and superintuitionistic logics. We state a broad condition under which the admissibility problem is coNEXP-hard. We also show that admissibility in several well-known systems (including GL, S4, and IPC) is in coNE, thus obtaining a sharp complexity estimate for admissibility in these systems.

A detailed exploration of Jewish thought and how it compares with the ideas of modern philosophy.

We develop approximate counting of sets definable by Boolean circuits in bounded arithmetic using the dual weak pigeonhole principle (dWPHP(PV)), as a generalization of results from [15]. We discuss applications to formalization of randomized complexity classes (such as BPP, APP, MA, AM) in PV₁ + dWPHP(PV).

We develop canonical rules capable of axiomatizing all systems of multiple-conclusion rules over K4 or IPC, by extension of the method of canonical formulas by Zakharyaschev [37]. We use the framework to give an alternative proof of the known analysis of admissible rules in basic transitive logics, which additionally yields the following dichotomy: any canonical rule is either admissible in the logic, or it is equivalent to an assumption-free rule. Other applications of canonical rules include a generalization of the Blok–Esakia (...) theorem and the theory of modal companions to systems of multiple-conclusion rules or (finitary structural global) consequence relations, and a characterization of splittings in the lattices of consequence relations over monomodal or superintuitionistic logics with the finite model property. (shrink)

We show that IPC, K4, GL, and S4, as well as all logics inheriting their admissible rules, have independent bases of admissible rules.

Excerpt from Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Kunstwissenschaft Tiefsinn ist ein Anzeichen des Chaos, das echte Wissenschaft in einen Kosmos verwandeln will, in eine einfache, vollig klare, aufgeloste Ordnung. Echte Wissenschaft kennt, soweit ihre wirkliche Lehre reicht, keinen Tiefsinn. Jedes Stuck fertiger Wissenschaft ist ein Ganzes von den Denkschritten, deren jeder unmittelbar einsichtig, also gar nicht tiefsinnig ist. Tiefsinn ist Sache der Weisheit, begriffliche Deutlichkeit und Klarheit Sache der strengen Theorie. Die Ahnungen des Tiefsinns in eindeutige rationale Gestaltungen umzupragen, das ist der (...) wesentliche Prozel 3 der Neukonstitution strenger Wissenschaften Diese Worte Edmund Husserls stelle ich an den Anfang meines Buches; nicht als Versuch einer Rechtfertigung oder gar Entschuldigung, sondern als Programm. Sie sollen zugleich die Schar derer vor Enttauschungen Warnen, die geistschillernde Betrachtungen uber Kunst und Kunstler erwarten; gluhende Hymnen uber das Mysterium der Kunst, uber das unbegreifliche Wunder schopferi scher Kraft. Nicht um Mysterien und Wunder handelt es sich mir, sondern um ernste und exakte wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis, um die Gewinnung von Grundlagen auf einem Gebiet, das - zwischen der Asthetik und den historischen Kunstdisziplinen gelegen bisher fast ganzlich die angemessene Forschungseinstellung entbehrt hat. So wendet sich dieses Werk einerseits an Philosophen und anderseits an die Vertreter der Kunstgeschichte, Literaturgeschichte usw. Beide Parteien mussen verzeihen, wenn manche Ausfuhrungen fur ihre Bedurfnisse zu breit angelegt sind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most plausibly interpreted in externalist terms. On this alternative view, (...) what is justifiable to persons is not in any way dependent on, or relativized to, their beliefs and commitments. Instead, what is justifiable to all in the relevant sense is what all could accept as free and equal. I defend this reinterpretation of the view by showing how it is supported by Rawls’s account of the freedom and equality of persons. In addition, a considerable advantage of this suggestion is that it allows for an inclusive account of to whom the exercise of political power must be made justifiable. (shrink)

In his book The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Kvanvig argues that there is an interchangeability of personal and doxastic justification, which ‘blocks the quick route to virtue epistemology’. To prove that personal justification is reducible to doxastic justification, he utilizes λ-calculus expressions that aim to show the logical equivalence of the two notions of justification. In this paper, I argue that he has made an illegitimate move (...) in his translation of the ordinary talk of personal justification into λ-expressions because his translation involves both an elimination from and an addition to the ordinary language. Pace Kvanvig, there is no logical equivalence of personal to doxastic justification. So, his argument for the reducibility of personal to doxastic justification founders. More importantly, since he has failed to disprove that personal justification is irreducibly primitive, he hasn’t shown that the prospects for virtue epistemology are ‘hopeless’. (shrink)

In this influential work, first published in English in 1963, Durkheim and Mauss claim that the individual mind is capable of classification and they seek the origin of the ‘classificatory function’ in society. On the basis of an intensive examination of forms and principles of symbolic classification reported from the Australian aborigines, the Zuñi and traditional China, they try to establish a formal correspondence between social and symbolic classification. From this they argue that the mode of classification is determined by (...) the form of society and that the notions of space, time, hierarchy, number, class and other such cognitive categories are products of society. Dr Needham’s introduction assesses the validity of Durkhiem and Mauss’s argument, traces its continued influence in various disciplines, and indicates its analytical value for future researches in social anthropology. (shrink)