This paper argues that a number of entrenched posthumanist positions are seriously flawed as a result of their dependence on a technical interpretive approach that creates more problems than it solves. During the course of our discussion we consider in particular the question of personhood. After all, until we can determine what it means to be a person we cannot really discuss what it means to improve a person. What kinds of enhancements would even constitute improvements? This in turn leads (...) to an examination of the technical model of analysis and the recurring tendency to approach notions like personhood using this technical model. In looking to sketch a Heideggerian account of personhood, we are reaffirming what we take to be a Platonic skepticism concerning technical models of inquiry when it comes to certain subjects. Finally we examine the question as to whether the posthumanist looks to apply technology’s benefits in ways that we have reflectively determined to be useful or desirable or whether it is technology itself (or to speak as Heidegger would – the “essence” of technology) which prompts many posthumanists to rely on an excessively reductionist view of the human being. (shrink)

This paper engages the philosophical concepts of subjectification and acknowledgment in conversation with Philip Pullman’s young adult novel, Northern Lights. Our particular focus is Lyra Belacqua, Pullman’s central character. Precarious in her vulnerability and in her unknown significance, we read Lyra as usefully negotiating the dangerous transition from childhood to adolescence. In her negotiation of this complex liminality, we argue that Lyra models those difficult-to-define moments encountered by children as they learn to be in and of the world. Situating our (...) reading in a Philosophy of Education discourse, we draw theoretically from the work of Gert Biesta and Stanley Cavell. With Biesta as the primary focus of our paper, we generalize beyond Northern Lights to argue that the reading of fiction constitutes “a weak educational event” in Biesta’s intriguing understanding of that phrase. Partly as a theoretical framing for the Pullman text, we begin with an outline of Biesta’s philosophy. (shrink)

Biodiversity is a valuable resource that supports sustainability within agricultural systems, yet in contradiction to this agriculture is recognised as a contributor to biodiversity loss. Agricultural advisory services are institutions that support sustainable agricultural development, employing a variety of approaches including farmer discussion groups in doing so. This study evaluates the impact of a farmland biodiversity management (FBM) communication strategy piloted within Irish farmer discussion groups. A sensemaking lens was applied in this objective to gain an understanding of how this (...) strategy could create an actionable space for FBM promotion amongst farmers. The strategy was piloted with six Irish dairy farmer discussion groups, after which focus groups were conducted with members of these groups. Additionally, baseline and endline surveys were completed by the members to determine their knowledge, attitude and on-farm practices relating to FBM. Analysis of the focus group data identified that the communication strategy supported the affordance of sensemaking with respect to FBM. Analysis of the data from the baseline and endline surveys relating to knowledge, attitudes and practices found that engaging with the communication strategy promoted farmers to improve their attitude in relation to FBM. Results from this study provide important lessons for agricultural advisory services to support farmers in incorporating FBM into the overall management of their farms and, in turn, to promote the improvement of farmland biodiversity and contribute to a sustainable future. (shrink)

In recent work Irigaray has continued to meditate on the myopic (we might say ‘monadic’) focus of the Western tradition when it comes to its failure to acknowledge sexuate difference. Irigaray has successfully diagnosed the patriarchally over-determined nature of that tradition masquerading behind a façade of objectivity and neutrality in ways that continue to open up interpretive and critical possibilities in terms of reading the canon today. In some of her work, Irigaray levels a powerful challenge against Heidegger’s conception of (...) Dasein and his point of entry into ‘phenomenological ontology’. Thus, Heidegger, the thinker that Irigaray, arguably, engages with most positively in some of her recent work is charged not just with the ‘exsanguination’ of his conception of Dasein, as it were, but with having neutered Dasein in a way that is all too characteristic of the monadic tendencies of the Western tradition and its enduring suppression of sexuate difference. Part of what we will examine in some depth in this section of the book is a blindspot in Heidegger’s account of Dasein which, for all of his insights concerning the social constitution of Dasein, leaves him open to some of the criticisms which Irigaray has successfully levelled against an entire tradition. As part of our efforts to tease these issues out in some detail, we will consider Derrida’s first Geschlecht essay where he looks to exonerate Heidegger from the charge of phallogocentrism (a charge he had levelled against him in a 1982 interview), along with more recent efforts to artificially cross-pollinate between Heidegger, Derrida and Irigaray. We will further examine the problematic ways that Heidegger looks to ‘neutralise’ Dasein in 1928 as well as his attempts in a series of 1930s texts to introduce a distinction between Dasein and the being of the human being. These attempts dovetail with a series of bizarre and illegitimate moves to exclude “whole peoples and races” from the domain of meaningful historical existence in the 1930s in particular. (shrink)

With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early career researchers and established academic figures in response to To Be Born, my most recent book. The contributors approach key issues of this book from their own scientific fields and perspectives – through calls for a different way of bringing up and educating children, the constitution of a new environmental and sociocultural milieu or the criticism of past metaphysics and the introduction of new themes (...) into the philosophical horizon. However, all the essays which compose the volume correspond to proposals for the advent of a new human being – so answering the subtitle of To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being. To Be Born thus acts as a background from which each author had the opportunity to develop and think in their own way. As such Towards a New Human Being is part of a longer-term undertaking in which I engaged together and in dialogue with more or less confirmed thinkers with a view to giving birth to a new human being and building a new world. –Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and Time have been a longstanding source of confusion and controversy in the literature. Many critics have been keen to identify contradictions between Heidegger’s positive account of the social nature of everyday Dasein and the putatively solipsistic account of authentic Dasein which comes later. This paper focuses on Heidegger’s brief attempts to sketch the outlines for the notion of something like authentic intersubjectivity. In doing so we will (...) see where the temptation arises to read Heidegger as having failed to remain consistent but also how Heidegger himself is responsible for some of the confusion here. (shrink)

Heidegger's thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of "resoluteness" in Being and Time with Heidegger's post-war account of "releasement" in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly 'anti-humanist' thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O'Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger's movement from authenticity to the search (...) for an authentic free relation to the world - as captured by the term "releasement". By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger's thought in its entirety, O'Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy. (shrink)

Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and Time have been a longstanding source of confusion and controversy in the literature. Many critics have been keen to identify contradictions between Heidegger’s positive account of the social nature of everyday Dasein and the putatively solipsistic account of authentic Dasein which comes later. This paper focuses on Heidegger’s brief attempts to sketch the outlines for the notion of something like authentic intersubjectivity. In doing so we will (...) see where the temptation arises to read Heidegger as having failed to remain consistent but also how Heidegger himself is responsible for some of the confusion here. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray’s confrontations with some of the canonical figures in Western Philosophy invite and often challenge us to reconstruct or reconsider how they might respond to her many penetrating insights and searching criticisms. A philosophical figure that, arguably, looms larger than any other for Irigaray is Martin Heidegger. In the following paper, I will gloss some ideas and themes from Heidegger’s work in ways that might push the conversation between Heidegger and Irigaray further or at least shed light on the (...) conversation already taking place. I will do this with the notion of birth/natality in mind, by revisiting Heidegger’s concerns with the importance of nothingness in any projected attempt at an overcoming of Western metaphysics. Against this backdrop we can perhaps begin to see Luce Irigaray’s work as an attempt to offer a thinking that might inaugurate a new or different kind of metaphysics and thus as an overcoming of traditional metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of his famous 1929 inaugural lecture and his 1940s retrospectives on the same lecture along with some related discussions in his 1935 lecture course—Introduction to Metaphysics. The chapter argues that Heidegger’s major concern in his early account of moods is best understood as an attempt to identify the role that absence plays in Dasein’s barest affective states which testify once more to the constant interplay of presence (...) and absence in terms of what it means for anything to be. Though Heidegger looks to clarify his position in later writings, his account of moods is frequently misunderstood by commentators who see Heidegger’s early work as existentialist, humanist and/or anthropological in ways that fail to appreciate how his discussions in the existential analytic and the subsequent account of authenticity are, in fact, fledgling attempts to begin to sketch out the possibility of moving beyond the metaphysics of presence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the topic for this special issue is the relationship between phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality, sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century phenomenologists.

Luce Irigaray’s confrontations with some of the canonical figures in Western Philosophy invite and often challenge us to reconstruct or reconsider how they might respond to her many penetrating insights and searching criticisms. A philosophical figure that, arguably, looms larger than any other for Irigaray is Martin Heidegger. In the following paper, I will gloss some ideas and themes from Heidegger’s work in ways that might push the conversation between Heidegger and Irigaray further or at least shed light on the (...) conversation already taking place. I will do this with the notion of birth/natality in mind (especially given the way that that notion is developed in To Be Born), by revisiting Heidegger’s concerns with the importance of nothingness in any projected attempt at an overcoming of Western metaphysics. Against this backdrop we can perhaps begin to see Luce Irigaray’s work as an attempt to offer a thinking that might inaugurate a new or different kind of metaphysics and thus as an overcoming of traditional metaphysics. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the topic for this special issue is the relationship between phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality, sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century phenomenologists.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward. -/- Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien (...) argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues that, however inflammatory, Heidegger's rhetoric cannot be simply reduced to crude Nazi jingoism. -/- This book is a genuinely philosophical approach to the Heidegger controversy and a much-needed re-examination of his ideas and influences. (shrink)

Mahon O’Brien on the right sort of question to ask about Heidegger’s philosophy and politics.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 2, Page 249-276, June 2022.

A fascinating portrait of a brilliant, complicated and often unattractive human being.

Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals, horseracing has come in for renewed and, in many instances, justifiable scrutiny. This has led to an ongoing public debate concerning the use of the padded whip in particular – a debate which has been reasonably open and well contested. However, the scientific/academic debate has been disappointingly one-sided and, to date, the views of anyone other than those opposed to the continued use of the (...) padded whip have not been given an airing. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance in the academic debate by revisiting some of the key arguments deployed by authors who express grave concerns over the use of the padded whip in racing, challenging what are taken to be significant weaknesses in many of them. For the sport to be able to make informed policy decisions on this important issue, a number of things are needed. First, a critical review of the studies available is needed. And, secondly, gaps in the literature and research need to be flagged. As things stand, the jury is still out from a scientific and philosophical point of view on the issue of whether the padded whip is painful, despite the claims of some of the more vocal critics of the practice. This paper will further look to identify the challenges ahead and the kind of research urgently needed. (shrink)

Teilhard’s cosmological speculation is a valuable basis for an environmental ethics that perceives individual natural objects as good in themselves and the world as good in itself. Teilhard perceives man as fundamentally part of a cosmic environmental whole that is greater than mankind taken individually or collectively. His holistic views on human biological and psychological and social evolution are, I argue,compatible with a biocentric environmental ethics. I discuss some similarities and differences with the views of the deep ecology movement. I (...) show that Teilhard’s hierarchical system is not humanistically oriented in a way that need be interpreted by Teilhardians as contrary to environmental well-being. I argue that Teilhard’s sympathies toward transportation technology, including the automobile, can be interpreted in his holistic manner. I conclude that Teilhard’s theocentric views are also a basis for supporting an environmental ethics which is both optimistic and not anthropocentric. (shrink)

IT has been affirmed frequently that Aristotle’s Physics contains no concept of inertia. Indeed this character, coupled with his great subsequent influence up to the Renaissance, is often considered a key reason for the charge that Aristotle produced a set-back of one thousand years in the development of physics. Our purpose here is to attempt to put in a balanced perspective the Aristotelian doctrine and ancient anticipations of the concept of inertia; no attempt is made to study the medieval period. (...) A classic passage cited to illustrate the position of Aristotle is the analysis of projectile motion in Book VIII of the Physics. (shrink)