φρόνη­σις and σοφία as kinds of knowledge and being Aristotle, Heidegger, Gadamer Φρόνη­σις and σοφία, practical and theoretical knowledge, were described by Aristotle as essential for the perfection of human life and thus for achieving happiness, the supreme good. The investigation of the relationship between the “highest” virtues and between the correspondent life ideals by Heidegger and Gadamer “made” the Stagirite “talk” in the 20 th century from the perspective of Heidegger’s question of Being and Gadamer’s philosophical Hermeneutics. A renewed (...) interpretation of the πρᾶξις/θεω­ρία interrelation elaborated by Aristotle could contribute to the development of attitudes required to face the current challenges, and so keep on making the Stagirite’s “doctrine” fruitful for our present. (shrink)

Heidegger, Lukacs and Heller confronted the “crisis” of modernity already at the beginning of their own paths of thinking and asked how to address it. Lukacs did never completely lose faith in politics, whereas Heidegger and Heller only briefly leant on a party to direct the course of history. Heidegger and Lukacs described modem life as an “unowned” existence occasioned by the metaphysics’ “forgetfulness of Being” and the “reification of consciousness” in the late capitalism respectively. Whilst Heidegger entrusted the task (...) of preparing a “turning” to the thinking of the truth of Being and Lukacs assigned materialistic dialectic to undertake a revolution, Heller worked out an ethics of responsibility that can both keep under control the modernity’s “dark side” and make again fruitful in today’s multicultural society the main achievement of the modem age, that is, freedom. (shrink)