Figal has long been recognized as one of the most insightful interpreters working in the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics and its leading themes concerned with ancient Greek thought, art, language, and history. With this book, Figal presses this tradition of philosophical hermeneutics in new directions. In his effort to forge philosophical hermeneutics into a hermeneutical philosophy, Figal develops an original critique of the objectification of the world that emerges in modernity as the first stage in his systematic (...) treatment of the elements of experience hermeneutically understood. Breaking through the prejudices of modernity, but not sacrificing the importance and challenge of the objective world that confronts us and is in need of interpretation, Figal reorients how it is that philosophy should take up some of its most longstanding and stubborn questions. World, object, space, language, freedom, time, and life are refreshed as philosophical notions here since they are each regarded as elements of human life engaged in the task assigned to each of us—the task of understanding ourselves and our world. (shrink)

Czech translation of Günter Figal’s lecture Theorie und Praxis: Über die Möglichkeit ihrer klassischen Verhältnisbestimmung.

This chapter is concerned with hermeneutics, and Martin Heidegger presents a precise and comprehensive outline of the hermeneutical tradition. Edmund Husserl's understanding of the phenomenological attitude is nearly connected to his understanding of phenomena. Gadamer's step beyond Heidegger's conception of phenomenon has a decisive advantage. According to Gadamer's conception, the deictic correlation is only a ‘phase’ in understanding; the hermeneutical and phenomenological orientation to texts could discern it as the basic structure of hermeneutical phenomenology. Paul Ricœur's hermeneutical phenomenology has no (...) phenomena. Phenomenality is more like a pattern of transparence and obscurity, of surface and depth, of denseness and distinctive structures. Phenomenological analysis has its paradigm in the interpretation of phenomenal objects. In this sense, it is hermeneutical. (shrink)

Heideggers »Schwarze Hefte« enthalten antisemitische Ressentiments von einer bisher nicht bekannten Schärfe. Sie erlauben, Heideggers politische Position genauer zu bestimmen als bisher, und geben darüber hinaus Aufschluss über dessen Geschichts-, Philosophie- und Selbstbild. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes bieten eine fundierte philosophische Kontextualisierung und Bewertung.

This first book-length work of the prominent German philosopher Gunter Figal to appear in English offers a radical defense of metaphysical philosophy in the era of postmodern thought.

Realism is a term that can be understood only by contrasting it with an opposite term, such as idealism or representationalism. But representationalism has indeed to presuppose something that is represented,in order for the representation to be possible at all. This does not mean,however, to fall prey to a naïve realism: our grasp on reality is always determined by our own way of accessing it. A realism which can take hold of this presupposition is to be called phenomenological realism. In (...) this sense, reality is always given only in representation, that is, mediated by our access to it, but is not itself representation. It is an objectivity opposed to ourself, it has a particular place and it appears, but its appearance does not belong to the subject, it is simply there. Therefore, appearances are spatial and have to be described as such. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to solve a key problem of phenomenology. The problem is given with the double role of the revealing capacity for which phenomena are present. On the one hand, this capacity must be prior to all phenomena, because it allows phenomena to show themselves and thus to be what they essentially are. On the other hand, the revealing capacity must be situated in the midst of phenomena; it must belong to the phenomenal world in order to (...) have access to it. This problem has been discussed in different versions by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, but in every version it remains aporetic. The problem can be solved by conceiving the capacity, which reveals phenomena, as spatial. The paper shows how the essential priority of the revealing capacity as well as its situatedness in the midst of phenomena has spatial character. Phenomenology thus is spatial thinking. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to solve a key problem of phenomenology. The problem is given with the double role of the revealing capacity for which phenomena are present. On the one hand, this capacity must be prior to all phenomena, because it allows phenomena to show themselves and thus to be what they essentially are. On the other hand, the revealing capacity must be situated in the midst of phenomena; it must belong to the phenomenal world in order to (...) have access to it. This problem has been discussed in different versions by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, but in every version it remains aporetic. The problem can be solved by conceiving the capacity, which reveals phenomena, as spatial. The paper shows how the essential priority of the revealing capacity as well as its situatedness in the midst of phenomena has spatial character. Phenomenology thus is spatial thinking. (shrink)

In seinem 1960 erschienenen Hauptwerk "Wahrheit und Methode" nimmt Gadamer die bis in die Antike zuruckreichende hermeneutische Tradition auf, um vor allem im Anschluss an Hegel und Heidegger eine philosophische Hermeneutik zu begrunden.

The Heidegger Reader brings key texts from the entire course of Heidegger’s philosophical career into one volume. Many of the selections, translated here for the first time, offer new insight into Heidegger’s thought for both the beginning student and the experienced scholar. A critical and interpretive introduction by Günter Figal traces the many thematic paths that are necessary for developing a comprehensive understanding of Heidegger’s most important work. The carefully chosen readings are designed to reflect the concerns that are (...) most relevant to philosophy today. Special features include an authoritative chronology of Heidegger’s life, a current list of the Complete Works, and a definitive translation of Heidegger’s controversial interview with Der Spiegel. (shrink)

Deux questions sont ici liées l’une à l’autre. D’un côté, il s’agit de suivre pas à pas les réflexions des dernières années de Heidegger sur la phénoménologie, telles qu’elles se donnent à lire avant tout dans le séminaire de Freiburg-Zähringen en 1973 et dans les notes posthumes. De l’autre côté, l’interprétation tardive de Parménide est ici discutée, et il est montré que Heidegger lie sa conception révisée de la phénoménologie avec une compréhension « tautologique » de la pensée de l’être (...) chez Parménide, et comment il fait ce lien. Le but de cet article est de discuter de manière critique les limites d’une phénoménologie orientée vers la parole en tant qu’elle nomme. (shrink)

In this essay, I wish to elucidate the specific function architectural photography has for the experience of buildings. With photographs, the image character of buildings can be discovered and represented, and thereby the nature of habitation can be revealed as well. Taking or contemplating pictures of habitable rooms one could learn that habitation is primarily perceptional—a character mostly concealed by the dominance of everyday practice. In order to give an impression of the manifold possibilities architectural photography holds, I discuss the (...) work of five quite different photographic artists, namely Julius Shulman, Yutaka Saito, Candida Höfer, Cy Twombly, and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. It argues that philosophical claims are bound to language, and yet philosophy’sclaim to objective clarity is meaningless if language is radically perspectival. The paper attempts to show the limitations and possibilities that Platonic dialectics and Derridean deconstruction share in their respective approaches to the analysis of language and the relationship between speech and writing. The paper concludes that language is ambiguous, neither reducible to the relativism of sophistry nor to (...) the essentialism of metaphysics. Against Derrida, the paper argues that without structure, voice is not language; it renders only inarticulate sounds. Yet in speaking, this structural aspect gets taken for granted and passed over. Only when language is established in writing is the possibility of voice first recognized. (shrink)

For philosophical hermeneutics as Hans‐Georg Gadamer conceived it, art plays an essential role. If hermeneutics and aesthetics are as strictly opposed as Gadamer suggests, the “abstraction” performed by aesthetic consciousness must be an abstraction from the truth of art. As the result of such an abstraction, the aesthetic view of art is secondary; it must be conceived of as nonoriginal experience of art, which, derivative as it is supposed to be, is only possible on the basis of original experience, as (...) an abstraction from it. Aesthetic objects are essentially correlated to perception, the word for which in Ancient Greek is ‘aesthesis’. But aesthetic objects cannot be coextensive with everything perceptible; otherwise, the term “aesthetic” could not be used significantly in respect to artworks. Being perceptibly present, artworks present phenomenal structures of meaning, texts in textures, which must not be directly applied to the factual world or identified with its “essence”. (shrink)

The article explores the relation of Plato’s criticism of poetry in Politeia to a seemingly unusual fact that one of his most important dialogues the Symposium is essentially a poetic work, and not a philosophical one. The analysis and the interpretation of the dialogue’s content show that philosophy is concealed in it, that is, presented in its absence. Socratic dialogue-dialectical mode of argumentation constitutes only a transitory episode in the totality of the work, whereas the rest of the content is (...) on the one hand dedicated to a pre-philosophical discourse, embodied in the speeches of all Socrates’s predecesors, and on the other in Diotima’s speech, which greatly surpasses and overcomes discoursive possibilities of philosophy. The Symposium then makes the inner tension as well as harmonious afinity of poetry and phi- losophy obvious in a poetic manner. Even though they both aspire to that which is divine, poetry aims at that which is in itself organized and adjusted, and which is, just like poetry, always an presentation of the highest divine beauty, while philosophy aims at that which is good, that is, at openness and freedom in which that which exists manifests itself in all its truth.Der Aufsatz thematisiert das Verhältnis zwischen Platons Dichtungskritik in Politeia und der auf den ersten Blick befremdlichen Tatsache, daß einer der wichtigsten Dialoge Platons, sein Symposion, im Wesentlichen kein streng philosophisches, sonder eher ein poetisches Werk ist. Durch eine Analyse und Interpretation des Dialog wird gezeigt, daß die Philosophie hier auf eine zum Teil verbergende Weise zugegen ist, nämlich in ihrer Abwesenheit. Sokrates’ dialogisch-dialektische Art, das Gespräch zu führen, macht nämlich nur eine überleitende Episode des Werks aus, während der ganze übrige Inhalt entweder dem vorphilosophischen Diskurs gewidmet ist, realisiert durch Sokrates’ Vorredner, oder dem überphilosophischen, in der Rede Diotimas, in der die diskursiven Möglichkeiten der Philosophie grundsätzlich überschritten werden. Das Symposion macht also auf poetische Weise die innere Spannung zwischen Dichtung und Philosophie offenkundig, die zugleich ihre wesentliche Zusammengehörigkeit in sich birgt. Obwohl es in beiden um das Göttliche geht, ist die Dichtung auf jenes gerichtet, was in sich harmonisch und geordnet und somit als menschliche Schönheit immer die Darstellung höchster göttlicher Schönheit ist, während die Philosophie auf das Gute ausgerichtet ist, d. h. auf die Offenheit und Freiheit, in welcher sich alles, was ist, in seiner jeweils eigenen Wahrheit zeigt. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 4 Seiten: 798-806.

Plato's cntique of poetry in the Republic aims at elucidating the relationship between poetry and philosophy to show the possibility of philosophical thinking. Both philosophy and poetry represent two own ways of experience depending on each other. While poetry is characterized as deceptive, philo- sophy proves herself as experience of tmth with an offspnng in her strife with poetry's untmth, since the latter is unable to express the difference fundamental to her st~cture as mimesis or representation: the difference between the (...) represented Sache and mimesis herself, this recognition of difference being the only way to a measure of her appropriateness to the Sache. Criticizing the mimetic lack of poetry, philosophy leams about her exclusive abilities as mimetic art herself: to perform the mimetic distance in interrogating her mimetic appropriateness and by this to gain a tme understanding about the represented. (shrink)