This paper focusses on two prima facie independent assumptions of a – broadly – “Heideggerian” approach to moods: One concerning an apparent methodological impact of moods for a fundamental-ontological enterprise and one concerning a presumed human tendency towards Verfallenheit or inauthenticity. It shows that the liaison of those two assumptions challenges theoretical claims according to which subjects are simply assailed by moods and passive with respect to being in a mood. To do so, it follows Heidegger’s reflections on the methodological (...) impact of moods before turning to Heidegger’s considerations about the fundamental disclosure of what he calls the “burden of existence” in anxiety, a burden which – according to Heidegger – we tend to evade most of the time. This paper suggests that the “evasive” character of this tendency is linked to Heidegger’s claim that anxiety latently structures being-in-the-world and that Heidegger’s brief allusion to a difference between the fact of attuned disclosure and conceding to a mood and to that which it discloses is his attempt to hint at what this ‘latency’ of anxiety might amount to. The focus, then, turns to Sartre, who not only shares Heidegger’s two assumptions but also emphasizes that if one wishes to make sense of such a structuring of life by a latent mood, a theory of moods should be saddled with a theory of la mauvaise foi, or self-deception in the broad sense. (shrink)

This article explores the consecutive modifications that phenomenology underwent in the works of Heidegger and Levinas. In particular, it discusses their importance for contemporary attempts to expand — and transcend — phenomenology in philosophy and the social sciences. Heidegger and Levinas responded to the problem of subjectivity — and intersubjectivity — in diametrically opposed ways and consequently the exposition of their thoughts involves focusing on conceptual dichotomies like finitude and infinity, time and eternity. Ultimately, it is argued that the very (...) conceptions of the human being that the two thinkers furnish under the guise of Dasein and Autrui reveal the impasses associated with western metaphysics and pave the path for the development of more adequate theorizations of subjectivity, radical otherness and communal being. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Podemos ver na ausência de luz, e ouvir na ausência de som? Em seu livro Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (2008), Roy Sorensen defende que sim, que podemos ver a escuridão na ausência de luz, e ouvir o silêncio na ausência de som. Neste artigo, defendo que (...) na escuridão nada vemos, no silêncio nada ouvimos, e que experienciar a ausência de luz e som é uma questão afetiva, e não perceptual. (shrink)

This study examines German educational philosopher Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s existential-hermeneutic theory of discontinuous forms of education, unstetige formen der Erziehung. At the core of this theory is a view of human being subjected to education that appears disruptive and critical, influencing the development of disclosing the true powers of a person and unfolding of truths about oneself that could not be uncovered otherwise. Typically, this theory has been interpreted on the continuum of hermeneutic philosophy, as hermeneutic pedagogy with an extension (...) of Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, antisubjectivism and especially his theory of truth as unconcealment. According to this line of interpretation, Bollnow’s project brings an existential addition to classical pedagogical theories, as a level of appealing pedagogy. According to this existentialist view, education in a strict sense cannot really take place: it could not affect the true core of a person, nor this person could be subjected under any pedagogical influence in any meaningful way. The only task left for education is to appeal to the conscience of an already autonomous person. However, in this study it is claimed that this line of interpretation falls short to the fact that Bollnow’s philosophy of education builds heavily on his overall philosophical-anthropological project, which springs from Kant’s first critique and especially, as shown in this work, from Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. The study shows, that Bollnow’s discontinuous forms of education are not resulted from hermeneutic educational reality, with an extension of existential potentiality to authenticity of a person. In fact, one could not derive such a view from mere hermeneutics. Instead, what Bollnow’s structural view of educational reality indicates, is that it should be understood as a phenomenological description of a priori categorical structures. It is claimed in the work, that the discontinuous forms are the products of phenomenological reduction. They are derived from the direct experience within consciousness, from the essence of what is experienced, from the very nature of what is it like to be in a process of becoming human. From this perspective, from the subject-point, education cannot be described as a paradox of freedom and restriction between educator and educatee, nor transmission of culture between generations, but instead could be described as the subjective experience of being educated or educating oneself, disclosing oneself to oneself, which is constituted only by the necessary conditions of these subjective experiences of discontinuity. (shrink)

The notions of 'meaning' and 'historicity', of the manner in winch they inform or reflect conceptions of collective or ‘social’ being and of individuality, and of the ways in which these dimensions are primordially experienced by human beings. This investigation concerns primarily the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions and especially Heidegger’s formulation of the notion of historicity as correlative to the 'event' of truth understood in terms of an interplay between disclosure and concealment 0eia) and Gadamer's understanding of 'meaning and historicity’ (...) as an indispensable couplet for both philosophical hermeneutics and the social sciences. Nevertheless the present inquiry does not content itself with an exploration of the notions of 'meaning' and historicity' within the confines of the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition, but rather attempts to attain a more adequate grasp of those concepts by a critical Juxtaposition of Heidegger and Gadamer with accounts that have the 'social' as their point of departure. Thus, Heidegger’s formulations on historicity are not only examined in relation to his 'immediate' legacy of German thought -especially Hegel and Nietzsche- but are also contrasted with conceptions of history pertaining to the Marxist tradition and especially Castoriadis’ conception of the social-historical. In effect, the contrast between 'historicity' and the workings of 'actual' history has arguably prevented a genuine dialogue between the Marxist and the phenomenological camps. Far from being concerned with a synthesis of those traditions or from being preoccupied with justifying either of them I have attempted to show that a combined reading of both is indispensable for the disclosure of the essential dimensions of historical experience. Castoriadis' emphasis on the ‘magmatic’ character of unconscious significations and his grounding of social-historical 'instituting' on the unconscious, together with Heidegger's attempt to link the primordial experience of history with myth have given me occasion to dissociate the very notion of 'meaning' from that of 'rationality'. This should not be interpreted as a rejection of rationality or as an -at bottom- ethical invocation of a return to a pre-Critical philosophical position but rather as an attempt to indicate the primordial manner in which history is accessible in experience and which arguably precedes any thematic theorizing of the historical realm. I have finally attempted to show the antinomies inherent in any attempt to grasp ‘rationally’ the social-historical by a detailed exploration of Gadamer's ambivalent conception of tradition’ and 'prejudice'. Gadamer’s conception of the ‘fusion of horizons’ gave me occasion to reflect further on the manner in which history and truth are made correlatively accessible in thought, in experience, and in historical praxis. (shrink)