Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

Heidegger also famously says that Being depends on Dasein, even though beings in general do not. This is perplexing. “Heidegger and the “There Is” of Being” offers an interpretation of what’s going on in the passages in which this sort of assertion is made.

The argument against need[Need: the belonging of the essence of mortals to, a belonging which is appropriated in the event.]Metaphysically, and t...

"Der Spekulative Realismus nimmt seinen Ausgang von einer Kritik des Korrelationismus. Sein theoretischer Vorteil soll darin bestehen, das Anzestrale, also dasjenige, das es gab, ehe es überhaupt als Seiendes konstatiert werden konnte, besser denken zu können. Gegen diesen Ansatz wird zunächst gezeigt, dass er gerade nicht imstande ist, die Existenz von Fossilien als metaphysischen Beleg anzuführen. Anschließend wird eine neo-realistische Tatsachenontologie als überlegene Alter- native eingeführt und auf ihren Naturbegriff hin befragt. Speculative Realism starts out from a critique of Correlationism. (...) Its theoretical advantage supposedly is its ability to rethink the ancestral, i.e. that which was before it could be stated as Being. This paper argues against this approach by showing that Speculative Realism is precisely not able to employ the existence of fossils as a metaphysical proof. Subsequently, a neorealist ontology of facts is introduced as a superior alternative and questioned in view of its concept of nature. ". (shrink)

It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything. He argues that the concept of existence is (...) incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the relationship between Heidegger’s famous “turn” and realism. I begin with Heidegger’s critique of the problem of an external world, and I describe how this critique anticipates New Realism. I then provide a reconstruction of Heidegger’s self-critique of Being and Time, showing how this work exhibits a higher-order antirealism. Next, I show how Heidegger’s turn is motivated by the inadequacy of this earlier anti-realism. In his philosophy of the event he moves towards a realist ontology (...) by developing concepts such as “destiny”, which he understands to be independent of human attitudes. Nevertheless, Heidegger ultimately falls back into an anti-realism, because Being still remains dependent upon the involvement of human beings. I therefore conclude this essay by briefly arguing for my own version of New Realism, according to which objects are meaningful in a way that is independent of our attitudes towards them. (shrink)

There are different ways to be. This paper explicates and defends this controversial thesis. Special attention is given to the meta-ontology of Martin Heidegger. -/- .