Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an English-language anthology. Two of the essays have never before been published in any language ; three of (...) the essays have never been published in English before , and two of the essays provide previews of works in progress by major scholars. (shrink)

Heidegger’s phenomenology is not focused on concepts but on the self-showing of phenomena. In Being and Time, section 44, it is not only everyday objects that show themselves – a true statement about a room lets the room show itself, but in addition the event of truth is an uncovering, Entdecken, that also shows itself. Truth is a phenomenon for the phenomenologist. Thus this article replies to Tugendhat and other critics who claim that Heidegger has not measured up to the (...) standards imposed by their concept of truth. It also supports replies made to Tugendhat by Dahlstrom and others. Later sections of the paper show why Heidegger was right to broaden the discussion beyond statements, to encompass the truth of conduct, of things, of the world and of Dasein. (shrink)

The first part of the book traces the role of interpretation in everyday perceptual experiences. The second half explores the question: What makes an interpretation true? The book concludes by showing what observations on language are prompted by the herm.

This article examines Heidegger’s account of existence by proceeding through one of his early accounts of our historical being and then looking at two of his later treatments of our historical being. Throughout his whole work, Heidegger seeks to show that destiny, das Geschick, is the essential constituent of history, die Geschichte. My own argument—--which is intended as an extension and application of Heidegger’s, not merely an exegesis--—is to formulate a still broader concept derived from das Geschick, which I call (...) civilisation. I conclude with the claim that civilisation is a normative principle as well as a descriptive one, and can take on the role of justifying thelaws and institutions of our communities. (shrink)

Emil Fackenheim, now retired from the University of Toronto, is one of Canada's most influential and internationally recognized philosophers. Bringing together philosophy and Jewish studies, his writings are relevant to a number of philosophical inquiries, including the philosophy of history, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. In this book an international group of publishers presents an overview of Fackenheim's thought. The volume includes an introduction, ten papers, and response from Fackenheim himself. Among the topics discussed are the influence of Hegel (...) and German philosophy on Fackenheim, the elements that make up his own philosophy, and his views on Judaism, the Holocaust, and Christianity. (shrink)

This manuscript is a close reading of a significant article by Heidegger entitled "On the Essence of Truth'. The first part is a reading of the 1930 lecture which forms the basis of the article eventually published in 1943. It is followed by a second part in which Nicholson compares closely the original lecture with its subsequent versions eliciting the subsequent changes and detours of his thoughts on "truth" over this period. The result is a very thorough examination of Heidegger's (...) thoughts on the concept of "truth". (shrink)

Although the scientific method has reached deeply into our intellectual and social life, there are places where it stops short, where its limitations become evident to us all. In these cases we discover that science can go about its explanations in its usual way, but that it does not tell us anything very interesting, and especially not what we most want to know. Let us think of music and painting, drama and ballet. No doubt a scientific method can tell us (...) something about them, but nothing very important or enlightening, perhaps something about their acoustical or chromatic materials, or some sort of evolutionary background. The scientists who try to go further than that in their explanations of the arts have earned a reputation for being reductionist in the bad sense. It is also my view that the incompetence of science becomes evident when it is applied to the interpretation of law and religion, love and many other forms of human aspiration -- but I shall not argue that point here. For what I hope to show is that the study of an elementary, fundamental human experience, seeing, is best pursued by certain philosophical methods that are not what we call scientific. The same applies to hearing. Many scientific studies have been made of seeing and hearing, but in my view they have not succeeded in the way that philosophy has in revealing the true character of these experiences. I shall devote the first two sections of this paper to outlining one philosophical approach to seeing that I regard as successful -- an approach I develop by working through key sections of Heidegger's Being and Time -- and then, in the concluding section, I point to the defects that I believe mark the approach of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects (...) for Europe in the coming years. Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger’s leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world’s leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the “fusion of horizons” also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture. (shrink)

"Graeme Nicholson addresses the fundamental topic of ontology, perhaps the fundamental topic posed to philosophy and the human mind: what is being?, i.e., what is it to exist or to be? He initially shows that we humans must be understood to be "existers" and "disclosers"--terms that render Heidegger's concept Dasein. Heidegger's philosophy provides the basic viewpoint, but Professor Nicholson offers an interpretation of Heidegger that seeks to set deconstructionist and pragmatist readings to one side. Since, according to Heidegger, being is (...) fundamentally a union of presence and absence, this study shows that metaphysical theories have always offered positive illustrations or interpretations of being." "Illustrations of Being then goes on to scrutinize the four most fundamental determinations of being that Western thought has adumbrated: being as substance, especially in Greek ontology; being as reality, especially in the period from Descartes to Kant, and therefore in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science; the logic of being, in which Nicholson undertakes an ontological critique of mathematical logic; and being as the transformation of form--the key idea that runs from Christian patristics, through Hegel and Marx, to modern dialectics." "Graeme Nicholson's new study is marked by its receptiveness to metaphysics in the traditional sense, and contains a critique of the deconstructionist effort to pass beyond metaphysics. It will be of interest to professional philosophers and to theologians, as well as to graduate students and to members of the general public interested in philosophical arguments about the nature of being."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)