Heidegger, Varlık sorusu temelinde Batı metafiziğini eleştirirken Varlık’ın bu gelenekte nasıl aşama aşama unutulduğunu göstermekle kalmayıp aynı zamanda Batı metafizik geleneğinin onto-teolojik yapısını da açığa çıkarmaya çalışır. Ona göre Batı metafiziğinin onto-teolojik yapısı içinde Tanrı kavramı metafizik sistemler için kurucu rolü üstlenir. Tanrı kavramına verilen bu rol Causa Sui’dir. Ancak Heidegger’e göre Tanrı Causa sui olarak, ilahi Tanrı’dan uzaklaşmıştır.

L'auteur, professeur d'histoire de la philosophie à l'université de Sophia Antipolis, s'interroge sur le sens métaphysique, anthropologique et éthique de la statique cartésienne à travers une double réflexion sur les causa sui divine et humaine. De la réponse à cette question dépend l'insertion de la philosophie cartésienne dans l'histoire de la constitution onto-théo-logique de la métaphysique.

Identity and Difference consists of English translations and the original German versions of two little-known lectures given in 1957 by Martin Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity" and "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics.

On Inception is a translation of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe 70. This work belongs to the crucial period, before and during WWII, when Heidegger was at work on a series of treatises that begins with "Contributions to Philosophy" and includes "The Event" and "The History of Beyng." These works are difficult, even hermetic, but represent a crucial development in Heidegger's thinking. On Inception deepens the investigation underway in the other volumes of the series and provides a unique perspective on Heidegger's thinking (...) of Being and of Event. Here, Heidegger asks, with a greater insistence than anywhere else in his work, what it might mean to think of being as event, and not as presence. Event cannot be thought without the sense of a beginning - an inception - and so, Heidegger insists, we must try to think of being as inception, as fundamentally inceptive. On Inception pursues rigorously the difficult and puzzling implications of this speculation. It does not merely extend work already undertaken but also opens doors onto wholly other pathways. (shrink)

Temel ontoloji, sonlu insan özünün ontolojik açıdan çözümlenmesi anlamına gelir. Bu ontolojik çözümleme, “insanın doğasına ait” metafizik için temel hazırlamalıdır. Temel ontoloji, metafiziğin olanaklılaşması için gerekli olan insan Dasein’ın metafiziğidir ve tüm antropoloji türlerinden, felsefi antropolojiden de temelden ayrışır. Bir Temel ontoloji idesini açıklamak demek, Dasein’a ilişkin tanımlı ontolojik çözümlemeyi kaçınılmaz bir gereksinim olarak görmek ve bu yolla temel ontolojinin “insan nedir?” biçimindeki somut soruyu hangi amaçla ve hangi tarzda, hangi sınırlama içerisinde ve hangi koşullar altında sorduğunu açıklığa kavuşturmak demektir. (...) Ancak bir fikir öncelikle bir olguyu ya da olayı aydınlatma gücüne dayanarak beliriyorsa, temel ontoloji idesi de bir metafiziğin temellendirilmesi olarak “Saf Aklın Eleştirisi”nin bir yorumunda kendini savunmalı ve göstermelidir. (shrink)

Ot perevodchika -- Chto takoe metafizika? -- Kommentarii -- Metafizicheskai︠a︡ kont︠s︡ept︠s︡ii︠a︡ Nit︠s︡she i ee rolʹ v evropeĭskom myshlenii : vechnoe vozrashchenie ravnogo (vybory).

Der Satz der Identität--Die onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik.

"Causa sui" is the second volume of a trilogy (first: "Potentia of poverty", it. 2006, english: Brill, 2023, "Capital Machine. Genesis and structure of exploitation", it. 2022): it analyses the parabola of Capital as fake causa sui, that is a mechanism that steals our own capacity of producing our life. It counterposes to Capital the true causa sui, that is our force of producing life which cannot be neither extracted nor appropriated, because it is the elementary matter that constitutes us. (...) This element resists exploitation and constitutes the seed of a possible revolution not only in labour but in all relations of power. (shrink)

For many of Spinoza's contemporaries and predecessors the very notion of causa sui was utterly absurd, akin to a Baron Munchausen attempting to lift himself above a river by pulling his hair up. This chapter examines Descartes’ engagement with the notion of causa sui, and shows that Spinoza understood the causation of causa sui as efficient, and not formal, causation. Proving the existence of God was the stated aim of Descartes’ Third Meditation. Descartes’ response to Caterus is pretty simple: he (...) denies that efficient causation must be spread in time. Descartes’ surprising response to Caterus drew the attention of Antoine Arnauld, the author of the Fourth Set of Objections, and, at the time, a doctoral student of theology at the Sorbonne. The young Spinoza must have watched Descartes’ struggle with the notion of causa sui with great interest. (shrink)

"What can guilt, the painful sting of the bad conscience, tell us about who we are as human beings? Being Guilty seeks to answer this question through an examination of the views of Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Paul Rée, Nietzsche, and Heidegger on guilt, freedom, responsibility, and conscience. The concept of guilt has not received sufficient attention from scholars of the history of German philosophy. Being Guilty addresses this lacuna and shows how the philosophers' arguments can be more deeply grasped once (...) read in their historical context. A main claim of the book is that this history could be read as proceeding dialectically. Thus, in Kant, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, we find variations on the idea that guilt is justified because the human agent is a free cause of his or her own being-a causa sui-and thus responsible for his or her "ontological guilt." In contrast, in Rée and Nietzsche these ideas are rejected and the conclusion is reached that guilt is not justified, but is explainable psychologically. Finally, in Heidegger we find a synthesis of sorts, where the idea of causa sui is rejected, but ontological guilt is retained and guilt is seen as possible, because for Heidegger a condition of possibility of guilt is that we are ontologically guilty yet not causa sui. In the process of unfolding this trajectory, the various philosophers' views on these and many other issues are examined in detail"--. (shrink)

English summary: Heidegger allowed us to better hear metaphysics by passionately listening to it. In this volume we seek to better understand Heidegger by patiently listening to another metaphysician: Descartes. The meaning of Descartess thought in creating an onto-theology of the causa and cogitatio, also taken up in the work of Heidegger, faithfully reveals Heideggers directions. French description: En se mettant passionnement a son ecoute, Heidegger nous a permis d'entendre la metaphysique d'une maniere inouie. Par un juste retour des choses, (...) dans un geste inedit, il s'agira ici de mieux entendre Heidegger en se mettant patiemment a l'ecoute d'un metaphysicien precis: Descartes, ou plutot a l'ecoute de ce qu'il nous en dit. Car loin d'etre anecdotiques, les significations que la pensee de Descartes a - la premiere faisant d'elle une onto-theologie de la causa, la seconde une onto-theologie de la cogitatio - et prend dans l'oeuvre de Heidegger - la premiere etant de la provoquer, la deuxieme de l'aiguiller, la troisieme de l'instruire - revelent fidelement les orientations de celui-ci, en et hors metaphysique. Comme il sied en hermeneutique, il sera donc question de sens, celui que l'on prend n'etant pas moins indifferent a celui que l'on donne que celui que l'on donne n'est innocent de celui que l'on prend. (shrink)

The essay takes its point of departure from Monod's reading of dialectical materialism in Chance and Necessity. A passage of Engels's Dialectics of Nature, which identifies Spinoza's concept of causa sui with the Hegelian concept of interaction [Wechselwirkung], provides the opportunity to examine the consequences of Monod's claims more closely. Using Spinoza's philosophy as a litmus test, the essay attempts to demonstrate the debt of Engels's materialism to Hegel's Science of Logic by tracing the development of the concept of Wechselwirkung (...) in classical German philosophy. A profound difference between the Spinozan and Hegelian concepts becomes apparent: while the concept of Wechselwirkung implies a totality present to itself as simultaneity, permitting the flow of a linear, homogenous and empty time upon which stages of development can be inscribed, the concept of causa sui implies a totality without closure, a totality whose eternity is identified with the necessary and infinite network of modal durations. The essay concludes by suggesting that Spinoza's concept of causa sui allows us to rethink the relation between freedom and necessity in the Marxist tradition in conjunctural and aleatory terms. (shrink)

The very first line of Spinoza’s magnum opus, the Ethics, states the following surprising definition: By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing [Per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura non potest concipi, nisi existens]. As we shall shortly see, for many of Spinoza’s contemporaries and predecessors the very notion of causa sui was utterly absurd, akin to a Baron Munchausen attempting (...) to lift himself above a river by pulling his hair up. How can a thing cause itself into existence, if before the causal activity, the cause did not exist at all? Indeed, in one of his earliest works, Spinoza himself claimed: “No thing, considered in itself, has in itself a cause enabling it to destroy itself (if it exists), or to make itself [te konnen maaken] (if it does not exist)” (KV II 26|I/110/14-16). Moreover, in other early works, Spinoza refers to God as an “uncreated thing” (TIE §97) or “uncreated substance” (CM II 1|I/237/20), and not as a cause-of-itself as in the Ethics. What made Spinoza desert the common, traditional, view of God as the uncaused first cause, or uncreated substance, and adopt instead the apparently chimerical notion of God as causa sui? A very likely explanation for this development suggests that Spinoza’s rationalism, his commitment to the principle that everything must have a reason both for its existence and for its non-existence – a commitment stated clearly both in the Ethics (see, for example, E1p8s2 and E1p11d2), and in Spinoza’s other writings (see, for example, Ep. 34 (IV/179/29)) – made him realize that the notion of an uncreated, or uncaused, thing is of no use for him: if everything must have a cause, then the first cause, or the most fundamental being, must be a cause-of-itself. All this is well and good, but we should not let Spinoza off the hook so easily, for the immediate question which arises now is whether Spinoza is not simply cheating his readers. Does Spinoza have a reason – i.e., argument – that could convince us that causa sui is indeed a more adequate characterization of God and not merely an opportunistic and ad hoc façade for the good old uncaused cause? While there are many important questions surrounding Spinoza’s notion of causa sui, it is the last question which will be the focus of this short chapter. In the first part of this chapter, we study, briefly, Descartes’ engagement with the notion of causa sui. In the second part, I show that Spinoza understood the causation of causa sui as efficient, and not formal, causation. The third and final part will attempt to locate precisely the alleged problem with the notion of causa sui, and consider how could Spinoza defend the intelligibility of this notion. Regrettably, limitations of space will force us to leave the examination of Spinoza’s closely related notion of being-conceived. (shrink)

O objetivo do filósofo Descartes (1596-1650), com as duas provas da existência de Deus na Terceira Meditação, é provar o conhecimento da certeza da verdade da existência de Deus por meio, unicamente, da razão como causalidade. Ao se valer de duas provas, surge entre outros problemas de interpretação o seguinte questionamento: a nova prova da existência de Deus apresenta novidades em termos metafísicos ou é apenas mais uma explicação da primeira prova? O presente artigo visa mostrar que a segunda prova, (...) que apresenta Deus como causa sui, implica em novos e importantes desdobramentos à filosofia cartesiana e influencia os filósofos da Modernidade que conceitualizaram o infinito ou Deus de uma forma dinâmica e inserida dentro da história. O método seguido, para o presente escopo, é o analítico-crítico, por meio do qual se busca evidenciar os principais argumentos cartesianos via interpretação dos seus escritos e de alguns textos dos clássicos comentaristas e exegetas de seu pensamento. Conclui-se, sem esgotar a temática, que a segunda prova da existência de Deus reconfigura a necessidade estática de uma essência numa relação dinâmica de causalidade. Ademais, tal certeza está inscrita dentro da mente do ser finito como a marca impressa que um artesão deixa em sua obra. (shrink)

Since the mid-1980s, Galen Strawson has introduced an argument into the analytic debate about the concept and possibility of freedom. He has repeated and defended it in various formulations, which amounts to an “impossibilism” of freedom in the moral sense, i. e., to the impossibility that we can be called ultimately responsible for the moral quality of our actions based on existing freedom in the full sense. In this paper, I want to explain Strawson’s argument, which is supposed to prove (...) this intuitive difficulty as impossible to fulfill, and to show the conditions of its persuasiveness. Furthermore, I will make clear how and by what right philosophers like Kant, Fichte and especially Schelling were able to evade this argument avant la lettre by introducing the concept of an intelligible self-constituting act of freedom. (shrink)

Theology after Heidegger must take into account history and language as constitutive elements in the pursuit of meaning. Quite often, this prompts a hurried flight from metaphysics to an embrace of an absence at the center of Christian narrativity. In this book, Conor Sweeney explores the "postmodern" critique of presence in the context of sacramental theology, engaging the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Lieven Boeve. Chauvet is an influential postmodern theologian whose critique of the perceived onto-theological constitution of presence in (...) traditional sacramental theology has made big waves, while Boeve is part of a more recent generation of theologians who even more wholeheartedly embrace postmodern consequences for theology. Sweeney considers the extent to which postmodernism a la Heidegger upsets the hermeneutics of sacramentality, asking whether this requires us to renounce the search for a presence that by definition transcends us. Against both the fetishization of presence and absence, Sweeney argues that metaphysics has a properly sacramental basis, and that it is only through this reality that the dialectic of presence and absence can be transcended. The case is made for the full but restless signification of the mother's smile as the paradigm for genuine sacramental presence. (shrink)

Can God be the efficient cause of himself (causa sui,)? It is well known that Descartes answers this question in the affirmative, but it is considerably less clear why. The main contention of the essay is that Descartes advances the causa sui doctrine because he came to think that the ontological proof of Meditation V required it. We argue these contentions through a close analysis of Descartes' initial articulation of causa sui in response to Caterus, followed by attention to the (...) reformulation of the doctrine in response to the logical objections posed by Arnauld. Our understanding of causa sui as a move made within the horizon of the ontological proof not only illuminates why Descartes would have defended a doctrine as conceptually problematic as causa sui, but also provides an alternative to Jean-Luc Marion's view that causa sui constitutes a third, distinct proof for the existence of God. /// Pode Deus ser a causa eficiente de si mesmo (causa sui,)? É bem sabido que Descartes responde aflrmativamente a esta questão, mas é consideravelmente menos claro porquê. O principal conteúdo do ensaio é que Descartes apresenta a doutrina da causa sui porque pensou que a prova ontológica da Meditação V precisava dela. Demonstramos estas afirmações através de uma análise rigorosa da articulação inicial de Descartes da causa sui em resposta a Caterus, seguida de uma atenção à reformulação da doutrina em resposta às objecções logicas apresentadas por Arnauld. A nossa compreensão da causa sui como proposta feita no horizonte da prova ontológica não ilumina apenas porque é que Descartes teria defendido uma doutrina conceptualmente tão problemática como a causa sui, mas também providencia uma alternativa ao ponto de vista de Jean-Luc Marion de que a causa sui constitui a terceira, prova distintapara a existência de Deus. (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll's theories of life -- Biography and historical background -- Nature's conformity with plan -- Umweltforschung -- Biosemiotics -- Concluding remarks -- Marking a path into the environments of animals -- The essential approach to the organism -- Heidegger and the biologists -- Paths to the world -- Disruptive behavior : Heidegger and the captivated animal -- The worldless stone -- The poor animal -- For example, three bees and a lark -- Animal morphology -- A shocking wealth (...) -- A fine line in the rupture of time -- An affected body -- The theme of the animal melody : Merleau-Ponty and the umwelt -- The structure of behavior -- A pure wake, a quiet force -- A leaf of being -- Interanimality -- The-animal-stalks-at-five-oclock : Deleuze's affection for Uexküll -- Problematic organisms -- Uexküll's ethology of affects -- The body without organs, the embryonic egg, and prebiotic soup -- Nature's refrain sung across milieus and territories -- The animal stalks. (shrink)

_Examines the significance of animal environments in contemporary continental thought._.

Heidegger often asserted that Germany, as “the land of poets and thinkers,” has a central world-historical role to play in any possible recovery from the technological nihilism of the modern epoch. And yet, on numerous occasions, Heidegger also demonstrated a serious interest in dialogue with the East Asian traditions of Daoism and Zen Buddhism. How are Heidegger’s entrenched ethnocentrism and his interest in East-West dialogue related? While neither can be wholly confined to one or another period in his thought, this (...) article shows how, in the late 1930s, Heidegger begins to recover from the most ethnocentric period of his thought, and how he starts thinking of his reflections on the Western history of being as a preparation for what he came to call “the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world.”. (shrink)

Two recent works will be considered that discuss Heidegger and Nietzsche in the context of the problem of overcoming metaphysics and the onto-theological tradition. A common criticism will be that these works in their attempt to retrieve a conception of religion, politics or faith beyond onto-theology and metaphysics tend to justify or idealize particular historically and culturally conditioned perspectives, which are not immune from further philosophical critique. Simon Oliai’s approach to countering the burgeoning fundamentalisms in our global age is ultimately (...) not very convincing, representing as it does, a Western, liberal, Eurocentric worldview. The author’s use of Nietzsche or Heidegger for this purpose is also not very compelling. The remainder of this review essay appraises the volume edited by Cimino and van der Heiden, which attempts to rethink faith beyond onto-theology in several interesting ways. Although meant to be a comparative study, several contributions subscribe to a general Heideggerian (or Heidegger-inspired phenomenological-hermeneutical) theoretical framework, which itself is not rigorously scrutinized. A problematic implication is that Nietzsche’s own critical and constructive views of philosophy, his critique of religion and history, and his positive appraisal of faith and divinity are not seriously considered on their own terms: they are either mostly ignored, or they are selectively interpreted through a Heideggerian lens, with the result that this volume puts forward a mostly unfavorable view of Nietzsche. Some of the conceptual moves credited to Heidegger in the volume have their equivalents in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which a comparative and evaluative study such as this one must seriously take into account by resisting the uncritical acceptance of Heidegger’s own view of Nietzsche. (shrink)

In a novel synthesis of Judith Butler’s social ontology, Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, Simon Critchley’s reading of Heidegger’s ontology of indebtedness, and my own system of ontic impunity premised on the illusion of free will, I make a case for a reframing—or perhaps an unframing—of the human. This unframing imbues those largely denied recognizability as human—such as pedophiles and Muslim civilian casualties of the war on terror—with a dignity and grievability denied them by the dominant ecumenical, Western epistemology of causa sui. (...) It also forces us to consider the tenuous distinction between human and non-human animals. Finally, I offer some concluding thoughts on the meaning of authenticity as wanting-to-have-a-conscience. (shrink)

The present article discusses Heidegger's conception of language within the frame of his onto-historical thought. In order to address this issue he starts from the question about the origins oflinguistic significance which he identifies with the enquiry into the essence of language in relation with the act of “essencialization” of being. The analysis begins considering the metaphysical determination of the relationship between language and being in Aristotle to oppose its features to Heidegger’s distinctive one.

Onto-semiotisch kann man eine Theorie nennen, welche angibt, wo die Zeichen an die Welt anknüpfen. Wittgenstein hat über dieses Problem viel nachgedacht, ohne eine rechte Lösung zu finden. Erforderlich ist eine Konzeption, die beide Arten von Zeichen, Repräsentatoren wie Indikatoren zu vereinigen vermag. An eben dieser Aufgabe scheitert Saussure, dem es nicht gelingt, Mentalismus und Strukturalismus so zu verbinden, daß die Konkurrenz von Repräsentatoren und Indikatoren aufgehoben wird. Dies gelingt Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. Er fundiert die Repräsentationssemiotik so in (...) einer onto-semiotischen Lehre von den Verweisungen, daß schließlich der Weltbezug der Zeichen deutlich wird. (shrink)