This investigation addresses a pressing anxiety of our time - that of homelessness. Tersely stated, the philosophical significance of homelessness in its more modern context can be understood to emerge with Nietzsche and his discourse on nihilism, which signals the loss of the highest values hitherto. Diverging from Nietzsche, Heidegger interprets homelessness as a symptom of the oblivion of being. The purpose of the present enquiry is to rigorously confront humanity's state of homelessness, and at the same time illumine the (...) extent to which Heidegger's thought engages with this pervasive phenomenon. In questioning the nature of homelessness, Heidegger's preoccupations with nihilism and modern technology prove crucial. Moreover, his attempts to overcome or prepare for the overcoming of this state of homelessness are also of great import to the current investigation. Adorno and Lèvinas offer scathing critiques of Heidegger's thought as it relates to the motifs of homelessness, homecoming (Heimkunft) and the German Heimat, for they associate it with provincialism, paganism, and a pernicious form of politics. In providing these critiques they bring to light the risks involved in undertaking a homecoming venture, and they also show how a great thinker can err greatly. While acknowledging the importance of these criticisms, the present study reveals how Heidegger's various discourses on homelessness and homecoming bear fruitful insights that can contribute not just to a Germanic sense of homecoming but to a sense of homecoming that humanity at large can relate to and be enriched by. (shrink)

Few themes resonate as powerfully in Heidegger as those connected to homecoming, homeland, and Heimat. This emphasis plays out most powerfully in Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin and his turn towards language, art, and poetizing as a way of thinking through the poet's relevance in the epoch of homelessness and the abandonment of the gods. As the first book-length study in English of the Heidegger-Hölderlin relation, Of an Alien Homecoming addresses the tension within Heidegger's work between his disastrous political (...) commitments during the era of National Socialism and his attempts to open a path to a German future nurtured on Hölderlin's ideal of poetic dwelling. Charles Bambach reads this work on Hölderlin from 1934–1948 in conversation with the Black Notebooks and Heidegger's metapolitics, even as he uncovers an ethical dimension within Heidegger that pervades his reading of poetry. Throughout all of these various stages on Heidegger's thought path, Hölderlin remains the poet who poetizes the possibility of finding our lost home amidst the homelessness brought about in the epoch of technological thinking. (shrink)

The struggle for domination clearly persists in The Homecoming as it does in almost all of Pinter’s works. Because of the vague atmosphere, enigmatic characters, and dark, tragicomic dialogue and action, a single decisive meaning for the play cannot be identified. Many character analyses have been carried out on the play, frequently focusing on Ruth and her decision at the end. Moreover, critics have sought to read the play in the light of psychoanalysis, centering on the characters’ past and (...) complexes. By adding a sociopolitical dimension to purely realistic or symbolic readings, this article attempts to analyze the relationships of domination and servitude between characters at the micro-level of the family structure through Marx’s notions of fetishism in relations between individuals, and commodity fetishism as expounded by Slavoj Žižek. With the help of Žižek’s ideas on ideology, a new layer of sociopolitical signification to the relationships held between characters is added, particularly that between Ruth and the men, which is seen as a parallel to the macro-level fetishized relationships in pre-capitalist societies and commodity fetishism in a capitalist one. (shrink)

Moral Matters: A Philosophy of Homecoming is Mark Dooley's attempt to offer an alternative to 'Cyberia'. It is a book about home, memory and identity. At a time when people are rapidly disengaging from those forms of life which once bound them together, it can be argued that our happiness depends on saving and conserving them. We cannot flourish in isolation or by detaching from the social sphere which surrounds us. We cannot truly prosper or progress if we choose (...) to forget where we came from or if we dismiss our inherited moral wisdom. And yet, in opting for loss, separation and homelessness, it seems we have done just that. We have opted for a rootless existence where alienation and amnesia are the norm. This powerful and passionate book shows how the alienated, 'postmodern' self can become re-rooted to time and place and restored to full humanity and happiness whilst moving in a virtual, hyperconnected world. In caring for creation, conserving culture and saving the sacred we can once again make our home in the world and experience the consolation of moving from loss to love."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Contents \t\t\t\t\t \tTRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION \t\t1 \t \tNOTE ON THE TRANSLATION \t\t39 \t OBSERVATIONS ON THE FEELING OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME \t\t\t\t\t \tSECTION ONE: \t\t\t\t \t\tOf the Distinct Objects of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime \t\t45 \tSECTION TWO: \t\t\t\t \t\tOf the Attributes of the Beautiful and Sublime.

The article refers to the Bolshevik genocide against prosperous Ukrainian peasantry, which the communist authorities, referring to the category of exploiters deported in the undeveloped eastern and northern regions of the USSR, to reduce resistance to forced collectivization of farmers. In particular archival documents highlighted the course of deportation, painful adaptation to survival in the new environment, heavy losses and attempts to return to their homes of survivors. In particular, on the basis of published and newly discovered archival documents (...) the author argues that the common earlier in historiography reports of deportation from Ukraine about a million rich peasants during collectivization is inflated at least four times and untrue. The actual data is still not installed because some of the families of the deportees remained in place, some had returned from exile under the decision of local councils of the USSR, some fled, and then legalized in the city, often under changed names. (shrink)

The article attempts a reformulation of globalization theory. We identify ‘flow speak’ and the flattened ontology of the social that goes with it as a major limitation in contemporary globalization theory. Contrary to the prevailing overemphasis on mobility and deterritorialization, we suggest an existential turn that orients future globalization thinking more towards issues of belonging, choice and commitment, and the rhythmicity of social relations. To highlight the processual character of this shift of perspective, we shall draw on the paradigmatic (...) figure of the ‘homecomer’. S/he, in our understanding, embodies the ambivalence between the lure of global options and the need for commitment to lasting bonds. Thus, we do not argue for a post-mortem on globalization theory, but maintain that a deeper understanding of globalization as a ‘way of being in the world’ would require a phenomenologically inclined repositioning of the concept. (shrink)

Dwelling in the homeland would become a signature theme for the later Heidegger, pervading his work on technology, poetry, language, art, and the meaning of thinking. This question concerning the home would come to serve as a way of posing the question about continuity within his work and its relation to the decisive shifts that helped to shape his philosophical path of thinking. This article attempts to situate Heidegger both within his own work and within the history of philosophy (...) by looking at the topic of “homecoming.”After offering a brief sketch of how North American philosophers have read Heidegger over the last twenty years, this article offers a review of four recent books that take up the question of continuity over Heidegger’s thought path. By focusing on Heidegger’s relation to medieval philosophy, the Greeks, the problem of will, and Gelassenheit, it shows how we can find a sense of unity in Heideggerian thinking by considering it against the discourse of a “first” and an “other” beginning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 263-283 [Access article in PDF] Contesting Metaphors and the Discourse of Consciousness in William James Jill M. Kress Ah, not to be cut off,not by such slight partitionto be excluded from the stars' measure.What is inwardness?What if not sky intensified,flung through with birds and deepwith winds of homecoming? --Rainer Maria Rilke William James's lifelong attention to questions about human mental (...) experience elucidates the development of the concept of consciousness through its realization in fields as disparate as natural science, radical empiricism, and religious mysticism. 1 Over the course of a career that both establishes and traverses disciplinary boundaries, James's work embodies tensions between scientific explanations for mental phenomena and the inescapability of metaphysical arguments. Jamesian psychology thus alternates between materialist and spiritualist assumptions of scientists and philosophers at the turn of the century, joining their compulsive investigations into the nature of consciousness. 2 Most readers [End Page 263] of James puzzle over the theoretical contradictions within his work, debating central philosophical dilemmas concerning the status of the conscious self. Perhaps the most paradoxical aspect of James's theories, his response to dualism, emerges as he attempts to negotiate ethereal explanations for consciousness with bodily processes. 3 The mind-body problem disrupts James's more delicately balanced theories, a disruption registered explicitly through the metaphors in his texts.Reading The Principles of Psychology (1890) alongside "Does 'Consciousness' Exist" (1904), this essay demonstrates how figurative language directs James's study of consciousness. I argue that metaphor does more than describe consciousness; metaphor constructs James's arguments, governs his conflicting theories of mind through a series of rhetorical configurations and provokes the continual reconstruction of his ideas of human subjectivity. Furthermore, while it is impossible for James to explain and to study consciousness without metaphor, he experiences great anxiety about using language, figurative or otherwise, to represent his object of study. The language becomes more powerful than his intentions or designs and, indeed, raises implications that James cannot control. James possesses a heightened awareness of what he crafts with words; he also, perhaps more penetratingly, acknowledges the inadequacy of any linguistic system to realize concepts thoroughly. 4 Struggling over appropriate "names" and "terms" for consciousness, James presupposes some clearly delineated concept around which we might wrap a verbal expression; yet he also seems painfully aware that every new metaphor launches an entirely new theory. Fluid and unpredictable, consciousness becomes like language itself, yielding its power precisely because it can be so many things at once. The ultimate principle of Jamesian consciousness seems to be its creative capacity; still, once James admits that the problem of consciousness is a problem of language, his carefully constructed designs begin to unravel. Though consciousness will be translated into James's notion of "pure experience" by the time he writes the radical empiricism [End Page 264] essays, James remains simultaneously committed to his figures (especially of the "stream of consciousness") and ambivalent about the account of consciousness that they provide. James helps create the modern self with its enhanced individuality, though his metaphors at once direct us inward to a centered, private self and propel us outward to find consciousness materializing in the fluxional cycle of the natural world.In presenting his initial theory of the stream of our thoughts, James argues for its coherence. His most famous metaphor of the "stream" of consciousness appears to saturate the varied material of the mind, its water washing over and through any distinctions or separations which the mind might present: Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as "chain" or "train" do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" or a "stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. 5James's desire to find words that are more "natural... (shrink)

Wildlife translocations often raise concerns about the purpose and impact among people living in target locations. We applied the integrated impact assessment in planning the reintroduction of wild forest reindeer in Finland. We investigated the variety of expected socioecological impacts, the relative importance of these impacts and local willingness to participate in local-level reintroduction activities. The reintroduction project organised interactive forums in 2013 and 2016 in each of the four regions suitable for wild forest reindeer. The variety of recognised potential (...) impacts was high, but the relative importance given to the expected impacts varied relatively little from forum to forum. Importantly, we found a contextual and relational value of wild forest reindeer that extended beyond their intrinsic and instrumental value. The results indicate high local acceptance of reintroduction and willingness to participate in it. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno has often been portrayed as the prototypical example of the permanent exile, even though, after living fifteen years in Britain and the US, he returned to Germany in 1949 and spent the last twenty years of his life there. This article traces Adorno’s reflections on his homecoming and analyses how his experiences of exile and return shaped his mature thought. Conceiving homecoming not simply as a return to one’s origins but as a continuation of a radical (...) experience of the foreign, it builds on the remarkable continuity of Adorno’s theory of intellectual experience over time. The article also explores homecoming in relation to Adorno’s thought on language and translation, an aspect that has been little studied in the existing literature, both in terms of the articulation of a philosophy of language where the foreign plays an important role, and in terms of how language and translation were directly connected with Adorno’s return. (shrink)

The paper - originally a lecture in the "40th Anniversary Lecture Series 2001-2002" - gives a survey of the development of philosophy of science in Germany and of the role tthe Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science plays in this development. An Italian version was published in 2006: “Un difficile ritorno a casa: la Filosofia della Scienza in Germania”, in: Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana, Nr. 189 n.s. (settembre - dicembra 2006), 37-50.

A 62-year-old female with Huntington’s disease presented after a suicide attempt. Her advance directive stated that she did not want intubation or resuscitation, which her family acknowledged and supported. Despite these directives, she was resuscitated in the emergency department and continued to state that she would attempt suicide again. Her suicidality in the face of a chronic and advancing illness, and her prolonged consistency in her desire to take her own life, left careproviders wondering how to provide ethical, respectful care (...) to this patient. Tension between the ethical principles of autonomy and beneficence is central in this case. The patient’s narrative demonstrated that her suicide was an autonomous decision, free from coercion or disordered thinking from mental illness. Beneficence then would seem to necessitate care aligned with the patient’s desire to end her life, which created ethical uneasiness for her family and careproviders. The case highlights several end-of-life ethical considerations that have received much recent attention. With ongoing discussions about the legalization of aid in dying across the country, caregivers are challenged to understand what beneficence means in people with terminal illnesses who want a say in their death. This case also highlights the profound moral distress of families and careproviders that arises in such ethically challenging scenarios. (shrink)

Gideon Yaffe presents a ground-breaking work which demonstrates the importance of philosophy of action for the law. Many people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. Yaffe's clear account of what it is to try to do something promises to resolve the difficulties courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes.

This book reflects the belief that a careful study of the Law of Attempts should be both interesting in itself, as well as being a productive route into a number of larger and deeper issues in criminal law theory and in the philosophy of action. By identifying the legal doctrines which courts and legislatures have developed or adopted, the author goes on to ask whether and how they can be rationalized or rendered persuasive. Such an approach involves paying detailed (...) attention to cases. The book is also unusual in that it grapples with English, Scots and US law, showing great breadth of research as well as philosophical sophistication. This is a work which is likely to become a seminal study and a major contribution to the study of law and legal philosophy. (shrink)

이 논문은 한국인의 이상향의 전형인 청학동, 특히 지리산 청학동을 ‘관념적 실재’임과 ‘귀향적 이상향’이라고 주장하고 있는 글이다. 사실 이상적인 삶을 살고자 하는 것은 모든 사람의 바람이다. 그런데 한국인에게 떠오르는 이상향의 전형은 청학동, 특히 이인로의 ‘청학동기’에 드러나고 있는 지리산 청학동이다. 이때 지리산 청학동은 전설에서나 나타나는 ‘청학’이 살고 있는 곳으로서, 또한 그곳을 찾아간 이인로가 찾지 못한 공간으로서 관념적 공간이자 관념적 실재이다. 그렇지만 지리산 청학동은 우리가 우리의 본래적이고 진정한 삶을 펼칠 수 있는 장소로서의 귀향적 이상향, 즉 우리가 귀향해서 살고 싶은 좋은 장소일 수 있다. (...) 사실 지리산 청학동은 사람들이 은둔해서 살고자 했던 하나의 은둔지이다. 그러나 지리산 청학동은 그러한 은둔지를 넘어 또 다른 세계에서 살 수 있는 토대를 제공하고 있는데, 이때 지리산 청학동은 우리가 살고픈 이상향일 수 있다. 은둔이란 지긋지긋한 현실로부터의 도피이지만, 그 도피는 현실을 부정하면서 그 현실과는 다른 삶을 살고자 하는 욕망, 즉 고향과 같은 장소에서 살고자 하는 욕망에서 나타나는 것이기 때문이다. 그렇다면 지리산 청학동은 ‘하나의 고향과 같은 장소’로서 우리가 자유롭게 자신의 삶을 펼칠 수 있는 곳일 것이다. 이런 의미에서 지리산 청학동은 사람들이 격차성이 난무하는 현실로부터 벗어나 고향과 같은 장소에서 살고자 하는 귀향적 이상향일 것이다. 그것도 이인로의 말대로 지리산 청학동이 훤히 탁 트인 ‘넓은 곳’이라면, 그곳은 하이데거의 말처럼 존재하는 모든 것이 서로 어울려 놀이하면서 살아갈 수 있는 ‘열린 장’인 고향과 같은 곳일 것이기 때문이다. (shrink)

시몽동은 생성과 존재를 결합하는 존재론적 기획 속에서 인간과학의 기초를 세우고자 한다. 선험적 주관을 거부하는 생성적 존재론에서 인간과학의 정당성근거를 도출하는 것은 특이하고도 모험적인 시도이다. 시몽동은 우선 에너지학과 정보이론의 기초 위에서 인간과 사회의 역동적 과정을 설명하는 ‘인간적 에너지학’이라는 개념을 확립한다. 그에게 인식은 존재의 발생과 동시적이고 따라서 인간과학의 정초의 정당성근거는 발생적 근거로 연결된다. 시몽동은 기술철학 저서에서 인간이 마술적 세계로부터 기술성을 통해 점차 스스로를 객관화해 온 과정을 서술한다. 이는 기술공학을 통한 인간과학의 통일성의 재조직화라는 문제로 이어진다. 오늘날 인간의 거부할 수 없는 존재조건이 된 기술적 우주에서 (...) 우리는 기술, 자연, 인간의 새로운 관계맺음을 시도할 수밖에 없다. 시몽동에 의하면 기술적 대상이 개체와 사회를 넘어서는 인간집단의 개체초월적 관계를 통해 이러한 소통과 관계맺음을 가능하게 할 수 있다. (shrink)

In this work, the peculiarities of the communicative space in the novel of modern German writer Bernard Shlink ‘The Homecoming‘ are considered. These peculiarities include literary, historical and sociological context and intertextual sub-bases of the novel containing sense bearing matters relevant for all times and nationalities; dialogic relations, expressed in the strategy of communication of characters of the novel. It is proved that the communicative space is not limited in the novel by antiquity, but rather includes token for German (...) mentality works, motifs and images. The famous Faust’s dilemma is being played up in the novel. Revealing in the mythological images models of main psychological types and conflicts connected with the type of the personality, B. Shlink creates in his novel a number of Odysseuses, Penelopes and Telemaches. The Odysseus model manifests itself primarily in two main characters of the novel: Peter and Johann Debauers. However, the father personifies only destructive and immoral, which finally leads to his moral inability, the Odysseus-junior - Peter, who played Telemachus in the beginning of the novel, finds in his wanderings solid moral values. Perceiving the myth as a historical and dialectic process, B. Shlink, like Th. Mann, takes it as a peculiar cipher of the human experience, a model of development of the humanistic values, a prototype of mutual battle between progress and regress, which b. Shlink masterfully describes in a communicative space of his novel. (shrink)

Anti-racist education within the Academy holds the potential to truly reflect the cultural hybridity of our diverse, multi-cultural society through the canons of knowledge that educators celebrate,...

It is argued that the main problem with "the problem of the direction of time" is to figure out what the problem is or is supposed to be. Towards this end, an attempt is made to disentangle and to classify some of the many issues which have been discussed under the label of 'the direction of time'. Secondly, some technical apparatus is introduced in the hope of producing a sharper formulation of the issues than they have received in the philosophical (...) literature. Finally, some tentative suggestions about the central issues are offered. In particular, it is suggested that entropy and irreversibility are much less crucial to the central issues than most philosophers would have us believe. This suggestion is not made because of any firm conviction of its correctness but rather because it helps to focus the discussion on some basic but long neglected assumptions which underlie traditional approaches. (shrink)