Consciousness – Bewußtsein – was one of the key concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology. In contrast to this, Heidegger – regarded as Husserl’s most outstanding pupil – placed Dasein at the center of his own phenomenology. This change in key concepts may be seen as an upheaval in the phenomenology that purports to study the “things themselves”: as a shift of focus from the activity of a Bewußtsein that constitutes the Being of objects, to the passivity of a Dasein that receives (...) the donation of Being. But there is another aspect of Dasein that lies in the concept of “Da” (disclosedness), and it implies another possibility for the development of phenomenology that Heidegger did not fully develop. Kitaro Nishida, the Japanese philosopher who introduced phenomenology to Japan during the first half of the 20th century, developed this concept in his own way by analyzing the structure of disclosedness in terms of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This paper considers whether the category of sovereign “decision,” as it is used in Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology, has analogies with the paradigm of “choice,” as it is theorized in neoliberalism. Both decision and choice belong to that mode of judgement that “cuts” the field of alternatives into two, into two “extreme” alternatives. This mode of judgment not only presupposes the subject of the decision, but also sets up the terms of the choice, clearly indicating the optimal option. For Schmitt, (...) a political decision arises in a “case of necessity”: in the “serious case” of war. And yet, it is precisely the neoliberal depoliticization of war that reduces it to a rule, and every choice fundamentally to a stance for or against. To escape from the neoliberal reduction of political decision in the form of a choice, I examine another mode of decision, absent from Schmitt’s texts: “disclosedness.”. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Testimony from victims of gendered violence is often wrongly disbelieved. This paper explores a way to address this problem by developing a phenomenological approach to testimony. Guided by the concept of ‘disclosedness’, a tripartite analysis of testimony as an affective, embodied, communicative act is developed. Affect indicates how scepticism may arise through the social moods that often attune agents to victims’ testimony. The embodiment of meaning suggests testimony should not be approached as an assertion, but as a process (...) of ‘articulating an understanding’. This account is deepened in the discussion of testimony as a communicative act. It is argued that testimony must be considered as a relational whole, and thus our aim in receiving victims’ testimony should be to honour the relational conditions under which the truth of testimony can be heard. Approaching testimony as the collaborative process of enabling an understanding to be articulated can enhance our conception of gendered violence, whilst also better serving the victims of gendered violence by helping to overcome the lack of trust and excessive scepticism with which victims’ testimony is often met. (shrink)

The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein). The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Such meaningful presence is (...) the Befragtes of Heidegger’s question, not the Erfragtes. (3) Being and Time’s goal was to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4) Ereignis—the appropriation of ex-sistence to sustaining the clearing—is the later Heidegger’s reinscription of thrown-openness, der geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e., unknowable.Some preliminariesI cite Heidegger’s texts by page and line (the line-number follows the period) in both the Gesamtausgabe and the current English translations where available, all of which are listed in the bibliography at the end of this issue of the journal. I cite Sein und Zeit in the Niemeyer 11th edition and in the ET by Macquarrie-Robinson.Sinn and Bedeutung are closely related, although Sinn is broader than Bedeutung. Sinn refers either to intelligibility as such or to the fact of something being intelligible, whereas Bedeutung is the specific meaning that a thing has. Sinn as intelligibility is generally interchangeable with Bedeutsamkeit and Verständlichkeit. Thus I translate Sinn as “intelligibility” or “meaningfulness.” Sinn in turn allows for Bedeutung as the particular meaning of a specific thing.I take “intellect” in the broad sense of νοῦς and in the specific sense of λόγος understood as discursive intellect, whether practical or theoretical.Dasein, Existenz, and Da-sein are all translated as "ex-sistence." The context indicates whether that is meant in an existentiel or an existential sense. The word “man” refers to human being, not the male of the species. I render das Seiende as “beings,” “things,” and “entities” ex aequo. All German words referring to ἀλήϑεια (e.g., Wahrheit, Erschlossenheit, Unverborgenheit, Entborgenheit, etc.) are translated by “disclosedness” or “openness.” Translations from the German are often my own. (shrink)

The article answers the question: “How does the agathos of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter come into being?” or “How does the meaningful-presence of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter come about?” The author turns to the philosophy of Plato and Heidegger and presents Dasein-psyche as an elementary structure or a Dasein-Intelligent-Matter actor. The Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence is significantly conditioned by the focus and limits of the arete potency, set by Dasein-Intelligent-Matter. The anthropologization of Dasein transforms the individual discourse and a way of life in (...) accordance with the arete potency. The arete potency is the source of Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence. The anthropologization of Dasein sets free arete, providing the transforming of the arete existentials potency into the energy of Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence. The disclosedness of arete is an “ideal” state of the Dasein-psyche sustainable development and prosperity, the agathos of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter. (shrink)

"Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon of truth is to "make clear the mode of being of the cognition itself." His starting point is a proposition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to have discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) of its being. The proposition displays this "how" of being in language. In the attempt to (...) verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heir), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewährung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition. A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of correspondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the meaning of alétheia Heidegger shows us a more originary sense of truth as unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering human Dasein can be "true" while it is Being-discovering (Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seiendes) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdecktsein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness. Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the human Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world. The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), understanding, and discourse, i.e., the constitution of the being (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness (Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf).. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 133-134 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Heidegger's Concept of Truth Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Heidegger's Concept of Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxx + 462. Cloth, $59.95. This somewhat trite and overly generic English title, from a Heideggerian perspective, is better specified by the title of the German original, which was perhaps too provocative for an analytical English (...) audience conditioned by Carnap's critique of Heidegger: "The Prejudice of Logic: Investigations into the Theory of Truth of the Early Heidegger." The author's more-than-literal, amplifying and supplementing translation of his own German text of 1994 aims to face up to all the "hard interpretive decisions" (xxii) that Heidegger poses by leaving no German term uninterpreted or untranslated, including even Dasein as "being-here." The translation is thus more illuminating from the start in the sense in which "logic" too narrowly conceived and claimed to be the sole arbiter of truth becomes a "disabling" prejudice (xvi) rather than the "enabling prejudice" that logic normally is for any discourse and thought. Dahlstrom's focus is on the early and so "logical" Heidegger (1912-29), before he decided to lose even logic (better, "onto-theo-logic") in a more original tornadic "whirl" of abyssal questioning in the "turning." Hence, the opening pages point to Heidegger's quest for a more original philosophical (transcendental, phenomenological, ontological, hermeneutical) "logic of philosophy" (Emil Lask's phrase) that "produces" the fundamental concepts or categories for any field of being, including itself. This original productive logic of category formation "transcends" the formal logic of judgment while founding it.It is the transcendental and material logic that Heidegger found in Kant, which is oriented toward the spatio-temporal schematisms of the imagination that emerge from the transcendental aesthetic to mediate the application of the judicative forms of the understanding into befitting categories of reality. But Dahlstrom does not get around to detail this quasi-Kantian account of material logic, or Lask's version of it, which finds its fundamental stratum in the already categorized (i.e., conceptually interpreted) originally unitary object, prior to its distinction into form and matter, subject and predicate, etc. Lask calls this a priori categorized realm of intentionally structured meaning (intelligibility, truth) a "panarchy of the logos," which Heidegger will readily transform into his "hermeneutics of facticity" (double genitive: "life lays itself out, interprets itself") and identify with the prejudicative, prepredicative temporal realm of truth as "disclosedness" and "unconcealment." [End Page 134]But Dahlstrom does find, in Husserl's unpublished logic courses of the early twenties in which "Analyses of Passive Synthesis" are carried out, a "genetic logic" on the level of the "transcendental aesthetic" in the "complicated intentional systems" of the sensing human body situating itself by constituting the time and space of its world prepredicatively and prejudicatively, a "logic" or logos which accordingly "anticipates much of the analysis of being-in-the-world undertaken in Being and Time" (155). And yet Heidegger, who as Husserl's trusted assistant was granted generous access to such unpublished manuscripts, "remained silent" about these clear anticipations. Instead he criticizes Husserl publicly in his own courses, culminating in Being and Time, for neglecting the question of the "being of intentionality" as well as of the "sense" of being as such, which Heidegger finds in "timeliness" (Zeitlichkeit), the originary time of being-here. Yet in arriving at this temporal sense of being, Heidegger "clearly appropriates the horizonal (allegedly preobjective and presubjective) character of time-consciousness elaborated by Husserl." Why, then, "Heidegger's silence"? "These breakthroughs of Husserl's later thinking are not mentioned by Heidegger because he wants to appropriate them in his own way and without the framework out of which they arose. An injustice and a disservice is thus done to Husserl's phenomenology... [which is] the price of the philosophical maturity of its most famous student... [as] his thinking moves to a plane beyond the reach of Husserlian phenomenology and terminology" (169f).This in-depth discussion of Heidegger's relationship with Husserl... (shrink)

Different kinds of fakery and imposture can be differentiated by means of the imaginary regimes within which a performative simulation unfolds. Engaging with Sartre’s analysis of the imaginary, we will identify three such regimes, calling them the objective, the reflective, and the phantasmatic. Each of these regimes involves its own kind of image and accordingly a specific type of simulation. It is proper to the objective image to attain dissimulation of the self by replacing the real with fiction. In the (...) reflective regime, the real is not substituted by the imaginary, but rather contaminated by it. Finally, whereas the objective and the reflective regimes operate within the sphere of intentional simulation, the phantasmatic image carries us beyond Sartre’s findings, as it shapes the very structure of pre-reflective disclosedness which provides the background for our projects. (shrink)

With what right and with what meaning does Heidegger use the term 'truth' to characterize Dasein's disclosedness? This is the question at the focal point of Ernst Tugendhat's long-standing critique of Heidegger's understanding of truth, one to which he finds no answer in Heidegger's treatment of truth in §44 of Being and Time or his later work. To put the question differently: insofar as unconcealment or disclosedness is normally understood as the condition for the possibility of propositional truth (...) rather than truth itself, what does it mean to say - as Heidegger does - that disclosedness is the "primordial phenomenon of truth" and what justifies that claim? The central aim of this paper is to show that Tugendhat's critique remains unanswered. Recent Heidegger scholarship, though it confronts Tugendhat, has not produced a viable answer to his criticism, in part because it overlooks his basic question and therefore misconstrues the thrust of his objections. Ultimately, the paper suggests that what is needed is a re-evaluation of Heidegger's analysis of truth in light of a more accurate understanding of Tugendhat's critique. The paper concludes by sketching the profile of a more satisfactory reply to Tugendhat's critical question, advocating a return to Heidegger's 'existential' analyses in Being and Time in order to locate the normative resources Tugendhat finds lacking in Heidegger's concept of truth. (shrink)

Por medio de un contraste con el pensamiento heideggeriano, el estudio desarrolla la concepción gadameriana de la alteridad, el lugar que ocupa este tema en la propuesta hermenéutica de Verdad y Método y la reformulación que ello supone de la manera como Heidegger concibe la aperturidad de la existencia humana y el acontecimiento mismo del ser. El trabajo inicia planteando la crítica de Gadamer al reconocimiento ontológico del otro por parte de Heidegger; muestra enseguida la oposición que se presenta entre (...) el “ser-para-la-muerte” y el “ser-para-la-historia”, la relevancia que tiene en Gadamer la vida práctica y la idea de diálogo como modelo de la comprensión. Se concluye mostrando la oposición que se da entre ambos autores en la manera de considerar el modo de ser del lenguaje y el acontecimiento del ser que en éste tiene lugar. [/] -/- In permanent contrast with Heidegger’s thought, this study develops Gadamer’s conception of otherness, its place in the hermeneutic project of Truth and Method and the reformulation that all this entails of human existence disclosedness and the event of being itself. Work starts raising Gadamer’s critique to the ontological [42] recognition of the others by Heidegger; it shows then the opposition between the “being-towards-death” and “being-for-history”, and the relevance of practical life and the idea of dialogue as a model of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophy. It concludes by showing the opposition between both authors regarding language’s essence and the event of being that takes place on it. (shrink)

Segundo Ser e tempo, o cuidado, como ser do ser-aí, é definível pela expressão complexa “ser-já-precedentemente-a-si-em (o mundo) como ser-junto-a (ente intramundano que vem ao en-contro)”, a qual é apresentada deste modo no Parágrafo 41, que trata de “O ser do ser-aí como cuidado”. Nesta expressão, pretende Heidegger indicar cada um dos existenciais (disposição, compreender, fala, assim como também decair e mundo), e condição da correta compreensão do sentido desta estrutura é o entendimento de que há co-originariedade (Gleichursprünglichkeit) entre eles, (...) isto é, de que a abertura de mundo só ocorre como resultado dos existenciais conjuntamente. Sem pretender contestar tal co-originariedade entre os existenciais no que diz respeito à abertura de mundo (e, portanto, do ser), pretendemos apenas chamar a atenção para o fato de que tal condição da abertura não implica necessariamente que os caracteres do ser do ser-aí tenham que ser entendidos como simultaneamente genéticos na abertura, mas apenas da abertura, e que o ser do ser-aí como cuidado tem seu fundamento originário no carecer. Este último constitui os Em-virtude-de-quê? (Worumwillen) que determinam as disposições, a partir das quais vem a ser as totalidades conformativas (Bewandtnisganzheiten) estabelecidas, como significâncias, no compreender interpretativo, sendo ambos, disposição e compreender, articulados pela fala, com o que tem origem, então, abertura de mundo. Sendo assim, já que o ser do ser-aí é disposição compreensiva e falante no mundo, percebe-se por que se afirma aqui que o fundamento do cuidado como ser do ser-aí é o carecer. Contudo, só é possível dizer que o ser do ser-aí é o cuidado caso a angústia, disposição que corresponde ao saber da morte como compreender projetivo, se manifeste, própria ou impropriamente. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Ser-aí. Disposição. Compreender. Fala. Impessoal. Angústia. Cuidado. ABSTRACT According to Being and Time, care, as the being of Dasein, is definable by the complex expression “ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world)”, which is presented this way in Paragraph 41, that approaches “Dasein’s Being as Care”. Through this expression, Heidegger intends to point out each one of the existentialia (state-ofmind, understanding, discourse, as well as falling and world), and as condition to the correct understanding of the meaning of this structure is the understanding of the fact that there is equiprimordiality (Gleichursprünglichkeit) among them, that is, that the world disclosedness only occurs as a result of the existentialia in conjunction. Without intending to contest this equiprimordiality among the existentialia with respect to the disclosedness of world, (and, therefore, of Being) we just intend to call attention to the fact that this condition of the disclosedness does not necessarily mean that the characters of the Being of Dasein have to be understood as simultaneously genetic in the disclosedness, but only for the disclosedness, and that the being of Dasein as care has its original basis in the need. The latter constitutes the for-the-sake-ofwhich (Worumwillen) that determine the state-ofmind, from which the totality of involvements (Bewandtnisganzheiten) are established, as significance, in the interpretative understanding, where both – state-of-mind and understanding – are articulated by discourse, with which there is, therefore, the origin of world disclosedness. This way, as the being of Dasein is a discoursing and understanding state-of-mind in the world, it is possible to realize why it is said here that the basis of care as being of Dasein is the need. However, it is only possible to affirm that the being of beingthere is care if anxiety, the state-of-mind that corresponds to the awareness of death as a projective understanding, manifests itself, either properly or improperly. KEY WORDS – Dasein. State-of-mind. Understanding. Discourse. Anxiety. Care. (shrink)

< Segundo Ser e tempo, o cuidado, como ser do ser-aí, é definível pela expressão complexa “ser-já-precedentemente-a-si-em como ser-junto-a ”, a qual é apresentada deste modo no Parágrafo 41, que trata de “O ser do ser-aí como cuidado”. Nesta expressão, pretende Heidegger indicar cada um dos existenciais, e condição da correta compreensão do sentido desta estrutura é o entendimento de que há co-originariedade entre eles, isto é, de que a abertura de mundo só ocorre como resultado dos existenciais conjuntamente. Sem (...) pretender contestar tal co-originariedade entre os existenciais no que diz respeito à abertura de mundo, pretendemos apenas chamar a atenção para o fato de que tal condição da abertura não implica necessariamente que os caracteres do ser do ser-aí tenham que ser entendidos como simultaneamente genéticos na abertura, mas apenas da abertura, e que o ser do ser-aí como cuidado tem seu fundamento originário no carecer. Este último constitui os Em-virtude-de-quê? que determinam as disposições, a partir das quais vem a ser as totalidades conformativas estabelecidas, como significâncias, no compreender interpretativo, sendo ambos, disposição e compreender, articulados pela fala, com o que tem origem, então, abertura de mundo. Sendo assim, já que o ser do ser-aí é disposição compreensiva e falante no mundo, percebe-se por que se afirma aqui que o fundamento do cuidado como ser do ser-aí é o carecer. Contudo, só é possível dizer que o ser do ser-aí é o cuidado caso a angústia, disposição que corresponde ao saber da morte como compreender projetivo, se manifeste, própria ou impropriamente. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Ser-aí. Disposição. Compreender. Fala. Impessoal. Angústia. Cuidado. ABSTRACT According to Being and Time, care, as the being of Dasein, is definable by the complex expression “ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in- as Being-alongside ”, which is presented this way in Paragraph 41, that approaches “Dasein’s Being as Care”. Through this expression, Heidegger intends to point out each one of the existentialia, and as condition to the correct understanding of the meaning of this structure is the understanding of the fact that there is equiprimordiality among them, that is, that the world disclosedness only occurs as a result of the existentialia in conjunction. Without intending to contest this equiprimordiality among the existentialia with respect to the disclosedness of world, we just intend to call attention to the fact that this condition of the disclosedness does not necessarily mean that the characters of the Being of Dasein have to be understood as simultaneously genetic in the disclosedness, but only for the disclosedness, and that the being of Dasein as care has its original basis in the need. The latter constitutes the for-the-sake-ofwhich that determine the state-ofmind, from which the totality of involvements are established, as significance, in the interpretative understanding, where both – state-of-mind and understanding – are articulated by discourse, with which there is, therefore, the origin of world disclosedness. This way, as the being of Dasein is a discoursing and understanding state-of-mind in the world, it is possible to realize why it is said here that the basis of care as being of Dasein is the need. However, it is only possible to affirm that the being of beingthere is care if anxiety, the state-of-mind that corresponds to the awareness of death as a projective understanding, manifests itself, either properly or improperly. KEY WORDS – Dasein. State-of-mind. Understanding. Discourse. Anxiety. Care. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGIn seinem 1927 gehaltenen Vortrag Phänomenologie und Theologie vertritt Heidegger die These, dass die Philosophie theologische Grundbegriffe korrigiere, indem sie sie auf ihren rein rational fassbaren Gehalt reduziere und die ontologischen Bedingungen dieses Gehalts formal anzeige. Dieses Prinzip der »Korrektion« kann durch seine Anwendung auf Thomas von Aquins Begriff des göttlichen Worts veranschaulicht werden. Es kann gezeigt werden, dass Heidegger diesen Begriff auf einen rein rational fassbaren Gehalt reduziert, den er mit einer neuen praktischen oder sprachlichen Bedeutung identifiziert, die ein (...) Dasein erfindet, das Zeug oder Sprache in einer radikal neuen Weise gebraucht. Es kann ferner gezeigt werden, dass die ontologischen Bedingungen dieses rein rational fassbaren Gehalts nach Heidegger in der Erschlossenheit des Daseins liegen. Eine Veranschaulichung von Heideggers Prinzip der Korrektion durch Anwendung auf Aquins Begriff des göttlichen Worts lässt erkennen, dass ein weit verbreitetes Verständnis des für Heideggers Philosophie in Sein und Zeit zentralen Begriffs der Eigentlichkeit verfehlt ist: Eigentlichkeit ist nicht der Modus der Existenz eines Daseins, das zu einer philosophischen Einsicht in seine existenziale Struktur fähig ist, sondern ein existenzieller Modus der Existenz eines Daseins, das über existenzielle Möglichkeiten zur Erfindung neuer Bedeutung durch einen neuartigen Gebrauch von Zeug oder Sprache verfügt.SUMMARYIn a lecture delivered in 1927, Heidegger claims that philosophy ‘corrects’ basic theological concepts by reducing them to their purely rational content and by formally indicating the ontological conditions of this content. This principle of ‘correction’ can be specified by applying it to Aquinas's concept of the divine word. Heidegger can be presented as reducing this concept to a purely rational content that he identifies with a new practical or linguistic meaning invented by a Dasein using tools or language in a radically new way. He can further be shown to hold that the ontological conditions of this purely rational content lie in the Dasein's disclosedness. His correction of Aquinas's concept of the divine word reveals that a common understanding of Heidegger's concept of authenticity, which is of central importance to his philosophy in Being and Time, is misguided: authenticity is not a mode exhibited by someone with a philosophical insight into Dasein's existential structure, but the existentiell mode of the existence of a Dasein who has the existentiell possibilities to invent new meaning by introducing new ways of using tools or language. (shrink)

The dissertation endeavors to study the controversial relationship of the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger by investigating their respective treatments of intentionality. Husserl's reflective and Heidegger's hermeneutical accounts of intentionality are brought into bold phenomenal relief in order to secure the phenomenal basis underlying their conflicting views of both the character and status of this phenomenon. Specifically, the study discusses Husserl's reflective exhibition of intentionality in terms of its manifestation of the phenomenally original essence of lived-experiences, and Heidegger's immanent critique (...) of the same in terms of its manifestation of phenomenally derivative understanding of Being. ;The discussion shows that Husserl finds the reflective securing of intentionality to manifest the most original phenomenal manifestation of die Sachen selbst, while Heidegger finds the hermeneutical securing of the same to manifest the temporalization of Dasein's being-in-the-world. The issues underlying the discrepancies of these two phenomenological findings are brought into relief with a discussion of the philosophical "prerogatives" of each thinker's understanding of phenomenology. These issues emerge in terms of the Heideggerian 'prerogative' of the hermeneutical advance regard toward Being, and the Husserlian 'prerogative' of the reflective seeing of the phenomenological regard. The study finds that the unavoidable opposition of the phenomenal content of these issues has its basis in the character and status each accords to the essence of the phenomenon of "reflection." The study concludes with a consideration of the phenomenal warrant of what comes forward as die Sachen selbst of the Husserlian 'prerogative' of the ontologically neutral reflective uncovering of the phenomenon of transcendental subjectivity and the Heideggerian 'prerogative' of the hermeneutical disclosure of the ontico-ontological disclosedness of the unreflective phenomenon of Being. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Heidegger’s remarks about language in Being and Time do not constitute a comprehensive theory of language. Hubert Dreyfus, William Blattner and Mark Wrathall each propose a derivativist reading of these remarks. Derivativism is the theory that language is derivative of a pre-linguistically articulated experience of the world – but derivativism is not quite right. It does not account adequately for the relationship between the disclosedness of being-in-the-world and what Heidegger calls discourse [Rede]. I claim that although language has (...) its ontological foundation in the constitution of disclosedness, this does not mean that language is prefigured by a way of being-in-the-world that is existentially prelinguistic. Finally, I develop Wrathall’s claims about disclosedness into a more palatable account of the relationship between discourse and language, which I test against Heidegger’s claims about the relationship between discourse and language in Being and Time. (shrink)

This paper examines Gerhard Krüger's interpretation of Plato in light of Martin Heidegger's Destruktion of the Greeks and critique of Platonism. I argue that Krüger's new reading of Plato should be understood as a critique of Heidegger's understanding of Platonism, and thereby as a broader critique of Heidegger's thoughts on Western metaphysics and the history of Being (Seinsgeschichte). The force and originality of Krüger's response to Heidegger consist in the fact that Krüger's Plato anticipates Heidegger's critique of Platonism. Krüger thus (...) contends that Plato (1) does not allow the understanding of truth as correctness (Übereinstimmung) to supplant the understanding of truth as disclosedness (Unverborgenheit), (2) understands and displays philosophy's dependence upon prereflexive attunements (Stimmungen); (3) appreciates the intricate relation between Being and temporality. In sum, Krüger's Plato is not guilty of Seinsvergessenheit, and rather opens up new ways for an authentic meditation on Being and on the human way toward an understanding of Being. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur and Jan Patočka are considered among the most important phenomenologists of the 20 th century. As with Ricœur, Patočka ’s philosophy is shaped by an enduring critical confrontation with Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses of Dasein. The present paper aims at analyzing Ricœur ’s and Patočka ’s convergences and mutual inspirations in their perspectives on the topic of history. More precisely, I will take up the question of the meaning of history in Ricœur and Patočka as profoundly (...) influenced by their readings of Husserl’s Krisis. Then, the attention will be turned to Ricœur ’s concept of historicity and Patočka ’s notion of care of the soul as concerns involved in the search for meaning in history as an open-ended mediation. In this context, I will discuss Ricœur ’s and Patočka ’s critical examination of Heidegger’s conception of thrownness and projection, that is, Dasein’s already-being-in-the-world and its disclosedness, as necessary concepts for understanding their own philosophical approaches to history. (shrink)

Division III of Being and Time (BT) was supposed to address the question of the sense of being. Being and its sense are in question because while we do understand being, it is also strangely withheld from us. That we understand being is evidenced by the fact that we have access to what and that things are (rather than not); that being is withheld from us is evidenced by the fact that we do not seem to be able to articulate (...) what it is that we grasp in this. Being is both given to us and withheld from us. To be given yet withheld is to be question-worthy—and it is also to be the proper object of phenomenology (BT 35). Being is the phenomenon: that which shows itself (phainomenon) (BT 31) but also needs to be “let be seen” (legein) (BT 32). To make sense of being is to make sense of both how it shows itself and how it hides itself. -/- Division I explains how being shows itself by, first, explaining how we discover entities in their being and, second, explicating the structure of our openness to being (i.e., disclosedness). The next step should be to explain how being hides itself—the phenomenon that Heidegger sometimes calls “falling.” But Heidegger does not do this. He is distracted by a different (albeit related) phenomenon: inauthenticity. By pursuing authenticity and inauthenticity throughout §40 and the so-called existentialist chapters in Division II, Heidegger does give us important insight into the riskiness and fragility of our relationship to being. But he does not capture the finitude that he should be aiming at: the withholding of being. Lacking this, Heidegger does not have our finite openness to being fully in view. As a result, the structure of the temporality that he draws out accounts for our openness to being but not for the finitude of this openness. This finitude is not a mere limitation on our part—it is not just that we don’t fully “get” being. It belongs to how being works that it withholds itself from us and so makes itself question-worthy. So, if Heidegger’s goal in Division III is to show how being makes sense, then he will need to make sense of this fundamental feature of being. It is, if nothing else, the feature that sparked his investigation. But because he lost sight of the withholding of being at the end of Division I, Heidegger is not in a position to make sense of being in Division III. -/- By the time he starts working seriously with the notion of phusis in the 1930s, Heidegger has reoriented himself to the phenomenon of being’s withholding. By approaching BT from the perspective of Heidegger’s work in this period, then, we can see more clearly what BT accomplished and where it veered off course. I will do this by interpreting Heidegger’s reading (in Introduction to Metaphysics [IM]) of the opening strophes of the choral ode from Sophocles’ Antigone. On Heidegger’s ontological reading, these strophes show us the various features of being by speaking of the natural world: being is understood as the sea, the earth, and the living thing. I will argue that BT illuminates being as the living thing and being as the earth, and in this explains how being is given to us. But BT falters when it tries to reach being as the sea. The sea is an image of being’s simultaneous granting and withholding. Because Heidegger has not thought being’s withholding in Divisions I and II, he cannot go on to make sense of this withholding as simultaneous with being’s granting in Division III. In short, Heidegger should have thought being as the sea in Division III, but he cannot. (shrink)

This paper argues that Tugendhat's critique of Heidegger's existential conception of truth as disclosedness is usually misunderstood. The main claim of this paper is that Tugendhat insists against Heidegger on certain conventional features of truth such as conformity of the law of non-contradiction, not because he adheres to an ideal of truth as correctness; rather, he proposes an alternative existential conception of truth in terms of an active, critical or self-critical, engagement with untruth. Various recent objections to Tugendhat's critique (...) of Heidegger are discussed against the background of his alternative and are rejected. The paper concludes by outlining several challenges to Tugendhat's alternative existential conception of truth. (shrink)

Summary of claims: (1) One of the most important relationships between the ontical and the ontological in Heidegger’s thought is the central, ontologically revelatory role that he gives to moods. (2) Heidegger uses the word “mood” as a term of art to refer to the whole range of disclosive affectivity. (3) Because of the role that Heidegger grants to mood as a primordial way of disclosing Being-in-the-world, and because it is impossible to think mood without also thinking the lived body, (...) Heidegger has placed the latter at the center of Dasein’s disclosedness. (4) Heidegger’s account of mood thus entails and highlights, rather than neglects, the ontological significance of the body. (shrink)

The paper discusses the relationship between time and understanding in Heidegger’s phenomenological-ontological hermeneutics. Even thanks to an innovative concept of understanding as an open and projecting dimension, Heidegger can reach the qualitative, dynamic and differential concept of time, which is the basis of the Daseinsanalyse in Sein und Zeit. Only if comprehension is meant as a primary phenomenon can time be thought as an ecstatic disclosedness, i.e. an original, ontologically inderivative, unprogrammable non-functionalistic and essential temporality, which always involves and (...) concerns us. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that Heidegger neglected the ontological significance of the lived body until the Zollikon Seminars, where he elaborates on the bodily aspect of Being-in-the-world as a “bodying forth.” Against such a contention, in this article I argue that, because of the central role that Heidegger grants to mood as a primordial way of disclosing Being-in-the-world, and because it is impossible to think mood without also thinking the lived body, Heidegger has actually placed the latter at the very (...) center of Dasein’s disclosedness. Heidegger’s account of mood thus entails and highlights, rather than neglects, the ontological significance of the body. (shrink)

Fallenness in Sein und Zeit, is the ontological path one takes to know one’s being, to know oneself, which is the penultimate task of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. As he states in Being and Time, being-in-the-world is always fallen, and “Falling” or “Fallenness” continues to be a “definite existential characteristic of Dasein itself. The concept of fallenness is grown from seeds of tentatio, it is one’s trial to know oneself and temptation of oneself and possibilities: Being-in-the-world is tempting in oneself. The (...) facticity of existence itself is the facticity of life. Fallen, not by choice, into the world is the effect of thrownness into-the-world. The fallenness is also the openness, to the world, to the possibilities. That is why fallenness is the characteristic of Dasein itself. The trial is not necessarily of the negative connotation, but it is also a tempting possibility. To establish the links between the early-Heideggerian temptations, trials and the later conception openness of fallenness is precisely the main task. One additional path that this paper will take is on the links of tentatio/fallenness and death. Fallenness as an existential character of Dasein, is a trial of the world, with the world; a face of infinite possibility/truth/being. This is what Heidegger calls disclosedness and Care. Being-open is not complete without the “end” of the cycle: death. Thus, openness to death is part of the same ontological existence of the Dasein. The kernels of this thought are already to be found in The Phenomenology of Religious Life. In readings of Paul, of Parousia, of openness and calling to death, in spite of death, are already and not yet formulations of being-towards-death. “Is not human life – trial?” – “is not human life death?” or being-towards- death? Death, as not eschatological but as openness, and care is precisely Jan Patocka’s reading of Heidegger which I will benefit from. Thus, to find the traces of Dasein’s many faces as tentatio and openness in early writings and as fallenness and being-towards-death as Care in later writings will be the overall concern of this paper. (shrink)

After the publication of Wahrheit und Methode in 1960, Hans-Georg Gadamer, a celebrated student of Martin Heidegger, received rapidly a worldwide response for his intellectual genius by fusing different philosophical horizons into a coherent and rational perspective which he calls ‘philosophical hermeneutics.’ In his attempt to construct philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer criticizes historicism, romantic hermeneutics and modern subjectivism since they disregard ontological structure of historical understanding. By claiming that prejudgment (or fore-understanding) is the basis for a genuine understanding, he contends that (...) we can overcome false prejudgment only by having recourse to the subject matter of the texts and by understanding texts on the model of dialogue which happens between the partners questioning themselves on the basis of a subject (sache). For him, understanding oneself and others happens as an event of dialogue simply because understanding takes place within the world of language. Language gets concretized and temporalized by the give and take of words. In other words, language is not a mere system of signs, but rather is uncoveredness of beings and the way within which human Dasein realizes himself. Since historical tradition which supports every event of understanding discloses itself only within language and language is a matter of sharing and participating, understanding is historical and temporal. Here the words “historicity” and “temporality” do not refer merely to “being in the history and time.” This is to approach the event of understanding from chronological and universal notion of time. Historicity and temporality are basically the distinctiveness of disclosedness of beings. Philosophical thoughts, scientific theses, trends which effect the course of history constitute the historicity of understanding by creating a sort of discontinuity in the continuity of history. Hence historicity is the basis for the formation of fore understanding and prejudgment. Philosophical hermeneutics tries to show how the continuity of history and traditions occurs through discontinuity (historicity) of understanding. (shrink)

The following thesis explores the notion of truth as developed in the work of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. Contrary to the position adopted by many commentators, who seek to drive a wedge between Heidegger's unorthodox phenomenology and the resolutely non -phenomenological Benjamin, I shall want to show how both begin with a rigorously Husserlian conception of truth as an intuition of essence in order, finally, to deviate from it. I argue that, for neither one, can truth be merely one (...) problem or issue taken up by a thinking secure in itself. Rather, from its most classical determination in, for example, the Metaphysics as έπιστήμη της άληθείας, the way in which truth has been determined has itself determined the very project of philosophy. Yet whilst the trajectory of both Heidegger and Benjamin's work can thus be determined in large measure by the question of truth, both are also concerned to re-orient that question in a direction that renders problematic Aristotle's implicit connection of truth to knowledge and knowledge to intuition and presence. I argue that their respective challenges to the location of truth in the act of knowing -a challenge made each time by way of an analytical regression from a propositional understanding of truth to intuitive truth to, finally, its more original character as disclosedness - remain thoroughly phenomenological before showing how it is in the work of art, and in tragedy in particular, that each one finds the resources for a still more radical understanding of truth. Not in the cognitivist sense that art makes truth claims about the world, but in the sense that it is with the work of art that the historical act of disclosure and world -constitution that Benjamin and Heidegger call truth is most emphatically made. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the reasoning of the „Ereignis“ phenomenon in the philosophy of M. Heidegger. It is worth to emphasize that one of the main trends in contemporary philosophy is an attempt of creation of new–non-substantial–ontology. The very specificity of such ontology lies in the fact that classical substance is replaced by the dynamical configuration of sense, which is not “purely theoretical” but “ontological” in its core. “Ontological” means, in fact, that it is impossible to separate the mode (...) of Being of phenomena from the process of thinking about them. Heidegger’s philosophy was one of the first attempts to create such ontology. It is worth to point out the three steps of the Heidegger’s studies of Being. The first, “fundamental-ontological” step is characterized primarily through the “ontological difference” between Being and entity, when the phenomenon of time represents by itself their hidden basis. During the second, “radical-ontological” period, Heidegger has already carried out his famous “turn.” In compliance with this “turn,” the truth of Being, die Lichtung, substitutes time as the “pre-ontological” basement of Being. In this case, Being itself transforms into the Event, „Ereignis“. On the third, “post-ontological” stage of studies the focal point of Heidegger’s thought is “post-ontological difference” between the Being of entity and Being itself. On this stage both Being and time are rooted in the phenomenon of „Ereignis“. The latter has been now transformed from being a “simple Event” into a “matter of fact” as the alternation of the “disclosedness” and “concealness” of Being and time. In this case, „Ereignis“ is not quasi-substantial basement of Being, time or entity but it shows itself as its “Beginning” “), when the Truth of Being is replaced by the dynamical sense configuration of the event, i.e., a “matter of fact.” Thus, Heidegger has conceptually created a new type of thnon-substantial ontology, the core of which is the phenomenon of „Ereignis“ as the dynamical singular configuration of the temporal-ontological sense of the Event itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 133-134 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Heidegger's Concept of Truth Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Heidegger's Concept of Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxx + 462. Cloth, $59.95. This somewhat trite and overly generic English title, from a Heideggerian perspective, is better specified by the title of the German original, which was perhaps too provocative for an analytical English (...) audience conditioned by Carnap's critique of Heidegger: "The Prejudice of Logic: Investigations into the Theory of Truth of the Early Heidegger." The author's more-than-literal, amplifying and supplementing translation of his own German text of 1994 aims to face up to all the "hard interpretive decisions" (xxii) that Heidegger poses by leaving no German term uninterpreted or untranslated, including even Dasein as "being-here." The translation is thus more illuminating from the start in the sense in which "logic" too narrowly conceived and claimed to be the sole arbiter of truth becomes a "disabling" prejudice (xvi) rather than the "enabling prejudice" that logic normally is for any discourse and thought. Dahlstrom's focus is on the early and so "logical" Heidegger (1912-29), before he decided to lose even logic (better, "onto-theo-logic") in a more original tornadic "whirl" of abyssal questioning in the "turning." Hence, the opening pages point to Heidegger's quest for a more original philosophical (transcendental, phenomenological, ontological, hermeneutical) "logic of philosophy" (Emil Lask's phrase) that "produces" the fundamental concepts or categories for any field of being, including itself. This original productive logic of category formation "transcends" the formal logic of judgment while founding it.It is the transcendental and material logic that Heidegger found in Kant, which is oriented toward the spatio-temporal schematisms of the imagination that emerge from the transcendental aesthetic to mediate the application of the judicative forms of the understanding into befitting categories of reality. But Dahlstrom does not get around to detail this quasi-Kantian account of material logic, or Lask's version of it, which finds its fundamental stratum in the already categorized (i.e., conceptually interpreted) originally unitary object, prior to its distinction into form and matter, subject and predicate, etc. Lask calls this a priori categorized realm of intentionally structured meaning (intelligibility, truth) a "panarchy of the logos," which Heidegger will readily transform into his "hermeneutics of facticity" (double genitive: "life lays itself out, interprets itself") and identify with the prejudicative, prepredicative temporal realm of truth as "disclosedness" and "unconcealment." [End Page 134]But Dahlstrom does find, in Husserl's unpublished logic courses of the early twenties in which "Analyses of Passive Synthesis" are carried out, a "genetic logic" on the level of the "transcendental aesthetic" in the "complicated intentional systems" of the sensing human body situating itself by constituting the time and space of its world prepredicatively and prejudicatively, a "logic" or logos which accordingly "anticipates much of the analysis of being-in-the-world undertaken in Being and Time" (155). And yet Heidegger, who as Husserl's trusted assistant was granted generous access to such unpublished manuscripts, "remained silent" about these clear anticipations. Instead he criticizes Husserl publicly in his own courses, culminating in Being and Time, for neglecting the question of the "being of intentionality" as well as of the "sense" of being as such, which Heidegger finds in "timeliness" (Zeitlichkeit), the originary time of being-here. Yet in arriving at this temporal sense of being, Heidegger "clearly appropriates the horizonal (allegedly preobjective and presubjective) character of time-consciousness elaborated by Husserl." Why, then, "Heidegger's silence"? "These breakthroughs of Husserl's later thinking are not mentioned by Heidegger because he wants to appropriate them in his own way and without the framework out of which they arose. An injustice and a disservice is thus done to Husserl's phenomenology... [which is] the price of the philosophical maturity of its most famous student... [as] his thinking moves to a plane beyond the reach of Husserlian phenomenology and terminology" (169f).This in-depth discussion of Heidegger's relationship with Husserl... (shrink)

There are by now a number of detailed expositions of Being and Time and very many studies in which the basic argument of Heidegger's best known work is reconstructed. Seeing the Self is among the latter. As elsewhere in the recent secondary literature, the extreme novelty of Being and Time is challenged. Øverenget goes so far as to say “[i]t may very well be that for the most part there is nothing really new in Heidegger apart from his investigations of (...) Aristotle, Kant, and Husserl, and that his genius was in the way he synthesized the insights of these thinkers”. Seeing the Self is distinctive among the reconstructions of Heidegger's fundamental ontology as it was worked out in Being and Time in being an attempt to show that “the formal structure of Husserl's phenomenology is at work in Heidegger's thinking” in that work. The author believes that Heidegger's project is unthinkable without Husserl’s notion of categorial intuition, which Øverenget claims appears in Heidegger as disclosedness [Ersctdossenheit], his theory of wholes and parts, that is, abstracta and concreta, and his concept of a priorism, which is “the unfolding of the theory of wholes and parts in its full range”. In fact, “the theory of wholes and parts, the interpretation of Dasein as Being-in-the-world, and the phenomeno-logical sense of the apriori are intrinsically related” in Heidegger's existential analytique. To demonstrate this, the author, who teaches at the University of Oslo, closely examines the argument in Being and Time against the background of Heidegger's lecture course “History of the Concept of Time” and other near-contemporary texts, including the “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation”. Øverenget claims that “Dasein is structurally related to Husserl’s notion of pure consciousness because both refer to subjectivity”. He thinks Heidegger's claim to fame may be that he “redefines subjectivity in a phenomenological manner”, since Dasein “designates a new way of interpreting what was traditionally known as the subject”. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that “Dasein not only refers to subjectivity but that this concept in fact designates transcendental subjectivity”. (shrink)

Qu’en est-il pour nous aujourd’hui de la prétention au savoir absolu dont la Phénoménologie de l’Esprit se voulait la justification ? Renvoie-t-elle encore à la clôture sur soi du discours dont ont parlé tant d’interprètes ? L’analyse de la représentation religieuse, celle de la belle âme, ne peuvent-elles au contraire être comprises comme une mise en question de toute métaphysique de la subjectivité ? En sorte que, loin d’être le comble du dogmatisme métaphysique, la Phénoménologie chercherait à nous en libérer, (...) comme le soutiennent des lectures telles que celles de R. Brandom, R. Pippin ou T. Pinkard.What means for us today the claim to absolute knowledge the Phenomenology of Spirit wanted to justify ? Is it still referring to the closure of discourse so many commentators have been talking about ? On the contrary, the way in which representation and beautiful soul are analyzed couldn’t it be understood as a way of questioning any metaphysics of the subjectivity ? Thus, far from bringing the metaphysical dogmatism to a climax, the Phenomenology would be an attempt to free us from it, just as readers like R. Brandom, R. Pippin or T. Pinkard point it out. (shrink)

Heidegger develops his reading of a-lētheia as privative un-concealment (Unverborgenheit) in tandem with his early phenomenological theory of truth. He is not simply reinterpreting a word, but rather reading Greek philosophy as having a primordial understanding of truth which has itself been concealed in interpretation. After shedding medieval and modern presuppositions of truth as correspondence, the existential truth-experience shows itself, no longer left puzzlingly implicit in unsatisfactory conventional readings of Greek philosophy. In Sein und Zeit §44, Heidegger resolves interpretive difficulties (...) in Parmenides through his interpretation of alētheia and philologically grounds this reading in Heraclitus’s description of the unconcealing logos. Although this primordial sense of the word has already been obscured in Plato and Aristotle, the structural gradation of their theories of truth conserves the primordial pre-Socratic sense of truth as the experience of unconcealment. (shrink)