In Time, Existential Presence and the Cinematic Image, Sam B. Girgus relates Laura Mulvey's theory of 'delayed cinema' to ideas on time and the relationship to the other in the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas and Julia Kristeva, among others. The sustained tension in film between, in Mulvey's phrase, 'stillness and the moving image' enacts a drama of existential emergence. The stillness of the framed image in relation to the moving image opens 'free' cinematic time and space (...) for a fresh engagement with crucial ethical and cultural issues. With close readings of films such as The Bicycle Thieves, Two Days, One Night, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Revenant and The Age of Innocence, this book proposes a fresh approach to reading film in the context of emerging existential presence and the ethical imperative. (shrink)

An existential-dialectical-phenomenological approach is applied to the understanding of the universal tensions between multicultural and transcultural value-laden modalities of existence. Differences in cultural comportments are described as variations in local human ways in dealing with universal and bipolar existential modalities, values, or needs, such as freedom versus limitation, independence versus dependence, and connectedness versus separateness. Cultures are described as being organized around and as providing their members with ways of dealing with these value-laden dialectical dilemmas. Cultures are (...) further depicted as legitimating one dialectical pole to the detriment of the other dialectical pole. Some cultures, for example, legitimate the dialectical poles of freedom, independence, and separateness, while deemphasizing or denying the dialectical poles of limitation, dependence, and connectedness. Other cultures legitimate the opposite. These one-sided value orientations of cultures are referred to as cultural tilts. The implications for the practice of multicultural counseling and phenomenologically-based qualitative research are delineated. (shrink)

According to Kratzer’s influential account of epistemic must and might, these operators involve quantification over domains of possibilities determined by a modal base and an ordering source. Recently, this account has been challenged by invoking contexts of ‘epistemic tension’: i.e., cases in which an assertion that must\ is conjoined with the possibility that \, and cases in which speakers try to downplay a previous assertion that must\, after finding out that \. Epistemic tensions have been invoked from two directions. (...) Von Fintel and Gillies :351–383, 2010) propose a return to a simpler modal logic-inspired account: must and might still involve universal and existential quantification, but the domains of possibilities are determined solely by realistic modal bases. In contrast, Lassiter :117–163, 2016), following Swanson, proposes a more revisionary account which treats must and might as probabilistic operators. In this paper, we present a series of experiments to obtain reliable data on the degree of acceptability of various contexts of epistemic tension. Our experiments include novel variations that, we argue, are required to make progress in this debate. We show that restricted quantificational accounts à la Kratzer fit the overall pattern of results better than either of their recent competitors. In addition, our results help us identify the key components of restricted quantificational accounts, and on that basis propose some refinements and general constraints that should be satisfied by any account of the modal auxiliaries. (shrink)

I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the strain that is taken up (...) by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the tiny pthesiss that make up the soul leave the body and are dispersed at the moment of death, leaving behind no subject to experience any evil that might be associated with death. Although informed by millennia of further scientific discovery, this is the strain picked up on by contemporary atheistic, technologically advanced mankind. My primary goal is to demonstrate that philosophy has an often-overlooked alternative to viewing death in terms of this ancient dichotomy. This is the alternative championed by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Although both thinkers arise from the Christian tradition, they clearly react to Epicurean insights about death in their work, thereby prescribing a peculiar way of living with death that the Christian tradition seems to have forgotten about. Despite the association of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, there is a fundamental difference between them on the subject of death. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to rely on the phenomenology of death that Kierkegaard provides in texts such as "At a Graveside." It is interesting to notice, however, that this discourse, especially when seen in the light of Kierkegaard's more obviously religious works, might only be compelling to the aspiring Christian. If so, then perhaps there is a tension in both Heidegger's "methodologically atheistic" appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas about death, and Heidegger's attempt to make these ideas compelling to the aspiring human. My secondary goal is to determine whether Heidegger takes the "existential philosophy of death" too far when he incorporates it into his early ontological project. (shrink)

It strikes many as obvious that negative facts—such as that Justin Trudeau is not the prime minister of Australia—are not fundamental: negative facts must ultimately be explained in terms of positive facts (for instance, that Justin Trudeau is the prime minister of Canada). I focus on a particular class of negative facts: contingent negative existentials (such as that there are no 10ft tall humans). If contingent negative existentials are not fundamental, then they must be explained. But the claim that contingent (...) negative existentials are explained is in tension with the widely held view that any universal generalization can be explained by its instances together with a totality fact (i.e. a fact to the effect that the instances exhaust the relevant domain). This is because a totality fact is itself a negative existential, and equivalent to a universal generalization. If the explanation for any contingent negative existential must appeal to another contingent negative existential, then—unless there are no fundamental facts—not all contingent negative existentials can be non-fundamental. I argue that we should give up the age-old mantra that only positive facts can be fundamental. I show that at least some contingent negative existentials are fundamental. I first make the case for including a totality fact in the explanans for a contingent negative existential and show that alternative accounts for explaining such facts are inadequate. I then undermine the standard arguments for subscribing to the view that there are no negative facts—including negative existentials—at the fundamental level. (shrink)

This paper examines the existential context of physical and mental health. Hans Georg Gadamer and The World Health Organization’s conceptualizations are discussed, and current medicalized and idealized views on health are critically examined. The existential dimension of health is explored in the light of theories of selfhood consisting of different parts, Irvin Yalom’s approach to “ultimate concerns” and Martin Heidegger’s conceptualization of “existentials.” We often become aware of health as an existential concern during times of illness, and (...) health and illness can co-exist. The paper discusses how existential suffering in Western culture is described, to an increasing degree, as disorders or psychological deficits, and perfectionistic health goals easily can become a problem. We seek to avoid suffering rather than relate to it, with all the tension that may create. The paper argues that suffering is an unavoidable aspect of people’s experience of their lives, and actively relating to suffering must be regarded as a fundamental aspect of health. The need and usefulness of a concept of “existential health” is discussed. (shrink)

Love, Subjectivity, and Truth engages in a lively manner with the overlapping areas of philosophy and literature, philosophy of emotions, and existential thought. "Subjective truth," a phrase used in Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, is rich with existential connotations. It invokes Kierkegaard above all, but significantly Nietzsche as well, and other philosophers who thematize love, subjectivity, and truth. In Search of Lost Time is especially concerned about what we can know about others through love. Insofar as (...) it conveys and analyzes experience, the novel is capable not only of exploring existential issues but also of doing something like phenomenology. What we know is shaped by our way of knowing, just as the properties of visible, colored objects are determined by the wavelengths of light our eyes can see. Nowhere does the subjective basis of our awareness appear so evident as it does when we view things through loving eyes. In Proust's novel we find skeptical views about love expressed again and again. However, we also note countercurrents, in which love is shown to provide a unique sort of insight. At those times, love seems to be a prerequisite of veridical apprehension. Love, Subjectivity, and Truth investigates this tension as it is played out in Proust's fiction. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a semiotic programme that proposes an alternative conceptual framework to understand the moral positionalities that people have in socio-material space. The study amalgamates moral character and signs and signification through a discussion of moral choice and value acts in an existential semiotic framework, as laid out by Eero Tarasti. The programme was triggered by a lived experience in a non-place, yielding the concept of semiotic space awareness – i.e., the value acts that work as (...) signs of moral character in people’s socio-material space. It is the moral positioning of a subject in the socio-material and semiotic space in relation to other subjects. People’s positionalities primarily take place in the socio-material space, and the dimensions we discuss focus on how value acts are produced and interpreted in space and place. Our aim is to take the approach used in, e.g., proxemics to a universal metalevel in terms of its key, undivided semiotic ingredients irrespective of cultural variation. We then extrapolate by discussing how these value acts trigger potential tensions and conflicts that can be approached using semiotics as a foundation for analysis. More specifically, the moral character that people portray in their value acts is theorized and applied as an explanatory tool to understand the semiosis and its repercussions in Dasein. We also introduce affordance as an additional dimension in the interplay and modalizations between moral character and moral choice to understand value acts and semiotic space awareness in subjects’ Dasein and Umwelt. (shrink)

According to Quine, the ontological question can be posed in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: “What is there?” But if we call this the ontological question, what shall we call the logically prior question: “What is it for an item to be there?” Peter van Inwagen has recently suggested that this be called the meta-ontological question, and more importantly, has endorsed Quine’s answer to it. Ingredient in this Quinean answer to the meta-ontological question are several theses, among them, “Being is the same (...) as existence”; “Being is univocal”; and “The single sense of being or existence is adequately captured by the existential quantifier of formal logic.” This articleexamines the last of these theses, which van Inwagen claims “ought to be uncontroversial.” But far from having this deontic property, the thesis in question ought to be not only controverted, but rejected. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je propose une exploration du phénomène du témoignage. Mon but est de montrer que la perspective phénoménologique rend possible une approche intégrative du témoignage, compris comme un phénomène qui engage la structure existentielle du sujet, articulant les relations entre langage, présence, mémoire, vérité et temporalité. Le témoin n’est pas seulement celui qui témoigne, mais d’abord celui qui affronte, dans sa présence expérientielle, un événement dont le sens est bouleversant et institue ainsi le sujet comme témoin : soit (...) comme « témoin endurant » si l’enjeu est d’abord le soi le plus propre du témoin, ou comme « témoin oculaire»s’il s’agit principalement de l’autre. Le témoignage trouve sa signification particulière dans la tension qui se creuse entre le pôle ontologique, où le témoin est compris comme « être là » en présence de l’événement sur le plan expérientiel, et le pôle herméneutique, où le témoin est convoqué devant les autres au niveau du langage. Une autre différence doit être tracée entre le « témoin-confessant », lorsque le témoignage porte précisément sur ce que le témoin a enduré soi-même, et le « témoin-tiers », dont le témoignage porte sur ce que l’on a principalement observé sans le subir soi-même. (shrink)

Background: As frail older people might have difficulties in expressing themselves, their needs are often interpreted by others, for example, by significant others, whose information health care staff often have to rely on. This, in turn, can put health care staff in ethically difficult situations, where they have to choose between alternative courses of action. One aspect that might be especially difficult to express is that of existential loneliness. We have only sparse knowledge about whether, and in what way, (...) the views of frail older persons and their significant others concerning existential loneliness are in concordance. Objective: To contrast frail older persons’ experiences with their significant others’ perceptions of existential loneliness. Methods: A case study design was chosen for this study. Individual interviews with frail older persons and interviews with their significant others, as well as field notes, served as a basis for the study. A thematic analysis was used to interpret data. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the principles of research ethics. Findings: The findings showed three themes: Meaningless waiting in contrast to lack of activities, Longing for a deeper connectedness in contrast to not participating in a social environment and Restricted freedom in contrast to given up on life. Discussion: Knowledge about the tensions between older persons’ and their significant others’ views of existential loneliness could be of use as a basis for ethical reflections on the care of older people and in the encounter with their significant others. Conclusion: It is of importance that health care professionals listen to both the frail older person and their significant other and be aware of whose voice that the care given is based on, in order to provide care that is beneficial and not to the detriment of the older person. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reading of Søren Kierkegaard's Climacean works (Fragments and Postscript) in which I focus on their specific dissimilarities, but also on the important dialectical relationship between them. My central claim is that when we consider Kierkegaard's larger project in his authorship to encourage believers to practice a Christian existence characterized by tension, we begin to see the crucial shared role these works play for Kierkegaard's purposes. To begin, I outline the theological and polemical background to (...) Kierkegaard's account of Christian existence by focusing on one of the central existential dualities in his thought, namely that of grace and works. In order to avoid falling into one extreme or the other, Kierkegaard argues for an account of faith as restlessness, which I identify as crucial to the Christian life. With this framework, I turn to Fragments and Postscript to draw out their respective emphases on gift and task, and I follow this with a discussion of how the dialectical relation between these emphases fulfills and upholds the account of tension that we have developed. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reading of Søren Kierkegaard's Climacean works (Fragments and Postscript) in which I focus on their specific dissimilarities, but also on the important dialectical relationship between them. My central claim is that when we consider Kierkegaard's larger project in his authorship to encourage believers to practice a Christian existence characterized by tension, we begin to see the crucial shared role these works play for Kierkegaard's purposes. To begin, I outline the theological and polemical background to (...) Kierkegaard's account of Christian existence by focusing on one of the central existential dualities in his thought, namely that of grace and works. In order to avoid falling into one extreme or the other, Kierkegaard argues for an account of faith as restlessness, which I identify as crucial to the Christian life. With this framework, I turn to Fragments and Postscript to draw out their respective emphases on gift and task, and I follow this with a discussion of how the dialectical relation between these emphases fulfills and upholds the account of tension that we have developed. (shrink)

Most social roles require role identification from the side of the role occupant, yet whoever identifies him- or herself with his or her social roles thereby mistakes him- or herself for what he or she is not, because role identity is determined by other people’s normative expectations, whereas self-identity is self-determined. This paper first develops an interpretation of this existential paradox of role identity, and then suggests a Rousseauvian perspective on how the tension between being oneself and playing one’s (...) social roles may be a matter of politics rather than a matter of the metaphysics of selfhood. The paper concludes with a cautionary remark on just how much Jacobinism a political solution to the existential paradox of role identity might entail. (shrink)

Written collaboratively by two undergraduate students and one professor, this article explores what it would mean to teach existentialism “existentially.” We conducted a survey of how Existentialism is currently taught in universities across North America, concluding that, while existentialism courses tend to resemble other undergraduate philosophy courses, existentialist texts challenge us to rethink conventional teaching practices. Looking to thinkers like Kierkegaard, Beauvoir and Arendt for insights into the nature of pedagogy, as well as recent work by Gert Biesta, we lay (...) out the four qualities that we propose characterize “existentialist” teaching practices: an emphasis on teaching over learning and on the “how” over the what; the cultivation of newness as well as capacities for resistance. Reflecting on the significance of existentialism for classroom dynamics, we conclude by examining the tensions between existentialist commitments to freedom and prevailing trends in higher education. This essay raises questions about the emancipatory potential of existentialist philosophies, especially in the context of undergraduate classrooms. (shrink)

David Carr argues that the intelligibility of spiritual development as an educational activity is dependent upon there being a framework of propositions that relates to spiritual experience and that there is a methodology for establishing their truth. These propositions and the accompanying methodology need to be constructed along the lines of a traditional but re-worked form of religious education. Michael Hand argues to the contrary that there can be no methodology for the evaluation of the truth claims in relation to (...) 'spiritual'propositions since they invariably psychologically, if not logically, involve reference to a transcendental being and are therefore seen as substantially matters of faith. Since the presentation of faith-based propositional knowledge is inappropriate to the secular school, the only route for spiritual education is in terms of those emotional qualities that we identify with the human 'spirit', that is, generosity, magnanimity, good heartedness, etc. In this paper it is argued that neither position is satisfactory in addressing the existential anxieties and tensions that underlie the construction of religious and other spiritually relevant forms of articulation. We do not need Carr's 'true' spiritual propositions. Analysis of spiritual discourses can take the same epistemological form as enquiry in arts criticism, one that recognises the elasticity of its propositions in terms of meaning and a fluidity in terms of its boundaries. The 'truth' of such propositions depends upon how they answer to the existential tensions felt by the pupil. Insofar as Hand's analysis is concerned, to reduce spiritual education to a form of emotional and social development neglects the clear intelligibility of spiritual discourse to the religious and non-religious minded alike. The unifying element in spiritual discourse is those existential questions that lie at its foundations. Spiritual education seeks to address these questions as ones of both passion and intelligibility, helping pupils to make choices in light of their own experience of the tensions and anxieties that are embedded within them. (shrink)

The affective turn -- Violence against women: perspectives and strategies -- Notes -- References -- PART III: Togetherness and its forms -- 7. Feminist visions and socio-political meanings of non-monogamous love -- Contemporary bonding, plurality of love -- Consensual plurality and sustainability of bonding -- Notes -- References -- 8. The invisible ties We share: A relational analysis of the contemporary loving couple -- The semantics of love and the We -- Love in situation: the WeLR in motion -- Enminded (...) bodies in the WeLR -- Final remarks: the bonds the WeLR creates -- Notes -- References -- 9. Silent love: On Irigaray's suggestion of cultivating sexual difference -- A culture of two subjects -- Listening -- The meaning of the word 'silence' -- Silence as a condition of love -- Cultivating silence -- Silent love -- Notes -- References -- 10. Love, feminism and dialectics: Repairing splits in theory and practice -- Dialectical critical realism -- Benjamin: from existential tension to oppressive contradiction -- Dialectics, necessity and redemptive critique -- The reparative turn and the issue of transformation -- In the pulse of now -- Closing words -- Notes -- References -- Index. (shrink)

Gregory the Great depicts himself as a contemplative who, as bishop of Rome, was compelled to become an administrator and pastor. His theological response to this existential tension illuminates the vexed questions of his relationships to predecessors and of his legacy. Gregory develops Augustine’s thought in such a way as to satisfy John Cassian’s position that contemplative vision is grounded in the soul’s likeness to the unity of Father and Son. For Augustine, “mercy” lovingly lifts the neighbor toward life (...) in God. Imitating God’s own love for humankind, this mercy likens the Christian to God’s essential goodness and, by this likeness, prepares him or her for the vision of God, which Augustine expects not now but only in the next life. For Augustine, the exercise of mercy can—when useful—involve a shared affection or understanding. Gregory makes this shared affection essential to the neighborly love that he calls “compassion.” In this affective fellowship, Gregory finds a human translation of the passionless unity of Father and Son—so that, for Gregory, compassion becomes the immediate basis for and consequence of seeing God—even in this life. Compassion does not degrade; rather, it retrenches the perfection of contemplation. Reconciling compassionate activity and contemplative vision, this creative renegotiation of Augustine and Cassian both answered Gregory’s own aspirations and gave to the tumultuous post-Imperial West a needed account of worldly affairs as spiritual affairs. (shrink)

This paper interprets the influential colony management simulator ‘Dwarf Fortress’ existentially, in terms of finitude, absurdity, and narrative. It applies Aarseth/Möring’s proposed method of game interpretation, adopting their definition of ‘cybermedia’ as a generalized game ontology, then providing a specialized ontology of ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which describes its genre and salient gameplay features, incorporating Ian Bogost’s concept of ‘procedural rhetoric’. It then gives an existentialist interpretation of ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which centres on ‘finitude’, ‘absurdity’, and ‘narrative’, showing that ‘Dwarf Fortress’ is a (...) game about the existential tensions involved in being human. We live knowing our lives and civilizations are finite, that there are radical limits on what we can know and do. There is no meaning inherent in the world, or in history, so it is up to us to create our own, and one of our most powerful ways of doing this is narrative. (shrink)

One of the world's pre-eminent Max Weber scholars here presents a comprehensive analysis of Weber's ambiguous stance toward modernity considered from a normative, theoretical, and historical point of view. The book is in two parts. Part I scrutinises Weber's world view. On the basis of his thinking about the meaning and inter-relationships of science, politics, and ethics in the modern era, Weber is seen as the embodiment of a social scientist and political thinker who exposes himself to intellectual risks and (...) existential tensions while resisting final solutions. It includes a masterly analysis of Weber's two famous speeches 'Science as a Vocation' and 'Politics as a Vocation'. Part II considers Weber's unfinished project on the sociology of religion. Piecing together planned and partially completed works on Islam and Western Christianity, Schluchter locates them in the history and theory of Weber's overall work. This reconstruction of Weber's work on religion emphasises its interplay between religion, economy, politics, and law. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considers the fear of social alienation of love. It is within the limits of psychoanalytic epistemology, the analysis of which will be presented in the article, the tendencies to monotony and universal solutions with an emphasis on ensuring the objectivity of the problem of gender alienation, to be more exact, the fear of love, which causes the gender process, are viewed most reliably. In view of the above the purpose of the paper is to investigate the conceptual (...) contradictions associated with the reconstruction of basic measurements of the fear of alienation of love within different ideological approaches; to reveal the most significant contradictions that manifest themselves in the differences between secular and religious frames; to determine a philosophical and fundamental foundation for the types of fear: metaphysical, transcendental and social, which to some extent have influenced the development of a gender tradition. The paper investigates the fear of alienation of love, not as an instinct or psychological experience, or as a social factor, but as a correlation between the functional types of fear and the peculiarities of social and cultural processes, and it acts as a dependence of the European societies on the various functional forms of fear of love that influence the processes of social transformations. Theoretical basis. The authors determine that in the gender approach the subject, who is cognized, has specific desires and interests. The process of cognation is local, contextual, in which physiologically and spiritually the fear of alienation of love is closely linked to the conditions of existence of people, with the arrangement of social and individual life. In modern civilization, true love with some exceptions, is fleeting. It is now hindered by the burdens of life, and ideological settings, which go only from the "I", and not from the common "I and You", contributing to frustration and alienation. Originality. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the fear of alienation of love, as a way of identifying the essential characteristics of "I", acts as an existential, which concentrates on the sense-life range of problems. The range of problem in a single topic is in the "point I", surrounded by gender boundaries, it contains as a condition for its manifestation the personality distancing – free or forced consolidation and assertion of the autonomy of the individual. Alienation of love as an existential admits in the register of the intimate, intentional for self-perception, internal state to organize and identify with the "authentic I". Conclusions. The article establishes that gender identity under the conditions of modern socio-psychological crisis is associated with forming a special "picture of fear, anxiety, loneliness" as a part of that internal and external world, generated by alienation from society. The fear of alienated love acts as the essential existential of human being, which is a necessary existential condition of the existential tension that occurs as an antipode and a characteristic of courage, asceticism, and the "beginning of wisdom". The considered phenomenon of the fear of alienation of love is interpreted as the result of the ontological and gender alienation of a person who has lost a sense of security and plunged into a continuous interindividual rivalry. (shrink)

In his important work, Orthodox Spirituality, Father Dumitru Stăniloae considers that, besides the real existence of the subconscious, there exists in man another reality as well, comprising the superior divine energies found in the human heart and which he defined by using the modern notion of transconscious or supraconscious.Contribution: The present study emphasises on the origin, definitions and content of this concept in the work of Father Stăniloae and its great importance in defining a way to know God and his (...) salvation works, from the perspective of an anchorite and Christian mystic, engaged in the existential tension of communion with God. (shrink)

While many studies of 'On the Concept of Irony' treat Kierkegaard's "irony" primarily from a literary perspective, "The Isolated Self" also examines irony with an eye to the fundamental problem in Kierkegaard's authorship, namely, the challenge of becoming a "self". Kierkegaard's "irony" is a cavalier way of life that seeks isolation from the other -- an isolation he considers necessary to becoming a self. At the same time, irony is said to be a hindrance to selfhood because the self fails (...) to become a part of the social world in which it resides. The book puts the existential tension of 'On the Concept of Irony' into relief and suggests how it sets the stage for the rest of Kierkegaard's authorship. The book reconstructs the horizon of understanding during Kierkegaard's time, including Hegel's interpretation of both Socratic irony and Friedrich Schlegel's romantic irony. In addition, the work explores material from the little-known Danish discussion of irony in the works of Poul Martin Møller, Johan ,Ludwig Helberg and Hans Lassen Martensen. (shrink)

Attempts to develop a genuine compatabilist model of the free will and to implement this model into psychology. The task of the model is to present an alternative to those versions of the compatabilist notion, which rightly seen are nothing but soft versions of determinism. This alternative is based on an integration of a soft version of determinism with a soft version of indeterminism, and based on a nonmystical and scientific concept of downward causality, and thereby is placed in the (...) domain of science and in a materialist ontology. This leads to a hierarchical multi-layer model, the core notion of which is the soft deterministic concept of bottom-up constituting dynamics and the soft indeterministic concept of top-down organizational dynamics. It is in this existential tension field between constitutional and organizational dynamics that our very human nature in general, and free will in particular, develop. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Collecting: An Unruly Passion: Psychological PerspectivesKevin MelchionneCollecting: An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives, by Werner Muensterberger; 295 pp. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1994, $29.95 cloth, $13.00 paper.Due to the growth of museum studies, collecting practices are receiving more attention these days. Muensterberger’s book is one of the more ambitious of recent studies in this area. He applies classical psychoanalytic concepts to collecting. Cultural theorists often say that (...) collecting is dominated by neurotic, fetishistic, compulsive, or obsessional desires. Muensterberger is firmly in this camp, and his performance confirms rather than dispels the misgivings that nonpsychoanalytic students of culture have often expressed about the psychoanalytic approach.The first two parts of the book are an exposition of the psychoanalytic view. The third treats several “case studies” of lunatic barons and desperate social climbers whose unbridled accumulation drove their families to ruin. The tales make for good reading. The final part of the book aims at a cultural history of [End Page 524] collecting. This section strays farthest from Muensterberger’s theoretical turf and suffers from a certain confusion of purpose. Much of it reads like a selection of case studies taken from the past rather than a history of collecting. In all, Muensterberger’s cultural history of collecting does not compare favorably with the extensive work in art history on the origins of the museum. I will limit my discussion to his psychoanalytic account of collecting.Muensterberger’s psychoanalysis is starkly classical: collecting is essentially a compensation for prior disappointment and an illusory comfort in the face of an uncertain future. Collecting serves this role particularly well, it seems, because its repetitive structure allows the individual to repeat the tension-reducing act of acquisition when the satisfaction induced by the previous act fades. The meaning of the process of collecting resides in the “momentary undoing of frustrating neediness but is felt as an experience of omnipotence. Like hunger, which must be sated, the obtainment of one more object does not bring an end to the longing. Instead, it is the recurrence of the experience that explains the collector’s mental attitude. The compelling concern to go in search, to discover, to add to one’s store, or holding, or harem, is not generated by conscious planning. Rather, every new addition, whether found, given, bought, discovered, or even stolen, bears the stamp of promise and magical compensation” (p. 13). In a similar vein, Muensterberger locates the origins of the urge to collect in the child’s reliance upon objects as “symbolic substitutes” for the parent. The acquisitive bent of the collector is derivative of the “grasping and clinging” of the infant (p. 18–19).If this sounds like your generic caricature of psychoanalysis, then you have the picture. Muensterberger makes an effort to distinguish his own perspective from a facile reductionism, whereby collecting is no more than the sign of a pathological state of mind. But this is exactly what he is doing. According to the author, collectibles are simply “narcissistic supplies” (p. 234). Speaking of the noted Italian collector, Mario Praz, Muensterberger writes: “the inanimate objects’ function is essentially compensatory... they are being used not only as an attempt to disguise old wounds but at the same time to serve as reminders of past injuries and humiliations” (p. 43).The idea that cultural practices like collecting serve in some way to compensate for the frailty of the human spirit is deeply attractive. If only through repetition, Muensterberger’s insistence upon the essentially compensatory nature of collecting (and for that matter, all culture) begins to make one wonder if the compensatory view of culture has not, through an excess of intellectual scruple, received too little recognition. Unfortunately, he pursues standard Freudian explanations with a relentlessness that sinks to self-caricature. In this respect, the book is a missed opportunity. It is plausible to suggest that collecting temporarily eases all sorts of psychological and existential tensions in adults though I doubt that it does this better than eating, sex, or yoga. [End Page 525]But it is not just his brand of psychoanalysis that is simplistic. Muensterberger defines collecting as the “selecting, gathering, and keeping of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper investigates from a phenomenological perspective the origins of self-illness ambiguity. Drawing on phenomenological theories of affectivity and selfhood, I argue that, as a phenomenon which concerns primarily the ‘personal self’, self-illness ambiguity is dependent on distinct alterations of affective background orientations. I start by illustrating how personhood is anchored in the experience of a specific set of non-intentional affects – i.e. moods or existential feelings – alterations of which are often present in mental ill-health. Also through (...) the exploration of the phenomenology of acute and long-term anxiety, I suggest that self-illness ambiguity originates in the presence of moods or existential feelings that are in tension with the ones that structure the person’s experience prior to the onset of the illness or when its symptoms are not experienced. More specifically, I claim that due to their ability to ‘block’ or ‘suspend’ some of the person’s affective and cognitive responses, such affective orientations may unsettle one’s self-defining evaluative perspective, leading to uncertainty and doubting about one’s personal self. (shrink)

Self-illness ambiguity involves difficulty distinguishing between patterns of thought, feeling, and action that are the ‘products’ of one's illness and those that are genuinely one's own. Bortolan maintains that the values, cares, and preferences that define someone’s personal identity are rooted in intentional emotions and non-intentional affects (i.e., existential feelings and moods). The uncertainty that comprises self-illness ambiguity results from the experience of moods or existential feelings that are in tension with ones that the patient experienced prior to (...) the onset of illness. Building on these ideas, I examine how the notion of ‘affordance’ can shed further light on the dynamics and phenomenology of self-illness ambiguity. In my view, such ambiguity results from a lack of diachronic continuity and stability in a subject’s field of affordances. (shrink)

We argue that two long-term goals of AI research stand in tension with one another. The first involves creating AI that is safe, where this is understood as solving the problem of value alignment. The second involves creating artificial general intelligence, meaning AI that operates at or beyond human capacity across all or many intellectual domains. Our argument focuses on the human capacity to make what we call “existential choices”, choices that transform who we are as persons, including transforming (...) what we most deeply value or desire. It is a capacity for a kind of value misalignment, in that the values held prior to making such choices can be significantly different from (misaligned with) the values held after making them. Because of the connection to existentialist philosophers who highlight these choices, we call the resulting form of risk “existentialist risk.” It is, roughly, the risk that results from AI taking an active role in authoring its own values rather than passively going along with the values given to it. On our view, human-like intelligence requires a human-like capacity for value misalignment, which is in tension with the possibility of guaranteeing value alignment between AI and humans. (shrink)

Learning and development are well established as concepts in educational psychology. Gert Biesta has used terms such as “learnification” and “developmentalism” to describe a tendency that, in his view, removes existential qualities from teaching and education. Although important in the right contexts, the concepts do not represent the core of what education should be about, he claims. Jostein Sæther notes that in many ways he shares Biesta's view on the most fundamental quality of education, i.e., helping young people exist (...) as independent subjects in confrontation with their own will, responsibility, and freedom. In this paper, he addresses the overarching question of whether it is possible and desirable to think educationally about psychology in educational theory, specifically through relating Biesta's critique to selected handbooks, reviews, and metaliterature. Sæther does not propose integrating educational psychology into Biesta's existential theory but rather hopes to open a dialogue on different points of view that challenge each other in fruitful ways. The process of discussing certain principles, problems, and examples should yield a certain kind of “unclean” educational psychology, one that is relevant to “subjectification.” There are problems related to eclecticism and the tension between essence and existence, yet, in this context, Sæther sees a dialogical project as the only way forward. (shrink)

Publication date: 26 January 2017 Source: Author: Abolfazl Mohammadi, Javad Momeni Angela Carter in her famous short story, The Bloody Chamber, depicts a protagonist whose identity seems to be a predetermined sign in a signifying loop from which she can make no escape. In the first part of our paper, we attempt to show how The protagonist’s ensuing psychological tension is aggravated by the conflict which she feels between her ideal ego and her ego-ideal and which leads her to unrelenting (...) introspection and interior dialogue with her existential states. Such interior dialogue provides the protagonist with an existential ground on which she empties all her life events of their presence by signifying them through Derridean Differance. Therefore, her interior dialogue results in non-identity in her subjectivization both in the realm of signs and of events. Then, we focus on the protaganist’s paradoxical urges spontaneously outflowed from within which, by resisting symbolization, provide her with the possibility of becoming what she thinks she has never been and allow for her moments of self-determination. Finally, we illustrate how such psychological odyssey takes shape in the Gothic setting which arouses, in Lacanian terminology, pre-symbolic tendencies and which involves the coincidence of Gothic horror with the horrors of social reality. (shrink)

From a reading of Sein und Zeit and contemporary courses, we are interested in examining the transcendental structure of Dasein to explain what we understand as its bidimensional character. For this, we analyze the function of the mood in the dynamics of the structure through the anxiety and profound boredom . We emphasize the affective disposition as an existential starting point and condition of possibility for two pathways, since in relation to being we observed tension between two dimensions that (...) are oscillated Dasein towards one concealment and one unconcealed motion of what happens. With this interpretation we intend to show that the tensive dynamics of the bidimensional structure of Dasein proposed here is the effect of the original givenness of being. (shrink)

In this paper I use a distinction between the "anxiety of strangers" and the "fear of enemies" to show how uncertainty and tension experienced in the face of what is other and different need not lead to a nationalist insularity, but can be the occasion for an existential philosophical education - an education in which the resolute acceptance of strangeness allows us to reflect on our taken-for-granted about the everyday.

I examine a tension between temporal and spatial conceptualization of the genesis of the cosmos to show how chronological characterization of ‘beginnings’ occludes ontological interpretation of our existential orientations, to help my audience distinguish symbolic expressions of wonder that the cosmos exists from explanations for it. I bring together resources from multiple intellectual and religious traditions to perform a philosophy of religions that goes beyond the narrowness, intellectualism, and insularity of institutionalized philosophy of religion. I turn to Ibn Rushd, (...) Tillich, Pamela Sue Anderson, and Sara Ahmed to expose problems of confusing symbols with concepts. I bring Aristotle, Nagarjuna, Maimonides, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Nasr together in conversation about the notion of a ‘beginning.’ Through this, I seek to shift questions of cosmic linearity to questions of spatial symbols of inclusivity and suggest that our orientation toward chronology distracts us from inclusive ontologies, inadvertently getting us stuck in imagistic representation of a closed cosmos rather than critical conceptualization of open symbols for an inclusive cosmos. (shrink)

The question ‘How does a person make an ethical decision?’ becomes all the more compelling and problematic when trying to behave ethically during, as A ́ gnes Heller puts it, ‘the total breakdown of ‘‘normal’’ ethical worlds’. In her philosophical work Heller pieces together a moral compass internal to individual subjectivity to employ during such times. Kierkegaard’s model of existential choice has played a formative role in Heller’s solution to the problem. In my article I describe Heller’s Kierkegaardian framework (...) of choosing oneself as an ethical being and consider a recent critique of Heller’s Kierke- gaardian ethics of personality by Richard J. Bernstein, continuing the substantively pro- ductive tension between the irrational and rational forces that determine our ethical actions. In the process, I show common ground between Bernstein and Heller through an appropriation of Arendtian judgment. I turn to Heller’s most recent work in The Concept of the Beautiful in order to make this common ground tangible. (shrink)

This article discusses the tension between social relationality and self-relationality central to Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein and the possible ways of reconciling this tension. Arguing that this is a tension between communicability and existential commitments, the article poses the question: How are existential commitments responsive to communication? After problematizing the quasi-Kantian and communitarian ways of settling the tension, the article uses Heidegger’s early reading of Aristotle to develop a third hermeneutic model of ethical relationality according to which (...) class='Hi'>existential commitments are shareable in communication, since ethos – the existential posture towards the good – arises out of pathos that exposes Dasein to coexistence. The account of ethical relationality found in Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle thus takes the world to be a shared and dynamic ontological condition and emphasize that the world constitutes selfhood in a way that is constantly at stake in ethical communication. (shrink)

“Existential risks” are risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential: risks of nuclear wars, pandemics, supervolcano eruptions, and so on. On standard utilitarianism, it seems, the reduction of such risks should be a key global priority today. Many effective altruists agree with this verdict. But how should the importance of these risks be assessed on a Christian moral theory? In this paper, I begin to answer this question – taking Thomas Aquinas as a reference, and the risks (...) of anthropogenic extinction as an example. I’ll suggest that on a Thomist framework, driving ourselves extinct would constitute a complete failure to fulfil our God-given nature, a radical form of hubris, and a loss of cosmological significance. So the reduction of such risks seems vital for Thomists, or Christians more broadly. Indeed, I end with the thought that these considerations are not parochially Christian, or indeed specifically religious: everyone with a similar view of mankind – as immensely valuable yet fallen and fragile – should agree that existential risks are a pressing moral concern. (shrink)

The enactive approach provides a perspective on human bodies in their organic, sensorimotor, social, and linguistic dimensions, but many fundamental issues still remain unaddressed. A crucial desideratum for a theory of human bodies is that it be able to account for concrete human becoming. In this article I show that enactive theory possesses resources to achieve this goal. Being an existential structure, human becoming is best approached by a series of progressive formal indications. I discuss three standpoints on human (...) becoming as open, indeterminate, and therefore historical using the voices of Pico della Mirandola, Gordon W. Allport, and Paulo Freire. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation we move from an existential to an ontological register in looking at modes of embodied becoming. His scheme of interpretation of the relation between modes of individuation allows us to understand human becoming in terms of a tendency to neotenization. I compare this ontology with an enactive theoretical account of the dimensions of embodiment, finding several compatibilities and complementarities. Various forms of bodily unfinishedness in enaction fit the Simondonian ontology and the existential analysis, where transindividuality corresponds to participatory sense-making and Freire’s joint becoming of individuals and communities correlates with the open tensions in linguistic bodies between incorporation and incarnation of linguistic acts. I test some of this ideas by considering the plausibility of artificial bodies and personal becoming from an enactive perspective, using the case of replicants in the film Blade Runner. The conclusion is that any kind of personhood, replicants included, requires living through an actual history of concrete becoming. (shrink)

Learning to work as a relational caring professional in healthcare and social welfare, is foremost a process of transformative learning, of Building, of professional subjectification. In this article we contribute to the design of such a process of formation by presenting a structured map of five domains of formational goals. It is mainly informed by many years of care-ethical research and training of professionals in healthcare and social work. The five formational domains are:Relational Caring Approach,Perception,Knowledge,Interpretation, andPractical Wisdom. The formation process, (...) described as the recurring detour of a continuing practice, requires ‘exposure’, in-depth learning and learning communities. Relational caring—care consequently resulting from and structured by relational thinking, exploring, and steering—requires ‘inquiry’ as a continuous learning process in practice. The process is ultimately aimed at fostering mature, competent, and practically wise professional caregivers who are able to relationally connect with and attune to care receivers, and adequately navigate existential, moral, and political-institutional tensions in relational caring in complex organizations in Late-Modern society. (shrink)

The cinema of Martin Scorsese has been analysed in connection with a wide range of themes and issues. In this paper, through a film-philosophical analysis, we aim to demonstrate how his filmography produces storyworlds pervaded by a tension similar to the one Søren Kierkegaard expressed in his existentialist writings. Indeed, one of the tenets of film-philosophy is that audio-visual media generate, in an affective and experiential manner, complex moral and ethical systems and existential viewpoints with which viewers interact in (...) a direct and creative way. Empathising with the self-sacrifice of the unlikely martyr played by Jake LaMotta or feeling the collapsing certainties of a missionary in seventeenth-century Japan are thus occasions to encounter particular conceptual personae. These characters embody specific iterations of Kierkegaardian knights of faith: existentialist figures whose doom takes in ambiguous film ecologies where the desire for wholesomeness constantly clashes with mortality and finitude. (shrink)

In this Introduction we lay out the context of a ‘Continental philosophy of biology’ and suggest why Georges Canguilhem’s place in such a philosophy is important. There is not one single program for Continental philosophy of biology, but Canguilhem’s vision, which he referred to at one stage as ‘biological philosophy’, is a significant one, located in between the classic holism-reductionism tensions, significantly overlapping with philosophy of medicine, philosophy of technology and other themes moving away from the more common (...) class='Hi'>existential and phenomenological motifs of post-war European thought. Chapters examine (among other themes) his relation to Lebensphilosophie, to authors such as Kant, Nietzsche and Marjorie Grene, and to current theoretical biology. (shrink)

Once the preserve of philosophy and theology, what Weber called `the problem of theodicy' - the problem of reconciling normative ideals with the reality in which we live - recurs in the social sciences in the secular form of `sociodicy'. Within a functionalist framework, sociodicies have offered legitimizing rationalizations of social adversities, inequalities and injustice, but seldom address the existential meaning and ethical implications of human affliction and suffering in social life. We suggest that an apparent indifference to these (...) questions in social theory reflects a deeper tension between modernity's millennial expectations of moral progress and the escalating history of violence, exploitation and suffering in the modern world. The task of sociodicy, we argue, should be reconstructed as a critique of the decivilizing implications of this tension, not just to document the consequences of suffering on people's lives, but in order to reassess the experience of modernity at the end of one of the most disturbed and violent centuries the world has known. (shrink)

I am attracted to ontological pluralism, the doctrine that some things exist in a different way than other things.1 For the ontological pluralist, there is more to learn about an object’s existential status than merely whether it is or is not: there is still the question of how that entity exists. By contrast, according to the ontological monist, either something is or it isn’t, and that’s all there is say about a thing’s existential status. We appear to be (...) to be ontological committed to what I will call almost nothings. Examples of almost nothings include holes, cracks, and shadows; almost nothings thrive in the absence of ‘positive’ entities such as donuts, walls, and sunlight. Let’s focus on holes, since the literature on them is voluminous.2 We quantify over holes, and even count them: we say, for example, that there are some holes in the cheese, seven to be precise. We ascribe features to them and talk as though they stand in relations: that hole is three feet wide, much wider than that tire over there. Holes apparently persist through time, as evidenced by the fact that my sweater has the same hole in it as the last time you saw me wear it. We even talk as though holes are causally efficacious: my ankle was badly sprained because I stepped in that hole in the sidewalk.3 It seems then that we believe in holes. If our beliefs are true, holes must enjoy some kind of reality. This puts the ontological monist in an uncomfortable position. According to her, everything that there is enjoys the same kind of reality, which is the kind of reality enjoyed by full-fledged concrete entities such as ourselves. She is committed to the unpleasant claim that holes are just as real as concretia, a claim that is apt to be met with incredulous stares by those not acquainted with contemporary metaphysics. Roy Sorensen (2008, p. 19) notes the tension almost nothings generate for ontological monists: ‘… it feels paradoxical to say that absences exist—but no better to say that absences do not exist’.. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary agency theory and the phenomenological-existential tradition, this paper uses Mr. Stevens, the narrator-butler of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, to examine the interplay and potential tensions between different aspects (and thus different standards) of human agency. Highlighting the problem of mission creep described by John Martin Fischer, in which a notion expands beyond the original purpose, I use Stevens’s thoughts on dignity to outline three different ways actions can (or can fail to) trace (...) back to agents—autonomy as self-control, authenticity as sincerity, and authenticity as ownership. I then propose that the way Stevens embraces and acts consistently within his subservient professional role (autonomy as self-control) weakens his ability to take responsibility for his life in the sense required by authenticity as ownership. Because the self-responsibility of authenticity requires normative flexibility (the ability to revise and reshape one’s commitments and values), when normatively inflexible agents act in self-controlled ways according to their roles or welfare standards, they may limit their ability to take responsibility for their lives. In addition to illuminating debates about whether robust human agency is compatible with subservience, the normative flexibility involved in authenticity has implications for human agency more broadly. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on de Beauvoir’s view and argue that, alongside an original account of existential freedom, she utilises a Marxist-inspired historical materialism as a methodological tool with which to analyse the social position of women. First, I discuss existential freedom and highlight de Beauvoir’s introduction of gender, whereby the concepts of material, social and situational conditions cohere to restrict the possibility of freedom and agency for women. Next, I explore Marx’s view on freedom and de (...) Beauvoir’s endorsement that in order to promote human flourishing, structural and material change is required. Although some tensions prevail, I conclude that by weaving together existentialism, phenomenology and Marxism in her unique way, Simone de Beauvoir offers a complex and nuanced approach to human freedom. (shrink)

I identify and then aim to resolve a tension between the psychological and existential conceptions of boredom. The dominant view in psychology is that boredom is an emotional state that is adaptive and self-regulatory. In contrast, in the philosophical phenomenological tradition, boredom is often considered as an existentially important mood. I leverage the predictive processing framework to offer an integrative account of boredom that allows us to resolve these tensions. This account explains the functional aspects of boredom-as-emotion in (...) the psychological literature, offering a principled way of defining boredom’s function in terms of prediction-error-minimisation. However, mediated through predictive processing, we can also integrate the phenomenological view of boredom as a mood; in this light, boredom tracks our grip on the world – revealing a potentially fundamental (mis)attunement. (shrink)

Context: The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas. Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and understanding (...) of the mind. Problem: Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive science. Method: We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. Results: Our analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations. This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive science that do not succumb to this tension. Implications: In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms, or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. Constructivist content: Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. (shrink)

An innovative, ambitious, tradition-crossing study drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas to propose a new and transformative concept of truth. The idea of truth is a guiding theme for German continental philosophers from Husserl through Habermas. In this book, Lambert Zuidervaart examines debates surrounding the idea of truth in twentieth-century German continental philosophy. He argues that the Heideggerian and critical theory traditions have much in common—despite the miscommunication, opposition, and even outright hostility that have prevailed (...) between them—including significant roots in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Zuidervaart sees the tensions between Heideggerian thought and critical theory as potentially generative sources for a new approach to the idea of truth. He argues further that the “critical retrieval” of insights from German continental philosophy can shed light on current debates in analytic truth theory. Zuidervaart structures his account around three issues: the distinction between propositional truth and truth that is more than propositional (which he calls existential truth); the relationship between propositional truth and the discursive justification of propositional truth claims, framed in analytic philosophy by debates between epistemic and nonepistemic conceptions of truth; and the relationship between propositional truth and the objectivity of knowledge, often presented in analytic philosophy as a conflict between realists and antirealists over the relation between “truth bearers” and “truth makers.” In an innovative and ambitious argument, drawing on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, Zuidervaart proposes a new and transformative conception of truth. (shrink)

In Being and Time, Heidegger affirms that being-with or Mitsein is an essential constitution of Dasein but he does not submit this existential to the same rigorous analyses as other existentials. In this essay, Jean-Luc Nancy points to the different places where Heidegger erased the possibility of thinking an essential with that he himself opened. This erasure is due, according to Nancy, to the subordination of Mitsein to a thinking of the proper and the improper. The polarization of Being-with (...) between an improper face, the Anyone, and a proper one, the people, which is also, as Nancy shows, a polarization between everydayness and historicity, between a being-together in exteriority (indifference and anonymity) and a being-together in interiority (union through destiny), between a solitary dying and the sacrificial death in combat, leaves the essential with unthought. This essay shows not only the tensions that arise out of Heidegger’s own analyses of Mitsein and affect the whole of Being and Time but also underlines in the end a “shortfall in thinking” inherent not only to Heidegger’s work but, as Nancy claims, to our Western tradition, a shortfall which Nancy has attempted to remedy in his Being Singular Plural. (shrink)