DOCSLIB.ORG

Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity David Liakos

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity David Liakos University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Philosophy ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 7-29-2019 From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity David Liakos Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/phil_etds Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Liakos, David. "From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity." (2019). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/phil_etds/39 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i David Liakos Candidate Philosophy Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Iain Thomson , Chairperson Mary Domski Ann Murphy Theodore George ii FROM DECONSTRUCTION TO REHABILITATION: HEIDEGGER, GADAMER, AND MODERNITY by David Liakos B.A., Philosophy, Connecticut College, 2012 M.A., Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2017 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Philosophy The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2019 iii To Genevieve and Francis J. McNamara, and Kathleen and Gregory Liakos ****** “The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.” — Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 112 “The greater part of what we have is not a burden to be carried or an incubus to be thrown off, but an inheritance to be enjoyed.” — Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, 113 iv Acknowledgments In one of his reflections on the poet, Gadamer quotes Hölderlin’s moving expression of thankful gratitude before the expanse of the divine and of nature: “Who wants to thank before he receives, / And give an answer, before he has heard?” (quoted in EPH 106/GW9 242) As a good Gadamerian, I believe that the most essential part of what we receive and hear is the past that shapes us and that provides us with our point of orientation. My own past has been shaped first of all by my family, and now, in submitting my dissertation, it is time for me to thank them. I dedicate this dissertation, then, to my grandparents, Genevieve and Francis J. McNamara, and to my parents, Kathleen and Gregory Liakos. Their love, support, and encouragement means more to me than words can say, and without them, I could not have written this dissertation. The same goes for my wonderful sister, Madeline Liakos, who has been here the whole way. Feedback and encouragement have come from scholars like John Arthos, Kelly Becker, John Bova, Alexander Crist, Steven DeLay, Andrew Fuyarchuk, Karsten Harries, Steven Haug, Daniel Lindquist, Greg Lynch, Jeff Malpas, Kathryn McKnight, Ian Moore, Cynthia Nielsen, Joachim Oberst, Claude Romano, Lawrence Schmidt, Richard Sharpe, Robert Stolorow, Kristi Sweet, and Larry Vogel. I have been blessed with many friends in Albuquerque and elsewhere who have made my life joyful, including Jordan Bancroft, Will Barnes, Jim Bodington, Graham Bounds, Nick Clements, Duncan Cordry, Yuri Di Liberto, Ben Dulong, Bill Gannon, Cara Greene, Matt Huss, Charles Kalm, Marcel Lebow, Brian Liwo, Elizabeth McNamara Liwo, Cody Lutz, Bobby McKinley, Chris McNamara, Jason Merriam, Hank Messinger, Lalita Moskowitz, Kylie Musolf, Connor Pagett, Mariah Partida, Justin Pearce, Rajesh Reddy, Brendan Rome, Mike Russo, Tom v Satriale, Ian Scanlan, and Joseph Spencer. Haley Burke, whose love and questioning have nurtured this project, deserves special mention. My dissertation committee has been enormously supportive. Mary Domski has been a mentor and friend to me ever since I decided to attend UNM. Ted George exemplifies many hermeneutical and dialogical virtues, and he has contributed greatly to the shape of this project. Ann Murphy has always been probing but kind in her questions. My chair, Iain Thomson, has generously encouraged my work for many years, and has pushed and improved my thinking and writing in so many ways. I hope this project offers what Gadamer calls a fusion of horizons—on which more later—with all these family members, teachers, and friends. I have read portions and drafts of this dissertation to audiences at meetings of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, the North Texas Philosophical Association, and the Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy. Part of Chapter 2 is forthcoming in Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. The writing of this dissertation was supported by a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship in the Humanities from the Bilinski Educational Foundation. vi From Deconstruction to Rehabilitation: Heidegger, Gadamer, and Modernity by David Liakos B.A., Philosophy, Connecticut College, 2012 M.A., Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2017 PhD, Philosophy, University of New Mexico, 2019 Abstract This dissertation is a study of the problem of modernity, formulated as the following multivalent question: How should we understand the scope, character, and limitations of our historical age? The study approaches this question from the point of view of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. We will, first, clarify how Heidegger and Gadamer think about modernity, thereby shedding light on their widely misunderstood intellectual relationship; and, next, uncover and defend a distinctively Gadamerian response to modernity as a viable argument, and as potentially more coherent and hopeful than Heidegger’s answer to the problem of the modern age. In the first part, I present my reading of how these figures think about modernity. I outline Heidegger’s deconstruction of the modern age, that is, his main critique of modernity and his account of the movement into a postmodern future. Next, I motivate a contrast between Heidegger’s vision of modernity and Gadamer’s. Contrary to numerous misreadings, Gadamer proceeds along his own path of thinking, one that crucially begins with Heidegger but goes its own direction by advancing past the shortcomings of Heidegger’s thinking of modernity. The next part outlines my interpretation of Gadamer’s post-Heideggerian response to the modern age, arguing that he accomplishes this task by rediscovering what vii remains most true and meaningful in the guiding metaphors of the modern age, while criticizing the pernicious elements of modernity’s bequest to the present. First, I reconstruct and defend Gadamer’s rehabilitation of modernity’s guiding epistemic metaphors, namely, transcendental thought, humanism, experience, objectivity, and curiosity, against the backdrop of his critique of other elements of modernity’s epistemic regimes. Next, I make the same type of argument with regard to guiding ocular metaphors of infinity, perspective, and mirroring. A speculative Conclusion, on the political implications of Gadamer’s differences from Heidegger, suggests that the Gadamerian rehabilitation of modernity successfully engenders a more genuinely hopeful response to modernity than Heidegger provides. This short Conclusion again makes the case for Gadamer’s appreciable advancement beyond Heidegger. viii Table of Contents Introduction: From Modernity to Postmodernity and Back Again ............................. 1 §0.1: The problem of the modern age ...................................................................................... 2 §0.2: Modernity in light of Heidegger and Gadamer ............................................................. 8 §0.3. Summary of the dissertation .......................................................................................... 19 Part I: From Heidegger to Gadamer: Preface ............................................................. 21 Chapter One: Heidegger’s Deconstruction of Modernity ........................................... 22 §1.1: Methods of historical confrontation .............................................................................. 24 §1.1.1: Deconstruction ......................................................................................................... 24 §1.1.2: History of being ....................................................................................................... 28 §1.2: Theory of modernity ....................................................................................................... 33 §1.2.1: Periodization ............................................................................................................ 33 §1.2.2: Subject/object dichotomy ....................................................................................... 37 §1.2.3: Modern natural science .......................................................................................... 40 §1.2.4: Transformation of truth ......................................................................................... 46 §1.2.5: The rise of aesthetics ..............................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Hermeneutic Phenomenology: the Death of the Other Understood As Event
    Journal of Applied Hermeneutics March 20, 2017 The Author(s) 2017 A Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Death of the Other Understood as Event Harris B. Bechtol Abstract This is a phenomenological description of what is happening when we experience the death of another that interprets surviving or living on after such death by employing the term event. This term of art from phenomenology and hermeneutics is used to describe a disruptive and transformative experience of singularity. I maintain that the death of the other is an experience of an event because such death is unpredictable or without a horizon of expectation, excessive or without any principle of sufficient reason, and transformative or a death of the world itself. Keywords Death, Mourning, the Other, Event, Phenomenology, Derrida And you, O tree, whose branches already are casting their shadows on one poor body and soon will be overshadowing two, preserve the marks of our death; let your fruit forever be dark as a token of mourning, a monument marking the blood of two lovers. (Ovid, 2004, 4.157-161) Poetry, literature, and art in general have a unique ability to expose us to common experiences so that we see the heart of these experiences as we live them out in everyday life. Art can function as a mirror of our deepest philosophical concerns by highlighting our average, everyday understanding of phenomena. Though classified under myth, Ovid’s account of how the mulberry tree came to bear red instead of white berries functions in just this way. He shows in the tragic love of Thisbe and Pyramus how the death of a loved one is carried by the world itself through the world’s own metamorphosis.
    [Show full text]
  • International Yearbook for Hermeneutics Internationales Jahrbuch Für Hermeneutik
    International Yearbook for Hermeneutics Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik edited by Günter Figal in cooperation with Damir Barbaric´, Béla Bacsó, Gottfried Boehm, Luca Crescenzi, Ingolf Dalferth, Nicholas Davey, Donatella Di Cesare, Jean Grondin, Pavel Kouba, Joachim Lege, Hideki Mine, Hans Ruin, John Sallis, Dennis Schmidt, Bernhard Zimmermann 15 · 2016 Focus: Humanism Schwerpunkt: Humanismus Mohr Siebeck Authors e-offprint with publisher’s permission. Editorial team/Redaktion: Jon Burmeister, Ph.D. Dr. David Espinet Dr. Tobias Keiling, Ph.D. Nikola Mirković, M.A. Jerome Veith, Ph.D. Contents Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Philosophisches Seminar Platz der Universität 3 79085 Freiburg Focus: Humanism Germany Schwerpunkt: Humanismus The Yearbook calls for contributions in English or German on topics in Philosophical Hermeneutics and bordering disciplines. Please send manuscripts to: yearbook@philo Bernhard Zimmermann (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) sophie.uni-freiburg.de. All articles, except when invited, are subject to blind review. Humanismus und humanistische Bildung . 1 We assume that manuscripts are unpublished and have not been submitted for publi- cation elsewhere. Citations are to be made according to the style in the present volume. Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Radboud University) Detailed information on formatting manuscripts can be downloaded from: http://www. philosophie.uni-freiburg.de/iyh. Technology and Childhood. On a Double Debt of the Human . 16 Das Jahrbuch bittet um Zusendungen auf Deutsch oder Englisch zu Themen der Philoso- (Freiburg) phischen Hermeneutik und angrenzender Disziplinen. Bitte senden Sie Manuskripte an: Antonia Egel [email protected]. Alle Artikel, die nicht auf Einladung des Heraus- Warum lesen und wenn ja, dann was? gebers verfasst worden sind, werden in einem blind review-Verfahren begutachtet.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermeneutics, Exteriority, and Transmittability
    Research research in phenomenology 47 (2017) 331–350 in Phenomenology brill.com/rp Are We a Conversation? Hermeneutics, Exteriority, and Transmittability Theodore George Texas A&M University [email protected] Abstract Hermeneutics is widely celebrated as a call for “conversation”—that is, a manner of in- quiry characterized by humility and openness to the other that eschews the pretenses of calculative rationality and resists all finality of conclusions. In this, conversation takes shape in efforts to understand and interpret that always unfold in the transmis- sion of meaning historically in language. Yet, the celebration of hermeneutics for hu- mility and openness appears, at least, to risk embarrassment in light of claims found in Heidegger and Gadamer that conversation is always contingent on “prior accord.” Critics of hermeneutics have, for some decades, interpreted this claim of prior accord to refer to a common tradition, so that the understanding achieved in conversation is restricted to those who belong to the same heritage. In this essay, the author argues that although Heidegger and Gadamer often suggest this prior accord is a matter of common tradition, crucial threads of Gadamer’s thought, in particular, recommend a different view. Gadamer, in these threads, offers that “prior accord” concerns not a common tradition, but, on the contrary, the call to participate in hermeneutic trans- mission as such, even—and no doubt especially—when those in conversation are not familiar with the tradition or language of the other. With this, we are called to converse not first by what the other says, but by the fact that we do not yet understand, that we have already misunderstood, and that we perhaps cannot understand.
    [Show full text]
  • Sheila M. Ross
    ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): 132-168 ____________________________________________________ Gadamer’s Late Thinking on Verweilen Sheila M. Ross Abstract This essay presents Gadamer’s interest in temporality as his strategy for advancing the importance of hermeneutics as philosophy of experience, a strategy that I show becomes significantly more salient with the appearance of his 1992 essay, Wort und Bild. I show how temporal categories function to demarcate the ontological imbalance that is of such central concern in Gadamer’s philosophical project. The paper also considers some common misunderstandings of Gadamer that result from a failure to take full account of his experiential orientation, and thus prevent recognition of its radical potential. A full account must include a grasp of the exemplariness of art in his philosophy, and in this connection, the essay considers, not Gadamer’s ideal of lyric poetry, but the quite distinct exemplariness of narrative art. Though its temporal structure would seem particularly pertinent, it is not this feature, it turns out, that makes it particularly worthy of hermeneutical reflection. I. Close to the Living World: Late Crystallizations This essay considers Gadamer’s attribution of a special temporality to the experience of “tarrying” (Verweilen), a term that for Gadamer denotes the exemplary hermeneutical eventfulness of application. Gadamer has frequently mentioned that the quality of time during tarrying is its definitive feature, and therefore this particular thread about time in Gadamer would appear to be rather fundamental. However, it is difficult to find any substantial discussion of the overall significance of Gadamer’s particular thinking about time.
    [Show full text]
  • Dr. Theodore George Professor and Head Department of Philosophy
    Dr. Theodore George Professor and Head Department of Philosophy Texas A&M University [email protected] Areas of specialization: Gadamer, contemporary hermeneutics, contemporary continental ethics, philosophy of art and aesthetics, Hegel, German Idealism and Romanticism Areas of competence: continental European philosophy since Kant, the history of Western philosophy Education: Ph.D. in Philosophy, Villanova University, 2000 Dissertation: “Hegel’s Speculative Theory of Political Life: Community and Tragedy in the Phenomenology of Spirit” Committee: Dr. Dennis Schmidt (Director), Dr. Walter Brogan, Dr. Julie Klein Fulbright Fellow, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, 1998–1999 Host: Prof. Dr. Günter Figal M.A. in Philosophy, Villanova University, 1997 B.A. in Philosophy and German (double major), Whitman College, 1993 Cum Laude, with honors and distinction in Philosophy and with distinction in German Thesis: “The Structure of Rebirth in Walden: A Connection with Thus Spoke Zarathustra” Appointments: Head, Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2015–present (Research leave 2018–2019; Interim Head 2014–2015) Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2020–present Associate Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2007–2020 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2001–2007 Honorary Appointment: Senior Researcher, College of Fellows, Philosophy Research Institute, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia, 2016–present Editorial Positions: Editor, Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2012–present
    [Show full text]
  • Vietnamese Existential Philosophy: a Critical Reappraisal
    VIETNAMESE EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY: A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Hi ền Thu Lươ ng May, 2009 i © Copyright 2009 by Hi ền Thu Lươ ng ii ABSTRACT Title: Vietnamese Existential Philosophy: A Critical Reappraisal Lươ ng Thu Hi ền Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2009 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Lewis R. Gordon In this study I present a new understanding of Vietnamese existentialism during the period 1954-1975, the period between the Geneva Accords and the fall of Saigon in 1975. The prevailing view within Vietnam sees Vietnamese existentialism during this period as a morally bankrupt philosophy that is a mere imitation of European versions of existentialism. I argue to the contrary that while Vietnamese existential philosophy and European existentialism share some themes, Vietnamese existentialism during this period is rooted in the particularities of Vietnamese traditional culture and social structures and in the lived experience of Vietnamese people over Vietnam’s 1000-year history of occupation and oppression by foreign forces. I also argue that Vietnamese existentialism is a profoundly moral philosophy, committed to justice in the social and political spheres. Heavily influenced by Vietnamese Buddhism, Vietnamese existential philosophy, I argue, places emphasis on the concept of a non-substantial, relational, and social self and a harmonious and constitutive relation between the self and other. The Vietnamese philosophers argue that oppressions of the mind must be liberated and that social structures that result in violence must be changed. Consistent with these ends Vietnamese existentialism proposes a multi-perspective iii ontology, a dialectical view of human thought, and a method of meditation that releases the mind to be able to understand both the nature of reality as it is and the means to live a moral, politically engaged life.
    [Show full text]
  • A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry Into the Lived Experiences of Taiwanese Parachute Students
    A HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF TAIWANESE PARACHUTE STUDENTS By Benjamin T. OuYang Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillm ent Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004 Advisory Committee: Professor Francine Hultgren, Chair and Advisor Associate Professor Jing Lin Ms. Su -Chen Mao Associate Professor Marylu McEwen Dr. Maria del Carmen Torres -Queral Copyright by Benjamin T. OuYang 2004 ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: A HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF TAIWANESE PARACHUTE STUDENTS. Benjamin T. OuYang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertatio n directed by: Dr. Francine H. Hultgren Department of Education Policy and Leadership The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experiences of Taiwanese parachute students, so named because of their being sent to study in the United States, fr equently unaccompanied by their parents. Significant themes are revealed through hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and developed using the powerful metaphor of landing. Seven parachute students took part in several in -depth conversations with the researcher about their experiences living in the States, immersed in the English language and the American culture. Their stories are reflective accounts, which when coupled with literary and philosophic sources, reveal the essence of this experience of living in a foreign land. Voiced by teenage and young adult parachute students, the metaphor of landing as shown in their search for establishing a home and belonging, is the slate for the writing of this work’s main themes. The research opens up to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon in such themes as foreignness, landing and surveying the area; lost in the language; homesickness; and trying to establish friendships.
    [Show full text]
  • Beauvoir on Gender, Oppression, and Freedom
    24.01: Classics of Western Philosophy Beauvoir on Gender, Oppression, and Freedom 1. Introduction: Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) Beauvoir was born in Paris and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. She passed exams for Certificates in History of Philosophy, General Philosophy, Greek, and Logic in 1927, and in 1928, in Ethics, Sociology, and Psychology. She wrote a graduate diplôme (equivalent to an MA thesis) on Leibniz. Her peers included Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1929, she took second place in the highly competitive philosophy agrégation exam, barely losing to Jean-Paul Sartre who took first (it was his second attempt at the exam). At 21 years of age, Beauvoir was the youngest student ever to pass the exam. She taught in high school from 1929-1943, and then supported herself on her writings, and co-editorship of Le Temps Modernes. She is known for her literary writing, and her philosophical work in existentialism, ethics, and feminism. She published The Second Sex in 1949. 2. Gender ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the future that the human female presents in society.’ (II.iv.1) A. What is a woman? “Tota mulier in utero: she is a womb,” some say. Yet speaking of certain women, the experts proclaim, “They are not women,” even though they have a uterus like the others. Everyone agrees there are females in the human species; today, as in the past, they make up about half of humanity; and yet we are told that “femininity is in jeopardy”; we are urged, “Be women, stay women, become women.” So not every female human being is necessarily a woman… (23) So there seems to be a sort of contradiction in our ordinary understanding of women: not every female is a woman, otherwise they would not be exhorted to be women.
    [Show full text]
  • Heidegger, Being and Time
    Heidegger's Being and Time 1 Karsten Harries Heidegger's Being and Time Seminar Notes Spring Semester 2014 Yale University Heidegger's Being and Time 2 Copyright Karsten Harries [email protected] Heidegger's Being and Time 3 Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Ontology and Fundamental Ontology 16 3. Methodological Considerations 30 4. Being-in-the-World 43 5. The World 55 6. Who am I? 69 7. Understanding, Interpretation, Language 82 8. Care and Truth 96 9. The Entirety of Dasein 113 10. Conscience, Guilt, Resolve 128 11. Time and Subjectivity 145 12. History and the Hero 158 13. Conclusion 169 Heidegger's Being and Time 4 1. Introduction 1 In this seminar I shall be concerned with Heidegger's Being and Time. I shall refer to other works by Heidegger, but the discussion will center on Being and Time. In reading the book, some of you, especially those with a reading knowledge of German, may find the lectures of the twenties helpful, which have appeared now as volumes of the Gesamtausgabe. Many of these have by now been translated. I am thinking especially of GA 17 Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (1923/24); Introduction to Phenomenological Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005) GA 20 Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (1925); History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1985) GA 21 Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (1925/26). Logic: The Question of Truth, trans. Thomas Sheehan GA 24 Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (1927); The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans.
    [Show full text]
  • Gadamer's Ambivalence Toward the Enlightenment Project
    University of Tabriz Journal of Philosophical Investigations Volume 6, No. 11 Autumn & Winter 2012 Gadamer’s Ambivalence toward the Enlightenment Project − Robert J. Dostal −− Rufus M. Jones Professor of Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College Abstract This essay explores Gadamer’s ambivalent relationship with modernity. Gadamer is a prominent critic of the Enlightenment project. His criticisms are both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, representationalism is at the center of modern epistemology for Gadamer. Practically, Gadamer sees the demotion of prudence ( phronesis ) as fundamental to the “bad” Enlightenment. Gadamer’s attempt to revive an appreciation of rhetoric is a way to the join the theoretical and practical dimensions of speech and life. The central representative philosopher of the Enlightenment for Gadamer is Kant. The antithetical thinker is Aristotle. Gadamer would have his Kant and his Aristotle too. The tension between these is at the heart of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Keywords: Gadamer, Enlightenment, Modernity, Philosophical Herme- neutics, Understanding, Language . − ﺗﺎرﻳﺦ وﺻﻮل: 20/7/ 1391 ، ﺗﺄﻳﻴﺪ ﻧﻬﺎﻳﻲ: 9/28/ 1391 University of Tabriz Journal of Philosophical Investigations 54 I. Introduction: Gadamer and Modernity’s Break with the Past Characteristic of much of the philosophical discourse of the 19 th and 20 th century is the rhetoric of a radical break with previous thought. This “break” is often expressed as a break with metaphysics or a break with modernity or a break with the Enlightenment. Prominent voices include, in the 19th century, Comte, Marx and Nietzsche, and in the 20 th century Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Horkheimer and Adorno. More recent is the phenomena of postmodernism, which very label announces the break with modern thought.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Westphalia: Rethinking Fundamental Ontology in IR Written by Andreas Aagaard Nohr
    Beyond Westphalia: Rethinking Fundamental Ontology in IR Written by Andreas Aagaard Nohr This PDF is auto-generated for reference only. As such, it may contain some conversion errors and/or missing information. For all formal use please refer to the official version on the website, as linked below. Beyond Westphalia: Rethinking Fundamental Ontology in IR https://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/05/beyond-westphalia-rethinking-fundamental-ontology-in-ir/ ANDREAS AAGAARD NOHR, JUL 5 2012 ‘Our task is to broaden our reasoning to make it capable of grasping what, in ourselves and others, precedes and exceeds reason’ – Maurice Merleau-Ponty[1] The Western philosophical tradition has been entrenched in a particular understanding of human beings by Plato’s love for theory. Theory, the notion that the universe can be understood in a detached and abstract way, by finding the principles that underlie the abundance of phenomena was surely powerful. And in effect, Plato held that we could have a theory of everything, even human beings and their relation to the world.[2] Man had to crawl out of the cave, where his existence had been meek shadow imagery. To be sure, this means that Plato had an implicit theory of how human beings relate to things. As such, the tradition has been build on the basic understanding of human beings as subjects contemplating, or relating to, objects. Man is a cogito, a thinking subject – a rational animal – in a world of objects. The consequence of this assumption is a categorical split between the mind and the world. So much becomes clear in the philosophy of René Descartes, who tried to doubt everything until there was only one thing he could not doubt: his own existence.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Fall 2011
    University PhilosophyPhilosophy DepartmentDepartment University Alumni Newsletter of Dallas Alumni Newsletter IssueIssue 11 Fall,Fall, 20112011 Dear Alumni and Alumnae, Inside this issue: You are holding in your hands (or reading on your screen) the first issue of a newslet- ter that, henceforth, the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas intends to The 2011 Aquinas 2 publish once every semester. The purpose of the newsletter is to extend the reach of Lecture our Department at least a little bit outside the proverbial “ivory tower.” Academics— including, of course, philosophy professors—are often in dialogue only with each A Royal Visit at UD 2 other (in conferences, publications, and so forth) and with their students. Once the students leave, the interaction ends, and this happens although both sides might well profit from and enjoy a continuing exchange. An Interview with 3 Robert P. George Thus, we plan to keep you “in the loop” through this newsletter. It will update you on developments in our undergraduate and graduate programs, share the names of our The Graduating Class 4 recent graduates, inform you of their plans and current activities, feature stories of 2011 about visiting speakers who have come to UD, and occasionally let you know of our own work. News from the 4 In turn, we would like to know what our majors have done with their degrees. Some Graduate Program have gone on to study philosophy in grad school, but many others have chosen differ- ent paths. How has your philosophy education at UD impacted your life and profes- Notable Publications 5 sional career? Has reading Aristotle, Aquinas & Co.
    [Show full text]