Heidegger's Project
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Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger’S Destruktion of Metaphysics* Iain Thomson
T E D U L G O E R · Internationa l Journal o f Philo sophical Studies Vol.8(3), 297–327; · T a p y u lo o r Gr & Fr ancis Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger’s Destruktion of Metaphysics* Iain Thomson Abstract Heidegger’s Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition leads him to the view that all Western metaphysical systems make foundational claims best understood as ‘ontotheological’. Metaphysics establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by ontologically grounding and theologically legitimating our changing historical sense of what is. By rst elucidating and then problematizing Heidegger’s claim that all Western metaphysics shares this ontotheological structure, I reconstruct the most important components of the original and provocative account of the history of metaphysics that Heidegger gives in support of his idiosyncratic understanding of metaphysics. Arguing that this historical narrative generates the critical force of Heidegger’s larger philosophical project (namely, his attempt to nd a path beyond our own nihilistic Nietzschean age), I conclude by briey showing how Heidegger’s return to the inception of Western metaphysics allows him to uncover two important aspects of Being’s pre-metaphysical phenomeno- logical self-manifestation, aspects which have long been buried beneath the metaphysical tradition but which are crucial to Heidegger’s attempt to move beyond our late-modern, Nietzschean impasse. Keywords: Heidegger; ontotheology; metaphysics; deconstruction; Nietzsche; nihilism Upon hearing the expression ‘ontotheology’, many philosophers start looking for the door. Those who do not may know that it was under the title of this ‘distasteful neologism’ (for which we have Kant to thank)1 that the later Heidegger elaborated his seemingly ruthless critique of Western metaphysics. -
A Critique of the Metaphysics of Presence Peter Eisenman
Lateness: A Critique of the Metaphysics of Presence Peter Eisenman Colin Rowe used to say that one of the problems with architectural thought was that it saw itself in a state of perpetual crisis. Always focusing on the latest problem or issue, architecture was said to obey a crisis mentality, an attitude partly fueled by nostalgia for an impossible avant-garde and partly by the received notion that archi- tecture was actually about solving problems. But as Rowe also would have said, permanent crisis is no crisis at all. For many historians, crisis is part of an historical cycle. In his book Krisis. Saggio sulla crisi del pensiero negativo da Nietzsche a Wittgenstein (1976), the philoso- pher Massimo Cacciari suggests that a crucial change had taken place in the way modernity was perceived. This rupture, he argued, was a "crisis of foundations," which signaled the end of classical rationality and dialectics in philosophy. He suggested that a crisis of dialectical problem of the limit; it projects the crisis of techniques synthesis in fact underlay the history of the modern already given." "The real problem is how to project a phase of contemporary development. Cacciari's crisis of criticism capable of putting itself into crisis by putting dialectical synthesis opens architecture to the synthetic into crisis the real." In his terms, the historical "project" project. In another interpretation, Manfredo Tafuri saw is an open discursive construct. Rather than producing a the idea of crisis as productive. Tafuri considered history linear narrative of history, the crisis provoked by criticism as a project of crisis, in that historical work, i.e. -
5 Derrida's Critique of Husserl and the Philosophy
5 DERRIDA’S CRITIQUE OF HUSSERL AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRESENCE David B. Allison* Now would be the time to reject the myths of inductivity and of the Wesenschau, which are transmitted, as points of honor, from generation to generation. ...Am I primitively the power to contemplate, a pure look which fixes the things in their temporal and local place and the essences in an invisible heaven; am I this ray of knowing that would have to 1 arise from nowhere? SÍNTESE – O autor reexamina a crítica de Derrida ABSTRACT – The author reexamines Derrida’s à fenomenologia de Husserl de forma a mostrar critique of Husserl’s phenomenology, so as to como a sua coerência estrutural emerge não show how its structural coherency arises not so tanto de uma redução a uma doutrina particular, much from the reduction to a particular doctrine, mas antes das exigências de uma concepção but rather from the demands of a unitary concep- unitária, especificamente impostas pelas deter- tion, specifically from the demands imposed by minações epistemológicas e metafísicas da the epistemological and metaphysical determina- presença. tions of presence. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Desconstrução. Derrida. KEY WORDS – Deconstruction. Derrida. Husserl. Fenomenologia. Husserl. Presença. Significado. Meaning. Phenomenology. Presence. * Doutor. Professor, State University of New York, Stony Brook, EUA. 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1964), Eng. tr., Alphonso Lingis, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). pp. 113-116. VERITAS Porto Alegre v. 50 n. 1 Março 2005 p. 89-99 It is practically a truism to say that most of Husserl’s commentators have in- sisted on the rigorously systematic character of his writings. -
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. -
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. -
University of California Santa Cruz Heidegger
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ HEIDEGGER: ONTOLOGICAL POLITICS TO TECHNOLOGICAL POLITICS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in PHILOSOPHY by Javier Cardoza-Kon June 2014 The dissertation of Javier Cardoza-Kon is approved: ____________________________________ Professor David C. Hoy, chair ____________________________________ Professor Abraham Stone ____________________________________ Carlos A. Sanchez, Ph.D. _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Javier Cardoza-Kon 2014 Table of Contents Abstract. iv Dedication. v Introduction. 1 Chapter 1: Cultural Identity and Two Politics. 14 Chapter 2: Polemos, Auseinandersetzung, and Unconcealment. 50 Chapter 3: Auseiandersetzung, Nietzsche, and the Politics of Nihilism. 77 Chapter 4: Technology and We Late-Moderns. 113 Conclusion: Heidegger’s in the Contemporary World. 160 Bibliography and Abbreviations of Cited Material 173 iii Abstract Heidegger: Ontological Politics to Technological Politics. By Javier Cardoza-Kon As Heidegger himself has done with Nietzsche in claiming that he will articulate what Nietzsche meant but never said metaphysically, I also do with Heidegger in terms of politics. On my reading there are two kinds of politics in Heidegger’s middle and late thought that are, for the most part, murky and confused. There is a politics of ontology the deals with the encountering and articulating of what beings are and what Being itself is. There is also a politics on the more familiar level of societies and the policies that different groups establish and follow. It is in terms of the second type of politics that Heidegger is most often attacked, and for good reason. -
Ontology and Ethics at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy*
Inquiry, 47, 380–412 Ontology and Ethics at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy* Iain Thomson University of New Mexico The idea inspiring the eco-phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally- destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco-phenomenology’s critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco-phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto- ethical facts; Heideggerians and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco-centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more ‘humanistic’ perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco-centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti-humanistic implications. I. Introduction: Uncovering the Conceptual Roots of Environmental Devastation What happens when you cross phenomenology with environmental philoso- phy? According to the editors of Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, you get an important interdisciplinary movement. -
Overturning the Paradigm of Identity with Gilles Deleuze's Differential
A Thesis entitled Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy Dr. Ammon Allred, Committee Chair Dr. Benjamin Grazzini, Committee Member Dr. Benjamin Pryor, Committee Member Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May 2014 An Abstract of Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2014 Taking Gilles Deleuze to be a philosopher who is most concerned with articulating a ‘philosophy of difference’, Deleuze’s thought represents a fundamental shift in the history of philosophy, a shift which asserts ontological difference as independent of any prior ontological identity, even going as far as suggesting that identity is only possible when grounded by difference. Deleuze reconstructs a ‘minor’ history of philosophy, mobilizing thinkers from Spinoza and Nietzsche to Duns Scotus and Bergson, in his attempt to assert that philosophy has always been, underneath its canonical manifestations, a project concerned with ontology, and that ontological difference deserves the kind of philosophical attention, and privilege, which ontological identity has been given since Aristotle. -
Derrida's Objection to the Metaphysical Tradition
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Scholarship@Claremont Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2015 Derrida's Objection To The etM aphysical Tradition Christopher A. Wheat Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Wheat, Christopher A., "Derrida's Objection To The eM taphysical Tradition" (2015). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 1188. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1188 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Claremont McKenna College Derrida’s Objection to the Metaphysical Tradition Submitted to Prof. James Kreines And Dean Nicholas Warner By Christopher Wheat For Senior Thesis Spring 2015 4/27/15 Table of Contents: Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………2 Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………4 The Metaphysical Tradition…………………………………………………………...6 Derrida’s Objection…………………………………………………………………..16 Metaphysics Given the Abandonment of the Metaphysical Tradition………………26 Conclusion………………………………………………….………………………..31 Bibliography…………………………………………………………..……………..33 1 Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Professor Kreines for his generous assistance in my thesis and initial research of deconstruction, and for helping to nurture my interest in philosophy over the course of my college career. I would also like to thank Professor Rajczi, Professor Schroeder, Professor Kind, Professor Kincaid, and Professor Gaitskill. In addition to my professors, my friends and family have supported and influenced me in ways I could never begin to repay them for, and hope that this thesis is only a small reflection of what they have taught me. 2 Abstract Derrida’s deconstruction of the philosophic tradition shows us not only the importance of pursuit of knowledge, but also the importance of questioning the assumptions on which such a pursuit is based. -
Heidegger's Basic Assumptions
Daniel O. Dahlstrom Heidegger’s Basic Assumptions If we improve our understanding of ordinary talk of physical things, it will not be by reducing that talk to a more familiar idiom; there is none. It will be by clarifying the connections, causal or otherwise, between ordinary talk of physical things and various further matters, which in turn we grasp with help of ordinary talk of physical things. W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object1 In Being and Time Heidegger sets out from three assumptions: first, that we generally have some understanding of what it means to be, some sense of being; second, that this understanding matters to us and, in an essential way, constitutes our manner of being; and third, that we are capable of giving an appropriate analysis or interpretation of this understanding.2 These are by no means the only suppositions driving the project begun in Being and Time but they certainly figure among its most basic assumptions. The first of these assumptions is Heidegger’s „preontological“ and „preexistential“ assumption, the second his „existential“ assumption, and the third his „ontological“ assumption. These basic assumptions, moreover, exhibit an order that is equally basic to Heidegger’s project at the time. The existential assumption presupposes the preontological assumption and his fundamental ontology presupposes the existential character of our preontological sense of being. Despite an increasing appreciation of the relevance of many of Heidegger’s investigations to concerns of contemporary analytic philosophers, these basic assumptions continue to be roundly viewed with a mixture of suspicion and bemusement. It would be extremely difficult – and no attempt will be made here – to give an adequate explanation of all the reasons for this recalcitrance. -
HAAS, ALEXANDER, MA August 2020
HAAS, ALEXANDER, M.A. August 2020 PHILOSOPHY MARION, HEIDEGGER, AND THE QUESTION OF GIVENNESS (74 pp.) Thesis Advisor: Gina Zavota In Being Given, Jean-Luc Marion claims that Heidegger errs in subordinating the givenness of phenomena to Ereignis, unduly restricting the ways in which phenomena can be said to “give themselves”. The problem, however, is that without this stricture, we are unable to make certain distinctions that are indispensable for understanding phenomena in the diversity of their appearing. Take, for example, technological phenomena (e.g., televisions, radios, computers, etc.) On Marion’s account, these phenomena give themselves; show themselves insofar as they give themselves. But is this really giving, or instead, a kind of intrusion, a permeating of our space by technological phenomena? What Marion is missing, is a robust account of the context, or better, the locus of apparition that allows us to differentiate the ways in which phenomena show up. I will argue that Heidegger’s notion of Ereignis is such a locus. MARION, HEIDEGGER, AND THE QUESTION OF GIVENNESS A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Alexander Haas August 2020 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Alexander Haas B.A., Kent State University, 2015 M.A. Kent State University, 2020 Approved by _______________________________, Advisor Gina Zavota _______________________________, Chair, Department of Philosophy Michael Byron -
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Eschatological Temporality, Or: ‘Bergson and the Reign of Theos’ Mark William Westmoreland Theology and Religious Studies Eschatology confronts us with a long list of problems. Clearly, the issue of temporality is one of these. How are we to conceive of time in the eschaton? How can we reconcile the biblical witness and church tradition with various philosophical accounts of temporality? This paper will demonstrate how Henri Bergson‟s philosophical notion of duration is applicable to theological discourse. I will accomplish this by (1) placing Bergson within the theological and philosophical tradition of Augustine and Kant, (2) comparing Bergson to two of his contemporaries, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, and (3) by describing Bergson‟s notion of duration. Throughout the paper, one will find mention of the phrases “the kingdom of heaven”/“the reign of God” and a discussion of how this may be understood in light of Bergson‟s theory. In conclusion, we will see that Bergson‟s duration offers a remedy to many of the ambiguities surrounding temporality and the eschaton. We often symbolize time as an hourglass or clock. “It is not easy,” writes Bergson, “to escape the image of the hour-glass.”1 The common way people conceive of time is by spatializing it.2 In doing so, we lose sight of what time actually is. This becomes highly problematic for theological discussions of eternal life. I think it would be safe to claim that heaven is not merely “a really long time.” For Bergson, “Real duration is what we have always called time.”3 Later, the notion of duration will be discussed at length.