Schizophrenic hallucinations can be understood only as a function of the totality of the schizophrenic's personality, that is, only in the context of the person's entire being-in-the-world. For essential reasons, there is a predominance of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and these typically take the form of human voices. This paper argues that the essential reasons here are human reasons. That is, hallucinations arise primarily on account of a human or personal deficit. We argue that the deficit in question is, most (...) fundamentally, the radical one of a disturbed relation between the subject and the world in general. The schizophrenic slackens the normal "intentional arc" that casts the subject out into a world. Our thesis is that this slackening has interpersonal roots and that hallucination can be understood as a desperate attempt to compensate for the impoverishment of being-in-the-world and, specifically, for the deficiency in human relations; hence, the "human" voices. (shrink)

This is a translation of Edmund HusserI's lecture course from the Summer semester 1907 at the University of Gottingen. The German original was pub lished posthumously in 1973 as Volume XVI of Husserliana, Husserl's opera omnia. The translation is complete, including both the main text and the supplementary texts (as Husserliana volumes are usually organized), except for the critical apparatus which provides variant readings. The announced title of the lecture course was "Main parts of the phenome nology and critique of (...) reason." The course began with five, relatively inde pendent, introductory lectures. These were published on their own in 1947, bearing the title The idea ojphenomenology.l The "Five Lectures" comprise a general orientation by proposing the method to be employed in the subsequent working out of the actual problems (viz., the method of "phenomenological reduction") and by clarifying, at least provisionally, some technical terms that will be used in the labor the subsequent lectures will carry out. The present volume, then, presents that labor, i.e., the method in action and the results attained. As such, this text dispels the abstract impression which could not help but cling to the first five lectures taken in isolation. Accord ingly, we are here given genuine "introductory lectures," i.e., an introduction to phenomenology in the genuine phenomenological sense of engaging in the work of phenomenology, going to the "matters at issue themselves," rather than remaining aloof from them in abstract considerations of standpoint and approach. (shrink)

An analysis of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology.

Martin Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event. Heidegger opens up the essential dimensions of his thinking on the historicality of being that underlies all of his later writings. Contributions was composed as a series of private ponderings that were not originally intended for publication. They are nonlinear and radically at odds with the (...) traditional understanding of thinking. This translation presents Heidegger in plain and straightforward terms, allowing surer access to this new turn in Heidegger’s conception of being. (shrink)

Volume 35 of Heidegger’s Complete Works comprises a lecture course given at the University of Freiburg in 1932, five years after the publication of Being and Time. During this period, Heidegger was at the height of his creative powers, which are on full display in this clear and imaginative text. In it, Heidegger leads his students in a close reading of two of the earliest philosophical source documents, fragments by Greek thinkers Anaximander and Parmenides. Heidegger develops their common theme of (...) Being and non-being and shows that the question of Being is indeed the origin of Western philosophy. His engagement with these Greek texts is as much of a return to beginnings as it is a potential reawakening of philosophical wonder and inquiry in the present. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s The Event offers his most substantial self-critique of his Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event and articulates what he means by the event itself. Richard Rojcewicz’s elegant translation offers the English-speaking reader intimate contact with one of the most basic Heideggerian concepts. This book lays out how the event is to be understood and ties it closely to looking, showing, self-manifestation, and the self-unveiling of the gods. The Event is part of a series of Heidegger's private (...) writings in response to Contributions. (shrink)

Richard Rojcewicz argues that Heidegger and Plato see the same connection between philosophy and death: philosophizing is dying in the sense of separating oneself from the prison constituted by superficiality and hearsay. Rojcewicz relates this understanding of philosophy to signs, anxiety, conscience, music, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ponderings II–VI begins the much-anticipated English translation of Martin Heidegger's "Black Notebooks." In a limited edition binding, this series of small notebooks with black covers, Heidegger confided sundry personal observations and ideas over the course of 40 years. The five notebooks in this volume were written between 1931–1938 and thus chronicle Heidegger's year as Rector of the University of Freiburg during the Nazi era. Published in German as volume 94 of the Complete Works, these challenging and fascinating journal entries shed (...) light on Heidegger's philosophical development regarding his central question of what it means to be, but also on his relation to National Socialism and the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1930s in Germany. Readers previously familiar only with excerpts taken out of context may now determine for themselves whether the controversy and censure the "Black Notebooks" have received are deserved or not. This faithful translation by Richard Rojcewicz opens the texts in a way that captures their philosophical and political content while disentangling Heidegger's notoriously difficult language. (shrink)

Ponderings II–VI begins the much-anticipated English translation of Martin Heidegger's "Black Notebooks." In a limited edition binding, this series of small notebooks with black covers, Heidegger confided sundry personal observations and ideas over the course of 40 years. The five notebooks in this volume were written between 1931–1938 and thus chronicle Heidegger's year as Rector of the University of Freiburg during the Nazi era. Published in German as volume 94 of the Complete Works, these challenging and fascinating journal entries shed (...) light on Heidegger's philosophical development regarding his central question of what it means to be, but also on his relation to National Socialism and the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1930s in Germany. Readers previously familiar only with excerpts taken out of context may now determine for themselves whether the controversy and censure the "Black Notebooks" have received are deserved or not. This faithful translation by Richard Rojcewicz opens the texts in a way that captures their philosophical and political content while disentangling Heidegger's notoriously difficult language. (shrink)

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, the text of a lecture course presented at the University of Freiburg in the winter of 1921–22, was first published in 1985 as volume 61 of Heidegger’s collected works. Preceding Being and Time, the work shows Heidegger introducing novel vocabulary as he searches for his genuine philosophical voice. Here, Heidegger first takes up the role of the definition of philosophy and then elaborates a conception of 'factical life,'or human life as it is lived concretely in relation (...) to the world, a relation he calls 'caring.' Heidegger’s descriptions of the movement of life are original, striking, and unique to this lecture course. As he works out a phenomenology of factical life, Heidegger lays the groundwork for a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle, one of the pivotal influences in the development of his philosophy. As an early articulation of Heidegger’s thought, this book will be an indispensable resource for scholars and students. (shrink)

On the theme of “the elemental,” this paper delves into the element of water. Specifically, the paper interprets the statement inaugurating philosophy, Thales’ claim that everything is water. This is seen not as any sort of atomism and not as opposed to mythology. Instead, it is a claim expressing what the myths themselves are trying to say: there is a mystery to the presence of things, their unconcealment is bestowed on them from a hidden source. This paper shows that Socrates (...) and Heidegger make a similar claim, and so, by generalizing from these three preeminent philosophers, the basic outlook of philosophy as such crystallizes in the view that everything is water. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of the "intentional arc" in Merleau-Ponty, who maintains that perception comes into play within, and is nourished by, an already established relation between the person and the world. That obscure relation, the intentional arc, is the "genesis" of perception, and this paper argues that in it resides the proper theme of a psychological phenomenology of perception. A study of the intentional arc shows that perception is not a passive, causal, impersonal process. On the contrary, (...) perception is active in that it requires the perceiver's free consent to the solicitations stemming from the world; it is thus only motivated or beckoned, but not caused; and it rests on a personal foundation, which is to say that it depends on the entire psychological life of the perceiver. A subsequent paper will enrich and develop the implications of this thesis by taking up the phenomenology of hallucinations. (shrink)

Schizophrenic hallucinations can be understood only as a function of the totality of the schizophrenic's personality, that is, only in the context of the person's entire being-in-the-world. For essential reasons, there is a predominance of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and these typically take the form of human voices. This paper argues that the essential reasons here are human reasons. That is, hallucinations arise primarily on account of a human or personal deficit. We argue that the deficit in question is, most (...) fundamentally, the radical one of a disturbed relation between the subject and the world in general. The schizophrenic slackens the normal "intentional arc" that casts the subject out into a world. Our thesis is that this slackening has interpersonal roots and that hallucination can be understood as a desperate attempt to compensate for the impoverishment of being-in-the-world and, specifically, for the deficiency in human relations; hence, the "human" voices. (shrink)

This is a list of corrigenda to the English translation of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. The list includes 186 entries: most are corrections of outright mistakes in expressing the sense of Heidegger’s text, and twenty-two entries are marked as representing Heidegger’s own revisions to the work as found in the latest German edition. Explanatory comments accompany many of the entries. The corrigenda are offered as a service to scholars of Heidegger’s magnum opus who (...) work within the discipline of philosophy and also to humanistic psychologists who follow the tradition of continental philosophy in their work as practioners and researchers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This contribution to phenomenological aesthetics takes inspiration from Martin Heidegger’s idea that poetry arises out of the experience of thinking and thinking out of the experience of poetry. The mutual nourishment of philosophy and poetry is put into practice here through a presentation of three poems and the reflections they provoke. The poems are the work of a contemporary Lithuanian-American poet, Rita Malikonytė Mockus. The reflections derive their basic orientation from Heidegger’s phenomenological philosophy of art. This philosophy is phenomenological (...) inasmuch as it views art in terms of what Being and Time characterizes as the preeminent phenomenon, the one bestowing presence on beings while itself receding from presence. This phenomenon, for Heidegger the one and only phenomenon in the strict sense, is Being as bestower of presence. For Heidegger, art in general and especially poetry might “awaken and found anew our vision of, and trust in, that which bestows.” Such vision and trust correspond to the ancient attitude of reverence for what has been bestowed, versus the hubristic attitude of modern technology. The goal of the paper is to appeal to poetry in order to help awaken this reverential attitude which Heidegger sees as the antidote to the thrall cast over us by the things of modern technology. At the end, reverence is brought into relation with Kant’s conception of the beauty of nature as purposiveness without a purpose. (shrink)

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle is the text of a lecture course presented at the University of Freiburg in the winter of 1921–1922, and first published in 1985 as volume 61 of Heidegger's collected works. Preceding Being and Time, the work shows the young Heidegger introducing novel vocabulary as he searches for his genuine philosophical voice. In this course, Heidegger first takes up the role of the definition of philosophy and then elaborates a unique analysis of "factical life," or human life (...) as it is lived concretely in relation to the world, a relation he calls "caring." Heidegger's descriptions of the movement of life are original and striking. As he works out a phenomenology of factical life, Heidegger lays the groundwork for a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle, whose influence on Heidegger's philosophy was pivotal. (shrink)

Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy presents a lecture course given by Martin Heidegger in 1926 at the University of Marburg. First published in German as volume 22 of the collected works, the book provides Heidegger's most systematic history of Ancient philosophy beginning with Thales and ending with Aristotle. In this lecture, which coincides with the completion of his most important work, Being and Time, Heidegger is working out a way to sharply differentiate between beings and Being. Richard Rojcewicz's (...) clear and accurate translation offers English-speaking readers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on Ancient thought and concepts such as principle, cause, nature, unity, multiplicity, Logos, truth, science, soul, category, and motion. (shrink)

The essays in this volume all ask what it means for human beings to be embodied as desiring creatures—and perhaps still more piercingly, what it means for a philosopher to be embodied. In taking up this challenge via phenomenology, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of literature, the volume questions the orthodoxies not only of Western metaphysics but even of the phenomenological tradition itself. We miss much that has philosophical import when we exclude the somatic aspects of human life, and it (...) is therefore the philosopher’s duty now to rediscover the meaning inherent in desire, emotion, and passion—without letting the biases of any tradition determine in advance the meaning that reveals itself in embodied desire. Continental philosophers have already done much to challenge binary oppositions, and this volume sets out a new challenge: we must now also question the dichotomy between being at home and being alienated. Alterity is not simply something out there, separate from myself; rather, it penetrates me through and through, even in my corporeal experience. My body is both my own and other; I am other than myself and therefore other than my body. Additionally, this book is a conversation, not a presentation of a new orthodoxy. Thus, the hope is that these essays will open the way for further dialogue that will continue to radically rethink our understanding of embodied desire. Gathered together here are twelve essays that address these issues from deeply interrelated albeit unique perspectives from within the field. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

The discussion of good and evil must not be confined to the sterile lecture halls of academics but related instead to ordinary human feelings, needs, and desires, says noted philosopher Richard Taylor. Efforts to understand morality by exploring human reason will always fail because we are creatures of desire as well. All morality arises from our intense and inescapable longing. The distinction between good and evil is always clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of ethics into complex (...) philosophical puzzles. In the first part of Good and Evil, Taylor looks for a more meaningful conception by reexamining and rejecting the whole rationalistic tradition that dominates philosophical ethics. The second part provides an empirical explanation of good and evil, noting that one does not have to look too far to find prime examples of the failure of fixed moral rules. Including important commentary on Joseph Fletcher's groundbreaking situation ethics, and Aristotle's virtues (e.g., magnanimity and pride), Taylor rounds out the book by developing a philosophy of aspiration--personal worth as an ethical ideal--to replace the morality of duty. He offers a modified form of situation ethics to fit the contemporary problems we face. (shrink)

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work ha generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the (...) theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

According to certain normative theories in epistemology, rationality requires us to be logically omniscient. Yet this prescription clashes with our ordinary judgments of rationality. How should we resolve this tension? In this paper, I focus particularly on the logical omniscience requirement in Bayesian epistemology. Building on a key insight by Hacking :311–325, 1967), I develop a version of Bayesianism that permits logical ignorance. This includes: an account of the synchronic norms that govern a logically ignorant individual at any given time; (...) an account of how we reduce our logical ignorance by learning logical facts and how we should update our credences in response to such evidence; and an account of when logical ignorance is irrational and when it isn’t. At the end, I explain why the requirement of logical omniscience remains true of ideal agents with no computational, processing, or storage limitations. (shrink)

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

Conditionalization is one of the central norms of Bayesian epistemology. But there are a number of competing formulations, and a number of arguments that purport to establish it. In this paper, I explore which formulations of the norm are supported by which arguments. In their standard formulations, each of the arguments I consider here depends on the same assumption, which I call Deterministic Updating. I will investigate whether it is possible to amend these arguments so that they no longer depend (...) on it. As I show, whether this is possible depends on the formulation of the norm under consideration. (shrink)

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against DAB. The aim of (...) this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies (...) but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial (...) successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and metatheory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert’s program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s. (shrink)

Most recent accounts of will-power have tried to explain it as reducible to the operation of beliefs and desires. In opposition to such accounts, this paper argues for a distinct faculty of will-power. Considerations from philosophy and from social psychology are used in support.

Most individuals realise that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as ""ethnic cleansing"" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purpose? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying (...) those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress and, most importantly, the UN Security Council in determining when long-term US military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals - whether in self-defense or in defense of others - remains the ""only"" classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principle of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars - World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War - and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgements about war decisions. The book should be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology and political science. (shrink)

This book gives a descriptive analysis of specific Madhyamika texts. It compares the ideology of Kumarajiva (a translator of the four Madhyamika treatises 400 A.D.) with the ideologies of the three Chinese contemporaries - HuiYuan, Seng-Jui and Seng-Chao. It envisages an intercultural transmission of religious and philosophical ideas from India to China.