In this paper I would like to reconstruct Patočka’s effort to give a faithful account of the phenomena, without betraying these phenomena with an objectivistic theory of perception. Only by remaining close to the things themselves will we be able to understand them as an appeal, as a call, while understanding ourselves as a response to this call. On the basis of this “ontological rehabilitation of the sensible”, which reveals Patočka’s affinity with Merleau-Ponty as much as his departure from Husserl, (...) I will criticize the idealism of Husserlian phenomenology and reconsider the a priori of correlation in a different fashion. World and subject will then find a different articulation, grounded in the ontological couple of movement and feeling. The analysis will consist of three parts: in the first part I will introduce the problematic of the opposition between phenomenological and physical space; the second part will deal with the notion of movement; the third part will concentrate on Patočka’s new account of subjectivity, the a-subjective cogito, arising precisely from the fundamental coupling of κίνησις and πάθος. Embodiment, qua original phenomenon, will be constantly present in the background of this analysis. (shrink)

The narrative approach to identity has developed as a sophisticated philosophical response to the complexities and ambiguities of the human, lived situation, and is not – as has been naively suggested elsewhere – the imposition of a generic form of life or the attempt to imitate a fictional character. I argue that the narrative model of identity provides a more inclusive and exhaustive account of identity than the causal models employed by mainstream theorists of personal identity. Importantly for ethical subjectivity, (...) the narrative model gives a central and irreducible role to the first-person perspective. I will draw the connection between narrative identity and ethical subjectivity by way of an exposition of work by Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, and a brief consideration of Korsgaard’s work on practical identity and normative ethics. I argue that the first-person perspective – the reflective structure of human consciousness – arises from human embodiment, and therefore the model of identity required of embodied consciousness is more complex and irreducibly first-personal than that provided in a causal account. What is required is a self-constitution model of identity: a narrative model of identity. (shrink)

On Heidegger's Beitraege and the influence of Nietzsche's Will to Power (a famous non-book).

The purpose of this article is to analyze the significance of the absence of the problem of living body in Heidegger's analytic of Dasein. In order to evaluate the occurrences of the problem of the body in Being and Time, I also refer to the context of some of Heidegger's later work where there is to be found a sketch of an ontological investigation of the living body. I analyze then in detail the scarce occurrences of body in the fundamental (...) ontology, showing finally that the lack of a proper phenomenological examination of living body generates a series of conceptual difficulties for the problem of Dasein's death, precisely when the issue of dead body is at stake. (shrink)

The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is characterized by a profound sense of intellectual humility. A significant influence within this discussion is Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and his later critiques of onto-theology. These critiques, however, were informed by Heidegger’s earlier phenomenology of the lived experience of religious humility performed alongside his reading of Martin Luther’s theology. This article shows that for Luther and Heidegger, religious humility is foremost an affection structured according to the enactment (...) of one’s dissimilitude from God and resulting existential tribulation. During a seminal period in his development, Heidegger’s phenomenology of humility changed from an Eckhartian conception of detachment culminating in the unio mystica to a Lutheran conception of humiliation and Anfechtung . Heidegger’s break from a mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s own break from that tradition, and anticipates contemporary developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This collection of interviews brings together seven post-continental thinkers to discuss their own personal academic development, their experiences of graduate school and their hopes for post-continental philosophy. Each thinker has been chosen for their importance, popularity and potential. Opening with a short introduction this book offers a rare insight into the world of academic philosophy from the inside. Acting as a handbook to post-continental philosophy this book will prepare students for the unique challenges facing academic philosophy in the coming years. (...) The following thinkers appear in the book: Graham Harman, Jeffrey Malpas, Lee Braver, Stuart Elden, Ian Bogost, Levi R. Byrant, and Adrian Ivakhiv. (shrink)

There are close parallels between perception (the interpretation of sensory experience as representing physical objects) and hermeneutics (the interpretation of signs as having meaning). Perceptual illusions corresponds to ambiguities in texts; naive realism corresponds to fundamentalism; the scientist's reinterpretation of the "manifest image" to the global/local interplay of the "hermeneutic circle" in the interpretation of large texts.

Heidegger’s deconstruction of the history of Western metaphysics has been a major influence behind poststructural critiques of modernity as well as more apologetic attempts to maintain a dialogue with historical sources, such as Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. This bifurcation has intensified the ambiguity of Heidegger’s project: was it an attempt to relinquish philosophical ties to the past or a call for a fundamental reinterpretation of them? In this article I argue the latter,focusing my analysis on Heidegger’s notions of appropriation and historicity. (...) On the one hand, appropriation is the hermeneutical event by which ontology is reinfused into a reading of historical sources. On the other hand, historicity is the self-reflexive historical involvement by which we become aware of what contemporary, philosophical conditions necessitate this reengagement. In the end, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics arises from this self-reflexivity. It deconstructs the prevailing misunderstandings of philosophical sources in order to allow for reinterpretation at a revivified ontological level constantly in view of the question of being. (shrink)

Heidegger’s deconstruction of the history of Western metaphysics has been a major influence behind poststructural critiques of modernity as well as more apologetic attempts to maintain a dialogue with historical sources, such as Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. This bifurcation has intensified the ambiguity of Heidegger’s project: was it an attempt to relinquish philosophical ties to the past or a call for a fundamental reinterpretation of them? In this article I argue the latter, focusing my analysis on Heidegger’s notions of appropriation and (...) historicity. On the one hand, appropriation is the hermeneutical event by which ontology is reinfused into a reading of historical sources. On the other hand, historicity is the self-reflexive historical involvement by which we become aware of what contemporary, philosophical conditions necessitate this reengagement. In the end, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics arises from this self-reflexivity. It deconstructs the prevailing misunderstandings of philosophical sources in order to allow for reinterpretation at a revivified ontological level constantly in view of the question of being. (shrink)

This book provides a novel interpretation of the Aristotelian understanding of work in light of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In a world of changing work patterns and the global displacement of working lifestyles, the nature of human identity and work is put under great strain. Modern conceptions of work have been restricted to issues of utility and necessity, where aims and purposes of work are reducible to the satisfaction of immediate technical and economic needs. Left unaddressed is the larger (...) narrative context in which humans naturally seek to understand a human contribution to and responsibility for themselves, others and being as a whole. What role does human work play in the development of the world itself? Is it merely a functional activity or does it have a metaphysical and ontological calling? "Heidegger, Work, and Being" elucidates Heidegger's philosophy of work, providing a novel interpretation of the Aristotelian understanding of work in relation to Heidegger's ontology and notion of thanking. Todd S. Mei employs Heidegger's hermeneutical approach to a critique and reconstruction of an understanding of work to show that work, at its core, is an activity centred on thanking and mutual recognition. "Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in the field of modern European thought. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from across the discipline. (shrink)

Aristotle’s economic thinking in the Nicomachean Ethics 5.5 and Politics 1 provides one of the earliest analyses of the economic nature exchange. Establishing the significance of Aristotle in this area has often led modern commentators to equate Aristotle’s descriptive analysis of use and exchange to the definitions of use-value and exchange-value as it is found in Karl Marx. In this article, I show that Aristotle’s understanding of use and exchange is qualitatively different from this interpretation, focusing in particular on the (...) ethical nature of use and how, for Aristotle, exchange is an extension of practical deliberation. (shrink)

Despite Heidegger’s critique of ethics, his use of ethically-inflected language intimates an interpretive ethics of encounter involving self-interpreting agents in their hermeneutical context and the formal indication of factical life as a situated dwelling open to possibilities enacted through practices of care, interpretation, and individuation. Existence is constituted practically in Dasein’s addressing, encountering, and responding to itself, others, and its world. Unlike rule-based or virtue ethics, this ethos of responsive encounter and individuating confrontation challenges any grounding in a determinate or (...) exemplary model of reason, human nature, the virtues, or tradition. (shrink)

This paper is about the relevance of the ineffable and the singular to hermeneutics. I respond to standard criticisms of Friedrich Schleiermacher by Karl Barth and Hans-Georg Gadamer in order to clarify his understanding of language, interpretation, and religion. Schleiermacher’s “indicative hermeneutics” is developed in the context of the ethical significance of communication and the ineffable. The notion of trace is employed in order to interpret the paradox of speaking about that which cannot be spoken. The trace is not a (...) brute singularity but bears a fundamental relationship to the word—and ultimately the word of God—for Schleiermacher. (shrink)

Focusing on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, and Fanon, among others, they trace its significance from life-philosophy to ...

Hubert Dreyfus has claimed that Heidegger's phenomenological method involves a “hermeneutics of suspicion”. This is an intriguing suggestion, and if it were correct it would indicate that the standard interpretations overlook a significant aspect of the methodology of Being and Time. But is there really a hermeneutics of suspicion in Being and Time? Leslie MacAvoy has offered the most sustained challenge to Dreyfus on this point, arguing that his “hermeneutics of suspicion thesis” misconstrues both the overarching project and the methodological (...) structure of Heidegger's magnum opus. In this essay, after examining Dreyfus's “hermeneutics of suspicion thesis” and MacAvoy's objections to it, I argue that the criticisms offered by MacAvoy, despite correcting some misunderstandings in Dreyfus's reading, are not fatal to the general thesis that a hermeneutics of suspicion is operative in Being and Time. Indeed, I contend that Dreyfus's basic intuition is correct and that it does identify a significant and often overlooked aspect of Heidegger's phenomenological method. In the body of the essay, Dreyfus's intuition is developed into a more detailed and rigorous analysis of the “suspicious” dimension of Being and Time. (shrink)

Examination of the concept of "form" within Lukacs' work and after Lukacs.

It is commonly assumed, at least by continental philosophers, that epistemological hermeneutics and foundationalism are incompatible. I argue that thisassumption is mistaken. If I am correct, the analytic and continental traditions may be closer than is commonly supposed. Hermeneutics, as I will argue, is a descriptive claim about human cognition, and foundationalism is a normative claim about how beliefs ought to be related to one another. Once the positions are stated in this way, their putative incompatibility vanishes. Also, to inspire (...) further research I include an appendix which contains an unfinished prototype of a hermeneutic foundationalism.C’est une opinion courante, à tout le moins parmi les tenants de la philosophie continentale, que sont incompatibles l’herméneutique épistémologique et le fondationalisme. Je soutiens que cette opinion est erronée. Sauf erreur de ma part, les traditions analytiques et continentales sont probablement plus proches l’une de l’autre qu’on ne le suppose d’habitude. L’épistémologie herméneutique produit, selonmoi, des affirmations descriptives à propos de la connaissance, tandis que le fondationalisme produit des affirmations normatives sur la manière dont les opinions doivent être reliées entre elles. Une fois qu’elles sont présentées de cette manière, la prétendue incompatibilité de ces positions disparaît. En outre, afin de susciter de nouvelles recherches, je joins à cet article un appendice présentant l’ébauche d’unprototype de fondationalisme herméneutique. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed, at least by continental philosophers, that epistemological hermeneutics and foundationalism are incompatible. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. If I am correct, the analytic and continental traditions may be closer than is commonly supposed. Hermeneutics, as I will argue, is a descriptive claim about human cognition, and foundationalism is a normative claim about how beliefs ought to be related to one another. Once the positions are stated in this way, their putative incompatibility vanishes. Also, to (...) inspire further research I include an appendix which contains an unfinished prototype of a hermeneutic foundationalism. (shrink)

This article seeks in the Platonic philosophers of late antiquity insights applicable to a new discipline, the philosophy of Pagan religion. An impor¬tant element of any such discipline would be a method of mythological hermeneutics that could be applied cross-culturally. The article draws par¬ticular elements of this method from Sallust and Olympiodorus. Sallust’s five modes of the interpretation of myth (theological, physical, psychical, material and mixed) are discussed, with one of them, the theological, singled out for its applicability to all (...) myths and because it interprets myth in reference exclusively to the nature of the Gods and their relationship to a model of the cosmos in its totality. The other modes of interpretation, while useful in particular contexts, are not uniformly applicable to all myths, interpret the myths as concerning things other than the Gods themselves, and interpret the myths with reference to particular sectors of the cosmos. Accordingly, it is from Sallust’s theological mode of interpre¬tation that the new method draws its inspiration. From Olympiodorus the method derives strategies for interpreting basic narrative attributes that myths share with all stories. Thus temporal sequence is interpreted as an ascent, from our perspective, from less perfect to more perfect manifestations of the powers of the Gods. Passivity, conflict, and transitive relations in general between the Gods are interpreted as expressing attributes of the cosmos to the constitution of which the Gods dedicate their energies, rather than as placing constraint upon the Gods themselves. The article concludes with a series of broad principles meant to guide the new method. (shrink)

The present paper aims to bring to light the relevance of Wittgenstein‘s thought for philosophical hermeneutics. In this sense it offers a thorough discussion of the Austrian philosopher‘s understanding of the concept of translation through a detailed examination of its development from its first formulation in the context of the picture theory of meaning in the Tractatus to its reformulation as "language game" and "form of life" within the use theory put forth in Philosophical Investigations. The paper argues that the (...) skepticism towards the history of everyday language implied by Wittgenstein‘s understanding of translation could be taken as an important step forward in the development of a critical dimension of philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the "claim to universality" of hermeneutics, as put forth by Hans-Georg Gadamer; the aim is to grasp the "life that can understand," to grasp it in its essence and in terms of understanding. In this way I deal critically with Gadamer's (and Heidegger's) idea that all understanding is "self-understanding" and work out the dependence of understanding on the other, on the "hermeneutic object" (Gegenstand) of understanding. But a "hermeneutic object" (Gegenstand) is not a "mere (...) object" (Objekt). On the basis of this distinction, I develop, in conclusion, a critical reflection on the selfobjectification of the human in those interpretations of human life that are oriented solely to natural science. Self-objectfication is a wrongly directed understanding and can therefore be corrected on the basis of a developed concept of life as understanding. (shrink)

Earth possesses a double-character: it supports life and grounds perception and experience, but because of being this very base, also restricts these stances, since as base of any activity, theoretical or practical, it cannot be overstepped. Thus, earth itself is also groundless. Nevertheless, this duplicity is not contradictory, is no dualism, when formulated as earth being both a space of movement and a space of sense. Understanding this duplicity means understanding the intertwining of these two spaces by articulating the possibilities (...) of movements within sense; it means an understanding of sense and meaning in moving. This is the task of philosophy: both alienation from earth and the matter-of-course of its sense and return to it by taking part in its sense of moving and becoming. This is gained by interpretation, of which we draw on as a model reading Nietzsche on 'Will to Power' and perspectivity, and Plato's conception of dialectic. Thus, interpretation represents itself sensibly in earth's duplicity. (shrink)

In his celebrated "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger spoke of the need for an "original ethics" which did not submit itself to the ideal of something like a "subject" or the "human," two notions that he suggested were no longer serviceable for the task of thinking the problems of ethical life. The purpose of this article is to look at how Gadamer's hermeneutics might offer an avenue for developing this original ethics. To this end, Gadamer's discussion of language, in particular the (...) relation of language and freedom, serves as the guideline for unpacking this claim. (shrink)