Online research in philosophy

Through an examination of the thought of Martin Heidegger, I argue that the relation between human beings and the natural environment can be more radically comprehended by critically examining the character of the relation itself with regard to how it has been shaped and articulated by the tradition ofWestern metaphysics, particularly in light of the manner in which this tradition contains the central presuppositions of both modern natural science as weIl as contemporary technology. I conclude with an examination of a “deconstructive analysis” of the concept of nature that has dominated Western philosophy; with a delineation of an alternative understanding of the environment, that is nevertheless deeply rooted in the Western tradition; and with a proposal that the present “environmental crisis” ultimately derives not from certain Judeo-Christian “values,” as it is commonly claimed, but from the initial metaphysical orientation of early Greek philosophy.

Why a hermeneutical philosophy of the natural sciences? It is necessary to address the philosophic crisis of realism vs relativism in the natural sciences. This crisis is seen as a part of the cultural crisis that Husserl and Heidegger identified and attributed to the hegemonic role of theoretical and calculative thought in Western societies. The role of theory is addressed using the hermeneutical circle to probe the origin of theoretic meaning in scientific cultural praxes. This is studied in Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus; the practice of measurement; the different theories and practices of space perception; the historicality and temporality of scientific research communities which ground paradigm change; and the process of discovery. The paper draws particularly from the work of Heidegger. Though envisaging all science and scholarship, the highlighted theme is research in the natural sciences.

The 'Metaphysics of Dasein' is the name which Heidegger gave to a new philosophical project developed immediately after the partial publication of his masterwork Being and Time (1927). As Heidegger was later to recall, an 'overturning' took place at that moment, more precisely right in the middle of the 1929 treatise On the Essence of Ground . Between the fundamental-ontological formulation of the question of being and its metaphysical rephrasing, Heidegger discovered that a 'metaphysical freedom' stood at the root of Dasein's relation to his world and, thus, at the basis of his whole ontological questioning. This article will show how the very structure of the 1929 essay clearly illustrates the path Heidegger followed between Being and Time and the new philosophical beginning of the mid 1930s. It will conclude with a few critical remarks concerning Heidegger's attempt to free his thinking from traditional philosophy and to overcome metaphysics.

If Descartes's Cogito can be held as the opening of the era of modern subjectivity, it is to the extent that the I is taken for the first time in the position of foundation, i.e., as the ultimate condition for the possibility of all philosophical discourse. The question raised in this paper is whether the crisis of the Cogito, opened later by Hume, Nietzsche and Heidegger on different philosophical grounds, is not already contemporaneous to the very positing of the Cogito.

Derrida's reading of Heidegger in Of Spirit provides an excellent opportunity to assess the ethical and political value of each of their works. Derrida uncovers a slippage in Heidegger during the 1930s in which Heidegger ?forgot to forget? the dangers of the ?spirit? he had disavowed in Being and Time. This reveals a substantial early investment in the National Socialist project from which Heidegger never adequately recovered. Even in his attempts to distance himself from his Nazi past, Heidegger was still caught up in a metaphysical, though not a racial?biological, gesture and while Heidegger may have written at the end of philosophy, it was an end never come. One cannot stop reading Heidegger on this account. Rather, one is all the more compelled to read him, and after him Derrida. In Derrida's reading of Heidegger, we see the ways in which Heidegger opened up for Derrida an alternative space for the ethical ? in ?The call of Being? before any decision ? in the obligation to the other. However, this ethical possibility of deconstruction is only a space of undecideabiliry and questioning, never a space for political comportment; that is, it is ontological?existential, not ontical?existentiell. In this, while deconstruction opens up a space for ethics, it is never to guide, only to expose.

Introduction -- What is platonism? -- Schleiermacher's pedagogical interpretation of Plato -- What's wrong with the current debate -- The romantic rediscovery of Plato's ineffable ontology -- Conclusions: Ineffability and dialogue form -- Untying Schleiermacher's gordian knot -- Metaphysical ineffability : the argument from language and human finitude -- Spiritual ineffability: the argument from self-transformation -- Existential ineffability : the argument from life choice -- Platonism reconsidered -- The context of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato -- What it all means and why it matters -- Stage one: the realm of shadows -- Stage two: the fire -- Stage three: the realm of light -- The good : Heidegger's Plato is the later Heidegger -- Stage four: the return to the shadows -- The virtues of heidegger's plato -- Heidegger's crisis and opportunity -- Setting the stage -- Heidegger's crisis -- Understanding Heidegger's crisis : Nietzsche -- Heidegger as reformed madman -- Revolutionary thinker or utopian social engineer -- The Greeks and university reform -- Theoria and fundamental ontology -- A community of similarly striving researchers -- University reform and nihilism -- Back from Syracuse : four reasons to rethink Heidegger's politics -- The ontological problem -- The epistemological problem -- The moral problem -- The political problem -- What was plato doing in Syracuse -- Back from Syracuse or Eros Tyrannos -- How Heidegger should have read Plato -- Plato anticipate Heidegger's critique of technology -- Plato's problems with periclean Athens -- Alcibiades as embodiment of periclean Athens -- Alcibiades as inverted image of Socrates -- Conclusions: What Heidegger missed.

Introduction: Talking 'bout my generation -- Part I: Looking for difference -- Levinas, multiculturalism, and us -- In respectful contempt : Heidegger, appropriation, facticity -- Whistling in the dark : two approaches to anxiety -- Part II: After Levinas -- The price of being dispossessed : Levinas' God and Freud's trauma -- The mortality of the transcendent : Levinas and evil -- Is ethics fundamental? : questioning Levinas on irresponsibility -- Part III: After Heidegger -- Intransitive facticity : a question to Heidegger -- Demons and the demonic : Kierkegaard and Heidegger on anxiety and sexual difference -- Dissensus communis : how to keep silent "after" Lyotard -- Conclusion: In search of visibility.

Heidegger presciently diagnosed the current crisis in higher education. Contemporary theorists like Bill Readings extend and update Heidegger's critique, documenting the increasing instrumentalization, professionalization, vocationalization, corporatization, and technologization of the modern university, the dissolution of its unifying and guiding ideals, and, consequently, the growing hyper-specialization and ruinous fragmentation of its departments. Unlike Heidegger, however, these critics do not recognize such disturbing trends as interlocking symptoms of an underlying ontological problem and so they provide no positive vision for the future of higher education. By understanding our educational crisis 'ontohistorically', Heidegger is able to develop an alternative, ontological conception of education which he hopes will help bring about a renaissance of the university. In a provocative reading of Plato's famous 'allegory of the cave', Heidegger excavates and appropriates the original Western educational ideal of Platonic paideia, outlining the pedagogy of an ontological education capable of directly challenging the 'technological understanding of being' he holds responsible for our contemporary educational crisis. This notion of ontological education can best be understood as a philosophical perfectionism, a re-essentialization of the currently empty ideal of educational 'excellence' by which Heidegger believes we can reconnect teaching to research and, ultimately, reunify and revitalize the university itself.

This book is a scholarly mongraph on Sigmund Freud's understanding of the basics of psychotherapy theory and practice from the perspective of phenomenology.

This essay presents imaginary philosophical debates between Heidegger and Freud exploring their views on science, philosophy, their interrelationship and the fundamental philosophical presuppositions of Freud’s metapsychology. In the final section, Heidegger presents a series of criticisms of Freud’s theory, to which ‘Freud’ posthumously responds.