Online research in philosophy

The article aims to advance our understanding of what the early Heidegger had in mind when he spoke about technics. Taking GA 18, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, as a guiding text, Heidegger's “destructive” reading of the two notions most directly associated with Aristotle's presentation of technics—τεχνη and εξις—will be examined, especially with reference to the portrayal of technics in the Nicomachean Ethics. It will be argued that Aristotle already exaggerated the distinction between virtue and skill and that, instead of insisting on their similarities (as will be argued to be desirable), Heidegger drove the two notions even further apart. This enabled him to form a warped picture of technical life, which he exploited as a counter image to develop an unrealistically non-technical notion of πρα;ξις, which Heidegger implicitly advocates.

A herança de Heidegger em Derrida (e Lévinas) permite abordar a conferência de 1962 como 'acabamento' do motivo da doação-e-retiro no Ereignis, e depois entender a "tarefa de pensamento" que nela Heidegger legou às ciências: com o exemplo da biologia, o autor mostra como o retorno de Heidegger ultrapassa Aristóteles e a oposição metafísica entre ser e tempo; o que se confirma depois com o exemplo da linguística saussuriana. A herança: o futuro ficou espantosamente aberto. /// The consideration of Heidegger's heritage in Derrida (and Levinas) allows the author to read the conference of 1962 as a fulfillment of the motif of giveness-andretreat in the Ereignis, leading to an understanding of the "task of thinking" which Heidegger left to the sciences. Taking as an example the science of biology, the author shows how Heidegger's return overcomes Aristotle and the metaphysical opposition between being and time; the same is then confirmed with the example of Saussure's linguistics. For the author, Heidegger's heritage consists in a future that remains exceedingly open.

This paper argues that Adorno's metaphysics can be rescued from the constellation of his messianic materialism. The recovery of metaphysics in this context also means that it is rescued as the basis of possible critique. Rescue here entails that the ideas of truth, freedom, justice and democracy should be seen as transcending whatever is empirically given, while remaining immanently operative within society. These ideas can still be drawn on for a critique of the present, thus renewing the original project of critical theory.

Following Marc Richir and others, László Tengelyi has recently developed the idea of Sinnereignis (meaning-event) as a way of capturing the emergence of meaning that does not flow from some prior project or constitutive act. As such, it might seem to pose something of a challenge to phenomenology: the paradox of an experience that is mine without being my accomplishment. This article offers a different sort of interpretation of meaning-events, claiming that in their structure they always involve what the late Heidegger called “measure-taking” (Maß-nehmen)—that is, an orientation toward the emergence of normative moments thanks to which what apparently eludes phenomenology becomes accessible in its inaccessibility. This is shown, first, on the example of conscience in Sein und Zeit and then on the example of the poetic image (Bild) in Heidegger’s later essays.

Emmanuel Levinas’s contribution to philosophical conceptions of time can be understood fully only in terms of his debt to Heidegger. Taking up Levinas’s critiques of Heidegger’s Destruktion of the Aristotelian conception of time in Being and Time, this paper argues that Levinas is ultimately unable to refuse fully, for reasons having to do with Heidegger’s disastrous alignment with the Nazis in the 1930s, the debt he owes to Heidegger, his earliest and most lasting influence. Despite his problems with the Dasein analytic, Levinas does not repudiate Heidegger’s essential contributions to a deconstruction of the history of ontology. Indeed, Levinas assumes this de-structuring as providing the necessary opening for his own contribution to rethinking the notion of time. In the last section of this paper, we tease out what Levinas’s analysis means for his ambivalent relationship to Heidegger, but also in his quest to go “beyond” phenomenology.

Although Levinas’ “il y a” does not directly correspond to Heidegger’s conception of being, his criticism of Heidegger’s temporal ontology is nevertheless justified. With the reduction of every meaning (and being) to its temporal constitution, Heidegger excludes any possibility of transcendence beyond time. The problem of overcoming the radical finitude and historicity of meaning, which is ethically motivated, brings Levinas to the age-old question of metaphysics. However, taking Heidegger’s thought seriously, Levinas is forced to look for an entirely new understanding of the metaphysical quest.

In 'Time and Being' Heidegger claims that the task is to 'cease all overcoming and to leave metaphysics to itself'. This paper asks what it actually means to leave metaphysics to itself, and how we are meant to understand the difference between "leaving metaphysics to itself" and "overcoming metaphysics". To understand this distinction, the paper compares Heidegger's later position with those of Husserl and Wittgenstein and with his own earlier position expressed in Being and Time. While we find different interpretations of what it means to leave metaphysics to itself, this paper shows that none of them, apart from Wittgenstein's, draw a clear distinction between leaving metaphysics to itself and overcoming metaphysics. Indeed, rather than leaving metaphysics to itself, Heidegger in 'Time and Being' comes to articulate a negative metaphysics. To avoid such a move, this paper draws on Wittgenstein to show how we can truly leave metaphysics to itself and cease all overcoming.

Although Martin Heidegger is undeniably one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, among the philosophers who study his work we find considerable disagreement over what might seem to be basic issues: why is Heidegger important? What did his work do? This volume is an explicit response to these differences, and is unique in bringing together representatives of many different approaches to Heidegger's philosophy. Topics covered include Heidegger's place in the 'history of being', Heidegger and ethics, Heidegger and theology, and Heidegger and Nazi concepts of race. More generally, the contributors also address their respective visions of the nature of philosophy and the presuppositions which guide their understanding of Heidegger.