Does Descartes belong to metaphysics? What do we mean when we say "metaphysics"? These questions form the point of departure for Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking study of Cartesian thought. Analyses of Descartes' notion of the ego and his idea of God show that if Descartes represents the fullest example of metaphysics, he no less transgresses its limits. Writing as philosopher and historian of philosophy, Marion uses Heidegger's concept of metaphysics to interpret the Cartesian corpus--an interpretation strangely omitted from Heidegger's (...) own history of philosophy. This interpretation complicates and deepens the Heideggerian concept of metaphysics, a concept that has dominated twentieth-century philosophy. Examinations of Descartes' predecessors (Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Suarez) and his successors (Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hegel) clarify the meaning of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. Expertly translated by Jeffrey Kosky, this work will appeal to historians of philosophy, students of religion, and anyone interested in the genealogy of contemporary thought and its contradictions. (shrink)
Descartes ne joue pas, dans la pensée de Heidegger, un rôle limité à l'interprétation de l'histoire de la philosophie. Lorsque Sein und Zeit entreprend de déterminer le mode d'être propre et irréductible du Dasein, Heidegger doit entrer en confrontation avec certes Husserl, mais surtout, par-delà la « conscience » husserlienne, avec Descartes lui-même. Car l'ennemi mortel du Dasein, cest l'ego du cogito. Dans quelle mesure cette rivalité n'induit-elle pas aussi une similitude? Die Rolle, die Descartes in dem Denken von Heidegger (...) spielt, darf nicht in dem Feld seiner Deutung der Geschichte der Philosophie eng begrenztwerden. Denn, als Sein und Zeit eine Bestimmung der eigentümlicheigentlichen Seinsweise des Daseins hervorzubringen unternimmt, setzt die « Destruktion der Geschichte der Ontologie » eine Auseinanderstzung nicht nur mit Husserl, sondern auch, über Husserl hinaus, gerade mit Descartes vor. Der Todfeind des Daseins ist das ego, das aus dem cogito stammt. Inwiefern aber diese ständige Gegenüberstellung eine tiefe Nachahmung hinweise ? (shrink)
John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)
Question - Dans Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, vous concluiez par la « destitution » de la métaphysique, ainsi laissée enfin à elle-même, et vous en appeliez à une autre « instance » , un autre ‘ordre’, pour définir la tâche d'élaborer une doctrine de la charité, d'en retracer l'histoire, selon la règle d'une historicité absolument indépendante de l'historialité. Les deux protagonistes emblématiques de cet ouvrage (Pascal contre Descartes) permettaient de comprendre la nature du « saut » ainsi requis (...) et d'instituer la rupture. Le mouvement général de Réduction et donation est le même, mais cette fois une case reste vide. Il ne s'agit point, en effet, dans ce dernier ouvrage, de ‘jouer’ quant à la réduction, Heidegger contre Husserl; cette confrontation n'intervient qu'en un premier moment, puisqu'aussi bien Husserl élargit déjà la réduction. Reste que, s'il est légitime de distinguer et d'opposer dans un horizon phénoménologique commun la réduction transcendantale de Husserl à la réduction au « phénomène d'être » de Heidegger, le passage à la troisième réduction - tel que vous le proposez - reste beaucoup plus problématique, sauf à jouer d'une certaine équivocité du terme même de « donation » , celle-là même qui conduit de la Selbstgegebenheit à la constellation du Geben, de la Gabe et du es gibt. (shrink)
The phenomenological project of Jean-Luc Marion’s Being Given (namely, to free phenomenological possibility to the unconditional self-giving of all phenomena) should be distinguished from the theological project of his God without Being (to think God unconditionally and absolutely). In freeing phenomenological possibility to the self-giving of all phenomena (on the model of the saturated phenomenon), and in proposing a new figure of the subject who receives phenomena (the gifted), Marion’s phenomenology provides the conceptual means for a philosophy of (...) religion that admits the phenomenonality of unconditional revelation. And yet, thereremain striking parallels between the unconditional, self-giving phenomenon as it is described in the phenomenology of Being Given and the unconditional, self-giving God of the theological God without Being. This essay concludes by offering a framework for interpreting these parallels without claiming that the saturated phenomenon transforms phenomenology into theology and without claiming that phenomenological givenness limits revelation to its philosophical possibility. (shrink)
This review-article aims to present the inner structure of J.-L. Marion’s book of 2003, Le phénomène érotique. Although closely related to the former development of the phenomenology of donation, his analysis of the concept of love discloses significantly new philosophical elements as it shows the pre-eminence, own rationality and univocity of this concept. My paper basically takes into account the question of the individuation of the other and of the self within the saturated phenomenon of love. I discuss the (...) coherence and conceptual consistency of its “figures” and description. I also try to suggest the possibility to question further in the direction of God as “the third” who grants or attests the individuation of the lovers in a unique common erotic phenomenon. Eventually, I claim that his overwhelming importance might affect the “two-entrance” phenomenon of love and the definition of the lover whose figure he is supposed to assume in his manifestation. (shrink)
Ever since the publication of Dieu sans l’être in 1982, Jean-Luc Marion’s various (and varying) pronouncements on the status and meaning of esse in Aquinas have excited a good deal of interest and controversy among Thomists. Marion’s evolving understanding of Thomistic metaphysics in general, and of Thomistic analogy in particular, has been commended for its openness to correction even as it has been criticized for what many still regard as its residual deficiencies. All such criticisms, however, neglect to (...) take account of the phenomenological provenance of Marion’s concerns, and to this extent they risk misunderstanding them. Ironically, Marion’s phenomenological approach to Aquinas intends to safeguard precisely what his Thomist critics think he has jettisoned: namely, our ability to speak about God in a way that says something meaningful—or perhaps better, reveals something meaningful—about God to us. The apophatic language Marionuses to make this point should be taken as a reminder to his fellow Christians (and especially to those who happen to be Thomists) who rightfully desire to speak of God about the danger that is involved in doing so. If we interpret Aquinas’s use of the divine names according to the phenomenological horizon of distance and thus think the various names of God “according to truly theological determinations,” Marion suggests, we can avoid the danger of lapsing into a conceptual idolatry of univocal predication that occludes their phenomenological disclosiveness. (shrink)
This paper guides the Romanian reader through a variety of discussions surrounding the central themes of Michel Henry’s latest books (C’est moi la Vérité,1996; Incarnation, 2000). Basically, it aims to present the principles of the phenomenology of Life in Henry’s thought, focusing on the status of the apparition, and of truth, both of which are to be understood not as the ontic relation of adaequatio, but as the self-revelation of Life in the immanence of each non-intentional experience. My review-article draws (...) upon the problem of the ‘original impression’, a crucial stage in shifting the theme of the ‘transcendental body’ and of the ‘self-affection’. At this point, my interpretation suggests that Henry’s phenomenology of affection would require further stark distinctions like the one between the ‘corporeal pain’ and the ‘transcendental sufferance’, very significant from the Christian viewpoint, too. I also try to suggest the importance of Henry’s phenomenology of Life for a radical understanding of bioethics. In addition, I tackle Michel Henry’s strong critique of the autistic sexual love, which sounds strikingly similarly to those raised up, respectively, by S. Kierkegaard and J.-L. Marion. Eventually, my essential claim is that one should reconsider very seriously the importance of the Christian mystical theology (best represented by the Patristic tradition) in order to get an adequate understanding of Michel Henry’s radical phenomenology of Life. (shrink)
A Filosofia francesa foi fortemente influenciada por Heidegger, o que não haveria de acontecer sem algumas polémicas. Uma obra recente de D. Janicaud, Heidegger en France, traça algumas das suas peripécias. O presente artigo debruça-se sobre um ponto particular desta influência. O pensamento está desde há bastante tempo associado em França com o sentido do existir das singularidades, sobretudo pessoais; disso o existencialismo é um sinal evidente. É sem dúvida esta mesma preocupação pela existência que deu lugar a investigações fenomenológicas (...) sobre a essência do evento, palavra que traduz mais ou menos fielmente a expressão heideggeriana Ereignis. O artigo expõe, pois, o modo como o tema do Ereignis evolui na obra de Emmanuel Levinas (o evento cria uma temporalidade irredutível às sistematizações da história; a palavra trocada, dita e escutada, traz consigo uma nova temporalidade), Jean-Luc Marion (o evento não se repete, excede todo o presente e abre possibilidades ao ser humano), e Claude Romano (o evento rompe o tempo linear e instaura um mundo em que o princípio é um começo sempre novo). O artigo apresenta-se, deste modo, como uma reflexão sobre a própria essência da fenomenologia, tal qual ela actualmente se desenvolve em França. O artigo propõe ainda uma crítica de uma visão demasiado estética sobre o evento e convida o pensamento a prosseguir a sua reflexão na direcção da história concreta das liberdades. /// French philosophy has been greatly influenced by Heidegger, but not without polemics. A recent book by Janicaud, Heidegger in France, has traced its itinerary. The present article focuses on a single aspect of its influence: the attention given especially to the sense of existence in terms of personal singularities. Existentialism is a case in point. Such a concern produced phenomenological researches on the essence of the event, a word that more or less translates Ereignis. The article demonstrates how the theme of Ereignis has developed in the work of Levinas as that which creates a temporality that is irreducible to systematized history: the exchanged word carries with it a new temporality. In J.-L. Marion's work, the event does not repeat itself and exceeds the present, opening up new possibilities for humankind. For Cl. Romano, the event disrupts linear time and inaugurates a new world. Thus, the article constitutes a reflection on the very essence of phenomenology as manifested currently in France. It also proposes a critique of the overly aesthetic perspective concerning the theme of event and invites thought to pursue its reflection in the direction of the concrete history of freedoms. (shrink)
Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)
A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism is a complete guide to two of the dominant movements of philosophy in the twentieth century. Written by a team of leading scholars, including Dagfinn Føllesdal, J. N. Mohanty, Robert Solomon, Jean-Luc Marion. Highlights the area of overlap between the two movements. Features longer essays discussing each of the main schools of thought, shorter essays introducing prominent themes, and problem-oriented chapters. Organised topically, around concepts such as temporality, intentionality, death and nihilism. Features essays (...) on unusual subjects, such as medicine, the emotions, artificial intelligence, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)
In this paper, I develop the notion of the experiential workspace, or the phenomenal setting generated by the coupling between the enactive body and its affordance-laden environment, in order to carry out a fine-grained analysis of enactive experiential phenomena, in particular those of ordinary lived experience. My purpose is to shed light on some of the ways that empirical methodologies are intrinsically limited in their ability to capture the native phenomena of enactive, embodied experience. (...) class='Hi'> Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that the experiential workspace is characterized by dynamic mutability, emergent norms, and epistemic openness - characteristics that are transphenomenal in nature and thus resistant to empirical measurement. Using concepts from the work of developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) and feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young (1998), I will show how our embeddedness in an intersubjective world makes the experiential workspace a mercurial, labile phenomenon, characterized by inherently transphenomenal features that are resistant to naturalistic analysis or modelling. (shrink)
The notion of givenness (Gegebenheit/donation) serves a key role in the phenomenological paradigms of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion, yet can this notion be applied directly or analogously within the context of sacramental theology? This essay demonstrates how the respective understandings of givenness, in the works of Husserl, Heidegger and Marion, can be employed as hermeneutical centers for exploring the paradoxical phenomenon of the sacrament, whereby the phenomenalities of the visible and the invisible coincide. The Eucharist (...) is called upon as sacrament par excellence for examining the dynamic of givenness within the phenomenality of the sacrament. Tracing the notion of givenness as employed in the thinking of Husserl, Heidegger and Marion, respectively, the essay concludes with a consideration of the Eucharist as event, or ‘happening.’ In such manner does the concept of givenness shed new light on traditional metaphysical understandings of sacramentality. (shrink)
