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)
Interpretations of Plato’s consideration of poetry often see his position either as a rejection or an admittance of only a certain kind. This article offers a more complex analysis: questions concerning the nature of justice and poetry should be taken as mutually illuminating inquiries. This constitutes Plato’s hermeneutics which shows how understanding poetry ideally effects a metanoia (new understanding) that requires the harmony between ethical deliberation and narrative self-understanding. The dialogue is a mimesis of this process, and the conclusion in (...) Book X does not represent Plato’s final position but the trajectory of the dialogue when such a metanoia is incomplete. (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)
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 article reveals the outcome of a study on the perceptions of elders, family members, and healthcare professionals and administration providing care in a range of different long-term care facilities in Hong Kong with primary focus on the concepts of autonomy and dignity of elders, quality and location of care, decision making, and financing of long term care. It was found that aging in place and family care were considered the best approaches to long term care insofar as procuring and (...) balancing the values of dignity, autonomy, family integrity and social sustainability were concerned. An elder having the final say was generally accepted. The results also initiated the importance of sharing of financial responsibility among elders, children and government albeit the emphasis was placed on individuals. Furthermore, dignity of elders was not considered purely a synonym of autonomy, but it had also to do with respect, family and social connections. (shrink)
The philosophy of economics has been largely guided by analytic philosophy. Even Marx has been appropriated without much scandal by economists who separate his scientific contributions from his politics. In this article, I place philosophical hermeneutics (i.e., Heidegger and Ricoeur) in dialogue with the conventional understanding of land as a factor of production. The history of political economy misunderstands land as an entity classifiable as property and capital. I argue instead that land's ontological role, deriving from Heidegger's concept of earth, (...) suggests that economics needs to account for it in a new way according to David Ricardo's notion of land rent. (shrink)
Hylas. «Veramente, la distruzion de’ frulloni e delle madie, la devastazion de’ forni, e lo scompiglio de’ fornai, non sono i mezzi più spicci per far vivere il pane; ma questa è una di quelle sottigliezze metafisiche, che una moltitudine non ci arriva.» Devo dire che il fastidio di Manzoni verso le metafisiche inconcludenti mi sembra sacrosanto. Ma soprattutto mi sembra sacrosanto il suo richiamo al buon senso, quando aggiunge che «senza essere un gran metafisico, un uomo ci arriva talvolta (...) alla prima, finch’è nuovo nella questione.. (shrink)
Hylas. «Veramente, la distruzion de’ frulloni e delle madie, la devastazion de’ forni, e lo scompiglio de’ fornai, non sono i mezzi più spicci per far vivere il pane; ma questa è una di quelle sottigliezze metafisiche, che una moltitudine non ci arriva.» Devo dire che il fastidio di Manzoni verso le metafisiche inconcludenti mi sembra sacrosanto. Ma soprattutto mi sembra sacrosanto il suo richiamo al buon senso, quando aggiunge che «senza essere un gran metafisico, un uomo ci arriva talvolta (...) alla prima, finch’è nuovo nella questione.. (shrink)
In 1987, a young woman named Angela Carder, pregnant and dying from cancer, was ordered by a court of law to undergo a cesarean delivery against her and her family’s wishes. She and her baby both died. Three years later, an appeals court took an extraordinary stand: it vacated the order that ended their lives and upheld pregnant women’s rights to informed consent and bodily integrity. The “unkindest cut of all,”1 it seemed, had been condemned by the courts.2 Yet shortly (...) before the twenty-year anniversary of this landmark case, the same rights were stripped from another young pregnant woman. In January of this year, oral arguments were heard in the case of Samantha Burton. She had been twenty-five weeks .. (shrink)
«Ci sono più cose in cielo e in terra di quante se ne sogni la tua filosofia».1 Amleto si rivolgeva ad Orazio, ma le sue parole risuonano ancora oggi come un monito severo per chiunque – e siamo in tanti – si ostini a voler costringere la meravigliosa diversità dell’universo che ci circonda entro schemi categoriali ottusi e limitati. Per la verità c’è anche il rischio opposto, come osservava Nelson Goodman: «Ci sono (...) filosofie che si sognano di cose che non stanno né in cielo né in terra»2. Tuttavia è difficile negare che le grandi rivoluzioni copernicane si verifichino proprio quando riusciamo ad ampliare i nostri orizzonti e uscire dal provincialismo ontologico che ci tiene imprigionati. Questo vale per le scoperte astronomiche (le galassie, i buchi neri) così come per quelle microscopiche (l’antimateria, i quark, le stringhe). E vale ogniqualvolta ci troviamo dinnanzi a qualcosa che non sappiamo come classificare perché ci manca la categoria, come i coloni australiani dinnanzi ai primi esemplari di quell’animale che oggi chiamiamo ornitorinco: non un mammifero, per via delle uova; non un rettile, per via del sangue caldo; non un uccello, per via delle zampe. Nessuno si era mai sognato potesse esserci una bestia siffatta, eppure eccola lì, come dice Umberto Eco citando Lesson, sdraiata «di traverso sul sentiero del metodo tassonomico per provarne la fallacia»3. (shrink)
Eco. ...e finiamo in un dialoghetto immaginario. Umberto. Non che io abbia qualcosa in contrario, ma mi sento un po’ a disagio. Sono sempre stato una persona in carne ed ossa e ho sempre interagito, nel bene come nel male, con gente che esisteva davvero.
Plato. The republic.--Aristotle. Politics.--Cicero, M. T. On the commonwealth.--John of Salisbury. The prince versus the tyrant.--Machiavelli, N. The prince and the people.--Hobbes, T. The state of nature and the Leviathan.--Locke, J. The right of revolution.--Marx, K. and Engels, F. Bourgeois and proletarians.--Bakunin, M. A. The Paris Commune and the idea of the state.--Mill, J. S. On liberty.--Lenin, V. I. Marxism and the withering away of the state.--Hitler, A. Race and the folkish state.--Mao Tse-tung. From the masses, to the masses.--Che Guevara, (...) E. Create two, three, many Vietnams. (shrink)
This paper considers some thesis proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty during his lessons on sleeping and dreaming in the mid fifties, also with reference to the contemporary scientific debate. Dreaming and sleeping constitute a privileged perspective for considering the characteristic human interweaving of natural and cultural aspects, of animality and meaning. The immediate association of sleeping with a suspension of consciousness and with an absence of worldly contacts seems problematic. Furthermore the dualistic opposition between conscious activity and bodily passivity seems far (...) less obvious. Besides it appears as not taken for granted that human acting and experiencing could be always considered as first person's phenomena. (shrink)
This introduction emphasises the relevance of the theoretical feminist reflection presented by Wendy Brown in her Politics Out of History . The Italian translation of the book, which introduces Brown’s thought to the Italian public for the first time, provides the opportunity to deepen the understanding of her feminist contribution to the comprehension of the crisis of sovereignty. The book, in fact, could be investigated as a sort of link between, on the one hand, 1990s Brown’s reflection on the crisis (...) of liberal universalism, political modernity and on the gendered constructions of such concepts as State and citizenship and, on the other, her more recent analysis on the reconfiguration of power and sovereignty in the age of globalization as expressed in her 2010 Walled States, Waning Sovereignty . At the core of her reflection, a crucial role has been played by the deconstruction of the nexus freedom-power-rights that enlightens the ambiguities, the semantic ambivalences and the political-theoretical traps inherent in the linear and progressive narration of political modernity. (shrink)
