Heidegger’s key word Ereignis is frequently translated as “event,” “event of being,” or “event of appropriation.” No ordinary event in the realm of beings, it is an event in which the meaning of being is recognized in difference from beings. In the history of philosophy, this insight into being set in motion the inception of a philosophical discourse within which we are still thinking. Inspired and guided by his philosophy of history, Heidegger hoped our own reflections on being could likewise (...) appropriate and set in motion preparations for another inception, another experience and understanding of what it means for something to be. Whereas, for the early Greek philosophers, their insight was an experience of awe and wonder, and perhaps also dread, for us of today that insight can set in motion a more “inward” turn, a process that puts in question who we are as human beings and who we want to become, and stirs us to acknowledge our responsibility for being in response to a time when being is under assault. (shrink)

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

David Michael Levin's ongoing exploration of the moral character and enlightenment-potential of vision takes a new direction in _The Philosopher's Gaze_. Levin examines texts by Descartes, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, and Lévinas, using our culturally dominant mode of perception and the philosophical discourse it has generated as the site for his critical reflections on the moral culture in which we are living. In Levin's view, all these philosophers attempted to understand, one way or another, the distinctive (...) pathologies of the modern age. But every one also attempted to envision—if only through the faintest of traces, traces of mutual recognition, traces of another way of looking and seeing—the prospects for a radically different lifeworld. The world, after all, inevitably reflects back to us the character, the reach and range, of our vision. In these provocative essays, the author draws on the language of hermeneutical phenomenology and at the same time refines phenomenology itself as a method of working with our experience and thinking critically about the culture in which we live. (shrink)

This second volume of David Kleinberg-Levin’s study of Heidegger’s phenomenology of perception sheds light on how Heidegger works, both critically and constructively, with seeing and hearing. The author explores how these capacities address the ills illuminated by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics and the nihilism devastating the Western world.

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In 1966, Samuel Beckett wrote, and then abandoned, a short story to which he eventually gave the title Le dépeupleur. In 1970, he completed it to his satisfaction and it was published.1 Two years later, it was issued in an English translation prepared by Beckett himself, who gave it the very different title The Lost Ones. In this story, Beckett is, like Dante, inventing narrative images of a “realm” or “world” in which matters of the utmost existential and moral gravity (...) are at stake.Beckett is frequently interpreted as an existential nihilist—that is to say, someone who, in Nietzsche’s definition, would claim that, with the “death of God,” our moral ideals and values are without any grounding in an ultimate and.. (shrink)

This interview with David Kleinberg-Levin, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University, concerns his recent trilogy on the promise of happiness in literary language. Kleinberg-Levin discusses the relationship between and among philosophy, phenomenology, and literature. Among others, he addresses questions regarding literature’s ability to offer redemption, its response to suffering and justice, literary gesture, the ethics of narrative logic, and the surface of the text.Cet entretien avec David Kleinberg-Levin, Professeur émérite au département (...) de philosophie de la Northwestern University, est consacrée à sa récente trilogie sur la promesse du bonheur dans le langage littéraire. Kleinberg-Levin examine les relations réciproques et internes de la philosophie, de la phénoménologie et de la littérature. Entre autres, il pose des questions sur la capacité de la littérature à offrir une rédemption, sur sa réponse à la souffrance et à la justice, sur le geste littéraire, sur l’éthique de la logique narrative et sur la surface du texte.L’intervista a David Kleinberg-Levin, Professore Emerito presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia della Northwestern University, è dedicata alla sua recente trilogia sulla promessa di felicità nel linguaggio letterario. Kleinberg-Levin esplora il rapporto tra filosofia, fenomenologia e letteratura. In particolare egli affronta le questioni che riguardano la capacità della letteratura di offrire redenzione, la sua risposta alla sofferenza e alla giustizia, il gesto letterario, l’etica della logica narrativa, e la superficie del testo. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by preeminent interpreters of continental philosophy explores the question of whether Western thought and culture have been dominated by a vision-centered paradigm of knowledge, ethics, and power. It focuses on the character of vision in modern philosophy and on arguments for and against the view that contemporary life and thought are distinctively "ocularcentric." The authors examine these ideas in the context of the history of philosophy and consider the character of visual discourse in the writings (...) of Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Habermas. With essays on television, the visual arts, and feminism, the book will interest readers in cultural studies, gender studies, and art history as well as philosophers. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by preeminent interpreters of continental philosophy explores the question of whether Western thought and culture have been dominated by a vision-centered paradigm of knowledge, ethics, and power. It focuses on the character of vision in modern philosophy and on arguments for and against the view that contemporary life and thought are distinctively "ocularcentric." The authors examine these ideas in the context of the history of philosophy and consider the character of visual discourse in the writings (...) of Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Habermas. With essays on television, the visual arts, and feminism, the book will interest readers in cultural studies, gender studies, and art history as well as philosophers. (shrink)

In a study that goes beyond the ego affirmed by Freudian psychology, David Levin offers an account of personal growth and self-fulfillment based on the development of our capacity for listening. Drawing on the work of Dewey, Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg, he uses the vocabulary of phenomenological psychology to distinguish four stages in this developmental process and brings us the significance of these stages for music, psychotherapy, ethics, politics, and ecology. This analysis substantiates his claim that the development of (...) our listening capacity is a process that fits Foucault's conception of a practice of the self, forming our character as social beings and moral agents. David Levin contends that our self- development as auditory beings is necessary for the achievement of a just and democratic society. (shrink)

This is a unique study, contuining the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, and using the techniques of phenomenology against the prevailing nihilism of our culture. It expands our understanding of the human potential for spiritual self-realization by interpreting it as the developing of a bodily-felt awareness informing our gestures and movements. The author argues that a psychological focus on our experience of well-being and pathology as embodied beings contributes significantly to a historically relevant critique of ideology. It also provides an (...) essential touchstone in experience for a fruitful individual and collective response to the danger of nihilism. Dr Levin draws on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to clarify Heidegger's analytic of human beings through an interpretation that focuses on our experience of being embodied. He reconstructs in modern terms the wisdom implicit in western and semitic forms of religion and philosophy, considering the work of Freud, Jung, Focault and Neitzsche, as well as that of American educational philosophers, including Dewey. In particular, he draws on the psychology of Freud and Jung to clarify our historical experience of gesture and movement and to bring to light its potential in the fulfilment of Selfhood. Throughout the book, the pathologies of the ego and its journey into Selfhood are considered in relation to the conditons of technology and the powers of nihilism. (shrink)

In ?Some Myths about ?Mental Illness'? (Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975], No. 3), Michael Moore attempts to clarify and refute what he takes to be the radical (existential) position concerning the nature and diagnosis of mental illness. Moore's dissatisfaction with certain formulations and conceptualizations of the radical position is endorsed; as also the need to introduce greater rigor and precision into the discussion of mental illness. But Moore's clarifications are really misunderstandings and, in consequence, his refutations do not succeed. Moore's (...) five?fold interpretative classification of the radical thesis is retained. (shrink)

This is a unique study, contuining the work of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, and using the techniques of phenomenology against the prevailing nihilism of our culture. It expands our understanding of the human potential for spiritual self-realization by interpreting it as the developing of a bodily-felt awareness informing our gestures and movements. The author argues that a psychological focus on our experience of well-being and pathology as embodied beings contributes significantly to a historically relevant critique of ideology. It also provides an (...) essential touchstone in experience for a fruitful individual and collective response to the danger of nihilism. Dr Levin draws on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to clarify Heidegger's analytic of human beings through an interpretation that focuses on our experience of being embodied. He reconstructs in modern terms the wisdom implicit in western and semitic forms of religion and philosophy, considering the work of Freud, Jung, Focault and Neitzsche, as well as that of American educational philosophers, including Dewey. In particular, he draws on the psychology of Freud and Jung to clarify our historical experience of gesture and movement and to bring to light its potential in the fulfilment of Selfhood. Throughout the book, the pathologies of the ego and its journey into Selfhood are considered in relation to the conditons of technology and the powers of nihilism. (shrink)

In this study, I examine the significance of the trace and its legibility in the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, showing that this trope plays a more significant role in Merleau-Ponty's thinking than has been recognized heretofore and that it constitutes a crucial point of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. But this point of contact is also, in both their philosophies, a site where their thinking is compelled to confront its limits and the enigmas involved in the description of the (...) topography of a hermeneutical flesh. It is argued that the significance of the trace consists in its alterity, its registering and inscribing in the very matter of the flesh an imperative spiritual assignment: the morally binding hold of the other person on my capacity to be responsive to the other's needs and bear responsibility for the other's welfare. The retrieval or recuperation of the trace, which, I argue, is inscribed as a certain predisposition in what, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, we might call the prepersonal topology of the flesh, would thus constitute a task of the utmost importance for the formation of the moral self. However, given the paradoxical temporality of the trace and the hermeneutical nature of its legibility, the retrieval of the trace is not actually possible. Nevertheless, the attempt to retrieve it - one's commitment to retrieving it - is an absolutely imperative existential task, determining the character of the moral self. In both Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, however, the problematic nature of this recuperative project is manifested in the ambiguous, equivocal modality of their rhetoric, supposedly engaged in the phenomenological description of the primordial 'inscription', but oscillating, in fact, undecidably between descriptive and prescriptive, constative and performative, literal and metaphorical modes of discourse. It is argued that this, far from being a fault, is necessitated by the hermeneutic nature of the trace, which requires that the description be invocative and evocative, provoking a deep transformation in experience that would make the description true. It accordingly becomes clear that and why the moral phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, depending as they must on a metaphorical interaction between language and experience, cannot function within the framework of the traditional correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

The principal argument of the present paper is that the human body is as much a reflective formation of multiple discourses as it is an effect of natural and environmental processes. This paper examines the implications of this argument, and suggests that recognizing the body in this light can be illuminating, not only for our conception of the body, but also for our understanding of medicine. Since medicine is itself a discursive formation, a science with both a history, and a (...) future, it is argued that much can be learned by reflecting on the progression of models, or “paradigm-shifts,”, in terms of which modern medicine has articulated the human body that figures at the heart of its discourse. Four historical periods of medicine will be considered, each one governed by its own distinctive paradigm. It is argued, finally, that, with the emergence of behavioural medicine, and, more particularly, psychoneuroimmunology, a new discursive formation in medicine, one can see a new conceptualization of the human body beginning to take shape; and that this new figure of the body makes it possible for the very first time to conceive the construction of testable hypotheses regarding correlations between the objective body of science and the phenomenological body of experienced meaning. (shrink)