Dieser Aufsatz versucht zunächst aufzuzeigen, dass unter den oberflächlichen Unterschieden zwischen Marx und Heidegger strukturelle Ähnlichkeiten in ihrem Denken liegen, die sich als doppelte Kritik manifestieren. Der Grund dafür liegt in der gemeinsamen Erkenntnis beider Philosophen, dass die Grundlagen der Theorie in der alltäglichen Erfahrung des Lebens und Herstellens liegen. Zweitens teilen Heidegger und Marx auch ihre Betonung des Begriffs der Praxis, die trotz ihrer jeweiligen Vorlieben für Individualität und Gesellschaftlichkeit nicht im Widerspruch zueinander steht, sondern sich vielmehr ergänzt. Mit (...) Hilfe der Analyse von Marcuse sehen wir jedoch wieder, dass Heideggers Ontologisierung und Neutralisierung der Praxis ihn bis zu einem gewissen Grad in die von ihm selbst heftig kritisierte “Theoretisierung” der Philosophie zurückfallen lässt. Und hier liegt die Möglichkeit, über Heidegger hinauszugehen, indem man zu Marx zurückkehrt. (shrink)

In this article, I imagine a scene in Plato’s cave where Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari encounter Pinocchio, the most famous puppet. I want to examine the forms of resistance created by the expressions of the Body Without Organs during the process of Pinocchio’s formation and bring together the elements that undermine the pedagogical causality established between telling a lie and the elongation of the nose to show that a different reading of The Adventures of Pinocchio is possible. I hope (...) to achieve this reading by demonstrating the constant conflict of the two logics in The Adventures of Pinocchio: the logic of punishment and the logic of symptoms. This research can also be read as preparing a possible strategic escape plan for Pinocchio, Deleuze and Guattari for a permanent escape from Plato’s cave. (shrink)

We dwell in a world of physical things. When it comes to the environments that we live in, we usually become oriented to the place, and eventually feel at home in it. Facing death during war and pandemic are times of extreme disorientation, and we sometimes exhibit an impulse to flee. It is no wonder that in those desperate times, some with means and ability consider fleeing to a safer place. But are we morally obliged to act in ways that (...) would ask us to sacrifice our deepest personal commitments and projects for others to meet their commitments and projects? It is argued here that fleeing Bosnia and Herzegovina during wartime, like what happened in the 90s, and fleeing a city during a pandemic may be morally decent actions. However, it is also an issue of political decency and fractured friendships. In cases or war and pandemic, returning home to contribute to the well-being of those they left behind may be morally and politically decent, but the fractured friendships may contribute to normative ambiguity. Why would anyone trust them again and regard them as a loyal friend? Perhaps reestablishing those trusting friendships may require those who remained behind to do what is supererogatory, i.e., doing more than can reasonably be asked of them, which in this case amounts to forgiving those who fled and giving them a second chance by welcoming them back home. (shrink)

In this article, I propose to analyse the earliest Indian systematic discussion on the problem of meaning and denotation of words. The discussion itself seems to have been conceived within the famous Indian grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa), and its definitive form was given by the Grammarian Patañjali (second century BC) in his work Mahābhāṣya. This whole discussion is carried over and further developed within classical Indian philosophy, beginning with the Nyāya school, whose positions regarding semantics are also analysed here, based on (...) classical works of this school. (shrink)

This paper argues that Marquis de Sade is a more original and relevant Enlightenment philosopher than it is commonly thought. We argue that de Sade is a notable author and a noteworthy naturalist thinker in contemporary times as well, concerning modern science, organized religion, (homo)sexuality, political violence and prevalent sociocultural norms. In order to demonstrate these claims, we thoroughly analyse de Sadeʼs philosophies of naturalism and materialism, i.e., his metaphysics and his radical ethics of “immorality”, based on viewing (human) Nature (...) as a sole organizing, creative and destructive principle. Furthermore, we detail his atheist and anti-theistic arguments, which he consistently uses to reject the possibility of a God and all supernatural beings, coupled with his social and political criticism of a faith-based society. Thus, we outline the philosophical arguments that made him a controversial, infamous and denounced thinker, and which socially distanced him from the prevailing philosophical milieu. We also argue for the possibility that he deserves a more prominent place in the history of philosophy which is not congruent with the various “rehabilitative” and “revisionist” narratives regarding de Sade as an early champion of the Counter-Enlightenment, anti-science and postmodernism. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse the hitherto largely ignored social and psychological roots of the philosophy of wholeness in David Bohm and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel was Bohm’s strongest philosophical influence throughout his mature intellectual life, however, as demonstrated in the paper, Bohm’s abhorrence of fragmentation and his affection for wholeness, which is prominently reflected in both his physics and his philosophy of science, was actually the realisation of specific social propensities and psychological determinants of his early emotional and (...) intellectual development for which Hegel’s philosophy was a crucial rational catalyst later in his life. These social propensities and psychological determinants of Bohm’s early development are further demonstrated to be strikingly similar to those that also led the young Hegel to engage with the concept of wholeness throughout his life. The article also brings the biographical evidence of Bohm’s lifelong interest in Hegel and analyses the state of scholarship regarding his Hegelianism, the nature of Hegel’s philosophy as reflected in Bohm’s work, and the reasons for the somehow unexpected disciplinary neglect of the crucial influence of Hegel’s philosophy on Bohm. (shrink)

I argue that one of the central concepts of the second part of Being and Time – resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) – represents a new way of doing philosophy and should therefore be understood as a philosophical method. Resoluteness is a specific way of comporting oneself towards things and is methodologically necessary to uncover these things as what they are. I draw on insights from the recently published On My Own Publications, in which Heidegger points to resoluteness as a crucial step towards (...) his later methodological stance. In doing so, I illuminate important aspects of Being and Time and contribute to ongoing debates about Heidegger’s philosophical method. I demonstrate that it is Heidegger’s critique of transcendental philosophy and of the inquiry into possibility conditions that is meant to be overcome by developing the idea of resoluteness as a philosophical method. (shrink)

Spinoza’s Ethics has a robust and underappreciated theory of love. In this paper, I show that Spinoza’s discussion of love, which stands at a crossroads between his ethics and his epistemology, details the metamorphosis of love in the philosopher’s mind – from passionate love to intellectual love of God, and from imagination or opinion to scientia intuitiva. This metamorphosis is responsible for the closely interrelated philosopher’s morality and the perfection of their understanding, which are closely linked. Reading Spinoza’s guide to (...) ethical and philosophical progress through the prism of his theory of love holds the key to understanding some of the most perplexing issues presented in the second half of Part 5, namely, the nature of the intellectual love of God and the object of the third kind of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the extent to which the theoretical procedures for interpreting works of visual art, which Gotthold Ephraim Lessing describes in his famous book Laocoon: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry, are comparable to various methods of interpretation from the tradition of hermeneutics. To achieve this, I analyse how Robert S. Leventhal and Frederick Burwick approached Lessing’s interpretation techniques and try to expand their views and apply them to Lessing’s thoughts in Laocoon. I will (...) focus on the idea that Lessing’s procedures for interpreting works of visual art depend, to a certain extend, on his methods for analysing literature. Even though these authors did not link Lessing’s thoughts to the hermeneutical theory of Friedrich Schleiermacher, I will also explore whether there are certain similarities in their views on the main constituents of the process of interpretation. (shrink)

The pluralistic philosophy of religion of Abdolkarim Soroush, whose neo-rationalist thought represents a genuine epistemological turn within Muslim reform discourse, is the central issue in this paper. Abdolkarim Soroush, as a contemporary Muslim thinker, brings a completely new understanding of the issue of religious pluralism and by incorporating analytical philosophy, contemporary hermeneutic tradition and Sufi metaphysics, contributes to the creation of a characteristically distinct philosophy of religion within the Muslim intellectual circle. Issues of expansion and contraction of religious knowledge, as (...) well as the expansion of prophetic experience, are inseparable elements of his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The phenomenon of the body has been neglected or placed lower in the hierarchy of importance for the almost entire philosophical tradition. This is especially noticeable in the problems of modern dualism, which struggled to reconcile the gap between the soul and the body. Although placed in the lowest position on the ontological scale, the phenomenon of the body played a very important role in Ancient Greek philosophy, especially in poetics and praxis philosophy. German idealism, which, led by Hegel, tries (...) to overcome modern dualism and adopt classical ancient dialectics, reaffirms the important role of the phenomenon of the body, showing its mediating place both in the field of theoretical truths and in the field of objective spirit. Although contemporary philosophy departed from idealistic logic, this paper emphasizes how the phenomenological method led by Husserl also affirmed the phenomenon of the body. By distinguishing between the perceptual (Gegenwärtigung) and the imaginary consciousness (Vergegenwärtigung), Husserl allows us to approach the phenomenon of the body in different ways, also showing its independence in the field of aesthetics. This made an influence on structuralist tradition, especially Rancière, who develops the idea of the free field of praxis through the notion of the sensible which represents the mediating role of the body and conceives of the sphere of aesthetics as a free regime. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz versucht zunächst aufzuzeigen, dass unter den oberflächlichen Unterschieden zwischen Marx und Heidegger strukturelle Ähnlichkeiten in ihrem Denken liegen, die sich als doppelte Kritik manifestieren. Der Grund dafür liegt in der gemeinsamen Erkenntnis beider Philosophen, dass die Grundlagen der Theorie in der alltäglichen Erfahrung des Lebens und Herstellens liegen. Zweitens teilen Heidegger und Marx auch ihre Betonung des Begriffs der Praxis, die trotz ihrer jeweiligen Vorlieben für Individualität und Gesellschaftlichkeit nicht im Widerspruch zueinandersteht, sondern sich vielmehr ergänzt. Mit Hilfe (...) der Analyse von Marcuse sehen wir jedoch wieder, dass Heideggers Ontologisierung und Neutralisierung der Praxis ihn bis zu einem gewissen Grad in die von ihm selbst heftig kritisierte „Theoretisierung“ der Philosophie zurückfallen lässt. Und hier liegt die Möglichkeit, über Heidegger hinauszugehen, indem man zu Marx zurückkehrt. (shrink)