Heidegger, in the writings of the so-called “turn” [Kehre] attributes to Plato a capital role in the history of philosophy, namely that of founder of metaphysics understood as the history of the oblivion of being. Yet, in his course on the Sophist (1924-25) Heidegger had not yet made such negative judgments. Is this double image of Plato that we can derive from Heideggerian writings the result of a rupture or is there perhaps a continuity? In this contribution I will show (...) the continuity, even if it is accompanied by a rather critical judgment on Plato’s role as the founder of Western metaphysics. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s Four Notebooks I and II (Black Notebooks 1947-1950), edited as volume 99 of the Gesamtausgabe of his writings, the author remarks that “One God, who as a unique God does not tolerate other Gods apart from him is outside divinity ”, the latter obviously referring to the Bible’s passage found in Exodus 34: 14 : “For you shalt worship no other God: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”. But how does Heidegger come to (...) say that? How does he come to deny the divinity of the one God? This seems to be at first sight a radical criticism of the so-called ‘monotheism’. A major question remains unanswered, nonetheless: the sense in which the Jewish tradition focuses on the “One God”. In this context, “one” is actually not a number but a name. Far from being one of God’s attributes, it is God’s Name. It is a common ground that Heidegger had no access to the Hebrew text of the Bible, a biased situation which leads us to narrow-minded consequences regarding the ‘Old Testament’, where God is frequently called Elohim, i. e. a plural. Is the Jewish God exclusive, or rather Heidegger’s conception of Judaism restrictive? That is the question. (shrink)

Heidegger’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and science is expressed in his claim that they are not hostile towards each other, i.e., that philosophy is neither for nor against science, though they differ in ambition, strength, and methodology. Their interaction, as this essay suggests, may contribute to the range and diversification of philosophical thinking and to a deeper grasp of the strength and boundary (potential and limitation) of scientific inquiry and knowing. Heidegger’s rethinking of science, especially in his twenty-four (...) “propositions about science”, includes a critical assessment of the status of science in the epoch of modernity; it discerns (discovers, discloses) the truth of science in its relation to the measure of truth in beings, and to the truth of be-ing. The entire inquiry at hand is grounded in be-ing-historical thinking and mindfulness. (shrink)

The language of philosophy is based on a philosophy of language, which is considered as instrument. The traditional speech of Being and of God, which makes them objects, is also understood as a designation, not a pointing. Finally, the conventional question about Being moves on its tracks. It takes its starting point from Being, as if it were given without question. Instead, Heidegger poses it in the origin from Being itself.

This essay tries to retrace Heidegger’s interpretation of the Aristotelian concepts of συμβεβηκὸζ, τύχη and abróparov and their role within daseinanalytic ontology. We will try to show how Heidegger manages to unify the three terms (which in Aristotelian philosophy remain distinct although related) into a single ontological concept, capable of exercising a negative function with respect to the conception of being as Anwesenheit. However, one will come to notice the lack of an effective Heideggerian thematization of the concept of τύχη, (...) whose ontological importance for the Dasein will instead be prepared and enhanced by his student Helene Weiss. (shrink)

Heidegger, Lukacs and Heller confronted the “crisis” of modernity already at the beginning of their own paths of thinking and asked how to address it. Lukacs did never completely lose faith in politics, whereas Heidegger and Heller only briefly leant on a party to direct the course of history. Heidegger and Lukacs described modem life as an “unowned” existence occasioned by the metaphysics’ “forgetfulness of Being” and the “reification of consciousness” in the late capitalism respectively. Whilst Heidegger entrusted the task (...) of preparing a “turning” to the thinking of the truth of Being and Lukacs assigned materialistic dialectic to undertake a revolution, Heller worked out an ethics of responsibility that can both keep under control the modernity’s “dark side” and make again fruitful in today’s multicultural society the main achievement of the modem age, that is, freedom. (shrink)

Although Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the problem of art and space leads in part to comparable results, the differences between the two phenomenological approaches should also be pointed out. As such a difference the relationship between the space of art (and craft) and the space of nature is first brought into view - as described by Heidegger in §§ 22-24 of Being and Time (1927) and by Merleau-Ponty in §§ 29-33 of his second fundamental work Phenomenology o f Perception (...) (1945). More concrete studies of space and art can be found in later texts by the two philosophers. For this comparison Merleau-Ponty’s essays “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1945), “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” (1952) and in particular “Eye and Mind” (1961) as well as Heidegger’s texts “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) “Remarks on Art - Sculpture - Space” (1964, published 1996 in German: “Bemerkungen zu Kunst - Plastik - Raum”) and “Art and Space” (1969) are regarded. (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s main interests in Heraclitus’ concept of Λόγοζ regards the phenomenon of corresponding (Entsprechen). While λέγειν is interpreted as an obedient joining (Fügen), harvesting (Lesen), gathering (Sammeln, Versammeln) and lying-before (Vorliegen lassen), the movement of essential thinking picks up the idea of corresponding (όμολογεἴν) to a subtle ‘claim’ (Anspruch) of being throughout appearance (εἴδοζ Anblick) which addresses i. e. calls for being put into words. The λέγειν of human Λόγοζ can thus become (at times) the same with the (...) one Aôyoç of being while the act o f corresponding holds being and thinking together. “Truth” can lie before in λέγειν, but only for the one listening attentively to what is spoken and so by hearing (Vernehmen) what is not spoken (out loud) in the spoken word. It is to this dimension of concealment (Verborgenheit), that speech still belongs to, even as result of an essential thinking that gathers and brings into presence: The brightness of essential thinking seems to owe itself to this darkness crossed by the fire of lightning. άλήθεια can thus be conceived in the Greek context of a special concept of ‘emerging into the light of φύσιζ‘, which also corresponds to the revealing movement of inceptually unfolding Λόγοζ in the gathering true human Xôyoç. Far from being able to dispose of being as knowledge remains a movement between the concealed toward unconcealment, essential thinking stays indepted to something “never-submerging” as (φύσιζ and the salvaging event of gathering into one Λόγοζ. To be freed from metaphysical for the inceptual thinking means learning to listen to how the essence of φύσιζ and άλήθεια address as the one Λόγοζ and to correspond to it, insofar as clearing is always carried by it i. e. can never remain permanently concealed from it. The present contribution follows the train of thought summarized here in brief through Heidegger’s confrontation with Heraclitus. (shrink)

This paper aims to underscore a certain continuity in Heidegger’s hermeneutical thinking, while examining the transformations that it undergoes from 1923 to 1959. My analysis of Heidegger’s thought follows the way the author uses the semantic range of the German word “Kunde”. I claim that this transformation can be understood from three different angles: the young Heidegger (1920’s), Heidegger’s “turning” (1930’s) and late Heidegger (1950’s). By analyzing those three steps in Heidegger’s thought, I show that Heidegger’s hermeneutics is a deep (...) reflection on language that aims to shatter its logical, technical, and metaphysical understanding (in other words, as a simple mean of communication). The interpretation of the semantic range of the word Kunde helps us to understand Heidegger’s hermeneutics as an effort to think language as the “house of Being”, in which we find ourselves at home on earth. (shrink)

This essay examines how being-historical thinking is enacted through specific motifs, which prompts an Auseinandersetzung with the modem age of machination. The earth is one such motif that arises in Contributions to Philosophy, calling for a nuanced language to enact being-historical thinking, on the one hand, and, on the other, marking a sharp divergence from the objectifying discourse of modern science and technicity. It is shown that Heidegger’s appeal to the earth not only yields a deeper meaning of what it (...) means to dwell in harmony with nature, but also that the proprietorship of dwelling provides a hint to reestablish the place of the political outside the rule of technicity. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the methodical status of phenomenological reduction in Heidegger's early Freiburg lectures (1919-1923). Starting from the assumption that the traditional interpretation of reduction focused mainly on Heidegger’s interpretation of its ontological possibility (by explaining reduction from the phenomenon of anxiety), we propose a reading conducted from a methodical perspective. First, we follow the Heideggerian appropriation of reduction as the epoché of the objectivations of life and determine its “phenomenological residue” as essentially evental and (...) “noematic”. Then, by broadening the meaning of reduction understood now as reconduction to the origin, we highlight its essentially interpretative, performative and rearticulatory character. As the “hermeneutical reduction” is accomplished as a critical destruction, the phenomenological seeing is essentially mediated in an interpretative and historical way. (shrink)