History and Decision in Heidegger’s Private Writings: The animal historicum and the Da-sein In this paper, we aim to reconstruct Heidegger’s critique of the modern conception of subjectivity, history and freedom, as it appears in his posthumous writings and in the Black Notebooks of the 1930’s and 1940’s. In order to do so, we will examine the meaning of decision ( Entscheidung ) and its links with the history of Be-ing ( Geschichte des Seyns ). Our first section will be (...) devoted to a critical reconstruction of Machenschaft as a symbol of our modern times. According to Heidegger, the Machenschaft represents a place in history where no new historical decisions can be made in any conceivable way, and humanity becomes an animal historicum. In spite of that, the way of a new beginning and a new decision concerning ourselves remains difficult but possible, a phenomenon that we analyze in our second section: how the essence of humanity can be transformed in Da-sein, but only if we think anew our relationship with being. (shrink)

Origin of Geometry and Origin of the Work of Art: Reduction, Truth, and History in Husserl and Heidegger Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry and Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art were surprisingly developed in parallel and deal with the same subject, the question of the origin: of a science, in one case, and of the artwork, in the other. From their comparison, the different conception that Husserl and Heidegger have of origin and truth clearly emerge. It concerns what (...) Heidegger identified as the real point of his divergence from Husserl, when they tried to write the entry “Phenomenology” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, namely the method of reduction. For Husserl, the reduction opens up a material content, an essence, which ensures the persistence of truth in historical transmission, beyond linguistic variability, as happens in geometry; for Heidegger, reduction brings to light the ontological and, we might say, grammatical condition of truth, that is, its being an event and giving rise to an original syntax, to a world. This is the function of the work of art, whose essence consists in its mere being-made, in its being, that is, a work: the actualization of a possibility. (shrink)

_The Collision of Science with the Question of Be-ing in Heidegger’s Thinking_ Science does not lead to the full, final, truly in-depth exploration of beings; it leaves unresolved (unclarified) the understanding of being; it does not think through the question of being, of the “to be”, of the “is”; it does not think being as such; it adopts a metaphysical idea of being as being of beings (as one, the highest of beings). As this study shows, being is not within (...) the range of merely scientific investigation. Many philosophical questions (e. g., the foundation of the sciences; the understanding of the ontological difference) go beyond and transcend the reach of scientific inquiry. The collision of science with the question of being, with the question of the “to be”, comes from science attempting to move beyond its intrinsic limitations and boundary. According to Heidegger’s be-ing-historical thinking, scientific inquiry cannot resolve the question of the “to be” and that of the truth of the “to be”; it cannot eliminate (suppress) these distinctly philosophical concerns. Science cannot become a substitute for philosophy. As this study indicates, the understanding of the danger of the “collision” identified contributes to its prevention and to a creative interaction between science and philosophy. (shrink)

φρόνη­σις and σοφία as kinds of knowledge and being Aristotle, Heidegger, Gadamer Φρόνη­σις and σοφία, practical and theoretical knowledge, were described by Aristotle as essential for the perfection of human life and thus for achieving happiness, the supreme good. The investigation of the relationship between the “highest” virtues and between the correspondent life ideals by Heidegger and Gadamer “made” the Stagirite “talk” in the 20 th century from the perspective of Heidegger’s question of Being and Gadamer’s philosophical Hermeneutics. A renewed (...) interpretation of the πρᾶξις/θεω­ρία interrelation elaborated by Aristotle could contribute to the development of attitudes required to face the current challenges, and so keep on making the Stagirite’s “doctrine” fruitful for our present. (shrink)

Novas Repeto Vias. A Note on Heidegger and Time This essay begins from the observation that a “theory of time” contradicts the Heideggerian intention to experience temporality based on a “pre-theoretical” condition and to emancipate it in this way from instances of the Western metaphysical discourse. Such a claim leads to the conclusion that Heidegger never elaborated a theory of time and therefore was never, strictly speaking, “a philosopher of time.” Thus, the necessary condition for releasing thought from the metaphysical (...) mortgage would have to pass through the deconstruction of any “concept” intended to exhaust the nature of time. This gives rise to implications of varying intensity with respect to the structure and functions of Dasein. Most importantly, it concerns the tension between Entschlossenheit and Augenblick, on which Heidegger’s structure of Dasein depends. (shrink)

The Truth of Being and the Historicity of the Earth This essay reads Graeme Nicholson’s Heidegger on Truth in conjunction with Frank Schalow’s Heidegger’s Ecological Turn. It calls for the appropriation of Heidegger’s understanding of Da-sein to elaborate a radically other, earth-based political order. Nicholson and Schalow independently draw the conclusion that the technocratic world order, founded in the metaphysics of presence, is incapable of adequate response to a hermeneutic situation defined by instrumental reason and ecological collapse. Schalow’s carefully elaborated (...) contribution to eco-philosophy offers a creative adaption of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology and specifies how it is integrated into the project of the history of being. (shrink)

There must be a forward trajectory to history, and not merely a connection to the chronology to past events, if history is to provide the stage for the disclosure of being. Conversely, if history does not merely reflect shifts in the course of human events, then the freedom to decide must originate from the reciprocity between being and Da-sein. In this essay, I outline the narrow passageway by which Heidegger shows how decision can unlock the transformative power of history, and, (...) reciprocally, how history grounds decision as a compliance or measured response to the claim ( Anspruch ) of being. I will center my inquiry on sections 45 – 48 of Contributions to Philosophy (Enowning), not only to provide a sharper focus, but also to bring into play the enactment of being-historical thinking as the key to coalescing the key motifs of history, decision, and freedom. (shrink)