A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work.

In this illuminating work, Dennis J. Schmidt examines tragedy as one of the highest forms of human expression for both the ancients and the moderns.

A particularly insightful commentary on Heidegger’s thinking, as well as a fascinating look at Gadamer himself.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to argue that the connection between hermeneutics and practical philosophy is so strong that one needs to consider hermeneutics as the outline of an ethical sensibility, one that takes up the challenges that are outlined by Heidegger's call for an “original ethics.“ Part of this argument entails demonstrating how understanding, the real task of every hermeneutic project, is ultimately a form of self-understanding.

_A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work._.

This chapter argues that as the tradition of hermeneutic reflection develops, it should come to show more clearly this very real and original concern with ethical life. It is also the most promising way of thinking the questions of ethics in our times. The chapter remarks on this topic to Gadamer's work on the ethical sensibility of hermeneutics. There are four rather obvious links between hermeneutic theory and ethics that can help illuminate this claim. First, hermeneutics is formulated with reference (...) to the question of ethical judgment as it is developed by Kant in his Third Critique; second, it is modeled on Aristotle's notion of ϕρóνησíς in his Nicomachean Ethics; third, it is concerned with conversation and listening, and with the need to engage others genuinely; and fourth, it is animated by a deep respect for alterity and a sensitivity to the complexities of historical realities. (shrink)

What are the assumptions and tasks hidden in contemporary calls to "overcome" the metaphysical tradition? Reflecting upon the internal contradictions of the notions of "tradition" and "finiteness," Dennis J. Schmidt offers novel insights into how philosophy must relate to its traditions if it is to retain a vital sense of the plurality of "edges" that constitute its finiteness. He does this through a close examination of issues found in the work of Hegel and Heidegger, two philosophers who made the ideas (...) of both tradition and finiteness the center of their concern.Schmidt begins by asking how Heidegger can claim to have destroyed metaphysics despite Hegel's claim to have perfected its possibilities. Systematically following the development of Heidegger's critique of Hegel, Schmidt generates a dialogue between them. The topic of that dialogue is the nature of finiteness as it is articulated in time, nothing, the dialectical and hermeneutical circles, and in the notions of experience, work, technology, history, and preSocratic thought.Beginning with Heidegger's critique of Hegel in Being and Time, Schmidt's strategy is to disclose the complexities of philosophical discourse about the finite by drawing out the proximities between Hegel and Heidegger. The dialogue that results presents novel portraits of both philosophers. It also reveals that Heidegger's early, unacknowledged failure to separate himself from the Hegelian dialectic is the motive behind many of the turns and decisions of his later career.In concluding, Schmidt offers an interpretation of the wider significance of the results of that dialogue, and connects his study to other contemporary discussions of postmodernism. He expands upon the idea of the plurality of edges opened by finiteness, arguing that philosophy only understands its own past and future once it recognizes the meaning of its own finiteness.Dennis J. Schmidt is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The Ubiquity of the Finite is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Focusing on Heidegger and the work of Paul Klee, Schmidt pursues larger issues in the relationship between word, image, and truth.

War has broken out in the technological global economy, principally in battles over intellectual property. A particularly fierce aspect ofthis battle sets people who guard proprietary software against hackers, who want information to be free. The key challenge today is to produce an adequate conceptual lens for seeing what ethically is at stake in this battle. Toward this end, this paper uses the just war tradition to analyze differences between proponents of Free Software and proponents of Open Source Software. This (...) paper’s use of three just war criteria—Just Cause, Right Intention, and Discrimination—illustrates how the just war tradition can raise the level of ethical awareness about the intellectual property wars that continue to rage in the technological global economy. (shrink)

War has broken out in the technological global economy, principally in battles over intellectual property. A particularly fierce aspect ofthis battle sets people who guard proprietary software against hackers, who want information to be free. The key challenge today is to produce an adequate conceptual lens for seeing what ethically is at stake in this battle. Toward this end, this paper uses the just war tradition to analyze differences between proponents of Free Software and proponents of Open Source Software. This (...) paper’s use of three just war criteria—Just Cause, Right Intention, and Discrimination—illustrates how the just war tradition can raise the level of ethical awareness about the intellectual property wars that continue to rage in the technological global economy. (shrink)

A wide-ranging attempt to develop a theory of ethical life from a hermeneutic understanding of language.

The purpose of this essay is to look at the ethical concerns and sensibilities that emerge out of Hegel and Heidegger’s respective interpretations of Antigone. Curiously, both of them turn to this ancient Greek tragedy in order to lay out the foundations of ethical life and the complexities of such a life in the present historical moment. The argument here in the end is that both Hegel and Heidegger find the lesson of the radical singularity defining ethical life to be (...) a key to what one sees in Antigone. Both see this above all in the role of death in the tragedy. Both focus upon questions of mourning, burial, and of the dead body. My suggestion is that birth too needs to be understood as confronting us with the problem of our being in the singular, our being an idiom among other idioms. (shrink)

:War has broken out in the technological global economy, principally in battles over intellectual property. A particularly fierce aspect of this battle sets people who guard proprietary software against hackers, who want information to be free. The key challenge today is to produce an adequate conceptual lens for seeing what ethically is at stake in this battle. Toward this end, this paper uses the just war tradition to analyze differences between proponents of Free Software and proponents of Open Source Software. (...) This paper’s use of three just war criteria—Just Cause, Right Intention, and Discrimination—illustrates how the just war tradition can raise the level of ethical awareness about the intellectual property wars that continue to rage in the technological global economy.The division between the two [open source and free software] is often bitterly contested, both from inside and outside the communities. The holiest of holy wars are not fought over word processors, operating systems, or compilers. They are all about software licenses.—Joe Barr. (shrink)

The intention of this article is investigate ways in which the image and metaphor of the garden open productive avenues for thinking the being of nature. The primary focus of this investigation is found in two instances in which gardens play significant roles in presenting, even if only tacitly, an image of nature: Homer’s Odyssey and Plato’s reference to the “Gardens of Adonis” in Phaedrus.

The study of human cognition and the study of artificial intelligence (AI) have a symbiotic relationship, with advancements in one field often informing or creating new work in the other. Human cognition has many capabilities modern AI systems cannot compete with. One such capability is the detection, identification, and resolution of knowledge gaps (KGs). Using these capabilities as inspiration, we examine how to incorporate detection, identification, and resolution of KGs in artificial agents. We present a paradigm that enables research on (...) the understanding of KGs for visual-linguistic communication. We leverage and enhance and existing KG taxonomy to identify possible KGs that can occur for visual question answer (VQA) tasks and use these findings to develop a classifier to identify questions that could be engineered to contain specific KG types for other VQA datasets. Additionally, we examine the performance of different VQA models through the lens of KGs. (shrink)

The study of human cognition and the study of artificial intelligence (AI) have a symbiotic relationship, with advancements in one field often informing or creating new work in the other. Human cognition has many capabilities modern AI systems cannot compete with. One such capability is the detection, identification, and resolution of knowledge gaps (KGs). Using these capabilities as inspiration, we examine how to incorporate detection, identification, and resolution of KGs in artificial agents. We present a paradigm that enables research on (...) the understanding of KGs for visual-linguistic communication. We leverage and enhance and existing KG taxonomy to identify possible KGs that can occur for visual question answer (VQA) tasks and use these findings to develop a classifier to identify questions that could be engineered to contain specific KG types for other VQA datasets. Additionally, we examine the performance of different VQA models through the lens of KGs. (shrink)

Whitehead’s widely cited and accepted remark that the history of philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato has implications for how both Plato and the history of philosophy is to be understood. Such an understanding does an injustice to both Plato and the history of philosophy. A recent book by John Sallis, Platonic Legacies, presents us with a counterview, one that offers a more exciting view of both Plato and the meaning of his legacy for the history of (...) philosophy. The chief purpose of this article is to unpack some of Sallis’s contributions in this regard. (shrink)

This paper discusses the interpretation of an important historical document:IGXII, 5, 608, a victory list from Iulis on ancient Keos. Since its discovery in 1883 it has always been described as a chronologically ordered official victory list of Kean athletes who have won at each of the major games. The surviving portion contains one complete list prefixed by the words ‘these won at Nemea’, and preceded by fourteen other names, which must, following the usual order, belong to Isthmian victors. Since (...) the two lists together name two athletes for whom Bakchylides wrote victory songs, Argeios and Lachon, it has long been used as a means of dating the first pair of poems, as well as the victories mentioned on the inscription not celebrated by Bakchylides. More recently, it has been used to fix the death of that poet to just after 452, in spite of a clear reference to him in Eusebios'Chronicleunder the year 431. It is the contention of this paper that this unique victory list has been misclassified and misinterpreted. It is not a chronologically ordered official victory list; it is rather an honorific victory list in which the entries are arranged by decreasing order of importance. This interpretation, and its various repercussions, destroys many of the currently accepted views about the dating of Bakchylides. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to raise the question of ethical life independently of the framework of metaphysical assumptions, above all, independently of the language and idiom of conceptual reason. In order to carry out this project, which is akin to what Heidegger described as the project of formulating an “original ethics,” I take up several works by Charles Scott that I find offering especially productive openings for that project.

The intention of this article is investigate ways in which the image and metaphor of the garden open productive avenues for thinking the being of nature. The primary focus of this investigation is found in two instances in which gardens play significant roles in presenting, even if only tacitly, an image of nature: Homer’s Odyssey and Plato’s reference to the “Gardens of Adonis” in Phaedrus.

Any determination of Hans‐Georg Gadamer's place in Continental philosophy needs to begin by noting that his contribution to that tradition is associated with the style of philosophizing designated as “hermeneutics.” But while a presentation of Gadamer's thought is well‐advised to begin with a discussion of his conception of hermeneutics, it must not end with that theme. In fact, what is perhaps most notable about Gadamer's work is both its historical and disciplinary breadth as well as the wide range of issues (...) that it addresses. That engagement with the history of philosophy and such a diverse collection of issues is itself a reflection of the project of hermeneutics as Gadamer has developed it: not a “method,” Gadamer's hermeneutics is more aptly described as the effort to solicit the experience of limits harbored by all experience, and to demonstrate that this experience of finitude is not restricted only to some forms of experience. So one turns to his body of work and finds significant texts on ancient Greek philosophy and literature, all forms of art, translation, questions of contemporary culture and politics, theology, as well as issues in medicine and health. Just as one finds a remarkable pluralization of the fields in which Gadamer's hermeneutics can take root, so too one finds a similar situation with respect to the formative influences upon Gadamer's thought: while he is most frequently associated with the name of his teacher, heidegger (Article 18), it is clear that Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Holderlin, kant (Article 2), hegel (Article 6), dilthey (Article 37), husserl (Article 15), Rilke, and Celan need to be understood as providing many of the decisive impulses for Gadamer's own original philosophic contributions. (shrink)