In this paper, we will present the specific and pioneering brand of existentialism developed by Søren Kierkegaard, an immensely influential European thinker who ushered in a whole new era of ...philosophy. We will analyze his view of the problem of existence and, more specifically, the self as to how an individual must first become separated from others (the masses or the public), to then become a new person through faith in God, the key Other that makes one’s whole life appear as new. Kierkegaard’s influence on the further development of philosophy is almost beyond comparison, as is apparent first and foremost in existentialism and its various versions developed in the 20th century, and through these developments, it has shaped the course of philosophical thought extending far beyond the borders of Europe. In his view, the life of a human individual is tightly bound up with the relation towards the other. This requires, on the one hand, a certain denial of the other qua the others and, on the other hand, an all-encompassing turning towards and acceptance of the Other, i.e. God (as the highest degree of human accomplishment cannot be achieved without this recognition of God as the Other with the initial capital).
In this article, the author intends to show that the question of the human being as weltbildend, which Heidegger discusses in his lecture on Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (WS 1929/30), could be ...helpfully read in light of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929), so as to appreciate the role played by the destruction (Destruktion) of Kant’s Einbildungskraft in the description of Weltbildung. The latter is only a formal indication (formale Anzeige), which is useful to make thought proceed, but which cannot escape its final destruction. The language of bilden is meant to be dissolved in another language. In this contribution, particular attention is given to the concluding paragraph 76 of Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, by insisting on the notion of Ent-wurf.
The present paper engages with Heidegger’s attempt to rethink, during the 1930s, the metaphysical history of being from the inside. It treats the movement of the appearance of Being (Seyn) in the ...concealment of the essence of truth, and moving from such a notion of “essence” (Wesen), it shows that the role of Phantasie falls within the seynsgeschichtliches Denken. The Heideggerian “Phantasie des Wesens” is thus studied through Holderlin’s poetry, which is central to the elaboration of the “thought of the history of being” in the thirties. It seems therefore, following Heidegger’s interpretation, that is from its own language (Sprache) that the metaphysical history of being can be rethought or “reinvented”. The paper rather explores the process of channeling Stimmung into Grund-stimmung, by which the Phantasie may be able to shape the experience of meaning.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy The Bloomsbury Companion to Existentialism, edited by Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds, and Ashley Woodward London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, pp. x + 406, AU$49.99 ...(paperback).
What commonality holds together all existentialists? Existentialism is notoriously difficult to define and there seems to be little agreement on how to use the term. At the same time, a cursory look ...at the content pages of the authoritative works on existentialism reveals that their authors discuss more or less the same list of thinkers. If this is so then it feels reasonable to assume that there is something tangible that holds the concept of existentialism together. This thesis aims to identify the commonality of existentialism by analysing the ideas of five existentialist writers-Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus-whose status as existentialist thinkers is rarely questioned in the relevant literature. This thesis is an interdisciplinary project that employs Deleuze's methodology of conceptual personae to facilitate a dialogue between literature and philosophy. Conceptual personae are idiosyncratic figures that help philosophers to enunciate complex ideas without resorting to reductive definitions. My thesis reads some of the key literary figures in writers' novels as conceptual personae, thereby achieving a methodological transition from textual analysis to conceptual analysis. By closely analysing these chosen conceptual personae, this thesis identifies a common paradigmatic structure that all the major works commonly agreed to be works of existentialism share. This structure consists of the following constituents: (i) a realisation of the existential lie; (ii) a movement towards a transitional state of reactive nihilism; (iii) a presentation of ultimate demands. The identification of the existentialist paradigm enriches our conceptual understanding of existentialism. Importantly, it gives us a tool to discover existentialist thinkers outside of the Western tradition. The last chapter employs this tool in the Chinese cultural context and helps identify the influential Chinese writer Lu Xun as an existentialist. This discovery will then turn out to have some exciting implications for our understanding of China's Cultural Revolution.
The existence and nature of the mysterious phenomenon, called “time,” has been one of the main issues that attracted the interests of scholars, especially philosophers and theologians, since ancient ...times. So much so that, time has a complicated and multi-faceted doctrinal area, which is the subject matter of–in a way–philosophical, physical, and also religious studies. In this article, we tried to investigate the issue of time under a few titles. First of all, the concept of “moment”, which is being the atoms of time, in one aspect and also its ontological dimension were examined. Then, we scrutinized the nature of time, whether it is pre-eternal or created later, namely “does it have a beginning?” These two opposite views were studied, and various opinions of philosophers and theologists were stated. In the final stage, we investigated the relationship between “motion and time.” In the article, close similarities between ancient philosophical teachings and contemporary findings, regarding the nature and quality of a couple of “time” and “motion,” were disclosed in a very remarkable fashion.
Our self-consciousness allows us to know that we exist and to situate ourselves in the world. However, self-consciousness also makes us realize that our existence is characterized by vulnerabilities, ...that we are individuals with experiences which cannot be experienced by the other and that we will not escape finitude. This selfconsciousness is usually in the background of our mind but may be brought to centre stage in case of illnesses which evolve toward death. Certain disciplines of medicine try to consider the existential dimensions of disease. The question remains what medicine can offer in such situations and why and for whom interventions to increase the well-being of patients under existential threat are proposed. An analysis of these developments needs to focus not only on patients, but also the clinician, medicine, and society.
