What if political rhetoric is unavoidable, an irreducible part of politics itself? In contrast to the familiar denunciations of political horse-trading, grandstanding, and corporate manipulation from ...those lamenting the crisis in liberal democracy, this book argues that the "politics of politics," usually associated with rhetoric and sophistry, is, like it or not, part of politics from the start. Denunciations of the sorry state of current politics draw on a dogmatism and moralism that share an essentially metaphysical and Platonic ground. Failure to deconstruct that ground generates a philosophically and politically debilitating selfrighteousness that this book attempts to understand and undermine. After a detailed analysis of Foucault's influential late concept of parrhesia, which is shown to be both philosophically and politically insufficient, close readings of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Derrida trace complex relations between sophistry, rhetoric, and philosophy; truth and untruth; decision; madness and stupidity in an exploration of the possibility of developing an affirmative thinking of politics that is not mortgaged to the metaphysics of presence. It is suggested that Heidegger's complex accounts of truth and decision must indeed be read in close conjunction with his notorious Nazi commitments but nevertheless contain essential insights that many strident responses to those commitments ignore or repress. Those insights are here developed--via an ambitious account of Derrida's often misunderstood interruption of teleology--into a deconstructive retrieval of the concept of dignity. This lucid and often witty account of a crucial set of developments in twentieth-century thought prepares the way for a more general re-reading of the possibilities of political philosophy that will be undertaken in Volume 2 of this work, under the sign of an essential scatter that defines the political as such.
Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity offers a radical new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy, developing his argument that art can help lead humanity beyond the nihilistic ontotheology of ...the modern age. Providing pathbreaking readings of Heidegger's 'The Origin of the Work of Art' and his notoriously difficult Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), this book explains precisely what postmodernity meant for Heidegger, the greatest philosophical critic of modernity, and what it could still mean for us today. Exploring these issues, Iain D. Thomson examines several postmodern works of art, including music, literature, painting and even comic books, from a post-Heideggerian perspective. Clearly written and accessible, this book will help readers gain a deeper understanding of Heidegger and his relation to postmodern theory, popular culture and art.
Martin Heidegger is arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century for theologians, and the question of the nature of his relationship with theology remains a source of lively ...discussion. This book offers theologians and philosophers alike a clear account of the directions and the potential of this debate.
Heidegger's Philosophic Pedagogy examines how Martin Heidegger conceives and carries out the task of educating human beings in a life determined by philosophic questioning. Through an exposition of ...recently published lecture courses that Heidegger delivered in the years 1928-1935, his magnum opus, Being and Time, and other key texts, the author shows that the task of education is central to Heidegger's understanding of philosophy. A pedagogical intention is essential to Heidegger's discourse in all its forms: lecture course, treatise and public address. It determines the philosopher's relation to students, readers and the public generally and the task of education is here shown to have a broad scope. This book reveals a continuity between Heidegger's efforts to engender a ‘living philosophizing’ in students and his conception of the role of philosophy in politics, a role that is defined as a form of ‘leadership’. Michael Ehrmantraut's study of the aims, necessity, character, method and limits of Heidegger's philosophic pedagogy thus opens up the political implications of Heidegger's thought as he himself understood them.
AlthoughBeing in Timeis the more recognizable of Martin Heidegger's many books, his second major work,Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)also had a substantial impact on twentieth-century ...philosophy.Heidegger's Possibilityis a careful and creative reading of this text by renowned scholar and translator Kenneth Maly. As someone who has translatedContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)into English, Maly has a unique grasp of the work as well as the philosophical dimensions that inform it, and applies his familiarity in this eloquent and fascinating study.
Heidegger's Possibilityfocuses on issues of language and translation, which are both important formative aspects of Heidegger's work and which place his thought and writing processes in perspective. Maly's own philosophical understanding helps to illuminate such concepts as nondual thinking, a movement beyond subject-object and the being-beings difference, and an integral part of Heidegger's philosophy. In Maly's hands, this and other ideas emerge at the cutting edge of cosmology, ontology, and interpretive phenomenology. This study also includes the first English translations of two works by Heidegger, as well as an essay that takes a critical look at the controversy surrounding the translation ofContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) almost a decade ago.
Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon ...derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.
"For those who want to think rigorously with Heidegger and with the movement of thinking set forth in Contributions, Vallega-Neu's book will prove to be an invaluable guide and resource. One of the ...great virtues of the book is its impeccable clarity and readability." -- Peter Warnek In her concise introduction to Martin Heidegger's second most important work, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Daniela Vallega-Neu provides guidance and structure to readers attempting to navigate this much-discussed but difficult text. Contributions reflects Heidegger's struggle to think at the edge of words and to bring to language what remains beyond the written or the spoken. In view of the centrality of Being and Time to Heidegger interpretation in recent decades, Vallega-Neu introduces Contributions first by reconsidering Being and Time in light of the transformative turn from prepositional thought to the poietic, performative character of thinking and language that marks the passage between the two works. She then discusses each of the "joinings" that structure the composition of Contributions. This graceful introduction provides students and scholars with a much-needed key for unlocking the thinking that underlies Heidegger's later writings.
Time and Death White, Carol J.; Ralkowski, edited by Mark
2005, 20170302, 2017-03-02
eBook
In Time and Death Carol White articulates a vision of Martin Heidegger's work which grows out of a new understanding of what he was trying to address in his discussion of death. Acknowledging that ...the discussion of this issue in Heidegger's major work Being and Time is often far from clear, White presents a new interpretation of Heidegger which short-circuits many of the traditional criticisms. White claims that we are all in a better position to understand Heidegger's insights after fifty years because they have now become a part of the conventional wisdom of common opinion. His view shows up in accounts of knowledge in the physical sciences, in the assumptions of the social sciences, in art and film, even in popular culture in general, but does so in ways ignorant of their origins. Now that these insights have filtered down into the culture at large, we can make Heidegger intelligible in a way that perhaps he himself could not. White presents the best possible case for Heidegger, making him more intelligible to those people with a long acquaintance with his work, those with a long aversion to it and in particular to those just starting to pursue an interest in it. White places the problems with which Heidegger is dealing in the context of issues in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, in order to better locate him for the more mainstream audience. The language and approach of the book is able to accommodate the novice but also offers much food for thought for the Heidegger scholar.
Contents: Foreword, Hubert L. Dreyfus; Editor's preface; Heidegger's texts and translations; Author's preface; Introduction; The existential analysis; The death of Dasein; The timeliness of Dasein; The derivation of time; The time of being; Bibliography; Index.
Carol J. White was formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, USA. Mark Ralkowski is a graduate student at University of New Mexico, USA.
Did post-Enlightenment philosophers reject the idea of original sin and hence the view that life is a quest for redemption from it? In Philosophical Myths of the Fall, Stephen Mulhall identifies and ...evaluates a surprising ethical-religious dimension in the work of three highly influential philosophers - Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. He asks: Is the Christian idea of humanity as structurally flawed something that these three thinkers aim simply to criticize? Or do they, rather, end up by reproducing secular variants of the same mythology? Mulhall argues that each, in different ways, develops a conception of human beings as in need of redemption: in their work, we appear to be not so much capable of or prone to error and fantasy, but instead structurally perverse, living in untruth. In this respect, their work is more closely aligned to the Christian perspective than to the mainstream of the Enlightenment. However, all three thinkers explicitly reject any religious understanding of human perversity; indeed, they regard the very understanding of human beings as originally sinful as central to that from which we must be redeemed.And yet each also reproduces central elements of that understanding in his own thinking; each recounts his own myth of our Fall, and holds out his own image of redemption. The book concludes by asking whether this indebtedness to religion brings these philosophers' thinking closer to, or instead forces it further away from, the truth of the human condition.
