The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

This book contains twelve engaging philosophical lectures given by Alexandru Dragomir, most of them given during Romania’s Communist regime. The lectures deal with a diverse range of topics, such as the function of the question, self-deception, banalities with a metaphysical dimension, and how the world we live in has been shaped by the intellect. Among the thinkers discussed in these lectures are Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Nietzsche. Alexandru Dragomir was a Romanian philosopher born in 1916. After (...) studying law and philosophy at the University of Bucharest, he left Romania to study for a doctorate in philosophy in Freiburg, Germany, under Martin Heidegger. He stayed in Freiburg for two years, but before defending his dissertation he was called back to Romania for military service and sent to the front. After 1948, historical circumstances forced him to become a clandestine philosopher: he was known only within a very limited circle. He died in 2002 without ever publishing anything. It was only after his death that Dragomir's notebooks came to light. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas, Bucharest; the present volume is the first to appear in English translation. In 2009, the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy was founded in Bucharest as an independent research institute under the auspices of the Romanian Society for Phenomenology. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another (...) important Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

Human enhancement technologies offer prospects for improving the mental capacities that are typically considered to ground moral status. Bioethicists, posthumanists and transhumanists have raised the worry that the radical enhancement of our moral status-relevant capacities is open to the possibility of creating supra-persons. The worry is that supra-persons would further reduce the moral inviolability of mere persons. If the possibility is plausible, then radical enhancement would put mere persons at risk. In order to assess the plausibility of possibility claims, epistemologists (...) have investigated the role of imagination in justifying our beliefs about what is possible. Philosophy has abounded with imaginability arguments for various entities like zombies, experience machines, super-spartans, and perfect actors. The aim of this paper is to investigate a newcomer in the bestiary of bioethics, the supra-person, using the utensils of imaginability-based modal epistemology. We will argue for an epistemic claim: that no imaginative act is sufficient to justify the belief that supra-persons are possible. In order to support our thesis, we will employ two influential accounts of the relation between imaginative acts and acquiring justification for beliefs about what is possible. (shrink)

Our most current experience of violence is not predominantly violence “given in the flesh,” but violence given through the mediation of the image. The phenomenon of real violence is therefore modified through the imagistic experience, involving first of all its emotional, embodied and intersubjective dimensions. How is the emotion constituted in the face of depicted violence, in contrast to the lived experience of real violence? Is the intersubjectivity modified when violence appears pictorially? What specific embodied dimensions are particularly engaged when (...) violence is lived as an image, and not as a real phenomenon? The phenomenon of imagistic violence can also be understood in contrast with the experience of violence lived in phantasy, memory, or dreaming. Also, since each type of image puts into play certain possibilities of depicting violence, making possible various subjective experiences of violence, it crucial to explore how this experience fundamentally depends on the type of image by which the phenomenon of violence is depicted, be it painting, photography, fiction film, documentary or media image. (shrink)

Intitulé Lectures de Jean-Luc Marion et composé d'une vingtaine d'articles, le volume assume l'équivocité d'une mise en abîme : lire Marion dans sa propre lecture de la philosophie. Montrer à l'oeuvre le dialogue du philosophe avec l'histoire de la philosophie constitue en effet le pari de ce livre, pari qui fait fond sur l'idée que tel est le chemin même de la philosophie et que ceci est en outre l'accès le plus respectueux que nous pouvons avoir à une oeuvre s'accomplissant (...) sous nos yeux. De Grégoire de Nysse et Denys l'Aréopagite à Derrida, en passant par Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl et Heidegger, la pensée de Marion embrasse, approfondit, reprend et réfute les thèmes fondateurs de la métaphysique et de la phénoménologie. L'oeuvre entière de Marion est traversée par sa lecture personnelle et novatrice de la philosophie. Elle se construit en dialogue avec les textes classiques et rend en même temps compte des grands débats théoriques de l'époque qu'elle traverse. Le dialogue est d'ailleurs privilégié aussi dans ce volume, Jean-Luc Marion répondant aux auteurs des études qui lui sont consacrées."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est la première monographie systématique d'expression française dédiée exclusivement au problème heideggérien de la mort. Il se donne pour tâche de clarifier tout l'enjeu de cette question capitale de la pensée de Martin Heidegger. La nouveauté de cette étude réside dans une approche systématique et précise de Sein und Zeit, à partir d'une clarification rigoureuse de la notion d'Existenzial, en interprétant le problème de la mort dans l'articulation des structures fondamentales de l'être du Dasein. Cette approche permet non (...) seulement d'expliciter les différentes couches ontologiques où intervient le phénomène de la mort dans l'analytique existentiale, mais aussi de mettre en lumière la rigueur de l'analyse heideggérienne et la systématicité de sa démarche. En outre, cette investigation explore l'intégralité de la pensée de Heidegger : des écrits de jeunesse jusqu'aux textes les plus tardifs, l'ouvrage retrace non seulement la genèse complexe de cette question, mais aussi son évolution arborescente. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the Heideggerian interpretation of death in relation with two fundamental structures of the existential analysis: understanding and state-of-mind . In the first part, I will highlight how the understanding opens the phenomenon of death as a possibility: this possibility will prove to be a specific imminence, in that it must be assumed by the Dasein in itself, as Dasein’s ownmost and non-relational possibility that cannot be outstripped. In the second part, I will analyse the (...) relation between death and the affectivity, emphasizing the contrast between the traditional position on this subject – which involves the philosophical neutralization of a natural fear of death – and Heidegger’s position, suggesting a dynamic tension between the fear and anxiety, where anxiety is not an annihilation of fear, but its existential radicalization. (shrink)

At the beginning of his philosophical career (between 1918 and 1921), the young Heidegger analyzed various texts belonging to the field of the religious tradition: the Pauline Epistles, Augustinian writings and texts of the medieval mystics. Through these analyses, Heidegger formalized certain phenomena that we can find, a few years later, in Being and Time, illustrating the “warm” line of the existential analytic, the pathetic level of the ontology of Dasein: anxiety, death, consciousness, and guilt. My paper focuses on this (...) process of ontologization of phenomena belonging to religious life, namely on the awaiting of Parousia which is used to elaborate the futural structure of being towards death. I finally argue that the keyword for the understanding of the phenomenological transfer from the religious life to the ontology of Dasein is the methodological idea of “formal indication”, whose meaning and role must be clarified. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the bodily constitution of violence from a phenomenological perspective, contrasting the directly lived experience of violence with imagistic violence. The analysis involves examining one’s own embodiment from the first-person perspective in two distinct situations: as the agent of violence, anchored in one’s own “I can”, and as a passive victim, marked by vulnerability and helplessness. Each situation reveals specific particularities of the other’s adversity. The final section transitions to the imagistic experience of violence, discussing how (...) bodily markers are modified in this context. Using Kubrick’s iconic film A Clockwork Orange as an example, I illustrate the shift in bodily structures and the implications of imagistic violence. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify several key aspects of Alexandru Dragomir: his amazing “technique” of keeping his entire knowledge in perfect working condition, his exceptional precision of references and his continuous disregard concerning writing. The root of all these peculiarities is traced back to Plato’s cognitive and moral arguments against writing, as expressed in Phaedrus and Seventh Letter. Finally, the article brings to light what seems to be the lesson of Dragomir’s life as a thinker: to rely only (...) on the living thought, that which is written “inside the soul”. (shrink)

Gettier cases are used to show that having a justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge. They are cases in which an epistemic agent has a belief that is both justified and true, but intuitively cannot be taken to count as knowledge. Modal epistemology is the field of philosophy that tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (possibility and necessity) and what offers justification for beliefs about what is possible or necessary. Part of the tradition (...) in modal epistemology is to consider conceivability as a guide to metaphysical possibility. As such, if an agent can conceive that P, then the agent is justified to believe that P is metaphysically possible. In this paper I will discuss the possibility of constructing Gettier cases for a tripartite, conceivability-based, definition of modal knowledge. (shrink)

In the Dune universe, humans relied on computers for thousands of years. Their immense capacity for mathematical calculations made space travel possible, until the Butlerian Jihad ended that era. Humans found the means to cognitively and physically enhance themselves to replace and outmatch intelligent machines by using nootropic drugs, revolutionary training methods, artificial selection, and genetic engineering. There are also moral and social problems that come along with human enhancement technologies. In a society where enhancement is popular, the poor would (...) have fewer chances to succeed in social and economic competitions. Many moral philosophers argue that our freedoms and basic rights are guaranteed by a special moral status, personhood. Nicholas Agar has proposed that post‐personhood could be seen as the end of a continuum of intelligence and reasoning abilities. The Bene Gesserit education and selective breeding program claims to be all about producing human beings who maximize the well‐being of all humankind. (shrink)

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another (...) important Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

Après des études de droit et de philosophie à l'Université de Bucarest, Alexandru Dragomir part à Fribourg-en-Brisgau comme doctorant de Martin Heidegger. Il y reste deux ans; en 1943 il est rappelé en Roumanie et envoyé au front. Après la guerre, sous le nouveau régime, il ne peut pas poursuivre une carrière universitaire. Il meurt en 2002 à Bucarest sans avoir rien publié. Ce n'est qu'après sa mort que ses cahiers sont découverts et publiés. L'œuvre de Dragomir comprend (...) cinq volumes, parus à Bucarest, aux Éditions Humanitas. Deux sont parus en traduction française chez Vrin : Banalités métaphysiques et Cahiers du temps. Cet article présente sa personnalité et son œuvre, notamment les Cahiers du temps, qui renferment la recherche de toute sa vie. Dragomir y développe sa propre théorie sur la nature du temps, tout en faisant des commentaires des textes classiques de la philosophie qui portent sur ce sujet. Des traductions en allemand et en anglais des Cahiers du temps paraîtront bientôt. Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandru Dragomir studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest. In 1941 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship, which allowed him to enroll as a doctoral student at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, under the supervision of Martin Heidegger. In 1943 he was drafted into the Romanian armed forces and left Freiburg without a degree. In Romania, under the communist regime, he could not pursue an academic career. He died in 2002 without publishing anything. His work has been published posthumously in five volumes by Humanitas Press. Two of the volumes have been published in French translation by Jean Vrin Press : Banalités métaphysiques [Metaphysical Banalities] and Cahiers du temps [Notebooks on Time]. This article offers an overview of Dragomir's personality and work, with an emphasis on his Notebooks on Time — his lifelong research on the nature of time. In these notebooks he develops his own views on time and comments on the classical philosophical texts that deal with the subject. (shrink)

Charles E. SCOTT, Susan M. SCHOENBOHM, Daniela VALLEGA-NEU, Alejandro VALLEGA, Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2001 ; Gernot BÖHME, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 2001 ; Dean KOMEL, Osnutja k Filozofski in Kulturni Hermenevtiki [Outlines to Philosophical and Cultural Hermeneutics], Nova revija, Ljubljana, 2001 ; Marc RICHIR, L’institution de l’idéalité. Des schématismes phénoménologiques, Association pour la promotion de la Phénoménologie, Paris, 2002 ; Fred EVANS & Leonard LAWLOR, (...) Chiasms. Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, State University of New York Press, 2000 ; Udo TIETZ, Ontologie und Dialektik. Heidegger und Adorno über das Sein, das Nichtidentische, die Synthesis und die Kopula, Passagen Verlag, Wien, 2003 ; Etienne FERON, Phénoménologie de la mort. Sur les traces de Levinas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1999. (shrink)

1) We will begin by offering a short introduction to Epistemic Logic and presenting Fitch’s paradox in an epistemic‑modal logic. (2) Then, we will proceed to presenting three Epistemic Temporal logical frameworks creat‑ ed by Hoshi (2009) : TPAL (Temporal Public Announcement Logic), TAPAL (Temporal Arbitrary Public Announcement Logic) and TPAL+P ! (Temporal Public Announcement Logic with Labeled Past Operators). We will show how Hoshi stated the Verificationist Thesis in the language of TAPAL and analyze his argument on why this (...) version of it is immune from paradox. (3) Edgington (1985) offered an interpretation of the Verificationist Thesis that blocks Fitch’s paradox and we will propose a way to formulate it in a TAPAL‑based lan‑ guage. The language we will use is a combination of TAPAL and TPAL+P ! with an Indefinite (Unlabeled) Past Operator (TAPAL+P !+P). Using indexed satisfi‑ ability relations (as introduced in (Wang 2010 ; 2011)) we will offer a prospec ‑ tive semantics for this language. We will investigate whether the tentative re‑ formulation of Edgington’s Verificationist Thesis in TAPAL+P !+P is free from paradox and adequate to Edgington’s ideas on how „all truths are knowable“ should be interpreted. (shrink)

"Gabriel Cercel: Martin HEIDEGGER, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges; Attila Szigeti: Emmanuel LEVINAS, Positivité et transcendance. Suivi de Lévinas et la phenomenology; Cristian Ciocan: Jean-Luc MARION, Crucea vizibilului; Gabriel Cercel: Mădălina DIACONU, Blickumkehr. Mit Martin Heidegger zu einer relationalen ästhetik; Cristina Ionescu: Mark WRATHALL, Jeff MALPAS, Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus; Cristian Ciocan: Ion COPOERU, Aparenţă şi sens. Repere ale fenomenologiei constitutive; Cristian Ciocan: Michael INWOOD, A Heidegger Dictionary; Cristian (...) class='Hi'>Ciocan: Linda FISCHER, Lester EMBREE, Feminist Phenomenology; Mădălina Diaconu: Renato CRISTIN, Fenomeno storia. Fenomenologia e storicità in Husserl e Dilthey; Cristian Ciocan: Michel HAAR, La philosophie française entre phénoménologie et métaphysique; Gabriel Cercel: Otto PÖGGELER, Heidegger in seiner Zeit; Roxana Albu: James RISSER, Heidegger toward the Turn, Essays on the work of the 1930s; Cristian Ciocan: Virgil Ciomoş, Timp şi Eternitate. Aristotel, Fizica IV 10-14, Interpretare fenomenologică; Cristina Ionescu: William D. BLATTNER, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism; Bogdan Mincă: Gino ZACCARIA, L'inizio greco del pensiero. Heidegger e l'essenza futura della filosofia; Mădălina Diaconu: Ute GUZZONI, Wohnen und Wandern; Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban: Emmanuel LÉVINAS, Totalitate şi infinit; Mihail Neamţu: Jean-Luc MARION, Étant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation; Gabriel Cercel: Robert PETKOVŠEK, Heidegger-Index ; Cristian Ciocan: Einar ØVERENGET, Seeing The Self. Heidegger on Subjectivity Mihail Neamţu: Rolf KÜHN, Husserls Begriff der Passivität. Zur Kritik der passiven Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie.". (shrink)

McCall (1984) offered a semantics of counterfactual conditionals based on “real possible worlds” that avoids using the vague notion of similarity between possible worlds. I will propose an interpretation of McCall’s counterfactuals in a formal framework based on Baltag-Moss-Solecki events and protocols. Moreover, I will argue that using this interpretation one can avoid an objection raised by Otte (1987).

In this article, I focus on the problem of body as it is developed in Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars, in contrast with its enigmatic concealment in Being and Time. In the first part, I emphasize the implicit connection of Heidegger’s approach of body with Husserl’s problematic of Leib and Körper, and with his phenomenological analyses of tactility. In the second part, I focus on Heidegger’s distinction between the limits of the lived body and the limits of the corresponding corporeal thing, opening (...) to an ontological understanding of the ecstatic bodying forth of the body. In the third part, I analyse this ecstatic bodiliness in relation to the problem of spatiality, exploring the tension between the here and the over there in the experience of the embodiment. Heidegger not only refuses to understand the space starting from the here of the body, but he also refuses to understand the body starting from the here of the space. Thus, there are two interconnected inversions that Heidegger operates in relation to Husserl: In the topic of spatiality, he rejects the pre-eminence of the here; in relation to the body, he contests the primacy of tactility. Finally, the conclusion stresses that, even if the bodying forth penetrates almost all behaviour of Dasein in the world, there is however a limit of embodiment, an unreachable frontier beyond any possibility of the bodying forth, namely the understanding of being. This also implies that the problem of body needs be understood in the context of the ontological difference. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the question of the limits of experience in light of the phenomenology of violence. I begin by emphasizing the specificity of the phenomenological concept of pre-theoretical experience, in contrast with the traditional concept of experience dominated by theoretical and epistemological motives. Consequently, I underscore that violence can be phenomenologically understood only as a lived experience, given in the first person, belonging to an embodied subject, and placed in an antagonistic intersubjective situation. In (...) order to question how the lived experience of violence discloses the limits of experience, I focus on the concept of the limit and discuss its relevance to phenomenological thought, referring to the limits of phenomenology, limit-problems, limit-phenomena, and limit-situations. I then show that we can differentiate between normal and liminal modes of experience, but we are also dealing with a multitude of levels of experience (visual, auditory, tactile, embodied, affective, intersubjective, comprehensive, and discursive), each of which has its own specific limits. I conclude by analyzing how the phenomenon of violence delineates the limits of experience at each of these levels. (shrink)

This short autobiographical text evokes the atmosphere of the years which marked the beginning of my friendship with Alexandru Dragomir: i.e. our student years in Bucharest, the circle of Romanian students studying in the 40s in Freiburg i. Br. and the intellectual intensity of Martin Heidegger’s seminars and courses, which influenced both of us for the rest of our lives. From the 15 members of Heidegger’s Oberseminar (dedicated in this period to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit), three were from Romania: (...) Alexandru Dragomir, Octavian Vuia and the author of these lines. The relationship between Dragomir and I became closer as we translated “Was ist Metaphysik?” into Romanian. Alexandru Dragomir was highly appreciated by Heidegger and beloved by other students for his penetrating spirit, for his spontaneity, but also for his sense of humor. After more than 30 years in which the history thrown us in parallel worlds, we had the joy to meet again in Bucharest. His texts, now published, present him as a brilliant and original thinker. (shrink)

Martin HEIDEGGER, Fiinţă şi timp [Être et temps] ; Bruce BÉGOUT, La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l’antéprédicatif et le catégorial ; François-David SEBBAH, L’épreuve de la limite. Derrida, Henry, Levinas et la phénoménologie ; Marcus BRAINARD, Belief and its Neutralization. Husserl’s System of Phenomenology in Ideas I ; Toine KORTOOMS, Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness ; Roland BREEUR, Singularité et sujet. Une lecture phénoménologique de Proust ; John J. DRUMMOND & Lester EMBREE, Phenomenological Approaches to Moral (...) Philosophy A Handbook. (shrink)

Ancien élève de Heidegger, Alexandru Dragomir (1916-2002) est une figure atypique de la philosophie. Abandonnant l'idée d'une carrière universitaire après la Seconde guerre mondiale, il navigua d'un métier à un autre, refusant catégoriquement d'être publié de son vivant. Il laisse aujourd'hui à nos curiosités ses Banalités métaphysiques, extraites des cahiers dans lesquels il griffonait des notes à sa propre intention. Banalités métaphysiques est la première publication de ce philosophe hors norme, tiré malgré lui de son retrait volontaire.

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 57 - 76 The aim of this article is to address the question of the anthropological difference by focusing on the intersubjective relation between the human and the animal in the context of a phenomenological analysis of violence. Following some Levinasian and Derridian insights, my goal is to analyze the structural differences between interspecific and intraspecific violence by asking how the generic phenomenon of violence is modalized across various levels: from human to human, (...) from human to animal, from animal to human, from animal to animal. I will address questions of incarnated vulnerability and altered states of affectivity, and I will relate the various forms of violence emerging in the context of the anthropological difference to the question of territoriality, arguing that violence is structurally modified in relation to particular articulations of our worldly spatiality. (shrink)

Time-tested commons characterize by having instituted sanctioning mechanisms that are sensitive to the circumstances and motivations of non-compliers. As a proposed Global Antimicrobial Commons cannot cost-effectively develop sanctioning mechanisms that are consistently sensitive to the circumstances of the global poor, I suggest concentrating on establishing a wider set of incentives that encourages both compliance and participation.

The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one (...) hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human. (shrink)

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character traits in justifying (...) beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology. (shrink)

From a Wittgensteinian point of view, my goal is to argue against the idea that teaching critical thinking should have as one of its aims the possibility of changing or adapting our deeply held beliefs. As pointed out by the Austrian philosopher in On Certainty, we have a world-picture which is neither true nor false, but above all, ‘it is the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting’. Besides that, in his remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Wittgenstein insists on the (...) idea that different communities have their own rituals that express ways of acting, which become crystallized in their customs and institutions, similar to the magical rituals described by Frazer. The degree of similarity among them is greater than we suspect, and what interested Wittgenstein was to understand how we see things by looking for the links between the various ritualistic events. Based on these remarks, I argue that, if our deeply held beliefs are a source of necessity, instead of aiming to change/adapt them, teaching critical thinking should—by showing the links between diverse cultures—essentially avoid employing them in a dogmatic way, since our own deeply held beliefs could have been different ones. (shrink)

Le § 45 de Sein und Zeit met en relation la totalité et la mort. En fait, il y a chez Heidegger, trois concepts de totalité : 1 / la totalité ontologico-existentiale et a priori de l'êtreau-monde et du souci ; 2 /la totalité a posteriori des choses intramondaines composées de parties ; 3 / la totalité existentielle temporelle de l'existence « entre » la naissance et la mort. Heidegger essaie de résoudre la tension entre un moment essentiel de la (...) totalité ontologique (notamment de l' « en avant de soi » ) et la totalité existentielle qui est constituée par le ne-pas-encore qui sépare le Dasein de sa mort. Cela s'accomplit par la modification du concept de totalité (Ganzheit) comme être-tout (Ganzsein), être-tout possible (mögliche Ganzsein) et pouvoir d'être-tout (Ganzseinkönnen), mais aussi par l'élaboration des rapports structurels entre l'idée de totalité et l'idée de fin, ce qui implique l'analyse détaillée de plusieurs variations structurelles de ces notions. Traitant cette question, Heidegger se réfère aux analyses platoniciennes, aristotéliciennes et husserliennes. Sein und Zeit's paragraph 45 relates totality and death. In fact, with Heidegger there are three concepts of totality : 1 / an existential-ontological totality which is a priori of the being-in-the world and care ; 2 / an a posteriori totality of intra-mundane things made of parts ; and 3 / a time existential totality of existence lying « between » birth and death. Heidegger tries to solve the tension between an essential moment of the ontological totality (namely the « afore one's self » ) and the existential totality composed of the not-yet which separates the Dasein from death. It occurs through the change of the concept of totality (Ganzheit) as all-being (Ganzsein), all-possible being (mögliche Ganzsein) and power to be all (Ganzseinkönnen), but also through the elaboration of the structural relationships between the idea of a totality and the idea of end, which implies a detailed analysis of several structural variations of such notions. While dealing with these matters, Heidegger refers to Plato's, Aristotle's and Husserl's analyses. (shrink)

What grounds the truth of modal statements? And how do we get to know about what is possible or necessary? One of the most prominent anti-realist perspectives on the nature of modality, due to Peter Menzies, is the response-dependent account of modal concepts. Typically, offering a response-dependent account of a concept means defining it in terms of dispositions to elicit certain mental states from suitable agents under suitable circumstances. Menzies grounded possibility and necessity in the conceivability-response of ideal conceivers: P (...) is possible iff an ideal conceiver could conceive that P. I will draw attention to three major objections that can be identified in the modal metaphysics and epistemology literature: Chalmers’ Incoherency Objection, Sherratt’s Transparency Objection and Geirsson’s Irrelevancy Objection. Each of these objections raises a different worry regarding Menzies’ account: that the notion of an ideal conceiver is incoherent, that the account implies a controversial thesis, and that it fails to offer an explanation of our knowledge of modality. The aim of this paper is to defend the response-dependent account of modality against these three objections. (shrink)

Jean-Luc MARION, De surcroît. Études sur les phénomènes saturés ; Magda KING, A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time ; Andreas MICHEL, Die französische Heidegger-Rezeption und ihre sprachlichen Konsequenzen ; Alfred DENKER, Historical Dictionary of Heidegger’s Philosophy ; John B. BROUGH & Lester EMBREE, The Many Faces of Time ; Daniel O. DAHLSTROM, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth ; Cristina LAFONT, Heidegger, Language, And World-Disclosure ; Eliane ESCOUBAS & Bernhard WALDENFELS, Phénoménologie française et phénoménologie allemande ; Eckard WOLZ-GOTTWALD, Transformation der (...) Phänomenologie. Zur Mystik bei Husserl und Heidegger ; Martin HEIDEGGER, Ontology – The Hermeneutics of Facticity ; Arkadiusz CHRUDZIMSKI, Die Erkenntnistheorie von Roman Ingarden ; Jocelyn BENOIST, L’apriori conceptuel. Bolzano, Husserl, Schlick ; Dennis King KEENAN, Death and Responsibility. The “Work” of Levinas ; Dan ZAHAVI, Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Central Topics in Phenomenology ; Sonya SIKKA, Forms of Transcendence. Heidegger and Medieval Mystical Theology ; Alfred DENKER, Omdat filosoferen leven is. Een archeologie van Martin Heideggers Sein und Zeit; Seán HAND, The Levinas Reader ; ; Ion MINCÃ, Informatica şi teoria cunoaşterii. O paradigmã fenomenologicã a domeniului hardware ; John van BUREN, The Young Heidegger. Rumor of the Hidden King. (shrink)

RésuméDans cet article, j'analyse deux approches du phénomène du geste, tel qu'il est constitué par l'incarnation, l'intersubjectivité, l'affectivité et le langage : tandis que Martin Heidegger affirme que le mouvement corporel humain dans son ensemble doit être compris comme geste par opposition au mouvement spatial des choses, Vilém Flusser intègre sous cette notion une multitude de pratiques et d'activités humaines que le sens commun hésite à appeler gestes. Le dilemme de la phénoménologie du geste consiste dans cette tension entre la (...) concrétude plurielle des apparences gestuelles et la tentation irrépressible d'identifier une couche unitaire qui leur permettrait de tenir ensemble. (shrink)

In this paper we articulate a characterization of the concept of disease as a social problem. We argue that, from a social ontology point of view, diseases are problems that are identified and addressed within the framework of concrete social institutions and practices (those that shape medicine). This approach allows us to overcome the classical distinction between naturalist and normativist approaches in the philosophy of medicine, taking into account both the material and the symbolic factors that shape the categories (...) and determine the practices of medicine. (shrink)

The prospect of cognitive enhancement well beyond current human capacities raises worries that the fundamental equality in moral status of human beings could be undermined. Cognitive enhancement might create beings with moral status higher than persons. Yet, there is an expressibility problem of spelling out what the higher threshold in cognitive capacity would be like. Nicholas Agar has put forward the bold claim that we can show by means of inductive reasoning that indefinite cognitive enhancement will probably mark a difference (...) in moral status. The hope is that induction can determine the plausibility of post‐personhood existence in the absence of an account of what the higher status would be like. In this article, we argue that Agar's argument fails and, more generally, that inductive reasoning has little bearing on assessing the likelihood of post‐personhood in the absence of an account of higher status. We conclude that induction cannot bypass the expressibility problem about post‐persons. (shrink)

Vilém Flusser’s chiro-phenomenology fills an essential gap in scholarship by expanding and reinterpreting the ontological significance of gestures, focusing on the hand as a crucial site for understanding the embodied nature of human existence. This article explores Flusser’s unique contribution to the phenomenology of the hand, highlighting why his approach is necessary for a fuller understanding of gesture and embodiment. I begin by emphasizing the relevance of the hand in understanding gestures, arguing that phenomenology provides rich resources for this inquiry. (...) Within the phenomenological tradition, two distinct perspectives emerge: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, who concentrate on the perceptive and kinesthetic dimensions of the hand, and Heidegger and Levinas, who explore its ontological significance, viewing the hand as essential to human existence. I position Flusser within this ontological framework but show how he departs from his predecessors by developing an original manual approach that centers on the ‘gesture of making.’ By analyzing the eleven constitutive moments of this gesture, I demonstrate how Flusser’s chiro-phenomenology views gestures not only as expressive or communicative acts but as fundamental possibilities for human being-in-the-world. His work thus offers a crucial extension of phenomenology’s understanding of the body and action. (shrink)

In this article, the author unveils the play between visibility and invisibility as it is captured in a phenomenology of the gift. The first part of the essay explores the tension between the fact of being given and the forgetting of its characters as a gift: its donor and the circumstances of it being given. In the process of becoming autonomous, free of its provenance, the gift loses its character of being given and becomes no more than a simple thing (...) in someone’s possession. Subsequently, the essay draws on the figure of Christ as gift of God, illustrating this interpretation with particular reference to several illuminating passages from the Gospel of John. The central image is the phenomenon of gift as given in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Finally, this image is used to define the task of a hermeneutical approach to the gift. (shrink)

Vilém Flusser’s chiro-phenomenology fills an essential gap in scholarship by expanding and reinterpreting the ontological significance of gestures, focusing on the hand as a crucial site for understanding the embodied nature of human existence. This article explores Flusser’s unique contribution to the phenomenology of the hand, highlighting why his approach is necessary for a fuller understanding of gesture and embodiment. I begin by emphasizing the relevance of the hand in understanding gestures, arguing that phenomenology provides rich resources for this inquiry. (...) Within the phenomenological tradition, two distinct perspectives emerge: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, who concentrate on the perceptive and kinesthetic dimensions of the hand, and Heidegger and Levinas, who explore its ontological significance, viewing the hand as essential to human existence. I position Flusser within this ontological framework but show how he departs from his predecessors by developing an original manual approach that centers on the ‘gesture of making.’ By analyzing the eleven constitutive moments of this gesture, I demonstrate how Flusser’s chiro-phenomenology views gestures not only as expressive or communicative acts but as fundamental possibilities for human being-in-the-world. His work thus offers a crucial extension of phenomenology’s understanding of the body and action. (shrink)

This study intends to provide some benchmarks for a full analysis of the evolution of the problem of death in Heidegger ’s thought developed after Sein und Zeit. The question that guides our investigation is how the phenomenology of death is still the center of Heidegger ’s philosophical interest, after the analytic of Dasein. Our discussion focuses on the period 1931–1935, following a chronological order, in order to call attention to some of the distinct stages of the thought on death (...) after Sein und Zeit. We begin by analyzing the reactions of Heidegger himself on the reception of the problem of death in the first period after the publication of Sein und Zeit. After that, we analyze the emergence of the subject of death in three courses: the course of the winter semester 1931–1932, the lecture from 1934/1935 on Hölderlin, and the lecture in the summer of 1935 – An Introduction to Metaphysics. (shrink)

Frege’s Begriffsschrift account of modality involves both a negative and a positive claim. The negative claim is that modal notions are logically insignificant; the positive claim is that modals convey a ‘hint’ (Wink) as to the speaker’s grounds for judgement. This paper is about Frege’s positive claim, which has not received much attention. I explain in detail the Fregean notion of hinting and how to distinguish hints from conceptual contents, and I argue that Frege’s two-dimensional account of modal talk is (...) supported by various observations. However, it also seems clear that Frege’s account cannot be the whole story. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss Sartre’s critic of the Heideggerian Being-towards-death and I identify two stages in Sartre’s confrontation with Heidegger. The first one is to be found in his “war diary” of 1939-1940, where Sartre criticizes Heidegger’s idea that the relationship to one’s own death individualizes the self. For Sartre, one is free not for death, as Heidegger assumes, but free against death. The second approach, which is also a more elaborated one, is to be found in Being and (...) Nothingness. Sartre contests some fundamental aspects of the Heideggerian description of death, among which the idea that death belongs to the self, that it is a possibility, that it gives the meaning of life and that it is the mark of one’s own self. After analyzing these two levels, I am critically discussing Sartre’s critic, underlining a kind of hermeneutical incomprehension and inconsequence in Sartre’s reading of Heidegger, especially in the understanding of the ontological possibility. (shrink)