Mettre à la question l’éthique de Heidegger, c’est répondre à l’impossibilité d’en dire le fondement dans les termes de ses propres préoccupations thématiques. Car si l’éthique évoque une « patrie » du Dasein, celui-ci demeure tragiquement étranger à son appel. Étrangeté entretenue par un inextricable conflit du langage et de l’Être, ainsi que due au privilège de la « mortalité » sur la puissance créatrice de la « natalité ». D’où une lecture de cette « analytique des ultimes » dont (...) est porteur le texte Des Hégémonies brisées. Lecture qui ne gage du reste pas du succès d’une éthique « heideggérienne », mais ouvre la voie vers une reprise fondationnelle du rapport du Dasein à son éthique. (shrink)

Selected b the late Reiner Schurmann from the Hannah Arendt Memorial Symposia held at the New School for Social research, the nineteen essays collected in this volume record some of the most significant and intense discussions of political philosophy by prominent contemporary philosophers. The framework is the famous seventeenth-and eighteenth-century debated between those who stood for the ancient and medieval traditions and those who advocated a new beginning under the title of modernity.

The search for an ethics rooted in human experience is the crux of this deeply compassionate work, here translated from the 1983 German edition. Distinguished philosopher Werner Marx provides a close reading, critique, and _Weiterdenken_, or "further thinking," of Martin Heidegger's later work on death, language, and poetry, which has often been dismissed as both obscure and obscurantist. In it Marx seeks, and perhaps finds, both a measure for distinguishing between good and evil and a motive for preferring the former. (...) The poet Hölderlin posed the question, "Is there a measure on earth?" His own answer was emphatic, "There is none," for he was convinced that the measure for man was to be found only in the domain of the heavenly beings. Such metaphysical assumptions, as well as the attempt to found ethical conduct in the nature of man as a rational being, have been rejected by many contemporary thinkers, particularly Heidegger. Yet these thinkers have not been able to provide a satisfactory alternative to metaphysical foundations of the standards for responsible human conduct. Marx, therefore, goes beyond Heidegger in demonstrating how several of his most basic notions could be relevant to a secular morality in our age. It is death, Marx claims, that unsettles man and transforms his conduct toward his fellow man. the common experience of mortality nourishes ethical life—and leads to the measures of compassion, love, and recognition of one's fellow human beings. "It is only on the basis of these 'traditional virtues,'" Marx writes, "that we can find a motive for averting the impending dangers which have often enough been described so vividly and convincingly.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS ~49 actual politics as President of the Italian Liberal Party from 1944 to i947, but demonstrates through a study of Piero Gobetti that neither Croce's own conservatism nor his doctrinal rigidity was a necessary corollary of "absolute historicism" in politics. As the main intellectual beacon of opposition to Fascism during its twenty years of power, Croce enjoyed enormous prestige in 1944; but as Don Benedetto, with his (...) great family estates in the South, he could not bring himself to admit that, if Fascism was only an "interlude," it was precisely an interlude in the resolution of a social crisis. As Roberts says (233) Croce's philosophical liberalism validated his right to hold conservative views; but if he wanted to speak for a "pre-partisan" view, he should have avoided party involvements altogether. He undermined his own philosophical authority in a matter of months, and so lost his greatest cultural opportunity. When he died in 195~ he was already a back number, and it was no one's fault but his own. Roberts does a good job on Croce's historical works in the next chapter. Croce's conservatism, his ingrained personal prejudice against serious social change, explains the evident presence of an element of special pleading in the Historyofltaly x87I-I915, and the History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century. All of Croce's formal histories were written as part of his defence of the liberal spirit against Fascism. But in these two works, which dealt with the world in which Fascism was actually born, we can readily detect his anxiety to prove that Fascism was indeed an interlude--and that when it was over nothing important would be changed. His other works are more respectable examples of "ethico-political history," but that is only because they are more "ethical" and less "political," so to speak. Croce was in many ways fortunate to live and work in the great "interlude" between 1914 and i945. For the fact is that he was not himself very good at the sympathetic and humanely humble dialogue that his theory called for, and the worst of his many heritages from Hegel was precisely that identification of philosophy with the "logic of the pure concepts" which enabled him to defend himself against philosophical dialogue with such righteous certitude. Roberts has none of this righteous spirit, and I hope most earnestly that his book will help many readers to see past it in Croce. H. S. HARRIS York University Michel Haar. Le chant de la terre. Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 1987. Pp. 3oL FF 13o. In Le chant de la terre Michel Haar finds himself swimming upstream. Whereas many Parisian thinkers conclude that every possiblefundamentum inconcussumhas finally met its end, Haar holds "that the thought of Ereignisdoes not give way.., to a liberation of multiple and decentered forces. On the contrary, the turn from the oblivion of Being marks a reentry into the Simple and a concentration in the Same [l'Unique]" (a7)" Thus Haar's general concern is with foundations and origins. However, Haar's project is not a resumption of Cartesian philosophy, for he resumes Heidegger's analysis of Dasein in Being and Time, which undercuts Cartesian dualism and shows that man, as Being-in-the-world, is essentially finite, historical, and 150 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 1990 linguistic. Haar then undertakes the sisyphean task of showing that something called 'earth,' while itself ahistorical and "pre-linguistic," is at the basis of man's historical and thoroughly linguistic existence. Therefore it behooves Haar, given the abysmal difference between the historical/linguistic domain and the ahistorical/pre-linguistic domain, to show that the latter can have a foundation in the former--that is, how the ahistorical, prelinguistic earth makes a difference for man even though one can never "escape" the historical/linguistic realm in any practical or theoretical sense. To do this Haar initially appeals to two Heideggerian notions: Stimmung (roughly translated as 'disposition') and phusis. Following Heidegger, Haar argues that disposition, while rooted in Dasein's facticity, by nature is attuned to something beyond this facticity. Since "every Grundstimraung reveals the Grund [ground], the abysmal foundation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 539 ls There a Measure on Earth? Foundations for a Nonmetaphysical Ethics. By WERNER MARX. Trans. Thomas J. Nenon and Reginald Lilly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. 172. (Hardcover.) (Originally published as Gibt es au/ Erden ein Mass? Grundbestimmungen einer nichtmetaphysischen Ethik. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983.) Is there a non-metaphysical earthly measure for responsible action? Marx takes his question from Holderlin and directs (...) it at Heidegger, in whom Marx finds no explicit answer. It is not the case that Heidegger simply fails to ask or answer this question, but rather that the corpus of Heidegger's later work itself motivates the question and leaves us searching for the path to an answer which must, on Heideggerian principles, differ from the one embraced by Holderlin, Schelling, and the metaphysical tradition in general. Marx explores.the various possibilities offered in Heidegger's texts but fails to. find a definite answer with respect to a measure for responsible action. In his concise interpretation Marx is led in one inevitable direction--4:owards the concept of death. How does death qualify as a measure for action? Before he addresses this question Marx attempts to understand 1the concept of measure, which, he contends, can be viewed as either a metaphysical or a nonmetaphysical concept. He sets out the metaphysical concept of measure on the basis of his reading of Schelling. Schelling's onto-theological concept of measure is characterized as normative, transcendent, immanently powerful, obligatory, self-same, manifest and univocal (20). This conception is then taken to represent the traditional metaphysical position. Here a number of questions could be raised regarding what Marx himself calls the "not completely satisfactory route" of his own analysis (17). One could certainly agree with his beginning assumption, "ithat our contemporary understanding of measure still contains certain residual traditional meanings" (17). But the stronger and genuinely operative assumption in Marx's analysis is more questionable. Why does Schelling's conception stand as.the representative of an entire metaphysical tradition? Although Schelling's conception of measure nicely facilitates Marx's projecl: vis-a-vis Heidegger, the reader might remain unconvinced that the full metaphysical conception of measure is reflected therein. Consider, for example, Marx's contention ithat 1the traditional measure is univocal and therefore leaves no room for ambiguity (42). On this basis he asserts that we cannot take Heidegger's notion of "the fourfold," which involves an "inner mobility " of play, as a.traditional measure. The ambiguity and "basic 540 BOOK REVIEWS instability inherent in playing and mirroring is irreconcilable with the traditional meaning of a measure" (42). By avoiding the more extensive analysis to which he makes reference, Marx neatly steps around an extremely important problematic involved in the concepts of ambi· guity and univocity. The following question indicates this problem in the simplest way: Does univocity belong to the measure itself or to our perception or predication of the measure? We might say, for example,,that there is no ambiguity in God, but that there is a high degree of ambiguity involved in our perception or predication of God. Certainly in the tradition, whether we take Arisotle's spoudaios, or God's eternal law, or Christian love in the model of Christ as our measure, we do not escape the ambiguity of our own finite interpretations. Thus Aristotle's caution about.the nature of ethics (N. Ethics 1094bl2-15), Aquinas's qualification about knowing the natural law with respect to details (ST 94,, 4), or Kierkegaard's acknowledgment of the paradox of Christ. This problematic is also to be found in Heidegger's writings where he indicates a play of concealedness-unconcealedness involved in Being or "the fourfold," and thus an ambiguity in the measure itself. But would Heidegger say that this concealing-unconcealing play of Being is something that happens in itself, outside of language, or independent· ly of the one who is looking after Being? (See Marx's discussion, 9192, 123). The difference between Heidegger and the tradition on this point is.this: in the tradition the " location " of ambiguity is unambiguous ; it is found in human perception, language, and reason, hut not in the measure itself. In Heidegger, ·the location... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 151 nuanced and cannot adequately be discussed in this short note. But we can say that Haar repreatedly comes back to phrases such as "a latent sketchof artistic configurations " (196), and a "secret outline of forms" (216) when describing the earth (both in the artwork and the world of artistic existence) as the origin and substructure of human, linguistic existence. Though Haar finds ample support in (...) Heidegger's writings, one is nevertheless led to wonder: What is the ontological status of this latent articulation immanent in earth? In what sense can earth be transepochal, ahistorical, if it contains such articulations to which the poet, artist, and thinker respond? How is the ahistorical/prelinguistic song from the earth to be compared to the historical/linguistic song about the earth? One must finally ask if the graceful and thoughtful prose Haar has given us is, as he hopes, a resonance of the former, or a spontaneous production of the latter. The success of Haar's insightful exposition of the ahistorical substructure of existence stands and falls on the answer to these questions. REGINALD LILLY Universityof New Hampshire Richard McKeon. Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Ducovery. Edited with an Introduction by Mark Backman. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987. Pp. xxxii + 22o. $25.00. 'History of philosophy' is an ambiguous term. It has been applied to doxography, a history of doctrines apart from their systematic relations or context. It has been applied to rational reconstructions of what a thinker must have meant apart from whether the thinker ever said it and from the context that provides checks on possible interpretations, rational or not. And it has been applied to contextual interpretations, which set philosophers and philosophies in the context of the language, history, and culture that condition them. Richard McKeon practiced the history of philosophy (or of thought, a phrase he sometimes prefers) in a different way: in terms of the subject matters thinkers treat and the functions they try to perform under the rubric of philosophy (rhetoric, poetry, grammar, and so on). Thus it is a history of changing definitions and differing conceptions, and of the spread of intellectual devices and ideas from realm to realm and from age to age. McKeon's kind of history is based on the observation that the terms we use--the names of our arts and sciences and the concepts employed in them--are stable but ambiguous. Thus it might be called a semantic history. It is also based on the insight, explained in the concluding essay, "A Philosopher Meditates on Discovery," that the truth is one, though it can be expressed in many different ways. And his history is consciously intended to provide both theoretical clarifications and insights and practical guidance in the resolution of contemporary problems. McKeon's work has not been widely influential in philosophy, although he is considered a major figure in the recent "renaissance of rhetoric" to which this volume primarily directs itself. However, despite the title, the selection of articles reprinted, and the 152 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28: I JANUARY ~99 o editor's emphasis on the term 'rhetoric' rather than 'philosophy', these essays can well be read--in roughly the reverse of their present order--as the discovery, illustration, and application of what McKeon calls his "new philosophy" (120). It is a philosophy built on the notions of"historical semantics" and "philosophic semantics" (218-20) and aiming to reunite philosophy and rhetoric, wisdom and eloquence, theory and practice. In the concluding essay, he describes his own intellectual development and the complex matrix of subject matters, methods, principles, and aims that can be used to characterize philosophic positions unambiguously despite their ambiguous use of common terms.' The system of historical semantics is illustrated by the two preceding essays. "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," a tour de force of medieval scholarship and famous among medievalists and historians of rhetoric, shows how rhetoric affected not only rhetoricians, but also philosophers, theologians, and logicians from Augustine into the Renaissance. "Poetry and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century" presents the varying conceptions of the two disciplines and the oscillation in their relations from identity to antithesis. In "Symbols, Myths, and... (shrink)

This article criticizes Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauser's recent utilitarian defense of racial profiling. I use a novel thought-experiment to argue that even if a negative phenomenon could be reduced by profiling members of certain groups who happen to be disproportionately associated with it, the practice can be implausible. Specifically, I explore the possibility that in a given society, platinum blondes have a higher per capita incidence of a serious sexually transmitted disease, D. And I argue that doctors and health (...) officials in the society would not be justified in profiling such blondes, given that there is nothing about being a platinum blonde that causes one to have D. (shrink)

Descartes's concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy's subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes's view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled with the body, (...) and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate. Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen's book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes's views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

Storrs McCall presents an original philosophical theory of the nature of the universe based on a striking new model of its space- time structure. He shows how his model illuminates a broad range of subjects, including causation, probability, quantum mechanics, identity, and free will, and argues that the fact that the model throws light on such a large number of problems constitutes strong evidence that the universe is as the model portrays it.

Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye toward the kinds of social orders such practices produce. This article focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques from information technology production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always, however, produce subjects. This article argues (...) that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to prove the consistency of libertarianism. We examine the example of Jane, who deliberates at length over whether to vacation in Colorado (C) or Hawaii (H), weighing the costs and benefits, consulting travel brochures, etc. Underlying phenomenological deliberation is an indeterministic neural process in which nonactual motor neural states n(C) and n(H) corresponding to alternatives C and H remain physically possible up until the moment of decision. The neurophysiological probabilities pr(n(C)) and pr(n(H)) evolve continuously (...) according to the different weights Jane's judgement attaches to C and H at different times during the deliberation. The overall process is indeterministic, since Jane's exact judgemental weighting would vary slightly were the process to be repeated from the same initial conditions. The weighting is however rational, and entirely under Jane's control. This controlled, rational, indeterministic process shows that libertarianism is a consistent philosophical thesis. (shrink)

Despite the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of liberal democracy celebrated by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history”, a growing number of scholars and political activists point to its inherent shortcomings. However, they have tended to dismiss it on the basis of one or two of its salient weaknesses. While this is a justifiable way to proceed, it denies the searching reader an opportunity to see the broad basis for the growing rejection of liberal democracy among (...) African political theorists. Consequently, in this article, I argue that from an African perspective, the almost hegemonic status of liberal democracy can be challenged on at least five grounds, namely, logical inconsistency, impracticability due to the largely communalistic outlook of many africans, inconsistency between affirmation and action, violation of the right to ethnic identity, and the moral imperative to assert the right to cultural emancipation. -/- I conclude by calling upon African and Africanist political theorists to utilise indigenous African political thought, coupled with emancipatory aspects of political thought from other parts of the world, to design practicable models of democracy for contemporary African states. I further conclude that in order to promote genuine inter-cultural dialogue on democratisation, people from Western cultures ought to acknowledge the equality of all cultures, and to recognise that systems of governance are part and parcel of those cultures. (shrink)

Reginald Williams offers a novel approach to the problem of evil.