NORM, ONTOLOGY, CONCEPTUAL SCHEME: NORMATIVE HEIDEGGERIANISM IN PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATION

Although the question of relationship between basic concepts of traditional ontology and central concepts of fundamental ontology is not a topic which is systematically dealt with in Being and Time, it is obvious that some of the theses which are crucial not only for Heidegger's interpretation of philosophical tradition, but also for the whole project of fundamental ontology, concern this 'conceptual scheme'. In fact, the backbone of Heidegger's critical confrontation with dominant philosophical conceptions is the question of relationship between the concept of 'substance' and the concept of 'Being', i.e. the discussion of philosophical doctrines in which 'Being' is reduced to 'substance'. Besides this context, which concerns the ontological problematics in the strict sense, it is possible to show that the refutation of the basic categories of traditional ontology is an issue which has a decisive role in more concrete phases of the realization of the project of fundamental ontology. This is especially confirmed in Heidegger's discussion of the concept of 'Being-There'. The interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of the relationship between the concepts of 'Being-there', 'existence' and 'existentials' on the one hand, and the concepts of 'substance', 'essence' and 'categories' on the other, shows that one of Heidegger's basic theses is that a transformation of concepts of traditional ontology is necessary for an appropriate understanding of human being.

When students of religion are tempted to theorize, they are more apt to spread confusion than to get things right. In Believing and Acting (2012), Scott Davis offers philosophical therapy for the resulting perplexities. There is no more instructive methodological essay in the field. Because the temptations Davis identifies are real, any would-be theorist of religion, society, or culture would be well advised to take his diagnoses seriously. “Understanding religion,” according to Davis, “requires nothing more than the sensitive and imaginative reading of human phenomena informed by the best available historical narrative.” The study of religion is a tangled garden in need of “judicious pruning and weeding” (2012, 3). In some cases, the prudent gardener will need only to reshape something that goes by the name of “theory.” Davis praises Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Wayne Proudfoot for freeing earlier research programs of their theoretical excesses. These are Davis’s model gardeners, the heroes of “the pragmatic turn” he recommends. What links the three together, he argues, is that they borrow their pruning hooks from the same shed—the pragmatic philosophical tradition initiated by C. S. Peirce.1 The book has villains as well as heroes. In “cognitive studies and the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion,” Davis finds nothing worth saving. He concludes that they “should probably be uprooted altogether” (2012, 4). In somewhat different ways, these programs fail to learn what pragmatism has to teach about studying human beings as rational agents. The lessons that figure most heavily in Davis’s critical project come from Donald Davidson.2 While I mostly agree with Davis on what those lessons are and admire the acumen with which he explicates them, I worry that he is too quick to dismiss some research programs as worthless. If we are not careful here, something valuable will end up in the compost heap. Davis argues that Peirce was basically right about how inquiry works. Inquiry is the activity in which human beings engage to resolve their doubts about what is the case and what to do. Like other things we do, it is something we can do well or poorly. Properly conducted, inquiry is part of living well.

O presente artigo tem como escopo principal mostrar a trajetória da abordagem normativa e suas diferentes variações temáticas diante dos mais diferentes ataques que esta tem sofrido ao longo da história da filosofia. Assim, busca-se tratar o itinerário filosófico-epistemológico acerca da abordagem normativa ou prescritiva do conhecimento desde as suas bases. A metodologia utilizada se estriba no método dialético, destacando no seio da própria abordagem normativa as diferentes concepções de normatividade e suas contraposições teóricas. A trilha metodológica utilizada centrou atenção na revisão bibliográfica de Platão, Descartes, Kant, Russell, Quine e Laudan, percorrendo as análises críticas concernentes aos aspectos epistemológicos normativos ao longo da história do conhecimento, fundamentalmente do conhecimento científico.

The article analyzes the problem of transfor-mation of ontological relations between the key elements – being and time – in the late philosophy of M. Heidegger. In the fundamen-tal ontology “early” M. Heidegger substanti-ates the ontological correlation between be-ing and time through an ontological interme-diary – Dasein. Considerable attention is paid to the thesis of the foundation clause as the central thesis of M. Heidegger's late philoso-phy. The article touches upon the topic of the transformation relation in the context of Heidegger's interpretation of the foundation position and clarifies its features. In connection with this circumstance, the transformation of the interpretation of the ontological difference between being and be-ing in accordance with M. Heidegger's inter-pretation of the ground position is comment-ed on. The ontological difference in the late period takes the form of a special type of transformation relation, which is an indication of existence itself (being). Two aspects of the change in the ontology of the late M. Heidegger were identified and substanti-ated, among which were: the rejection of the central role of Dasein and, as a consequence, the rejection of the identification of time and temporality. As part of the research, this arti-cle highlights and describes the characteristic features of the main ontology phenomena of the late period of M. Heidegger's philosophy: posturing, co-existence, space-time clearance, thinking. The ontology, which combines these concepts into a single system, has been reconstructed in basic terms. Based on the study of the correlation of being and time in philosophy after the “turn”, it is established that such a philosophy can be called neometaphysics.

Science and Different Images of the World

Reviewing the state of play in the attempt to naturalise content a quarter of a century after John Haugeland’s survey paper “The Intentionality All-Stars”, Dan Hutto and Glenda Satne propose a new naturalistic account of content that supposedly synthesizes what is best in the three failed programs of neo-Cartesianism, neo-Behaviourism and neo-Pragmatism. They propose to appeal to a Relaxed Naturalism, a non-reductive genealogical form of explanation and a primitive notion of contentless ur-intentionality. In this paper I argue that the authors’ Relaxed Naturalism is a broad form of Scientific Naturalism and, as such, it is unable to account for the problem of conceptual normativity that arises for any scientific naturalist attempt to explain content – whether reductive or not. This is based on the irreconcilability of the objective third-personal character of scientific inquiry and the intersubjective second-personal nature of the normativity of content. I suggest that the authors would do better to simply become neo-Pragmatists who, properly understood, are Liberal Naturalists who have the conceptual and methodological resources to acknowledge and do justice to conceptually normative content.

Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living the other's death, dead in the other's life. Heraclitus, 22B62 En-owning owns god over to man in that it owns man to god. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Front Enowning) The relation between philosophy and the existence of Dasein is a recurrent theme in Heidegger's writing. Analyses of anxiety, conscience, and resoluteness sit alongside reminders of the demands made by a philosophical life and calls for commitment on the part of his students. It is not just that philosophy is difficult or time consuming. For Heidegger, there is an unbreakable link between philosophy and the existence of Dasein, insofar as the temporal horizon for the disclosure of Being is to be elicited from the existence of Dasein itself, in and through which the ontological difference occurs. Fundamental ontology rests on an ontic foundation.1 Moreover, fundamental ontology depends for its success on the extent to which Heidegger's philosophical analysis can preserve the dimension of the ontological difference, while at the same time affirming the of the relation between the optic and the ontological. The recognition of this necessity, which informs the problematic of Being and Time, amounts to an acknowledgment that philosophy itself is inextricably linked to the finitude of human existence: to its temporality, affectivity, understanding, and above all to its mortality. It is for this reason that in Heidegger's view philosophy cannot be undertaken as a specialism abstracted or otherwise set apart from one's existence as a whole. Even as we read denials that authenticity is ethically privileged, it is plain that Heidegger regards philosophy as making extraordinary demands on the individual. Indeed, the involvement and engagement it demands are such as to require the illusion, as it were, that the given task at hand is the one and only necessary task; to accomplish anything at all one must, says Heidegger, have acquired that art of existing [Existierkunst] by which this illusion of is conjured and sustained from out of the finitude of existence.2 In view of the fact that Heidegger regards philosophy as a distinctive possibility essential to the existence of Dasein as such, two questions present themselves. First, what are the repercussions for philosophy of its optic foundation in the existence of Dasein? Second, does the activity of philosophy represent the accomplishment of the existence of each individual Dasein? To these, a third may also be added: why is the unique necessity of philosophy said by Heidegger to be an illusion? These questions will be approached via an issue central to the critical appropriation of Aristotle that figured so highly in the early period of Heidegger's writing; namely, that of the relation between phronesis and sophia.3 Placing the question of this relation in proximity to that of the optic foundation of ontology, and the accompanying interest in the mutual implication of philosophy and existence, will help to shed light both on Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle and on his understanding of finitude of philosophy. Phronesis and Sophia In the course of making the case for sophia as the crowning accomplishment of a good life, Aristotle exhorts us, in line with the overarching teleology that governs his philosophy, not to be satisfied with the Euripidean advice to think as mortals, but rather to be true to the highest, divine, element within our souls.4 The opposition between phronesis and sophia is thereby aligned with that between the human and the divine, the mortal and the immortal. Their crossing, which is never a reduction or subordination, poses the question of mortality in relation to philosophy. In view of Heidegger's acknowledgment of the implication of philosophy in the finitude of human existence, we are bound to reconsider this inter-relation of the human and the divine, the mortal and the immortal. …

The article has two main aims: to illustrate the productive potential of the norms concept as an analytical tool in studying translations, and to explore the implications of the concept for the way we speak about translation. Part one takes up an historical case (Adrianus de Buck translating Boethius in 1653) and uses the concept of norms to inquire into the translator's choices. It is suggested that sociological concepts deployed by Bourdieu and Luhmann may offer useful ways forward in applying norm concepts as tools to study translation. Part two begins by positing a connection between norms and values. If translation is norm-governed it cannot be value-free. Three points are discussed following from this. First, its lack of transparency is what makes translation significant as a cultural and historical phenomenon. Second, the notion of equivalence can only be an ideological construct. Its presence in the historical discourse on translation is worth investigating, for it reveals key aspects of the conceptual self-positioning of translation. Finally, if our speaking about translation is itself a form of translating, then the implication must be that our translations of translation cannot be value-free either.

The article has two main aims: to illustrate the productive potential of the norms concept as an analytical tool in studying translations, and to explore the implications of the concept for the way we speak about translation. Part one takes up an historical case (Adrianus de Buck translating Boethius in 1653) and uses the concept of norms to inquire into the translator's choices. It is suggested that sociological concepts deployed by Bourdieu and Luhmann may offer useful ways forward in applying norm concepts as tools to study translation. Part two begins by positing a connection between norms and values. If translation is norm-governed it cannot be value-free. Three points are discussed following from this. First, its lack of transparency is what makes translation significant as a cultural and historical phenomenon. Second, the notion of equivalence can only be an ideological construct. Its presence in the historical discourse on translation is worth investigating, for it reveals key aspects of the conce...

Defining global citizenship (GC) depends on the perspective undertaken. The academic literature on GC is divided into two theoretical approaches: normative and interpretative. The first of these can also be called the attributive approach, because it refers to specific attributes that indicate whether someone is, or is not, a global citizen. This approach emphasizes the importance of education, during the course of which appropriate skills, competencies, and attitudes characterizing a global citizen are shaped. In contrast, representatives of the interpretative approach do not concentrate on creating a list of attributes through the prism of which the concept of GC can be identified but, rather, try to recognize what meaning individuals and language users ascribe to the concept. Understanding what GC is and what meaning actors ascribe to it is crucial in this view. The adopted theoretical perspective also determines who is and who can be a (global) citizen. The education emphasized in the normative approach, and the related course of acquiring specific attributes, means that only adults are recognized as (global) citizens. Young people are only citizens in the making. Consequently, full citizenship is an exclusive social category that is acquired on reaching the age of majority. In the interpretative approach, both adolescents and adults are considered equally as citizens. This approach stands in opposition to the age-determined order and seeks to broaden analysis by breaking from a transitional life-stage paradigm that works to divide childhood from adolescence and adolescence from adulthood. In this approach, we do not become citizens but are citizens from the very beginning of our lives. Within this concept, shifting young people’s understanding of life by applying “citizenship” as an inclusive social category is necessary. Depending on what theoretical perspective is used, a diverse range of educational practices will be employed—global citizenship education (GCE). The normative approach is related to the idea of GCE and practical notions about how GC could be taught in educational institutions or learned in other settings. In the interpretive approach, the emphasis is on cooperation in creation, joint and democratic decision-making, from which no one is excluded, regardless of age, race, religion, gender, and so on. In the same way that globalization became the target of criticism, the idea of GC and GCE is generating increasingly more discussion. Some of its aspects refer to the neoliberal foundation of GC; in that context, GCE can be understood as a system of influencing individuals to adjust them to the economic expectations of contemporary markets. Also, the expansion of the GC idea to other continents forced educators to take into account the achievements of cultural anthropology and academics to conduct international comparative research. What in the normative conceptualization was considered a universal norm in light of intercultural studies began to be perceived as a neocolonial expansion of Euro-American culture. This raises a fundamental question about a better (less colonializing) variant of global education. One of many answers is critical global learning, focused on demystification of dominant global discourses, mapping local discourses to recognize their statuses, tracing individual or institutional narratives to collective “root” meta-narratives, and emancipation of those who are discriminated against or not recognized in their formal civil rights.

Heidegger's early ‘fundamental ontology’ offers a vision of our subjectivity and of the world we inhabit that can appear to be simply truer to life. It allows us to understand the creature that thinks as also one which acts, moves, even touches the world around it — a creature at home in the same ordinary world in which we too live our lives when outside of the philosophical closet. It also promises to free us from seemingly intractable philosophical problems, such as scepticism about the external world. But many of the concepts central to that vision are elusive; and some of the most widely accepted interpretations of Heidegger's vision harbour within themselves deep and important unclarities, while others foist upon us hopeless species of idealism. This book offers a new way of understanding that vision. Drawing on an examination of Heidegger's work throughout the 1920s, it takes as central to that vision the proposals that propositional thought presupposes a mastery of what might be called a ‘measure’, and that mastery of such a ‘measure’ requires a recognizably ‘worldly’ subject. These insights provide the basis for a novel reading of key elements of Heidegger's ‘fundamental ontology’, including his concept of ‘Being-in-the-world’, his critique of scepticism, his claim to disavow both realism and idealism, and his difficult reflections on the nature of truth, science, authenticity, and philosophy itself. According to this interpretation, Heidegger's central ideas identify genuine demands that we must meet if we are to achieve the feat of thinking determinate thoughts about the world around us.

BOOK REVIEWS 123 Kant's Moral Philosophy. By H. B. Acton. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970. Pp. 71. Paper $1.95) As part of an introductory series entitled "New Studies in Ethics," this brief study of Kant's ethics is a fine job of condensation which does pretty much what it is intended to do. The concentration, as one would expect, is on Kant's Grundlegung, with occasional references to the Lectures on Ethics, The Doctrine o[ Virtue, and the Critique o/ Practical Reason. A brief introduction to the background and influences on Kant's ethics is provided which indicates Kant's sympathy with the doctrine of moral sentiment in his essay, Enquiry into the Distinctness o/ the Fundamental Propositions o/Natural Theology and Morality. In discussing the essential principles of Kantian ethics, H. B. Acton deals with the attempt to expunge all "sensuous motives" from ethical prescription, including the denial of the moral value of actions done from a "pathological" (emotional or passional) motive . En passant, reference is made to Kant's notion that one should act out of reverence or respect (Achtung) for the moral law, a "moral feeling" which only a rational being aware of the moral law can have (p. 14). What is not mentioned is that this notion of respect seems to have an empirical or psychologistic content which seems to undermine Kant's intention to construct "a pure moral philosophy." Kant's long footnote referring to the use of "respect" does not quite obviate the charge of empirical reference (Acton suggests that it does) since it is said that "respect . ... is not a feeling received through influence, but is sel/-wrought by a rational concept" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic o/ Morals, trans. T. K. Abbott [Chicago, 1949], p. 19, note 1). It seems that one could have "respect" for a principle of compassion which would conform to Kant's requirements. In subsequent sections Acton deals briefly (and in a somewhat cursory manner) with the distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, duties to oneself, and (quite substantially) with the question of universalizability. In this latter discussion, reference is made to the social consequences of universalizing certain maxims (p. 25), but no reference is made to the illogical consequences of universalizing such maxims even though Kant explicitly states that one could not universalize a maxim that one may borrow money with a false promise to repay it because "it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent with itself; rather it must necessarily contradict itself" (ibid., p. 45). While Acton agrees with Paton that Kant puts his arguments coneerning universalizing certain maxims in a "prudential way" (p. 26), he only mentions in passing the influence which Kant's conception of nature has on his ethics (p. 48), despite the fact that Kant construes universalizability in ethics as analogous to the form of "universal laws of nature." Despite this omission, Acton does include lucid discussions of the empirical content in Kant's appeal to the "means" which individuals have to perform right actions (pp. 30-31), the question whether one is motivated by "the mere form of a universal legislation," the "law giving" nature of moral principles (p. 38), and the influence of certain notions in Rousseau's thought on Kant's ethics (p. 43). In the concluding chapters of this work Aeton proffers a good exposition of Kant's conception of freedom and the moral argument for immortality. Perhaps one may question whether Acton is correct in asserting that Kant entirely rejected the notion that God "made" the moral law (p. 53). For one could appeal to the Opus postumum for counterevidence. Thus, Kant avers that "the categorical imperative represents human duties as divine commandments" (p. 570) and that "the concept of God is the Idea of a moral being which, as such, judges and issues universal commands" (p. 614). On this point, Acton refers without comment to Kant's view that neither man nor God is the author of moral laws (Lectures on Ethics) and subsequently states that, for Kant, man obeys a law he recognizes as his when he obeys the moral law (p. 53). It 124...

<i>Meaning Diminished: Toward Metaphysically Modest Semantics</i>

Gibbard does not claim to be discovering of these concepts. He holds that recent developments in the philosophy of language and Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction have discredited the search for the meaning of concepts. Gibbard takes his conceptual scheme to be a proposal about how to use normative concepts. He claims the following virtue for his proposals: they allow us to raise important questions and do not foreclose or answer questions by appeal to the meaning of concepts. (According to Gibbard, the fact that a particular definition or conceptual proposal closes a substantive question is a strong reason to reject that definition.)

Reviewed by: Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character Ivan A. Boldyrev Mark D. White. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 270. Cloth, $55.00. This remarkable book provides a new ethical perspective for economics based on Kantian ethics of autonomy and dignity. There are two main messages in it that I find particularly important. First, Mark White derives from Kant the idea of irreducible moral principles that govern the behavior of economic agents independently of welfarist and, more generally, consequentialist concerns. These principles of duty and the “incomparable worth” (21) of human dignity, as well as justice or rights, may not be economically traded off against some other motivations; hence, they simply evade economic reasoning altogether. Second, White endorses a version of libertarian Kantianism that treats people as individuals in essence (“autonomous”) and social in orientation (respecting the rights and the choices of the others). In discussing individualism, White attacks the conventional wisdom of economics and claims that preferences alone do not account for the identity of individuals [End Page 298] in space and time, although their unique characters do. Persons should be given free choice (absent in deterministic rational-choice models) and hence responsibility for their choices that incorporates the social factors in decision-making. However, White never mentions the almost insurmountable difficulties associated with fleshing out the truly individual features of a given person. Although he allows for a person’s identity and character changing over time, he does not recognize that character itself is in many respects a social construction. White criticizes paternalistic economic policies that suggest manipulating choice environments in order to follow the “true” preferences of the individuals. Instead, real consent, as satisfying both relevant preferences and principles (e.g. rights and human dignity), is, in his view, the sole criterion for justifying particular policy measures—not Pareto-efficiency or Kaldor-Hicks compensation. Economists’ obsession with efficiency leading to the misconceived notions such as “efficient level of crime” or “manageable level of terrorism” is also severely criticized. For White, the most popular formalistic version of the categorical imperative is less important than the other two—prohibiting treating other people simply as means and instituting the “Kingdom of Ends.” Formalism is reserved merely for the negative evaluation of actions and providing strict perfect duties that give clear guidance concerning what should not be done. White’s “Kantian-economic” model of decision-making incorporates perfect duties as constraints, and imperfect (positive) duties as preferences. He also stresses that for Kant, duties derived from the imperative depend on empirical knowledge, the context of decision-making, and judgment as a unique personal interpretation of the moral law. He further emphasizes the intersubjective role of Kantian morality: moral law should be universalizable to all rational persons (the “Kingdom of Ends” formula of the imperative), whereas rationality means not just following the patterns of behavior developed in the preference-oriented choice model, but rather acting on one’s beliefs and desires or choosing not to follow them, thus exhibiting genuine autonomy. The new and important contribution to the discussion is an explicit treatment of will as an inner faculty that, together with judgment, constitutes a person’s character or “self,” and helps to overcome the mere inclination to follow duty. Will is the missing link between decision and action and should be “well-trained” for bringing about true morality. The book is clearly written, and the author has upheld the interdisciplinary appeal of the topic, demonstrating an outstanding knowledge of the vast literature on ethics (both Kantian and not) and economics. White’s emphasis on the irreducibility of moral principles is absolutely relevant for current economic and political debates. However, some reservations are in order. There is an ambiguity concerning the status of his analysis. If in its positive aspect White’s recommendations for economists is to accept the Kantian vision of morality, then almost no arguments are given for this, and his modifications of the standard choice model are introduced in an ad hoc manner, just to reconcile it with the Kantian framework. Are an individual’s decisions to act on principles and to overcome mere inclinations really...