Abstract
A central ethical and political worry in Heidegger and Nietzsche is the philosophical irrelevance of everyday moral, epistemological and political norms, as well as of individual suffering and evil. In consequence they offer little to help us think about ethical experience. I argue that Albert Camus' analysis of moral and epistemic limits offers a more fruitful alternative. But this requires us to take ordinary experience as central to philosophical analysis, rather than simply viewing it as a clue to the real philosophical issues.
Highlights
There are two worrying elements in both Nietzsche and Heidegger—the devaluation of commonsensical everyday senses of truth, and the bracketing of the specific details of moral experience of particular communities
Moral principles, norms, and beliefs are functions of a kind of herd animal struggling to survive in a quasiDarwinian world
In Heidegger, a variant on the same theme arises in his distinction between everyday and genuine senses of truth
Summary
PhaenEx: journal of existential and phenomenological theory and culture, 2(1), 67-86. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this document breaches copyright, please contact the Bond University research repository coordinator
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