End Of Metaphysics Research Articles

Psychoanalysis beyond the end of metaphysics: Thinking towards the post-relational

Psychoanalysis beyond the end of metaphysics: Thinking towards the post-relational

Aquinas in the Conceptual Border

Aquinas in the Conceptual Border

Metaphysical thinking after metaphysics: a theological reading of Jan Patočka’s Negative Platonism

ABSTRACTFor decades now, the end of metaphysics has been heralded. Engaging with the issue at stake, first, I will present and critically discuss Jan Patočka’s prophetic reflection on the fate of metaphysics after (the end of) metaphysical philosophy. This will show that the problem is far more complicated and that attempts devoted to overcoming metaphysics often unjustly reduce it. To be able properly address the complexities of the crisis of metaphysics, I will move beyond Patočka and will introduce the agent, which played a decisive role in the history of metaphysics and its development, that is, theology. I will point out that Patočka’s reconsideration of metaphysical thinking via the reinterpretation of the Platonic Idea correlates with the category of faith. Thus, I will argue that ‘a providential marriage’ between Athens and Jerusalem should not be divorced and that, despite numerous attempts to prove the contrary, the alliance of theology metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and even beneficial for both parts.

Psychoanalysis beyond the End of Metaphysics: Thinking towards the Post-Relational, Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight: Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein and Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field

Psychoanalysis beyond the End of Metaphysics: Thinking towards the Post-Relational, Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight: Celebrating the Work of James S. Grotstein and Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field

17Modern European Philosophy

This chapter considers four texts by Italian thinkers that were published in English translation in 2016, although some of the texts under discussion date back to earlier periods: Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies (originally published in Italian in 2014, and consisting of texts written over the course of the last twenty years), Gianni Vattimo’s Of Reality: The Purposes of Philosophy (first published in Italian in 2012, and based on two series of lectures delivered at Leuven in 1998 and Glasgow for the Gifford Lectures in 2010), Emanuele Severino’s The Essence of Nihilism (originally published in Italian in 1972, but only now translated into English for the first time), and Adriana Cavarero’s Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (first published in Italian in 2014). It suggests that what unites these four thinkers, despite wide variations in their understanding of nihilism, metaphysics and philosophy itself, is the attempt to question philosophy’s own thinking of itself as a discipline, whether this be through resurrecting under-theorized concepts (such as ‘use’ for Agamben and ‘inclination’ for Cavarero), by taking seriously the idea of the ‘end of metaphysics’ and nihilism (Vattimo) or by fundamentally critiquing the nihilistic direction of Western thought and its tethering to time (Severino). The chapter concludes by suggesting that it is in philosophy’s careful exploration of its own conditions, situation and buried concepts, that the modern European tradition remains strongly relevant. The chapter is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Agamben on ‘Use’; 3. Vattimo on Interpretation; 4. Severino on Nihilism; 5. Cavarero on Inclination; 6. Conclusion.

The Imperative of Individuality, Vocation of Man and the End of Metaphysics in Modern Times

The Imperative of Individuality, Vocation of Man and the End of Metaphysics in Modern Times

Psychoanalysis beyond the end of metaphysics: thinking towards the post-relational

Psychoanalysis beyond the end of metaphysics: thinking towards the post-relational

Notas para una lectura postmoderna sobre el fin del mundo: El planeta de los simios (Tim Burton, 2001)

El artículo plantea acercarse a la película El planeta de los simios (Tim Burton, 2001) a partir de algunas lecturas filosóficas de la posmodernidad, que tienen como una constante narrativa el apocalipsis, y que derivan en una búsqueda frenética del humanismo y la mitología, con una mirada que se caracteriza por la nostalgia por los tiempos pasados y provee una serie de obituarios: la muerte del sujeto, el fin de las grandes narrativas, la reconstrucción crítica de la tradición, el fin de la metafísica y la absoluta caída de la teoría. En El planeta de los simios (Tim Burton, 2001) asistimos a un fin del mundo creado por medio de elementos como el homenaje, la parodia, la sorpresa y el guiño.

GianniegoVattima postulat słabego chrześcijaństwa

Gianni Vattimo (1936-) is one of the most popular European thinkers and one of the most important representatives of philosophical postmodernism. He has also become prominent outside of the philosophical circles for his political activism in supporting gay rights as well as for his position as a Member of the European Parliament. His ideas have had a wide-ranging influence on such disciplines as feminism, theology, sexuality studies and globalization. In our article, we have presented Vattimo’s original concept of “weak thought”. The expression pensiero debole (“weak thought”) refers to the theory of a weakening of existence in the times of the end of metaphysics. The consequence of weak thought should be weak Christianity and the ethics of mercy as illustrated by “bioethics without dogmas”.

Introduction by the Guest Editor

It is Heidegger who asks what there is to be thought after the end of metaphysics, and indeed his own work is never far from a response to the question. This is neither to say that there is only one such response, nor even to suppose that Heidegger’s thinking provides only one response. To be sure, the origin of the question is not difficult to identify. Metaphysics, as the grounding of known beings in some anterior or first being, comes to its end as thinking becomes capable of grasping it as a sum of relations. This occurs when thinking is awakened to the difference between inquiring about beings (Seiende), including the first being, and asking the question of the meaning of Being (Sein). In an important sense, then, the ‘‘end’’ of metaphysics coincides with the appearing of its place within a more primordial horizon. Attending more closely to the historical configuration of this metaphysics, Heidegger often concentrates on the recurrence, or else the persistence, of an urge in thinking to stabilize itself by appeal to unity. Already before Sein und Zeit, this appeal is approched by way of a claim that Dasein does not rest on any prior cause, but rather comprehends all causal relations in a thrownness in the world that is also an abyss of ground. Subsequent texts seem only to pursue the implications of this claim, while working out the nature of a thinking that would be guided by it. Yet if we therefore agree that after the end of metaphysics there remains a thinking that suspends any urge to stabilize itself in a commitment to founded unity, we have come only to a formal definition of what Heidegger sometimes calls ‘‘thoughtful thinking.’’ Does thoughtful thinking only consider and perhaps supply clarification of the necessary unity of metaphysical thinking? Or does it already move as if without possibility of recourse to unity? These alternatives are far apart. Their difference suggests to us that if we ask Heidegger what is to be thought after

Flaneuring with Vattimo: The annotative hermeneutics of weak thought

This article rethinks the future of continental philosophy of religion through a central, annotative reading of Gianni Vattimo’s Not Being God. The reading develops from Agamben on citation and Žižek on the short-circuit into a new reading strategy of annotation as a development of weak thought. It argues for what is termed the flânerie of the weak thought of annotation, rethinking the future of continental philosophy of religion as para-thought. The future envisioned is a future that flâneurs, annotates and is para- to both the religious and laicity and their associated strong claims and metaphysics. For Vattimo, weak thought helps us see that if we read Nietzsche as an announcement and not a claim, hermeneutics teaches us we cannot conceive ultimate objective truths. Therefore, after Heidegger, we reach the end of metaphysics and the age of weak thought, where we respond only to appeals and announcements.

“Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks”- A Review

“Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks” (2013) published by Shaker Verlag, by Professor Ştefan Vlăduţescu from University of Craiova and Professor Ella Magdalena Ciuperca from National Academy of Intelligence “Mihai Viteazul” Bucuresti, is a book of intellectual elevation and high expression of ideas. The authors’ hypothesis and the nuclear idea of their book is that by their amplitude, by their performance, and by their self-generating, self-organization and self-improvement capabilities, social networks are the next flood level of communication. “The observational-wave of hypothesis is reinforced by an interrogative wave: what is next after next? If "End of Metaphysics" in Martin Heidegger is perfection of metaphysics, if the "End of History" in Francis Fukuyama is perfection of history, we believe that "next flood level" is neither the last level, nor the perfect level of communication” asserts the authors. Social network is not quite the perfection it is only the configured direction to untouchable perfection. Social network is the path to perfection in constant concern itself, in self-knowledge, and in self-superior capitalization of humanity as a whole, of humanity as a global, integrated and homogeneous and with obvious nuclei of heterogeneity macro-social network. However, next of the next is something, at the same time apparent and hidden, from the actual potential of the current concrete. The future always has its seeds in the past and the present.

Heidegger's "Productive Dialogue with Marxism"

This paper takes the theme of Heidegger’s phrase ‘a productive dialogue with Marxism’ from the Letter on Humanism and examines what Heidegger could have meant by it by referring to a number of his works and commentary in other places, and the backdrop of European, Western, and global history in the twentieth century. The paper touches on Heidegger’s relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, Kostas Axelos and Jean Beaufret. It looks at a key section of the 1969 television interview Heidegger conducted with Richard Wisser, when he discussed the eleventh of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach. The paper examines Heidegger’s interpretation of the Letter and of Being and Time in view of what he meant by ‘the language of metaphysics’, as well as his central interpretation of Marx at Zahringen in 1973, and his understanding of ‘production’ in relation to his critique of technology. The paper concludes by showing how Heidegger understands Marx and Marxism to have made possible a historical dialogue at the ‘end of metaphysics’ which opens the way to what Heidegger sees as the Abendland, that is, what befalls us through the new beginning history offers to thinking.

O marginaliach (i nie tylko) Tadeusza Różewicza

Tadeusz Rozewicz moved from Gliwice to Wroclaw in 1968. He lived near South Park for many years and he regularly met there with the author of this article. They talked about many different things and current events, and especially about Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, i.e. more specifically about his service in the tsarist army, the battle that took place near the Stokhid in June 1916 in which he was severely wounded as well as about the causes of his suicide in September 1939. In 2003 Rozewicz moved to a house on Promien Street, which is located in a remote area of the city. When he was moving to the new place he came across Witkacy’s 1919 treatise titled Nowe formy w malarstwie i wynikające stad nieporozumienia [New Forms in Painting and the Misunderstandings Arising Therefrom], which he had bought in October 1945 at a street stall in Warsaw. After a careful reading of the treatise (as evidenced by numerous underlines in the text), he decided to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. The quotes that are presented in the article show that Rozewicz paid particular attention to Witkacy’s main philosophical concepts (“metaphysical anxiety”) and statements about the end of metaphysics in the 20th century. Many notes and annotations in the margins, some of which are cited in the present article, are evidence of Witkacy’s critical reading of Leon Chwistek’s “Wielośc rzeczywistości w sztuce” i inne szkice literackie [The Multiplicity of Realities in Art and Other Literary Sketches]. In 1975 Anna Micinska published, based on a manuscript that had been discovered, the sociocultural study Niemyte dusze [Unwashed Souls] which Witkacy wrote in 1936 but which he did not manage to publish. Rozewicz regarded this study as one of Witkacy’s most interesting works because it showed a whole different side of the artist – a citizen who was concerned about the condition of Polish society and the Polish state.

Beyond Ousiodic Ontology

At the historical moment when the fate of Western civilization is being decided in a way that seems unprecedented-when Hamlet's question resounds with a new force not only on theatrical stages, but also in the halls of academia-John McCumber's On Philosophy: Notes from a Crisis points us to a third, much less dramatic, but the only viable possibility: to be differently.The extraordinary character of our historical moment is revealed also in the recent and ongoing events in Ukraine, the events that came to be known as Maidan: this country on the margins of Europe is proving to be more European than Europe, insofar as the people of Ukraine willing to risk their lives in the search of who they are, of their dignity and freedom. Simultaneously the non- Europeanness of Europe becomes evident when we consider that in the recent elections for the European Parliament on May 25, 2014, Europeans either directly or through indifference upheld non-European values by voting for candidates with neo-Nazi agendas.There many other important indicators that the West is in the midst of a profound crisis, and that both of the roads contemplated by Hamlet-regardless of the unbreachable distance that seems to be separating them-lead to the same place. If Western civilization decides to be by clinging to its wealth, including the treacherous wealth of its philosophical tradition, by striving for ethnic or national purity, by reinforcing its borders, and by distinguishing itself from everything it is not-if the West chooses to be in this way, then it will not be. If Western philoso- phy chooses to be by separating itself from the vast realms of non-philosophy, by upholding professional standards and hierarchies that silence and marginalize the vast majority of voices, and restrict the range and the tonality of those that allowed to resound within its lecture and conference halls, then it will not to be. It is no wonder that some Western intellectuals have chosen to preempt this seeming impasse by announcing the end-the end of metaphysics, of man, of art, of history, of narrative.John McCumber is not one of these thinkers, yet he harbors no illusions as to the oppressive nature of Western philosophy and culture: while acknowledging the profundity of the current crisis, he also sees the simple either/or. In particular, McCumber brings to our attention two points of inconsistency that can help us to disentangle ourselves from the deadly embrace of philosophy's history: the contradictory road of both/and, and the anomalous path of neither/ nor. McCumber urges us to begin articulating new ontologies, and for this alone his book deserves most careful consideration.On Philosophy challenges the key dichotomy of Western philosophical tra- dition-the basic ontological distinction that appeared under different guises throughout the long and frequently unseemly history of Western thought, but that is perhaps best articulated as the distinction between form, or ο?σ??, and matter. Aristotle, McCumber argues, was the first to place this dichotomy at the center of metaphysics, and it dominated philosophical thought ever since. Most, if not all Western metaphysical theories have been constructed around this basic distinction-by either explicitly asserting, or implicitly relying on the supposed ontological difference between ο?σ?? and matter. Oppression, instituted by this ontological difference, became integral to Western so that, for instance, Kant's racism and sexism are not blemishes on his philosophy, but specifications of some of its most basic and ancient views.1Matter as mute, and devoid of logos, and reason as rigid and purged of any shade of ambiguity-this dichotomy was and is still used to justify oppression, and it grows directly out of Aristotle's notion of ο?σ??. McCumber identifies three traits that the beings with ousiodic structure exhibit: 1) continuous and clear borders2 that separate an entity from that which it is not, 2) a single unitary component of that entity that maintains order within those borders, and 3) the same unitary component that governs all interaction with the world beyond the entity's borders. …

Reiner Schürmann and the Challenge of Christian Trinitarian Thought

Reiner Schurmann speaks of the end of Western metaphysics as the end of a mode of thinking that relies on an overriding metaphysical principle that establishes the economies that provide the space for permissible and impermissible actions. In its wake, he proposes a project of an-archy, of living without the reliance to the domination of one central metaphysical concept, but rather of kata physin, of “following the way things enter into mutual relations.” Kenneth Schmitz, in reacting to Schurmann, points out that there are elements in Christian thought that can also provide new patterns of thought and action at the twilight of the end of metaphysics, namely, the notions of: (1) charity, (2) the Trinity, and (3) mystery. I shall take up the second suggestion of Schmitz and attempt to articulate what the Christian notion of the Trinity can contribute to our understanding of thought and action after the end of metaphysics. I argue that through the theological detour of Thomistic Trinitarian thought, we can chart out new patterns of thought and action, specifically on the notion of the tri-personality of the Trinity, leading to the analogical understanding of persons-as-relations. Such a consideration not only provides a sharp rebuttal to Schurmann in his understanding of “hard unity” in terms of metaphysical principles, but it also helps us understand the place of man in the contemporary world: one of charitable relationality.

A leitura de Heidegger acerca do niilismo e da sentença de Nietzsche “Deus está morto”

O presente estudo tem como escopo refletir acerca da metafísica, apoiando-se na reflexão que Heidegger empreende acerca do niilismo e da sentença de Nietzsche “Deus está morto”. “Deus está morto” significa desvalorização de todos os valores supremos. É o niilismo; a metafísica mesma: o esquecimento do ser. Para Heidegger, Nietzsche é o pensador que concebe a “morte de Deus” como a lógica interna da metafísica. Todavia, ainda se processa dentro da própria metafísica. O pensamento de Nietzsche, não obstante aos seus esforços, é um platonismo invertido. Desse modo, a metafísica de Platão a Nietzsche é marcada pelo o esquecimento do ser.

Resisting the Enlightenment's Instrumentalist Legacy: James, Hamilton, and Carlyle on the Mechanisation of the Human Condition

SummaryIn the early post-Enlightenment period, informed by the history of Scottish and European thought, Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856) alerted readers to a melancholy future emerging from mechanical theories of the mind. Opposing a Lockean strand in British and French philosophy, their concerns involved predictions about, among other things, a descent into pessimism and nihilism, and the end of metaphysics and moral philosophy. Arguably influenced by Carlyle and Hamilton, William James's (1842–1910) much later Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) evinces a similar opposition to medical materialist psychology. Confronting a profound shift within Enlightenment thought, towards the increasing dominance of mechanical theories, Carlyle, Hamilton, and James were variously resisting the mechanisation of the human condition and an agency-eradicating instrumentalism. Part of that resistance involved humour and certain indications of hope for humanity that, as Carlyle put it, ‘mechanism is not always to be our hard taskmaster’. Once immensely influential, Carlyle, Hamilton, and James are presently marginalised figures. However, Jürgen Habermas's distinction between communicative and instrumental rationality suggests that what was at stake for these thinkers is of continuing relevance. Their work deserves to be explored to recover nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy's participation in a discourse of transnational status and significance.

TO HAVE DONE (TRULY) WITH METAPHYSICS

abstractOne cannot consider the future of continental philosophy without accounting for its specific “hermeneutic situation.” It seems to us that the state of continental philosophy today returns us to metaphysics and to the possibility of truly having done with it. Continental philosophy, in reality, does not cease to live metaphysically, because by asserting the end of metaphysics, it still continues to think according to the topos of the here‐and‐now and the beyond: that which seeks the ruin of the heavens continues to obsess over the heavens; the cult of immanence can only understand itself in opposition to the other world, therefore in constant reference to it; insufficiently radical, the critique, in the words of Karl‐Otto Apel, is but an “inverted metaphysics.” Our inversions of the for and against (the sensible vs. the intelligible, the body vs. the soul, the empirical vs. the transcendental, and more recently, the multiple vs. the one) still belong to the landscape of metaphysics.How do we imagine what comes after metaphysics? Can philosophy think according to a topos other than the one of the world above and the world below? Can it respatialize itself in a new way? Put more precisely, can we accept what science tells us about the world and about humanity in any other way than as the deposing of the other world? Can science provide us with anything other than weapons against metaphysics; in other words, can science give us anything other than metaphysics? As a response to these questions, we imagine an alternative scenario tied to the (scientifically attested) fact of our animal origin. Our animal origin can be, for philosophy and more specifically for phenomenology, the chance for a new beginning. But it can do so only on the condition that it does not follow the current method of evolutionary psychology. If it is true that we can be metaphysicians while being reductionistic, because we thus preserve the “old schema,” then evolutionary psychology is today, in virtue of its very reductionism, one of the more metaphysical currents of thought. Conversely, if phenomenology decides to face the fact of evolution and to confront its estrangement, we think that it possesses all the resources to invent a new intellectual landscape.

An End of Metaphysics in Mark Twain's "Carnival of Crime"

In his disturbingly hilarious “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (1876) Mark Twain explains how he inadvertently incarnated and then happily destroyed his conscience, thereby ending years of remorse for wronging strangers, friends, and family. He confesses to hav‐ ing mistreated supplicants at his door, betrayed comrades, and abused his children and brother. But now with conscience dead, he can forget all that and guiltlessly rid himself of any who trouble him: “Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss, unalloyed bliss. Nothing in all the world could persuade me to have a conscience again. I settled all my old outstanding scores, and began the world anew. I killed thirty‐eight persons during the first two weeks—all of them on account of ancient grudges.”1 Twain likewise dispatches the numerous tramps who call and, with the word “dead” punctuating his rant, even threatens the life of his beloved aunt: