Heidegger's Critique Research Articles

Critique of modernity in the philosophy of Nishitani Keiji

ABSTRACTThis article analyses Nishitani Keiji’s persistent critique of modernity and how it intertwines with other issues—such as nihilism, science and religion—in his philosophy. While Nishitani gained some notoriety for his views on overcoming modernity during WWII, this article will look at his relationship with the issue more in the scope of his whole philosophical career. Pulling together various strands that weave through Nishitani’s treatment of modernity, its relation to nihilism and his views for overcoming both, we find that it motivates his themes of Heideggerian critique of technology and Nietzschean redemption of tradition that combine with a reverse-Hegelian search for an originary ground that is grasped via existential realisation revealed through religious praxis. However, Nishitani’s approach raises some problematic questions on the social level due to the way it conceptualises modernity through a Nietzschean lens that leaves little room for modernity as a social and political phenomenon.

DDP Controversy and the Dilemma of H-Sang Seung′s ″Landscript″

Zaha Hadid′s design of the DDP (2007-13) in Seoul has been criticized for its seeming disinterest in the site′s sense of place. The most consistent critic against the design is H-Sang Seung (b. 1952), one of the participants in the 2007 competition for the project. For Seung, careful consideration of ″the record and story of our lives…written on the land,″ which was to be theorized under the name ″landscript″ (2009), should have been the starting point of the present DDP. Though very cogent, however, his opinion cannot but encounter a dilemma in the fact that the futuristic DDP will also be established as one layer of the ″landscript″ on the site. In addition, his ″landscript″ theory, partly supported by Heidegger′s concept of place, could be criticized based on criticism of Heidegger. For example, Neil Leach (1998)—after Jean-François Lyotard (1987)—sensed ″a potential violence″ and ″the logic of exclusion″ in the Heideggerian place. In the contemporary context of ″the heterogeneous, open cosmopolis,″ Leach argues, we should pursue ″cosmopolitan architectures″ transcending ″the rigid constraints of the genius loci.″ On the basis of Leach′s argument, this paper aims for a critical re-reading of Seung′s ″landscript,″ revealing his dilemma in the DDP controversy.

Against the iDoctor: why artificial intelligence should not replace physician judgment

Experts in medical informatics have argued for the incorporation of ever more machine-learning algorithms into medical care. As artificial intelligence (AI) research advances, such technologies raise the possibility of an "iDoctor," a machine theoretically capable of replacing the judgment of primary care physicians. In this article, I draw on Martin Heidegger's critique of technology to show how an algorithmic approach to medicine distorts the physician-patient relationship. Among other problems, AI cannot adapt guidelines according to the individual patient's needs. In response to the objection that AI could develop this capacity, I use Hubert Dreyfus's analysis of AI to argue that attention to the needs of each patient requires the physician to attune his or her perception to the patient's history and physical exam, an ability that seems uniquely human. Human physician judgment will remain better suited to the practice of primary care despite anticipated advances in AI technology.

Heidegger’s Twofold Treatment of Modern Technology

In this article the twofoldness of Heidegger’s treatment of modern technology is presented. Firstly, it is shown that one can trace the line of thinking on modern technology from the earliest to the latest of Heidegger’s thinking periods. Though Heidegger claimed that it was firstly the task to understand the essence of modern technology that concerned him, it is still possible to discern basic trends of treatment or evaluation of modern technology in his thinking. On the one hand, the Heideggerian critique of modern technoscientific revelation of reality is presented: Heidegger stressed not only the negative practical consequences of technology as ecological crisis but also ontological ones as the disappearance of the experience of Being itself. The program of the overcoming of technology is presented as well as some examples of the alternatives. On the other hand, the positive or appropriative treatment of modern technology is presented. The fragmentary suggestions that it is precisely the modern technological revealing of reality that prepares the way for the authentic experience of Being are developed by connecting them with early Heidegger’s claim that it is the basic experience of production that forms the conceptual horizon of Western culture. The possibility that this line of Heideggerian thinking might help to understand and articulate such important phenomena of current technoscientific condition as synthetic biology is mentioned.

Meillassoux, Correlationism, and the Ontological Difference

Meillassoux defines “correlationism” as the view that we can only access the mutual dependence of thought and being—specifically, subjectivity and objectivity—which he attributes to Heidegger. This attribution is inapt. It is only by accessing being—via existential analysis—that we can properly distinguish beings like subjects and objects. I propose that Meillassoux’s misattribution ignores the ontological difference that drives Heidegger’s project. First, I demonstrate the inadequacy of Meillassoux’s account of correlationism as a criticism of Heidegger and dispense with an objection. Second, I argue that Meillassoux’s neglect of the ontological difference stems from a question-begging appeal to transcendental realism, which is at odds with Heidegger’s twin claims for a variety of transcendental idealism in Being and Time. Third, I offer a reflection on three general marks of transcendental idealism.

Был ли Хайдеггер антисемитом? О «Черных тетрадях» и нынешнем положении критики Хайдеггера

Был ли Хайдеггер антисемитом? О «Черных тетрадях» и нынешнем положении критики Хайдеггера

Inheriting Hölderlin: Adorno, Parataxis

Inheriting Hölderlin:Adorno, Parataxis Geoffrey Wildanger (bio) Theodor W. Adorno's essay "Parataxis" can be read as a sustained engagement with the problem of inheriting. With its first sentence, the essay announces itself as a project of, and a reflection upon, inheriting: "There is no question that the understanding of Hölderlin's work has grown along with his fame since the school of Stefan George demolished the conception of him as a quiet, refined minor poet with a touching life story."1 In other words, since George and his school cleared the debris occluding Hölderlin's legacy of great value and began to inherit it, Hölderlin has once again been read: inheriting a legacy allows for it to live on, for one to live in it. Yet this inheritance is of a contested legacy, for while philologists such as Norbert von Hellingrath, Friedrich Beissner, and Emil Staiger made it possible, "the firm foundation philology imagines it possesses has proved unstable" (109). Philology's firm foundation trembles under the weight of das Gedichtete, for what philological explanation is compelled to clear out of the way nevertheless fails to disappear from what first Benjamin and later Heidegger called "das Gedichtete," that which has been composed poetically. This moment, which eludes the grasp of philology, inherently demands interpretation. It is the moment that is obscure in literary works, not what is thought in them, [End Page 585] that necessitates recourse to philosophy. But it is incommensurable with intention, 'the poet's meaning, to which Beissner appeals […]. (111–12) As the invocation of these two names, and das Gedichtete, makes clear, "Parataxis" concerns more than the problem of inheriting Hölderlin. As Beatrice Hanssen reminds us, "in using the term Gedichtete, Adorno […] appropriated a concept that his friend Walter Benjamin had introduced […]. With this term, Adorno not only sought to qualify the strangeness, otherness, and sublime darkness that distinguished Hölderlin's late lyric work, but also its truth content […], which eluded traditional methods of literary analysis […] no less than Heidegger's."2 In fact, "Parataxis" reflects on several concrete instances of inheriting Hölderlin: Adorno's own, Benjamin's, Beissner's, and Heidegger's. I wish to interrogate the three positions Adorno advances: a critique of Heidegger, a reading of Hölderlin, and a claim about interpretation in general. In all three cases, Adorno employs parataxis both as a formal device and as an analogy for literary interpretation that negotiates the caesura of historical distance and differentiation, rather than a presentist negotiation that collapses this distance by homogenizing difference.3 In other words, "Parataxis" is about inheriting insofar as it develops a theory of interpretation. In rhetoric, parataxis refers to the practice of placing phrases or parts of speech next to each other without coordinating or subordinating conjunctions. Harte Fügung, parataxis, in Norbert von Hellingrath's words, "makes possible for individual words themselves to establish relational unity,"4 rather than unity being imposed by a legislating subject. Adorno draws an analogy between this syntactic structure [End Page 586] and the interpretation of literature. He argues that interpretation entails viewing historical moments as separated from each other by the caesura of historical distance. Rather than seeking to collapse this distance, the critic must allow it to persist as a principle of interpretation. Otherwise, all historical objects are subsumed to the interpretive demands of the reader's present, imputing hermeneutic sovereignty to the reader in an effort to appropriate the past as one wishes. On the other hand, recognizing the distance and difference of history allows the reader to come to a better understanding of one's own historico-critical moment at the same time as understanding the text in its own. Adorno accuses Heidegger of the former gesture, while attempting to model an exemplary version of the latter approach in his reading of Hölderlin. He suggests an analogy between parataxis and reading to describe his method of interpretation, because both incorporate the space of caesura without collapsing it. The critical literature pertaining to Adorno's conflict with Heidegger is extensive, and it has received renewed attention in light of the recent publication of Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte. I...

La angustia de encontrarse con Dios.

The existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger by Edith Stein is a critique of Heidegger´s Being and time. Stein summarizes the fundamental lines of Heidegger´s opus magnum and then criticizes it from phenomenology, Scholastics, and Christianism, the religion she converted to. Her critical standing focuses on the main concepts on which the work is based, such as the starting point of ontology, the being, Dasein, the condition of the thrown one, the fall, temporality, the One, death, and the denial of God’s existence. The purpose of this study is to examine the reasons that make impossible to affrm God’s existence in Heidegger´s Being and time.

Subjectivité et projet. La critique patočkienne du concept heideggérien de "projet de possibilités"

Subjectivity and Project. Patočka's critique of Heidegger's concept "project of possibilities" The purpose of this article is to lay out the way the main aspects of Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger's fundamental ontology. More precisely, I intend to restate the central arguments Patočka raised against Heidegger's characterization of "understanding" (Verstehen) as a "project". In the first part, I will single out Patočka's project of an "asubjective phenomenology" by distinguishing it from another asubjective project (that of Aristotle) and from the subjective phenomenology. In the second part, I will examine some central theses Heidegger puts forth in §31 of Being and Time in order to show the inescapable difficulties they bring about. In the final part, I will describe the tenets around which Patočka's critical reading of Heidegger revolves. I will explore the two directions of this critique that correspond to the double orientation of asubjective phenomenology: a) on the one hand, the priority of the phenomenal field with regard to any subjective sense-bestowal; b) the importance of the phenomenon of corporeity for an accurate apprehension of subjectivity.

Deconstructing the substantialist conception of God: recasting Heidegger's critique of Augustine

In this paper, I argue that Augustine's conception of God as substance (substantia) has misleadingly been evoked by Martin Heidegger's deconstruction of onto-theological and substantialist variants of metaphysics as they mistook entities (Seienden, entia, beings) for their very Being (Sein, ens, esse) which cannot be conceptualized or objectified by human thinking, but makes both their thought and reality possible. Even though Augustine sought somehow to reconcile a Neoplatonic, essentialist cosmology with a Judeo-Christian worldview of historical redemption, Heidegger not only failed to properly recognize his indebtedness to Augustinian existential anthropology, but also the latter's contention that the actuality of beings and contingent history ultimately determines ontological concepts in their basic difference from their ontical counterparts, compromising thus Heidegger's intuitive criticisms against the confusion between God and Being (Sein).

The Beast in the Machine: Modernity, Aviation and the Legacies of Colonialism in Roger McDonald’s Slipstream

ABSTRACTThe expectation that a novel about a celebrity aviator will romanticise flight and glorify the pilot is a product of the mythologisation of aviation, which this essay understands is a response to the threat of technology and the alienating conditions of modernity. Roger McDonald’s novel Slipstream refuses to reproduce this mythology, expressing a literary aspiration to use the form of the modern novel to explore the entanglement of the subject under the conditions of postcolonial modernity. My argument will develop through three parts. The first section will explore the mythologisation of aviation as a symptom of modernity. The second will examine the ways in which the novel uses its modernist form to call into question the celebrity of the aviator and the spectacle of flight. This part of my argument is indebted to the critique by German philosopher Martin Heidegger of the technological mode of Being. Finally, I take up the postcolonial implications of the Heideggerian critique in a country in which many of modernism’s standard antidotes to the problems of its century are compromised by the legacies of colonialism.

Gender by Dasein? A Heideggerian critique of Suzanne Kessler and the medical management of infants born with disorders of sexual development.

This article explores the relationship between gender, technology, language, and how infants and children born with disorders of sexual development are shaped into intelligible members of the community. The contemporary medical model maintains that children ought to be both socially and surgically assigned and reared as one particular gender. Gender scholar Suzanne Kessler rejects this position and argues for the acceptance of greater genital variability through the use of language. Using a Heideggerian lens, the main question I seek to answer in this article is: does Kessler's approach succeed in its aim to better treat individuals born with disorders of sexual development? I argue that Kessler is successful in offering practical solutions for persons with intersexed conditions to exist and flourish as intelligible members of the community, but that her project ultimately relies on power to "challenge forth" greater acceptance of genital variance. Building on the work of Kessler and Heidegger, I argue that a better approach to making intelligible the existence of an infant born with a disorder of sexual development is not to rely on the manipulation of language, but to instead reinvigorate a sense of the sacred in response to having an intersex condition.

The Imagination in Kant and Fichte, and Some Reflections on Heidegger’s Interpretation

The paper deals with the meaning of the transcendental imagination in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, comparing it with the productive imagination proposed by Fichte in his Wissenschaftslehre of 1794. It also presents Heidegger’s views concerning both Kant and Fichte. Regarding Kant there is also a discussion of the difference between the first and second editions of the First Critique. It may be noted that Heidegger prefers the first edition to the second, since, in his view, the latter leads into German Idealism. In Fichte’s philosophy the imagination plays a considerably larger role than it does in Kant. And Heidegger early on (in 1929) recognizes the importance of Fichte as a philosopher in its own right, and not just, as was customary in the period, a mere transitional figure between Kant and Hegel. The paper concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s views regarding both Fichte and Kant. Though there is an addendum discussing the function of the imagination in the aesthetics of Kant (classicism), in that of Fichte (romanticism), and a brief comparison with Heidegger’s own aesthetics.

Rhythm and Technics: On Heidegger’s Commentary on Rimbaud

This article takes up Heidegger’s commentary on Rimbaud’s Lettres du voyant as the starting point for an exploration of the question of rhythm in Heidegger’s thought, and an attempt to situate it within his understanding of technics and Being. Besides pursuing a historical study of the concept of rhythm in Heidegger’s work, this article proposes to understand rhythm through the concept of individuation. It responds to the French philosopher Jacques Garelli’s critique of Heidegger that the latter ignores the question of individuation and always starts with beings that are already individuated. On the contrary, this article attempts to sketch a theory of individuation of rhythm in Heidegger’s proper thinking through a re-interpretation of the Fug—a word he used to translate the Greek word δίκη and words derived from it: joint (Fuge), structure (Gefüge), submission (sich fugen), etc.

Realism without Speculation

In this article, we evaluate Meillassoux’s criticism of correlationism in general and of Heidegger’s correlationism in particular. Contrary to earlier contributions, we argue that Meillassoux’s reflections on uncorrelated being not only serve an epistemological but also an ontological interest; both Meillassoux and Heidegger are interested in the way we have access to uncorrelated being as well as in the nature of uncorrelated being itself. After introducing Meillassoux’s criticism of the correlationism of Heidegger, we reflect on three arguments of his account of planet earth as un-correlated being; the emergence of planet earth, the presupposed accessibility of un-correlated being and his criticism of Heidegger’s fideism. Although it becomes clear that Meillassoux’s criticism of correlationism is not applicable in the case of Heidegger, it also helps us to articulate the relevance of Heidegger’s “realist” approach of uncorrelated being in contemporary philosophy.

The "Protofigural" and the "Event"

Translated by Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez, Tobias Keiling, Ian Alexander Moore, and Yuliya Aleksandrovna TsutserovaThe turnthat is taken by Heidegger in matters of art and aesthetics is less sharp than those carried out by him in other areas of his thinking. This should have become clear in Cezanne chapter [of Kunst als Enteignis1]. The reason that such is less than evident-and that artwork essay of 1935-36 still looms large as philosophy of art of Heidegger-lies in textual and publication history [of Heidegger's writings].Yet today, when one sets out to pursue with Heidegger2 one can avoid including attempts of late and latest Heidegger in matters of art and aesthetics as well. Future attempts at exploring such paths will receive support in now partly published notes on Klee from Heidegger's Nachlass.3 However, unnecessarily raised expectations concerning degree of elaboration and resolution of these sketches cannot be even remotely met: Heidegger's Klee notes remain a challenge for every interpreter; and latter-no less than in case of Cezanne-will be needed all more because of conjectural nature of these notations. It is now becoming more and more clear that (and why) Klee-beside Cezanne and East Asian art-marks one of three defining pinnacles of Heidegger's late art paths.The turn toward Klee is associated, in Heidegger, with a destructuring [Destruktion] of traditional-metaphysical-Western art, and alongside it, with a critique of his artwork essay of 1935-36. In opposition to such traditional art, Heidegger reserves for Klee an exceptional place, one he does not concede to abstract art following Klee; he rather accuses it of same metaphysical essence he attacks in art working in an objective manner. This is to be presented in section 1 and demonstrated exclusively on basis of Heidegger's Klee notes. The theme of section 2 will be properly Heideggerian perspective on, and interpretation of, art of Klee. In particular, following vanishing points of Heidegger's interpretation will be elaborated: prefigural [ Vorbildliche] as a kind of definition of preoccupation of earlier art (2.a), gained from new standpoint of protofigural [ Urbildlichen] in art of Klee (2.b). Heidegger seeks to grasp this specificity of Klee's art by means of concepts of bringingforth [Her-vor-bringen].''plasticity [Bildsamkeit] of and seeing (2.c). His innovation with regard to production and reception is to be discussed in section 2.d, Not images, but states; theme of last section will be the visible and invisible (2.e).i. Between Metaphysical Art of Past and that of Today: The Work of Paul Klee; Heidegger's Critique of Artwork EssayIn Klee notes, Heidegger continues what he had already begun in Contributions to Philosophy (of Even) and in marginalia of artwork essay:5 he subjects artwork essay to an immanent critique that keeps to path of his thought. He observes that artwork essay thinks historically-the works that have been. It is no longer constructing of and setting forth of as thematized in artwork essay, which are to be set as a task for future art, but rather bringing about of re-lation from out of [the]6 event of fugue.This step back, i.e., grounding of load-bearing categories of artwork essay, world and earth, within event, does not pertain solely to Heidegger's earlier attempt at philosophy of art. It pertains to art itself! In artwork essay, he had sought (and believed to have found) someone in Western art who would have been in solidarity with his struggle against metaphysics, and had therefore intended to protect Western art from aesthetico-metaphysical encroachments. Now he comes to suspect art itself-and not merely its interpretation and theoretical self-understanding-of possessing a metaphysical essence: 'Art' as such [is]7 of a metaphysical essence. …

Social Transformation and Online Technology

The Internet age has seen the influential rise of social media. Consumer culture is tied to this modern phenomenon. This paper begins with an exposition of Herbert Marcuse’s grounding in phenomenology and his subsequent critique of Heidegger’s apolitical Dasein. In explicating Marcuse’s critical theory of technology, this paper will retrace Hegel’s influence on Marcuse in the idea of the dialectic. The dialectic is an integral aspect of social transformation. While modern technology may be value-neutral, it is argued herein that the lack of depth in social media provokes thought and invites critical dissent. Marcuse believes in the capacity of modern tools to effect social reform through adaptation. But emerging pathologies from online technology also have pressing challenges. For instance, social media makes manifest a dominant order that can be manipulative. It can be said that particular interests, notably from business and capitalists, shape the type of consumer culture that online technology promotes. In advancing Marcuse’s relevance in today’s Internet age, the paper will explore how social media as a platform can truly liberate the individual from the ills that consumerism peddles online.

Conceptos y fundamentos para una crítica del ‘tiempo vulgar’ en Heidegger

Una crítica del concepto vulgar de tiempo busca explicitar los caracteres básicos de dicho concepto y fundamentalmente las aporías en el planteo. En relación a lo primero, en este artículo se pone énfasis en el carácter “originario” del concepto vulgar, es decir, su conexión con el “tiempo del mundo” y en el nexo de fundamentación que conecta ambos – tiempo vulgar y tiempo del mundo – con la temporalidad originaria del Dasein. En relación a lo segundo (las aporías), el artículo cuestiona los límites de una atribución del concepto vulgar de tiempo a Aristóteles; se discute asimismo la homologación de espacio y tiempo, por un lado, y la relación entre tiempo y presencia por otro, dos presupuestos de la representación tradicional (física y filosófica) del tiempo como medida/parámetro de los cambios en general.

The aesthetic turn

This paper considers alternative styles of philosophy, based on art or science, through an investigation of Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger. Carnap’s criticism of Heidegger’s account of das Nichts is analysed in relation to Immanuel Kant’s theory of the imagination. Heidegger’s account of the work of art demonstrates philosophies that take science as their model, over-emphasize cognition, and do not adequately consider the importance of apprehension.

Alterity and the call of conscience: Heidegger, Levinas, and Ricoeur

Since the publication and reception of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, it has become standard practice among some authors to argue that Heidegger’s thinking of being, both early and late, is an insistent meditation on the alterity of the self in the call of conscience and the alterity of being in relation to beings, and that this thought is consequently already ‘ethical’. This line of argument has been recently pursued by Dastur, Raffoul, and Ricoeur. None of them contests that there is a difference between the alterity of the self and the alterity of the other. But they argue that the experience of the first is the condition of possibility of gaining access to the second. There are several reasons why I have failed to be convinced by this argument. In this paper, I spell out those reasons and argue that Ricoeur’s attempt to carve out a path between Heidegger and Levinas remains unsuccessful.