Heidegger's Philosophy Research Articles

Towards an Algebra of Existence and Development of Unique Subjects with Unique Minds: a Commentary to Jens Mammen's Book.

In the commentary to Jens Mammen's book A New Logical Foundation for Psychology (2017), three issues are discussed. The first one concerns possible interrelations of: (a) others' irreplaceability and existential irretrievability rigorously proved by Mammen; and (b) morality and attitudes to the others. Lem's criticism of Heidegger's existential philosophy, which paradoxically ignores mass homicide, is discussed in the context of topology of being. Different attitudes to the other as irreplaceable and irretrievable (e.g., in case of apprehension and execution of a murderer) are analyzed. The second issue concerns the possibility of true duplicates of the same person. The paradox of copied complexity is introduced. The third issue concerns reductionism (including brain reductionism) and opportunities to deduce various phenomena of development (mental development, actual genesis of creative thinking, etc.) from the new logical foundation for psychology built by Mammen.

Another Look at Heideggerian Cinema: Cinematic Excess, Antonioni's Dead Time and the Film-Photographic Image as Copy

Within the loose group of studies that are sometimes labelled Heideggerian cinema – studies in which scholars consider film in conjunction with Heidegger's philosophy – little attention has been paid to Heidegger's actual view of cinema. This omission is not only odd (Heidegger's view of film would seem essential for a Heideggerian cinema) but it is also problematic. In the off-hand comments Heidegger directs towards film throughout his collected works he criticises the medium for its covering over of Being, a fact that makes engaging with film through Heidegger's thinking a questionable project. The present article aims to address this omission and to provide a conception of Heideggerian cinema that does not ignore, but answers, Heidegger's criticism. It argues that it is not the technological nature of cinema that is the source of Heidegger's hostility towards the medium but his conception of the film-photographic image as a transparent copy of the world. It is on this basis that cinema is denied the capacity to manifest Being and hence is subject to critique. I then argue that Thompson's notion of cinematic excess reveals that the film-photographic image need not be as transparent as Heidegger assumes and that a cinematic presentation of Being is possible. To explore this idea further the article considers the use of dead time by Michelangelo Antonioni, particularly in his film L'eclisse.

Editorial

To all readers who followed Hawiiyat, the University of Balamand Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from its first issue, I have the pleasure to offer them this Florilege issue after an interruption of four years. It contains mainly philosophical, literary and political studies, as well as research in other domains written by colleagues from the University of Balamand, the Lebanese University, the University of AI-Yarrnouk, the University of Jordan, and the University of Mascara in Algeria. These articles, unveil, in some way, the basic interests of our Balamand Faculty as well as the interests of all those who have participated in this volume. It truly merits our attention. The study by Ghomari Taibi focuses on the current political situation in the Arab world and defends, in its interpretation of the events that are shaking Arab societies, the thesis of "social disintegration". This social disintegration has made those societies open to the ideas and actions of all sorts of adventurers and manipulators. The researches done by Mazen Naous, Peter Williams, Nada Sayed-Ziade and Frank Darwiche analyze various academic questions posed by the literary works that they examine in order to understand and rediscover the authors. Dealing with the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson and of Imru' a1-Qais; dealing with the City in French contemporary poetry; dealing with a novel of Vladimir Nabokov or with the problem of "god" in Heidegger's philosophy and the Sufism of Ibn' Arabi , these studies, written with ardour and passion, deserve our admiration. They make us love the works and understand the said authors by giving us profound insight into the human soul. The article by Charbel Dagher, which focuses on the relationship between aesthetics and citizenship, is astonishing and enticing when it relates the aesthetic expressions to political citizenship. Finally, the article of Rajai Khanji and Muhammad Saraireh on the strategies of translation gives new insight into the difficulties of the work of the translators, the go-betweens or passeurs of cultures. The melange of trilingual studies of this ISlh issue of Hawliyat is innovative. I am sure it will elicit reflection and debate. Returning to its annual rendez-vous, Hawliyat is committed, beyond unforeseeable events of the time and the world, to remaining, in the forthcoming issues, a major centre of scientific university research and intellectual life in the pure humanist tradition: the one of freedom of the spirit and intellectual independence.

Exploring the lived experience of migrants dying away from their country of origin

Migrants experience challenges settling into a new society, while retaining their cultural and religious values. Concurrently facing an end-of-life illness can result in existential distress affecting quality of dying. This study aimed to explore the lived experience of migrants dying away from their country of birth or origin. The study design used a phenomenological approach using Heidegger's philosophy to gather and interpret dying migrants' stories. Participants were a purposive sample of New Zealand immigrants experiencing end-of-life illness and under hospice care. Participants were interviewed at home. Coherent stories were drawn from the transcribed interviews and analysed using iterative methods. Interpretive notions were formed through contemplation and writing. The ten participants, seven males and three females, were of different ethnicities and countries of origin. Three notions emerged. The first was dual possession of a new hybrid identity developed in their adoptive country, and an inner ethnic and cultural identity, in varying degrees of harmony with each other. The second was being in life review-reliving homeland memories and letting go of dreams. The third notion showed how they sought resolution by enacting continuity through their children, hoping for a final homeland visit, or conveying their dying wishes. How life review was enacted for each migrant and resolution depended on finding some degree of belonging in their country of adoption. Implications for end-of-life care include education to increase practitioner awareness and use of formal and informal life review. Enhancing spiritual well-being can assist resolution of end-of-life adjustment.

Rhetorical Action inRektoratsrede: Calling Heidegger'sGefolgschaft

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes Heidegger's rhetoric in his most famous political address, the Rektoratsrede, which he delivered at the University of Freiburg on 27 May 1933. After I set out the political and philosophical kairos of the Rektoratsrede by drawing on Heidegger's contemporary lectures, letters, and Ponderings, in part 2 I use classical rhetorical resources and Heidegger's philosophy of temporality in Sein und Zeit (1927) to analyze the arrangement of his speech. In part 3, I examine two key National Socialist terms in the speech's climax. In part 4, I consider Heidegger's elocutio—his artful use of charged figures of speech and thought in the Rektoratsrede—in more detail. Concluding remarks reflect on the value and limits of the analysis in the context of debates about Heidegger's politics and its imbrication with his thought.

The late Heidegger and a post-theistic understanding of religion

AbstractThis article explores Heidegger's later philosophy with regard to the problem of a philosophical interpretation of religious language. In what follows, I will draw upon the work of Wittgenstein and refer to the cosmological argument to read Heidegger in terms of a post-theistic understanding of religious language that avoids the shortcomings of both theistic realism and non-cognitivism. At the same time, I am proposing a new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy against this background. I will show that, in spite of its hermeticism, Heidegger's later philosophy has a specific relevance to philosophy of religion that still needs to be explored.

Postmodernism as conservatism: deconstruction of deconstruction as a way of avoiding choice "Fa versus Antifa"

The article is devoted to the philosophical and cultural analysis of postmodern philosophy (post-structuralism) on the basis of the Hegelian methodology, Heidegger's philosophy of language, structural psychoanalysis, deconstructionism, hermeneutics, universal ethics and philosophy of dialogue. The article substantiates the thesis that postmodernism as a model of theoretical reflection is autonomous with regard to liberalism and relativism with the concept of a "French school", which has an anti-liberal orientation and corresponds to the conservative Christian attitudes imposed by implicit ontological meanings. The medieval ontological "nuclei" of postmodernism are concepts: "Real" by J. Lacan, "Archepism" by J. Derrida, "Schizoid" by J. Deleuze, "language reconfiguration" by P. Ricker. Thus, freed from the stereotypes of relativity, postmodernism appears as a third (conservative) alternative in opposition to the European choice between liberalism and radicalism.The double standard extends to the attitude of liberals to radical currents in crisis processes. Initially, liberal leaders take an overwhelming majority in right-wing nationalism, using it as a tool to support the status quo of capitalism, a means of distracting the masses from real problems, and a mechanism of intimidation. When the mass is intimidated enough, it is proposed to liberalism as "a source of defacing" as the "only alternative". We can talk about the artificial situation of identifying the choice of Fa versus Antifa for the subject who is forced to choose between "purse and life" - between multiculturalism and radical nationalismThe key task of structural psychoanalysis is not only the returning of the conflict to its original place, that is, the disclosure of the deep-seated class traumas of the capitalist neoliberal world itself, according to S. Zizek and other representatives of the Slovenian school, but also - the separation of the philosophy of postmodernism as a spiritual phenomenon from political projects of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, which until recently were considered an applied dimension of postmodern politics and promoted the introduction into the social practice of the vicious circle "liberalism - nationalism liberalism" - a circle that does not provide choice and which excludes from its own semiosfery any other values: ethical and dialogical, modern, conservative, religious, international, non-system Left (antyhlobalistic) and others. In order to realize this task, postmodernism must be considered under the other (not postmodern) viewpoint, depriving it of the stereotypes of "relativism", "cynicism" and "enlightenment", that is, it is necessary to demonstrate that the authentic core of postmodern philosophy is far from multicultural indifference of "post-truth" and includes expressive ontological motives.The double goal of our study: to carry out a critical rethinking of postmodernism as a form of manifestation of a conservative attitude based on hereditary archetypes of the Middle Ages and Modernism, and to show that postmodernism as a philosophy is not the cause of the tragic self-denial of postmodernism as an applied measurement of multiculturalism, that multiculturalism with its vicious circles of relativity , devastation and radicalism is separate from the phenomenon of postmodernism and belongs to the "shock" project of American liberal democracy, and not to "French school" Moreover, the School of Post-Structuralism of the Sorbonne, as the basis of postmodernism, is the descendant of the Marxist school of "new left" in Frankfurt and its meaning is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-liberal.By combining among themselves in a single interdisciplinary field the classical philosophy of M. Heidegger's language, J. G. Derrida's "grammar", G. Lacan's structural psychoanalysis, J. Habermas's universal ethics, J. de Gaulle's schizodiscourse, and hermeneutics and the philosophy of P. Ricker's dialogue, we have shown that In the semantic field of postmodernism there are ontological kernels of conservatism, which approximate this philosophical model to medieval traditionalist thought and make the border between modern and postmodern very conditional. The return of postmodernism to the status of the philosophy of being and the liberation of the French school from the stereotypes of "lack" and "loseness" is necessary in order to protect postmodernism from accusations of cynicism, relativism and "emptiness", since these allegations are, firstly, based on the mixing of postmodernism with liberal irony, and, secondly, often serve as an excuse for the revival of various kinds of fundamentalist aspirations. We have shown that liberalism, by provoking through the irony of the identification of the "illusion", initially contributes to the development of radical movements, and then, when they emerge from the symbolic control, they remove them from the agenda as "fascist", opposing them to themselves. There is a closed vicious circle of impossibility to choose between "Fa and Antifa". Our work was an attempt to remove postmodernism from this circle.

하이데거 예술론의 특성: 그 의미와 의의에 대한 비판적 검토

하이데거 예술론의 특성: 그 의미와 의의에 대한 비판적 검토

Pedagogia da “presença”: uma aproximação da “analítica existencial” de Martin Heidegger e suas consequências nos processos educativos

Usamos o termo pedagogia da “presença” para aproximarmos sutilmente o pensamento de Heidegger da questão pedagógica e educativa. O objetivo desse trabalho é elucidar uma possível reflexão sobre alguns dos principais conceitos da filosofia de Heidegger, especificamente, “ser-aí”, “mundo”, “morte”, “cuidado”, “angustia” e “presença”, em consonância com os processos educativos. Acreditamos que a proposta do autor nos centraliza em um viés crítico ao convencionalismo científico perante os processos educativos tradicionais. Em suma, defendemos a ideia que essa análise nos coloca em problemas que consideram o humanismo e axiológica com ponto chave para um “outro pensar” da educação, tendo sua incidência mais considerável, na alteridade.

Fathers: The Lost Ring in the Chain of Family-Centered Care: A Phenomenological Study in Neonatal Intensive Care Units of Iran.

The basic principles of family-centered care in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) include the unlimited presence of parents and their participation in infant's care. Nurses play a central role in encouraging parental attachment with their infant. This study was carried out with the aim of understanding NICU nurses' lived experiences of family participation in family-centered care. This interpretative phenomenological study was conducted on the basis of Heideggerian philosophy. The data were collected using semistructured interviews and field notes and analyzed through the 7-stage Diekelmann, Allen, and Tanner approach. Two overarching themes emerged including "mother's centrality in the care chain" and "fathers; the lost ring in the care chain" each of which consisted of 3 and 4 subthemes, respectively. Interviews indicated that in Iran's NICUs, conditions for the presence of parents were appropriate for the mothers and they were encouraged to engage in family-centered care but the fathers' participation was limited due to traditional attitudes, cultural-religious background, and difficulties relating to the hospitals' organizational rules. Fathers' participation in family-centered care seems to be enhanced through providing facilities, altering the organizational rules, attempting to modify traditional social attitudes, and educating parents and nurses. Future research should explore the experience of mothers and fathers of infants in NICU in Iran to achieve a comprehensive understanding of their role in family-centered care.

Being active after hip fracture; older people’s lived experiences of facilitators and barriers

ABSTRACT Hip fracture (HF) incidents can severely restrict the activity and well-being of older people. While participation in activities may be related to lived experiences of meaningfulness, the aim of this study was to explore facilitators and barriers for being active as experienced by older people during the first six months after HF. The study used a phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology informed by the philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer. Two men and 11 women with reduced functioning prior to the HF were interviewed 2 weeks (n=13) and again 6 months (n=11) after discharge. Referring to own pre-understanding including a theoretical framework of well-being, a method of meaning condensation was applied to structure the data. A deeper understanding was gradually achieved through a movement between the parts and the wholes. Two themes emerged: (1) “Inner dialogue and actions” with the sub-themes “Inner driving forces” and “Inner limitations”; (2) “Struggling and Striving” with the sub-themes “Building relationships” and “Considering complications and conditions”. We conclude that facilitators for older people to experience well-being while being active involve meaningful relationships with other people, a sense of own identity and being at peace and may be influenced by relationships with staff, physical surroundings, public health services, and health problems.

Filozoficzne i polityczne milczenie Martina Heideggera

This article discusses the problem of Martin Heidegger's famous involvement in Nazism. This problem has already been widely discussed in the literature, but it is worth re-thinking. The question of Heidegger's involvement and, above all, his post-war silence about Nazi crimes have been discussed basically from the perspective of his anti-Semitic attitude, personal ambitions or even as naive thinking. Perhaps there is worth looking at this problem from the point of view of Heidegger's philosophy and, above all, the role and meaning of language. Heidegger called for reaching the covered base – being itself. The key to this must be to reach the boundaries of language, that is, the transition from the language of everyday life, which is a consequence of an attitude oriented only to naive existence itself (or ontity), to the language of being. This path leads inevitably to the border of language, that is to the "place" where language balances between saying and silence (syge). Heidegger saw it as the proper (true) philosophical attitude, which is a discovery in the "event" of truth of being. The tragedy (meaning in Ancient Greek tradition) takes place here in the man's realization of his helplessness towards the truth of being, and thus of silence, which is a transition from the state of philosophical silence to political silence. The philosopher is probably "doomed" to political engagement (as said Slavoj Žižek), and a consequence of it could be the famous "Syracuse".

Meaning and Mortality in Kierkegaard and Heidegger: Origins of the Existential Philosophy of Death by Adam Buben

Reviewed by: Meaning and Mortality in Kierkegaard and Heidegger: Origins of the Existential Philosophy of Death by Adam Buben Susan-Judith Hoffmann Adam Buben. Meaning and Mortality in Kierkegaard and Heidegger: Origins of the Existential Philosophy of Death. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv + 189. Paper, $34.95. Buben undertakes the ambitious project of providing "a compelling framework for understanding the ways in which philosophy has discussed death" (3). This is a tall order for 136 pages of text, all the more so since he argues that the thinkers of western philosophy before Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's innovative existential philosophy of death can be broadly categorized into a Platonic strain, and an Epicurean strain. The Platonic strain suggests that death should not be feared, as the soul will survive the death of the body. Thinkers such as the Apostle Paul, Plotinus, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, and Pascal are briefly discussed as examples. Membership in the Epicurean strain is marked by the conviction that the particles of the soul disperse at death and leave no subject in any form that might experience evil or salvation. Since there is no "meaningful postmortem" (23) experience, concerns with death are rendered irrelevant in life. The Epicurean strain of thought, Buben argues, was appropriated by the Stoics, Montaigne, Spinoza, [End Page 181] Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and even Hegel, all of whom are critical of the Platonic recommendation of "dying to" the world (11) to focus on an afterlife that finds its heyday in Christian thought. Buben admits that it is difficult to situate Hegel in this Platonic/Epicurean dichotomy. Ultimately, Buben reads Hegel as arguing that human beings can find divinity in their mortal selves and not in some future heavenly realm. Buben briefly discusses a few other notable exceptions to the Platonic/Epicurean framework, namely analytic philosophers Thomas Nagel and George Pitcher. Given that they argue that one need not experience harm for harm to be done, they do not fit comfortably into the Epicurean framework. The two strains are uniquely merged in Kierkegaard and Heidegger, resulting in an existential account of death, in which, contra Epicurus, death and the I coexist, and contra Plato, life must not be a "dying to the world" in preparation for an eternal afterlife. According to Buben's reading, Kierkegaard is at odds with the Epicurean strain because Kierkegaard is concerned with the theme of death in life in ever-increasing intensity throughout his corpus. Moreover, Kierkegaard is highly critical of the Platonic/Christian strain that attempts to offer individuals worldly comfort by mitigating the fear of death with hope for an afterlife. Buben offers an interesting account of Kierkegaard and his relationship to Christianity; and he provides ample references to Kierkegaard's texts. He also includes a thorough and valuable discussion of Kierkegaard scholarship, as well as an interesting engagement with Hegel's thought on Christianity. One drawback to this section of the book is that Buben does not sufficiently distinguish between the individual Socrates's and Plato's doctrines. Buben argues that Kierkegaard is critical of Plato's "dying away from the world"; however, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard emphatically praises Socrates for being an authentic individual who held fast to uncertainty and was therefore a truly subjective thinker. In the chapter on death in Being and Time, Buben promises to clarify, by means of a careful explication, "the most controversial and difficult in the history of philosophy's dealings with the topic" (92) and to argue that the role that death plays in the "care" structure of Dasein constitutes an important "response" to Epicurus. In the first part of the chapter, Buben gives a detailed analysis of the death chapter. He concludes, along with Heidegger, that Dasein released from the illusions of the "they" and inauthentic ways of understanding death as demise, inter alia, will enjoy a robust freedom to be what it really is. The last part of the book offers an interesting discussion of the unacknowledged debt that Heidegger owes to Kierkegaard's thought and underscores the similarity in their projects. The heart of their kinship lies in "the combination of maintaining a sense of dying to the world while...

Heidegger’s Manichaeism. Comments on Peter Trawny’s Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy

Heidegger’s Manichaeism: Comments on Peter Trawny’s Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy. In the book Heidegger and the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy, Peter Trawny convincingly shows that anti-Semitism in Heidegger’s thought does not have the shape of the Nazi call for racial discrimination, but rather is a stereotypical and unfortunate element of Heidegger’s call for a transformation of thinking so that philosophy and the human attitude to life would be focused on Being itself (Seyn selbst) instead of beings (Seiendes). Despite the advantages of Trawny’s book, I think that Trawny unlawfully tries to demonstrate that anti-Semitism is the main ethical and political problem of Heideggerian philosophy, while in my opinion the main problem is Heidegger’s “being-historical Manichaeism” — a phenomenon which is only marginally evoked by Trawny. This Manichaeism brings Heidegger to criticize the values of human subjectivity, personality and social and economic self-security as the en-emies of Being. These views not only can have severe political collectivist implications, but — to put it in the terminology of Sein und Zeit — they also make Heidegger speak in the manner of the conservative variant of “idle talk” (Gerede) of “the they” (das Man).

Professional insights from nurses who are carers for family with chronic illness: A phenomenological approach

BackgroundThe incidence of chronic illness is growing globally and nurses within the family circle often fulfil a caring role for relatives who are chronically ill. Registered nurses who are also carers have a unique vantage point to evaluate healthcare provision. AimThis study aimed to develop insights into healthcare provision from understanding the lived experience of participants who were family carer and professional nurse. MethodsThis paper is drawn from a larger phenomenological study that explored the lived experience of fifteen registered nurses who cared for family who had a chronic illness. Unstructured interviews of one hour duration were used as the method of data collection to enable thematic analysis of the findings within the context of Heideggerian philosophy. FindingsThe research identified that participants held three distinctive ways of being a nurse and family carer while at the bedside of their chronically ill family member. During the critical times of exacerbation and hospitalisation, the carer who is also a nurse, has professional and personal insights which enable them to; navigate healthcare systems to access care, progress through hospital safely and build pathways towards discharge. Discussion and conclusionIn contrast to much of the previous literature, which has focused upon the needs of nurses who are family carers, this paper focuses upon the contributions that participants can make to the nursing profession and the wider health industry. Understanding the contribution that carers can make to patient safety and improved health outcomes may bring focus and purpose to the implementation of care for the chronically ill. Participants developed insights into healthcare provision from repeated exposure through multiple admissions and this repository of knowledge may have previously been overlooked.

Transforming, storing and consuming athletic experiences: a coach’s narrative of using a video application

ABSTRACTThe analysis of sport performance in competitive contexts has become synonymous with the use of a range of software applications and hardware e.g. heart rate monitors and gps systems. With the prevalence of technology in mind, a small but growing corpus of literature has begun to consider this phenomenon and its influence upon the coaching process. This study adds to this literature by detailing the autoethnographic experiences of a case study coach; Derek. A contextualised and richly described narrative account of Derek’s experience of using coaching applications is provided. Analysis of Derek’s narrative suggests that technology can be a useful means by which individuals make sense of their experience. Specifically, (1) technology can be a ‘ready-to-hand’ instrument that enhances the coaching process. Unfortunately, (2) technology may become the only and ‘calculative’ means by which individuals come to understand their performance. In such instances, it is important to note that (3) the videos we use to understand our performance are transformed and incomplete representations of lived athletic experiences. Thus, Derek’s story illustrates how technology can be both an enabler and barrier to athletes who wish to holistically understand their own lived experiences and engage in coach-athlete relationships. The accompanying analysis draws upon concepts from Heideggerian philosophy to add insight into the use of technology within the coaching process. In so doing, the study prompts coaches to critically view their coach-athlete relationships as situated in a wider world which contains, and can be mediated by, technology. In addition, Derek’s story (re)directs researchers and coaching practitioners interested in technology to a useful literature (philosophy of technology) which may further inform their understanding of coach-athlete relationships.

Tensions in the personal world of the nurse family carer: A phenomenological approach.

The incidence of chronic illness is growing globally. As a result, there are fiscal and social implications for health delivery. Alongside the increased burden on health resources is the expectation that someone within the family will assume the responsibility of carer for those who are chronically ill. The expectation to assume the role of carer may be amplified for family members who are also nurses. Currently, there is little research that investigates the impact of nurses who are carers for family with a chronic illness. Consequently, this qualitative study, based on face-to-face and telephone dialogue, was conducted using unstructured interviews. A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach utilizing the hermeneutic circle was employed to understand the meaning of the transcriptions. Hermeneutic phenomenology inspired by Heideggerian philosophy was used as a framework to clarify themes and build ways of understanding the phenomenon of 'Being' a nurse and a family carer. Themes identified in the analysis of the study included a personal world, a professional world and a practical world. This paper explicates the findings from examination of the personal world of 'Being' a nurse who is also a family carer. Analysis revealed there were three facets to this way of 'Being': a shared experience, a caring experience and a fraught experience. The findings of the study disclosed that participants were informed by experiences that were both enriching and conflicting. These insights can enlighten healthcare professionals to the tensions which exist for nurses who care for family so that these considerations are incorporated into individualized and effective family-centred care.

Beholdenness to Entities and the Concept of ‘Dasein’: Phenomenology, Ontology and Idealism in the early Heidegger

The fear that Heidegger's early philosophy cannot ultimately be distinguished from a problematic idealism has a number of sources in his work. For example, Christina Lafont maintains—I think rightly—that the fact that ‘[w]e always move about in an understanding of being’ (SZ 5)1 lies ‘at the basis of Heidegger's philosophy as a whole’ (Lafont 2000: xiii). But she sees this as trapping us within that understanding such that ‘[t]here is no way to step outside of [it] in order to check its validity, to test whether or not our understanding of being coincides with the being of the things themselves’ (Lafont 2000: xiv); and the only way to escape the scepticism to which such trapping would seem to lead is to embrace the idealistic notion that, in some sense, that understanding determines the being of such things.

Heideggerian Ethics and Kantian Ethics: Diverging Interpretations in Contemporary French Debate

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to show how the interaction between Kantian ethics and some aspects of Heideggerian philosophy can lead to the model of a subject in immediate relationship with others and with his or her community. The positions of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida on this question are presented in contrast with those of Alain Renaut and Emmanuel Lévinas to elucidate their differing ways of interpreting the relationship between Kant and Heidegger with regard to ethics, apriorism, and subjectivity.

Exposed to an Accumulation of Burdensome Feelings

Seriously mentally ill patients' unusual behavior is considered challenging in caring relationships, but we know little about how this affects mental health nurses' vulnerability. This article uses a phenomenological design inspired by Heidegger's philosophy with the results of fieldwork and reflection groups with 11 nurses on an acute ward. The nurses were exposed to an accumulation of negative emotions, caused by potentially or actually harmful scenarios that were more extreme than those in other nursing contexts. They protected themselves through limit-setting approaches, which conflicted with their standards of building trusting relationships with patients. The feeling of guilt might function as an appeal for authentic practice, but a change in practice requires the use of acknowledgment approaches and the systematic debriefing of accumulated burdensome feelings.