Project Of Fundamental Ontology Research Articles

Heidegger and Plato's idea of the Good

The article deals with the question of Plato's reception in Heidegger's philosophy. In particular, the research focuses on the question of how Heidegger interpreted the idea of the good from Plato's "State". Here a number of difficulties important for the history of philosophy arise. What is the ontological status of the idea of good? How is the idea of the good connected with the demiurge from the dialogue "Timaeus"? On the one hand, it is well known that the late Heidegger criticized Plato and all European metaphysics, which was and remains Platonism. On the other hand, the early Heidegger clearly presents an attempt to master the shining heights of Platonism: the question of the meaning of being needs an angle from which a definite answer can be highlighted – and Heidegger borrows this angle from Plato. Just as the good endows existence with being and truth, so the understanding of being is possible from time, because it is temporality that is the condition for understanding being, it highlights its meaning. And if Plato's being "pounces" on the good, or on the one, then for Heidegger, time is such a condition. This line of thought, fundamental to the whole project of fundamental ontology, is directly related to the philosophy of Plato, who for the first time was able to rise so high as to become ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας, to see things as if from the outside, i.e. in the light of the transcendent idea of good. Nevertheless, Heidegger criticizes Plato, which allows us to raise the question: how did Heidegger understand Platonic ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας and the doctrine of the good? It is impossible to answer this question unequivocally, since Heidegger approached this question from different sides and at different times interpreted this most important position of the Greek thinker in different ways. Nevertheless, the main remarks can be reduced to two: (1) the good was conceived by Plato as something moral and therefore mixed with the existing, (2) the good subordinates the being, brings it under fitness.

Fundamental Ontology, Saturated Phenomena and Transcendental Dilemma

ABSTRACT In this article, I will argue that while Marion’s criticism of Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology is in many ways sound, Marion remains bound to the conceptual opposition that existential phenomenology has successfully overcome. Namely, I will argue that Marion remains dependent upon the transcendental dilemma according to which we must rely on the strict differentiation between explanans and explanandum. Marion sees no way of departing from Heidegger’s project other than reversing the order of explanation and switching the places of the explanans and explanandum, which means that phenomena start appearing as explanans. I will demonstrate how existential phenomenology has overcome this conceptual dilemma, and then I will argue that we could make a much better account of saturated phenomena, if we ground our insights in the idea of being-in-the-world.

THE PROBLEM OF THE CATEGORIAL IN THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PERCEPTION: HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER

The article aims to show that the task of grounding categorial constituents in the specific founded acts of perception yields the problem field of phenomenological inquiry, within the framework of which remains Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology. To achieve this goal the article reconstructs, first, the problem of the possibility of a priori correspondence between meaning and intuition of the intentional act; second, the phenomenological justification of extension of the traditional concept of truth, as a result of which truth characteristic expands to intentional acts structured in a certain way, namely acts of total agreement between meaning and intuition (identification acts); third, the problem of the “categorial” in the phenomenological analysis of perception, which includes the extension of the concept of perception, limited in transcendental philosophy to the area of sensible intuitions, and justification of the specific categorial acts. On this basis, the article demonstrates that (1) phenomenology in a certain sense continues the project of transcendental philosophy, but the idea of a priori correspondence between notion and intuition within the framework of structural analysis of intentionality forms a new research problem. (2) The phenomenological understanding of truth in terms of the dynamics of empty and filled meaning intention is significant for the concept of truth presented by Heidegger in Being and Time. Heidegger explicates the concept of the truth in fundamental ontology based on the idea of identification. (3) The extension of the concept of object to its categorial constitution justified by Husserl provides fundamental ontology with the research subject. Heidegger interprets the categories, phenomenally represented in acts of categorial intuition, as a priori structures of the being of beings. The study also ascertains that new concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology saturate the conceptual framework of fundamental ontology. However, Heidegger also rethinks the key concepts of phenomenology in accordance with objectives which are different from the original objectives of the project of phenomenology designed by Husserl.

Neither Philosophy nor Theology: The Origin in Heidegger’s Earliest Thought

Abstract “The Origin,” one of Martin Heidegger’s most important notions after 1934, is tightly related to being-historical thinking, and to the peculiar kind of divinity that being-historical thinking indicates. However, the notion of the Origin appears already in Heidegger’s early Freiburg lectures (given between 1919 and 1923), thus placing it among the fundamentals of his early thought. This article argues that Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology emerges from that early notion of the Origin, preparing the way for its flourishing in his later thinking. Attending to Heidegger’s early notion of the Origin, I suggest, reveals a unique feature of Heidegger’s thinking; namely, an element of genuine religiosity ungraspable in terms of both philosophy and theology. Thus, rather than interpreting fundamental ontology as a transcendental project encompassing a de-theologized version of early Christianity, it should be taken as an attempt to think the truth of the Origin, thus preparing the way for the genuine religiosity of Heidegger’s later thought. In this light, a unique sense of divinity underlies Heidegger’s lectures between 1919 and 1925; a sense which can only be comprehended through Heidegger’s triple sense schema (enactment–relation–content).

Тезис средневековой онтологии в толковании Хайдеггера

The article is devoted to the analysis of Heidegger’s interpretation of the me­dieval ontology thesis. The main source for this article is Heidegger’s Marburg Lectures “Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie”, where the problem of the interpretation of the medieval ontology thesis has a special section. The meth­ods of hermeneutic analysis, comparative analysis, as well as the method of historical and philosophical reconstruction are applied in the research. The ar­ticle shows what points of convergence Heidegger could find in the medieval tradition of discussing the problem of distinction between essence (essentia) and existence (existentia) with his project of fundamental ontology. Particular attention is paid to clarifying the core definitions of essentia and existentia for the topic of study, as well as the closely related Greek terms μορφή, εἶδος (ἰδέα), τὸ τὶ ᾖν εἶναι, γένος, φύσις, ὁριςμός, οὐσία in the Heidegger’s interpre­tation. The article presents how the clarification of the genealogy of key onto­logical terms enables Heidegger to discover the correlation between the con­structions of medieval metaphysics and Dasein analytics. The author shows to what extent the scholastic tradition of discussing the problem of the relation and distinction between essence and existence in Heidegger’s interpretation could serve as a kind of introduction to the Heidegger’s project of ontology as phenomenology. The article also shows what difficulties arise when trying to apply the results of the analysis of medieval ontology thesis to the specificity of the Dasein. In this problematic context are considered the correlation and distinction of the terms proposed by Heidegger: Washeit, Vorhandensein as well as Werheit and Existenz.

A questão da essência da ciência em Martin Heidegger

Este artigo pretende discutir a concepção de essência da ciência desenvolvida por Heidegger em Introdução à filosofia – curso ministrado em 1928-1929 na Universidade de Freiburg –, no contexto de sua crítica à filosofia moderna e de seu projeto de ontologia fundamental. Tendo em vista que a análise heideggeriana da ciência é inseparável de sua investigação sobre a existência humana, defenderemos que Heidegger não desenvolve uma filosofia da ciência, ao contrário do que diz parte dos estudiosos de sua obra.

The Presuppositions of Being and Time

It is often remarked that Heidegger’s Being and Time was originally proposed as a book on Aristotle, and that formative work for this initial expression of Heidegger’s existential ontology was developed through the early 1920s in a series of lecture courses and seminars on Aristotle’s practical philosophy. This paper examines select details from Heidegger’s 1924 summer course in order to question the presuppositions of Heidegger’s decision to found the project of fundamental ontology on a purely philological reading of Aristotle. At stake is the method of investigation which permitted Heidegger to think politics through ontology in his most controversial writings from the 1930s—and ultimately the meaning of philosophy itself.

Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time

AbstractThis essay provides an analysis of the role of affectivity in Martin Heidegger's writings from the mid to late 1920s. We begin by situating his account of mood within the context of his project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time. We then discuss the role of Befindlichkeit (often translated as ‘attunement’ or ‘disposition’) and Stimmung (‘mood’) in his account of human existence, explicate the relationship between the former and the latter, and consider the ways in which the former discloses the world. To give a more vivid and comprehensive picture of Heidegger's account of mood, we focus on the experience of anxiety (Angst) by articulating both its function within fundamental ontology and, relatedly, its revelatory nature. We conclude by considering the place of emotions in Heidegger's thinking from this period. In a companion essay, ‘Affectivity in Heidegger II: Temporality, Boredom, and Beyond’, we complement our present analysis by revisiting the issue of affectivity in terms of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of Being and Time. We also expand our present discussion by considering the fundamental mood of boredom and other specific moods that Heidegger considers within his later thinking.

Project of fundamental ontology: transformation or overcoming phenomenology?

In his paper the author considers the issue of phenomenological destruction in the works by M. Heidegger, which was finalized in Heidegger’s fundamental book «Being and Time». The dynamics of Heidegger’s methodological search is presented, beginning from his lecture courses in the 1920s. It is shown that practical (primary) experience is gained owing to description of experience of Christian life in the Letters of Paul the Apostle. Heidegger modifies his own methodology then in the Phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle. The main phenomenon in the above work changes its nature: it exists in the concealed way rather than is directly given and phenomenological destruction is therefore modified to some extent. In The Hermeneutics of Facticity Heidegger’s methodological position is further developed. For now facticity means the existential nature of “our own existence here”, whereas the term Dasein itself completely replaces a rather unclear concept of life. In «Being and Time» Heidegger eventually re-interprets all the main concepts: phenomenology, ontology and hermeneutics to the extent that at different stages of his work he totally discards them. And a subsequent explication of the concept of phenomenon radically transforms the project of phenomenological research itself: the first phenomenon mainly conceals itself rather than reveals. According to the author of the paper, such research method can be named in different ways (destruction, hermeneutics etc.), but naming it a phenomenological method means assigning to the terms of phenomenology and phenomenological the meanings alien to them.

Truth.

What exactly do we mean by truth? Although the concept is nebulous across the array of theoretical perspectives in psychoanalysis, it is fundamental to all discourses. Is psychoanalysis in a position to offer a theory of truth despite the fact that at present it has no explicit, formal theory regarding the matter? A general metatheory is proposed here that allows for discrete categories and instantiations of truth as metacontextual appearance. In revisiting the ancient notion of aletheia as disclosedness or unconcealment, we may discover a distinct psychoanalytic contribution to truth conditioned on unconscious processes reappropriated from Heidegger's project of fundamental ontology. Construed as a dialectics of truth, this notion accords well with how psychoanalysts understand the dynamic unconscious and how it functions to both reveal and conceal. Given that clinical experience demonstrates the workings of dynamic unconscious activity, psychoanalytic theory may contribute a vocabulary relevant to philosophy by explicating the motives and mechanisms that create the appearances of contextual truth as such, phenomena whose causes have previously gone undescribed.

Metontology, moral particularism, and the “art of existing:” a dialogue between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams

An important shift occurs in Martin Heidegger’s thinking one year after the publication of Being and Time, in the Appendix to the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. The shift is from his project of fundamental ontology—which provides an existential analysis of human existence on an ontological level—to metontology. Metontology is a neologism that refers to the ontic sphere of human experience and to the regional ontologies that were excluded from Being and Time. It is within metontology, Heidegger states, that “the question of ethics may be raised for the first time.” This paper makes explicit both Heidegger’s argument for metontology, and the relation between metontology and ethics. In examining what he means by “the art of existing,” the paper argues that there is an ethical dimension to Heidegger’s thinking that corresponds to a moderate form of moral particularism. In order to justify this position, a comparative analysis is made between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams.

Heidegger’s “Phenomenology of Failure” in Sein und Zeit

(ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Failure speaks, in its own way-as an adman and therefore with little importance-the crucial logic, or rather it inscribes discourse in that logic. Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies Heidegger's Sein undZeit is replete with silent keywords that underwrite unfolding of existential analytic of Dasein in particular and project of fundamental ontology in general. One such keyword is that organizes, among other things, phenomenality of conscience in a crucial second chapter of Division II-Dasein's attestation of an authentic potentiality-for-being, and resoluteness-but also transition from Zuhandenheit to Vorhandenheit and practical-methodological orientation of phenomenology as an impossible praxis above actuality. And yet, when it comes to Heidegger's even most sympathetic of Heidegger's commentators cannot resist temptation to convert it, without hesitation, into or, rather, failures of Heidegger. Besides more substantial failures to account for body and for life of Dasein within boundaries of fundamental ontology, conversion to which I am alluding hardly needs to be explained two decades after noisy controversy. Suffice it to say that another keyword that never fails to surface next to the of Heidegger is silence. Two general, though closely linked, variations theme are exemplified, one hand, in debate between Dominique Janicaud and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and, other, in work of David Pareil Krell. While I do not intend to follow path of conversion of I will merely catalogue least futile of its outcomes. What drives first debate is question of ground for something like a in Heidegger's case. In Heidegger, Art and Politics Lacoue-Labarthe writes: To speak of moral failing \faute] presupposes that there exists an ethics, or at least an ethics is possible. Now, it is probably case today that neither of these conditions is fulfilled.1 He further justifies his doubts regarding actual existence and even possibility of ethics within Heideggerian problematic itself, referring to the general exhaustion of philosophical possibilities that must affect ethical, delimitation of ethics and humanism, etc. It is this very justification that Janicaud finds difficult to accept, despite praising Lacoue-Labarthe's prudence and acknowledging historical caesura that governs his theoretical position. For Janicaud, the only politics liable to unmask Nazism as profoundly criminal is a politics that demands that one 'bend a knee' in front of ethical principles.2 Rejecting such politics in name of Heidegger, we deepen closure of metaphysics, but also augment thinker's concrete moral failure, repeating it. In spirit of Lacoue-Labarthe's approach, David Krell undertakes an immanent critique of Heidegger, which is rather refreshing, notwithstanding Janicaud's justifiable rejoinder: I shall say what I believe would hurt most-that his silence concerning fate of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945 is a of ein Versagen des Denkens. ... I still believe that in Heidegger's texts there is and that when thinking fails an abyss opens right there page.' It turns out that failure of thinking, for Krell, is simultaneously narrower and broader than moral failure. It is narrower than latter because (assuming that hermeneutical violence and physical violence are still radically discontinuous, though this assumption may not be entirely warranted in Krell's case) abyss he spots opens only on page, in internal contradictions of thought, such as inclusion of human beings in category of a standing reserve-the inclusion that challenges tenets of existential analytic of Dasein. …

What Does (the Young) Heidegger Mean by the Seinsfrage ?

Heidegger's central concern is the question of being (Seinsfrage). The paper reconstructs this question at least for the young (pre- Kehre) Heidegger in the light of two interconnected hypotheses: (1) the substantial content of the question of being can be identified by seeing it as a response to (Marburg) neo-Kantianism; and (2) this content centres around the claim that, pace the neo-Kantians, 'epistemological' concerns are grounded in 'ontological' ones, for which reason 'ontology' must precede 'epistemology' as a form of philosophical inquiry. In section I the general position of (Marburg) neo-Kantianism is sketched. In section II the implications of the neo-Kantian position for the concepts of truth and reality, reason, and experience, are outlined; significant similarities to Sellars, Davidson, and Brandom are revealed. Finally, in section III Heidegger's analysis of everydayness is shown to yield a distinct critique of the neo-Kantian relativization of the concept of the real to the theoretically knowable. From this critique it emerges why Heidegger thinks that 'ontology' precedes 'epistemology'. The project of fundamental ontology marked by the question of being thus shows itself to be at least in part a response to the aporia of Marburg neo-Kantianism.

Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology

Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology