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2455A Russian Radical Conservative Challenge to the Liberal Global Order: Aleksandr DuginIn Marko Lehti, Henna-Riikka Pennanen & Jukka Jouhki (eds.), Contestations of Liberal Order: The West in Crisis?, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 289-314. 2019.The chapter examines Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) challenge to the Western liberal order. Even though Dugin’s project is in many ways a theoretical epitome of Russia’s contemporary attempt to profile itself as a regional great power with a political and cultural identity distinct from the liberal West, Dugin can also be read in a wider context as one of the currently most prominent representatives of the culturally and intellectually oriented international New Right. Th…Read more
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440The Absent Foundation: Heidegger on the Rationality of BeingPhilosophy Today 49 (5): 175-184. 2005.For Heidegger, the fundamental “rationality” of Western metaphysics lies in the fact that its “leading question” concerning beings as beings constantly refers back to the question concerning the ground (arche, ratio, Grund) of beings. Whereas metaphysics has sought to ground beings in ideal beingness, Heidegger attempts to think beingness as itself based on the withdrawing “background” dimension of no-thing-ness that grounds finite presence by differing from it. In Heidegger’s earlier work, the …Read more
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438Encountering Finitude: On the Hermeneutic Radicalization of ExperienceIn Antonio Cimino & Cees Leijenhorst (eds.), Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives, Brill. pp. 46-62. 2018.The chapter approaches the hermeneutic concept of experience introduced by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960) from the perspective of the conceptual history of experience in the Western philosophical tradition. Through an overview of the concept and the epistemological function of experience (empeiria, experientia, Erfahrung) in Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Hegel, it is shown that the tradition has considered experience first and foremost in methodological terms, that is, as a pathwa…Read more
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292Pienten kertomusten etiikkaa: ideologia ja narratiivinen hermeneutiikkaAjatus 75 (1): 361-381. 2018.Kirjasymposioartikkeli esittelee Hanna Meretojan teoksen The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (Oxford University Press, 2018) keskeisimmät ajatukset ja kytkee ne laajempaan hermeneuttiseen ja jälkistrukturalistiseen ajatteluperinteeseen, etenkin Jean-François Lyotardin luonnehdintaan jälkimodernista aikakaudesta suurten modernien historiallisten metakertomusten horjumisen ja pienten paikallisten kertomusten moneuden aikakautena. Tässä valossa Meretojan he…Read more
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651Spekülatif materyalizmde hümanizm ve post-hümanizmSabah Ülkesi: Üç Aylık Kültür-Sanat Ve Felsefe Dergisi (57): 20-25. 2018.Translated into Turkish by Mustafa Yalçınkaya.
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416Äärellisyyden kohtaaminen: kokemuksen filosofista käsitehistoriaaIn Jarkko Toikkanen & Ira Virtanen (eds.), Kokemuksen tutkimus VI: Kokemuksen käsite ja käyttö, Lapland University Press. pp. 25-40. 2018.Väitetään, että nykypäivän populismi vetoaa tosiasioiden sijasta ”kokemukseen”. Mutta mitä on kokemus? Se ei ole vain ennakkoluuloihin nojautuvaa mutua eikä myöskään pelkkää empiirisen datan rekisteröintiä mutta liittyy molempiin. Artikkelin luoma tiivis katsaus kokemuksen käsitehistorian pääpiirteisiin osoittaa, että länsimaisen filosofian perinteessä kokemus on ymmärretty ohittamattomana vaiheena tiedon hankkimisessa ja koettelemisessa. Toisaalta kokemukseen on liitetty tiettyjä tiedollisia he…Read more
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2292Being Itself and the Being of Beings: Reading Aristotle's Critique of Parmenides (Physics 1.3) after MetaphysicsEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (2): 271-291. 2018.The essay studies Aristotle’s critique of Parmenides in the light of the Heideggerian account of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics as an approach to being in terms of beings. Aristotle’s critique focuses on the presuppositions of the Parmenidean thesis of the unity of being. It is argued that a close study of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s own critique reveals an important difference between the Aristotelian metaphysical framework and the Parmenidean “protometaphysical” approach. The Parmeni…Read more
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454Editors' IntroductionJournal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology 4 (2): 93-99. 2017.A brief overview of the current status of the scholarship on Heidegger and contemporary art and of the contributions included in the special issue.
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619Aristotle (in Agamben's Philosophical Lineage)In Adam Kotsko & Carlo Salzani (eds.), Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 15-26. 2017.This chapter is an overview of Giorgio Agamben's engagement, in the Homo Sacer series (1995–2014), with Aristotelian philosophy. It specifically studies Agamben's attempt to deconstruct two Aristotelian conceptual oppositions fundamental for the Western tradition of political thought: (1) that between the bare fact of being alive and "qualified" living (associated by Agamben with an alleged distinction between zōē and bios) and (2) that between potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia). Ag…Read more
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277The One Is Not : On the Fate of Unity in Post-Metaphysical PhilosophyJournal for Cultural and Religious Theory 17 (3): 480-485. 2018.nonPeerReviewed.
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848The End of the World after the End of Finitude: On a Recently Prominent Speculative Tone in PhilosophyIn Cavalcante Schuback Marcia & Lindberg Susanna (eds.), The End of the World: Contemporary Philosophy and Art, Rowman and Littlefield International. pp. 105-123. 2017.The chapter studies the speculative realist critique of the notion of finitude and its implications for the theme of the "end of the world" as a teleological and eschatological idea. It is first explained how Quentin Meillassoux proposes to overcome both Kantian and Heideggerian "correlationist" approaches with his speculative thesis of absolute contingency. It is then shown that Meillassoux's speculative materialism also dismantles the close link forged by Kant between the teleological ends of …Read more
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176Bildung und Bildmetaphysik: Eine Heideggersche Kritik des BildungsbegriffesIn Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, René Kaufmann & Hans Rainer Sepp (eds.), Die Bildung Europas: Eine Topographie des Möglichen im Horizont der Freiheit, Thelem. pp. 175-191. 2012.Dieser Aufsatz erörtert Heideggers Auffassung vom ‚metaphysischen‘ Charakter des abendländischen Humanismus mittels einer Hervorhebung einiger Grundzüge der Geschichte des philosophischen Bildungsbegriffes. Nach Heidegger sind die Bildungsideale der europäischen Humanismen von den metaphysischen Grundauffassungen vom idealen Sein des Seienden bestimmt. Außerdem ist für Heidegger der Bildungsbegriff mit der Tradition der Bildmetaphysik – sowohl mit der platonisch-christlichen Vorstellung des Mens…Read more
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397From the Ultimate God to the Virtual God: Post-Ontotheological Perspectives on the Divine in Heidegger, Badiou, and MeillassouxMeta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 6 (Special): 113-142. 2014.peerReviewed.
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1745Unity in Crisis: Protometaphysical and Postmetaphysical DecisionsIn Artemy Magun (ed.), Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and Many in Contemporary Thought, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 87-112. 2012.The paper studies, within the framework of Martin Heidegger's narrative of the history of metaphysics, two perspectives on the unity of being: the "protometaphysical" perspective of Parmenides, the thinker of the "first beginning" of Western philosophy, and the postmetaphysical perspective of Heidegger, situated in the ongoing transition from the Hegelian and Nietzschean end of metaphysics to a forthcoming "other beginning" of Western thought. Both perspectives involve a certain "crisis", in the…Read more
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583Omaisuus ja elämä: Heidegger ja Aristoteles kreikkalaisen ontologian rajallaEurooppalaisen filosofian seura. 2005.Mitä oleva on? Omaisuus ja elämä pureutuu tähän filosofian peruskysymykseen seuraten kahta länsimaisen filosofian jättiläistä, Aristotelestä ja Heideggeria. Siinä missä Aristoteles kysyy olevaa substantiivina ja tilana, etsii Heidegger olemisen mieltä verbinä ja tapahtumana. Nämä kaksi merkitystä löytyvät myös suomen olla-verbistä: "omistaa jotakin" ja "olla olemassa, elossa". Omaisuus ja elämä antavat peruslähtökohdat olevan tulkitsemiselle. Kirja vie lukijansa filosofian kreikkalaisille juuril…Read more
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771Bir, bir şey değildir: post-metafizik düşüncede birlik ve çokluğun akıbetiSabah Ülkesi: Üç Aylık Kültürsanat Ve Felsefe Dergisi (51): 16-19. 2017.Translated into Turkish by Mustafa Yalçınkaya.
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3276The End of Action: An Arendtian Critique of Aristotle’s Concept of praxisHannah Arendt: Practice, Thought and Judgement. 2010.The article re-examines the Aristotelian backdrop of Arendt’s notion of action. On the one hand, Backman takes up Arendt’s critique of the hierarchy of human activities in Aristotle, according to which Aristotle subordinates action (praxis) to production (poiesis) and contemplation (theoria). Backman argues that this is not the case since Aristotle conceives theoria as the most perfect form of praxis. On the other hand, Backman stresses that Arendt’s notion of action is in fact very different fr…Read more
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48Für das Wohnen denken: Heidegger, Arendt und die praktische BesinnungHeidegger-Jahrbuch 3 199-220. 2007.Dieser Aufsatz, der sich den Interpretationen u. a. von Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Taminiaux und Franco Volpi anschließt, betrachtet Heideggers „Wiederholung“ der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles als eine Radikalisierung des aristotelischen Begriffs des Handelns (praxis). Die moderne „Not des Wohnens“ erweist sich als ein Ergebnis der Unterordnung der Endlichkeit und Zeitlichkeit des menschlichen Handelns in der abendländischen philosophischen Tradition unter die metaphysischen und theo…Read more
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238Language after Heidegger by Krzysztof Ziarek (review)Review of Metaphysics 68 (3): 684-686. 2015.
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1507All of a Sudden: Heidegger and Plato’s ParmenidesEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2): 393-408. 2007.The paper will study an unpublished 1930–31 seminar where Heidegger reads Plato’s Parmenides, showing that in spite of his much-criticized habit of dismissing Plato as the progenitor of “idealist” metaphysics, Heidegger was quite aware of the radical potential of his later dialogues. Through a temporal account of the notion of oneness (to hen), the Parmenides attempts to reconcile the plurality of beings with the unity of Being. In Heidegger’s reading, the dialogue culminates in the notion of th…Read more
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88Complicated Presence: Heidegger and the Postmetaphysical Unity of BeingState University of New York Press. 2015.From its Presocratic beginnings, Western philosophy concerned itself with a quest for unity both in terms of the systematization of knowledge and as a metaphysical search for a unity of being—two trends that can be regarded as converging and culminating in Hegel’s system of absolute idealism. Since Hegel, however, the philosophical quest for unity has become increasingly problematic. Jussi Backman returns to that question in this book, examining the place of the unity of being in the work of Hei…Read more
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619Transcendental Idealism and Strong Correlationism: Meillassoux and the End of Heideggerian FinitudeIn Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo & Timo Miettinen (eds.), Phenomenology and the Transcendental, Routledge. pp. 276-294. 2014.The chapter discusses Quentin Meillassoux's recent interpretation and critique of Heidegger's philosophical position, which he describes as "strong correlationism." It emphasizes the fact that Meillassoux situates Heidegger in the post-Kantian tradition of transcendental idealism that he defines in terms of a focus on the correlation between being and thinking. It is argued that Meillassoux's "speculative" attempt to overcome the Kantian philosophical framework in the name of absolute contingenc…Read more
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792Hermeneutics and the Ancient Philosophical Legacy: Hermeneia and PhronesisIn Niall Keane & Chris Lawn (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 22-33. 2015.Hermeneutics as we understand it today is an essentially modern phenomenon. The chapter presents observations that illustrate some of the central ways in which the modern and late modern phenomena of philosophical hermeneutics relate to the ancient philosophical legacy. First, the roots of hermeneutics are traced to ancient views on linguistic, textual, and sacral interpretation. The chapter then looks at certain fundamentally unhermeneutic elements of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Augustinian…Read more
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993Logocentrism and the Gathering Λόγος: Heidegger, Derrida, and the Contextual Centers of MeaningResearch in Phenomenology 42 (1): 67-91. 2012.Abstract Derrida's deconstructive strategy of reading texts can be understood as a way of highlighting the irreducible plurality of discursive meaning that undermines the traditional Western “logocentric“ desire for an absolute point of reference. While his notion of logocentrism was modeled on Heidegger's articulation of the traditional ontotheological framework of Aristotelian metaphysics, Derrida detects a logocentric remnant in Heidegger's own interpretation of gathering ( Versammlung ) as t…Read more
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609A Religious End of Metaphysics? Heidegger, Meillassoux and the Question of FideismIn Antonio Cimino & Gert-Jan van der Heiden (eds.), Rethinking Faith: Heidegger between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 39-62. 2016.The paper analyzes Quentin Meillassoux’s conception of the fideistic approach to religious faith intrinsic to the “strong correlationism” that he considers pervasive in contemporary thought. Backman presents the basic elements of Meillassoux’s speculative materialism and especially the thesis according to which strong correlationism involves a “fideistic” approach to religiosity. In doing so, Backman critically examines Meillassoux’s notions of post-metaphysical faith, religious absolutes, and c…Read more
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762Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight: Seeing, Hearing, and Thinking in Heraclitus and ParmenidesIn Antonio Cimino & Pavlos Kontos (eds.), Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight, Brill. pp. 11-34. 2015.The paper outlines a tentative genealogy of the Platonic metaphysics of sight by thematizing pre-Platonic thought, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides. By “metaphysics of sight” it understands the features of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics expressed with the help of visual metaphors. It is argued that the Platonic metaphysics of sight can be regarded as the result of a synthesis of the Heraclitean and Parmenidean approaches. In pre-Platonic thought, the visual paradigm is still marginal. F…Read more
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560Divine and Mortal Motivation: On the Movement of Life in Aristotle and HeideggerContinental Philosophy Review 38 (3-4): 241-261. 2005.The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essentia…Read more
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1288The Transitional Breakdown of the Word: Heidegger and Stefan George's Encounter with LanguageGatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 1 54-64. 2011.The paper studies Heidegger's reading of the poet Stefan George (1868-1933), particularly of his poem "Das Wort" (1928), in the context of Heidegger's narrative of the history of metaphysics. Heidegger reads George's poem as expressing certain experiences with language: first, the constitutive role of language, of naming and discursive determination, in granting things stable identities; second, the unnameable and indeterminable character of language itself as a constitutive process and the conc…Read more
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Tampere UniversityTampere Institute for Advanced Study / Faculty of Social SciencesSenior Research Fellow
University of Helsinki
Department of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)
PhD, 2010
Tampere, Finland