Jeff Malpas

In a recent number of this journal there appeared an article by Niall Shanks and John King-Farlow on the theory of radical interpretation as developed by Donald Davidson. In that paper Davidson was presented as an opponent of “metaphysical openness in general [and] … idealism in particular” and as a philosopher who has “sought to silence all philosophically challenging talk both about the ordinary speaker’s systematic errors and about the claims of revisionary metaphysicians such as phenomenalists or absolute idealists.” I suspect that Davidson would be somewhat surprised by this description of himself. He might also wonder just what it means to be an “opponent of metaphysical openness in general.” Like any other philosopher, Davidson has his own views on matters philosophical; and, like other philosophers, he criticizes what he sees as false or mistaken in the views of others. One cannot help but suspect that what Davidson’s opposition to “metaphysical openness” really comes down to is his criticism of views associated with idealism.

J. E. Malpas discusses and develops the ideas of Donald Davidson, influential in contemporary thinking on the nature of understanding and meaning, and of truth and knowledge. He provides an account of Davidson's holistic and hermeneutical conception of linguistic interpretation, and, more generally, of the mind. Outlining its Quinean origins and the elements basic to Davidson's Radical Interpretation, J. E. Malpas' book goes on to elaborate this holism and to examine the indeterminacy of interpretation and the principle of charity. The metaphysical and epistemological consequences of Davidson's approach are considered, particularly in relation to scepticism and relativism, the realist/anti-realist debate, and the problem of truth. Parallels are drawn between the Davidsonian emphasis on the centrality of the notion of truth and Heidegger's notion of truth as aletheia, as the book looks to structuralist, hermeneutical and phenomenological sources to illuminate Davidson's position.

The idea of philosophical topology, or topography as I call it outside of the Heideggerian context, has become increasingly central to my work over the last twenty years. While the idea is not indebted only to Heidegger’s thinking, it is probably Heidegger to whom I owe the most. Moreover, one of my claims, central to _Heidegger’s Topology_, is that Heidegger’s own work cannot adequately be understood except as topological in character, and so as centrally concerned with place – _topos, Ort, Ortschaft_ (which, I should emphasize, is not the same as a concern with space nor with time taken apart from one another, but I shall say more on this below). I do not regard myself as the only person to make this claim, or something like it. In the 1980s, both Joseph Fell and Reiner Schürmann, from very different perspectives, advanced topological readings of Heidegger, or elements of such readings. My own work aims to provide a definitive case for the topological reading of Heidegger’s thinking in its entirety, as well as to articulate an account of topology or topography as itself central to philosophical inquiry. On my account, the attempt to think place, and to think in accord with place, is at the heart of philosophy as such

It is often argued that there is a connection between certain forms of environmental or place-oriented thinking and conservative or reactionary politics. Frequently, the philosopher Martin Heidegger is taken to exemplify this connection through his own involvement with Nazism. In this essay, I explore the relations between Heidegger's thought and that of certain other key thinkers, principally the ethologist Jakob von Uexküll, and the geographers Friedrich Ratzel and Paul Vidal de la Blache, as well as with elements of Nazi ideology. While Heidegger, Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache are shown to have a similar commitment to a holistic conception of the relation between human being and the world, and to also give priority to ideas of geographic space, or, as we may also say, to place, this is shown to run counter to the essentially subjectivist and biologically determinist position that is associated with Nazi thinking on these matters, and that can also be seen as a key element in the work of von Uexküll. It is argued that the clarification of these issues is not only important for matters of intellectual history alone, but also to ongoing discussions about the role and significance of place. Given the influence of geographical considerations on contemporary historiography, as well as in a number of other disciplines, and given also the role played by Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache, as well as Heidegger, in the rise of such 'place-oriented' thinking, the exploration and clarification of the differences at issue here is especially important.

Recent philosophy has seen the idea of the transcendental, first introduced in its modern form in the work of Kant, take on a new prominence. Bringing together an international range of younger philosophers and established thinkers, this volume opens up the idea of the transcendental, examining it not merely as a mode of argument, but as naming a particular problematic and a philosophical style. With contributions engaging with both analytic and continental approaches, this book will be of essential interest to philosophers and philosophy students interested in the idea of the transcendental and the part that it plays in modern and contemporary philosophy.

Gadamer was fond of telling of his last meeting with his old teacher Martin Heidegger: ‘You are right’, said Heidegger, ‘language is conversation [Sprache ist Gespräch].’1 We might argue as to what such a comment, assuming Gadamer remembered it aright, would really have meant for Heidegger – whether it would have constituted a significant revision of any view to which Heidegger was himself committed.2 The fact that Gadamer felt it worth repeating, however, does indicate something of Gadamer’s conception of the relation between his thought and that of Heidegger, as well as of the centrality of the idea at issue in his own thought. Indeed, elsewhere Gadamer has commented that.

Hubert L. Dreyfus's engagement with other thinkers has always been driven by his desire to understand certain basic questions about ourselves and our world. The philosophers on whom his teaching and research have focused are those whose work seems to him to make a difference to the world. The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"--not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world.Dreyfus has helped to create a culture of reflection--of questioning the deep premises that inform and shape work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He has also been the primary introducer and interpreter of Martin Heidegger's work to the world of information technology. The essays in this volume represent the fruitful application of deep philosophical analysis to the concerns of our modern technological world.The sections are Coping and Intentionality; Computers and Cognitive Science; and "Applied Heidegger." In addition to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, topics include everyday skills, religion, business practices, and medical care. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : Daniel Andler, Patricia Benner, Albert Borgmann, Harry Collins, George Downing, Fernando Flores, Sean Kelly, Joseph Rouse, Theodore R. Schatzki, John Searle, Robert C. Solomon, Charles Spinosa, David Stern, Charles Taylor, Terry Winograd, Mark Wrathall.

This paper sets out an account of hermeneutics as essentially ‘topological’ in character at the same time as it also argues that hermeneutics has a key role to play in making clear the nature of the topological. At the centre of the argument is the idea that place and understanding are intimately connected, that this is what determines the interconnection between topology and hermeneutics, and that this also implies an intimate belonging-together of place and thinking, of place and experience, of place and the very possibility of appearance, of presence, of being.

Para qualquer um interessado no lugar da espacialidade no pensamento de Heidegger, um dos principais problemas apresentados por Ser e tempo é a tentativa, feita no § 70, "de derivar o existencial espacialidade a partir da temporalidade". Esta tentativa, que foi considerada "insustentável" pelo próprio Heidegger, mostra-se não ser meramente periférica na análise global. Pelo contrário, ela se liga a certos aspectos centrais e problemáticos no argumento de Ser e tempo, no qual está incluído o tratamento de conceitos espaciais e topográficos em geral, aspectos estes que podem ser vistos como associados ao fracasso do projeto aí ensaiado. Contudo, o argumento do § 70 não suscita apenas questões a cerca do tratamento da espacialidade feito por Heidegger, mas também no que respeita à própria noção de "derivação": se e como é efetivamente possível tal derivação, e de que modo poderia ser entendida a dependência que ela implica. Uma das características centrais da análise desenvolvida em Ser e tempo é o movimento que parte das estruturas da cotidianidade para fundá-las no cuidado, transitando a seguir para a estrutura da temporalidade, e chegando finalmente na estrutura ekstática da temporalidade originária. O que é exibido nesse movimento não é uma relação de dependência, mas uma série de relações que estão supostas. É no interior desse movimento global que estão embutidas dependências mais específicas, inclusive a relação de dependência entre espacialidade e temporalidade. A questão geral da dependência conceitual ou estrutural que aparece aqui, entendida especificamente em termos de "derivação" ou nos termos das noções correlatas de "fundação" ou "fundamentação" , também possui uma relevância que se estende muito além das análises de Ser e tempo, sendo central para a investigação fenomenológica e, de fato, para a investigação filosófica como tal. O que está em jogo nessa questão é a natureza e a base para o ordenamento de conceitos e estruturas, que é uma preocupação central da análise fenomenológica e filosófica. Minha intenção aqui é a de explorar da derivação tal como surge no âmbito de Ser e tempo, mas também prestando atenção para o contexto mais amplo no qual pode-se dizer que a questão também emerge - uma exploração que também nos levará para certas questões sobre espaço e topologia.For anyone interested in the place of spatiality in Heidegger's thinking, one of the key problems presented by Being and Time is Heidegger's attempt, in §70, "to derive existential spatiality from temporality" [i] - an attempt he himself referred to as "untenable" [ii]. This attempt turns out to not to be merely peripheral to Heidegger's overall analysis, but is instead tied to certain central and problematic features in the argument of Being and Time, including its treatment of spatial and topographic concepts in general, that can themselves be seen as associated with the failure of the project attempted there. The argument of §70 does not raise questions only about Heidegger's treatment of spatiality, however, but also regarding the notion of "derivation" itself - about how and whether such derivation is indeed possible in general, and how the dependence that it entails might be understood. One of the central features of the analysis developed in Being and Time is its movement from the structures of everydayness to the grounding of that structure in care, thence to the structure of temporality, and finally, of course, to the ecstatic structure of originary temporality. What is exhibited in this movement is not one, but a series of supposed dependence relations, and it is within that overall movement that more specific dependencies, including that between spatiality and temporality, are themselves embedded. [The general question of conceptual or structural dependence that appears here, whether understood specifically in terms of "derivation" or in terms of related notions of "grounding" or "foundation" , also has a relevance that extends far beyond the analyses of Being and Time, and is central to phenomenological, and indeed, philosophical, inquiry as such. What is at issue in this question is the nature and basis for the ordering of concepts and structures that is a central concern of phenomenological and philosophical analysis. My intention here is to explore this question of derivation as it emerges within the framework of Being and Time, but also with an eye to the larger context in which the question can also be said to emerge - an exploration that will also, as it happens, returns us to certain questions of space and topology

This groundbreaking inquiry into the centrality of place in Martin Heidegger's thinking offers not only an illuminating reading of Heidegger's thought but a detailed investigation into the way in which the concept of place relates to core philosophical issues. In Heidegger's Topology, Jeff Malpas argues that an engagement with place, explicit in Heidegger's later work, informs Heidegger's thought as a whole. What guides Heidegger's thinking, Malpas writes, is a conception of philosophy's starting point: our finding ourselves already "there," situated in the world, in "place." Heidegger's concepts of being and place, he argues, are inextricably bound together.Malpas follows the development of Heidegger's topology through three stages: the early period of the 1910s and 1920s, through Being and Time, centered on the "meaning of being"; the middle period of the 1930s into the 1940s, centered on the "truth of being"; and the late period from the mid-1940s on, when the "place of being" comes to the fore. The significance of Heidegger as a thinker of place, Malpas claims, lies not only in Heidegger's own investigations but also in the way that spatial and topographic thinking has flowed from Heidegger's work into that of other key thinkers of the past 60 years

The venture into the public realm seems clear to me. One exposes oneself to the light of the public, as a person. Although I am of the opinion that one must not appear and act in public selfconsciously, still I know that in every action the person is expressed as in no other human activity. Speaking is also a form of action. That is one venture. The other is: we start something. We weave our strand into a network of relations. What comes of it we never know. We’ve all been taught to say: Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do. That is true of all action. Quite simply and concretely true, because one cannot know. That is what is meant by a venture. And now I would say that this venture is only possible when there is trust in people. A trust— which is difficult to formulate but fundamental—in what is human in all people. Otherwise such a venture could not be made (from the transcript of the interview of Hannah Arendt by Günther Gaus, 28 October 1964 – see EU).

The idea of place--topos--runs through Martin Heidegger's thinking almost from the very start. It can be seen not only in his attachment to the famous hut in Todtnauberg but in his constant deployment of topological terms and images and in the situated, "placed" character of his thought and of its major themes and motifs. Heidegger's work, argues Jeff Malpas, exemplifies the practice of "philosophical topology." In Heidegger and the Thinking of Place, Malpas examines the topological aspects of Heidegger's thought and offers a broader elaboration of the philosophical significance of place. Doing so, he provides a distinct and productive approach to Heidegger as well as a new reading of other key figures--notably Kant, Aristotle, Gadamer, and Davidson, but also Benjamin, Arendt, and Camus. Malpas, expanding arguments he made in his earlier book _Heidegger's Topology_, discusses such topics as the role of place in philosophical thinking, the topological character of the transcendental, the convergence of Heideggerian topology with Davidsonian triangulation, the necessity of mortality in the possibility of human life, the role of materiality in the working of art, the significance of nostalgia, and the nature of philosophy as beginning in wonder. Philosophy, Malpas argues, begins in wonder and begins in place and the experience of place. The place of wonder, of philosophy, of questioning, he writes, is the very topos of thinking

Donald Davidson has argued that 'most of our beliefs must be true' and that global scepticism is therefore false. Davidson's arguments to this conclusion often seem to depend on externalist considerations. Davidson's position has been criticised, however, on the grounds that he does not defeat the sceptic, but rather already assumes the falsity of scepticism through his appeal to externalism. Indeed, it has been claimed that far from defeating the sceptic Davidson introduces an even more extreme version of scepticism according to which we cannot even know the contents of our own minds. This paper argues that these criticisms are mistaken and that Davidson does indeed have grounds to argue that scepticism is false. The externalism that figures in Davidson's antisceptical arguments is shown to be merely an element in Davidson's overall holism according to which the very possibility of having beliefs that could be true or false depends on most of those beliefs being true and their contents known

Taking an image by Thomas Hoepker as its starting point, this essay examines the discontinuities and contradictions that appear around the contemporary rhetoric of the ‘event’ as given particular instantiation in the destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. It is argued that the rhetoric at issue here, in spite of its emphasis on the ‘eventful’ character of our time, actually serves to conceal the urgency of our contemporary situation as well as disabling any genuine response to it.

“In space”, declared the posters for the 1979 movie Alien, in a deliberately disconcerting juxtaposition, “no-one can hear you scream.” Yet even the space that lies beyond the earth is not utterly silent – stars and planets themselves produce sounds that radiate through the rarefied gases lying between them, although the wavelengths produced lie far beyond the range of human hearing. There are, then, not even in the spaces between the planets and the stars, any truly silent spaces, and merely to be present in a space, no matter the nature of the space in question, is already to disturb that space in multiple ways – such disturbance typically being manifest acoustically no less than visually. Yet often we tend to conceptualise space and spatial presence in terms that actually give priority to the visual over the acoustic, and even to neglect the spatial character of the acoustic altogether. A classic example of this is to be found in the work of the British philosopher Peter Strawson who famously proposed, as a kind of thought-experiment, the idea of what he called a ‘No-Space world’ that was constituted in purely auditory terms, and was for just this reason taken to be a non-spatial world. 1..

The life of Gautama, who came to be known as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, is famously said to have been irrevocably changed by his experience of three things: poverty, old age, and death – it was this experience that started him on the road to enlightenment. There is no doubt that the encounter with death can be a life-changing experience, perhaps more so than either poverty or old-age, and not only because death may be construed as an especially powerful emblem of human suffering. Quite aside from the emotional impact of death, it would seem to have an inevitable and irreducible strangeness that challenges our sense of our own existence.