Jeff Malpas

According to Quine the inscrutability of reference leads to ontological relativity, or, as Donald Davidson calls it, relativity of reference. Davidson accepts both inscrutability and the indeterminacy of translation which it grounds, but rejects any explicit relativity of reference or ontology. The reasons behind this rejection are set out and explained. Explicit relativization is shown to be at odds with indeterminacy. Some notion of the relativity of reference (or, more generally, interpretation) is nevertheless shown to be both possible and necessary. It is, however, a relativity which is compatible with commensurability — the idea of absolute incommeasurability is ruled out along with the realist ideal of universal commensuration — as well as with indeterminacy. The indeterminacy thesis itself undergoes some slight elaboration, particularly in respect of the notion of empirical equivalence. In general the resulting account is one which retains both the absolute character of truth and some sense of the relativity of ontology against the background of Davidsonian holism.

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.

Death and Philosophy presents a wide ranging and fascinating variety of different philosophical, aesthetic and literary perspectives on death. Death raises key questions such as whether life has meaning of life in the face of death, what the meaning of "life after death" might be and whether death is part of a narrative that can be retold in different ways, and considers the various types of death, such as brain death, that challenge mind-body dualism. The essays also include explorations of Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan perspectives on death and why death in some cultures, such as in Mexico's day of the dead, is celebrated.

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.

While the 'sense of place' is a familiar theme in poetry and art, philosophers have generally given little or no attention to place and the human relation to place. In Place and Experience, Jeff Malpas seeks to remedy this by advancing an account of the nature and significance of place as a complex but unitary structure that encompasses self and other, space and time, subjectivity and objectivity. Drawing on a range of sources from Proust and Wordsworth to Davidson, Strawson and Heidegger, he argues that the significance of place is not to be found in our experience of place so much as in the grounding of experience in place, and that this binding to place is not a contingent feature of human existence, but derives from the very nature of human thought, experience and identity as established in and through place.

Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, constitutes one of the earliest reflections on the way in which the cultural experience and interpretation is transformed by the advent of what were then the ‘new’ media technologies of photography and film. Benjamin directs attention to the way in which these technologies release cultural objects from their unique presence in a place and make them uniformly available irrespective of spatial location. The way in which old media technologies apparently obliterate the place of cultural objects is also a feature of new media. However, the apparent obliteration of place that occurs in this way is itself problematic, in giving rise to a loss of the sense of spatial and temporal distance, and so of the relative locatedness of both experiencing subject and interpreted object. The loss of a sense of the place of the object threatens a loss of the sense of place of the subject, and with it, a loss of a proper sense of heritage as such.

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’1 – an attempt he himself referred to as ‘untenable’.2 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

The commonplace image of Heidegger is of a philosopher firmly rooted, not in the city of Freiburg in which much of his life was spent, but in the Alemannic-Schwabian countryside around the village of Messkirch in which he was born. It would seem that the distance between Heidegger and Benjamin, between Messkirch and Berlin or Paris could not be greater. But to what extent are Heidegger's own personal predilections for the provincial and the bauerlich actually tied to the philosophical positions that he developed? Might it be the case that the city, perhaps even more than the countryside, has to play a central role in any serious attempt to think through the implications of Heidegger's thought of being? This presentation will explore how Heidegger might find h imself in Benjamin's city, and of the place of the city in Heidegger's own thought, with the aim of shedding light, not only on Heidegger's thought, but also on that of Benjamin himself

Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa's argument for 'robust' realism centres on the possibility of our having access to things as they are in themselves and so as having access to things in a way that is not dependent on our 'quotidian concerns or sensory capacities'. Dreyfus and Spinosa claim that our everyday access to things is incapable of providing access of this kind, since our everyday access is holistically enmeshed with our everyday attitudes and concerns. The argument that Dreyfus and Spinosa provide in support of this conclusion seems, however, to depend on illegitimately combining what are really two separate issues: that concerning the independence of the things themselves with the independence of our means of access to those things. Contrary to Dreyfus and Spinosa, the fact that our everyday access to things is necessarily dependent on our everyday attitudes and concerns does not mean that we therefore have access to things only as they 'appear' rather than as they are 'in themselves'.

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.

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.

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

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

Every threshold is placed at an edge, and yet not merely an edge, for the threshold always carries with it a sense of opening up toward or closing away from. Only that place at the edge that anticipates or remembers can constitute a threshold. The threshold thus is not a place in which one can remain – to do so is for it to cease to be a threshold – but is always a place of movement and transition. Indeed, one might say that the threshold is the coalescence of a time into the form of a place, since the threshold only appears as a threshold in that time of opening-toward or closing-away-from. The being of the threshold as a place is therefore essentially determined by the event of approach or withdrawal, anticipation or remembrance, arrival or departure, coming-to-be or passingaway.

One of the most influential and significant developments in the philosophy of language over the last thirty years has been the rise of externalist conceptions of content. This essay aims to explore the implications of a form of externalism, largely derived from the work of Donald Davidson, for thinking about history, and in so doing to suggest one way in which contemporary philosophy of language may engage with contemporary philosophy of history. Much of the discussion focuses on the elaboration of the externalism that is at issue, along with the holistic approach to content with which it is connected. It will be argued that such holistic externalism is itself thoroughly in keeping with the very character of historical inquiry itself, and can be seen to provide an underpinning to certain contemporary developments in historical thinking