Daniel Dahlstrom

In Heidegger's 1921 lectures, he presents an extensive interpretation of Book Ten of Augustine's Confessions. The present paper elaborates parallels between that interpretation of Augustine's Confessions and Heidegger's interpretation of existence in Being and Time, with special reference to the themes of self-possession and resoluteness as respective anchors of the two interpretations. The study also highlights ways the two interpretations diverge, i.e., the aspects of the interpretation of the Confessions ' themes of the good and desirable, the joyful and endearing, the delectatio that Augustine deems the end of our care that do not find their way into the existential analysis. By way of conclusion, questions are raised about the significance and plausibility of Heidegger's prima facie omissions of these themes from his existential analysis.

For much of contemporary ethical theory, the universalizability of the motive of a contemplated action forms a necessary part of the basis of the action’s moral character, legitimacy, or worth. Considering the possibility of resentment springing from the performance of an action also serves as a means of determining the morality of an action. However, considerations of universalizability and resentment are plainly inconsistent with the performance of some unselfish moral actions. I argue that the sphere of the moral adequacy of considerations of universalizability and resentment is limited. I profile key elements of “conformist” or “consensus-driven” ethical thinking modelled on Nagel’s ethical theory. Then, I elaborate the measure of validity of the profiled ethical thinking as well as its limitation, suggesting that its proper domain is located in an ethics of honor, delimited by an ethics of love and friendship.

According to the author, Heidegger's understanding of the metaphysical roots of modern technology also indicates a way out of its life-threatening grip. Technik und Gelassenheit is an attempt to clear that alternative path according to and after Heidegger. Unaware of the extent of "die ökologische Katastrophe wie das atomäre Inferno," Heidegger was too generous to metaphysics and unable to hope that technology itself would be part of the turn from metaphysics. Schirmacher aims to cultivate that very hope, taking up where Heidegger left off, by developing a notion of the unity of Technik and Gelassenheit.

Challenging art historians' scientific pretensions as well as their neglect of theoretical questions, the author traces art history's development from the turn of the century by critically reviewing the early and lesser known writings of Erwin Panofsky, "the most influential art historian in the twentieth century." In a brief sketch of art history's nineteenth century roots, the first chapter reviews what is retained and what is discarded in Hegel's, Burckhardt's, and Dilthey's successive conceptions of historiography. The march of the Hegelian absolute through history may have been decried a fiction, but not the effort to construe history culturally and contextually.