Daniel Dahlstrom

This volume of essays by internationally prominent scholars interprets the full range of Heidegger's thought and major critical interpretations of it. It explores such central themes as hermeneutics, facticity and Ereignis, conscience in Being and Time, freedom in the writings of his period of transition from fundamental ontology, and his mature criticisms of metaphysics and ontotheology. The volume also examines Heidegger's interpretations of other authors, the philosophers Aristotle, Kant and Nietzsche and the poets Rilke, Trakl and George. A final group of essays interprets the critical reception of Heidegger's thought, both in the analytic tradition and in France. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to all who are interested in the themes, the development and the context of Heidegger's philosophical thought.

There are several difficulties, largely the product of the distinctive question and paths of Heidegger's thinking, that beset any attempt to determine his philosophical heritage. In the first part of the following paper, after reviewing these difficulties, the author argues that Heidegger is, nonetheless, singularly and quite rightly preoccupied with the heritage of his thinking. In the second part an attempt is made to show how a particular understanding of being, namely, being as presence and absence, motivates various paths taken by his thinking, paths which, indeed, have given rise to several appropriations of his thinking in the present: pragmatic, religious, hermeneutical as well as in the philosophy of art and technology. In the final part of the paper the author identifies some of these ongoing "Heideggerian heritages," but with the aim of underscoring their dependence upon what for the author is the principal heritage of his thinking, a way of thinking about being that recovers its fundamentally historical character. /// Existem várias dificuldades, as quais são em larga medida produto da questão distintiva e dos diversos caminhos do pensamento de Heidegger, que condicionam toda e qualquer tentativa de determinar a sua herança filosófica. Na primeira parte do presente artigo, o autor, depois de mencionar as sobreditas dificuldades, argumenta que Heidegger, apesar de tudo, está singularmente, e apropriadamente, preocupado com a herança do seu pensamento. Na segunda parte, é feita uma tentativa no sentido de mostrar até que ponto uma compreensão particular do ser, nomeadamente do ser como presença e ausência, deu lugar a diversas apropriações do pensamento heideggeriano no presente: apropriação pragmática, religiosa, hermenêutica, bem como no âmbito da filosofia da arte e da tecnologia. Finalmente, na sua última parte, o presente artigo identifica algumas das "heranças heideggerianas" correntes, mas com a intenção de sublinhar a sua dependência em relação àquilo que para o autor constitui a principal herança do seu pensamento, nomeadamente, um modo de pensar acerca do ser que recupera o seu carácter fundamentalmente histórico.

This well-written, ambitious, and admirably condensed reconstruction of Kant's concept of God in relation to his theoretical and moral philosophy, from the precritical writings to the Opus Postumum, is by its very nature an uneven survey of the works and problems treated. The author strives for a new interpretation of Kant's moral theology by interpreting Kant's practical postulate of God as "eine qualitätive neue Metaphysik," making possible "subjektiven moralischen Glauben an einen wirklichen transzendenten Gott." The author faithfully exposits how Kant conceived divinity and man's relation to God. But beyond the exposition there is a paucity of elaboration or critical consideration. The author is more intent on articulating the consistency of Kant's conception than in entertaining the rationale, if any, of its critics.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science was conceived by Kant as an application of the positive conclusions or "general metaphysics" demonstrated in the Analytic of Principles of the Critique of Pure Reason to the specialized objects of knowledge that fall under the concept of matter. The application was meant to provide a metaphysical foundation for natural science, capable of explaining, among other things, how mathematics as an a priori discipline is necessarily applicable to the empirical objects encountered in nature. How to understand the precise meaning of this application has, however, been a recurring problem for students of Kant's thought. First published in 1965 as "an interpretation of the Preface of MF," Peter Plaass' Kants Theorie der Naturwissenschaft attempts to resolve this problem by clarifying the meaning of "metaphysical construction," Kant's term for the method introduced and employed in the MF alone. As Plaass construes it, the method consists in constructing the specific, pure concepts required to entertain the existence of a special kind of objects. More precisely, the metaphysical construction specifies the system of pure concepts of the understanding in terms of the content of the empirical concept of matter, namely, "the movable in space." That empirical character applies only to the objective reality of the concept, leaving the way open for the determination of the content of the concept insofar as it is thought in terms of the categories, a determination purportedly conducted in the MF and resulting in the a priori foundations of natural science.

Hegel's Encyclopaedia Logic constitutes the foundation of the system of philosophy presented in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Together with his Science of Logic, it contains the most explicit formulation of his enduringly influential dialectical method and of the categorical system underlying his thought. It offers a more compact presentation of his dialectical method than is found elsewhere, and also incorporates changes that he would have made to the second edition of the Science of Logic if he had lived to do so. This volume presents it in a new translation with a helpful introduction and notes. It will be a valuable reference work for scholars and students of Hegel and German idealism, as well as for those who are interested in the post-Hegelian character of contemporary philosophy.

This well-informed and perceptive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy aims at presenting "how Kant thought that transcendental philosophy can be established, and how he in fact tried to accomplish his task". After indicating the metaphilosophical motivations underlying the study, the author focuses primarily on the transcendental deduction as presented in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. The study itself is divided into three parts. In the first part Kant's philosophical motives, assumptions, and method are unpacked. The author properly takes issue with the tendency to read the transcendental deduction as an answer to the sort of skepticism engendered by attributing primacy to mental states. As the author points out, Kant disavows any such attribution and his concern is rather with specifying what the necessary conditions of empirical cognition are and what follows from them.. Another anachronistic tendency to which the author rightly objects is that of construing Kant's assumptions about the analytic-synthetic distinction in terms of modern notions of analyticity and syntheticity. Relying heavily on the distinction Kant makes in the Methodology between mathematical and philosophical methods, the author also argues quite trenchantly that "deduction" does not signify any kind of deductive proof but rather a kind of nontechnical justification, and that the transcendental deduction is to not be equated with a transcendental proof but is, instead, only a preliminary step in accomplishing such a proof.

This major study of Heidegger is the first to examine in detail the concept of existential truth that he developed in the 1920s. Daniel O. Dahlstrom critically examines the genesis, nature and validity of Heidegger's radical attempt to rethink truth as the disclosure of time, a disclosure allegedly more basic than truths formulated in scientific judgements. The book has several distinctive and innovative features. First, it is the only study that attempts to understand the logical dimension of Heidegger's thought in its historical context. Second, no other book-length treatment explores the breadth and depth of Heidegger's confrontation with Husserl, his erstwhile mentor. Third, the book demonstrates that Heidegger's deconstruction of Western thinking occurs on three interconnected fronts: truth, being and time. Dealing with a crucial aspect of the philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, this book will be important to all scholars and students of Heidegger, whether in philosophy, theology or literary studies.

This meeting of the Hegel-Gesellschaft featured forty-six papers, including those presented during the two plenary sessions, covering a wide range of topics within the theme of the congress. The congress was ably administered and hosted by Dr. Wolfgang Sünkel at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Nürnberg. As usual, the congress was heavily represented by scholars from Eastern Europe and by scholars working at the Hegel-Archiv in Bochum. The contingent from the United States included Howard Kainz, Thomas Rockmore, Lawrence Stepelevich and myself.

The first part of this essay contests traditional objections to Kant's derivation of the law of right from the moral law, objections based upon the formalism and subjectivism that are inherent in Kant's formulation of the latter. Through a reconstruction of that derivation in syllogistic form, the nature and extent of the empirical presupposition underlying Kant's doctrine of right - furnishing it with a kind of content and natural objectivity - are made perspicuous. After noting the multiple uses of the term 'right' in Kant's doctrine, the second part of the essay sharply criticizes his dismissal of what he calls a "right in a broad sense", namely, equity.

Over a hundred scholars from as far away as Tokyo, New York, and Buenos Aires, participated in the twentieth congress of the Internationale Hegel-Gesellschaft held in Debrecen and Budapest, Hungary, from August 24 to August 28, 1994, on the theme: Vernunft in der Geschichte? Among those addressing the Debrecen portion of the congress were Agnes Heller, Manfred Riedel, Shlomo Avineri, Walter Jaeschke, and Ludwig Siep. Howard Kainz of Marquette University also gave a well received paper in Debrecen on “Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Providence.”

This paper suggests that Hegel's legacy is precisely the questionability of any attempt to put it in question. Derrida's acknowledgment of différance's "absolute proximity" to Hegel's notion of Aufhebung is an admission of this difficulty and an insistence, nevertheless, on disestablishing Hegel's thinking. Part one reviews four Hegelian legacies, summed up in the notion of Aufhebung: a suspicion of immediacy, a presumption of the fully mediated character of reality, a decentering of subjectivity by way of recovering nature and society, and finally, an endorsement of the absolute power of negation. Part two briefly recounts how Derrida manages, nevertheless, to deconstruct Hegel's legacy. However, the paper concludes that, since deconstruction and différance also call for the humility of deferring to a non-deferral of meaning, the questionability of putting Hegelian legacy in question remains its legacy.