Daniel Dahlstrom

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, published in 1761, bring the metaphysical tradition to bear on the topic of 'sentiments'. Mendelssohn offers a nuanced defence of Leibniz's theodicy and conception of freedom, an examination of the ethics of suicide, an account of the 'mixed sentiments' so central to the tragic genre, a hypothesis about weakness of will, an elaboration of the main principles and types of art, a definition of sublimity and analysis of its basic forms, and, lastly, a brief tract on probability theory, aimed at rebutting Hume's scepticism. This volume also includes the essay 'On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences', selected in 1763 by the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences over all other submitted essays, including one by Kant, as the best answer to the question of whether metaphysical sciences are capable of the same sort and degree of evidence as mathematics.