David Batho

Supposing that addicts choose to act as they do, rather than being compelled to behave in particular ways, what explains the choices that they make? Hannah Pickard has recently pointed out that we can go a long way to answering this question if we can make sense of why addicts value the ends they pursue. She argues that addiction is a social identity that gives purpose and structure to life and that the choices that addicts make are valuable to them as ways of sustaining this social identity. But if addicts freely make choices towards ends that they perceive as valuable in terms of a social identity to which they contribute, and therefore if addiction involves the deployment of quite considerable agential apparatus, how are we to hold on to the natural assumption that addictions are disempowering? In this paper I present an answer to this question. Drawing on the resources of the phenomenological tradition, I argue that some social identities give purpose and structure to life in a way that inhibits, rather than enables, the exercise of a capacity that is central to our form of life. I elaborate the hypothesis that paradigmatic cases of addiction involve this sort of disempowering social identity.

ABSTRACTCan Heidegger account for hallucination? I argue that while Heidegger does not develop an account of hallucination, he gives us all the resources we need to develop such an account. I first discuss a prominent argument against the very possibility of such an account. I argue that this argument is mistaken. I then discuss Heidegger's brief remarks on hallucination. In analysing a particular case study, Heidegger claims that the subject hallucinates for two reasons. First, he fails to realize the distinction between the different ways entities are present to him. For this reason, he cannot encounter a particular entity as it is present. Second, he is unable to do anything about the fact and manner of the presence of that entity. He is ‘unable to move in his world freely’, as Heidegger puts it. I show how these remarks, when taken in combination with Heidegger's broader ontology, allow us to explain the possibility of hallucination in a distinctively Heideggerian way.

There is an obvious role for self-assertion within discourse. It is much less obvious what role self-withdrawal might play. Indeed, it is far from obvious what role it could play. For how can we enter into discourse at all if we pull ourselves from the fray? Heidegger, however, claims not only that self-withdrawal has a role to play but that reticence is the authentic mode of discourse. In this paper, I develop an account of reticence that explains its importance to Being and Time. I argue that Heidegger's conception of reticence is central to his explanation of how the understanding can be developed in terms of the things themselves, rather than in terms of what one says about things.

Supposing that addicts choose to act as they do, rather than being compelled to behave in particular ways, what explains the choices that they make? Hannah Pickard has recently pointed out that we can go a long way to answering this question if we can make sense of why addicts value the ends they pursue. She argues that addiction is a social identity that gives purpose and structure to life and that the choices that addicts make are valuable to them as ways of sustaining this social identity. But if addicts freely make choices towards ends that they perceive as valuable in terms of a social identity to which they contribute, and therefore if addiction involves the deployment of quite considerable agential apparatus, how are we to hold on to the natural assumption that addictions are disempowering? In this paper I present an answer to this question. Drawing on the resources of the phenomenological tradition, I argue that some social identities give purpose and structure to life in a way that inhibits, rather than enables, the exercise of a capacity that is central to our form of life. I elaborate the hypothesis that paradigmatic cases of addiction involve this sort of disempowering social identity.

How are we to explain the sort of evil exemplified by Shakespeare's Richard III? Some authors argue that we can only understand this sort of evil as undertaken for its own sake and, in this sense, as ‘diabolical’. Michelle Kosch has argued that Kierkegaard is such an author. In this article I have two aims. My first is to argue that Kierkegaard's analysis of what he calls ‘demonic evil’ offers a psychologically nuanced and compelling account of a distinctive quality of evil without ever abandoning the idea that action is always performed under the guise of the good. My second aim is to connect Kierkegaard's psychological analysis with his broader ethico-religious concerns and, in this way, to do justice to the unity of his ethico-religious psychology as anatomical, diagnostic and therapeutic. To this end, in the second half of this article I aim to show how Kierkegaard's psychology of the demonic is the basis for his valuation of silence as an ethico-religious ideal.

What does it mean to act in the light of a norm? According to Robert Pippin, despite promising overtures, and in contrast to Hegel, Heidegger has no coherent answer to this question. Steven Crowell disagrees. In responding to Pippin’s challenge, Crowell develops a sophisticated reading of Heidegger-on-norms that exploits and expands Heidegger’s inheritance of German Idealist thought around the topic of self-legislation. This chapter has two principal aims. Firstly, it argues that Crowell’s argument fails as a defense of Heidegger. Secondly, it develops a reading of Heidegger to provide an alternative response to Pippin’s challenge.