Iain Thomson

Fischer suggests that the endless life of an immortal would be just as desirable as the very long but finite life of a long‐lived mortal. Fischer acknowledges that this is “one of the most difficult and challenging issues surrounding immortality.” This chapter answers the following: Why do we think, conversely, that being able to die makes a crucial difference? Why would an individual existence that could never come to an end necessarily be bad?. An immortal being could conceivably cycle through an endless succession of such selves, each organized into a coherent and meaningful identity by the new life‐project born out of the collapse of the old one. The author argues, however, that the endless life of an immortal would necessarily fail to qualify as life worth living. So, were we ever to face that choice with which we began, we think living with death remains preferable to the alternative.

When Kant finished the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, he was 56 years old and had already published more than 25 essays and monographs. In this precritical oeuvre the young Kant unabashedly answered some of the most difficult questions of theoretical physics, physical geography, cosmology, theology, and moral theory, advancing ambitious theories about the origin and history of the universe, the nature of space, the age of the earth and the stability of its rotation, the causes of earthquakes, winds, and fire, the ultimate components of reality, the soundness of optimism, the legitimate domain of logic, the character of the beautiful and the sublime, the first principles of theology and morality, the possibility of proving God’s existence, and—tellingly, at the end—the connection between metaphysics and madness. Since this dizzying speculative array appears to be unified only by the young Kant’s “metaphysical exuberance”, his precritical thought is often dismissed as the work of an unfocused dilettante.

This landmark achievement in philosophical scholarship brings together leading experts from the diverse traditions of Western philosophy in a common quest to illuminate and explain the most important philosophical developments since the Second World War. Focusing particularly on those insights and movements that most profoundly shaped the English-speaking philosophical world, this volume bridges the traditional divide between “analytic” and “Continental” philosophy while also reaching beyond it. The result is an authoritative guide to the most important advances and transformations that shaped philosophy during this tumultuous and fascinating period of history, developments that continue to shape the field today. It will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary philosophy of all levels and will prove indispensable for any serious philosophical collection.

This article develops Thomson’s post-Heideggerian view that ontological education is centrally concerned with disclosing being creatively and responsibly. To disclose being creatively and responsibly is to realize the meaning of being, developing our historical understanding of what being means along with our consequent understanding of what it means for us to be, both communally and in the many facets of our own individual lives. As ontological educators, we disclose our own being by becoming who we are, which we do best by learning-in-public, that is, by ‘teaching learning’. In the teaching and learning that belong together in ontological education, we come into our own by helping others to come into their own as well. Thomson explains and develops the crucially meaningful difference between creatively and responsibly disclosing inchoate meanings, on the one hand, and technologically imposing pre-existing plans and ideas, on the other. Responding to five recent essays on Heidegger allows Thomson to elaborate a non-nihilistic way of understanding education, teaching, learning, and being in our late-modern age of increasing technology. This article thereby articulates and embodies some of the important educational possibilities opened up by a more genuinely meaningful postmodern understanding of being.

“Thinking Love: Heidegger and Arendt” explores the problematic nature of romantic love as it developed between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, whom Heidegger later called “the passion of his life.” I suggest that three different ways of understanding love can be found at work in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship, namely, the perfectionist, the unconditional, and the ontological models of love. Explaining these different ways of thinking romantic love, this paper shows how the distinctive problems of the perfectionist and unconditional models played out in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship and how that relationship eventually gave rise to the third, ontological understanding of love. This ontological vision of love combines some of the strengths of the perfectionist and unconditional views while avoiding their worst problems, and so emerges as perhaps the most important philosophical lesson about romantic love to be drawn from studying the lifelong love affair between two of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.

Iain I remember reading Thomas Jefferson in high school; he wrote so eloquently about our human need for freedom that I got choked up just reading him. When I found out he'd had slaves I was stunned, traumatized intellectually, but I lacked the resources to work through it very far at the time. Reading Heidegger a few years later I had a similar experience, only magnified and more complicated. As I read Heidegger's later work in Hubert Dreyfus's wonderful "later Heidegger" course at UC Berkeley, I had that strange experience Emerson describes as our own ideas returning to us with "alienated majesty"; here, I thought, was someone who had eloquently expressed ideas that I felt were at the core of my own thinking but that I had never managed to articulate adequately. I was deeply moved by Heidegger's critique of our increasingly nihilistic treatment of our world and each other as meaningless resources to be optimized and I was inspired by his vision of poetic thinking as a way out of this historical nihilism. Then I found out he'd been a Nazi. I was intellectually traumatized once again. But this time I didn't let the question go: How could the greatest thinker of the twentieth century have thrown the weight of his thinking behind its most horrible political regime? That's something I've been struggling with for almost twenty years now. I believe I made some real progress in understanding this difficult and controversial issue in Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, and I hope to disseminate the view I presented there to a broader audience in a book I'm working on now, an intellectual biography of Heidegger

Heidegger's Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition leads him to the view that all Western metaphysical systems make foundational claims best understood as 'ontotheological'. Metaphysics establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by ontologically grounding and theologically legitimating our changing historical sense of what is. By first elucidating and then problematizing Heidegger's claim that all Western metaphysics shares this ontotheological structure, I reconstruct the most important components of the original and provocative account of the history of metaphysics that Heidegger gives in support of his idiosyncratic understanding of metaphysics. Arguing that this historical narrative generates the critical force of Heidegger's larger philosophical project (namely, his attempt to find a path beyond our own nihilistic Nietzschean age), I conclude by briefly showing how Heidegger's return to the inception of Western metaphysics allows him to uncover two important aspects of Being's pre-metaphysical phenomenological self-manifestation, aspects which have long been buried beneath the metaphysical tradition but which are crucial to Heidegger's attempt to move beyond our late-modern, Nietzschean impasse.

Heidegger presciently diagnosed the current crisis in higher education. Contemporary theorists like Bill Readings extend and update Heidegger's critique, documenting the increasing instrumentalization, professionalization, vocationalization, corporatization, and technologization of the modern university, the dissolution of its unifying and guiding ideals, and, consequently, the growing hyper-specialization and ruinous fragmentation of its departments. Unlike Heidegger, however, these critics do not recognize such disturbing trends as interlocking symptoms of an underlying ontological problem and so they provide no positive vision for the future of higher education. By understanding our educational crisis 'ontohistorically', Heidegger is able to develop an alternative, ontological conception of education which he hopes will help bring about a renaissance of the university. In a provocative reading of Plato's famous 'allegory of the cave', Heidegger excavates and appropriates the original Western educational ideal of Platonic paideia, outlining the pedagogy of an ontological education capable of directly challenging the 'technological understanding of being' he holds responsible for our contemporary educational crisis. This notion of ontological education can best be understood as a philosophical perfectionism, a re-essentialization of the currently empty ideal of educational 'excellence' by which Heidegger believes we can reconnect teaching to research and, ultimately, reunify and revitalize the university itself.

In 1991 Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs made off with five Academy Awards, including the coveted "Best Picture." Merely to introduce this fact I have already had to ignore several potentially relevant questions. [1] But I will spare you the tedium of endlessly qualifying my choice of subject matter; both existentialism and psychoanalysis teach us that the attempt to get behind our own starting points or render our pasts completely transparent to ourselves is an impossible task. Rather, let me lay my Heideggerian cards on the table up front, briefly outlining the methodological understanding from which I will be working in the rest of this paper.

In this paper, I suggest that the important philosophy of the future will increasingly be found neither in the “continental” nor in the “analytic” traditions but, instead, in the transcending sublation of (all) traditions I call “synthetic philosophy.” I mean “synthetic” both in a sense that encourages the bold combinatorial mélange of existing styles, traditions, and issues, and also in the Hegelian sense of sublating dichotomous oppositions, appropriating the distinctive insights of both sides while eliminating their errors and exaggerations, and thereby creating new syntheses in which the old oppositions are transcended

Andrew Feenberg?s most recent contribution to the critical theory of technology, Questioning Technology , is best understood as a synthesis and extension of the critiques of technology developed by Heidegger and Marcuse. By thus situating Feenberg?s endeavor to articulate and preserve a meaningful sense of agency in our increasingly technologized lifeworld, I show that some of the deepest tensions in Heidegger and Marcuse?s relation re-emerge within Feenberg?s own critical theory. Most significant here is the fact that Feenberg, following Marcuse, exaggerates Heidegger?s ?fatalism? about technology. I contend that this mistake stems from Feenberg?s false ascription of a technological ?essentialismfito Heidegger. Correcting this and several related problems, I reconstruct Feenberg?s ?radical democraticEfficacyll for a counter-hegemonic democratization of technological design, arguing that although this timely and important project takes its inspiration from Marcuse, in the end Feenberg remains closer to Heidegger than his Marcuseanism allows him to acknowledge.

Martin Heidegger is now widely recognized as the most influential philosopher of the Twentieth Century. Until the late 1960's, this impact derived mainly from his early magnum opus, 1927's Being and Time. Many of this century's most significant Continental thinkers---including Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Gadamer, Marcuse, Habermas, Bultmann, and Levinas---acknowledge profound conceptual debts to insights first elaborated in this text. But Being and Time was never finished, and Heidegger continued to extend, develop, and in some places revolutionize his own thinking for another fifty years. This "later" Heidegger's prolific body of work has decisively influenced the next generation of Continental thinkers, shaping the concepts and concerns of important figures such as Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Blanchot, and Baudrillard. Despite this unparalleled impact, several basic aspects of Heidegger's later philosophy remain shrouded in mystery, confusion, and controversy. ;The End of Onto-Theology: Understanding Heidegger's Turn, Method, and Politics explains four central aspects of Heidegger's later thought: his controversial understanding of metaphysics as onto-theology, his famously recondite Kehre, his heretofore overlooked philosophical methodology, and his appalling misadventure with Nazism. ;Chapter I introduces the basic structure and unifying thesis of the text. Chapter II clarifies and periodizes Heidegger's mysterious Kehre or "turn," the philosophical transformation which distinguishes his "early" and "later" work. Chapter III uncovers another sense of Kehre, connecting this "turning" to Heidegger's infamous political misadventure. Chapter IV reconstructs Heidegger's famous Destruktion of the history of metaphysical foundationalism, showing how this "deconstruction" both disabused Heidegger of his own politically disastrous metaphysical ambition to recover a "fundamental ontology" and provides the necessary philosophical background for understanding Heidegger's later philosophy. Chapter V explicates Heidegger's later methodology, "ontohistorical placement through hermeneutic altercation," using the case of Nietzsche to demonstrate how Heidegger developed and deployed this method to situate other philosophers' contributions to the history of intelligibility. Chapter VI addresses the complex intersection of Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche's nihilistic legacy with his failed bid to assume philosophical leadership of the National Socialist "revolution," isolating its philosophical sources and establishing the important philosophical lessons Heidegger learned from his "great political error."

Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the twentieth century, yet much of his later philosophy remains shrouded in confusion and controversy. Restoring Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics as 'ontotheology' to its rightful place at the center of his later thought, this book demonstrates the depth and significance of his controversial critique of technology, his appalling misadventure with Nazism, his prescient critique of the university, and his important philosophical suggestions for the future of higher education. It will be required reading for those seeking to understand the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and National Socialism, as well as the continuing relevance of his work.

In Questioning Technology, Feenberg accuses Heidegger of an untenable 'technological essentialism'. Feenberg's criticisms are addressed not to technological essentialism as such, but rather to three particular kinds of technological essentialism: ahistoricism, substantivism, and one-dimensionalism. After these three forms of technological essentialism are explicated and Feenberg's reasons for finding them objectionable explained, the question whether Heidegger in fact subscribes to any of them is investigated. The conclusions are, first, that Heidegger's technological essentialism is not at all ahistoricist, but the opposite, an historical conception of the essence of technology which serves as the model for Feenberg's own view. Second, that while Heidegger does indeed advocate a substantivist technological essentialism, he offers a plausible, indirect response to Feenberg's voluntaristic, Marcusean objection. Third, that Heidegger's one-dimensional technological essentialism is of a non-objectionable variety, since it does not force Heidegger to reject technological devices in toto. These conclusions help vindicate Heidegger's ground-breaking ontological approach to the philosophy of technology.

The idea inspiring the eco-phenomenological movement is that phenomenology can help remedy our environmental crisis by uprooting and replacing environmentally-destructive ethical and metaphysical presuppositions inherited from modern philosophy. Eco-phenomenology's critiques of subject/object dualism and the fact/value divide are sketched and its positive alternatives examined. Two competing approaches are discerned within the eco-phenomenological movement: Nietzscheans and Husserlians propose a naturalistic ethical realism in which good and bad are ultimately matters of fact, and values should be grounded in these proto-ethical facts; Heideggerians and Levinasians articulate a transcendental ethical realism according to which we discover what really matters when we are appropriately open to the environment, but what we thereby discover is a transcendental source of meaning that cannot be reduced to facts, values, or entities of any kind. These two species of ethical realism generate different kinds of ethical perfectionism: naturalistic ethical realism yields an eco-centric perfectionism which stresses the flourishing of life in general; transcendental ethical realism leads to a more 'humanistic' perfectionism which emphasizes the cultivation of distinctive traits of Dasein. Both approaches are examined, and the Heideggerian strand of the humanistic approach defended, since it approaches the best elements of the eco-centric view while avoiding its problematic ontological assumptions and anti-humanistic implications.

Heidegger is against the modern tradition of philosophical “aesthetics” because he is for the true “work of art” which, he argues, the aesthetic approach to art eclipses. Heidegger's critique of aesthetics and his advocacy of art thus form a complementary whole. Section 1 orients the reader by providing a brief overview of Heidegger's philosophical stand against aesthetics, for art. Section 2 explains Heidegger's philosophical critique of aesthetics, showing why he thinks aesthetics follows from modern “subjectivism” and leads to late-modern “enframing,” historical worldviews Heidegger seeks to transcend from within—in part by way of his phenomenological interpretations of art. Section 3 clarifies this attempt to transcend modern aesthetics from within, focusing on the way Heidegger seeks to build a phenomenological bridge from a particular work of art by Vincent van Gogh to the ontological truth of art in general. In this way, as we will see, Heidegger seeks to show how art can help lead us into a genuinely meaningful postmodern age. Section 4 concludes by explaining how this understanding of Heidegger's project allows us to resolve the longstanding controversy surrounding his interpretation of Van Gogh