Norman Swazo

Heidegger’s thought presents us with the possibility of, as well as a call for, a “retrieval” (Wiederholung) of what is “unthought” (das Ungedachte) and “unsaid” (das Ungesagte) in the political philosophy of the ancient Greeks. A successful retrieval would lead to an “originary” (ursprünglich) political thinking that enables the “enactment” (Vollzug) of an originary politics, consistent with the possibility of a “second beginning” such as Heidegger deemed necessary and imminent. The task here is to identify “hermeneutic signposts” present in Heidegger’s reading of Plato’s Sophist as a basis for a “prolegomenon” to thinking the unthought. After the signposts are identified, a “Postscript” engages briefly several salient queries that arise from the effort to think about the political with reference to Heidegger’s thought, thus pointing to what remains to be thought beyond the signposting of this prolegomenon.

Every philosopher who is concerned with practical rationality and the public import of philosophy assumes a politico-philosophical responsibility for his or her words, thoughts, and deeds. More often than not, this is a function of his or her place and time in history as well as the press of current events that claim the philosopher’s solicitude so as to intervene at least with the force of thought and words, if not with deeds. Yet, as philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Albert Camus have argued, thinking is itself always the essential action that is needed in times of momentous decision, despite the seeming absurdity of events.

This book critically examines the debate on Martin Heidegger's concept of Entscheidung and his engagement and confrontation with Nazism in terms of his broader philosophical thought. It argues that one cannot explain Heidegger's actions without accounting for his idea of "decision" and its connection to his understanding of individual "fate" and national "destiny." The book looks at the relation of biography to philosophy and the ethical and political implications of appropriating Heidegger's thinking in these domains of inquiry. It highlights themes such as Heidegger's differences with the neo-Kantians in Germany; Heidegger on Kant and practical reason; and his reading of Nietzsche and Hegel. It offers a philosophical assessment grounded in Heidegger's own texts, with reference to historical and other philosophical commentaries on the rise of National Socialism in post-Weimar Germany and the philosophical issues associated with the interpretation of Nazi genocide and ideology. An important intervention in Western philosophy, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political philosophy, continental philosophy, German philosophy, philosophy in general, and political studies.

This book provides a history of the ethnic persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and their disputed ethnic and national identity. It focuses on how the crisis has morphed into a geopolitical encounter among Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar. It further explores the moral, ethnographic, and public policy issues in the humanitarian response to the crisis of the Rohingya people. The volume analyzes the question of citizenship for the Rohingyas by analyzing historical documents and interviews which chronicle the status and identity of the community and their past involvement in the government and politics of Myanmar. The authors focus specifically on the changing geopolitical context of state formation in South Asia and the tense relationships between Myanmar and its neighbours - Bangladesh, China, and India. The book examines the alliances and disputes in the South and Southeast Asia region, which are predicated on economic and strategic gains, and their impact on the Rohingya crisis. It also looks at the failure of bilateral and multilateral negotiations among these countries to adequately address or alleviate the plight of the stateless Rohingyas. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of international studies, peace, human rights and conflict studies, sociology, ethnic studies, border studies, migration and diaspora studies, discrimination and exclusion studies, public policy, and Asian Studies. It will also be useful for professionals working in the media, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and policy makers, as well as general readers interested in the history of the persecution of the Rohingya people.

Heidegger’s thinking of the human way to be unavoidably concerns itself with a distinctive human possibility of being. It is argued here that the early Heidegger, who engaged Aristotle’s philosophy via what Heidegger calls “phenomenological interpretations,” learns from Aristotle’s method of definition but goes beyond it to conceive the idea of possibility—Dasein’s being-possible (Seinkönnen)—differently. It is reasonable to argue that the early Heidegger accomplishes a productive interpretation of Aristotle in this case while being indebted to Aristotle’s understanding of ‘definition’ as both “genuinely indicative” and “indeterminate.” Despite Aristotle’s ontological commitment to a metaphysics of presence (Anwesenheit) with its linkage of “possibility-actuality” (“dunamis-energeia/entelecheia”), Heidegger appreciates that there remains an important possibility of phenomenological interpretation in both Aristotle’s concept of zóon lógon echon and the expression ‘tò tí en einai’. This interpretive move is discussed here.

Political philosophy concerns itself with thematic, systematic interrogation of political ideas, structures, institutions, and practices. As such it privileges the authority of reason. But, the vision of the literary imagination likewise can and does contribute to human understanding and to imagining our common future. Ursula K. LeGuin is a master teacher of ethical politics in her award-winning novel The Dispossessed. Therein, the protagonist Shevek is presented as an edifying exemplar of “permanent revolution” in a uniquely “thinking mind.” His quest for solidarity of peoples is grounded on a possibility of authentic selfhood within his anarchist society. Considering the concept of authentic selfhood as discussed in philosopher Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, Shevek’s character may be represented as an imaginary, yet “real,” example or profile of how authentic selfhood may be constituted. This is consistent with LeGuin’s intent in The Dispossessed.

Literary criticism of Shakespeare’s Othello since the early 20th century leaves us with various complaints that Shakespeare fails to achieve poetic justice therein, or that this work leaves us, in the end, with a moral enigma—despite what seems to be Shakespeare’s intent to represent a plot and characters having moral probity and, thereby, to foster our moral edification through the tragedy that unfolds. Here a number of interpretive views concerning the morality proper to Othello are reviewed. Thereafter, it is proposed that Heidegger’s thought about the relation of appearance, semblance, and reality enables a novel interpretation of the moral significance of this tragedy, thereby to resolve the question of moral enigma.

How can one be authentic, except with reference to some dogma? An answer to this query is philosophically important in light of the significance that individuals attach to traditions of thought and practice and to epistemic commitments articulated in the context of the political, which are characterized as ideological appeals. Here the thinking of Martin Heidegger is engaged as a way of evaluating the concept of dogma and the seemingly moral and political relevance of the concept of authenticity. The point of the analysis is to conclude otherwise than is presupposed by the question, i.e., to conclude that one can be authentic without reference to some dogma.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger’s writing on the essence of technology has often been seen as too abstract even though he illustrated his concerns with reference to technological developments of his day. While most in the immediate post-World War 2 period judged thermonuclear weaponry to be the most obvious technological threat to the future of humanity, Heidegger instead considered developments in the biological sciences to be more so. In the discussion presented here, Heidegger’s thinking is related to developments in biotechnology, specifically assisted reproductive technology. The task here is (1) to illustrate how Heidegger’s disquiet is manifested in such technologies and (2) to emphasize the significance of his call for a “step back” from the calculative thinking dominant in the natural sciences to what he called, alternately, “essential,” “meditative,” or “commemorative” thinking. Only through this latter mode of thinking can we expect to enter into a “free” relationship to technology.

When political philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of ‘banality of evil’ she did so in reference to the actions of Germans who appropriated the doctrines of National Socialism “thoughtlessly” and without obvious intentions to do evil. But, Arendt’s description of this phenomenon entails that such banality can be found even in a democracy such as the USA. The relation of law and morality must therefore be unambiguous to defend the rule of law against the rule of men. However, a legal philosophy other than positivism is essential to safeguard the Republic against the overreach of executive power. And, where the psychopathology of Donald Trump is at the core of America’s electoral discontent in 2020, as mental health professionals have argued, there is all the more reason to take Arendt’s counsel especially seriously today. It is in this context that it is argued here that the American public must beware Trump’s inducement of America’s banality of evil.

The twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger distinguished “meditative” and “calculative” modes of thinking as a way of highlighting the problematique of modern technology and the limits of modern science. In doing so he also was prescient to recognize, in 1955, that the most significant danger to the future of humanity are developments in molecular biology and biotechnology, in contrast to the post-World War global threat of thermonuclear weapons. These insights are engaged here in view of recent discussion of the need for international regulation of heritable human genome editing and the announcement in 2018 of the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies in China. Heidegger’s call for meditative thinking requires modern medicine and the life sciences to appropriate the phenomenological conception of the human “way to be” such that it is not restricted to the “present-at-hand” physiology and pathology of the human body.

In November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced the birth of two baby girls born through the use of in vitro fertilization technology and the use of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. There has been nigh uniform international condemnation of the clinical trial for violating international norms governing genomic research, especially research in human embryos that has implications for the germline. At issue also is the question whether the parents and the clinical research team harmed, and therefore wronged, the two girls. Here this question is engaged through application of the reasoning Derek Parfit has provided on the non-identity problem. One concludes that on this reasoning the parents are not morally culpable on that argument, although there is other reasoning that is to be considered to resist the Parfitian conclusion.

It is often stated that the German twentieth-century philosopher Martin Heidegger never wrote an ethics while undertaking his critique and deconstruction of the Western tradition of metaphysics. It is, therefore, difficult to know what manner of normative ethics, if any, is consistent with his “hermeneutic of Dasein” such as articulated in his Being and Time. However, in his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger refers to the tragedies of Sophocles as “preserving the ēthos” more originally, thus better, than does Aristotle’s ethics. Hence, one may examine Sophocles’s tragedies guided by the hermeneutic Heidegger provides, especially through the concepts of authenticity and authentic selfhood. Doing so, it is argued here that Sophocles’s Philoctetes presents one such opportunity for moral understanding in the interplay of authenticity and inauthenticity, in particular through a study of the moral dilemma that Neoptolemus must resolve as he moves from a situation of inauthenticity to a display of authentic resolve.

BackgroundNormally, physicians understand they have a duty to treat patients, and they perform accordingly consistent with codes of medical practice, standards of care, and inner moral motivation. In the case of COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country such as Bangladesh, however, the fact is that some physicians decline either to report for duty or to treat patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms. At issue ethically is whether such medical practitioners are to be automatically disciplined for dereliction of duty and gross negligence; or, on the contrary, such physicians may legitimately claim a professional right of autonomous judgment, on the basis of which professional right they may justifiably decline to treat patients.MethodsThis ethical issue is examined with a view to providing some guidance and recommendations, insofar as the conditions of medical practice in an under-resourced country such as Bangladesh are vastly different from medical practice in an industrialized nation such as the USA. The concept of moral dilemma as discussed by philosopher Michael Shaw Perry and philosopher Immanuel Kant’s views on moral appeal to “emergency” are considered pertinent to sorting through the moral conundrum of medical care during pandemic.ResultsOur analysis allows for conditional physician discretion in the decision to treat COVID-19 patients, i.e., in the absence of personal protective equipment (PPE) combined with claim of duty to family. Physicians are nonetheless expected to provide a minimum of initial clinical assessment and stabilization of a patient before initiating transfer of a patient to a “designated” COVID-19 hospital. The latter is to be done in coordination with the national center control room that can assure admission of a patient to a referral hospital prior to ambulance transport.ConclusionsThe presence of a moral dilemma (i.e., conflict of obligations) in the pandemic situation of clinical care requires institutional authorities to exercise tolerance of individual physician moral decision about the duty to care. Hospital or government authority should respond to such decisions without introducing immediate sanction, such as suspension from all clinical duties or termination of licensure, and instead arrange for alternative clinical duties consistent with routine medical care.

In institutional settings affecting the formulation and implementation of international foreign and security policy, nation-states are influenced by Western standards of jurisprudence without explicit concern for religiously grounded legal frameworks. The question at issue here is whether there is a role for Islamic law in the formulation of international law, given recent literature examining this conjunction. For some, cultural symmetry requires attention to Islamic law, e.g., the Islamic law of nations, in the same way Western modernity evolved contemporary international law out of a concept of a “law of nations”. In a historical period of asserted fundamentalist Islamic ideology as well as post-9/11 neo-conservative political ideology, there is ample need for negotiation of culture, including philosophical foundations of law, in which case attention to Islamic jurisprudence may well be a positive development to advance the cause of an evolving international legal order.

In recent times, the American Philosophical Association has been exposed in a serious way to the issue of pluralism in philosophy curriculums in the departments of philosophy of American universities and colleges. This conversation brings to the fore the fact that what is at issue in the prospect of pluralizing American philosophy departments is not merely the matter of deciding the discipline's boundaries of intellectual formation relative to the current generation of students, but the unforeseeen consequences of pluralism which challenge both 'the American canon' and the profession's self-understanding vis-à-vis a 'Western' intellectual heritage that distinguishes the 'essential' from the 'marginal' by privileging essential figures, problems, and time-honored methodological commitments. Yet, to the degree that there is a quest for relation of differences, this need not presuppose the universality of philosophical discourse, comparative philosophy moving inevitably within a logic of opposition rather than a logic of mutuality. Our thinking is surely problematic if at this World Congress we find an occasion for a confrontation between 'the West' and 'the margin,' the latter construed negatively as a 'mute, growing and menacing pressure.'

The medical devices industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of healthcare industry with a large market, a wide variety of products and growing applications. In Malaysia, this industry is a major contributor to the economy and government initiatives support its growth to position Malaysia as a medical device manufacturing hub in the Asia-Pacific region. There are more than 180 manufacturers of medical devices in Malaysia involved in the production of sophisticated devices such as orthopedic products, surgical instruments and dialysis machines. Local companies are moving towards complying with internationally recognized quality standards such as ISO 13485 as an attempt to penetrate the global market. However, there is a religious need to provide medical devices that are certified halal in order to cater to the needs of Muslim consumers who make up 64.3% of the Malaysian population. It is an advantage that Malaysia halal certification industry is well-developed and recognized as a model all around the world. Malaysia shows a strong industrial manufacturing potential for a wide range of halal products. The availability of supporting industries thus provides Malaysia with the ideal conditions to develop into a medical device hub in Asia as well as to establish a global acceptance model for halal medical devices. This paper will discuss the ethical aspects of developing halal medical devices for the needs of Muslims in Malaysia and other Islamic nations.

Islamic studies, as a discipline, are carried out according to various methodological commitments and hermeneutic presuppositions. This includes traditional conservative and apologetic perspectives, as well as Orientalist and revisionist, more or less historical-critical approaches to Islamic religious life. Interpretation of Islamic faith and practice is to be understood accordingly. Notwithstanding such methodological commitments, one can reasonably ask if and how a phenomenological clarification of ‘the Qur’an’ might add to this understanding. Phenomenological methods vary, in which case phenomenological description is dependent on the methodological guideline adopted, e.g., that which follows Edmund Husserl or, alternatively, the approach offered by Martin Heidegger. This paper reviews these methodological issues with a view to illuminating an alternative comportment that sees the Qur’an as a phenomenon open to clarification, yet without commitment to epistemological or empirical methods of analysis

Whether Albert Camus’s “existentialist” thought expresses an “ethics” is a subject of disagreement among commentators. Yet, there can be no reading of Camus’s philosophical and literary works without recognizing that he was engaged in the post-WW2 period with two basic questions: How must we think? What must we do? If his thought presents us with an ethics, even if not systematic, it seems to be present in his ideas of “remaking” both man and world that are central to his The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. Curiously, however, this apparent recommendation is ambiguous for the fact that while Camus proposes as much he does so “comme si,” i.e., form a perspective of “as if.” A clarification of this qualification is presented here in the light of the fact that Camus rejects any nihilist project that countenances either suicide or murder. Thereby one may argue that Camus indeed has an ethics that remains pertinent to today.

Contemporary Islam presents Europe in particular with a political and moral challenge: Moderate-progressive Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims present differing visions of the relation of politics and religion and, consequently, differing interpretations of freedom of expression. There is evident public concern about Western “political correctness,” when law or policy accommodates censorship of speech allegedly violating religious sensibilities. Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and various empirical studies on the religious convictions of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to the principle of separation of religion and state (political authority). Further, a reasonable interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence allows that matters of religious difference may be engaged and resolved by appeal to private conscience and ethical judgment, rather than by appeal to public law per se. In so far as they are 1 representative of contemporary scholarship, the interpretative positions of Ziad Elmarsafy, Jacques Derrida, and Nasr Abū Zayd are presented in illustration of this latter point.

The general task of this meditation is to understand the philosophical underpinnings of world order thinking, i.e., its grounding in the metaphysics of subjectivity of the modern age initiated by Descartes and completed by Nietzsche. The thought of Martin Heidegger, in particular his critique of the history of metaphysics, is appropriated and applied to world order thinking. The specific task here is to elucidate the consequent of a conditional proposition: If Heidegger's thinking of the history of metaphysics as the history of Being is compelling, then world order thinking rests on flawed metaphysical presuppositions. In short, ontological and epistemological difficulties remain most at issue for world order thinking, despite the urgency of global problems. ;World order thinking is understood by way of the rubrics "normative futurism" and "technocratic futurism". When examined in light of the dominance of subjectivism, however, this distinction collapses. Both modes of futurism involve a strategic rationality, what Heidegger calls "calculative thinking". That is, value-thinking which characterizes normative futurism is, metaphysically, the same as the technocratic rationality of technocratic futurism. A technocratic world order--global governance by way of the planetary domination of technology--is the tacit, if not explicit, promise of both modes of futurism. This is particularly the case with respect to the systems approach to world order, i.e., the application of systems philosophy or General Systems Theory to the problem of world order. Heidegger's "fundamental ontology", in particular his articulation of the ontological structures of human Dasein, challenges the legitimacy of all world order thinking which is governed by the metaphysics of subjectivity. This metaphysical horizon promises total conquest of the earth along the path of technologically organized man--a path which is coordinate with the hegemony of Western reason qua scientific-technological reason. ;Notwithstanding, the positive dimension of this Heideggerian critique is such as to sustain and buttress the world order movement. A critique of the metaphysics of subjectivity grants support to the movement's challenge to the logic of statecraft and its ordering principle of sovereignty. Moreover, Heidegger's thought promises to illuminate the character of planetary thinking and planetary dwelling

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom presented the provocative idea that we are now living in a computer simulation. Although his argument is structured to include a “hypothesis,” it is unclear that his proposition can be accounted as a properly scientific hypothesis. Here Bostrom’s argument is engaged critically by accounting for philosophical and scientific positions that have implications for Bostrom’s principal thesis. These include discussions from Heidegger, Einstein, Heisenberg, Feynman, and Dreyfus that relate to modelling of structures of thinking and computation. In consequence of this accounting, given that there seems to be no reasonably admissible evidence to count for the task of falsification, one concludes that the computer simulation argument’s hypothesis is only speculative and not scientific.

At an international conference on philosophy and anthropology held in 1968, French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida remarked that an international philosophical encounter is an extremely rare thing in the world. Twenty years later, American moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre argued that moral discourse today entails the recognition that there are many rationalities, each with its conception of justice, such that one must ask the questions, "Which rationality? Whose justice?" In this paper I take note of these observations with reference to the claim that human rights have universal validity, recognizing that international discussions about this claim are moments in which "the West" presumably experiences a "collocution" with discourses from "the margin". My argument proceeds to conclude that any legitimate discussion of human rights must acknowledge the need for movement from cultural hierarchy to cultural symmetry, thereby conceding that traditions alien to the Western tradition of moral discourse may be superior in rationality, both theoretical and practical, thereby being instructive about the requirements of global justice.

At an international conference on philosophy and anthropology held in 1968, French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida remarked that an international philosophical encounter is an extremely rare thing in the world. Twenty years later, American moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre argued that moral discourse today entails the recognition that there are many rationalities, each with its conception of justice, such that one must ask the questions, "Which rationality? Whose justice?" In this paper I take note of these observations with reference to the claim that human rights have universal validity, recognizing that international discussions about this claim are moments in which "the West" presumably experiences a "collocution" with discourses from "the margin". My argument proceeds to conclude that any legitimate discussion of human rights must acknowledge the need for movement from cultural hierarchy to cultural symmetry, thereby conceding that traditions alien to the Western tradition of moral discourse may be superior in rationality, both theoretical and practical, thereby being instructive about the requirements of global justice.

Patents recognize economic right and are important for both individual and social economic benefit. Nonetheless, mere economic right does not eliminate the requirement for moral assessment when adjudicating intellectual property claims, especially in the case of claims associated with applications of biomedical technology [e.g., somatic cell nuclear transfer methods]. This is so for applications for patent in the case of live-born animal clones, as governed in the setting of the judicial system of the USA. Here recent federal court decisions in the USA are reviewed, and the ethical ambiguities of this judicial review are engaged in light of the current prohibitions on human reproductive cloning. It is concluded that the legal proscription of patents on animal clones bodes well for human accountability to present and future generations in the event of human reproductive cloning.

Bioethics tends to be dominated by discourses concerned with the ethical dimension of medical practice, the organization of medical care, and the integrity of biomedical research involving human subjects and animal testing. Jacques Derrida has explored the fundamental question of the “limit” that identifies and differentiates the human animal from the nonhuman animal. However, to date his work has not received any reception in the field of biomedical ethics. In this paper, I examine what Derrida’s thought about this limit might mean for the use/misuse/abuse of animals in contemporary biomedical research. For this, I review Derrida’s analysis and examine what it implies for scientific responsibility, introducing what I have coined the “Incompleteness Theorem of Bioethics.”.