Heidegger letter to Richardson, 1962

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Famously, Heidegger wrote a letter in 1962 to Father William J. Richardson, S.J., which I’ve made available.

The letter (originally in German) was in response to Richardson’s query for his book Heidegger: through phenomenology to thought (1963), which was the first authoritative attempt to understand the entirety of Heidegger’s career in thinking. The book is outdated now, but famous (reprinted, 2003) for its role in mid-century English-language understanding of Heidegger. Indeed, it was important to me circa 1974-76.

a note on Heidegger’s early philosophy

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Here is a review by Theodore Kisiel (the leading scholar in English of Heidegger’s early development) of a 2008 book, Heidegger’s Early Philosophy: The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality. Kisiel uses the occasion of his review to provide the best succinct conception of Heidegger’s early thinking that I’ve ever read (as something short). What can be said briefly about Being and Time? Kisiel shows the reader.

January 2008 — September 2013

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June 9, 2017

This blog began during spring of 2017, but inherited postings from other blogs, one canceled, one re-purposed. The canceled blog had begun in 2013; the re-purposed blog had postings routed also to “our evolving,” but it had ceased (more or less) by 2010, as I focused on writing that didn’t pertain to that blog. So, the gap here between 2008 and 2013 echoes that situation.

Aren’t you glad to know.

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Heidegger and onticism of globalization

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Heidegger never supported Nazism. Bernhard Radloff published an outstanding book, to that effect, in 2007 on Heidegger’s critique of German ideology, Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism, which has not come into paperback; but he later provided a thorough synopsis of his book as a response to two critical reviews of the book, which is available here: “Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Globalisation.”

a coherence conception of truth as global localityof ultimate value

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20^th century coherence theories of truth (which aren’t tenable) might be appropriately read as plausible intuitions of theories of validity containing a conception of true statements and other kinds of “truth,” like normative validity and genuineness (or sincerity, to use Bernard Williams’s preferred term in his bi-modal theory of truth as a matter of accuracy and sincerity). In any case, I find old coherence theories of truth interesting as promising miscarriages.

Yet, a tenable theory of coherence is only as good as the discursive cohering that designs. That might imply a sense of “the” Good which is discursive, but doesn’t imply that an appropriate theory of “the” Good is about discursiveness! Philosophy itself might be about discursiveness, but what we want backing (warranting) a conception of “the” Good is, I think, a conception of valuing that integrally serves Our flourishing, which is individuational, communitarian, vastly systemic (hyperNetted, politically economic, environmental, etc.), and evolving (a disursive notion which would be also about its own discursive“ness”).

meaning of life

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The meaning of one’s life? A meaning?—for one’s life?

A distinction can be made between meaning and significance—or literal meaning of something and a broader/deeper sense of it—narrow scale and wide scale. Doesn’t one have in mind, by using the phrase “meaning of life,” a concern for a significance of a life? meaningfulness?

a note on objectivity vs. factuality vs. normativity

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I sent the following note today to Brian Leiter, Professor of Law and Philosophy, U. of Texas, Austin:

Professor Leiter,

You know, Jürgen Habermas has received a lot of attention in philosophy, including philosophy of law (e.g., the anthology Habermas on Law and Democracy, 1998, oriented around his Between Facts and Norms). So, when you write, in "Leiter Reports," that "I don't think much of Habermas as a philosopher-—who does?" (11/06/03), I think: Gee, what's wrong with me?