Zollikon Seminars

Zollikon Seminars
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780810118324

Long awaited and eagerly anticipated, this remarkable volume allows English-speaking readers to experience a profound dialogue between the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss. A product of their long friendship, Zollikon Seminars: Protocols-Conversations-Letters chronicles an extraordinary exchange of ideas. Heidegger strove to transcend the bounds of philosophy while Boss and his colleagues in the scientific community sought to better understand their patients and their world. Boss approached Heidegger during World War II asking for help in reflective thinking on the nature of Heidegger's work. A correspondence ensued, followed by visits that soon became annual two-week meetings in Boss's home in Zollikon, Switzerland. The protocols from these seminars, recorded by Boss and reviewed, corrected, and supplemented by Heidegger himself, make up one part of this volume. They are augmented by Boss's record of the conversations he had with Heidegger in the days between seminars and by excerpts from the hundreds of letters that Heidegger wrote to Boss between 1947 and 1971. For the first time, Heidegger makes the fundamental ideas of his philosophy accessible to nonphilosophers. Heidegger confronts certain philosophical/psychological theories, including Freudian psychoanalysis, Ludwig Binswanger's and Boss's forms of Dasein (existential) psychoanalysis, and Indian philosophy that he has never previously addressed. The lectures, correspondence, and conversations span twenty-five years, offering an ongoing view of Heidegger's career and philosophical development. A richly detailed picture of one of the century's great philosophers, Zollikon Seminars is the best and clearest introduction to Heidegger's philosophy available.

The Chattering Mind

The Chattering Mind
Author: Samuel McCormick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2020-03-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022667780X

From Plato’s contempt for “the madness of the multitude” to Kant’s lament for “the great unthinking mass,” the history of Western thought is riddled with disdain for ordinary collective life. But it was not until Kierkegaard developed the term chatter that this disdain began to focus on the ordinary communicative practices that sustain this form of human togetherness. The Chattering Mind explores the intellectual tradition inaugurated by Kierkegaard’s work, tracing the conceptual history of everyday talk from his formative account of chatter to Heidegger’s recuperative discussion of “idle talk” to Lacan’s culminating treatment of “empty speech”—and ultimately into our digital present, where small talk on various social media platforms now yields big data for tech-savvy entrepreneurs. In this sense, The Chattering Mind is less a history of ideas than a book in search of a usable past. It is a study of how the modern world became anxious about everyday talk, figured in terms of the intellectual elites who piqued this anxiety, and written with an eye toward recent dilemmas of digital communication and culture. By explaining how a quintessentially unproblematic form of human communication became a communication problem in itself, McCormick shows how its conceptual history is essential to our understanding of media and communication today.

Kierkegaard and Bioethics

Kierkegaard and Bioethics
Author: Johann-Christian Põder
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000878236

This book explores Kierkegaard’s significance for bioethics and discusses how Kierkegaard’s existential thinking can enrich and advance current bioethical debates. A bioethics inspired by Kierkegaard is not focused primarily on ethical codes, principles, or cases, but on the existential 'how' of our medical situation. Such a perspective focuses on the formative ethical experiences that an individual can have in relation to oneself and others when dealing with medical decisions, interventions, and information. The chapters in this volume explore questions like: What happens when medicine and bioethics meet Kierkegaard? How might Kierkegaard’s writings and thoughts contribute to contemporary issues in medicine? Do we need an existential turn in bioethics? They offer theoretical reflections on how Kierkegaard’s existential thinking might contribute to bioethics and apply Kierkegaardian concepts to debates on health and disease, predictive medicine and enhancement, mental illness and trauma, COVID-19, and gender identity. Kierkegaard and Bioethics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Kierkegaard, bioethics, moral philosophy, existential ethics, religious ethics, and the medical humanities.

Contemporary Kantian Metaphysics

Contemporary Kantian Metaphysics
Author: R. Baiasu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2012-02-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230358918

Responding to growing interest in the Kantian tradition and in issues concerning space and time, this volume offers an insightful and original contribution to the literature by bringing together analytical and phenomenological approaches in a productive exchange on topical issues such as action, perception, the body, and cognition and its limits.

Madness and Death in Philosophy

Madness and Death in Philosophy
Author: Ferit Guven
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791483568

Ferit Güven illuminates the historically constitutive roles of madness and death in philosophy by examining them in the light of contemporary discussions of the intersection of power and knowledge and ethical relations with the other. Historically, as Güven shows, philosophical treatments of madness and death have limited or subdued their disruptive quality. Madness and death are linked to the question of how to conceptualize the unthinkable, but Güven illustrates how this conceptualization results in a reduction to positivity of the very radical negativity these moments represent. Tracing this problematic through Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, and, finally, in the debate on madness between Foucault and Derrida, Güven gestures toward a nonreducible, disruptive form of negativity, articulated in Heidegger's critique of Hegel and Foucault's engagement with Derrida, that might allow for the preservation of real otherness and open the possibility of a true ethics of difference.

The Incarnality of Being

The Incarnality of Being
Author: Frank Schalow
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791481867

The Incarnality of Being addresses Martin Heidegger's tendency to neglect the problem of the body, an omission that is further reflected in the field of Heidegger scholarship. By addressing the corporeal dimension of human existence, author Frank Schalow uncovers Heidegger's concern for the materiality of the world. This allows for the ecological implications of Heidegger's thought to emerge, specifically, the kinship between humans and animals and the mutual interest each has for preserving the environment and the earth. By advancing the theme of the "incarnality of being," Schalow brings Heidegger's thinking to bear on various provocative questions concerning contemporary philosophy: sexuality, the intersection of human and animal life, the precarious future of the earth we inhabit, and the significance that reclaiming our embodiment has upon ethics and politics.

Of Philosophers and Madmen

Of Philosophers and Madmen
Author: Richard Askay
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401207143

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Cast of Characters -- Play Setting -- Of Philosophers and Madmen -- On the Nature of Humans: Sigmund Freud -- Finding Oneself in Heidegger's Early Philosophy -- Stemming the Tide: Martin Heidegger's Critique of Freudian Psychoanalysis -- A Creative Misunderstanding: Ludwig Binswanger -- In Search of a Humanistic Grounding for Psychoanalysis: Medard Boss -- Toward an Integration of Psychoanalysis and Phenomenological Ontology -- Bibliography.

Contexts of Suffering

Contexts of Suffering
Author: Kevin Aho
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2019-08-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786611899

Contexts of Suffering draws on Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology and his analysis of human existence to challenge core assumptions in contemporary psychiatry by contextualizing mental illness and illuminating its existential and experiential qualities. The book explores the limitations of today’s biomedical model and examines mental illness from a first-person perspective to show how it can disrupt and modify the meaning-structures that constitute our subjectivity. It goes on to offer a hermeneutic analysis of mental illness by shedding light on the extent to which our historical situation shapes the way we diagnose, classify, and experience our suffering and provides the discursive framework through which we can interpret and make sense of it. To this end, the book highlights the crucial need for clinicians to regard the sufferer not as a neurochemical entity but as a way of being that is uniquely situated, embodied, and self-interpreting. Contexts of Suffering will be a valuable resource for Heidegger scholars, philosophers of health and illness, medical ethicists, and mental healthcare professionals in general.

Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time

Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time
Author: Emily Hughes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2024-04-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1040010369

This book reconstructs Heidegger’s philosophy of time by reading his work with and against a series of key interlocutors that he nominates as being central to his own critical history of time. In doing so, it explains what makes time of such significance for Heidegger and argues that Heidegger can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. Time is a central concern for Heidegger, yet his thinking on the subject is fragmented, making it difficult to grasp its depth, complexity, and promise. Heidegger traces out a history that focuses on the conceptualisations of time put forward by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Husserl – an “alternative history of time” that challenges how time has been defined and studied within both philosophy and the sciences. This book explores what happens when we take seriously Heidegger’s claim that these seven figures are essential to any understanding of time, setting out what this can tell us about existence, possibility, and philosophy as a historical discipline. Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Heidegger, phenomenology, the philosophy of time, and the history of philosophy.

Heidegger and the Politics of Disablement

Heidegger and the Politics of Disablement
Author: Thomas Abrams
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2016-04-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137528567

This book presents the early existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger as a way to reformulate academic disability studies and activist disability politics. It redresses the almost categorical neglect of human difference in the philosophy of Heidegger. It proceeds by applying a revised version of his phenomenology to social policy aimed to get disabled persons to work and to methods in rehabilitation science intended to be more ‘client friendly’. Phenomenological philosophy is extended to the topic of disability, while, at the same time, two key concerns facing disability studies are addressed: the roles of capitalism in disablement, and of medical practice in the lives of disabled persons. By reframing disability as a lived way of being in the world, rather than bodily malfunction, the book asks how we might rethink medicine and capitalism in democratic ways. It aims to transform Heidegger’s work in light of his troubling politics to produce a democratic social theory of human difference.