Ian Alexander Moore
Loyola Marymount University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
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Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Martin Heidegger, Meister Eckhart, Ontology, and 23 moreTranslation, Medieval Mysticism, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Philology, Liberal arts, Ancient Greek Philosophy, Theology, Poetics, German Idealism, Existentialism, Georg Trakl, Paul Celan, Friedrich Hölderlin, Jean Wahl, Philosophy of Art, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Film, Reiner Schürmann, Hans Jonas, Schelling, Ancient Greek Language, and German Language edit
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Ian Alexander Moore is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Heidegge... moreIan Alexander Moore is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Heidegger und Trakl auf der Bühlerhöhe (with Tobias Keiling, 2023); Dialogue on the Threshold: Heidegger and Trakl (2022), which won the Symposium Book Award of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy; and Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement (2019). Moore works mostly on continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and post-Heideggerian thought) and the history of philosophy (especially medieval philosophy). He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Heidegger and writing a book titled Heidegger, Metaphysics, and Divinity for the Cambridge series Elements in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. He is also writing, with Francesco Guercio, a book on the lifework of Reiner Schürmann. edit
https://www.dla-marbach.de/shop/shop-einzelansicht/147/831/?tt_products%5Bvariants%5D=%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B&cHash=acea971e9f6ca5f98d07cc83f33724b6 In October 1952, Martin Heidegger gave a lecture on the poet Georg Trakl at... more
https://www.dla-marbach.de/shop/shop-einzelansicht/147/831/?tt_products%5Bvariants%5D=%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B&cHash=acea971e9f6ca5f98d07cc83f33724b6
In October 1952, Martin Heidegger gave a lecture on the poet Georg Trakl at Bühlerhöhe, a legendary spa hotel in the northern Black Forest. The timing and the audience were highly symbolic: the elite of the Federal Republic of Germany, who had been mentally scarred by the war and their own complicity in it, were supposed to gain new orientation through literature and poetry. To this end, Heidegger undertook a speculative interpretation of Trakl’s work. Trakl’s “song” would give Western culture a new direction. In Heidegger’s view, Trakl represents neither a promise of progress nor a link to tradition, but a thinking of “apartness,” a slow farewell to the losses and hopes of the past. Derrida has debunked the “national humanism” in Heidegger’s lecture: the idea that the German people has a special “spiritual” mission.
Im Oktober 1952 hielt Martin Heidegger auf der legendären Bühlerhöhe, einem Kurhaus im Nordschwarzwald, einen Vortrag über Georg Trakl. Zeitpunkt und Publikum waren hochsymbolisch: Die durch den Krieg und die eigene Mittäterschaft nach eigener Einschätzung geistig versehrte Elite der Bundesrepublik, die sich dort zusammenfand, sollte durch Literatur und Dichtung neue Orientierung gewinnen. Heidegger unternahm dazu eine spekulative Deutung von Werk Trakls. Sein »Gesang« würde der abendländischen Kultur wieder Richtung geben. Trakl stehe weder für ein Fortschrittsversprechen noch für ein Anknüpfen an die Tradition, sondern für ein Denken der »Abgeschiedenheit«, einem langsamen Abschiednehmen von den Verlusten wie von den Hoffnungen der Vergangenheit. Derrida hat diesen »National-Humanismus« Heideggers entlarvt: die Vorstellung, das deutsche Volk habe einen besonderen »geistigen« Auftrag.
In October 1952, Martin Heidegger gave a lecture on the poet Georg Trakl at Bühlerhöhe, a legendary spa hotel in the northern Black Forest. The timing and the audience were highly symbolic: the elite of the Federal Republic of Germany, who had been mentally scarred by the war and their own complicity in it, were supposed to gain new orientation through literature and poetry. To this end, Heidegger undertook a speculative interpretation of Trakl’s work. Trakl’s “song” would give Western culture a new direction. In Heidegger’s view, Trakl represents neither a promise of progress nor a link to tradition, but a thinking of “apartness,” a slow farewell to the losses and hopes of the past. Derrida has debunked the “national humanism” in Heidegger’s lecture: the idea that the German people has a special “spiritual” mission.
Im Oktober 1952 hielt Martin Heidegger auf der legendären Bühlerhöhe, einem Kurhaus im Nordschwarzwald, einen Vortrag über Georg Trakl. Zeitpunkt und Publikum waren hochsymbolisch: Die durch den Krieg und die eigene Mittäterschaft nach eigener Einschätzung geistig versehrte Elite der Bundesrepublik, die sich dort zusammenfand, sollte durch Literatur und Dichtung neue Orientierung gewinnen. Heidegger unternahm dazu eine spekulative Deutung von Werk Trakls. Sein »Gesang« würde der abendländischen Kultur wieder Richtung geben. Trakl stehe weder für ein Fortschrittsversprechen noch für ein Anknüpfen an die Tradition, sondern für ein Denken der »Abgeschiedenheit«, einem langsamen Abschiednehmen von den Verlusten wie von den Hoffnungen der Vergangenheit. Derrida hat diesen »National-Humanismus« Heideggers entlarvt: die Vorstellung, das deutsche Volk habe einen besonderen »geistigen« Auftrag.
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In 1962, Reiner Schürmann began studying at the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir, outside Paris. That experience radically shaped his life and work, enabling him to begin to develop many of the ideas for which he would later be... more
In 1962, Reiner Schürmann began studying at the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir, outside Paris. That experience radically shaped his life and work, enabling him to begin to develop many of the ideas for which he would later be known: letting be, life without why, ontological anarchy, and the tragic double bind.
Ways of Releasement contains never-before-published material from Schürmann’s early period as well as a report Schürmann wrote about his encounter with Heidegger; a précis of his autobiographical novel, Origins; and translations and new editions of later groundbreaking essays. Ways of Releasement concludes with an extensive afterword setting Schürmann’s writings in the context of his thinking and life.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/W/bo208651450.html
https://www.diaphanes.com/titel/ways-of-releasement-6932
Ways of Releasement contains never-before-published material from Schürmann’s early period as well as a report Schürmann wrote about his encounter with Heidegger; a précis of his autobiographical novel, Origins; and translations and new editions of later groundbreaking essays. Ways of Releasement concludes with an extensive afterword setting Schürmann’s writings in the context of his thinking and life.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/W/bo208651450.html
https://www.diaphanes.com/titel/ways-of-releasement-6932
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A reconstruction and critical interpretation of Heidegger's remarkable relationship to the poet Georg Trakl. In the early 1950s, German philosopher Martin Heidegger proclaimed the Austrian expressionist Georg Trakl to be the poet of his... more
A reconstruction and critical interpretation of Heidegger's remarkable relationship to the poet Georg Trakl.
In the early 1950s, German philosopher Martin Heidegger proclaimed the Austrian expressionist Georg Trakl to be the poet of his generation and of the hidden Occident. Trakl, a guilt-ridden lyricist who died of a cocaine overdose in the early days of World War I, thus became for Heidegger a redemptive successor to Hölderlin. Drawing on Derrida's Geschlecht series and substantial archival research, Dialogue on the Threshold explores the productive and problematic tensions that pervade Heidegger's reading of Trakl and reflects more broadly on the thresholds that separate philosophy from poetry, gathering from dispersion, the same from the other, and the native from the foreigner. Ian Alexander Moore examines why Heidegger was reluctant to follow Trakl's invitation to cross these thresholds, even though his encounter with the poet did compel him to take up, in astounding ways, many underrepresented topics in his philosophical corpus such as sexual difference, pain, animality, and Christianity. A contribution not just to Heidegger and Trakl studies but also, more modestly, to the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, Dialogue on the Threshold concludes with new translations of eighteen poems by Trakl.
"This is an extremely impressive book. Full of original insights and meticulous scholarship, as well as new primary source material that is not available elsewhere, Dialogue on the Threshold establishes Moore among the leading Heidegger scholars of his generation." — Robert Bernasconi, Pennsylvania State University
https://sunypress.edu/Books/D/Dialogue-on-the-Threshold
In the early 1950s, German philosopher Martin Heidegger proclaimed the Austrian expressionist Georg Trakl to be the poet of his generation and of the hidden Occident. Trakl, a guilt-ridden lyricist who died of a cocaine overdose in the early days of World War I, thus became for Heidegger a redemptive successor to Hölderlin. Drawing on Derrida's Geschlecht series and substantial archival research, Dialogue on the Threshold explores the productive and problematic tensions that pervade Heidegger's reading of Trakl and reflects more broadly on the thresholds that separate philosophy from poetry, gathering from dispersion, the same from the other, and the native from the foreigner. Ian Alexander Moore examines why Heidegger was reluctant to follow Trakl's invitation to cross these thresholds, even though his encounter with the poet did compel him to take up, in astounding ways, many underrepresented topics in his philosophical corpus such as sexual difference, pain, animality, and Christianity. A contribution not just to Heidegger and Trakl studies but also, more modestly, to the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, Dialogue on the Threshold concludes with new translations of eighteen poems by Trakl.
"This is an extremely impressive book. Full of original insights and meticulous scholarship, as well as new primary source material that is not available elsewhere, Dialogue on the Threshold establishes Moore among the leading Heidegger scholars of his generation." — Robert Bernasconi, Pennsylvania State University
https://sunypress.edu/Books/D/Dialogue-on-the-Threshold
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Christianity, Etymology, Animal Studies, Literary Criticism, Deconstruction, and 14 moreContinental Philosophy, German Idealism, Poetics, Martin Heidegger, German Expressionism, Jacques Derrida, Heidegger, Eschatology, Derrida, Friedrich Hölderlin, Georg Trakl, Sexual Difference, Gelassenheit, and Abgeschiedenheit
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In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart’s answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then... more
In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart’s answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart’s Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Regardless of whether Heidegger is promoting the will or, like Eckhart, letting-be, the mood of Heidegger’s discourse, from beginning to end, is imperative. Experience is all.
Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement does not just offer a novel way to read Eckhart and Heidegger, though. It also carefully examines Heidegger’s lifelong fascination with “the old master of letters and life,” as Heidegger liked to refer to his German predecessor. Drawing on archival material and Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart’s writings, this book argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger’s philosophy. The book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji’s seminal essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger’s classes in 1938.
Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement does not just offer a novel way to read Eckhart and Heidegger, though. It also carefully examines Heidegger’s lifelong fascination with “the old master of letters and life,” as Heidegger liked to refer to his German predecessor. Drawing on archival material and Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart’s writings, this book argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger’s philosophy. The book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji’s seminal essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger’s classes in 1938.
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Ontology, Medieval Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, and 11 moreMysticism, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Aquinas, Heidegger, Kyoto School, Parmenides, Phenomenology of Religion, Meister Eckhart, Middle High German language and literature, Nishitani Keiji, and Gelassenheit
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Ontology, Medieval Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and 12 moreContinental Philosophy, Mysticism, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Aquinas, Heidegger, Kyoto School, Parmenides, Phenomenology of Religion, Meister Eckhart, Middle High German language and literature, Nishitani Keiji, and Gelassenheit
Jean Wahl (1888-1974), once considered by the likes of Bataille, Deleuze, Levinas, and Marcel to be among the greatest philosophers in France, has today nearly been forgotten outside France. Yet his influence on French philosophical... more
Jean Wahl (1888-1974), once considered by the likes of Bataille, Deleuze, Levinas, and Marcel to be among the greatest philosophers in France, has today nearly been forgotten outside France. Yet his influence on French philosophical thought can hardly be overestimated. About him, Emmanuel Levinas wrote that "during over a half century of teaching and research, [Jean Wahl] was the life force of the academic, extra-academic, and even, to a degree anti-academic philosophy necessary to a great culture." And Gilles Deleuze, for his part, commented that "Apart from Sartre, who remained caught none the less in the trap of the verb to be, the most important philosopher in France was Jean Wahl." As professor at the Sorbonne for over three decades, president of the Société Française de Philosophie (1960-74), editor of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (1950-74), and founder and director of the Collège Philosophique, Wahl was in dialogue with some of the most prominent and well-known French philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Georges Bataille, Henri Bergson, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone Weil, impacting several of them greatly. Wahl also played a significant role, in some cases almost singlehandedly, in introducing French philosophy to movements like phenomenology, existentialism, American pragmatism and literature, and British empiricism. And Wahl was an original philosopher and poet in his own right. The goal of this volume of selections from Jean Wahl's philosophical writings is to reintroduce Wahl to the English-speaking philosophical community, and to show the enormous influence he had through introducing the work of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Jaspers to several generations of French philosophers.
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In this volume, Reiner Schürmann develops the idea that, in between the spiritual Carolingian Renaissance and the secular Humanist Renaissance, there was a distinctive Medieval Renaissance connected with the rediscovery of Aristotle.... more
In this volume, Reiner Schürmann develops the idea that, in between the spiritual Carolingian Renaissance and the secular Humanist Renaissance, there was a distinctive Medieval Renaissance connected with the rediscovery of Aristotle. Focusing on Thomas Aquinas’s ontology and epistemology, William of Ockham’s conceptualism, and Meister Eckhart’s speculative mysticism, Schürmann shows how thought began to break free from religion and the hierarchies of the feudal, neo-Platonic order and devote its attention to otherness and singularity. A crucial supplement to Schürmann’s magnum opus Broken Hegemonies, Neo-Aristotelianism will be essential reading for anyone interested in the rise and fall of Western principles, and thus in how to think and act today
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In this article, I bring bring Hans Jonas’s speculative theology into dialogue with Schelling’s theodicy as outlined in the latter’s 1809 Freedom Essay. For Jonas, if human freedom is really to be free—indeed so free that it does not... more
In this article, I bring bring Hans Jonas’s speculative theology into dialogue with Schelling’s theodicy as outlined in the latter’s 1809 Freedom Essay. For Jonas, if human freedom is really to be free—indeed so free that it does not implicate God in the Holocaust—the traditional attributes of the Judeo-Christian God must be rethought. These questions lead Jonas to espouse, admittedly with some hesitation, the following three theses: (1) divine omnipotence must be relinquished, (2) God must be “passible,” i.e., able to suffer at the hands of humans, and (3) eschatology must allow for different ends. I discuss these theses in Jonas and compare them with Schelling’s philosophy in the Freedom Essay. Although Jonas is indebted to Schelling in his attempt to reconcile freedom with divine intelligibility and in his recognition of the necessity of narrative, Jonas finds it necessary to push Schellingian positions in the Freedom Essay to their limits or even to their breaking points. That is, he finds it necessary to view God as weak or lacking power altogether, as suffering in his being, and as uncertain about the end times.
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This article first retraces the history of Heidegger's "The Argument against Need" and situates it in the context of extant notes from his never-completed introduction to the Gesamtausgabe titled "The Legacy of the Question of Being." It... more
This article first retraces the history of Heidegger's "The Argument against Need" and situates it in the context of extant notes from his never-completed introduction to the Gesamtausgabe titled "The Legacy of the Question of Being." It then argues that, for the later Heidegger, Brauch ("need," "use") becomes another name—indeed one of the most important, albeit neglected, names—for being in its deepest sense. To appreciate Heidegger's legacy and that of the question of being, it is crucial that we (1) critically assess the argument against Brauch qua "need"—i.e., the argument according to which the being of certain entities, such as those that predate Homo sapiens, does not depend on the human—and (2) understand the ontological sense of Brauch qua "use." We must not only recognize that Dasein is needed for the safeguarding of truth, but also move beyond this and see being in its independent use.
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Bühlerhöhe was a former luxury hotel and sanatorium in the Black Forest that served as the setting for one of the most controversial philosophical lectures of the 20th century. The story begins with Gerhard Stroomann, head physician at... more
Bühlerhöhe was a former luxury hotel and sanatorium in the Black Forest that served as the setting for one of the most controversial philosophical lectures of the 20th century. The story begins with Gerhard Stroomann, head physician at Bühlerhöhe, who wanted his birthday party to commemorate the work of Austrian poet Georg Trakl. To celebrate, Stroomann invited not only Trakl’s editor and friend Ludwig von Ficker but also the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was to give a keynote lecture on the importance of Trakl’s work. The lecture to the elite circle of the Bühlerhöhe guests was one of Heidegger’s first public appearances after having been banned from teaching following his engagement for the Nazi party. Heidegger praised Trakl’s poetry, but the way he did so remains controversial to this day. Jacques Derrida, for one, recognized it as the eminent example of Heidegger’s “National-Humanism”. Following in the footsteps of Hölderlin, Trakl’s “poeticizing”, his “song”, was to guide towards a better future. But a better future for whom? Western humanity, as one might be led to think from a superficial reading of the lecture? Or rather those who remained true to myths of the “secret Germany” and the “hidden Reich”—the Nazi defeat and revelations about the Holocaust notwithstanding? In his account of the events at Bühlerhöhe, Jürgen Habermas, for his part, saw Heidegger as sharing out his philosophy to a managerial class. Derrida strikes a different tone: the ambiguity of Geschlecht (sex, generation, people), the term that Heidegger takes from Trakl to denote the addressees of Trakl’s “song”, covers over the fact that Heidegger was reiterating a much older and more problematic narrative: the German people is in need of a Führer, and the poet is the one to lead them.
https://www.boundary2.org/2023/12/tobias-keiling-and-ian-alexander-moore-spoiling-the-party-heideggers-lectures-on-trakl-at-spa-buhlerhohe/
https://www.boundary2.org/2023/12/tobias-keiling-and-ian-alexander-moore-spoiling-the-party-heideggers-lectures-on-trakl-at-spa-buhlerhohe/
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Drawing on unpublished material, this chapter brings Fink’s and Heidegger’s writings on the play of being and the play of the world into dialogue. I show that both philosophers use play to characterize the ultimate level of reality, which... more
Drawing on unpublished material, this chapter brings Fink’s and Heidegger’s writings on the play of being and the play of the world into dialogue. I show that both philosophers use play to characterize the ultimate level of reality, which is neither entitative (a being) nor simply ontological (the being of beings), and both stress its groundlessness, aimlessness, and non-mechanistic/non-teleological causality. However, whereas Fink believes he can access the "in-itself," Heidegger's ambitions are, for the most part, more modest, as I explain with respect to the topics of correlationism, finitude, and individuation.
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An interview with Peg Birmingham for the special issue of Diacritics, "Heidegger Today?"
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Addressing the place of the Austrian poet, Georg Trakl, in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, this article turns in particular to Trakl’s poem “A Winter Evening” in order to unfold a sense of language in dialogue with... more
Addressing the place of the Austrian poet, Georg Trakl, in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, this article turns in particular to Trakl’s poem “A Winter Evening” in order to unfold a sense of language in dialogue with the poet. This engagement equally becomes the occasion for Gadamer to confront Heidegger, whose own reading of Trakl becomes both an inspiration and a challenge.
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In 1969, Reiner Schürmann submitted a thesis to the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir. It was titled Peregrine Identity: The Concept of Detachment in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons (portions of which are published for the first... more
In 1969, Reiner Schürmann submitted a thesis to the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir. It was titled Peregrine Identity: The Concept of Detachment in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons (portions of which are published for the first time in this issue of MMT). Three years later, Schürmann published Wandering Joy, his celebrated book on Eckhart. In this article, we examine four aspects of the earlier study that cannot, as such, be found in the later one: (1) the specifically Christological dimension of Eckhart’s teaching of detachment; (2) a logic of conversion at work in Eckhart and St. Francis; (3) Schürmann’s hermeneutics of the symbol; and (4) the practical outcomes of Heidegger’s ontological difference as it is inflected by what Schürmann calls wandering or “peregrine” difference. We aim to show how the questions and issues raised in Schürmann’s thesis remain vital for all those readers of Eckhart who seek to restore their own existence to its essential freedom.
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I argue in this paper that Heidegger was the main source for Jonas' first book: Augustine and the Pauline Problem of Freedom. Jonas’ 1930 study can be seen as a Destruktion of the corpus of an author whom Heidegger himself had perhaps,... more
I argue in this paper that Heidegger was the main source for Jonas' first book: Augustine and the Pauline Problem of Freedom. Jonas’ 1930 study can be seen as a Destruktion of the corpus of an author whom Heidegger himself had perhaps, from Jonas’ perspective, read too charitably (albeit highly idiosyncratically) in the early 1920s.
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Reiner Schürmann a été appelé « l'un des philosophes majeurs du XXe siècle » et « le continuateur peut-être le plus important d'une pensée de la mystique dans la lignée d'Eckhart et de Heidegger ». Nombre des chercheurs qui connurent... more
Reiner Schürmann a été appelé « l'un des philosophes majeurs du XXe siècle » et « le continuateur peut-être le plus important d'une pensée de la mystique dans la lignée d'Eckhart et de Heidegger ». Nombre des chercheurs qui connurent Schürmann ou s'intéressent aujourd'hui à son œuvre souscriraient volontiers à de tels jugements, dans la mesure où cette œuvre déploie, comme nulle autre, les conséquences philosophiques et politiques de ce que Maitre Eckhart et Heidegger appellent le délaissement ou le laisser être (Gelassenheit). Pourtant, presque rien n'a été dévoilé des bornes entre lesquelles s'inscrit le cheminement personnel de Schürmann quant au délaissement : sa découverte de ce concept - ou, plus exactement, de ce mode de vie - lors de ses études auprès des dominicains du Saulchoir, et la manière dont le délaissement a pu façonner sa mort trois décennies plus tard. Ces parties précoce et tardive de son œuvre, consacrées au délaissement et à sa mise en acte, sont toutefois cruciales pour comprendre le parcours de Schürmann et donc pour apprécier ce qu'il peut aujourd'hui offrir à la pensée et à l'existence. Si, dans ses œuvres publiées, Schürmann minimise l'importance de l'expérience chrétienne du délaissement, voire critique en elle une figure dérivée et même trompeuse de la Gelassenheit, c'est bien elle qui lui a permis de s'engager sur son chemin de pensée. C'est elle aussi qui, à plus d'un titre, l'attendait au terme de son parcours, lequel apparaît alors comme un cercle faisant retour en soi.
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This paper outlines a few strategies for reading Meister Eckhart’s famous sermon on the first beatitude (Pr. 52). It looks at the political and ecclesiastical background of Eckhart’s teaching on poverty, some ways to manage the role of... more
This paper outlines a few strategies for reading Meister Eckhart’s famous sermon on the first beatitude (Pr. 52). It looks at the political and ecclesiastical background of Eckhart’s teaching on poverty, some ways to manage the role of paradox in his preaching, and how to navigate tensions between the spirit and the letter of his text.
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The article provides an introduction to Heidegger's manuscript “The Argument against Need”. It comments on the nature of the manuscript, the circumstances of its composition, and its major philosophical themes. These themes include the... more
The article provides an introduction to Heidegger's manuscript “The Argument against Need”. It comments on the nature of the manuscript, the circumstances of its composition, and its major philosophical themes. These themes include the problem of ontological independence, the nature of time, and the question of realism.
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In this paper, we maintain that Schürmann’s interpretation of Heidegger’s Beiträge is even more relevant now than it was when Schürmann began writing on the book over thirty years ago. Schürmann’s interpretation mines valuable resources,... more
In this paper, we maintain that Schürmann’s interpretation of Heidegger’s Beiträge is even more relevant now than it was when Schürmann began writing on the book over thirty years ago. Schürmann’s interpretation mines valuable resources, above all in Heidegger’s own work, to critique not only the most damning of Heidegger’s anti-Semitic utterances, which became available only with the 2014 publication of the first three volumes of his Black Notebooks, but also the tantamount resurgence of autocratic nationalism around the globe today, whose theoreticians and even politicians have not, on some occasions, hesitated to claim Heidegger for their cause.
We first say a few words about the general reception and relevance of Schürmann’s reading of Heidegger in and for contemporary thought. We then demonstrate how, in Schürmann’s interpretation, the name “Heidegger” stands for the monstrous site in which the ineluctability of hegemonic fantasms meets its end. Next, we look more closely at how this comes about by examining four centripetal strategies and four centrifugal counter-strategies that are, according to Schürmann, simultaneously operative in Heidegger’s Beiträge, and at some of the implications Schürmann draws thereby. Finally, we will contrast Schürmann’s unique alternative with a variety of contemporary appropriations of Heidegger.
We first say a few words about the general reception and relevance of Schürmann’s reading of Heidegger in and for contemporary thought. We then demonstrate how, in Schürmann’s interpretation, the name “Heidegger” stands for the monstrous site in which the ineluctability of hegemonic fantasms meets its end. Next, we look more closely at how this comes about by examining four centripetal strategies and four centrifugal counter-strategies that are, according to Schürmann, simultaneously operative in Heidegger’s Beiträge, and at some of the implications Schürmann draws thereby. Finally, we will contrast Schürmann’s unique alternative with a variety of contemporary appropriations of Heidegger.
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A discussion of Heidegger's theory of translation and how it applies both to his and Gadamer's respective renderings of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda 6 and to my efforts to translate these translations into English for Kronos... more
A discussion of Heidegger's theory of translation and how it applies both to his and Gadamer's respective renderings of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda 6 and to my efforts to translate these translations into English for Kronos Philosophical Journal. (Unfortunately, some of the italics disappeared during proof stage, making the distinction between 'über'setzen [accent on the first syllable] and über'setzen' [accent on the penultimate] difficult to discern.)
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Reiner Schürmann has been called “one of the most important philosophers of the XXth century” and “perhaps the most important thinker to advance the lineage of Eckhartian–Heideggerian mysticism.” While many scholars who knew Schürmann and... more
Reiner Schürmann has been called “one of the most important philosophers of the XXth century” and “perhaps the most important thinker to advance the lineage of Eckhartian–Heideggerian mysticism.” While many scholars who knew Schürmann and who still know his work today—which, after all, uniquely develops the philosophical and political implications of what Meister Eckhart and Heidegger had called releasement or letting-be (Gelassenheit)—would agree, almost nothing is known publicly about the ends of Schürmann’s own path of releasement: about how, for example, he discovered this term or, better, this way of life while a student at the Dominican school of theology, Le Saulchoir, or about how it shaped the way he died three decades later. And yet, as I show in this paper, this very early and very late work on and of releasement is crucial for understanding Schürmann’s trajectory and hence what he has to offer to thinking and being today. If, in his published works, Schürmann downplays or denigrates Christian releasement as derivative or even delusional, it is nevertheless this variety of releasement that set him on his path of thought. Christian releasement, in more than one sense, is also what awaited him at the end, as though his path had been a circle all along.
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In late 1967, shortly after having been released from a Parisian psychiatric hospital, the poet Paul Celan turned his attention to the Middle High German writings of the speculative mystic Meister Eckhart. Celan’s engagement with... more
In late 1967, shortly after having been released from a Parisian psychiatric hospital, the poet Paul Celan turned his attention to the Middle High German writings of the speculative mystic Meister Eckhart. Celan’s engagement with Eckhart’s work resulted in the final three poems of the final volume of poetry that Celan was able to submit for publication before drowning himself in the Seine in 1970. These three poems thus might be said to mark a certain culmination of Celan’s own work, although, for those familiar with the latter, this idea might seem strange. What does a late-medieval Dominican have to do with a post-Holocaust Jewish poet? Celan, who bridges and challenges numerous traditions and languages in his poetic activity, would have been drawn to the mediating work of Eckhart’s corpus. However, Celan was also disturbed by Eckhart’s central concept of abegescheidenheit (Modern German Abgeschiedenheit) or ‘detachment,’ especially in the wake of the Shoah. In this paper, I survey Celan’s critical appropriation of Eckhart by offering brief commentaries on his three Eckhart-poems. I focus on the themes of memory and detachment.
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Paul Celan’s poem “Wirk nicht voraus” (“Work Not Ahead”) silently exploits the writings of the late-medieval mystic Meister Eckhart to show, against Eckhart, that even the divine needs the other in order to be what it is. Tracing the... more
Paul Celan’s poem “Wirk nicht voraus” (“Work Not Ahead”) silently exploits the writings of the late-medieval mystic Meister Eckhart to show, against Eckhart, that even the divine needs the other in order to be what it is. Tracing the poem’s allusions and connections not just to Eckhart, but to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, to philosophers such as Plato, Augustine, and Heidegger, and to the Lurianic Kabbalah, I argue that “Wirk nicht voraus” depicts the divinity’s dawning recognition of its need for the other and its sudden decision to compromise itself, or rather its putative self, for the sake of the other. The poem thereby provides an extreme, perhaps the most extreme, example for ethical imitation, not exactly of Christ in extremis, nor even of the Father, but of what Eckhart calls the Godhead beyond the Trinity. I conclude with some reflections on the significance of “Wirk nicht voraus” for speculative philosophy and for ethics today.
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In this interview, conducted on February 4, 2021, philosopher and activist Drucilla Cornell discusses the importance of Reiner Schürmann’s work and reminisces on the seminars they led together with Jacques Derrida in the early 1990s.
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Among the many words Heidegger explores in order to elucidate his primary matter for thought, one would not likely expect Schmerz (‘pain’) to play a prominent role. And yet, in a selection of notes recently published in a limited German... more
Among the many words Heidegger explores in order to elucidate his primary matter for thought, one would not likely expect Schmerz (‘pain’) to play a prominent role. And yet, in a selection of notes recently published in a limited German edition under the title Über den Schmerz, Heidegger goes so far as to claim that pain is being itself. In this paper I analyze Heidegger’s ontological treatment of pain and his etymology of its Greek counterpart, asking whether he does not ultimately anesthetize his readers to pain’s most rending effects.
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In this chapter, I examine the work of two poets who, on Heidegger’s interpretation, use particular colors to characterize Being and the related concept of the Holy. Although separated by two and a half millennia, Heidegger finds that the... more
In this chapter, I examine the work of two poets who, on Heidegger’s interpretation, use particular colors to characterize Being and the related concept of the Holy. Although separated by two and a half millennia, Heidegger finds that the victory odes of the Ancient Greek lyricist Pindar and the melancholic poetry of the twentieth-century Austrian expressionist Georg Trakl were both written under a sort of “holy compulsion.” Through them, Being spoke itself— synesthetically—in colors: gold in the case of Pindar, blue (along with gold) in the case of Trakl. I first try to listen for this voice in Heidegger’s extensive excursus on Pindar’s 5th Isthmian in the undelivered lecture course Der Spruch des Anaximander (§1). Then, I will show how many of the motifs Heidegger identifies, including their timbre or ‘color,’ are reprised in his discussion of Trakl in the first two chapters of On the Way to Language (§2). While it might seem that, at the ontological level, golden shining is proper exclusively to the ancients and bluish twilight to the post-Hölderlinian moderns, I argue that, in his respective analyses, Heidegger is drawing out different aspects of Being and the Holy that belong to all epochs, even if they cannot always be seen as such, and even if different gods show up in them. I conclude with some reflections on what might be called, following Goethe, a Heideggerian Farbenlehre or ‘color theory’ (§3).
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Poetry, Poetics, Martin Heidegger, Heidegger, Paul Celan, and 4 morePindar, The holy, Color Theory, and Georg Trakl
This document includes the first English translation of Georg Trakl’s recently discovered poem “Hölderlin,” along with two commentaries on it. Moore’s commentary highlights the significance of this poem for continental philosophy... more
This document includes the first English translation of Georg Trakl’s recently discovered poem “Hölderlin,” along with two commentaries on it. Moore’s commentary highlights the significance of this poem for continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and Derrida) by focusing on the German word for madness, Wahnsinn, which Trakl (mis)spells with three n’s. Moore argues that this word resists the sense of gentle gathering that Heidegger locates in Trakl’s poetry and therefore in Hölderlin and his madness. Trakl is, rather, a precursor to Paul Celan. Moore's commentary concludes with a new translation of Celan’s own poetic response to Hölderlin, titled “Tübingen, Jänner.” Weichselbaum’s commentary discusses the background for the genesis and discovery of Trakl’s “Hölderlin.” Weichselbaum compares this poem with other moments in which Trakl alludes to Hölderlin.
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In this article, I analyze Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copy of the 1946 Zurich edition of poems by Georg Trakl, which I discovered several years ago while conducting research in the castle of Heidegger’s hometown of Meßkirch.... more
In this article, I analyze Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copy of the 1946 Zurich edition of poems by Georg Trakl, which I discovered several years ago while conducting research in the castle of Heidegger’s hometown of Meßkirch. Although Heidegger’s marginalia in this volume are not extensive, they are significant for three reasons: they provide valuable insight into his reading of the spirit of Trakl’s poetic work and into the place in which Heidegger situates it; they frequently shed light on topics often left in the shadows by Heidegger and his expositors, topics such as (auto)biography, sexual difference, and Christianity; and they bear on Heidegger’s lifelong engagement with the status of being and even, at times, seem to call into question his published positions on it.
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For decades now, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog has been promoting the idea of ‘ecstatic truth’ as opposed to ‘cinéma vérité’ or to what he mockingly calls ‘the truth of accountants.’ Truth is illumination, revelation, an unveiling of... more
For decades now, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog has been promoting the idea of ‘ecstatic truth’ as opposed to ‘cinéma vérité’ or to what he mockingly calls ‘the truth of accountants.’ Truth is illumination, revelation, an unveiling of what ordinarily lies hidden. Far from merely reproducing the visible, however, Herzog makes and moves images to disclose the invisible, to reveal truths that are literally ecstatic, standing out beyond what is otherwise accessible. Yet this revelation cannot occur unless we, as viewers, are transported beyond the everyday realm. We too must stand outside of ourselves. Herzog aims to make us ecstatic. In this paper I first analyze portions of Herzog’s rare programmatic speech “On the Absolute, the Sublime, and Ecstatic Truth” (§1). I then show how many of Herzog’s ideas are prefigured and illuminated by Martin Heidegger’s understanding of truth, especially as it relates to the work of art (§2). Next I turn to several scenes in Herzog’s films to show how he puts his theory to work. I first discuss the ethereal ski-jumps in The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (§3), and then examine Herzog’s use of Richard Wagner at the beginning of Lessons of Darkness and Lo and Behold (§4). I conclude with a few words on the significance of ecstatic truth in our purportedly ‘post-truth age’ (§5).
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In this paper I critically examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Trakl, focusing in particular on a possibility it opens up but just as soon forecloses: namely, the idea that spirit is inherently and insuperably riven. Rather than... more
In this paper I critically examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Trakl, focusing in particular on a possibility it opens up but just as soon forecloses: namely, the idea that spirit is inherently and insuperably riven. Rather than allowing for the inevitability of discord, distress, and dissemination—as his own logic seems to demand—Heidegger tranquilizes the pain of being, turning it into a force of gathering and an actor in a rather conventional three-part drama about ontological history.
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In this essay I contend that the differences between the newly discovered original version and the published version of Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?" lie in how they understand the Nothing (das Nichts). Whereas the published version... more
In this essay I contend that the differences between the newly discovered original version and the published version of Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?" lie in how they understand the Nothing (das Nichts). Whereas the published version conflates the Nothing with Being (das Sein) as no thing, or simply sees the Nothing as a characteristic of Being’s finitude, the original version examines the Nothing on its own terms. Being, even if finite, still maintains continuity with beings (das Seiende) as the Being of those beings. The Nothing itself, in contrast, marks a break with beings and their Being. The way in which it is interrogated must therefore also differ from the approach of the sciences (which treat only beings) and from ontology (which examines only the Being of beings). If ontology, as a scientific account of Being, still bears a resemblance to the sciences generally, Heidegger’s study of the Nothing as such in the original version leads him beyond not just the notion of philosophy as a rigorous science, but even the possibility of rational argumentation. Anxiety accordingly comes to play a greater role in this version. My essay begins with a discussion of the genesis and context of Heidegger’s lecture (§1). Then, in order to set up a comparison, I provide a summary of the better-known published version (§2). After this I explain how the two versions differ with regard to the themes of science and the university (§3), logic and thinking (§4), anxiety (§5), and ultimately the Nothing (§6).
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In the essay Language in the Poem, Heidegger situates the entire body of Trakl's poetic work under the banner of a restricted conception of detachment (Abgeschiedenheit). Nearly every key term in his essay is subjected to etymological... more
In the essay Language in the Poem, Heidegger situates the entire body of Trakl's poetic work under the banner of a restricted conception of detachment (Abgeschiedenheit). Nearly every key term in his essay is subjected to etymological scrutiny; about the origins of detachment, however, Heidegger remains silent. In this paper I make use of Derrida's way of reading other important terms in Language in the Poem in order to argue that detachment is one of the most problematic, most deconstructible concepts in Heidegger's text. And yet it is not, for all that, an exclusively problematic concept. Rather, when loosed from the strictures that Heidegger puts on it, detachment may be a useful way to think about the very work and love of deconstruction.
Heidegger deutet in Die Sprache im Gedicht Trakls gesamtes dichterisches Werk im Zeichen einer spezifischen Konzeption von Abgeschiedenheit. Obwohl er die Etymologie beinahe jedes seiner Schlüsselbegriffe diskutiert, blendet Heideggers die Ursprünge dieses Ausdrucks aus. Ian Moore zieht in diesem Aufsatz Derridas Interpretation anderer zentraler Begriffe in Die Sprache im Gedicht heran, um zu zeigen, dass Abgeschiedenheit einer der problematischsten und dekonstruktionsbedürftigsten Begriffe in Heideggers Text ist. Nichtsdestotrotz lässt sich dieser aus der Verengung befreien, die sich aus Heideggers Diskussion ergibt. Die Konzeption der Abgeschiedenheit wird so zu einer Möglichkeit, die Arbeit und liebende Tätigkeit der Dekonstruktion selbst zu denken.
Heidegger deutet in Die Sprache im Gedicht Trakls gesamtes dichterisches Werk im Zeichen einer spezifischen Konzeption von Abgeschiedenheit. Obwohl er die Etymologie beinahe jedes seiner Schlüsselbegriffe diskutiert, blendet Heideggers die Ursprünge dieses Ausdrucks aus. Ian Moore zieht in diesem Aufsatz Derridas Interpretation anderer zentraler Begriffe in Die Sprache im Gedicht heran, um zu zeigen, dass Abgeschiedenheit einer der problematischsten und dekonstruktionsbedürftigsten Begriffe in Heideggers Text ist. Nichtsdestotrotz lässt sich dieser aus der Verengung befreien, die sich aus Heideggers Diskussion ergibt. Die Konzeption der Abgeschiedenheit wird so zu einer Möglichkeit, die Arbeit und liebende Tätigkeit der Dekonstruktion selbst zu denken.
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Hans-Jonas-Handbuch, ed. Michael Bongardt, Holger Burckhart, John Stewart Gordon, and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2021)
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Published, in German, in Hans-Jonas-Handbuch, ed. Michael Bongardt, Holger Burckhart, John Stewart Gordon, and Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2021)
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Published in A Companion to Early German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Millán and Norman (Brill, 2019)
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This article examines the extent to which two of Meister Eckhart's Latin writings fall prey to Heidegger's charge of ontotheology. It argues that the intellectualist, 'meontological' approach to God in Eckhart's First Parisian Question... more
This article examines the extent to which two of Meister Eckhart's Latin writings fall prey to Heidegger's charge of ontotheology. It argues that the intellectualist, 'meontological' approach to God in Eckhart's First Parisian Question and the analogical, ontological approach in his Opus tripartitum are not as different as may initially appear. Not only do both rest on Eckhart's peculiar doctrine of analogy; both serve to dismantle the ontotheological architecture. Indeed, rather than an intellectualist alternative to ontotheology, Eckhart's First Parisian Question presents a meticulously crafted dialectic designed to explode rational distinctions. Rather than a traditional account of God as the highest being, Eckhart's Opus tripartitum obliterates hierarchies with its appeal to treat all being as God. Still, although both approaches contribute to an appreciation of Eckhart's principal concern—the basic unity of the soul and the Godhead in Gelassenheit—neither suffices for unfolding its deepest implications. An ontotheological residue remains.
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It has been a common trope to characterize Heidegger’s development as a turn away from the active, voluntarist resoluteness of his early work to the passive, submissive releasement of his later works. However, the term Gelassenheit... more
It has been a common trope to characterize Heidegger’s development as a turn away from the active, voluntarist resoluteness of his early work to the passive, submissive releasement of his later works. However, the term Gelassenheit appears over a hundred times throughout Heidegger’s corpus. There are passages in his early period in which this term calls into question any univocal prioritization of activity, and passages in his later period in which it calls into question any univocal prioritization of passivity. For both the early and late Heidegger, Gelassenheit must be understood not in terms of the active or passive voices, but in terms of the middle voice. Heidegger’s work in this regard can contribute to efforts to twist free of metaphysical binaries like activity and passivity.
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This document specifies which editions of Eckhart Heidegger used, as well as where and when Heidegger cites Eckhart. It also includes reports by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean Guitton, Käte Oltmanns, Reiner Schürmann, and Bernhard Welte on... more
This document specifies which editions of Eckhart Heidegger used, as well as where and when Heidegger cites Eckhart. It also includes reports by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean Guitton, Käte Oltmanns, Reiner Schürmann, and Bernhard Welte on Heidegger's relation to Eckhart.
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In this essay, I argue that in The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides tacitly espouses the idea that prudence equals providence. By this I mean that while God ensures the preservation of species insofar as they have been provided... more
In this essay, I argue that in The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides tacitly espouses the idea that prudence equals providence. By this I mean that while God ensures the preservation of species insofar as they have been provided with innate survival mechanisms, we, as individuals, have been provided with the faculty of prudence, which enables us to avoid some calamities, even though we cannot completely circumvent them. I conclude by considering how my interpretation correlates with what Maimonides says in the Guide about the problem of evil.
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Ontology, Death, Idealism, Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 15 moreHenri Bergson, Jean Wahl, Martin Heidegger, Secularization, Kierkegaard, Philosophy of Time, Jean Paul Sartre, Heidegger, French philosophy, Karl Jaspers, Phenomenology of Temporality, Realism, Existentialism, Freedom, and Existentialism In Philosophy
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Lecture at St. John's College (Santa Fe). Audio recording: http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/6752
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An interview with Kimberly Uslin, of St. John's College, about the recently published edition and translation of the original version of Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?"
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Lecture given at the conference "Heidegger’s ‘National Humanism’: A Symposium on Derrida’s Lost Geschlecht III," Texas A&M University, February 2019. Video recording of the whole panel available here:... more
Lecture given at the conference "Heidegger’s ‘National Humanism’: A Symposium on Derrida’s Lost Geschlecht III," Texas A&M University, February 2019. Video recording of the whole panel available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUU44rZxcm8&list=PLT844ZmWuvr4v1RYSSs5PBkzoYHHOxq_o&index=8
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Lecture at St. John's College (Santa Fe). Audio recording available here: http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3956
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“The Placement of Detachment,” Reading Derrida’s Geschlecht III: Responses to an Archival Discovery, Princeton University, New Jersey, October 2018. Video recording available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7P3EN5VpM
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A review of three recent volumes by Reiner Schürmann
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In Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement, Ian Alexander Moore investigates Martin Heidegger's use of releasement (Gelassenheit). Moore argues that this conceptual development was greatly influenced by Meister Eckhart's... more
In Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement, Ian Alexander Moore investigates Martin Heidegger's use of releasement (Gelassenheit). Moore argues that this conceptual development was greatly influenced by Meister Eckhart's thought. In addition to their shared use of releasement, Moore suggests, both Hei-degger and Eckhart share similar philosophical strategies. The task of Moore's monograph is to illuminate how releasement functions in Heidegger's work and to argue that Eckhart was one of Heidegger's central influences. This review examines Moore's method for assessing the function of releasement in Heidegger and Eckhart's thought, while noting the distinctive and compelling aspects of this monograph.
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Review by Tom Rockmore of Jean Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). 291 pp.
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Review by Sean Bowden of Jean Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). 291 pp.
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Review of Jean Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). 291 pp.
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One strand of recent Heidegger research has focused on the systematic investigation of key sources that endure over the length of his long philosophical career. In the last half-decade, the exploration of these early courses and the... more
One strand of recent Heidegger research has focused on the systematic investigation of key sources that endure over the length of his long philosophical career. In the last half-decade, the exploration of these early courses and the degree to which they anticipate Being and Time has given way to an examination of how their key figures reappear in less obvious ways or at crucial moments in Heidegger's later thought beyond 1927, often despite his attempts to disavow or distance himself from these influences.
These two strands of research meet in Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement (2019) by Ian Alexander Moore, which makes an enduring contribution to both of them.
These two strands of research meet in Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement (2019) by Ian Alexander Moore, which makes an enduring contribution to both of them.
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A review of Klaus Held, Marbach-Bericht über eine neue Sichtung des Heidegger-Nachlasses [Marbach-Report on a New Inspection of Heidegger’s Literary Estate] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2019), 73 pp.
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Reiner Schürmann ha 36 anni. Tedesco nato nel pieno della guerra, non ha mai smesso di sopportare il peso di torti che non ha commesso. Nel tentativo di sfuggire al passato si è gettato in una vita itinerante [errance]. Un soggiorno in un... more
Reiner Schürmann ha 36 anni. Tedesco nato nel pieno della guerra, non ha mai smesso di sopportare il peso di torti che non ha commesso. Nel tentativo di sfuggire al passato si è gettato in una vita itinerante [errance]. Un soggiorno in un kibbutz in Israele, studi a Parigi, viaggi in Grecia, poi una certa stabilizzazione negli Stati Uniti dove è professore di filosofia. In un libro sconvolgente, Les Origines, in gran parte autobiografico, racconta la sua sofferenza di essere stato segnato dalle sue "origini". In un momento in cui il terrorismo pone la Germania in primo piano nell'attualità , ascoltare Reiner Schürmann rende più comprensibile ciò che sta accadendo e soprattutto le reazioni del suo popolo di fronte al ritorno della violenza.
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An Italian edition of the first part of Reiner Schürmann's "'Only Proteus Can Save Us Now'" (forthcoming GFPJ), in which he responds to commentaries on his book Heidegger on Being and Acting.
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This document contains two previously unpublished responses that the New School philosopher Reiner Schürmann (1941–1993) gave to his commentators at sessions of the 1987 and 1992 meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential... more
This document contains two previously unpublished responses that the New School philosopher Reiner Schürmann (1941–1993) gave to his commentators at sessions of the 1987 and 1992 meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). These two texts can be viewed as precise attempts to highlight the questions that Schürmann felt most urgently needed to be posed “at the end of metaphysics,” not least whether metaphysics has in fact ended or whether its end is even thinkable as such. He does this by sketching the main theoretical and methodological moves of his pathbreaking Heidegger book and of his topological retrieval of the western tradition in Broken Hegemonies (Des hégémonies brisées).Presenting the two SPEP responses together gives readers a chance to appreciate the shifts that Schürmann’s thinking, as well as his relation to Heidegger’s troubled yet inescapable inheritance, underwent in the last years of Schürmann’s life. The 1987 response allows Schürmann to reevaluate his reading of Heidegger by delineating the continuity or convergence between Schürmann’s “historical deduction of categories” and his “topology.” The 1992 response, with its different set of concepts (such as maximization, theticism, natality, double bind, differend, and peremption), clarifies the scope of the later topological project as hinging on a propaedeutic “analytic of ultimates,” thus providing an incisive précis of Schürmann’s major final philosophical endeavor—Broken Hegemonies, which was published posthumously in 1996.
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Cette lettre, publiée ici pour la première fois en français, dans sa version originale, a été envoyée par Jean Wahl à Martin Heidegger le 12 décembre 1937. Elle répond à une lettre que Heidegger avait écrite à Wahl une semaine plus tôt au... more
Cette lettre, publiée ici pour la première fois en français, dans sa version originale, a été envoyée par Jean Wahl à Martin Heidegger le 12 décembre 1937. Elle répond à une lettre que Heidegger avait écrite à Wahl une semaine plus tôt au sujet des thèses de Wahl dans la célèbre conférence « Subjectivité et transcendance1 ». Dans cette conférence, qui a été décrite comme « un tournant dans l’histoire intellectuelle du XXe siècle2 », Wahl s’interrogeait, entre autres, sur la mesure dans laquelle la philosophie pouvait fournir une théorie générale des intuitions d’existences particulières telles que Kierkegaard ou Nietzsche. En d’autres termes, une philosophie de l’existence était-elle possible, ou ces existences elles-mêmes n’étaient-elles pas « à la fois plus ‘existentielles’ et plus vraiment philosophiques que les philosophies de l’existence3 » ? Dans sa réponse, Heidegger déclarait que sa propre pensée ne pouvait être qualifiée de philosophie de l’existence, car elle ne s’occupait de l’être humain que dans la mesure où celui-ci pouvait éclairer l’être lui-même (das Sein). Wahl, cependant, n’était pas convaincu, et dans la lettre publiée ici, il défend à la fois sa décision d’appeler Heidegger un philosophe de l’existence et propose plusieurs objections à la manière dont Heidegger essaie de répondre à la question de l’être.
This letter, published here in the original French for the first time, was sent by Jean Wahl to Martin Heidegger on December 12, 1937. It responds to a letter that Heidegger had written to Wahl a week earlier about the latter’s theses in the celebrated lecture “Subjectivity and Transcendence.” In this lecture, which has been called “a turning point in twentieth-century intellectual history,” Wahl questioned, among other things, the extent to which philosophy could provide a general theory of the insights of particular existences such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. Was, in other words, a philosophy of existence possible, or were not these existences themselves “more ‘existential’ and more truly philosophical than the philosophies of existence?” In his reply, Heidegger claimed that his own thought could not be labeled a philosophy of existence, for it concerned itself with the human being only insofar as the latter could shed light on being itself (das Sein). Wahl, however, was not convinced, and in the letter published here he both defends his decision to call Heidegger a philosopher of existence and offers several objections to the way in which Heidegger tries to answer the question of being.
This letter, published here in the original French for the first time, was sent by Jean Wahl to Martin Heidegger on December 12, 1937. It responds to a letter that Heidegger had written to Wahl a week earlier about the latter’s theses in the celebrated lecture “Subjectivity and Transcendence.” In this lecture, which has been called “a turning point in twentieth-century intellectual history,” Wahl questioned, among other things, the extent to which philosophy could provide a general theory of the insights of particular existences such as Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. Was, in other words, a philosophy of existence possible, or were not these existences themselves “more ‘existential’ and more truly philosophical than the philosophies of existence?” In his reply, Heidegger claimed that his own thought could not be labeled a philosophy of existence, for it concerned itself with the human being only insofar as the latter could shed light on being itself (das Sein). Wahl, however, was not convinced, and in the letter published here he both defends his decision to call Heidegger a philosopher of existence and offers several objections to the way in which Heidegger tries to answer the question of being.
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Un échange jusqu’à présent inédit entre Karl Jaspers et Jean Wahl, conservé dans les archives de Karl Jaspers retrouvé et vivifié par les annotations de Ian Alexander Moore et la traduction des lettres en allemand de Christophe Perrin... more
Un échange jusqu’à présent inédit entre Karl Jaspers et Jean Wahl, conservé dans les archives de Karl Jaspers retrouvé et vivifié par les annotations de Ian Alexander Moore et la traduction des lettres en allemand de Christophe Perrin propose une discussion vivante, en fait tout ontologique, partant de Descartes et arrivant jusqu’à l’ Existenzphilosophie de Jaspers. Les deux penseurs s’y confrontent sur la foi, la philosophie même, et s’interrogent de concert en faisant appel à Nietzsche et Kierkegaard, avec une fraîcheur de pensée qui étonne, si l’on songe que cela a été écrit dans les années ‘37-’38.
La courte correspondance - il s’agit de cinq lettres en tout - a été préfacée de manière vigoureuse, touffue et poétique par Michel Crépu dans le numéro 649 de la Nouvelle Revue Française (Juillet 2021, Gallimard).
La courte correspondance - il s’agit de cinq lettres en tout - a été préfacée de manière vigoureuse, touffue et poétique par Michel Crépu dans le numéro 649 de la Nouvelle Revue Française (Juillet 2021, Gallimard).
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Algorithms, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy, Technology, and 14 moreMedia Studies, Race and Racism, Immigration, Revolutions, Continental Philosophy, Walter Benjamin, Biopolitcs, Capitalism, Globalism, Intersectionality, Authoritarianism, Temporality, Public Policy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
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An edition of selections on medieval Neo-Aristotelianism and William of Ockham from Reiner Schürmann's 1978/1991 lecture course.
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Martin Heidegger wrote one and only one preface for a scholarly work on his thinking, and it was for William J. Richardson’s study Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, first published in 1963. Ever since, both Heidegger’s Preface... more
Martin Heidegger wrote one and only one preface for a scholarly work on his thinking, and it was for William J. Richardson’s study Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, first published in 1963. Ever since, both Heidegger’s Preface and Richardson’s groundbreaking book have played an important role in Heidegger scholarship. Much has been discussed about these texts over the decades, but what has not been available to students and scholars up to this point is Richardson’s original comments and questions to Heidegger that led to the famous Preface. These are published here for the first time both in the German original and in our English translation. In our commentary we (1) discuss how Heidegger’s Preface came about, (2) explain the source and status of the materials published here, and (3) pair selected passages from Richardson’s text with Heidegger’s reply in his Preface to highlight the consonance of their thinking.
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Martin Heidegger n’a écrit qu’une et une seule préface à un ouvrage savant portant sur sa pensée, et ce fut pour l’étude de William J. Richardson intitulée Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, publiée pour la première fois en... more
Martin Heidegger n’a écrit qu’une et une seule préface à un ouvrage savant portant sur sa pensée, et ce fut pour l’étude de William J. Richardson intitulée Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, publiée pour la première fois en 1963. Depuis lors, la préface de Heidegger et le livre novateur de Richardson ont joué un rôle de premier plan dans les études heideggériennes. On a beaucoup discuté de ces textes au cours des décennies mais, jusqu’à présent, les questions et commentaires originaux de Richardson à Heidegger qui ont conduit à la célèbre Préface n’étaient pas disponibles pour les étudiants et les universitaires. Ceux-ci sont publiés ici dans leur version originale allemande et dans une traduction française. Dans notre commentaire, nous (1) discutons de la manière dont la Préface de Heidegger est née, (2) expliquons la source et le statut des documents publiés ici et (3) couplons certains passages du texte de Richardson et de la réponse de Heidegger dans sa Préface afin de souligner la consonance de leurs pensées.
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This is the first translation (and publication in any language) of the sixth session of Derrida's seminar Donner le temps. This session appeared neither in Donner le temps I (Given Time) nor in Donner le temps II. For more information,... more
This is the first translation (and publication in any language) of the sixth session of Derrida's seminar Donner le temps. This session appeared neither in Donner le temps I (Given Time) nor in Donner le temps II. For more information, see Michael Portal's introduction: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/drt.2024.0335
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An edition and translation of Gadamer's commentary on Trakl's poem "A Winter Evening"
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A translation of one of Martin Heidegger’s most acute and mature discussions of the problem of a mind-independent reality and the ontological status of facts about the early history of the Earth in particular
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Martin Heidegger is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and his seminal text Being and Time is considered one of the most significant texts in contemporary philosophy. Yet his name has... more
Martin Heidegger is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and his seminal text Being and Time is considered one of the most significant texts in contemporary philosophy. Yet his name has also been mired in controversy because of his affiliations with the Nazi regime, his failure to criticize its genocidal politics and his subsequent silence about the holocaust.
Now, according to Heidegger's wishes, and to complete the publication of his multi-volume Complete Works, his highly controversial and secret 'Black Notebooks' have been released to the public. These notebooks reveal the extent to which Heidegger's 'personal Nazism' was neither incidental nor opportunistic, but part of his philosophical ethos. So, why would Heidegger, far from destroying them, allow these notebooks, which contain examples of this extreme thinking, to be published?
In this revealing new book, Peter Trawny, editor of Heidegger's complete works in German, confronts these questions and, by way of a compelling study of his theoretical work, shows that Heidegger was committed to a conception of freedom that is only beholden to the judgement of the history of being; that is, that to be free means to be free from the prejudices, norms, or mores of one's time. Whoever thinks the truth of being freely exposes themselves to the danger of epochal errancy. For this reason, Heidegger's decision to publish his notebooks, including their anti-Jewish passages, was an exercise of this anarchical freedom. In the course of a wide-ranging discussion of Heidegger's views on truth, ethics, the truth of being, tragedy and his relationship to other figures such as Nietzsche and Schmitt, Trawny provides a compelling argument for why Heidegger wanted the explosive material in his Black Notebooks to be published, whilst also offering an original and provocative interpretation of Heidegger's work.
Now, according to Heidegger's wishes, and to complete the publication of his multi-volume Complete Works, his highly controversial and secret 'Black Notebooks' have been released to the public. These notebooks reveal the extent to which Heidegger's 'personal Nazism' was neither incidental nor opportunistic, but part of his philosophical ethos. So, why would Heidegger, far from destroying them, allow these notebooks, which contain examples of this extreme thinking, to be published?
In this revealing new book, Peter Trawny, editor of Heidegger's complete works in German, confronts these questions and, by way of a compelling study of his theoretical work, shows that Heidegger was committed to a conception of freedom that is only beholden to the judgement of the history of being; that is, that to be free means to be free from the prejudices, norms, or mores of one's time. Whoever thinks the truth of being freely exposes themselves to the danger of epochal errancy. For this reason, Heidegger's decision to publish his notebooks, including their anti-Jewish passages, was an exercise of this anarchical freedom. In the course of a wide-ranging discussion of Heidegger's views on truth, ethics, the truth of being, tragedy and his relationship to other figures such as Nietzsche and Schmitt, Trawny provides a compelling argument for why Heidegger wanted the explosive material in his Black Notebooks to be published, whilst also offering an original and provocative interpretation of Heidegger's work.
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In this volume renowned German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk offers an original and often provocative account of some key elements in Heidegger's philosophy. Situating Heidegger's thought in the history of philosophical ideas and problems,... more
In this volume renowned German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk offers an original and often provocative account of some key elements in Heidegger's philosophy. Situating Heidegger's thought in the history of philosophical ideas and problems, Sloterdijk approaches his work with a series of unconventional questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would undermine universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics? This highly original interpretation of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, taking in the works of other thinkers including Adorno, Luhmann and Cioran along the way, is bound to generate wide interest amongst all those interested in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory.
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In his "Critique of Cynical Reason," Peter Sloterdijk pursued an enlightenment of the Enlightenment in both its beginnings and the present. "After God" is dedicated to the theological enlightenment of theology. It ranges from the period... more
In his "Critique of Cynical Reason," Peter Sloterdijk pursued an enlightenment of the Enlightenment in both its beginnings and the present. "After God" is dedicated to the theological enlightenment of theology. It ranges from the period when gods reigned, through the rule of the world-creator god, to reveries about the godlike power of artificial intelligence. The path of this self-enlightening theology, which is carried out here by a non-theologian, must begin well before Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God, and it must move beyond this dictum to explore the present and the future.
Since the early 20th century we have seen how the metaphysical twilight of the gods, which has preoccupied philosophers and theologians, has been accompanied by an earthly twilight of the souls. The emergence of psychoanalysis, and more recently the development of the neuro-cognitive sciences, have secularized the old Indo-European concept of the soul and transferred many accomplishments of the human mind to computerized machines. What remains of the eternal light of the soul after the artificial lights have been turned on? Have the inventors of AI thrust themselves into the position vacated by the death of god? Perhaps the distinction between God and idols will soon re-emerge here for the citizens of modernity, only this time in a technological and political register. For them, theological enlightenment – which is completely different from an instinctive rejection of religion – will be a fateful task.
This new work by one of the most original thinkers today will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences, as well as anyone interested in religion, philosophy and critical theory today.
Since the early 20th century we have seen how the metaphysical twilight of the gods, which has preoccupied philosophers and theologians, has been accompanied by an earthly twilight of the souls. The emergence of psychoanalysis, and more recently the development of the neuro-cognitive sciences, have secularized the old Indo-European concept of the soul and transferred many accomplishments of the human mind to computerized machines. What remains of the eternal light of the soul after the artificial lights have been turned on? Have the inventors of AI thrust themselves into the position vacated by the death of god? Perhaps the distinction between God and idols will soon re-emerge here for the citizens of modernity, only this time in a technological and political register. For them, theological enlightenment – which is completely different from an instinctive rejection of religion – will be a fateful task.
This new work by one of the most original thinkers today will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences, as well as anyone interested in religion, philosophy and critical theory today.
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Religion, Gnosticism, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy Of Religion, Theology, and 13 moreContinental Philosophy, Enlightenment, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Postmodernism, Augustine, Martin Buber, Peter Sloterdijk, Martin Luther, Richard Wagner, Sloterdijk, and Secularism
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Metaphysics, Plato, Mimesis, Philosophy of Education, Play, and 23 morePhenomenology, Ortega y Gasset, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Pedagogy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Nietzsche, Philosophy of Sport, Eugen Fink, Imagination, Jan Patocka, Henri Lefebvre, Heraclitus, Philosophy of Play, Ludwig Landgrebe, Philosophy of the Image, Kostas Axelos, and Theory and Philosophy of Image
Eugen Fink is considered one of the clearest interpreters of phenomenology and was the preferred conversational partner of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Play as Symbol of the World, Fink offers an original phenomenology of play... more
Eugen Fink is considered one of the clearest interpreters of phenomenology and was the preferred conversational partner of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Play as Symbol of the World, Fink offers an original phenomenology of play as he attempts to understand the world through the experience of play. He affirms the philosophical significance of play, why it is more than idle amusement, and reflects on the movement from "child's play" to "cosmic play." Well-known for its non-technical, literary style, this skillful translation by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner invites engagement with Fink's philosophy of play and related writings on sports, festivals, and ancient cult practices.
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A translation of Gadamer's recently discovered radio speech
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A translation of the correspondence between the Protestant theologian of “demythologization” Rudolf Bultmann and the philosopher Hans Jonas about the "myth" the latter invents to account for immortality in a disenchanted age.
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The first English translation of Heidegger's 1929 letter to Elisabeth Blochmann, in which he discusses their experience during the Compline service at the Benedictine Archabbey of Beuron, as well as the nature of evil and the fact that... more
The first English translation of Heidegger's 1929 letter to Elisabeth Blochmann, in which he discusses their experience during the Compline service at the Benedictine Archabbey of Beuron, as well as the nature of evil and the fact that existence is essentially "held out into the night."
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Martin Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik? Urfassung / What is Metaphysics? Original Version,” ed. Dieter Thomä, Philosophy Today 62, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 733-51 (forthcoming). Co-translated with Gregory Fried.
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A translation of Werner Hamacher's essay " Andere Schmerzen, " which he was unable to complete before his death on July 7, 2017. The essay analyzes the connection between pain and language in the work of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca,... more
A translation of Werner Hamacher's essay " Andere Schmerzen, " which he was unable to complete before his death on July 7, 2017. The essay analyzes the connection between pain and language in the work of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, Kant, Hegel, and Valéry.
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Hegel, Seneca, Cicero, Immanuel Kant, Sophocles, and 4 morePaul Valéry, Pindar, Paul Valery, and Werner Hamacher
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This document gathers together and translates Heidegger's notes on Paul Klee that have been published up to now.
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This is the first English translation of the majority of Fichte's 1807 essay on Machiavelli, which has been hailed as a masterpiece and was important for the development of German idealist political thought, as well as for its reception... more
This is the first English translation of the majority of Fichte's 1807 essay on Machiavelli, which has been hailed as a masterpiece and was important for the development of German idealist political thought, as well as for its reception by figures such as Carl von Clausewitz, Max Weber, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt. Fichte's essay attempts to resuscitate Machiavelli as a legitimate political thinker and an "honest, reasonable, and meritorious man." It tacitly critiques Napoleon, who was occupying Prussia when Fichte composed the piece, and calls on the Germans to resist the French. And some have argued that it marks a shift in Fichte's political thought toward a more realist position.
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In 1992, Cormac McCarthy gave a rare interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, translated into English here for the first time.
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Program for the first West-Coast Heidegger Workshop, Turlock 2024. Contact Hakhamanesh Zangeneh (CSU Stanislaus, hzangeneh@csustan.edu) for logistics or to be added to the email list.
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We invite submissions for an in-person 2-3 day conference to be held in Northern California, January 12th - 14th, 2024. The workshop will be limited to 10-12 papers maximum. There will be ample time for presentation and discussion, and... more
We invite submissions for an in-person 2-3 day conference to be held in Northern California, January 12th - 14th, 2024. The workshop will be limited to 10-12 papers maximum. There will be ample time for presentation and discussion, and papers will be distributed in advance. Please share this with anyone you think might be interested.
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https://eckhartsociety.com/events/eckhart-34th-conference/ Patricia Impey Meister Eckhart – A True Dominican Tollef Graff Hugo “If someone asked life for a thousand years: ‘why do you live?’...” – On the absoluteness and... more
https://eckhartsociety.com/events/eckhart-34th-conference/
Patricia Impey
Meister Eckhart – A True Dominican
Tollef Graff Hugo
“If someone asked life for a thousand years: ‘why do you live?’...”
– On the absoluteness and self-expression of life
Ian Alexander Moore
"Better a Lebemeister than a thousand Lesemeister": Eckhart's Speculative Mysticism and the Life without Why
Joseph Milne
Meister Eckhart on Living in the World
Patricia Impey
Meister Eckhart – A True Dominican
Tollef Graff Hugo
“If someone asked life for a thousand years: ‘why do you live?’...”
– On the absoluteness and self-expression of life
Ian Alexander Moore
"Better a Lebemeister than a thousand Lesemeister": Eckhart's Speculative Mysticism and the Life without Why
Joseph Milne
Meister Eckhart on Living in the World
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November 2–5, 2022
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Marburg, June 24–25, 2022
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Södertörn University, Stockholm, June 8–10, 2022
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In his recently published Donner le temps II, Derrida raises the possibility that Heidegger’s notion of Gelassenheit (‘releasement,’ ‘letting-be’) might escape the economic confines of exchange, debt, and repayment and therefore qualify... more
In his recently published Donner le temps II, Derrida raises the possibility that Heidegger’s notion of Gelassenheit (‘releasement,’ ‘letting-be’) might escape the economic confines of exchange, debt, and repayment and therefore qualify as a pure gift. In this paper, I explore this possibility, explaining that Gelassenheit would have to be understood, first, not primarily as a human comportment but at the level of being itself, second, beyond appropriation, and third, as “without why.” If Heidegger’s focus on appropriation in “Time and Being” remains entangled in the economy of exchange (as Derrida insinuates in the final session of Donner le temps II), Heidegger’s anarchic treatment of “letting” (laisser, Lassen) in the final session of his 1969 seminar in Le Thor opens instead onto a “pure giving” (pur donner, reines Geben).
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Algorithms, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Environmental Philosophy, and 14 moreTechnology, Media Studies, Globalization, Race and Racism, Immigration, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Colonialism, Medical Ethics, Capitalism, Biopolitics, Temporality, Public Policy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
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This graduate course will in large part be devoted to a study of Reiner Schürmann's Broken Hegemonies, although we will also touch on some of Schürmann’s earlier analyses of anarchy, Marxism, direct democracy, Soto Zen, and releasement... more
This graduate course will in large part be devoted to a study of Reiner Schürmann's Broken Hegemonies, although we will also touch on some of Schürmann’s earlier analyses of anarchy, Marxism, direct democracy, Soto Zen, and releasement (Gelassenheit) as well as on other figures within the tradition of Continental Political Philosophy broadly speaking (e.g., Adorno, Agamben, Althusser, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Lyotard, Malabou, Strauss, Vattimo).
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I am making this remarkable interview available because it is nearly impossible to find elsewhere, and because efforts to learn about the journal in which it was published have proved unsuccessful. Please contact me if you know anything... more
I am making this remarkable interview available because it is nearly impossible to find elsewhere, and because efforts to learn about the journal in which it was published have proved unsuccessful. Please contact me if you know anything about the journal or the circumstances surrounding the interview.
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This forthcoming essay begins by examining Martin Heidegger's and Gustav Landauer's influential interpretations of Eckhart as a Lebemeister, a 'master or teacher of life'. The essay then turns to the source on which they both rely, a... more
This forthcoming essay begins by examining Martin Heidegger's and Gustav Landauer's influential interpretations of Eckhart as a Lebemeister, a 'master or teacher of life'. The essay then turns to the source on which they both rely, a source that may be the earliest attestation of the use of the word Lebemeister. This source, which is little known in its complete form, is all more noteworthy as it contrasts the figure of the Lebemeister with that of the Lesemeister, the 'master or teacher of learning'. (Lese- refers literally to 'reading'; we might also say 'letters', in the sense of a 'person of letters' who possesses great learning.) Commenting on this source, the essay interrogates to what extent Heidegger and Landauer do justice to it. It concludes with a reflection on how best to label Eckhart, above all in view of the ultimate master: Jesus Christ.
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The question posed in the title of this presentation will—to state it right way—ultimately be answered in the affirmative. But first it will be necessary to ask several subsidiary questions. (1) Who is Heidegger, or better, what is meant... more
The question posed in the title of this presentation will—to state it right way—ultimately be answered in the affirmative. But first it will be necessary to ask several subsidiary questions. (1) Who is Heidegger, or better, what is meant by the name “Heidegger”? (2) What is anarchy such that it is possible to distinguish between true and false forms and attribute true anarchy to a signature that, for twelve years, could be found on the membership lists of the Nazi Party? And (3) given that the term “anarchy” and its cognates have been used pejoratively for over twenty-five-hundred years and positively—if rarely—for at least two-hundred, how can Heidegger or “Heidegger," of all people and things, be considered its first true representative?
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Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, Anarchism, Continental Philosophy, Martin Heidegger, and 12 moreHistory of Anarchism, Michel Foucault, Normativity, Heidegger, Mikhail Bakunin, National Socialism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Meister Eckhart, Tragedy, Anarchy, Reiner Schürmann, and History of Philosophy
In his recently published Donner le temps II, Derrida raises the possibility that Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit ('releasement', 'letting-be') might escape the economic confines of exchange, debt, and repayment and therefore qualify... more
In his recently published Donner le temps II, Derrida raises the possibility that Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit ('releasement', 'letting-be') might escape the economic confines of exchange, debt, and repayment and therefore qualify as a pure gift. In this paper, I explore this possibility, explaining that Gelassenheit would have to be understood, first, not primarily as a human comportment but at the level of being itself, second, beyond appropriation, and third, as 'without why'. If Heidegger's focus on appropriation in 'Time and Being' remains entangled in the economy of exchange (as Derrida insinuates in the final session of Donner le temps II), Heidegger's anarchic treatment of 'letting' (laisser, Lassen) in the final session of his 1969 seminar in Le Thor opens instead onto a 'pure giving' (pur donner, reines Geben).
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In this paper I reconstruct Schürmann’s argument in part 2 of Broken Hegemonies and in two of his lecture courses to show how the denaturing of nature in the Franciscan voluntarists and in the Dominican master Eckhart reveals the secret... more
In this paper I reconstruct Schürmann’s argument in part 2 of Broken Hegemonies and in two of his lecture courses to show how the denaturing of nature in the Franciscan voluntarists and in the Dominican master Eckhart reveals the secret of happiness for Schürmann: a love that is not simply of the good but of the double bind, a wisdom that is not simply the contemplation of the highest truth but constitutively tragic. I explain why Eckhart, with whom Schürmann began his philosophical journey, remained pivotal in the end. Like in his first book on Eckhart (Wandering Joy), Schürmann is still in search of the joyful life in Broken Hegemonies. Only, he comes to see that happiness is to be found not outside of all principles, let alone by conformity with them, but in the tragic recognition of the inescapable double bind of natality and mortality, of universalization and singularization, of appropriation and expropriation.