Heidegger and Practical Philosophy

Edited by François Raffoul & David Pettigrew

Subjects: Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791453445, 392 pages, March 2002
Hardcover : 9780791453438, 392 pages, March 2002

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part I. Heidegger and Practical Philosophy

1. Free Thinking
John Sallis

2. The Interpretation of Aristotle's Notion of Aretê in Heidegger's First Courses
Jacques Taminiaux

3. Freedom, Finitude, and the Practical Self: The Other Side of Heidegger's Appropiation of Kant
Frank Schalow

4. Hier ist kein warum: Heidegger and Kant's Practical Philosophy
Jacob Rogozinski

Part II. Heidegger and Ethics

5. Heidegger's "Originary Ethics"
Jean-Luc Nancy

6. The Call of Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity
Françoise Dastur

7. The "Play of Transcendence" and the Question of Ethics
Jean Greisch

8. "Homo prudens"
Miguel de Beistegui

Part III. The Question of the Political

9. In the Middle of Heidegger's Three Concepts of the Political
Theodore Kisiel

10. The Baby and the Bath Water: On Heidegger and Political Life
Dennis J. Schmidt

11. Heidegger's Practical Politics: Of Time and the River
Charles E. Scott

12. Heidegger and Arendt: The Birth of Political Action and Speech
Peg Birmingham

Part IV. Responsibility, Being-With, and Community

13. Heidegger and the Origins of Responsibility
François Raffoul

14. Reading Heidegger Responsibly: Glimpses of Being in Dasein's Development
David Wood

15. The Communit y of Those Who Are Going to Die
Walter Brogan

16. Heidegger and the Question of Empathy
Lawrence J. Hatab

Part V. Heidegger and the Contemporary Ethos

17. Nihilism and Its Discontents
Thomas Sheehan

18. Is There an Ethics for the "Atomic Age"?
Pierre Jacerme

19. Praxis and Gelassenheit: The "Practice" of the Limit
Andrew Mitchell

20. Psychoanalytic Praxis and the Truth of Pain
William J. Richardson

Contributors
Index

Leading scholars address the ethical and practical dimensions of Heidegger's thought.

Description

Heidegger has often been reproached for his alleged neglect of practical issues, specifically his "inability" to propose or articulate an ethics or politics. This book investigates the extent to which Heidegger's thought can be read as a crucial resource for practical philosophy and the articulation of an ethos for our time. Leading scholars from around the world offer a sustained and intensive focus on Heidegger's thought of praxis, working through such motifs as freedom, the possibility of ethics, the political, responsibility, community, nihilism, technology and the contemporary ethos, among others. Ultimately, this volume reveals the practical senses of ontology, and the ontological senses of praxis by exhibiting the practicality of Being itself.

François Raffoul is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University and the author of Heidegger and the Subject. David Pettigrew is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. Together they have translated Jean-Luc Nancy's and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan and Juan-David Nasio's Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan, both published by SUNY Press, and Françoise Dastur's Heidegger and the Question of Time. They have also coedited Disseminating Lacan, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This is a superb collection of essays by leading Heidegger scholars, a pioneering book that will be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the practical, ethical, and political dimensions opened up by Heidegger's thought. " — William McNeill, author of The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory

"With the increasing attention to questions of ethics and social/political philosophy in contemporary philosophy, this volume makes a timely contribution. Moreover, one could argue that 'practical philosophy' has always been at the center of Heidegger's philosophy, yet the topic has never been explored at length in this way before now. " — James Risser, editor of Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays on the Work of the 1930s

"Raffoul and Pettigrew have collected excellent texts, which offer a rich variety of views on a too-neglected side of Heidegger's thought: the preparation of new ethical and practical issues appropriate to our technological age. " — Dominique Janicaud, coauthor of Heidegger from Metaphysics to Thought