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Division III of Heidegger's Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being

Lee Braver (ed.)

How would Heidegger’s Being and Time have ended? How should it have concluded? Why didn’t he finish it? What would he have said about being in the final, concluding Division of the book that was ... More

How would Heidegger’s Being and Time have ended? How should it have concluded? Why didn’t he finish it? What would he have said about being in the final, concluding Division of the book that was never published, or perhaps even written? Some of the world’s leading Heidegger scholars offer answers to these questions, shedding new light on the central ideas of the book along the way. If we understand what the third Division would have said, we can understand the book as a whole better. If we can see why he didn’t write it, we can appreciate his later work anew.Less

The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Religion, Volume VII, Book Three

George Santayana

Marianne S. Wokeck and Martin A. Coleman (eds)

This text, originally published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, the ... More

This text, originally published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, the book traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is a rendered vision of human life lived sanely. This third book offers a naturalistic interpretation of religion. The text argues that religion is ignoble if regarded as a truthful depiction of real beings and events; but regarded as poetry, it might be the greatest source of wisdom. The book analyzes four characteristic religious concerns: piety, spirituality, charity, and immortality. The book argues for an ideal immortality that does not eradicate the fear of death but offers a way for mortal man to share in immortal things and live in a manner that will bestow on his successors the imprint of his soul.Less

Reading Heidegger's Black Notebooks 1931-1941

Ingo Farin and Jeff Malpas (eds)

The publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, especially those from 1931-1941,has provoked enormous controversy and this volume aims to bring together a range of responses by well-known figures in ... More

The publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, especially those from 1931-1941,has provoked enormous controversy and this volume aims to bring together a range of responses by well-known figures in contemporary Heidegger scholarship. Encompassing a range of different perspectives, the essays deal with the interpretive and stylistic issues raised by the Notebooks; the role the Notebooks play in relation to other works and to Heidegger’s thinking as a whole; the question of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, as well as his broader relation to Judaism and Christianity; the political and historical dimensions of the Notebooks as well as Heidegger’s critical approach to technology, science and modernity.Less

True Enough

Catherine Z. Elgin

Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot ... More

Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot accommodate science, for science unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments which are known not to be true. We ought not assume that the inaccuracy of such devices is a sign of their inadequacy. When effective, they are felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features they share with the phenomena they bear on. Inasmuch as works of art also deploy felicitous falsehoods, they too advance understanding. True Enough develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than on knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability on this account is not a matter of truth or truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by members of an idealized epistemic community – a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.Less