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Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger's concept of 'being-towards-death' and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject. Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina demonstrates how they all highlight two aspects of the experience. First, they uncover a particular state of being, or more precisely non-being, that comes with a death sentence, and, second, they reveal how this state exists beyond death row, as sovereignty and alterity are by no means confined to a prison cell. In contrast to Heidegger's being-towards-death, which individualizes the subject – only I can die my own death, supposedly – this book argues that, when condemned to death, the self and death collide, putting under erasure the category of subjectivity itself. Be it death row or not, when the supposed futurity of death is brought into the here and now, we encounter what Aquilina calls 'relational death'. Living on with death severs the subject's relation to itself, the other and political sociality as a whole, rendering the human less a named and recognizable 'being' than an anonymous 'living corpse', a human thing. In a sustained engagement with Blanchot, Levinas, Hegel, Agamben and Derrida, The Ontology of Death articulates a new theory of the subject, beyond political subjectivity defined by sovereignty and beyond the Heideggerian notion of ontological selfhood.
Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger's concept of 'being-towards-death' and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject. Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina demonstrates how they all highlight two aspects of the experience. First, they uncover a particular state of being, or more precisely non-being, that comes with a death sentence, and, second, they reveal how this state exists beyond death row, as sovereignty and alterity are by no means confined to a prison cell. In contrast to Heidegger's being-towards-death, which individualizes the subject - only I can die my own death, supposedly - this book argues that, when condemned to death, the self and death collide, putting under erasure the category of subjectivity itself. Be it death row or not, when the supposed futurity of death is brought into the here and now, we encounter what Aquilina calls 'relational death'. Living on with death severs the subject's relation to itself, the other and political sociality as a whole, rendering the human less a named and recognizable 'being' than an anonymous 'living corpse', a human thing. In a sustained engagement with Blanchot, Levinas, Hegel, Agamben and Derrida, The Ontology of Death articulates a new theory of the subject, beyond political subjectivity defined by sovereignty and beyond the Heideggerian notion of ontological selfhood.
Examines conceptions of death as manifested in German literature and philosophy expanding on thanatological theories that distinguish between a metaphysical and an ontological view of human finitude. This book addresses the French philosophical treatment of death by Blanchot, Kojeve, and others in the wake of their German predecessors.
The book is the first detailed and full exegesis of the role of death in Heidegger’s philosophy and provides a decisive answer to the question of being. It is well-known that Heidegger asked the “question of being”. It is equally commonplace to assume that Heidegger failed to provide a proper answer to the question. In this provocative new study Niederhauser argues that Heidegger gives a distinct response to the question of being and that the phenomenon of death is key to finding and understanding it. The book offers challenging interpretations of crucial moments of Heidegger’s philosophy such as aletheia, the history of being, time, technology, the fourfold, mortality, the meaning of existence, the event, and language. Niederhauser makes the case that any reading of Heidegger that ignores death cannot fully understand those concepts. The book argues that death is central to Heidegger’s “thinking path” from the early 1920s until his late post-war philosophy. The book thus attempts to show that there is a unity of the early and late Heidegger often ignored by other commentators. Niederhauser argues that death is the fulcrum of Heidegger’s ontology and the turning point of the history of being. Death resurfaces at the most crucial moments of the “thinking path” – from beginning to end. The book is of interest to those invested in current debates on the ethics of dying and the transhumanist project of digital human immortality. The text also shows that for Heidegger philosophy means first and foremost to learn how to die. This volume speaks to continental and analytical philosophers and students alike as it draws on a number of diverse Heidegger interpretations and appreciates intercultural differences in reading Heidegger.
Omnipotent Laws in nature, not religious `beliefs' of human beings - govern birth on earth - and continuity of personal, individual consciousness - forever! Have you prepared yourself or a dear relative how to die? a facsimile of A. J. Davis' article an.
Death is one of those few topics that attract the attention of just about every significant thinker in the history of Western philosophy, and this attention has resulted in diverse and complex views on death and what comes after. In Meaning and Mortality, Adam Buben offers a remarkably useful new framework for understanding the ways in which philosophy has discussed death by focusing first on two traditional strains in the discussion, the Platonic and the Epicurean. After providing a thorough account of this ancient dichotomy, he describes the development of an alternative means of handling death in Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, whose work on death tends to overshadow Kierkegaard's despite the undeniable influence exerted on him by the nineteenth-century Dane. Buben argues that Kierkegaard and Heidegger prescribe a peculiar way of living with death that offers a kind of compromise between the Platonic and the Epicurean strains.
In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.
Heidegger&’s thinking has an underlying unity, this book argues, and has cogency for seemingly diverse domains of modern culture: philosophy and religion, aesthetics and literary criticism, intellectual history and social theory. &“The theme of mortality&—finite human existence&—pervades Heidegger&’s thought,&” in the author&’s words, &“before, during, and after his magnum opus, Being and Times, published in 1927.&” This theme is manifested in Heidegger&’s work not &“as funereal melodramatics or as despair and destructive nihilism&” but rather &“as a thinking within anxiety.&” & Four major subthemes in Heidegger&’s thinking are explored in the book&’s four parts: the fundamental ontology developed in Being and Time; the &“lighting and clearing&” of Being, understood as &“unconcealment&”; the history of philosophy&—with emphasis on Heraclitus, Hegel, and Nietzsche&—interpreted as the &“destiny&” of Being; and the poetics of Being, explicated as the &“fundamental experience&” of mortality. & Neither an introduction nor a survey, this book is a close reading of a wide range of Heidegger&’s books, lectures, and articles&—including extensive material not yet translated into English&—informed by the author&’s conversations with Heidegger in 1974&–76. Each of the four subthemes is treated critically. The aim of the book is to push its interrogations of Heidegger&’s thought as far as possible, in order to help the reader toward an independent assessment of his work and to encourage novel, radically conceived approaches to traditional philosophical problems.
This book is a critical inquiry into three ideas that have been at the heart of philosophical reflection since time immemorial: freedom, God and immortality. Their inherent connection has disappeared from our thought. We barely pay attention to the latter two ideas, and the notion of freedom is used so loosely today that it has become vacuous. Axel Hutter’s book seeks to remind philosophy of its distinct task: only in understanding itself as human self-knowledge that articulates itself in these three ideas will philosophy do justice to its own concept. In developing this line of argument, Hutter finds an ally in Thomas Mann, whose novel Joseph and His Brothers has more to say about freedom, God and immortality than most contemporary philosophy does. Through his reading of Mann’s novel, Hutter explores these three ideas in a distinctive way. He brings out the intimate connection between philosophical self-knowledge and narrative form: Mann’s novel gives expression to the depth of human self-understanding and, thus, demands a genuinely philosophical interpretation. In turn, philosophical concepts are freed from abstractness by resonating with the novel’s motifs and its rich language. Narrative Ontology is both a highly original work of philosophy and a vigorous defence of humanism. It brings together philosophy and literature in a creative way, it will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, literature and the humanities in general.