The Logic of Being: Realism, Truth, and Time
Abstract
In The Logic of Being, Paul Livingston examines the relationship of truth and time from a perspective that draws on Martin Heidegger’s inquiry into the question of being, as well as twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language and logic. In his influential earlier work The Politics of Logic, Livingston elaborated an innovative “formal” or “metaformal realism.” In the Logic of Being, he now extends this concept into a “temporal realism” that accounts for the reality of temporal change and becoming while also preserving realism about logic and truth. Livingston employs a formal and phenomenological method of analysis to articulate and defend a position of realism about being, time, and their relationship, on which all of these are understood as structured and constituted in a way that does not depend on the human mind, consciousness, or subjectivity. This approach provides a basis for new logically and phenomenologically based accounts of the structure of linguistic truth in relation to the appearance of objects and of the formal structure of time as given. Livingston draws on philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Davidson and Heidegger in this exploration of truth and time. In it, readers and scholars will discover innovative connections between Continental and analytic philosophy. © 2017 by the Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
... Antroje teksto dalyje bus parodoma, kaip šiuo būdu suformuluota prieiga yra ir prieiga prie aristotelio filosofijos pamatinės struktūros, jos "ikisąvokinės ištakos", ir leidžia joje surasti bei ją analizuojant eksplikuoti būties ir laiko skirtumo bei kartu būties ir laiko neatsiejamumo struktūrą. Heideggerio prieiga prie iš graikų kilusios teorijos ir jos ontologinės (ikisąvokinės) ištakos rėmėsi iš Husserlio gautu formalumo supratimu (žr., pvz., Abalo 2016, Livingston 2017. Jo formalus nurodymas (formale Anzeige) susijęs ne vien su sąvokiniu mąstymu, bet ir su ikisąvokine mąstymo ištaka, kurios apmąstymas jam kartu yra ir autentiškas graikiškosios οὐσία -Vakarų minties pagrindo -apmąstymas. ...
Globalization and the digital revolution have forced a rethink of many philosophical works of the 20th century. Among them, Martin Heidegger’s ideas attract special attention. The main purpose of the article is to study the dichotomy of opposition between the image of technology and the pre-technological era in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art. Research methods include the possibility of recombination of heterogeneous data to obtain previously unknown knowledge and semantic analysis of Martin Heidegger’s works. The study proposes a model of the dichotomy of civilization development within the framework of Ge-stell. The essence of this model is the concept of Ge-stell, which now covers modern civilization with industrial and digital technologies. At the same time, humanity and nature are a “permanent reserve” in relation to Ge-stell, that is, according to Heidegger’s ideas, Bestand. Humanity has two paths of development, which involve creation and destruction. Technological development over the past two centuries has caused a global environment. In his philosophy, Heidegger proposed art as the only way to overcome the crisis of modernity. The findings expand the understanding of the global problems associated with the modern development of human civilization through a new rethinking of Heidegger’s ideas. The study offers an alternative to the path of destruction through the mechanism of creative perception of technology through art.
Faced with the difficulties presented in Chap. 3, this chapter takes Heidegger’s Kant-interpretation as a clue and proposes the horizonal interpretation of time. Heidegger, even in his “transcendental period” of 1920s, never fell prey to subjectivism; this means his work may be construed as a transcendental philosophy which does not presuppose subjective consciousness. The subjectivist interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of “time-horizon” is untenable. The horizonality of the horizon needs to be reconsidered: it presupposes neither a seeing subject nor a ground of absolute absence; rather, it means the “whereto” which orients and constitutes subjectivity. On the other hand, the subject, instead of actively constituting the horizon, “lets it be.” This reading of horizonality is affirmed by Section 24 of Heidegger’s Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1927–28). Analysis of the section shows that the structure of the now-horizon is local differentiation in originary unity; the structure of the horizon-of-having-been is releasement from a “here” to its “elsewhere”; the structure of the horizon-of-what-is-to-come is further determination of the yet-indeterminate identical being. Together, these three structures constitute a unified time-horizon; it is a transcendental horizon in the sense that it orients the subject with the alterity of the thing, thus making possible the temporal experience which seems to “belong to” the subject.
This chapter examines the ontological presuppositions behind the traditional idea of the dissociation of being from time; it raises, as an alternative, the “ontology of temporal differentiation.” Predominant in everyday understanding and in the natural sciences is the “ontology of the extant,” which identifies the being of beings with their being-extant or full determinacy. To ensure the independence of such a full determinacy from finite human experience, a perfect intellect must be assumed. This, and not the human subject, is considered the measure for the being of beings. The ontology of the extant exhibits two problems. First, it focuses on extant differences at the price of the differentiating processes which allow the differences to “make a difference” in the first place, so that all differences are in fact juxtaposed indifferently in the being. Second, it understands the essence of beings according to the manifestation of beings to the perfect intellect, so that their manifestation to the finite human intellect becomes always “second-hand.” To address the first problem, we need to attend to the process of differentiation, which allows each aspect of a being to be distinguished from other possible aspects while remaining with the latter in an originary unity. It is thanks to this process that the difference “matters” or “makes a difference.” In the movement of contemporary “post-metaphysics,” which rose under the influences of the later Heidegger and Deleuze, a “differential ontology” has been articulated to take differentiation seriously; it understands being as incessant differentiation. Due to a mistrust of modern subjectivity, however, differential ontology takes a naturalist or impersonalist position and must assume a realm of “the virtual,” in which all differences subsist. The manifestation of beings, now construed as actualization from the virtual, becomes once again second-hand experience. This is how differential ontology fails to address the second problem with the ontology of the extant. Faced with this challenge, I propose the “ontology of temporal differentiation.” It says that an originary sense of time must be prepared to make comprehensible the “focus-margin” structure of the field of sense which is at work in the manifestation of beings, as well as the “tenuous presence” of beings which this structure enables.
In this paper I draw from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of the 1920s to outline some basic features of his theory of intentionality that I believe have not been fully appreciated or utilized, and that allow for both novel and fruitful interventions in questions about meaning, the relationship between mind and the world, and epistemic justification, principally as they appear in John McDowell’s synoptic project in Mind and World. I argue that while elements of McDowell’s picture are ultimately unsatisfying and problematic, much of his conceptual framework can and should be put into dialogue with Heidegger’s, and that in so doing we make available powerful resources for amending the McDowellian account. Moreover, these emendations have attractive implications for his distinctive desiderata. In particular, they provide original conceptions of normativity’s place in nature, of the boundaries of the space of reasons, and of the relationship between the answerability of thought both to the world and to human beings as a rational community.
In this paper I draw from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of the 1920s to outline some basic features of his theory of intentionality that I believe have not been fully appreciated or utilized, and that allow for both novel and fruitful interventions in questions about meaning, the relationship between mind and the world, and epistemic justification, principally as they appear in John McDowell’s synoptic project in Mind and World. I argue that while elements of McDowell’s picture are ultimately unsatisfying and problematic, much of his conceptual framework can and should be put into dialogue with Heidegger’s, and that in so doing we make available powerful resources for amending the McDowellian account. Moreover, these emendations have attractive implications for his distinctive desiderata. In particular, they provide original conceptions of normativity’s place in nature, of the boundaries of the space of reasons, and of the relationship between the answerability of thought both to the world and to human beings as a rational community.
One of the stated commitments of the later Wittgenstein’ philosophy is that, just as philosophy must not in any way “interfere” with the practice of mathematicians, conversely and equally, “no mathematical discovery” can by itself “advance” philosophy in its quest to clarify the forms of our lives and language. It would thus appear ab initio that, for Wittgenstein, the mathematician and the philosopher of mathematics, operating with different methods and in distinct regions of inquiry and insight, have very little to say to each other. On the other hand, however, Wittgenstein is committed equally strongly to the idea that philosophy can and should take a different kind of interest in mathematics: not as a body of results to be explicated or methods to be emulated but as a set of techniques or practices within human life, to be understood in general terms only in the context of related practices that are not simply or exclusively mathematical and thereby as illuminating our practices and ways of life, much more broadly. This includes the characteristic practices of mathematics “itself”—activities such as calculating and problem-solving, developing proofs, and making conjectures. But it also, crucially, includes those practices that characterize our practical, lived, social, emotional, and educational experience much more generally—practices, for example, of teaching and learning, of understanding and being convinced, of “seeing” a relationship, and of “knowing” what is the right way to proceed. The philosopher’s interest in these practices, and in particular in the ways that they are involved in (what we call) “doing” mathematics, extends to the illumination of what is meant by (or what we understand by) such “ordinary” phenomena and experience as those of following a rule, practicing a regular method, developing a technique, arguing rationally for a conclusion, and convincing someone of something (whether by means of a “formal” or “informal” “proof”). With respect to each of these, Wittgenstein argues the philosopher’s attention to mathematical practice provides a decisive guideline for the broader kinds of clarification and illumination that philosophical reflection itself produces more generally. It does so, in part, by directing our attention to those features of (specifically) mathematical practice that mark its role within the broader and multiple contexts of what we may call, using Wittgenstein’s terminology, our collective and shared human and linguistic “form of life.”
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