Metaphysics and the Critique of Metaphysics

This paper explores how Derrida's concept of deconstruction (aiming at two targets: the logic of identity and the metaphysics of presence) challenges claims to final and unchangeable meaning and truth embedded in our language. While taking on board Derrida's own criticisms of negative theology and of apophaticism, it shows where and how his thought resonates with other elements of this theological tradition, beyond his critique.

This article compares two approaches to Christian existence, one protestant philosophical represented by Paul Ricoeur, the other catholic sacramental theological represented by Louis-Marie Chauvet. Their complementarity is pointed out In the conclusion. While Riroeur stresses a cultivation of an individual, Chauvet emphasizes the constitutive role of the church as a living body.

«BEING OUTSIDE-ITSELF» IN SCHELLING AND HEIDEGGER The author of the article framed the question of the possible relevance of the treatment of the Schelling's philosophy in the context of a phenomenological one. Thereby, he points its problematic character, referencing Husserl's treatment of German idealism after Kant (including the thought of Schelling) as the romantic idealism. At the same time, he also states the influence of Schelling on the few phe-nomenologists who made their careers after Husserl. The article's author reviews the concept of the «being outside-itself» or «ecstasy» in Schelling and Heidegger (as one of the phenomenologists) for the further concretization of the theme. The ecstasy in Schelling is the new name for the idealistic intellectual intuition, by which a singular subject loses its own position as subject and thereby gets to the position of the absolute subject. The absolute subject is one which cannot be an object already. Schelling identifies the ecstasy understood in this way with the wondering as philosophical initiation in Ancient Greece. Such ecstasy leads to unknowing knowledge in Schelling's words. The concept of being outside-itself means the structural element of being of human Dasein, i.e. of temporality in Heidegger. This philosopher thinks that a human being is always already outside itself ontologically, before any intuition both sensual and intellectual. The human subject is not closed in on itself, for then it has to transcend from its immanence to the outside. It is always outside itself, it is ecstatic. In its ecstasies, it is always in the world, instead of being inside the world and other people. Heidegger bases his critique of the traditional metaphysics of the subject on such understanding of the ontological structure of Dasein, i.e. of the true «subject». In conclusion, the article's author states that the approaches to the problem of being outside-itself of both mentioned philosophers are in principle, quite different. Schelling tries to rehabilitate the subjectivity by the reduction of the singular subject to the absolute one. On the contrary, the finitude of human Dasein is the necessary condition of its being in Heidegger. The ecstasy is interiorization in Schelling, but it is exteriorization, which has been always already realized, in Heidegger. However, the author of the article also pinpoints a certain isomorphism of the treatments of ecstasy in both thinkers. In the different ways they attempt to overcome the crisis of the understanding of the subject as closed in itself, create the conditions of this isomorphism.

This paper details how, besides his work on theoretical physics, Philipp Frank continued to remain interested in the philosophical questions of physics throughout his entire career. While this interest surfaced in different forms in different periods, Frank's late approach (developed mainly in the United States) constituted a sophisticated and complex inquiry into what he called the "humanistic background of science". Frank argued that we need to understand the physical (or scientific) endeavor as a whole. In this project, as it turned out, metaphysics could play a crucial role. Frank's American activities thus involved two core issues: (1) interpreting metaphysics in a way that would make it a meaningful enterprise for empiricists; and (2) investigating to what extent metaphysics, in this interpretation, can contribute to a better understanding of the natural sciences. Using the results of the latter, Frank tried to bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences.

This is an interpretation of the second chapter of John Dewey's Experience and Nature. The chapter "Existence as Precarious and as Stable" is crucial for assessing Dewey's metaphysics, as it is here that Dewey develops not only his definition of metaphysics (applying both to traditional and his own) but also the key hypotheses for the following chapters. These hypotheses refer to the general features of nature. Dewey's metaphysics evolves as a critique of metaphysics. That Dewey is devastatingly critical of traditional metaphysics does not, however, imply a destruction of metaphysics of any sort. On the contrary, Dewey holds metaphysics to be a necessary moment of critical practice: For nature to transform itself as experience, experience needs an account of a transformable nature both stable and precarious. To develop that account is the task of humanistic naturalism.

La « Sprachkritik » comme « Kulturkritik » : une lecture du §11 d'Humain, trop humain I, §11 1 Introduction : la place de la métaphysique dans Humain, trop humain Le premier chapitre d'Humain, trop humain, « Des choses premières et dernières », est consacré à la remise en question de la métaphysique et le premier aphorisme établit déjà les termes-clés de cette critique : « La philosophie métaphysique s'arrangeait jusqu'ici pour franchir cette difficulté [de la naissance d'une chose de son contraire] en niant que l'un naquît de l'autre et en admettant pour les choses d'une haute valeur une origine miraculeuse, celles-ci provenant directement du noyau et de l'essence de la "chose en soi" » 1 . L'un des problèmes de la métaphysique est qu'elle fait appel à une essence fixe et immuable, à une « chose en soi » afin d'expliquer l'origine et le développement des choses. A cette philosophie métaphysique, Nietzsche oppose la philosophie historique qui considère les choses dans leur développement ;