Secular Frontier

SEE THIS CURRENT BLOG SERIES LANDING PAGE ON DERRIDA’S AND HEIDEGGER’S PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH: Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger on The Philosophy of Death Once that affect of conclusion (conviction or belief) is suspended, “it is surely possible,” says Freud, “to throw oneself [to give oneself up to—it is a strong phrase: sich hingeben] into ... A Derridean Interpretation of Christian/Stoic Being-Toward Death in Heidegger’s Being and Time:

We had another great session of the Being and Time/Derrida discussion group today, especially thanks to our great discussion organizer.  What stood out to me: We asked what Heidegger is doing with the question of Being, since this isn’t immediately obvious.  If Hegel is right and Being is just the most general concept, then it isn’t clear ... Today’s Meeting on Being and Time and Derrida

Excited to be attending the next meeting on Heidegger and Derrida tomorrow.  We will be looking at Derrida’s introduction to his translation of Husserl’s geometry book. That makes me think of when Heidegger says “in Leibniz’s sense, a ratio sufficiens, a sufficient reason, isn’t at all a ground capable of supporting a being so that it ... Heidegger/Derrida Book Club Meeting Tomorrow

“Out of life’s school of war—what does not kill me makes me stronger (Nietzsche’s1888 book Twilight of the Idols.)” There is an entirely new type of causality here whereby the effect correlates with the cause but is not the result of it.  We might suppose a set of triplets in an abusive home: One grows ... Concluding Post on Derrida’s Life Death Seminar

I’m picking up from the same lecture course I was looking at from Derrida on concepts and metaphors, this time beginning a series on Life. If DNA is information like a text that is transmitted and deciphered without being “understood” as we typically talk about texts and meanings constructed hermeneutically, then is Derrida right that ... (Part 1) Derrida and Jacob on Life and Writing

δῆλον γὰρ ὡς ὑμεῖς μὲν ταῦτα [τί ποτε βούλεσθε σημαίνειν ὁπόταν ὂν φθέγγησθε] πάλαι γιγνώσκετε, ἡμεῖς δὲ πρὸ τοῦ μὲν ᾠόμεθα, νῦν δ’ ἠπορήκαμεν … This is translated as: “For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression ‘being’. We, however, who used to think we understood it, ... CONCLUSION: ONLY A GOD …

I previously covered the first 3 lectures of Derrida’s Life/Death seminar focusing on what Derrida calls the Metaphoricity of the Metaphor and the Conceptuality of the Concept. That served as a good beginning and now I’d like to move on with an introduction to his fourth lecture. Nietzsche has a passage about “to schematize” and ... (Part 1) Derrida and The Logic of the Supplement The Supplement of the Other, of Death, of Meaning, of Life

In relation to Leibniz’s principle of ground/reason, Heidegger clarifies this issue in his 1957 book The Principle of Reason, “in Leibniz’s sense, a ratio sufficiens, a sufficient reason, isn’t at all a ground capable of supporting a being so that it doesn’t straightaway fall into nothing. A sufficient reason is one that reaches and offers ... (CONCLUSION) The Metaphoricity of Metaphor and the Conceptuality of the Concept with Heidegger and Derrida: A Case Study of Angelus Silesius

Interpretations are not hermeneutics of reading but political interventions in the political rewriting of the text. This has always been the case, but especially so since what is called the end of philosophy, since the textual indicator named Hegel. It is not an accident but an effect of the structure of all post-Hegelian texts that ... (PART 2) The Metaphoricity of Metaphor and the Conceptuality of the Concept with Heidegger and Derrida: Example, Exemplar, and Analogy Based Thinking.

“The metaphoricity of metaphor and the conceptuality of the concept …” – Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 68). INTRODUCTION “Metaphor” means transporting something from one domain to another, such as when I say “he’s a cold blooded killer” or “she’s boiling mad,” I am transporting descriptions from the physical world ... New Blog Series: The Metaphoricity of Metaphor and the Conceptuality of the Concept with Heidegger and Derrida

“a mortal can only start from here, from his mortality.  His possible belief in immortality, his irresistible interest in the beyond, in gods and spirits, what makes survival structure every instant in a kind of irreducible torsion, the torsion of a retrospective anticipation that introduces the untimely moment and the posthumous in the most alive ... My Posts on Jacques Derrida’s Interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy of Death: Afterword

(Jacques Derrida, wiki) (Martin Heidegger, wiki) These are my notes for an upcoming study of Heidegger’s Being and Time and Derrida’s response. I focus on philosophy of death and Derrida’s books The Gift of Death, On the Name, and Aporias. Foreword: Of course, most people live their lives “as though” the next moment won’t be ... Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger on The Philosophy of Death

Nietzsche argued that early Jews and Greeks were fundamentally “attached to life” and paid little attention to ideas of a personal afterlife or postmortem rewards and punishments. In his 1881 work Daybreak (specifically Section 72), Nietzsche contrasts the early Jewish and Greek mindset with that of Christianity and later mystery religions: Priority of Life over ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death in Response to Heidegger in “APORIAS” (CONCLUSION)

Derrida notes no context, such as death, “can determine meaning to the point of exhaustiveness (Derrida, 9).”  Derrida connects this to the notion of aporia, a block in the path of appropriation that elicits wonder/thaumazein, something “fascinating/passionne (12)” that causes us to deconstruct and reconstruct our guiding perspective, such as when the beloved traditional definition ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death in Response to Heidegger in “APORIAS” (Part 4)

In Derrida’s Aporias, he says regarding Seneca and death “Seneca describes the absolute imminence, the imminence of death at every instant.  This imminence of disappearance that is by essence premature seals the union of the possible and the impossible, of fear and desire, and of mortality and immortality, in being-to-death (Derrida, Finis, 4).”  What did ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death in Response to Heidegger in “APORIAS” (Part 3)

Αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη. “The aeon (The Geschick of being) is a child at play, playing at draughts; dominion is the child’s” (that is to say, dominion over being as a whole). Heraclitus fragment 52: In the previous series I looked at Derrida’s critique of example thinking.  When we look at ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death in Response to Heidegger in “APORIAS” (Part 2)

This will be my last series on Derrida and Death and I will be looking at his book APORIAS. Here’s a little context for making sense of the series: Friedrich Nietzsche discusses ancient Greek “proofs” of the soul’s immortality primarily to critique them as life-denying inventions that paved the way for Christian asceticism. Nietzsche identifies ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death in Response to Heidegger in “APORIAS” (Part 1)

Derrida says Philosophical thinking is usually thought as taking up a guiding thread in a text  (e.g., negative theology) provisionally, and seeing what we can do with it (Sauf le nom, 62).  It concludes by going “back, then once more, briefly, to the beginning, and rapidly trace the steps that led us to the point ... Jacques Derrida and Khora (conclusion)

I’m beginning my last two blog series on Jacques Derrida.  Previously I looked at his book The Gift of Death and essay Sauf le nom, and now I will be looking at his essay khora, which looks at Plato’s Timaeus.  In my last series I will look at Derrida’s reading of Heidegger in “Aporias.” In ... Jacques Derrida and Khora (Part 1)

We’ve been thinking about apophasis/negative theology, a way of approaching God without attributing things to him.  This was popularized by the Christian mystic tradition.  Angelus Silesius mentions the heart becoming the Mount of Olives in Book 2, epigram 81 of Cherubinischer Wandersmann (translated as The Cherubinic Wanderer). The original German text reads: “Soll dich des ... Jacques Derrida and Angelus Silesius in Sauf le nom (Conclusion)

(free AI image) “19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, ... Jacques Derrida and Nietzsche in Sauf le nom (part 6): God’s Ass?

The unknown God of negative theology (not this, not that) is a singularity that overflows attempts a generalizing with an essence, overflowing opposites like thing/non thing, being/ non being – transcending all theological attributes (Derrida, Sauf le nom, 52) in the form A is B.  We assume as our a priori that we have understood ... Jacques Derrida in “Sauf le nom” (part 5)

We’ve been thinking about negative theology / apophatic theology with Derrida’s Sauf le nom, the idea of characterizing the divine by negating predicates: wise without wisdom, powerful without power.  It is a kind of language/translating.  It is a being-together or gathering together of singularities (46) that is not just that of a subsuming under a ... Jacques Derrida and Søren Kierkegaard in “Sauf le nom” (part 4)

Derrida’s Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum) begins with a look at apophatic theology (negative theology) and Augustine’s Confessions.  Apophatic theology is the idea that we approach God, not through attribution (e.g., God is all-powerful), but through questioning and negation [“Meister Eckhart cites him often; he often cites the ‘without’ of Saint Augustine, that quasi-negative predication of ... Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard in “Sauf le nom” (part 3)

Martin Heidegger did his major study lecture course on Plato’s Sophist around the same time as Being and Time, and a major focus is Antisthenes on the question of naming. Let’s approach this obliquely with the question on the sciences. Academic fields differ in their objects of inquiry based on the nature of reality they ... Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger in “Sauf le nom” (part 2)

Heidegger uses the term phenomenology in Hegel’s sense as “uncovering what is hidden” though always already there inconspicuously: making conspicuous. Hegel says the tearing of the sock phenomenalizes the Category of Unity, “as” a lost-Unity. Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says “The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no ... Derrida and Heidegger: Phenomenology vs Deconstruction “Sauf le nom (part 1)”

I’ve been thinking about Jacques Derrida and deconstruction in previous posts, so I’d like to contrast Derrida with Heidegger briefly “In order to understand, Heidegger says, one must see phenomenologically. He thus invites us to the first exercise of phenomenological “kindergarten.” To tear apart [zer-reissen] means: to tear into two parts, to separate: to make ... Jacques Derrida and Passions

Heidegger talks about the passivity and receptivity of essential thinking, not something the result of your effort.  In German this is “Es Gibt,” “there is” or literally “it gives.”  For example, you might try in futility for hours to solve a problem when suddenly “it comes to you.”  Derrida’s analysis in “The Gift of Death” ... Jacques Derrida and the Philosophy of Death: Conclusion of The Gift of Death chapter 3-4 with Heidegger, Derrida

One of the striking things about Paul’s letters is they sound like Papal missives or decrees. Paul was a self-made man from Tarsus and a self-proclaimed apostle. But his long and weighty letters make him sound like a Roman provincial administrator. In fact, the letters themselves depict Paul as such an administrator who makes the ... End of Year Post. Announcing My Fourth and Final Essay on the Historical Paul and Prof Nina Livesey