The concept of facticity denotes conditions of experience whose necessity is not logical yet whose contingency is not empirical. Although often associated with Heidegger, Fichte coins ‘facticity’ in his Berlin period to refer to the conclusion of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories, which he argues leaves it a contingent matter that we have the conditions of experience that we do. Such rhapsodic or factical conditions, he argues, must follow necessarily, independent of empirical givenness, from the I through (...) a process of ‘genesis.’ I reconstruct Fichte’s argument by tracing the origin of his neologism, presenting his Jena critique of Kant’s rhapsodic appeal to the forms of judgment, and illustrating the Jena period’s continuity with the Berlin period’s genetic method, while noting a methodological shift whereby Fichte directs his critique against his own doctrine of intellectual intuition in order to eliminate its ‘factical terms.’. (shrink)

Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant is the first history of the concept of facticity. G. Anthony Bruno argues that this concept’s coining, transmission, and repurposing by post-Kantian thinkers leaves a lasting divide concerning the question of whether a science of intelligibility can tolerate brute facts. In the phenomenological tradition, ‘facticity’ denotes undeducibly brute conditions of intelligibility such as sociality, mortality, and temporality. This suggests an affirmative answer to the post-Kantian question. However, the term’s original (...) use in the German idealist tradition is associated with a negative answer: a science of intelligibility must eliminate bruteness in order to be systematic, as Fichte says, or presuppositionless, as Hegel says. Moreover, eliminating bruteness requires a new logic for deducing conditions of intelligibility from reason’s self-contradictions, a dialectical logic that Fichte invents and Hegel develops. In response to the German idealists, Heidegger argues that dialectic ineluctably presupposes brute facts of lived experience, whose interpretation requires a hermeneutics of facticity. The untold history of the concept of facticity thus contains the deepest parting of the ways after Kant, one in which reason is fated to transform from the hand that holds the world to the thrown activity of being-in-the-world. Facticity and the Fate of Reason After Kant explores this transformation while confronting our inheritance of the still-pressing post-Kantian question. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of motivation in the early Heidegger, situating its emergence within the development of his project of Urwissenschaft, formed at the intersection of Neo-Kantian philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology. Whereas Husserl conceives motivation as a connective structure between acts of consciousness, Heidegger – drawing on Rickert’s analysis of value-motivation – reworks the notion through his reinterpretation of the core phenomenological concept of Erlebnis, a move that marks his hermeneutical turn toward factical life. I argue that Heidegger’s delineation (...) of the field of facticity, in decisive contrast to the theoretical attitude, uncovers an originary level of factical living in which motivation appears as an intrinsic feature of life’s own ‘movedness’ (Bewegtheit). From this originary ground – and through this intrinsic motivation – theoretical inquiry first arises by way of a motivated distancing from the immediate flow of life. The paper concludes by showing that Heidegger’s earliest conception of temporality – well before Being and Time – emerges phenomenologically from this motivational structure of factical life and from the way life’s movedness articulates its own temporal unfolding. (shrink)

This article traces the philosophical genealogy linking Heidegger, Benjamin, and Agamben to José Esteban Muñoz’s queer hermeneutics. Starting from Heidegger’s notion of facticity and Agamben’s paradigm of bare life, it examines how Muñoz reinterprets the ontology of impropriety in aesthetic and affective terms. His thought transforms exposure and abandonment into forms of potency and hope, locating in affect the site of a historical politics of persistence. Drawing on Benjamin, temporality is conceived as interruption and promise: the time of the (...) “not-yet,” where queer and brown community embodies an immanent utopia –an ontology of affect open to the future. (shrink)

In his book Welt und Unendlichkeit, László Tengelyi has enquired into the possibility of a phenomenological metaphysics. Among the many issues addressed in his book, he thematized a real necessity of a non-apriori kind at Aristotle and Husserl, a necessity which he called „a necessity of the fact“. His research settled the basis for the present enquiry, which will examine the relationship between the absolute and the conditional necessity of a fact as well as the contingent or accidental features involved (...) therein at Aristotle and Husserl, insofar as facticity is concerned. I intend to show that although both authors share the view that worldly beings are characterized by their contingency, they differ as to their necessity: Aristotle attributes a contingent necessity to the factual being i.e. to reality, a necessity characterized by its being temporarily conditioned by actuality and which can therefore be defined as the,conditional necessity of a fact‘. As to Husserl, transcendental phenomenology must, upon the basis of the eidetic method, determine the possibilities out of which the ego constitutes the factual world. He states the necessity of the fact as an eidetic necessity, which has to be grounded on eidetic laws. Later on, enquiries into a „metaphysics in new sense“ lead to a revision of the meaning of „fact“ and to an inversion of the order of foundation as well: the original givenness of the world, the primal I, intersubjectivity and historicity as primal and absolute facts carry the eidetic necessities. Accidental causes, on the other hand, account not only for the contingency of the real but, at Husserl, for the ego‘s,essential openness‘ and its core of primal contingency. In this context, I shall argue that facticity paired with the accidental allows for the irruption of something new that overwhelms us – an event as Ereignis. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a notable turn in philosophical orientation in the Nordic countries. For the first time, the North has a generation of philosophers who are oriented to phenomenology. This means a vital rediscovery of the phenomenological tradition as a partly hidden conceptual and methodological resource for taking on contemporary philosophical problems. The essays collected in the present volume introduce the reader to the phenomenological work done in the Nordic countries today. The material is organized under three general (...) headings: metaphysics, facticity, and interpretation. The first part, "Metaphysics", asks if phenomenology is, or could be taken as, a metaphysical inquiry. It studies this possibility in a systematic as well as in a historical perspective. The second part, "Facticity", focuses on the double character of the philosophizing subject, on the one hand, as a worldly being bound by a cultural and historical situation, and on the other hand, as the one who thinks this condition and gives it an interpretation. It studies four aspects of facticity in particular: language, dwelling, alterity, and generation. The third part, "Interpretation", clarifies the different notions of interpretation central to phenomenology, understood as hermeneutics. (shrink)

Kant scholarship often refers to transcendental idealism as a ‘theory.’ Kant’s project, however, is not easily reconciled with that term in its current use. This paper contends that his critique and idealism should be seen as a remedial response against our natural albeit confused prejudice of transcendental realism. Kant’s idealism articulates a ‘metametaphysical’ ethos that is supposed to provide a new grounding of metaphysics by proceeding ‘from the human standpoint:’ it aims to dispel the temptation of transcendental realism in favor (...) of a resolute inhabitation of, and contentment with, our own humanity. This project comes under pressure in post-Kantianism: Fichte is among the first to voice the worry that Kant’s critique is well-intentioned, but not well-executed. His concern is that, while it ‘bring[s] man into harmony with himself,’ this mere contentment with our own humanity will not suffice to achieve the scientificity that, by Kant’s own lights, is the mark of any promising metaphysics. Fichte’s charge is that Kant’s idealism, in its very confinement to the brute facts of the human condition, surrenders itself to unacceptable contingency or ‘facticity.’ The paper explores Kant’s idealist project of grounding metaphysics, Fichte’s facticity charge against it, and whether Kantian idealism can withstand it. (shrink)

Present-day debates on science are polarised between two official anti-theses. The respective competing positions can be read as a radicalisation of postmodern relativism in the direction of a post-truth framework, and defences of facticity based on the assumption of the abstract neutrality of objective facts. These two epistemological positions are only apparently independent from each other. Post-truth epistemology and facticity have complementary ideological functions despite their apparent contradictions: both exclude the possibility to address and transform the societal framework (...) in which they are inserted. A critical theory – more precisely, a Marxist political epistemology – is necessary to address and to comprehend the ideological role of today’s epistemological dichotomies. These dichotomies jointly monopolise the cultural arena and hinder emancipatory imagination, thought and action. (shrink)

_Examines the historical context and contemporary relevance of facticity._.

In his Introduction Bruno tells us that his book “provides the first history of facticity” (3). ‘Facticity’ was Fichte’s term for the ultimate conditions of intelligibility in Kant’s philosophy. Ka...

(1) The “thing itself” of Heidegger’s thinking was Ereignis. (2) But Ereignis is a reinscription of what Being and Time had called thrownness or facticity. (3) But facticity/Ereignis is ex-sistence’s ever-operative appropriation to its proper structure as the ontological “space” or “clearing” that makes possible practical and theoretical discursivity. (4) Such facticity is the ultimate and inevitable presupposition of all activities of ex-sistence and thus of any understanding of being. (5) Therefore, for ex-sistence – and a fortiori (...) for Heidegger as a thinker of Ereignis – there can be no going beyond facticity. (shrink)

In Donner le temps II, Derrida argues that Heidegger is a thinker of ‘propriety’, which suggests that Heidegger is committed to a metaphysical strategy of assigning essential characteristics to entities and to being. This essay interrogates this claim from Derrida’s reading in Donner le temps II of Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Derrida on this issue, we will distinguish propriety from facticity. This investigation reveals that Heidegger conceives of Dasein as facing a range of (...) possible commitments which can become determinate but are not determined. In turn, this conception of facticity provides the basis for Heidegger’s thinking of normativity, that is, a measure for success or failure which does not assign propriety to Dasein’s character, as Steven Crowell has argued. The essay concludes that Derrida’s critique of propriety and departure from phenomenology complicate the possibility of a viable deconstructive conception of normativity. (shrink)

This paper critically engages the method that guides critical phenomenology’s approach to political praxis. While many in this field have emphasized the need to clarify critical phenomenology’s method of social critique, less attention has been given to how critical phenomenology establishes a distinct and rigorously phenomenological method of praxis. The aim of this paper is to enrich the calls to action in critical phenomenology by inquiring into the conditions under which transformative political praxis becomes possible. To this end, I draw (...) on Hannah Arendt’s political appropriation of Martin Heidegger’s factical turn in phenomenology to provide a methodological framework for undertaking this inquiry. By using this framework to clarify the scope, limits, and responsibilities of action, I argue that Arendt’s analysis gives rise to what might be described as a praxis of facticity that critical phenomenology, in its concern for the situatedness and intersubjective constitution of experience, is well-positioned to adopt. (shrink)

First published in 1988 as volume 63 of his Collected Works, Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity is the text of Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Freiburg during the summer of 1923. In these lectures, Heidegger reviews and makes critical appropriations of the hermeneutic tradition from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Schleiermacher and Dilthey in order to reformulate the question of being on the basis of facticity and the everyday world. Specific themes deal with the history of ontology, (...) the development of phenomenology and its relation to Hegelian dialectic, traditional theological and philosophical concepts of man, the present situation of philosophy, and the influences of Aristotle, Luther, Kierkegaard, and Husserl on Heidegger's thinking. Students of Heidegger will find initial breakthroughs in his unique elaboration of the meaning of human experience and the "question of being," which received mature expression in Being and Time. (shrink)

The early Freiburg lectures have shown us the degree to which Heidegger is influenced by Luther. In Being and Time, Heidegger designs a philosophy that can co-exist with a radical Lutheran theology of revelation. Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity constitutes a polemic with the Scholastic idea of a natural desire for God and an accommodation of a theology of revelation. However, Heidegger’s implicit assent to the Lutheran concept of God-forsakenness is philosophically problematic. To be God-forsaken is not to be ignorant (...) of God; it is to be abandoned by God, to have a history of dealing with God that has resulted in a decisive rupture and distance. But if this is a theological position, as Luther would be the first to argue, it can be justified only theologically. (shrink)

Robert Jackson examines the work of the German artist Florian Slotawa. Beginning with his first works, “Hotelarbeiten”, Slotawa recomposes and reconfigures the order of ordinary objects – in this case, the furniture of hotel rooms. In reconstructing these rooms in another order without altering these objects in any way, photographing them, and then subsequently restoring them to their previous configuration, the artist reveals the ordinary function of the objects and by withdrawing from their function shows their material and factual character. (...) To elucidate the specificity of Slotawa’s intervention, Jackson critiques Heidegger’s conception of facticity in its exclusive account of Dasein and its being-in-the world, in contrast to the factuality of “things-within-the world.” Drawing on Harman’s extension of finitude beyond Dasein to all things, he encourages us to see Slotawa as engaged in “facticity of things” that is characterized by dispossession, lack of reason, and radical contingency. As Jackson argues, Slotawa is trying to find a way to dwell in a world that has no room or possibility for the given coordinates of dwelling; a world that is a fact without reason. In concluding he explores a reading of Slotawa that explores the intersecting yet radically different approaches to thinking about a speculative realism in the work of Harman and Meillassoux, and their differing attitudes to the finite and the infinite, facticity and factiality, contingency and necessity, without presuming to assume that either of these accounts cover the speculative facticity of things revealed in Slotawa’s work. (shrink)

Modern Japanese thinkers tried to understand “history” as processes of translation through which the Japanese culture/society/nation integrated itself into world history. This paper analyzes Miki Kiyoshi’s (1897-1945) Philosophy of History [1932], a prominent example of such an approach to history. His understanding of history is deeply influenced by Martin Heidegger’s thoughts about facticity. The most essential part of Miki’s notion of “history” lies in his practico-poietic conception of history, which is elaborated through his own interpretation of Heidegger (via Marx). (...) This paper attempts to investigate how Miki developed such a practico-poietic theory as well as how he was faced with its limit, not only on a theoretical level, but also in the specific historical contexts in the 1930s and 1940s. To seek answers to these questions enables us to understand why Miki came to re-create philosophical discourse to describe the space of history in approaching the question of translation, that is, the question concerning the transformation by and through language. (shrink)

This paper begins from one of the most commonly found questions in phenomenology, “What is Phenomenlogy?”, to argue that phenomenology is a trans-disciplinary approach to engaging with the products of human culture. This approach is characterized by paying particular attention to the distinction between facticity and transcendence within “lived experience” so as to help us better articulate and evaluate the promises that animate every human institution. Such a task necessarily requires inter-disciplinary input and helps us engage in our lives—in (...) our shared cultural life—differently. (shrink)

It is argued that the key to understanding the Doctrine of the Fact of reason lies in clarifying what Kant meant by a fact for moral practice. It is suggested that the facticity of the Fact of Reason must be understood in both a noetic and a performative aspect. Dietrich Henrich's interpretation is discussed, and it is argued that it risks reducing the Fact of Reason exclusively to its noetic function in moral ontology, and that it ignores the fact (...) that this is a doctrine of self-discovery, not of self-constitution. (shrink)

This paper argues that, contrary to the views of Nancy Cartwright and Brian Ellis, explanations are factive: if a statement is taken to be an explanation, it also has to be accepted as true. Taking explanations to be true, in turn, seems to imply that all the entities posited in explanations are real. But this is precisely what some philosophers, such as Cartwright and Ellis, want to deny. What these philosophers do not want to deny, however, is that such statements (...) do explain. As a result, they see themselves forced to reject the facticity of explanation, a strategy that is unacceptable in my view. In order to avoid the further conclusion that all of the entities explanations posit exist, I propose to separate truth from ontology: explanations can be true, but the truth of these explanations alone does not commit us to the entities that these explanations posit. To determine where the ontological commitments of our statements lie, we must instead start with a criterion (a necessary and sufficient condition) for what exists. For instance, if all and only entities with causal powers are real, then this tells us that the only entities our true statements are committed to are entities with causal powers. (shrink)

Language and facticity in Heidegger’s lecture of Saint Augustine. The phenomenological analysis of the Confessions of Saint Augustine gave to Heidegger the opportunity to radicalize the deconstruction of the theoretical path do God and to discover the factical life under the “formal indication” of “the historical”. In Book X of the Confessions Heidegger found an authentic experience of temporality, breaking down with the cosmological concept of time characteristic of Greek philosophy and of metaphysical tradition. The confrontation with such an (...) experience is inscribed in Heidegger’s interpretation of the augustinian concept “cura’‘, that Heidegger will incorporate in Sein und Zeit, as an “existential” accountable for the whole Daseins’s existential structure. So, the phenomenological description of “care”, in the double modality of authenticity or unauthenticity in the Freiburger Vorlesung de 1921 will also lead the heideggerian’s investigation in Sein und Zeit in the direction of the ambiguity of both Daseins’s existence, which moves back and forward, and of Dasein’s language, which swings between Rede und Gerede. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jean-Paul Sartre ’ s early philosophy — above all Being and Nothingness — advances a distinctive and insuf fi ciently examined form of realism. Although Sartre rejects both classical metaphysical realism and idealism, his phenomenological ontology never- theless commits him to a realist position that speaks directly to contemporary debates associated with “ speculative ” or “ new ” realism. At the centre of this position lies what I reconstruct as Sartre ’ s “ argument from (...) facticity, ” which exhibits a structural parallel with recent arguments for basic or absolute facts in contemporary realism debates. Sartre anticipates these approaches while avoiding their characteristic dogmatisms — most notably, their reliance on mathematical or naturalized absolutes. His realism is neutral in that it eschews privileging domain-speci fi c ontologies and instead treats facts as inherently tem- poral and indexical: they depend on temporal becoming and yet obtain universally across time. This conception is clari fi ed by Sartre ’ s appropriation of Husserl ’ s phenomenological metaphysics of facticity, through which he develops an image of reality as internally incomplete yet intelligible, and of transphenomenal facts as manifestable only through the temporalisation of subjectivity. I conclude by arguing that Sartre ’ s realism offers a compelling alternative to contemporary realist programs — such as those of Quentin Meillassoux, Markus Gabriel, and Paul Boghossian — by maintaining the independence of reality while acknowl- edging the partially constitutive role of fi nite subjects in its manifestation. (shrink)

Scholars agree that Schelling’s critique of Hegel consists in charging reason with an inability to account for its own possibility. This is not an attack on reason’s project of constructing a logical system, but rather on the pretense of doing so with complete justification and so without presuppositions, as if it were obvious why there is a logical system or why there is anything meaningful at all. Scholars accordingly cite the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ as emblematic (...) of Schelling’s critique and the source of his claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other than itself. But what sort of claim is this? For what sort of argument could it be the conclusion? On these questions, the literature is lacking. I propose that the question ‘why something’ motivates Schelling to give a transcendental argument to the effect that past and future are a priori conditions of the possibility of reason. As I reconstruct it from the Weltalter, this argument construes the past as the pre-rational decision to construct a logical system, while the future represents the purpose that guides the construction of the same. Schelling’s claim against Hegel that reason is bounded by something other is thus the discovery of inescapable presuppositions that condition the possibility of reason as such. (shrink)

We tend to associate intimacy with the familiar, the reassuring, the personal, the private, the like-minded, and the comfortable. This article argues instead for a more expanded – perhaps even “cosmic” or “elemental” – form of intimacy; one in which all sorts of strange encounters and entities can be conceivably included in a dynamic constellation of concern. This argument begins by revisiting John Ruskin’s famous critique of the romantic projection of poetic sentiments onto an unfeeling, insentient world. And it does (...) so in order to ask what Ruskin may have missed, in dismissing more-than-human pathos altogether. What if, in other words, the pathetic fallacy is not a fallacy? This article offers the counter-concept of “pathetic facticity,” as a less anthropocentric approach the distributed presence of affects, moods, and even passions. From this revised perspective, intimacy is less an exclusive circle of human proximity and belonging, and more a vast and punctuated space of uncanny recognitions and unexpected epiphanies. (shrink)

The Early Heidegger’s Philosophy of Life: Facticity, Being and Language offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of facticity as it is articulated in connection with the ideas of life and language in the lecture courses from 1919225. The book argues that facticity is both the source of vitality for theory and a source of deception and falsehood and therefore cannot be viewed in either positive or negative terms exclusively, but must instead be viewed as ambiguous. This essay (...) argues that this basic thesis is correct and is supported by drawing a distinction between everydayness and inauthenticity. It is also argued that the analysis of language the book offers can be useful in clearing up misunderstandings of Heidegger’s concept of discourse in Being and Time. (shrink)

First published in 1988 as volume 63 of his Collected Works, Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity is the text of Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Freiburg during the summer of 1923. In these lectures, Heidegger reviews and makes critical appropriations of the hermeneutic tradition from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Schleiermacher and Dilthey in order to reformulate the question of being on the basis of facticity and the everyday world. Specific themes deal with the history of ontology, (...) the development of phenomenology and its relation to Hegelian dialectic, traditional theological and philosophical concepts of man, the present situation of philosophy, and the influences of Aristotle, Luther, Kierkegaard, and Husserl on Heidegger's thinking. Students of Heidegger will find initial breakthroughs in his unique elaboration of the meaning of human experience and the "question of being," which received mature expression in Being and Time. (shrink)

This article aims to understand the primordial experience of the existence of the Other, presented by Jean-Paul Sartre in the third part of Being and Nothingness. In order for our intention to be effectively understood, we have organized this reading into three duly articulated moments. In the first moment, it is essential to clarify how the French philosopher delimited the problem of solipsism as an obstacle constituted by realist and idealist philosophies that generally deny the conditions of possibility for the (...) existence of the other, as well as the critical description that questions the permanence of solipsistic theories in contemporary times, bequeathed by Husserl, Hegel and Heidegger. From this critique, we will lead our reading to the second moment, which consists of establishing an understanding of the existence of the Other, showing how it appears and affects the subject’s daily life, above all because the Other requires the presence of a body and a consciousness that is distinct from the subject’s. In the last moment, we will emphasize the interesting approach to the gaze and shame, this original feeling that strips the consciousness of any certainty that it is isolated in the world. Thus, the experience of shame comes to be understood as the unveiling of the subject’s consciousness, which perceives itself as “invaded” by the gaze of the Other, thus making the Other’s existence in the concrete relationship effective. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of historical facticity in the phenomenological tradition. I argue that taking historicity into consideration in its factical constitution means transgressing the realm of the primordial or existential temporality. Following Ricoeur’s discussion of the idea of the “referential status of the past,” the question of the material foundation of historical meaning-formation, i.e., relation between temporality and materiality will be brought into the forefront of phenomenological investigations. It is with this context in mind that I (...) argue that exploring the conditions of historicity with regard to its factical and material determinations should assume a realist position in phenomenology. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Husserl's phenomenology has often been criticized for its Cartesian, fundamentalistic, idealistic and solipsistic nature. Today, this widespread interpretation must be regarded as being outdated, since it gives but a very partial and limited picture of Husserl's thinking. The continuing publication of Husserl's research manuscripts has disclosed analyses which have made it necessary to revise and modify a number of standard readings. This anthology documents the recent development in Husserl research. It contains contributions from a number of young phenomenologists, who have (...) all defended their dissertation on Husserl in the nineties, and it presents a new type of interpretation which emphasizes the dimensions of facticity, passivity, alterity and ethics in Husserl's thinking. (shrink)

본 논문은 후설의 후기 윤리학과 형이상학에 나타난 실존주의적 동기들을 로이돌트(Loidolt)가 정립한 '실존주의적 합리주의'라는 관점에서 해명한다. 이러한 실존주의적 경향은 후설이 본질학을 넘어 '현사실성(Faktizität)'의 문제를 다루기 위해 감행한 광범위한 형이상학적 전환에서 기원한다. 이를 보다 구체적으로 파악하기 위해 본고는 후설의 사유를 사르트르의 자기책임, 야스퍼스의 죄책 및 비극성 개념과 비교하며 그 고유성을 추적하고자 하며, 이에 따라 후설은 절대적 사랑가치들 간의 충돌에서 필연적으로 발생하는 삶의 비합리성과 피할 수 없는 '죄'(Sünde), 그리고 이에 따른 삶의 선택의 문제와 '비극성'(Tragik)을 다른 실존주의자들처럼 있는 그대로 직시한다는 점을 밝힌다. 하지만 본고는 (...) 더 나아가 야스퍼스가 비극을 미완결성 자체로 보존하려 한 것과 달리, 후설은 부조리 속에서도 인류가 윤리적 실천을 멈추지 않게 하는 보편적 '목적론'과 참된 이념적 세계에 대한 믿음을 실천 이성적 요청으로서 합리적으로 정당화하고자 한다는 점을 해명한다. 이를 통해 결론적으로 후설의 철학은 현사실적 삶의 부조리를 직시하는 실존주의적 태도와, 세계의 보편적이고 낙관적인 목적론을 지향하는 초월론적 현상학의 기획이 결합된 노력으로 평가할 수 있다. (shrink)

This chapter explores how the “facts” of neoliberalism must be transformed into “facticities”, conditions that are currently holding us back from realizing our existential freedom. It first counterposes supposed neoliberal “facts”—such as the need to be “fiscally responsible” or the idea that massive “inequality” is acceptable and even desirable—with Satre’s interpretation of “facticities”, the events, conditions, and capabilities that impact on what one can and cannot do. This reading allows for an understanding of how these dogmatic “facts” represent an ideological (...) hegemony that forecloses the opportunity to conceive and practically explore alternative modes of freedom. This insight will be critically investigated, in particular, though using the theories of discursive hegemony first introduced by Laclau and Mouffe. The relabeling of neoliberal “facts” as “facticities” thus opens the potential for constructing a counter-hegemonic politics aimed at expanding a dominant social horizon of freedom, in this case away from the narrow limits of the free market. (shrink)

Starting with the emphasis that Levinas puts on the role of otherness in the constitution of subjective dimension, this paper discusses how the articulation of this process and the consequences that derive from it recall specifically Fichtean themes. Although the relation between Levinas and Fichte has not been thoroughly examined in the literature yet, it can nevertheless be shown that themes such as the “call” of the subject from the outside, from the unattainable dimension of an otherness irreducible to any (...) immanence and the factual and finite character of its correlative freedom can be understood by reference to the categories that Fichte develops in his texts on law and morals. The reference to Fichte, who already in his considerations on the Wissenschaftslehre recognizes an external Anstoß as determining the reality of the subject, will allows to elucidate the fundamental structure of Levinas’ thought. Particular attention is paid in Levinas to the belonging of otherness to an immemorial past, which in the impossibility of being traced back to the presence of consciousness finds the guarantee of its radical transcendence. Thus, another temporal dimension is configured which also in Fichte refers to an “exteriority” that cannot be assumed by the subject, but only ascertained a posteriori, hence its factual character. Through an interpretation of the fundamental meaning that the primacy of otherness over sameness has in Levinas and the attempt to reflect this relationship through the reference to similar Fichtean motifs, it becomes clearer that the basic meaning of a radical thought of otherness does not cancel the sameness of subject, but on the contrary allows to found it by referring it to its constitutive, unavoidable heteronomy. (shrink)

By introducing 'drives' into a Sartrean framework, 'being-in-itself' is interpreted as 'Nature as such', wherein instincts dominate. Being-for-itself, on the contrary, has an ontological nature diametrically opposed to this former – indeed, in the latter realm, through a fundamental process of 'nihilation' (Sartre's 'freedom') consciousness perpetually flees itself by transcending towards the world. However, a kernel of (our) nihilated Nature is left at the heart of this process, in the form of 'original facticity' that we here name drives. Drives (...) are the original feelings and urges of a freed Nature that simply are there; they are the fundamental forces that consciousness qua freedom always has to deal with. Drives, in addition, can be nihilated in their own turn, onto a reflective, irreal plane, whereby they take the form of value . This means Sartre's notion of ontological desire is always made up of two necessary components: drives and value. (shrink)

이 글은 초기 하이데거 철학에서 현사실성과 현사실성의 해석학 사이의 관계 문제를 다룬다. 현사실성의 해석학에 관한 논자들의 해석은 현사실성에 대한 철학의 참여 혹은 개입을 어떻게 볼 것인가와 관련하여 입장을 달리한다. 현사실성은 그 자체로 몰락에로의 경향성을 가지며 철학의 개입을 통해서만 현존재의 본래적 삶으로의 전환 가능성이 성립하는가? 아니면, 현존재의 현 사실성은 몰락에의 경향과 동시에 몰락하는 삶의 경향에 대한 반대운동을 그 자체에 포함하며, 그렇기에 현사실성의 해석학은 각자의 현존재가 자신의 실존 가능성을 수행하는 바를 명시적으로 보여주는 작업으로 한정되어야 하는가? 필자는 후자의 입장에 서서, 현사실성의 해석학을 비본래적 (...) 삶을 본래적 삶으로 전환하는 것으로, 나아가 현존재의 본래적 실존 가능성과 방식을 형성하는 것으로 간주하는 전자류의 기존 해석이 갖는 부당성을 밝히고자 했다. 그리고 본 연구는 초기 하이데거에게 현사실성의 해석학은 각자성과 각자의 현존재가 갖는 실존 수행의 면모를 은폐시키지 않고 그 자체로 드러내는 것과 관련된다는 점에서, 기존의 학문 이론으로서의 해석학과 방법적이고 형식적 측면에서 차이를 갖는다는 점을 드러내고자 했다. 이 연구는 『존재와 시간』을 중심으로 논의 되어 온 본래성과 비본래성의 문제를 초기 하이데거의 연구에 기초해 발생적 관점에서 보여준다는 점에서 연구의 의의를 갖는다. (shrink)

Migrant and refugee children live through a rupture that non-migrants will never know. They carry with them gifts of language, experience, family, and memory but are often forced into conditions that fail to recognize their worth as such. The growing numbers of these children, a function of the destruction of homelands due to war and pervasive climate change, present education with urgent questions, including What kinds of ethical dilemmas arise in caring for and educating these children? What constitutes the generational (...) “passing on” of learning amidst such exponential heterogeneity? In this chapter, I draw upon two concepts to highlight the uniqueness of the migrant or refugee child’s experiences. First, I discuss Heidegger’s rendering of “thrownness” and facticity to understand the ontological condition of migration better. I argue that this aspect of thrownness is significant to understanding the fundamental disruption of migration as an ontological upheaval. Second, with a view to responding to the questions posed above, I turn to Levinas’s thinking about ontology, which serves as both a critique of and engagement with Heidegger’s ontological premise to present education’s responsibilities to these children and the possibilities of wisdom they entail, and to recast the horizon of presence and futurity. I suggest that Levinas’s premise of ethics as the first philosophy engenders responsibility expressed as vulnerability—not of the child, but of the countries, educators, and classrooms receiving them as the Levinasian Other. I further describe how Levinas’s critique of Western philosophy opens the door for an intersubjective epistemology that holds us open to listening as the only pathway to wisdom. Finally, I assert that the ethical relation changes how we experience presence in the classroom and enlivens possibilities for a yet-to-be-imagined future. (shrink)

Este artículo busca estudiar la noción de facticidad y responder qué significa y cuál es su alcance en un período concreto de la obra de Martin Heidegger. Así, a partir del examen de Los fundamentos filosóficos de la mística medieval, Introducción a la fenomenología de la religión, Agustín y el neoplatonismo, y Ontología – Hermenéutica de la facticidad, que refieren, por ejemplo, el Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento, las Confesiones de San Agustín, y los textos de otros autores y místicos tales (...) como Tomás de Kempis, se presenta una hipótesis de trabajo que consiste en afirmar que la noción de facticidad en el primer Heidegger tiene contornos más negativos (pesimistas) que positivos (optimistas), y que ella tiene como características fundamentales la cotidianeidad, la temporalidad y el distanciamiento. La metodología de investigación supuso una aproximación dialéctico-exegética a la fuente primaria. El trabajo concluye afirmando que la noción de distanciamiento comprendida dentro de la de facticidad supone que la vida se asume temporalmente, pero que ella se vive sobretemporalmente. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation of the questions of time, history, and facticity in Dilthey and Heidegger. It is an exploration of the contextual character of experience and the scope and limits of understanding and interpretation. In particular, this work considers their historical and temporal character and relation to facticity. Facticity is that which escapes and resists interpretation, narration, and understanding. In Heidegger's language, facticity indicates the "thrownness" and "uncanniness" of existence which throws the "subject" and (...) its construction of meaning into question. As such, facticity is a positive characteristic of the finitude of human existence. I offer a reconstruction of the question of history in the works of Dilthey and Heidegger through an analysis of "historicality" . The discussion of Dilthey attempts to clarify his project of a "critique of historical reason" and his grounding of the human sciences. The interpretation of Heidegger is based on Heidegger's "hermeneutics of factical life" as developed in his lecture courses of the early 1920's and his thinking of the "event"-character of being in his works of the 1930's. (shrink)

Salsa dancing, a partnered dance premised on the felt sense of connection, is well suited to an exploration of Henry’s radical phenomenology of immanence and Heidegger’s facticity of life. Birthed in social celebratory contexts, salsa carries a particular motile freedom. What matters most is not how the dance movements are created from an outer frame of reference, but the experience of interactive responsiveness that emerges from unanticipated acts of giving life to another. Connecting to one’s partner and exuding a (...) presence filled with life is revealed in an indepth interview with two-time world champion salsa dancer, judge, choreographer and coach, Anya Katsevman. This interview attempts to invoke the kinetic, kinesthetic and affective registers of the lividness and livingness of salsa dancing. As a phenomenological inquiry into factical life, the inter-view is presented not so much as a matter of shared perspectives or viewpoints, but more in the way of an inter-feeling, a practice of life engagement. This affectively-oriented approach provides both promise and challenge to the field of phenomenology. It invites us to delve more deeply into feeling acts of seeing. It also helps us understand how, through attending more fully to acts of seeing, we can increase the intensity with which we feel the upsurge of life. (shrink)

My aim in the present paper is to show the significance of Heidegger's phenomenology of religion as an important step on his way to his magnum opus . First, I wish to exhibit traits characteristic of Heidegger's path of thinking in terms of his confrontation with phenomenology, historicism, hermeneutics, and Lebensphilosophie . I will then argue, in a second step, that it was with an eye to, and drawing upon, his previous understanding of religion and religious life, as well as (...) of the relation between faith and theology, that Heidegger was to conceive of philosophy and its relation to human existence in Being and Time . Both theology and philosophy offer a conceptual elaboration of something previously enacted or lived and, in doing so, are at the same time meant to refer back to and reinforce what they grow out of—faith or factical life. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This study explores the long-standing philosophical question of whether reality and knowledge are constructed or discovered, analyzing the issue through the lens of constructivist and realist thought. It first outlines the conceptual framework of constructivism, distinguishing between its epistemological and ontological dimensions as well as its various strands, such as social, radical, and biological constructivism. The discussion situates constructivism within realism–anti-realism debates, emphasizing its influence across disciplines like sociology, psychology, and epistemology. In its second part, the article examines (...) the “argument from facticity,” a realist counter-argument developed by philosophers such as Paul Boghossian, Markus Gabriel, and John Searle, which challenges radical or global forms of constructivism. According to this argument, even the most comprehensive constructivist theories presuppose a minimal realist foundation: certain facts must exist independently of human conceptual or linguistic frameworks for any theory, including constructivism itself, to hold coherence. The analysis shows that denying all objective facts results in performative contradictions, as constructivist claims rely on factual presuppositions about their own validity. Through Boghossian’s critique of fact-constructivism, Gabriel’s ontological realism, and Searle’s external realism, the study demonstrates that a minimal commitment to factuality is unavoidable. Ultimately, the “argument from facticity” reveals that any coherent theory of knowledge and reality must presuppose at least a minimal realist ontology to avoid self-refutation. -/- Keywords: Constructivism, Realism, Markus Gabriel, Paul Boghossian, John Searle, Argument from Facticity. (shrink)