Principles of Philosophy: A Phenomenological Approach

Description

This book offers a phenomenologically informed reading of some fundamental positions of the philosophical tradition. Its objective is not that of giving an exhaustive account of the thinking of any single philosopher, much less of the trajectory of philosophy as a whole; rather, the aim is to retrace a few key moments in the course of philosophical enquiry, from its outset to its accomplishment in Nietzsche's metaphysics, with a focus on the main motive of that enquiry: the always new attempt to establish a sufficient knowledge of the ultimate principle on which to build a human ethos. Cover Contents Preface 1. A Propaedeutic Distinction: Operative Concepts versus Ontological Concepts (On Σχολή) Appendix 1: From the Preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) 2. Introduction Appendix 2: Kant on the Learning and Teaching of Philosophy 3. The End of Philosophy — and Beyond 3.1 Contingency 3.2 Why Engage with the Principles of Philosophy? Appendix 3: Schelling on the Condition for Attaining the Point of Inception of Philosophy 4. Heraclitus 4.1 Logos 4.2 Harmonia 4.3 Kosmos 4.4 Physis Appendix 4: On Abscondedness 1. In the visible domain: 2. In the mindable domain: 5. Parmenides 5.1 Preliminary Consideration: the Word »Being« 5.2 Fundamental Concepts (1) The notion of physis (2) The notion of alētheia (3) The notions of einai and eon (4) The notion of noein 5.3 Fragment VI: Being’s Need 5.4 The Paths of Inquiry 5.5 Circuits and Cybernetics 5.6 Fragment VIII: the Traits of Being 5.7 The Ontological Temptation 5.8 The Philosophical Question 6. Plato 6.1 The Structure and Scope of the Guiding Question of Philosophy 6.2 Plato’s Answer to the Guiding Question of Philosophy 6.3 The Traits of the Idea and its Reference to Physis 6.4 The Idea of the Good 6.5 Paideia 6.6 The Myth of the Cave 6.7 Plato and the Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics Appendix 5: Plato on the Uselessness of Philosophy Appendix 6: Heidegger on the Eros of Being 7. Aristotle 8. Transition to Modernity[srtn](On Method) Appendix 7: From Galilei’s Discorsi 9. Descartes 9.1 The Meditations as First Philosophy 9.2 What is Old and what is New in the Philosophy of the »New Time« (a) What is old (b) What is new 9.3 Descartes’s First Principle 9.4 What Does »to Cogitate« Mean? (i) Cogitating as perceiving (percipere) (ii) Cogitating as doubting (dubitare) (iii) Cogitating as »I cogitate myself cogitating« (cogito me cogitare) or as self-assuring assurance 9.5 The Cogitating I as Subiectum 9.6 Recapitulation of Descartes’s Metaphysical Position Appendix 8: From Descartes’s Meditations 10. Leibniz 10.1 Leibniz’s Answer to the Guiding Question of Philosophy 10.2 The Principle of Sufficient Reason 10.3 The Original (Harmonic) Economy of the World 11. Kant 11.1 The Transcendental Experience 11.2 The Position of Being and the Original Unity of Apperception Appendix 9: Schelling on the Desirableness of Philosophy 12. Nietzsche 12.1 Nietzsche’s Answer to the Guiding Question of Philosophy: Life and the Will to Power 12.2 Values as Conditions of the Will to Power 12.3 The Will to Power as the Cause of Universal Becoming and the Absence of a »True World« 12.4 Becoming as an Approximation of Being 12.5 Nihilism and the Necessary Inversion of the Polarity of Values 12.6 The Overall Economic Management of the Earth and the Overman 13. Heidegger 13.1 The End of Philosophy 13.2 The Task Held in Store 13.3 Being and Time Greek Alphabet