The book explores how individuals confront existential anxieties by amplifying their sense of existence through various means, including self-righteousness, career ambitions, nationalism, and religious beliefs. It delves into the psychological and societal mechanisms that people employ to validate their lives and find purpose, offering insights into the human condition and the quest for significance.
Exploring the concept of truth, Martin Heidegger's 1930 address delves into phenomenology, challenging the traditional "correspondence theory of truth." He invites readers to consider broader discussions surrounding truth, emphasizing the implications for human freedom and decision-making. This thought-provoking work uncovers deeper philosophical inquiries, guiding readers through a transformative pathway of understanding.
Graeme Nicholson addresses the fundamental topic of ontology, perhaps the fundamental topic posed to philosophy and the human mind: what is being?, i.e., what is it to exist or to be? He initially shows that we humans must be understood to be "existers" and "disclosers"--Terms that render Heidegger's concept Dasein. Heidegger's philosophy provides the basic viewpoint, but Professor Nicholson offers an interpretation of Heidegger that seeks to set deconstructionist and pragmatist readings to one side. Since, according to Heidegger, being is fundamentally a union of presence and absence, this study shows that metaphysical theories have always offered positive illustrations or interpretations of being. Illustrations of Being then goes on to scrutinize the four most fundamental determinations of being that Western thought has adumbrated: being as substance, especially in Greek ontology; being as reality, especially in the period from Descartes to Kant, and therefore in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science; the logic of being, in which Nicholson undertakes an ontological critique of mathematical logic; and being as the transformation of form--the key idea that runs from Christian patristics, through Hegel and Marx, to modern dialectics. Graeme Nicholson's new study is marked by its receptiveness to metaphysics in the traditional sense, and contains a critique of the deconstructionist effort to pass beyond metaphysics. It will be of interest to professional philosophers and to theologians, as well as to graduate students and to members of the general public interested in philosophical arguments about the nature of being