A new article by DeSantisa for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, online in advance of print edition.
Ricky DeSantisa – ‘Love’s Resistance: Heidegger and the Problem of First Philosophy’: JBSP (Originally published online: 4 March 2021).
Abstract: This paper offers a reading of passages in Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures in which Heidegger describes love as a feeling which grants an essential vision. I contend that by invoking this language of vision while simultaneously contrasting love with infatuation, Heidegger is implicitly attempting to situate love within his category of fundamental attunements. While Heidegger does not explicitly follow this thought through, I argue that doing so leads to a problem—namely, how can love be a fundamental attunement if such attunements are necessarily objectless? I suggest we can see a response to this problem in Heidegger’s treatment of Plato’s Phaedrus within the same lecture course. I conclude by claiming that while Heidegger attempts to follow Plato in arguing that love is most properly directed towards Being, love nonetheless poses a challenge to Heidegger’s category of fundamental attunements which also strikes at the heart of his claim that ontology is first philosophy.
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2021.1893609
Ricky DeSantisa, Fordham University, Philosophy, New York City, USA
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