Posted: January 10th, 2017

What is the role of Heidegger’s ‘destruction of the history of ontology’ in relation to the task of ‘fundamental ontology’?

Choose one of the following and come and discuss;
submit drafts for comment well in advance of submitting your assessed work.
You need to leave at least ten days between submitting drafts for comment and your submission deadline.

Essay Titles for the First Piece of Assessed Coursework

1. With what must a reading of Being and Time begin?

2. What for Heidegger is the importance of the forgetting of the question of being?

3. What for Heidegger in Being and Time are the main outlines of the history of philosophy?

4. How does Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology’ differ from the conceptions of ontology already available in philosophy (Aristotelian, Cartesian etc.)?

5. What is the role of Heidegger’s ‘destruction of the history of ontology’ in relation to the task of ‘fundamental ontology’?

6. Why might ‘Dasein’ be best left untranslated?

7. “The essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (SZ 42, MR 67). Discuss this claim as advanced in section 9 of Being and Time.

8. What is the role of the critique of Descartes in the development of the analytic of Dasein, and of the differences between concepts of nature and space, and the concepts of world and worldhood?

9. ‘It could be that the ‘who’ of everyday Dasein just Is not the ‘I myself’. (SZ 115, MR 150)
Why is it important for Heidegger to distinguish between everyday Dasein, the ‘das Man’ (the ‘they’) and Dasein as potential for being-a-self (Selbstsein).

10. What is the role of Heidegger’s analyses of care and of anxiety within the analytic of Dasein, as offered in Division One of Being and Time.

11. Assess the account of language, and of meaning given in Division One of Being and Time.

11. What are the main features of Heidegger’s account of truth?

12. ‘The altogether unprecedented character of those formulations which were
imposed upon the Greeks by their philosophers ‘ (SZ 39, MR 63):
Discuss in relation to Heidegger’s way with words.

Essays of 3,000 words.

Please note that there will be a further list of questions for the second part of the course, addressing Being and Time Division Two.

See assignment brief and do come and discuss your choice of question.

You are also advised to submit drafts well in advance of submitting your work.

One aspect to look at is the relation between primary and secondary reading, and if you are in doubt about how to do this, and how to footnote, and provide a bibliography, please ask for guidance.