Bøger af Michael Eldred

Eldred offers a remedy to the consequences of ancient Greek misconceptions of time that are also entrenched in today's mathematized physics. Here time is spatialized as the one-dimensionally linear 'arrow of time' for the sake of predicting and controlling movement. But such spatialized time distorts the phenomenon of time itself. An alternative, hermeneutic-phenomenological path begins with a pre-spatial concept of time that is genuinely three-dimensional. This paves the way for recasting who we are as humans in belonging, first of all, to the free openness of 3D-temporality. This belonging enables temporally 3D-vision of the psyche that empowers us to see movement at all and reconcile its inherent contradictoriness. We are then also able to conceive ourselves no longer merely as internally cogitating, self-conscious subjects, but as engaged existentially in temporally 3D-interplay, mutually estimating and esteeming who we are. This unpredictable interplay is constrained, however, by being played out in the sociating medium of thingified value, the accumulative movement of thingified value having gained the upper hand in dictating our life-movements as well as our interplay with the earth.

A fantasy in the sense of Alice in Wonderland, but not for children. It's cock-and-bull like Tristram Shandy, but without the digressions. It's satire in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels, but the satire is on modern science. The humour is British, like the Goons or Monty Python. The protagonists are two young students, Phi and Psi, finding their way in life. In Book I, In Quest of Mu, they go in search, in search of the ancient Mu, a philosophical refugee from Athens to Upper Matta. Mu himself is on a philosophical quest to answer his guiding question, Why is there movement at all, rather than standstill? In Book II, The Way Back to Anaxaton, the main character turns out to be the mysterious Willy P., the power behind the scenes. Matta stands for 'mathematics', but there are no formulae, only a more or less playful, historical treatment of maths along with a couple of Greek symbols. The quantum mechanics is accurate, but blown up to fantastic proportions with fun-loving, unbridled literary licence. This makes it look superficially like sci-fi, but it's subtler. The philosophical strand is substantial, but presented narratively and playfully camouflaged. The presentation is tongue-in-cheek, so the reader constantly has to decide at each point whether it's serious sense or straight-faced nonsense. Usually it's both. It has some quasi-Platonic dialogue, and the whole is borne by philosophical questions subversively at work in the background. Its companion philosophical volume is A Question of Time: An Alternative Cast of Mind (2015).

Heidegger und Marx in der ganzen Radikalität ihres jeweiligen Denkens zusammenzuführen, heißt, den Versuch zu unternehmen, welches Licht das Genie des einen Philosophen auf die jeweiligen blinden Flecken des anderen wirft, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Fragen: Was ist Technik? Was ist Kapital? Heidegger geht auf die Suche nach dem Wesen der Technik, wobei er dieses letztendlich im Begriff des Ge-Stells artikuliert. Das Ge-Stell ist die geschichtlich-hermeneutische Konstellation des Seins ALS welches das Seiende im Ganzen im vollendeten technologischen Zeitalter sich präsentiert. Bei dieser Wesensbestimmung der Technik geht Heidegger irrigerweise so vor, daß er Marxens Wesensbestimmung des Kapitals unter das Paradigma der Produktion subsumiert. Marx jedoch denkt das Wesen des Kapitals ALS den sich vermehrenden Kreislauf des verdinglichten Werts, wobei der Wert ein Phänomen ist, das in erster Linie mit dem Tausch und nicht mit der Produktion zu tun hat. Der Wert ist eine geschichtliche Weise der Vergesellschaftung, der durch das Wechselspiel des gegenseitigen Wertschätzens auf allerlei Arten von Märkten zustandekommt. Diese Gedankenlinie führt letztlich zur Wesensbestimmung des Kapitals als diejenige geschichtlich-hermeneutische Konstellation des Seins, in der das Seiende im Ganzen sich überall allen Spielern im Gewinn-Spiel ALS wertvoll präsentiert. Aufgabe wird es dann zu durchdenken, wie sich diese beiden Konstellationen des Seins - das Ge-Stell und das Gewinn-Spiel - im Ge-Griff verzahnen. Erst so kann die geschichtliche Lage in unserem Zeitalter klar ans Licht kommen, damit diejenigen, die dieses Zeitalter durchleben und -leiden - wir -, eine unerläßliche sozio-ontologische Orientierung gewinnen.

Der Titel Entständigung soll anzeigen, daß in unserer Zeit überall die Vollendung und die Grenzen des abendländischen Logos - was er an Seiendem, Mensch und Welt in Bewegung gesetzt und zu Stande gebracht hat - zumindest für das phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Denken sichtbar geworden sind. Diese Aufsätze von den späten 1980er und frühen 1990er Jahren legen die Grundlage für das, was später kommt. Die Auseinandersetzungen mit Aristoteles und Heidegger stehen im Zentrum, wobei unter dem Titel Der Mann ein erster Versuch einer Phänomenologie des Werseins, der den Hintergrund für diese Arbeiten bildete, damals bereits vorlag. Die beiden letzten Aufsätze stellten sich mit der Zeit als die ersten in einer Reihe heraus, die sich von verschiedenen Ansätzen her dem Phänomen Musik nähert. All diese unerläßlichen Erkundungen zahlten sich später aus; diese Grundsteine, weiter bearbeitet, gedreht und elaboriert, fanden ihren jeweiligen Platz im späteren Denken des Autors. Rückblickend ist zu sehen, wie langsam das Denken sich ent-wickelt. Oft ist es bloß ein einziges neues Wort, das - nun als Begriff verwendet - den Blick auf das betreffende Phänomen verschiebt und es so in einem anderen, reicheren und klareren Licht erscheinen läßt.

To bring Heidegger and Marx together in all the radicalness of their respective thinking means endeavouring to see what light the genius of each of these philosophers throws on the respective blind spots of the other, in particular, with regard to the questions: What is technology? and What is capital? Heidegger goes in search of the essence of technology, articulating it finally in what he calls the Ge-Stell (set-up). The set-up is the historical hermeneutic constellation of being AS which beings present themselves in the consummated technological age. From this determination of the essence of technology, Heidegger proceeded misleadingly to subsume Marx's determination of the essence of capital under the paradigm of production. Marx, however, thinks through the essence of capital AS the augmentative circulation of reified value, and value is a phenomenon that has to do first of all with exchange, not production. Value comes about through the interplay of mutual estimation on markets of all kinds. Following this line of thought leads ultimately to determining the essence of capital as that historical hermeneutic constellation of being in which beings present themselves ubiquitously AS valuable to all the players in the gainful game, who are all striving for income of different basic kinds. The task then becomes to think through how these two constellations of being, the set-up and the gainful game, intermesh. Only in this way can today's historical situation come clearly to light, thus providing those living through it with indispensable socio-ontological orientation.

The year 1984 was the tail-end of a period of intense interest in Marx on the part of youth in Australia and West Germany. In Australia this interest took the form of a reception of structural Althusserian Marxism, whereas in West Germany it manifested itself especially in reading and research groups around Marx's critique of political economy. As a young Australian research student in philosophy, the author joined these West German discussions in 1976. This book - a doctoral dissertation - is the result of an intensive, multi-year engagement with seminal writings of Marx and Hegel.

The question of time is a question of time. How long will it take for the question concerning time to become THE question of our time? That neither you nor I know. Today the question is still being evaded, as if it had been settled for all time already by Aristotle. Modern science, even today's most advanced quantum physics, despite eschewing Aristotle as superseded, nevertheless remains true to his conception of linear, numeric time. It doesn't want to touch the question for fear of losing control over time as a mathematizable physical variable. But is time physical? The guiding thesis of the present collection of essays is that it is not, but neither is it a formal construct inside subjective consciousness. Therein lies the subversive adventurousness of the study, which is the philosophical companion to The Land of Matta (2015).

Today's composers are preoccupied first and foremost with exploring the possibilities of producing new and hitherto unheard-of kinds of different-sounding music. In particular, they employ advanced, mainly electronic, technologies, or invent new musical instruments that break the mould of traditional music-making, thus introducing new sounds to music. On this front there are exciting, creative developments for those willing to open their ears. These contemporary composers also often take a piece of literature, an art work, a landscape or an historical event for extraneous orientation. The traditional understanding of music, especially of Western music, based as it is on harmony and wedded to aesthetic theory, has long since been burst. The beginning of the twentieth century heralded already a break-out into the realm of sounds beyond those well-defined, pure, rational tones produced by specially designed instruments. The advent of electricity and electronics exploded conceptions of music tied to venerated traditions, particularly in European music. Do these new kinds of music come about simply because of advances in technology that composers and musicians licentiously and creatively appropriate for their own music-making purposes? Or does their thinking need to dig deeper philosophically to gain another orientation and attunement? There is a dearth of philosophical thinking on music nowadays, which invariably remains dedicated either to aesthetic theory or social critique, or to a blend of both. The present study offers an alternative approach to thinking on music along a path that leads from... via... to music and is parallel to the way from... via... to language.

The cyberworld fast rolling in, impacting every aspect of human living on the globe today presents an enormous challenge to humankind. Digitized technoscience develops at a breakneck pace in all areas. What is missing is a philosophical response posing the ontological question: What is a digital being's mode of being? This leads to interrogating the mathematization of knowledge and underlying Western conceptions of efficient movement and time.

This greatly expanded book offers a recasting of traditional political philosophy by interpreting core social phenomena as modes of 3D-temporality. It focuses on the ontology of freedom, value, power, justice and legitimate government. Casting human being as whoness opens up new insights into how human beings sociate in interplays of mutual estimation. Since these are simultaneously social power plays, an ontology of social power results.

How are core social phenomena to be understood as modes of being? This book offers an alternative approach to social ontology. Recent interest in social ontology on the part of mainstream philosophy and the social sciences presupposes from the outset that the human being can be cast as a conscious subject whose intentionality can be collective. By contrast, the present study insistently poses the crucial question of who the human being is and how they sociate as whos. Such whoness is a clean-cut departure from the venerable tradition of questioning whatness (quidditas, essence) in philosophical thinking. Casting human being hermeneutically as whoness opens up new insights into how human beings sociate in interplays of mutual estimation that are simultaneously social power plays. Hitherto, the ontology of social power in all its various guises, has only ever been implicit. This book makes it explicit. The kind of social power prevalent in capitalist societies is that of the reified value embodied in commodities, money, capital, & co. Reified value itself is constituted through an interplay of mutual estimation among things that reflects back on the power interplay among whos. In this way a new critique of capitalism becomes possible.

Freedom, value, power, justice, government, legitimacy are major themes of the present inquiry. It explores the ontological structure of human beings associating with one another, the basic phenomenon of society. We human beings strive to become who we are in an ongoing power interplay with each other. Thinkers called as witnesses include Plato, Aristotle, Anaximander, Protagoras, Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Schumpeter, Hayek, Schmitt, Ernst Junger, et al.

The first aim is to provide well-articulated concepts by thinking through elementary phenomena of today's world, focusing on privacy and the digital, to clarify who we are in the cyberworld - hence a phenomenology of digital whoness. The second aim is to engage critically, hermeneutically with older and current literature on privacy, including in today's emerging cyberworld. Phenomenological results include concepts of i) self-identity through interplay with the world, ii) personal privacy in contradistinction to the privacy of private property, iii) the cyberworld as an artificial, digital dimension in order to discuss iv) what freedom in the cyberworld can mean, whilst not neglecting v) intercultural aspects and vi) the EU context.

We live today surrounded by countless digital gadgets and navigate through cyberspace as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This digital cast of being, however, comes from a long history of philosophical and mathematical thinking in which the Western will to productive power over movement has attained its consummation. This study traces the digital dissolution of beings from the Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle's ontology via Cartesian mathematical science through to our digitized economy and telecommunications. With an appendix reinterpreting quantum mechanical indeterminacy phenomenologically.