The Passivity of Reason – On Heidegger's Concept of Stimmung
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Hans Ruin
Summary
The concept of Stimmung – attunement or mood – is a key notion in Heidegger's existential ontology as this is articulated in Sein und Zeit. Not only does it designate a significant aspect of human existence, which Heidegger portrays as “tuned” throughout its different comportments; it also plays a decisive role as a methodological step within the course of the ontological analysis. Only through the cultivation of specific moods can the route to a qualified philosophical contemplation be accessed. Throughout his life Heidegger remained a devoted reader of Aristotle, who plays a particularly important role during the early twenties when the existential analytic is developed. This background is one important key to understanding the philosophical implications of Heidegger's analysis of Stimmung. In the end this theme also invites us to distinguish in very broad terms how the relation between passion and reason has been articulated in Greek and Christian thinking respectively. Against the background of such a general account, it is my purpose here to situate Heidegger's analysis of Stimmung in a context in which it can hopefully both be better appreciated and critically assessed.
© Philosophia Press 2000
Articles in the same Issue
- Rational Ends: Humean and Non-Humean Considerations
- Two kinds of methodological solipsism
- The Touch of Art: Adorno and the Sublime
- Understanding Scepticism
- Against Deontology
- The Passivity of Reason – On Heidegger's Concept of Stimmung
- The Undeflated Domain of Semantics
- Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 159 pp.
- Herbert Schnädelbach: Philosophie in der modernen Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000, 283 Seiten
- Gronke, Horst: Das Denken des Anderen: Führt die Selbstaufhebung von Husserls Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität zur transzendentalen Sprachpragmatik? (Epistemata: Reihe Philosophie Bd. 234) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 294 sider Zahavi, Dan: Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik. (Phaenomenologica 135) Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 204+xii sider
- Laura Otis. Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 210 pp.
- Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul. The Welfare State edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul, Cambridge University Press 1997, 292 sider
- Søren Kjørup. Kunstens filosofi: En indføring i œstetik. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitets Forlag, 2000, 213 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Rational Ends: Humean and Non-Humean Considerations
- Two kinds of methodological solipsism
- The Touch of Art: Adorno and the Sublime
- Understanding Scepticism
- Against Deontology
- The Passivity of Reason – On Heidegger's Concept of Stimmung
- The Undeflated Domain of Semantics
- Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 159 pp.
- Herbert Schnädelbach: Philosophie in der modernen Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000, 283 Seiten
- Gronke, Horst: Das Denken des Anderen: Führt die Selbstaufhebung von Husserls Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität zur transzendentalen Sprachpragmatik? (Epistemata: Reihe Philosophie Bd. 234) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 294 sider Zahavi, Dan: Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik. (Phaenomenologica 135) Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 204+xii sider
- Laura Otis. Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 210 pp.
- Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul. The Welfare State edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul, Cambridge University Press 1997, 292 sider
- Søren Kjørup. Kunstens filosofi: En indføring i œstetik. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitets Forlag, 2000, 213 pp.
