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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik
Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese philosophy, classical Daoism offers a thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness …
Logos And Dao Revisited: A Non-Metaphysical Interpretation, Steven Burik
Logos And Dao Revisited: A Non-Metaphysical Interpretation, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Why another article on logos and dao ? Is it not the case that enough scholars have looked into the similarities between the term logos and the notion of dao? Although it may seem so, I will argue that when another perspective is employed, logos and dao might fruitfully be compared on a different level from the one used by most of these comparisons. In this essay I will argue first that in many instances the approach of some of the scholars who have compared logos and dao has been one-sided and has mostly consisted in a comparison of these …
Thinking On The Edge: Heidegger, Derrida, And The Daoist Gateway (Men), Steven Burik
Thinking On The Edge: Heidegger, Derrida, And The Daoist Gateway (Men), Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Steven Bunk Many philosophical interpretations of the Daoist classics have proceeded, or continue to proceed, to read into these works the quest for a transcendental, foundational principle, a permanent moment of rest beyond the turmoil of everchanging things. The metaphysics that may be understood to be at work in such interpretations is what Heidegger and Derrida have called philosophy as ontotheology. It is argued here that Heidegger, Derrida, and the classical Daoists are better understood not so much as metaphysical and essentialist thinkers but as advocates of a profoundly inner-worldly way of thinking. In arguing for such a different approach, …
Self And Other: Continental And Classical Chinese Thought, Steven Burik
Self And Other: Continental And Classical Chinese Thought, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Traditionally, metaphysical notions of self and other presuppose a dualism that underlies much of Western philosophy. This dualism is opposed by accounts of self and other in recent continental philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy, which I compare. I argue that the self is seen in continental and Chinese thought as embedded in (ethical) relations and language, and not as transcendent or prior in the metaphysical sense to them. I argue for this by focussing on three themes: self and language, self as relational and embedded in the world or contextual environment, and self and the particular other. These three themes …