In this essay, I aim to engage Martin Heidegger’s and Karl Jaspers’s views of the tragic in critical dialogue in order to show that for both of these philosophers tragedy, in literature and in its philosophical interpretation, defines the relationships of thought to transcendence, of history to truth, I begin with an account of Jaspers’s treatment of the tragic, proceed to interpret Heidegger’s account of tragic poetry and his post-tragic notion of Gelassenheit, and finally outline the limitations of tragedy as a model for historical truth, I will argue that the fact that these limitations are explicitly denoted and called for by Jaspers but are to some extent neglected by Heidegger is due to a difference between their philosophies with regard to the primacy, and perhaps their rival conceptions, of ontology.

In traditional African ethics the emphasis is on respect and hierarchy. This is underpinned by a conception of the person as normative, developmental, and communitarian. But in this conception the person is only problematically unified. Further elaboration is needed on how one’s motivational structure is critically integrated if the tradition is to be reformulated so as to meet the challenges of a liberal, and often relativist, global culture. The psychological and intersubjective conditions for such personal growth need to be spelled out. Here I draw upon the writings of a contemporary South African Thomist writer, Augustine Shutte, on the emergence, development, and fulfillment of our powers of self-enactment, which are given their proper intersubjective dimension.

William Desmond’s ongoing contribution to metaphysics encompasses both an innovative construction of a metaphysical perspective (“metaxological metaphysics”) and a thorough criticism of prior metaphysics. Consideration of seven distinct but related criticisms of other metaphysical theories reveals much of Desmond’s own view. What seems to be missing in Desmond’s works is thorough-going use of Neoplatonic thinkers. This absence is telling insofar as classical Neoplatonists not only avoid many of the criticisms that Desmond directs against “forgetful” metaphysicians but actually articulate a metaphysics that would often confirm Desmond’s own. A clear example of this is found in Plotinus’s view of determination and excess in the individual, a metaphysical topic of great importance for Desmond himself. From this, one may conclude that Desmond’s already rich metaphysical thinking may be further enriched through closer consideration of Neoplatonism.

If we understand Arendt’s work on totalitarianism as the beginning of her philosophizing, then we can better appreciate her concern with human nature and better judge her Existenz philosophy. Certifying Arendt as an existentialist allows those who would label her to recast her ideas into the language of modernity and thereby abolish the nature that stalks modem theorizing. Eliminating nature as a reckoning also obliterates history as an anchor and offers modems unlimited will for shaping the future. But Arendt is decisively anti-modem in her formulation ofImagination, which she uses to connect men to the past, to the deeds and the speech that set limits to human action. Imagination allows her to break through the thought-systems that now substitute for a God who is no-more and for a rationalist potential that is not-yet. This in-between forms a space of existence for thinkers who want to be at home in the world.

Intellectual receptivity is both the prerequisite for objective human knowledge and the condition of possibility for all human knowledge. My arguments are cast in Thomistic terms. In the first part, I review the most important arguments with which Aquinas defends the receptivity of the human intellect, especially the argument from intellectual media and the argument from actualization. In the second part, I attempt to resolve the apparent contradictions involved in the claim that the intellect is receptive, contradictions that stem from the fact that the intellect is an active potency (since its proper act is to reason) and receptivity is the act of a passive potency. In the final part,I argue that knowledge of the proper object of the human intellect (material singulars) is possible if and only if the human intellect is receptive.