This paper attempts to reconcile, what appear to be, two conflicting accounts of authenticity in Heidegger's thought. Authenticity in Being and Time (1927) is commonly interpreted in 'existentialist' terms as willful commitment and resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) in the face of one's own death but, by the late 1930's, is reintroduced in terms of Gelassenlieit, as a non-willful openness that "lets beings be." By employing Heidegger's conception of authentic historicality (Geschiclidichkeit), understood as the retrieval of Dasein's past, and drawing on his writings on Hölderlin in the 1930'sand 1940's, I suggest that the ancient interpretation of leisure and festivity may play an important role in unifying these conflicting accounts. Genuine leisure, interpreted as a form of play (Spiel), frees us from inauthentic busy-ness and gives us an opening to face the abyssal nature of our own being and the mystery that "beings are" in the flrst place. To this end, leisure re-connects us with wonder (Erstaunen) as the original temperament of Western thought. In leisurely wonder, the authentic self does not seek purposive mastery and control over beings but calmly accepts the unsettledness ofbeing and is, as a result, allowed into the original openness or space of play of time (Zeit-Spiel-Raum) that lets beings emerge-into-presence on their own terms.

This article explores the different ways in which suffering is represented iconographically in Christianity and in Buddhism. The disparate images of Christ nailed to a cross and Buddha sitting serenely under a tree surest diametrically opposed attitudes toward the role of suffering in religion. In line with the suggestion posed by a Tibetan lama to the author, this article seeks to demonstrate that these various approaches to suffering—seeking redemption through suffering versus transcendence of suffering—are at a deeper level not in actuality different. This rapprochement is achieved through appealing to Jungian and post-Jungian theories in situating Christ and Buddha within a singular process of psychospiritual transformation.

This essay analyzes Marcel Proust's claim that "Crime and Punishment" could be the title of all of Dostoevskys novels. Although Proust reveals some important points regarding the motivation for Dostoevskys writings, his account is also inadequate in some relevant respects. For example, while Proust calls our attention to what happens to victimizers, he ignores the perspective of victims; thus Ivan Karamazovs challenge remains unaccounted for in Proust's interpretation. More importantly Proust does not account for Dostoevsky's optimism, which, in connection with his realism, is the central aspect of Dostoevsky novelistic and philosophical approach.

Poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's scientific studies grew out of a disenchantment with the reductionist science of his time. He believed a more accurate description of nature was possible. Goethe's scientific method paralleled the methodology of art current in his era, and very likely arose, at least in part, from pre-existing traditions of knowledge in the visual arts. The study of similarities between Goethe's scientific method and the methodology of art couldprovide insights into both disciplines, and insights into the intentions that drove Goethes scientific studies.

This study rationally reconstructs Novalis's linguistic theory. It traces Novaliss assessment of earlier linguistic debates, illustrates Novaliss transformation of their central questions and uncovers Novaliss unique methodological proposal. It argues that in his critical engagement with Idealism, particularly regarding problems of representation and regulative positing, Novalis recognizes the need for both a philosophy of language and the artistic language designed to execute it. The paper contextualizes Novalis's linguistic appropriation and repudiation of Kant and explains how, even while Novaliss linguistic theory issues Kantianism such a challenge, it also begins to demonstrate the application of Kantian designs to linguistic philosophy. The modernity and potential of Novaliss proposal is evaluated and its significance for discussions in linguistic philosophy and aesthetics is advocated.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, develops the concept of “bad faith” in order to account for the paradoxical fact that knowledge can be ignorant of itself, and thus that a self-conscious subject can deceive itself while being aware of its own deception. Sartre claims that Freudian psychoanalysis would account for self-deception by positing an unconsciousness that guides consciousness without consciousness being aware of it. Therefore, Freudian psychoanalysis is an insufficient model with which to address bad faith. I disagree. There is a specific psychic mechanism in Freud that answers Sartre’s criteria for bad faith, and it is called “disavowal” (Verleugnung). Disavowal is the mechanism responsible for fetishism. And thus, fetishism is the Freudian account of bad faith.

To what extent can meaning be attributed to nature, and what is the relationship between such “natural sense” and the meaning of linguistic and artistic expressions? To shed light on such questions, this essay lays the groundwork for an “ontology of sense” drawing on the insights of phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. We argue that the ontological continuity of organic life with the perceived world of nature requires situating sense at a level that is more fundamental than has traditionally been recognized. Accounting for the genesis of this primordial sense and the teleology of expressive forms requires the development of an ontology of being as interrogation, as suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s later investigations.

Through a critical reading of Hölderlin’s poetry and Heidegger’s thinking, this essay explores how thunder awakens us to the elemental, opens us to the elements through their boundaries or cracks, and brings the hum and clamor of things, their elemental voices, to our presence.