The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to identify in Heidegger’s work a determination of the history of metaphysics parallel to the famous onto-theological one, and which I will label onto-agathological. Based upon a text from the course of 1935, “Einführung in die Metaphysik,” I argue that for Heidegger the history of metaphysics is not only the Aristotelian onto-theology, but is also characterized by the Platonic pre-eminence of the good over being (Republic 509c). In short, it is an onto-agathological history. Second, and as a consequence of the first point, I will flesh out the hypothesis of another history metaphysics, and emphasize its strong phenomenological content which stands in opposition to the Neo-Kantianism of Windelband and Rickert.

In this article I shall largely make use of terms like “responding,” “responsive,” and “responsivity.” These terms are not part of traditional philosophy. They became indispensable for my own thinking when I tried to develop a theory of radical Fremdheit, of alienness or otherness. Hence I came to a sort of responsive phenomenology that does not replace current variants of phenomenology, but sets a new tone. This is what I try to show in my article. I shall proceed in four steps. In the first step, dealing with the formation of the theory, I try to show how our experience of radical otherness leads to the key concept of responsivity (sect. 1–3). In the second step, I shall describe the main features of responsivity and its pathological deviations (sect. 4–6). In the third step, this perspective will be expanded by referring to co-affection and co-responsivity as elements of proto-sociality (sect. 7). The fourth and last step will offer a practical outlook, raising the question to what extent responsivity can be organised and institutionalised (sect. 8).

Since his 1977 The Idol and Distance (L’idole et la distance), Jean-Luc Marion has almost continually drawn upon the work of the 5th-6th century Christian mystic Pseudo-Denys the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), not only within his explicitly theological considerations, but throughout his Cartesian and phenomenological work as well. The present essay maps out the influence of Denys upon Marion’s thinking, organizing Marion’s career into a three-part periodization, each of which corresponds to a distinct portion of the Dionysian corpus—in Marion’s work of the seventies the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy are foregrounded, in the eighties this emphasis is shifted to the The Divine Names, and in the nineties The Mystical Theology takes center stage. Insofar as these emphases directly correlate to the unique tasks that Marion has set himself in each of these various periods, Dionysius is revealed as a hermeneutical key, unlocking and clarifying crucial aspects of Marion’s theologically-inflected phenomenology.

This paper accomplishes two goals. First, the essay elucidates Husserl’s descriptions of meaning consciousness from the 1901 Logical Investigations. I examine Husserl’s observations about the three ways we can experience meaning and I discuss his conclusions about the structure of meaning intentions. Second, the paper explores how Husserl reworked that 1901 theory in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Investigation. I explore how Husserl transformed his descriptions of the three intentions involved in meaningful experience. By doing so, Husserl not only recognized intersubjective communication as the condition of possibility of linguistic meaning acts, but also transformed his account of the structure of both signitive and intuitive acts. In the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by showing how, on the basis of these new insights, Husserl reconstructs his theory of fulfillment.