This paper examines Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by Hume’s critique of the philosophy of the ego and the continuity of consciousness. The path taken here follows a continental and phenomenological approach. Husserl’s 1905 lecture course on the temporalization of immanent time-consciousness is a phenomenological-eidetic examination of how the continuity of consciousness and the consciousness of continuity are possible. It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but that escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him. In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its impressions.

The recent translation into English of Jean-Luc Marion’s essay “Saint Thomas Aquinas and Onto-Theo-Logy” provides an opportunity to re-examine the significance of Marion’s earlier criticisms of Aquinas (set forth, as is well known, in God without Being) in the light of his most current position on Aquinas. Toward this end, I discuss the role that the doctrine of analogy plays in Marion’s reassessment, and partial retraction, of the controversial indictment of Aquinas that was presented in God without Being. Marion’s claim that the Thomistic conception of God as ipsum esse should be understood by “starting from the distance of God” is highlighted in order to elucidate how, for Aquinas (at least as Marion reads him), the doctrine of analogy functions phenomenologically, as do the divine names generally, to manifest the character of God as infinite goodness and excessive givenness.

Even as philosophers increasingly apply their analytical acumen to other subjects of intellectual study, technology is one area relegated to the sidelines. To help dispel such prejudice, this exercise in applied ontology explains why technology invites critical examination, enumerates the generic needs and perceived wants that it fulfills, and then supplies a taxonomy of technological devices individuated in terms of the functional roles that their designers or consumers intend for them. In light of the classificatory scheme developed, I conclude that everything in space and time may be used to realize technological goals, necessitating a more inclusive understanding of technology and thereby a heightened awareness of its pervasive character.

There are at least two versions of the famous Wager argument to be found in Pascal’s Pensées. In contemporary work on the Wager, attention is almost always focused on the second. In this paper, we take a look at the first, which is often quickly dismissed as a failure. Indeed, it seems to be generally believed that Pascal himself quickly dismissed it as a failure. We fi rst argue that Pascal himself accepted the argument. Then we argue (more importantly) that those who accept a virtue theoretic account of human flourishing ought to agree with Pascal in accepting the argument.

Nietzsche’s perspectivism has aroused the perplexity of many a recent commentator, not least because of the doctrine’s apparent self-refuting character. If, as Nietzsche holds, there are no facts but only interpretations, then how are we to understand this claim itself? Nietzsche’s perspectivism must be construed either as a fact or as one further interpretation—but in the former case the doctrine is clearly self-refuting, while in the latter case any reasons or arguments one may have in support of one’s perspective are rendered bothimpotent and superfluous. The unpalatable consequences of Nietzsche’s perspectivism are further highlighted by considering its effects on Nietzsche’s treatment of the fundamental laws of logic, such as the principle of non-contradiction. Finally, Nietzsche’s perspectivism, if not self-refuting, at least seems to be refuted by his own writings, where he confidently puts forward various doctrines and critiques, thus indicating that he does not think of his own beliefs as being true merely in a perspectival sense. There is every reason, I conclude, to be perplexed about Nietzsche’s perspectivism.

Pascal is well known to be an early modern disciple of Augustine, but it has not always been sufficiently emphasized that Pascal’s Augustinianism differs profoundly from its source in many ways. The following essay examines his re-ordering of Augustine’s psychology and its implications for philosophy and religion in the modern period. For Augustine, intellect and will are equal moments in the activity of mens, but Pascal is radically voluntarist. For him, the will’s relation to the good radically transcends intellect’s relation to being. This moves Pascal to a position closer in some respects to neo-Platonism. It also prevents him from appropriating Augustine’s claim that the triadic human mens is a created analogue of the Trinity. Pascal drops Augustine’s teaching on this point, with profound consequences for his conception of humanity’s relation to God.

In the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, learning is not a paradox, as suggested by Plato’s Meno, but the fundamental form of experience. To experience is precisely to be permeable and open to being reshaped by one’s experiences. I explore the reconceptualization of the human subject within Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy that allows us to understand how the body-subject can be a learning subject. Fundamentally this involves consideration of the nature of habit, and the way in which habit simultaneously locks us into a repressiveattachment to a specific past and opens us up to the possibilities of meaningful engagement with the world. Through an analysis of the temporality of habit, I conclude that understanding habit as the fundamental launching-place of learning also allows us to see how essential learning is to the experience of human freedom.

In this paper I explain the basics of Heidegger’s early Daseinanalytik, an account that contains promising insights for the phenomenology of time. I then draw out some of the relevant lessons from his phenomenology for the debate between A-theorists andB-theorists in contemporary analytic philosophy of time, and I show how it is that he gives a more philosophically satisfying account of the phenomenological features of becoming than one generally finds in the analytic debate. In Heidegger’s theory, becoming is not some contingent and misleading artifact of consciousness or of Dasein. It is a necessary and sufficient condition for their occurrence, even though it is not identical with them.

In this paper, I suggest that Heidegger’s conception of freedom, elaborated in piecemeal fashion in Being and Time, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, and Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and culminating in The Essence of Human Freedom, providesa way of rethinking our conception of freedom, not as a set of specific determinations and rights, but as the very condition for the possibility of both existence and community. In this elaboration, it is possible to trace Heidegger’s gradual removal of freedom from the ontology of self-presence. This, I argue, offers us a way of thinking freedom, not in terms of a quality or attribute that Dasein possess, but in terms of community, fraternity, and hence ethics.