My lecture is concerned with a presentation of the method of Deleuzian thought, which - I would like to contend - well represent the change that has taken place in postmodernist thought. Deleuze is unique in calling himself a "classical metaphysicist," i.e. a restorer of classical thought, albeit via the screen - thought which has managed to survive and overcome the obstacle of modernity. The Deleuzian unification of pre-modern thought and modernist critique with Nietzsche's theory of eternal repetition gives rise to a method, whose utter meaning is an attempt to provide thinkers with sharp tools for successfully opposing later capitalism and globalization, something that stands at the very heart of Deleuzian metaphysics. This opposition, which in effect is also a new doctrine of moral aesthetics, lies at the core of this present lecture. I would like to present the special combative nature of Deleuzian thought, and through him to present a different radical angle of the post-modern paradigm.

Hermeneutics, in its phenomenological mode, has become one of the dominating issues in contemporary philosophical discours. Hans-Georg Gadamer, the leading exponent of phenomenological hermeneutics, develops his theory in his monumental work Truth and Method1, by regarding hermeneutics as an exploration of both the archaeology of human understanding and constitutive role of language in experience. In this paper, we have presented a brief exposition of Gadamer's views, giving an emphasis on how human understanding of objects inevitably mingles with its traditions or prejudices. Following Gadamer, we also have offered a systematic account of the role of language upon our overall understanding and building of an impersonal criterion of the truth and meaning of experiences. And finally we have critically examined Habermas* critique of Gadamer's failure to see language as a camouflage of domination of stronger experiences and the fact that the history of understanding is systematically distorted by this domination.

The issues of difference, diversity, otherness, and the possibility of community have emerged as leading philosophical and socio-political questions in recent times. An increasing theoretical emphasis on issues of difference and alterity, with a corresponding convergence of topics like globalization, have brought into renewed focus not only the question of otherness, but more fundamentally, the question of how the encounter with the Other is to take place. My paper examines the treatment of issues of difference and otherness within a perspective of philosophical hermeneutics. In recent writings, Gadamer has suggested that the principles of his philosophical hermeneutics can prove beneficial in reflections on contemporary social problems of diversity and cultural difference. In examining these claims, I question whether Gadamer acknowledges sufficiently the challenges and resistance of otherness. At the same time, I also question the claims of some theorists who maintain that it is never possible to bridge difference and otherness. In the end I suggest that while the resistance of difference might be underestimated, there are nevertheless promising approaches for thinking difference and diversity to be found in a hermeneutical perspective.

In his Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65), Heidegger claims: "Making itself intelligible is the suicide of philosophy" (435). He defines intelligibility in terms of the modern metaphysical forms of thinking and speaking about beings as objects of representation. Moreover, intelligibility involves a uniform accessibility for the inauthentic. anybody of an age marked by thoughtlessness. Thus, Heidegger upholds and tries to adhere to a principle of unintelligibility for the thinkers in the crossing from the first beginning to the other beginning of philosophy. Thinkers in the crossing are essentially ambiguous and indefinite in their attempt to move through and away metaphysical thinking toward a be-ing-historical thinking. Their only option is to say the metaphysical language of beings as language of be-ing, and this involves a transformation of language and thinking through a "turning around" of the meaning of metaphysical words. Unintelligibility is an essential feature of this transformed and transformative effort to carry out the ultimate task of "the bringing back of beings from the truth of be-ing" (11). If philosophy makes itself intelligible, then it fails to accomplish its mission in the age of the abandonment of be-ing by beings. Unintelligibility in Heidegger, as he defines it and as it occurs in his own writing, suggests the concomitant demand on us, the philosophers of today, to make the effort to interpret the language of beings as language of be-ing.

The present text shows the hidden root of the question of being in Heidegger's Early Writings. His first logic and epistemological investigations in a neokantian atmosphere moves to ontological interests: he gives up the notion of transcendental subject, and asks for the historical and temporal background of live. In this sense, the young Heidegger gives his work a new direction by searching for the hermeneutical pressupositions that allows philosophy to formulate again the question of being from a radical point of view.

In what manner can philosophy best face world problems? I argue that philosophy's most important contribution to problem solving is not analysis and clarification but synoptic in nature. Relying upon the power of reflection and the scope of imagination as linked to a patient attempt to understand many disciplines, the philosopher ideally seeks to comprehend problems in their many-dimensioned complexity. The disciplines of ecology, evolution, and ethics are especially fruitful in guiding the philosopher seeking to assess the relative worth of things in their emergent inter-relationships. - In the body of the paper I attempt an outline of the outstanding human caused harms, injustices, and instabilities resulting in pain and suffering today. World philosophy today seems sufficiently pluralistic, comprehensive and free of unduly constraining orthodoxies that it can again play a significant role not only in conceptualizing problems but in articulating solutions. Broad visions comparable to Plato's as set forth in the Republic can again be ventured. We need to seek out ways to place into power a council of international philosopher kings and queens offering effective solutions beyond the dictates of partisanship and ideology. I conclude by suggesting five principles that international philosopher kings and queens might be expected to rely upon to bring about a more just global society.

The studying of Marx, said Gyorgy Lukäcs at the beginning of the 1920s, does not mean the uncriticised recognition of the results of his researches, nor the <faith> set in well-defined theses, the interpretation of a <sacred> book. One has to become absorbed in the ceuvre of Marx, so that then, as a second step, one can commence the systematic elaboration of the problems of our age. It is unjust that in western philosophies, especially in the Anglo-Saxon concerning literature the name of the old-age Lukäcs does not appear, or is present as that of some Stalinist inquisitor, the indisputable pillar of Marxism and the Bolshevik movement. Yet his late piece of labour, his vast ontology experiment convincingly shows how one can penetrate the original texts of Marx and at the same time preserve one's conceptual souvereignity, sense of reality, and one's capacity, at least in a latent way, to judge or surpass the thoughts of one's master. This study aims to interpret the problem of Lukäcs's relation to Marx through the analysis of the labour concept of Lukäcs, and would like to prove that the rereading of Lukäcs (and Marx) can serve with surprises, new meanings and morals even today.

In this paper I present Pluralistic Kantianism as a viable alternative to other prominent accounts of the determination of the truth conditions of our ordinary empirical statements. I further claim that this sort of Kantianism is capable of handling certain theoretical difficulties faced by any scheme-based semantics. Moreover, Pluralistic Kantianism can shed some light on such crucial issues as cross-cultural communication and understanding. As a result, if the account offered here is on the right track, we may get a palatable alternative to both restrictive monism and apathetic relativism, both of which ultimately fail to explicate or enlighten the successful and unsuccessful instances of cross-cultural understanding.

The paper centers on philosophy's major trends and trials at the turn of the XXt h and XXIs t century, its leading idea is based on several basic assumptions which can be summarized as follows: 1) the title is a query after XXt h-century philosophy's main achievements and their usefulness in the XXIs t ; 2) speaking about philosophy's achievements, the author particularly means its critical role in condemning and de-mystifying evil, dispelling illusion and myth, and disclosing untruth; 3) the answer to the titular question is based on the entire paper's main assumption that there are three main problems of XXt h-century thought which - as a heritage - will be carrying over into the XXIs t . These problems are the problem of being (Sein), the problem of reason, and the problem of humanity (man). In connection with these problems the author formulates his main thesis that the twentieth century philosophy is characterized by three features which are the following: (a) anti-metaphysical disposition, (b) anti-rationalism, and (c) anti-humanism.

According to our opinion, Lukäcs's way does not lead to Marx but to himself and his independent philosophy and in spite of its inconsistency and mistakes it is still one of the most significant achievements of the XXt h century.

This paper concerns Jacques Derrida's reading of S0ren Kierkegaard's interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice. Abraham's decision to listen to God's command and sacrifice to Him his beloved son is based on his personal faith which conflicts with general morality. On the basis of this story, Derrida argues that we often witness similar conflicts between religion and morality, demonstrating that responsibility is ultimately based on something irresponsible, i.e. something secret. The paper finally discusses Derrida's logic of ultimates.

This paper will attempt to assess the primary differences between what I take to be the two primary philosophical "traditions" in c o n t e m p o r a r y French philosophy, using Derrida (transcendence) and Deleuze (immanence) as exemplary representatives. The body of the paper will examine the use of these terms in three different areas of philosophy on which Derrida and Deleuze have both written: subjectivity, ontology, and epistemology. (1) In the field of subjectivity, the notion of the subject has been critiqued in two manners, either by appealing either to the transcendence of the other (Levinas, Derrida) or to the immanent jlux of experience itself, in relation to which the Ego itself is trancendent (Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, James). (2) In the field of ontology, a purely "immanent" ontology would be an ontology in which there is neither a "beyond" or an "otherwise" Being, nor "interruptions" in Being, both of which would require an appeal to a formal element of transcendence (Deleuze). Such a "transcendent" and aporetic structure, which can never appear or be present as such within Being, is what lies at the basis of the project of deconstruction, with its attendant aporias (Derrida). (3) This distinction, finally, finds parallels in Kant's epistemology, for whom the possible experience is conditioned by purely immanent criteria (Deleuze), whereas what goes beyond the limits of possible experience is transcendent (Derrida). Drawing on these three thread of analysis, the paper concludes with an assessment of what is at stake in the ethical differences between the two traditions. The question of "transcendence" is "What mast I do?", which is the question of morality (a duty or obligation that is beyond being, an "ought" beyond the "is"). The question of "immanence" is "What can I do?" (my power or capacity as an existing individual within being). For Levinas and Derrida, ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other); for Deleuze, ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (Spinoza).

Foucault argued in his retrospective writings that it is possible to give an overall interpretation of his work around the question of subjectivity and that his individual books are historical analyses of the constitution of certain subjective experiences that he finds characteristic of modernity. Furthermore, he called this history of the emergence, development and transformation of subjective experiences a 'history of thought.' Hence understanding the sense in which Foucault uses the notion of thought seems to be crucial for an interpretation of his writings within the framework he provided in his retrospective accounts. In this paper I will argue that the Foucaultian notion of thought is Kantian in fundamental ways, and that this Kantian framework is present throughout his entire work. This argument will provide the background for a rejection of the claim that Foucault's individual writings are specific and marginal. Finally, I will claim that the standard periodizations of Foucault's work under the headings of archaeology, genealogy and ethics have to be reconsidered and revised.

In this paper, I examine how and why Heidegger's early conception of freedom as the ground of the self-appropriation of Dasein had been gradually transformed after 1930. The approach of Heidegger to the issue of human freedom displays how his thinking proceeds from Kant's formulation of the problem in "The Third Antinomy" of the first Critique to Sophocles' tragedy of Antigone. I argue that the reason behind this transformation resides in the attempt of thinking the relation between freedom and natural necessity over and beyond the constraints of critical philosophy. What seems pivotal in this transformation is Heidegger's growing concern with the "tragic" in which he envisages the possibility of a genuine exposure to the "truth" of the conflict between freedom and necessity and, more primordially, to the "abode" wherein the encounter between man and Being {Sein) occurs. Here, the "tragic" is pointing to the limits of representation and what is presented. In other words, it exhibits the limits of human freedom in its relation to the truth of Being. In the passion for disclosure of Being {aletheia), man is driven into the freedom of instituting its truth. In Heidegger's late thinking, human freedom is determined not any more by the obligation of choosing oneself but by the necessity of clearing the truth of Being. Human freedom is tragic in the face of this necessity that it has to answer. Therefore, man is envisaged as having no right or mastery over his freedom for there is no total clearing of its origin. Finally, I argue that it seems impossible to understand the transformation in Heidegger's concept of freedom without an appeal to his emphasis on the "tragic" as being an attempt to deepen and to transfigure the problem as treated in Kantian critical philosophy. In its tragic sense, Heidegger's concept of human freedom displays what lies beneath the Kantian antinomy: the incomprehensible origin of human freedom conceived as the event of the historical appropriation of Being {Er-eignis).

Many scientific realists think that the best reasons for scientific theories are abductive, i.e., must appeal to what is also called inference to the best explanation (IBE), while some anti-realists have argued that the use of abduction in defending realism is question-begging, circular, or incoherent. This paper studies the idea that abductive inference can be reformulated by taking its conclusion to concern the truthlikeness of a hypothetical theory on the basis of its success in explanation and prediction. The strength of such arguments is measured by the estimated verisimilitude of its conclusion given the premises. It is argued that this formulation helps to make precise and justifies the "ultimate argument for scientific realism": the empirical success of scientific theories would be a miracle unless they are truthlike.

Traces are generally considered to constitute an ontologically distinct class of objects that can be distinguished from other objects. However, it can be observed on close inspection that the principles to demarcate traces from other objects are quite general, imprecise and intuitively unclear, except perhaps the entropic account envisaging traces as low entropy states. This view was developed by Hans Reichenbach, Adolf Grünbaum, and J. J. C. Smart on the basis of Reichenbach's theory of branch systems that are subsystems of wider systems. According to this theory, traces form within subsystems as low entropy states as a result of interaction with wider systems. It is also claimed that entropy is the measure of disorder, and that traces are ordered states. I argue that the concepts of entropy and disorder are used beyond their legitimate limits of application, for there are clear-cut counter-examples in the literature. I also analyze the concept of trace together with some examples from classical mechanics and geology in order to show that traces are determined relative to a particular context in which they are so defined.

The paper argues for the relevance of phenomenology for the contemporary debate about a naturalistic explanation of phenomenal c o n s c i o u s n e s s . Phenomenology's analysis of intentionality in terms of the conscious act, its representational content and the intentional object sustains an interpretation of qualia as intrinsic, nonrepresentational properties of the conscious mental acts themselves and not of their content. On the basis of this anti-representationalist clarification of the nature of qualia, the paper substantiates the claim for a more comprehensive naturalistic explanation of embodiment. A phenomenological, i.e. noetico-noematical, analysis of bodily experience helps to integrate the role of the lived body in accepted psycho-physical explanations of conscious embodiment (for instance of proprioception). Furthermore and more importantly, noetical phenomenology identifies a proper bodily self-awareness, consisting of sensations localized on the lived body, as the quale of conscious embodiment. It is maintained that naturalizing embodiment demands a radical explanation of the conditions of possibility of this bodily self-awareness.