Tristan Laing (Toronto) is a scholar and organizer with expertise in alternative organizational design. With a background in Philosophy, Tristan approaches Co-operative and Non-Profit work in a way that reveals and responds to social problems at their roots. A strong believer in the power of human association, Tristan sees solutions to human problems in how we relate to each other, to ourselves, and to our environments. While currently working as the Director for Communications and Education with HOUSE (Housing Ontario University Students Equitably), Tristan sees developing affordable co-operative housing for students and young adults as key to responding to central social pathologies of our age: loneliness, anxiety, and the destruction of the natural world. Supervisors: Marcel Vietta Address: Toad Lane Cooperative House, Toronto
In this paper I argue that Community Development initiatives are more likely to serve the goal of... more In this paper I argue that Community Development initiatives are more likely to serve the goal of building community when they rely on market sources of revenue compared to relying on funding from Government or Foundations.
In this paper I discuss how the welfare state's intervention on behalf of community interests can... more In this paper I discuss how the welfare state's intervention on behalf of community interests can have the effect of de-mobilizing communities' own capacity to organize to meet their own needs.
In this short paper I argue that attempts by major theorists such as Green and Putnam to use the ... more In this short paper I argue that attempts by major theorists such as Green and Putnam to use the concept of community in a non-moral sense fail due either to hidden normativity or unacceptable vagueness. I assert instead an explicitly normative understanding of community grounded on a notion of equitable access to social capital.
This paper proceeds in two parts: the first concerns Heidegger’s understanding of Logos in the p... more This paper proceeds in two parts: the first concerns Heidegger’s understanding of Logos in the period leading up to Being and Time, and the second supplements this understanding with an interpretation of the mythology of Hermes. My desire is that in the mythology of Hermes we might find a way to conceive how the logos comes into being through the formation and articulation of the symbolon in magical speech. A happy offshoot of this line of thought is that it leads to a philosophical account of magic which shows magical speech or incantation to be a formal possibility built into the structure of the logos itself. The question of whether magic in fact occurs or has occurred thus becomes an empirical problem.
The question of the turn in Heidegger’s philosophy is an enduring one. Heidegger himself, in a ... more The question of the turn in Heidegger’s philosophy is an enduring one. Heidegger himself, in a 1962 letter to William Richardson affirmed that the thought of a reversal (kehre) was already “at work in my thought a decade prior to 1947”(Heidegger 1962: 302). 1947 is of course the year “Letter on Humanism” was published, this being the first time Heidegger spoke of a “reversal” or “turn” in the published writings (ibid.) Furthermore, in his letter Heidegger calls this reversal in thinking, “a tangled process that was opaque even to me”(Heidegger 1962: 301). However, since Heidegger instructed that it is only possible to gain access to “Heidegger 2”, “by way of what Heidegger 1” has thought, we might think that investigating this opaque period in Heidegger’s thinking will continue to bear fruit (Heidegger 1962: 304). The sheer amount of post-humous material unearthed from this period, moreover, suggests a continuing hermeneutic project of limitless endurance. Against the background of the larger issue of the turn, it is tempting to concentrate on what appear to be specific, nameable transformations in Heidegger's thought - and this tendency may not be insidious so long as the limitations of grasping Heidegger's turn in terms of theoretical transformations is recognized - after all, if the turn were a simple changing of some theoretical beliefs, then surely it would not have remained indefinitely murky to Heidegger himself. In this paper I take up one specific transformation - the change in Heidegger's attitude towards Nietzsche between the Nietzsche 1 and Nietzsche 2 lecture courses (given in 1936 and 37 respectively). I will attempt to show that Contributions reveals a deeper and more essential level of Heidegger's struggle against Nietzsche - one which underlies the statements in the lecture courses, but also exceeds them. On the basis of these insights, I will argue that Heidegger's rejection of Nietzsche's philosophy of the sensuous is not so much about whether Nietzche in fact comes into a relationship with metaphysics as a whole, or succeeds in overcoming Platonism - but rather, that it is about Heidegger's changing attitude towards the importance of failing precisely at this attempt, and in the relation the failure of subjectivity's self-overcoming in Nietzsche to the true overcoming of subjectivity. This recognition encourages us to continue to read Nietzsche 1, and to recognize the attempting to overcome Platonism by way of the body as an essential part of post-metaphysical practice.
The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the normative differences between the theories of al... more The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the normative differences between the theories of alterity given by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, and Emmanuel Levinas in Totality and Infinity. This task is made difficult because we can easily become distracted by Levinas’ own statements on the moral difference between his metaphysical theory of alterity and Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology, which he claims “reduces the other to the same”(Levinas 1961 42). Levinas’ comments on Heidegger are based on a reading of Being and Time which is deeply flawed. Proper consideration of Heidegger’s texts can reveal its account of alterity as an ethical text in its own right, one that has similarities and indebtedness to ethical thoughts in Aristotle and Kant. The actual basis of Levinas’ anger with and divergence from Heidegger is, I argue, a fundamentally different way of thinking transcendence, one which presumes the subject to be infinite in its nature. On the basis of this notion of transcendence I suggest we read Levinas as a phenomenologist. Levinas' phenomenology differs from Heidegger's because his notion of transcendence implies different precepts, or pre-understandings which force ethical life to reveal itself in a different way. It is on the basis of these different kinds of phenomenological experience that we can inquire into the normative differences between Levinas’ theory of radical separation, and Heidegger’s theory of authentic and inauthentic being-with-Da-sein. On this basis we can distinguish a number of significant normative advantages Heidegger’s theory of alterity possesses over Levinas’s approach, although space and scope limitations prevent us from simply asserting Heidegger's phenomenology to be normatively superior.
In this paper I argue that Community Development initiatives are more likely to serve the goal of... more In this paper I argue that Community Development initiatives are more likely to serve the goal of building community when they rely on market sources of revenue compared to relying on funding from Government or Foundations.
In this paper I discuss how the welfare state's intervention on behalf of community interests can... more In this paper I discuss how the welfare state's intervention on behalf of community interests can have the effect of de-mobilizing communities' own capacity to organize to meet their own needs.
In this short paper I argue that attempts by major theorists such as Green and Putnam to use the ... more In this short paper I argue that attempts by major theorists such as Green and Putnam to use the concept of community in a non-moral sense fail due either to hidden normativity or unacceptable vagueness. I assert instead an explicitly normative understanding of community grounded on a notion of equitable access to social capital.
This paper proceeds in two parts: the first concerns Heidegger’s understanding of Logos in the p... more This paper proceeds in two parts: the first concerns Heidegger’s understanding of Logos in the period leading up to Being and Time, and the second supplements this understanding with an interpretation of the mythology of Hermes. My desire is that in the mythology of Hermes we might find a way to conceive how the logos comes into being through the formation and articulation of the symbolon in magical speech. A happy offshoot of this line of thought is that it leads to a philosophical account of magic which shows magical speech or incantation to be a formal possibility built into the structure of the logos itself. The question of whether magic in fact occurs or has occurred thus becomes an empirical problem.
The question of the turn in Heidegger’s philosophy is an enduring one. Heidegger himself, in a ... more The question of the turn in Heidegger’s philosophy is an enduring one. Heidegger himself, in a 1962 letter to William Richardson affirmed that the thought of a reversal (kehre) was already “at work in my thought a decade prior to 1947”(Heidegger 1962: 302). 1947 is of course the year “Letter on Humanism” was published, this being the first time Heidegger spoke of a “reversal” or “turn” in the published writings (ibid.) Furthermore, in his letter Heidegger calls this reversal in thinking, “a tangled process that was opaque even to me”(Heidegger 1962: 301). However, since Heidegger instructed that it is only possible to gain access to “Heidegger 2”, “by way of what Heidegger 1” has thought, we might think that investigating this opaque period in Heidegger’s thinking will continue to bear fruit (Heidegger 1962: 304). The sheer amount of post-humous material unearthed from this period, moreover, suggests a continuing hermeneutic project of limitless endurance. Against the background of the larger issue of the turn, it is tempting to concentrate on what appear to be specific, nameable transformations in Heidegger's thought - and this tendency may not be insidious so long as the limitations of grasping Heidegger's turn in terms of theoretical transformations is recognized - after all, if the turn were a simple changing of some theoretical beliefs, then surely it would not have remained indefinitely murky to Heidegger himself. In this paper I take up one specific transformation - the change in Heidegger's attitude towards Nietzsche between the Nietzsche 1 and Nietzsche 2 lecture courses (given in 1936 and 37 respectively). I will attempt to show that Contributions reveals a deeper and more essential level of Heidegger's struggle against Nietzsche - one which underlies the statements in the lecture courses, but also exceeds them. On the basis of these insights, I will argue that Heidegger's rejection of Nietzsche's philosophy of the sensuous is not so much about whether Nietzche in fact comes into a relationship with metaphysics as a whole, or succeeds in overcoming Platonism - but rather, that it is about Heidegger's changing attitude towards the importance of failing precisely at this attempt, and in the relation the failure of subjectivity's self-overcoming in Nietzsche to the true overcoming of subjectivity. This recognition encourages us to continue to read Nietzsche 1, and to recognize the attempting to overcome Platonism by way of the body as an essential part of post-metaphysical practice.
The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the normative differences between the theories of al... more The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the normative differences between the theories of alterity given by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, and Emmanuel Levinas in Totality and Infinity. This task is made difficult because we can easily become distracted by Levinas’ own statements on the moral difference between his metaphysical theory of alterity and Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology, which he claims “reduces the other to the same”(Levinas 1961 42). Levinas’ comments on Heidegger are based on a reading of Being and Time which is deeply flawed. Proper consideration of Heidegger’s texts can reveal its account of alterity as an ethical text in its own right, one that has similarities and indebtedness to ethical thoughts in Aristotle and Kant. The actual basis of Levinas’ anger with and divergence from Heidegger is, I argue, a fundamentally different way of thinking transcendence, one which presumes the subject to be infinite in its nature. On the basis of this notion of transcendence I suggest we read Levinas as a phenomenologist. Levinas' phenomenology differs from Heidegger's because his notion of transcendence implies different precepts, or pre-understandings which force ethical life to reveal itself in a different way. It is on the basis of these different kinds of phenomenological experience that we can inquire into the normative differences between Levinas’ theory of radical separation, and Heidegger’s theory of authentic and inauthentic being-with-Da-sein. On this basis we can distinguish a number of significant normative advantages Heidegger’s theory of alterity possesses over Levinas’s approach, although space and scope limitations prevent us from simply asserting Heidegger's phenomenology to be normatively superior.
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