UJ Philosophy Colloquium 3 June: Prof Czerkawski, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzen

[Rafael Winkler]

Dear all,

Please see the attached document regarding the above. 

Prof Czerkawski will deliver a talk titled "Being is not an exclusive kind: rethinking the ontological difference."

Maciek Czerkawski is an Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen in China. His areas of interest are Post-Kantian Philosophy (especially Heidegger), Ancient Philosophy (especially Aristotle), and Metaphysics. His work on these issues has been featured in journals including Inquiry, Synthese, and the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. He completed his graduate studies in the UK: at the University of Warwick (MA) and the University of Oxford (DPhil).

Abstract: 

"The ‘ontological difference’ – OD for short – is Heidegger’s thesis that ‘the Being of beings “is” not itself a being.’ Engaging with Plato’s Sophist (1924-1925), Being and Time (1927), The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), ‘The Letter on “Humanism”’ (1947), and ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ (1953), this paper develops a new – restricted – interpretation of OD, which allows (contra most extant readings) that Being might be a being in some sense of the word and even (contra all extant readings) that it might be determined by a ‘kind of Being’ distinctive to itself (alongside presence-at-hand, readiness-to-hand, Dasein’s Being, and so on). The thesis of the paper is that, when Heidegger denies that Being is ‘a being’, he wants to say, instead, that Being is not an ‘exclusive kind’ – roughly, a set of features had only by some, rather than all, objects in the domain of our language."

A Teams meeting link is included in the poster in case you're interested but cannot attend in person.

Best,

Rafael