Take a mountain: is it a thing or a place? It is an elemental thing-place. The mountain looms before us as a massive place for things and as itself a thing. It looms as a Thing of things, just as stones and lichen on stones are in turn things of this Thing. Furthermore, just as such determinate things as rocks…
In the introductory note to PART IV – PROLEGOMENA TO A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE of his 1972 book, The Nature of Physical Existence, the American author and philosopher Ivor Leclerc, explains why he undertook an in-depth exploration of the concept of nature – or the physical existent (from the Greek term ‘physis’, φύσις) –, examining it from historical, linguistic,…
I argue we cannot understand the meaning of the concepts of place and space, and their impact on our understanding of the nature of reality, without considering the meaning of other basic concepts that are co-implicated with and necessary for understanding the very concepts of place and space. That was particularly evident ever since I introduced Julian Barbour’s scientific history…
This article is a continuation of Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part One, where I explored Heidegger’s metaphysical discourse on Being, examining how it intersects with the reformed concept of place I am discussing at RSaP-Rethinking Space and Place. So far in the first three chapters of Introduction to Metaphysics (the 2000-edition translated by Gregory Fried and Richard…
Building on the new translation of Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (2000), this article presents Heidegger’s metaphysical discussion of Being, and I hope it will contribute to clarifying the foundation for the reinterpretation of traditional concepts of place, space, time, and matter that I am advocating for at RSaP-Rethinking Space and Place. This ground shares many intersecting threads with Heidegger’s concept…