Metaphysics and Oppression Heideggers Challenge to Western Philosophy [Paperback]

In this stunning philosophical accomplishment, McCumber sheds important new light on the history of substance metaphysics and Heidegger's challenge to metaphysical thinking.... Well-documented, brilliant, definitely a major contribution to philosophy! Choice

In this compelling work, John McCumber unfolds a history of Western metaphysics that is also a history of the legitimation of oppression. That is, until Heidegger. But Heidegger himself did not see how his conception of metaphysics opened doors to challenge the domination encoded in structures and institutionssuch as slavery, colonialism, and marriagethat in the past have given order to the Western world.

Proem
Introduction: Two Heideggers and Their Challenge
Part 1: The Codification and Consolidation of Ousia (Aristotle and Aquinas)
1. Aristotles Concept of Ousia
2. Ousia as Parameter in Aristotle
3. The Docility of Matter in Thomas Aquinas
4. Two Ancient Engines of Oppression
Appendix to Part 1: Plato and Prehistory
Part 2: The Modern Eviction of Ousia (Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hume)
Introduction to Part 2
5. The Cartesian Relocation of Ousia
6. Ousia and Sovereignty in Hobbes
7. Ousia and Property Rights in Locke
8. The Triumph of the Individual in Hume
9. Critical Accounts of Oppression in Mudimbe, Douglass, de Beauvoir
Appendix to Part 2: Ousiodic Structures in Spinoza and Leibniz
Part 3: Heideggers Challenge to Ousia
10. Heideggers Presentation of Diakena in Being and Time
11. Diakena and Thing in the Later Heidegger
12. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

John McCumber is Professor of German at Northwestern University. He is author of Poetic Interaction: Language, Freedom, Reason and The Company of Words: Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy.