Taking its point of departure in an enigmatic passage from the Analects, in which the interlocutor is likened by the master to a sacrificial vase, the essay explores how this teaching can be read as a indirect commentary on the proper way of inhabiting and communicating tradition. The relation to the ancestors and the proper way of handling the rites for the dead is shown to reveal a more basic hermeneutic argument in Confucian thinking, opening the text to its own future transformation.

The chapter presents the topic of “historicity” (Geschichtlichkeit) as a core concern for phenomenological thinking in the intersection with hermeneutics. It is first coined as a philosophical term by Dilthey and Yorck von Wartenburg as a way to capture the unique way in which humans exist historically and belong to history. Through their correspondence published posthumously in 1923 it enters the orbit of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, as he quotes extensively from these letters in Being in Time. For Heidegger, historicity was the key to transforming Husserlian phenomenology into hermeneutical ontology. In his reappraisal of hermeneutic thinking, Gadamer also locates historicity at the center of his magnum opus Truth and Method. The chapter also shows how Husserl was a thinker of historicity. This is brought out in particular in Derrida’s early interpretations of Husserl, where the deconstructive approach emerges literally from the problem of the historicity of ideal objects.

This article explores the connections between Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Tove Jansson and the world of the Moomins. It begins with a short summary of the impact of Nietzsche in the Nordic countries and of his most important book, focusing on passages that are of particular relevance for the analyses that follow. It then proceeds to explore its meaning and significance for Jansson in three sections. The first concerns Atos Wirtanen, the writer and politician with whom she lived for ten years, and who encouraged her to publish her first book, while he himself was completing a book on Nietzsche. In the second section, the article analyzes an early semi-autobiographical literary experiment from the Jansson family archive that displays her as a passionate reader of Nietzsche long before her meeting with Wirtanen. In the third and last section, the framework of the Zarathustra narrative is used to interpret some of the figures and scenes from the Moomin books.

Genom sin distinkta röst och inriktning har Marcia Sá Cavalcante utvidgat det svenska filosofiska språket. I sina texter har hon förvandlat den i hennes eget fall fritt valda exilen till ett tema av större räckvidd. Hennes tänkande är inte bara ett ”lovtal till intet”, som titeln lyder på en av hennes böcker, utan också till mellanrummet, såväl det historiska, kulturella, språkliga och filosofiska mellanrum där förlust och ankomst alltid är sammanlänkade. Genom hennes närvaro har den svenska och nordiska filosofiska miljön blivit rikare, mer mångfacetterad och mer spännande. Hon har också breddat förståelsen för vad filosofi är och därmed utvidgat möjligheterna för vad som är möjligt inom nordisk filosofi. Men hennes inflytande hörs inte bara i norden, utan har även fått internationell genklang och sträcker sig långt utöver det egna ämnets gränser. Om detta vittnar flera av bidragen i denna bok. Det känns följdriktigt att få hylla denna sällsynt mångspråkiga och mångbegåvade filosof med en volym som både genom sin utformning och sitt innehåll utgör en mötesplats for många röster, språk, och uttrycksformer – inte bara filosofin, utan även litteraturen, konsten och musiken.

This chapter explores the relation between Heidegger, Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Jonas, through the figure of Paul. Bultmann was Heidegger’s friend and colleague from Marburg who used an existential ontology to reinvent Lutheran theology. Hans Jonas was a student of both of them, who left Germany for USA in 1933. For Heidegger, Paul was a voice of original facticity and historicity, but also a source for his choice of National Socialism and anti-Judaism. For Bultmann, Paul and Christianity served as a defence against totalitarian temptations. Jonas’s return to Paul in his later years is both a response to Heidegger’s betrayal and a celebration of his original interpretation in a reinvention of Paul as a Jewish existential thinker. © The Author(s) 2017.