Mahon O' Brien | University of Sussex (original) (raw)

Books by Mahon O' Brien

With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early... more With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early career researchers and established academic figures in response to To Be Born, my most recent book. The contributors approach key issues of this book from their own scientific fields and perspectives – through calls for a different way of bringing up and educating children, the constitution of a new environmental and sociocultural milieu or the criticism of past metaphysics and the introduction of new themes into the philosophical horizon. However, all the essays which compose the volume correspond to proposals for the advent of a new human being – so answering the subtitle of To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being. To Be Born thus acts as a background from which each author had the opportunity to develop and think in their own way. As such Towards a New Human Being is part of a longer-term undertaking in which I engaged together and in dialogue with more or less confirmed thinkers with a view to giving birth to a new human being and building a new world.

–Luce Irigaray

Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781786613837 • Paperback • October 2019 • $19.99 • (£13.95), 2019

Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original a... more Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original and challenging philosophical concepts, as well as his association with – and sympathy for – the Nazi Party during World War II.Providing an introduction to both the man and his philosophy, this book is a concise, jargon-free journey through his life and thought.

The publication of Heidegger’s private ‘Black Notebooks’ from the 1930s and 40s has led to renewed interest in the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political views and caused widespread confusion and condemnation. This short book puts many of these problems into context and offers an honest appraisal of Heidegger’s disturbing political views and how they might relate to some of the perennial themes that occupied his philosophical imagination.

A fascinating portrait of a brilliant, complicated and often unattractive human being, the book will prove invaluable for students with some familiarity with Heidegger’s thought, students approaching Heidegger’s work for the first time and non-specialists looking to acquaint themselves with a great, yet problematic, twentieth century thinker.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate conc... more Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward.

Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues that, however inflammatory, Heidegger's rhetoric cannot be simply reduced to crude Nazi jingoism.

This book is a genuinely philosophical approach to the Heidegger controversy and a much-needed re-examination of his ideas and influences. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/heidegger-history-and-the-holocaust-9781472510198/#sthash.bn3n4WNd.dpuf

Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed i... more Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of “resoluteness” in Being and Time with Heidegger’s post-war account of “releasement” in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly ‘anti-humanist’ thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O’Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger’s movement from authenticity to the search for an authentic free relation to the world – as captured by the term “releasement”. By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger’s thought in its entirety, O’Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy.

Papers by Mahon O' Brien

Springer eBooks, 2019

This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of ... more This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of his famous 1929 inaugural lecture (‘What Is Metaphysics?’) and his 1940s retrospectives on the same lecture along with some related discussions in his 1935 lecture course—Introduction to Metaphysics. The chapter argues that Heidegger’s major concern in his early account of moods is best understood as an attempt to identify the role that absence plays in Dasein’s barest affective states which testify once more to the constant interplay of presence and absence in terms of what it means for anything to be. Though Heidegger looks to clarify his position in later writings, his account of moods is frequently misunderstood by commentators who see Heidegger’s early work as existentialist, humanist and/or anthropological in ways that fail to appreciate how his discussions in the existential analytic and the subsequent account of authenticity are, in fact, fledgling attempts to begin to sketch out the possibility of moving beyond the metaphysics of presence.

Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original a... more Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original and challenging philosophical concepts, as well as his association with – and sympathy for – the Nazi Party during World War II.Providing an introduction to both the man and his philosophy, this book is a concise, jargon-free journey through his life and thought. The publication of Heidegger’s private ‘Black Notebooks’ from the 1930s and 40s has led to renewed interest in the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political views and caused widespread confusion and condemnation. This short book puts many of these problems into context and offers an honest appraisal of Heidegger’s disturbing political views and how they might relate to some of the perennial themes that occupied his philosophical imagination. A fascinating portrait of a brilliant, complicated and often unattractive human being, the book will prove invaluable for students with some familiarity with Heidegger’s t...

Challenging a Fictitious Neutrality: Heidegger in Question, 2022

In recent work Irigaray has continued to meditate on the myopic (we might say ‘monadic’) focus of... more In recent work Irigaray has continued to meditate on the myopic (we might say ‘monadic’) focus of the Western tradition when it comes to its failure to acknowledge sexuate difference. Irigaray has successfully diagnosed the patriarchally over-determined nature of that tradition masquerading behind a façade of objectivity and neutrality in ways that continue to open up interpretive and critical possibilities in terms of reading the canon today. In some of her work, Irigaray levels a powerful challenge against Heidegger’s conception of Dasein and his point of entry into ‘phenomenological ontology’. Thus, Heidegger, the thinker that Irigaray, arguably, engages with most positively in some of her recent work is charged not just with the ‘exsanguination’ of his conception of Dasein, as it were, but with having neutered Dasein in a way that is all too characteristic of the monadic tendencies of the Western tradition and its enduring suppression of sexuate difference. Part of what we will examine in some depth in this section of the book is a blindspot in Heidegger’s account of Dasein which, for all of his insights concerning the social constitution of Dasein, leaves him open to some of the criticisms which Irigaray has successfully levelled against an entire tradition. As part of our efforts to tease these issues out in some detail, we will consider Derrida’s first Geschlecht essay where he looks to exonerate Heidegger from the charge of phallogocentrism (a charge he had levelled against him in a 1982 interview), along with more recent efforts to artificially cross-pollinate between Heidegger, Derrida and Irigaray. We will further examine the problematic ways that Heidegger looks to ‘neutralise’ Dasein in 1928 as well as his attempts in a series of 1930s texts to introduce a distinction between Dasein and the being of the human being. These attempts dovetail with a series of bizarre and illegitimate moves to exclude “whole peoples and races” from the domain of meaningful historical existence in the 1930s in particular.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate conc... more Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward. Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues tha...

International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 2021

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk O'Brien, Mahon (2021) 'The case against the use of the air-cushioned whip... more http://sro.sussex.ac.uk O'Brien, Mahon (2021) 'The case against the use of the air-cushioned whip in horseracing: analyzing the arguments'. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. pp. 1-16.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2020

ABSTRACT Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twen... more ABSTRACT Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the topic for this special issue is the relationship between phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality, sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century phenomenologists.

The Social Science Journal, 2010

We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from the desert, it had ... more We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from the desert, it had grown like a mushroom in the silence of a European forest, it would have done so in the shadow of big trees, in the shelter of their silence or their indifference but in the same soil. I will not list these trees which in Europe people an immense black forest, I will not count the species.. .In their bushy taxonomy, they would bear the names of religions, philosophies, political regimes, economic structures, religious or academic institutions. In short, what is just as confusedly called culture, or the world of spirit." (Derrida: 109/110) "somewhat hysterical phrases are deployed by critics who, recognizing Heidegger's rejection of biologism, none the less wish to tar him with the brush of Auschwitz." (Young: 44) The name Martin Heidegger has been attached to more 'scandal', perhaps, than that of any other thinker of the last century. It has proved next to impossible for most commentators to discuss Heidegger's 'politics' without eventually becoming mired in polemics or apologetics. 1 All too often, a binary code obtains such that one is 'required' to declare allegiance to either the acolytes or the witch-hunters before one is lent an ear. In the following, we will look to situate the Heidegger controversy, which raged through intellectual circles until relatively recently, in the context of the predominant 'agenda' and concomitant set of attitudes that have come to monopolize any such debate. Our aim is to demonstrate that the way this controversy has unfolded reflects a kind of victor's morality and a collective strategy of self-deception concerning World War II and the Holocaust. We are thus pointing to sources of possible intersection between what has, for the most part, been a controversy which has enjoyed systematic treatment more or less exclusively in philosophy circles, and the work of sociologists and social

Towards a New Human Being, 2019

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2014

Abstract Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and ... more Abstract Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and Time have been a longstanding source of confusion and controversy in the literature. Many critics have been keen to identify contradictions between Heidegger’s positive account of the social nature of everyday Dasein and the putatively solipsistic account of authentic Dasein which comes later. This paper focuses on Heidegger’s brief attempts to sketch the outlines for the notion of something like authentic intersubjectivity. In doing so we will see where the temptation arises to read Heidegger as having failed to remain consistent but also how Heidegger himself is responsible for some of the confusion here.

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2012

Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed i... more Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of “resoluteness” in Being and Time with Heidegger’s post-war account of “releasement” in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly ‘anti-humanist’ thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O’Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger’s movement from authenticity to the search for an authentic free relation to the world – as captured by the term “releasement”. By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger’s thought in its entirety, O’Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy.

International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics , 2021

Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals... more Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals, horseracing has come in for renewed and, in many instances, justifiable scrutiny. This has led to an ongoing public debate concerning the use of the padded whip in particular – a debate which has been reasonably open and well contested. However, the scientific/academic debate has been disappointingly one-sided and, to date, the views of anyone other than those opposed to the continued use of the padded whip have not been given an airing. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance in the academic debate by revisiting some of the key arguments deployed by authors who express grave concerns over the use of the padded whip in racing, challenging what are taken to be significant weaknesses in many of them. For the sport to be able to make informed policy decisions on this important issue, a number of things are needed. First, a critical review of the studies available is needed. And, secondly, gaps in the literature and research need to be flagged. As things stand, the jury is still out from a scientific and philosophical point of view on the issue of whether the padded whip is painful, despite the claims of some of the more vocal critics of the practice. This paper will further look to identify the challenges ahead and the kind of research urgently needed.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2021

The controversy surrounding Heidegger’s remarks on the Holocaust in Bremen in 1949 erupted again ... more The controversy surrounding Heidegger’s remarks on the Holocaust in Bremen in 1949 erupted again recently owing to some of the revelations concerning Heidegger’s antisemitism in recently published notebooks from the 1930s in particular. An overlooked dimension to this controversy within a controversy is the specific relationship between Heidegger’s account of being-towards-death in Being and Time and his remarks in Bremen in 1949. One of the most notorious passages from the Bremen lectures is best understood against the backdrop of Heidegger’s account of death in Being and Time where he distinguishes between the notions of death (as a way for Dasein to be) and perishing. In this paper we will revisit Heidegger’s account of being-towards-death and the concomitant notion of Dasein (as the way of being for the human being) before looking at the conflicting ways that he will invoke those ideas in subsequent work. We will further challenge the criticisms of Heidegger’s Bremen remarks in some recent literature and offer a competing interpretation.

THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY, 2020

Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-ce... more Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with
some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the
topic for this special issue is the relationship between
phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to
look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality,
sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the
manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her
critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century
phenomenologists.

3:16 Richard 3:16 - Richard Marshall's Philosophy Interviews after 3:AM, 2019

"Mahon O’Brien is concerned with issues in phenomenology, in particular, the work of Martin Heid... more "Mahon O’Brien is concerned with issues in phenomenology, in particular, the work of Martin Heidegger. Here he discusses reactions to Heidegger's Nazism, the link between his politics and his philosophy, his anti-semitism, whether there are breaks and ruptures in Heidegger's thinking, the meaning of Being as Heidegger's single philosophical concern, how the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' connects with politics, the idea of authenticity, whether Being and Time contains politics, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, Dasein, technology and the Holocaust, whether Heidegger is just reheated Spengler and Junger, and what Heidegger's achievements are." Richard Marshall.

With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early... more With my own introduction and epilogue, Towards a New Human Being gathers original essays by early career researchers and established academic figures in response to To Be Born, my most recent book. The contributors approach key issues of this book from their own scientific fields and perspectives – through calls for a different way of bringing up and educating children, the constitution of a new environmental and sociocultural milieu or the criticism of past metaphysics and the introduction of new themes into the philosophical horizon. However, all the essays which compose the volume correspond to proposals for the advent of a new human being – so answering the subtitle of To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being. To Be Born thus acts as a background from which each author had the opportunity to develop and think in their own way. As such Towards a New Human Being is part of a longer-term undertaking in which I engaged together and in dialogue with more or less confirmed thinkers with a view to giving birth to a new human being and building a new world.

–Luce Irigaray

Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781786613837 • Paperback • October 2019 • $19.99 • (£13.95), 2019

Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original a... more Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original and challenging philosophical concepts, as well as his association with – and sympathy for – the Nazi Party during World War II.Providing an introduction to both the man and his philosophy, this book is a concise, jargon-free journey through his life and thought.

The publication of Heidegger’s private ‘Black Notebooks’ from the 1930s and 40s has led to renewed interest in the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political views and caused widespread confusion and condemnation. This short book puts many of these problems into context and offers an honest appraisal of Heidegger’s disturbing political views and how they might relate to some of the perennial themes that occupied his philosophical imagination.

A fascinating portrait of a brilliant, complicated and often unattractive human being, the book will prove invaluable for students with some familiarity with Heidegger’s thought, students approaching Heidegger’s work for the first time and non-specialists looking to acquaint themselves with a great, yet problematic, twentieth century thinker.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate conc... more Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward.

Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues that, however inflammatory, Heidegger's rhetoric cannot be simply reduced to crude Nazi jingoism.

This book is a genuinely philosophical approach to the Heidegger controversy and a much-needed re-examination of his ideas and influences. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/heidegger-history-and-the-holocaust-9781472510198/#sthash.bn3n4WNd.dpuf

Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed i... more Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of “resoluteness” in Being and Time with Heidegger’s post-war account of “releasement” in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly ‘anti-humanist’ thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O’Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger’s movement from authenticity to the search for an authentic free relation to the world – as captured by the term “releasement”. By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger’s thought in its entirety, O’Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy.

Springer eBooks, 2019

This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of ... more This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of his famous 1929 inaugural lecture (‘What Is Metaphysics?’) and his 1940s retrospectives on the same lecture along with some related discussions in his 1935 lecture course—Introduction to Metaphysics. The chapter argues that Heidegger’s major concern in his early account of moods is best understood as an attempt to identify the role that absence plays in Dasein’s barest affective states which testify once more to the constant interplay of presence and absence in terms of what it means for anything to be. Though Heidegger looks to clarify his position in later writings, his account of moods is frequently misunderstood by commentators who see Heidegger’s early work as existentialist, humanist and/or anthropological in ways that fail to appreciate how his discussions in the existential analytic and the subsequent account of authenticity are, in fact, fledgling attempts to begin to sketch out the possibility of moving beyond the metaphysics of presence.

Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original a... more Martin Heidegger was a captivating and controversial philosopher, known for his highly original and challenging philosophical concepts, as well as his association with – and sympathy for – the Nazi Party during World War II.Providing an introduction to both the man and his philosophy, this book is a concise, jargon-free journey through his life and thought. The publication of Heidegger’s private ‘Black Notebooks’ from the 1930s and 40s has led to renewed interest in the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political views and caused widespread confusion and condemnation. This short book puts many of these problems into context and offers an honest appraisal of Heidegger’s disturbing political views and how they might relate to some of the perennial themes that occupied his philosophical imagination. A fascinating portrait of a brilliant, complicated and often unattractive human being, the book will prove invaluable for students with some familiarity with Heidegger’s t...

Challenging a Fictitious Neutrality: Heidegger in Question, 2022

In recent work Irigaray has continued to meditate on the myopic (we might say ‘monadic’) focus of... more In recent work Irigaray has continued to meditate on the myopic (we might say ‘monadic’) focus of the Western tradition when it comes to its failure to acknowledge sexuate difference. Irigaray has successfully diagnosed the patriarchally over-determined nature of that tradition masquerading behind a façade of objectivity and neutrality in ways that continue to open up interpretive and critical possibilities in terms of reading the canon today. In some of her work, Irigaray levels a powerful challenge against Heidegger’s conception of Dasein and his point of entry into ‘phenomenological ontology’. Thus, Heidegger, the thinker that Irigaray, arguably, engages with most positively in some of her recent work is charged not just with the ‘exsanguination’ of his conception of Dasein, as it were, but with having neutered Dasein in a way that is all too characteristic of the monadic tendencies of the Western tradition and its enduring suppression of sexuate difference. Part of what we will examine in some depth in this section of the book is a blindspot in Heidegger’s account of Dasein which, for all of his insights concerning the social constitution of Dasein, leaves him open to some of the criticisms which Irigaray has successfully levelled against an entire tradition. As part of our efforts to tease these issues out in some detail, we will consider Derrida’s first Geschlecht essay where he looks to exonerate Heidegger from the charge of phallogocentrism (a charge he had levelled against him in a 1982 interview), along with more recent efforts to artificially cross-pollinate between Heidegger, Derrida and Irigaray. We will further examine the problematic ways that Heidegger looks to ‘neutralise’ Dasein in 1928 as well as his attempts in a series of 1930s texts to introduce a distinction between Dasein and the being of the human being. These attempts dovetail with a series of bizarre and illegitimate moves to exclude “whole peoples and races” from the domain of meaningful historical existence in the 1930s in particular.

Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate conc... more Heidegger, History and the Holocaust is an important contribution to the longstanding debate concerning Martin Heidegger's association with National Socialism. Although a difficult topic, this ambitious new work moves the entire debate on the Heidegger controversy forward. Following Being and Time Heidegger expands on his notion of authenticity and related notions such as historicity and discusses the possibility of an authentic Dasein of a people along structurally consistent lines to his account of authenticity in Being and Time. O'Brien argues that the same difficulties which appear to hamstring the early account of authenticity further affect the notion of an authentic Dasein of a people; Heidegger's political myopia in the thirties can thus be attributed to an underlying failure to come to terms with some of the difficulties discussed in this study. O'Brien concedes that Heidegger's philosophy is influenced by its historical period and context but argues tha...

International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 2021

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk O'Brien, Mahon (2021) 'The case against the use of the air-cushioned whip... more http://sro.sussex.ac.uk O'Brien, Mahon (2021) 'The case against the use of the air-cushioned whip in horseracing: analyzing the arguments'. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. pp. 1-16.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2020

ABSTRACT Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twen... more ABSTRACT Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the topic for this special issue is the relationship between phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality, sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century phenomenologists.

The Social Science Journal, 2010

We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from the desert, it had ... more We all know this, but it has to be constantly recalled. And even if, far from the desert, it had grown like a mushroom in the silence of a European forest, it would have done so in the shadow of big trees, in the shelter of their silence or their indifference but in the same soil. I will not list these trees which in Europe people an immense black forest, I will not count the species.. .In their bushy taxonomy, they would bear the names of religions, philosophies, political regimes, economic structures, religious or academic institutions. In short, what is just as confusedly called culture, or the world of spirit." (Derrida: 109/110) "somewhat hysterical phrases are deployed by critics who, recognizing Heidegger's rejection of biologism, none the less wish to tar him with the brush of Auschwitz." (Young: 44) The name Martin Heidegger has been attached to more 'scandal', perhaps, than that of any other thinker of the last century. It has proved next to impossible for most commentators to discuss Heidegger's 'politics' without eventually becoming mired in polemics or apologetics. 1 All too often, a binary code obtains such that one is 'required' to declare allegiance to either the acolytes or the witch-hunters before one is lent an ear. In the following, we will look to situate the Heidegger controversy, which raged through intellectual circles until relatively recently, in the context of the predominant 'agenda' and concomitant set of attitudes that have come to monopolize any such debate. Our aim is to demonstrate that the way this controversy has unfolded reflects a kind of victor's morality and a collective strategy of self-deception concerning World War II and the Holocaust. We are thus pointing to sources of possible intersection between what has, for the most part, been a controversy which has enjoyed systematic treatment more or less exclusively in philosophy circles, and the work of sociologists and social

Towards a New Human Being, 2019

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2014

Abstract Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and ... more Abstract Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and Time have been a longstanding source of confusion and controversy in the literature. Many critics have been keen to identify contradictions between Heidegger’s positive account of the social nature of everyday Dasein and the putatively solipsistic account of authentic Dasein which comes later. This paper focuses on Heidegger’s brief attempts to sketch the outlines for the notion of something like authentic intersubjectivity. In doing so we will see where the temptation arises to read Heidegger as having failed to remain consistent but also how Heidegger himself is responsible for some of the confusion here.

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2012

Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed i... more Heidegger’s thinking in the decades following the publication of Being and Time is often deemed irreconcilable with that work. Critics contrast the notion of “resoluteness” in Being and Time with Heidegger’s post-war account of “releasement” in an attempt to establish a discrepancy between the allegedly voluntarist humanism of his early work and the supposedly ‘anti-humanist’ thinking of his later work. By contrast, Mahon O’Brien argues for the structural and thematic coherence of Heidegger’s movement from authenticity to the search for an authentic free relation to the world – as captured by the term “releasement”. By demonstrating the structural and thematic unity of Heidegger’s thought in its entirety, O’Brien paves the way for a more measured and philosophically grounded understanding of the issues at stake in the Heidegger controversy.

International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics , 2021

Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals... more Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals, horseracing has come in for renewed and, in many instances, justifiable scrutiny. This has led to an ongoing public debate concerning the use of the padded whip in particular – a debate which has been reasonably open and well contested. However, the scientific/academic debate has been disappointingly one-sided and, to date, the views of anyone other than those opposed to the continued use of the padded whip have not been given an airing. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance in the academic debate by revisiting some of the key arguments deployed by authors who express grave concerns over the use of the padded whip in racing, challenging what are taken to be significant weaknesses in many of them. For the sport to be able to make informed policy decisions on this important issue, a number of things are needed. First, a critical review of the studies available is needed. And, secondly, gaps in the literature and research need to be flagged. As things stand, the jury is still out from a scientific and philosophical point of view on the issue of whether the padded whip is painful, despite the claims of some of the more vocal critics of the practice. This paper will further look to identify the challenges ahead and the kind of research urgently needed.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2021

The controversy surrounding Heidegger’s remarks on the Holocaust in Bremen in 1949 erupted again ... more The controversy surrounding Heidegger’s remarks on the Holocaust in Bremen in 1949 erupted again recently owing to some of the revelations concerning Heidegger’s antisemitism in recently published notebooks from the 1930s in particular. An overlooked dimension to this controversy within a controversy is the specific relationship between Heidegger’s account of being-towards-death in Being and Time and his remarks in Bremen in 1949. One of the most notorious passages from the Bremen lectures is best understood against the backdrop of Heidegger’s account of death in Being and Time where he distinguishes between the notions of death (as a way for Dasein to be) and perishing. In this paper we will revisit Heidegger’s account of being-towards-death and the concomitant notion of Dasein (as the way of being for the human being) before looking at the conflicting ways that he will invoke those ideas in subsequent work. We will further challenge the criticisms of Heidegger’s Bremen remarks in some recent literature and offer a competing interpretation.

THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY, 2020

Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with some key figures in twentieth-ce... more Luce Irigaray has devoted considerable energy to wrestling with
some key figures in twentieth-century phenomenology. Since the
topic for this special issue is the relationship between
phenomenology and ancient philosophy, I plan in the following to
look at Irigaray’s reading of Plato, given the centrality of carnality,
sexuation and embodiment, not just to her own project, but the
manner in which she invokes the same notions as part of her
critique of Plato along with a number of twentieth-century
phenomenologists.

3:16 Richard 3:16 - Richard Marshall's Philosophy Interviews after 3:AM, 2019

"Mahon O’Brien is concerned with issues in phenomenology, in particular, the work of Martin Heid... more "Mahon O’Brien is concerned with issues in phenomenology, in particular, the work of Martin Heidegger. Here he discusses reactions to Heidegger's Nazism, the link between his politics and his philosophy, his anti-semitism, whether there are breaks and ruptures in Heidegger's thinking, the meaning of Being as Heidegger's single philosophical concern, how the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' connects with politics, the idea of authenticity, whether Being and Time contains politics, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, Dasein, technology and the Holocaust, whether Heidegger is just reheated Spengler and Junger, and what Heidegger's achievements are." Richard Marshall.

Heidegger on Affect, 2019

This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of ... more This chapter re-examines Heidegger’s analysis of moods in Being and Time against the backdrop of his famous 1929 inaugural lecture (‘What Is Metaphysics?’) and his 1940s retrospectives on the same lecture along with some related discussions in his 1935 lecture course—Introduction to Metaphysics. The chapter argues that Heidegger’s major concern in his early account of moods is best understood as an attempt to identify the role that absence plays in Dasein’s barest affective states which testify once more to the constant interplay of presence and absence in terms of what it means for anything to be. Though Heidegger looks to clarify his position in later writings, his account of moods is frequently misunderstood by commentators who see Heidegger’s early work as existentialist, humanist and/or anthropological in ways that fail to appreciate how his discussions in the existential analytic and the subsequent account of authenticity are, in fact, fledgling attempts to begin to sketch out the possibility of moving beyond the metaphysics of presence.

Towards a New Human Being, 2019

Luce Irigaray’s confrontations with some of the canonical figures in Western Philosophy invite an... more Luce Irigaray’s confrontations with some of the canonical figures in Western Philosophy invite and often challenge us to reconstruct or reconsider how they might respond to her many penetrating insights and searching criticisms. A philosophical figure that, arguably, looms larger than any other for Irigaray is Martin Heidegger. In the follow- ing paper, I will gloss some ideas and themes from Heidegger’s work in ways that might push the conversation between Heidegger and Irigaray further or at least shed light on the conversation already taking place. I will do this with the notion of birth/natality in mind (especially given the way that that notion is developed in To Be Born), by revisiting Heidegger’s concerns with the importance of nothingness in any projected attempt at an overcoming of Western metaphysics. Against this backdrop we can perhaps begin to see Luce Irigaray’s work as an attempt to offer a thinking that might inaugurate a new or different kind of metaphysics and thus as an overcoming of traditional metaphys- ics. But in what ways can she profess to have gone beyond Heidegger? Are we thinking then, with Heidegger against Heidegger? Are there possibilities still? If there are—what limits the possibilities of the ‘pos- sible’, as deployed in Being and Time, to signify the role that absence plays in terms of what it means for anything to be? What do birth and natality bring to the table that is not already provided by a thinking that tries to overcome the stifling, binary grip of the metaphysics of presence?

The Final Furlong Podcast, 2022

Proudly brought to you by Kalooki Sportsbook and All About Sunday Emmet Kennedy is joined by Maho... more Proudly brought to you by Kalooki Sportsbook and All About Sunday Emmet Kennedy is joined by Mahon O’Brien Independent Chair of the BHA Ethics Committee and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, for an in-depth discussion about the Whip Consultation Report

Out of the Vat is a new (semi)regular podcast about philosophers’ work and philosophers’ lives, b... more Out of the Vat is a new (semi)regular podcast about philosophers’ work and philosophers’ lives, both inside and outside of philosophy.

Colloque «Heidegger et "les juifs"», 2015

Centre Culturel Irlandais January 24, 2015