Continental Philosophy Research Group Talk (David Suarez, Toronto)

The Continental Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker David Suarez, a part-time assistant professor in the teaching stream at the University of Toronto. Dr. Suarez’s research is aimed at understanding and rehabilitating post-Kantian philosophy to develop it today as a viable mode of philosophical inquiry.

Talk Title

Death and Apperception

Talk Abstract

For Heidegger, and for Kant, respectively, death and transcendental apperception are necessary forms belonging to our finite mode of being. Like Kant, Heidegger is motivated by a concern for systematic understanding of our finite mode of being; like Kant, he aims to map out the space of meaning in which we live through an understanding of its limits. Kant limits and defines the totality of our possible cognitions through the form given by the unity of transcendental apperception. Heidegger limits and defines the totality of Dasein’s possibilities-to-be through its ‘ownmost’ possibility, which makes it a whole: its death. In this paper, I offer a novel reading of the concept of death in Heidegger which draws out these parallels with Kant, and foregrounds the systematic, validating role of authentic being-towards-death in enabling our self-determination.

About the Continental Philosophy Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Continental Philosophy Group works in the traditions of textual interpretation of human consciousness, phenomenology, and post-structuralist critical theory, among other related traditions of thought.