Spring/Summer 2009 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

p h i l o s o p h y
Justifying Our Existence
An Essay in Applied Phenomenology
Graeme Nicholson
New Studies in phenomenology and Hermeneutics
Using remarkably accessible and concise writing,
Graeme Nicholson provides a close reading of
Heidegger’s methods to indicate how his work has a
practical application for existential concerns. Justifying
Our Existence shows how phenomenology can be used
to foreground existence, while also providing startling
insights into human behaviour, the motivation behind
many of our social systems, as well as one of the twentieth
century’s most important philosophers.
Graeme Nicholson is a professor emeritus in the
Department of Philosophy at the University of
Toronto.
In his magnum opus Being and Time (1927), Martin
Heidegger (1889–1976) argued that individuals
have assumed that their existence is ‘a given,’ when
in actual fact they simply have the ability to be.
Justifying Our Existence examines the ways in which
human beings attempt to calm their existential
concerns by magnifying and proving their existence
through phenomena such as self-righteousness,
careerism, nationalism, and religion.
Also from the New Studies in Phenomenology and
Hermeneutics series:
Heidegger’s Possibility
Language, Emergence—Saying Be-ing
Kenneth Maly
978-0-8020-9829-0
£28.00 / $45.00 / 2008
Heidegger and the Question of National
Socialism
Disclosure and Gestalt
Bernhard Radloff
978-0-8020-9315-8
£48.00 / $75.00 / 2007
Approx. 208 pp / 6 x 9 / February 2009
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8020-9929-7 £35.00 $55.00 E
Paper ISBN 978-0-8020-9620-3 £15.00 $24.95 C
35