Profile
Daniela Vallega-Neu (Visiting Associate Professor)
Office: 328 PLC
Office Hours: Wednesday 1-3pm
Phone: 541-346-5979
Email: dneu@uoregon.edu
View CV
RESEARCH
Daniela Vallega-Neu earned her PhD at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany) in 1995 with a work on the notions of grounding and groundlessness in Heidegger and Derrida. Subsequently her research focused on the “bodily dimension in thinking” from a historical-genealogical and phenomenological perspective, exploring works of Plato, Nietzsche, Scheler, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Foucault. From this project grew her ongoing work on embodied time by focusing on the notion of rhythm. Time is approached in terms of the rhythmic articulation of things and events such that time is of things and events in their encroaching occurrences. At the same time, Vallega-Neu continued intensive work on Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Of the event). She wrote a widely used introduction to this crucial work titled Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (the book was translated into Chinese), and she just finished a new translation of Contributions to Philosophy together with Richard Rojcewicz (forthcoming with Indiana University Press).
Vallega-Neu’s current book project traces shifts of themes and concepts in Heidegger’s non-public writings from Contributions to Philosophy to Das Ereignis (GA 65, 66, 69, 70, 71). In these non-public writings Heidegger searches at the limit of language for original ways of articulating historical being in terms of Ereignis (event). He does this by departing more and more radically from traditional philosophical thinking and articulation. This occurs by way of a more and more radical interpretation of ancient Greek thought as well as through a profound criticism of our epoch in relation to what Heidegger calls “Machenschaft” (machination) and the abandonment of beings. Vallega-Neu’s book project also takes account of the historical setting of these non-public writings (in German editions they are being called Heidegger’s “seynsgeschichtliche Abhandlungen”), which currently consist in five volumes written between 1936 and 1942, i.e. shortly before and during World War II. A sixth and last volume belonging to and concluding this series (GA 72 written in 1944) has not yet been published and may be included in the project later on. GA 69-71 only recently appeared in German and the volumes are now being translated into English.
BOOK PUBLICATIONS
Authored books:
The Bodily Dimension in Thinking (SUNY Press, 2005).
Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy.’ An Introduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
Die Notwendigkeit der Gründung im Zeitalter der Dekonstruktion. Zur Gründung in Heideggers 'Beiträgen zur Philosophie'; unter Hinzuziehung der Derridaschen Dekonstruktion (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1997). (“The Need of Grounding in the Age of Deconstruction: On Grounding in Heidegger's 'Contributions to Philosophy’ and its Relation to Derridian Deconstruction.”)
Co-edited books:
A Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy,’ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
Co-translated books:
Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), (forthcoming with Indiana University Press).
John Sallis, Einbildunkskraft (Mohr/Siebeck, 2010).
TEACHING INTERESTS
Vallega-Neu teaches single author courses, theme-based courses with a historical approach drawing from the classical Western tradition, and courses in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. In the past, she has taught single author courses on Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Kant, and theme-based courses with a historical approach on topics such as truth, experience and nature, soul and body, theory of ethics, and, more recently, the human place in the cosmos. She also has taught introductory level critical thinking courses on a regular basis.
In the academic year 2011-2012, Vallega-Neu will teach Phil 323 (Moral Theory), Phil 463/563 (Heidegger’s Being and Time), Phil 103 (Critical Thinking), Phil 433/533 (Leibniz), Phil 399 (Place in Cosmos), Phil 415 (Continental Philosophy).
COURSE LINKS
Fall 2012
PHIL 399 Truth
PHIL 453/553 Nietzsche
Winter 2013
PHIL 103 Critical Reasoning
PHIL 421/521 The Presocratics
Spring 2013
PHIL 345 Place in the Cosmos
PHIL 463/563 Heidegger