Criticism of metaphysics is usually associated with the overcoming of essentialist-correspondent schemes of thinking, which inevitably fit reality into concepts of reason. In contrast to this mode of philosophy, models are built that rely on recognition, identification, dialogue, personality, or the historicity of being. However, Jacques Derrida reasonably warns us, that through the philosophical language and through language as such, metaphysical intuitions invariably emerge even within explicit anti-metaphysical programs of thought. Among the suspects is undoubtedly the “place” category. Since identity implies dis-cerning, and dialogue is impossible without positioning the subjects involved. Even the timeness of being, thought in its most anti-essentialist version as “a number of motion” (Aristotle), suggests an initial coordinate point, and this means a localization center.

The topic of the current issue of PHILOSOPHIA e: Place, Presence, Continuity. There are papers by university lecturers and students. Looking at different angles and applying interdisciplinary methods, the authors analyze the aspiration of man to position himself meaningfully. Presence in the world is viewed as a phenomenology of habitation, as an urge to grasp the metaphysical grounds of the universe, but also as the basis of moral responsibility to future generations. We aim at presenting as broad a range of methodological approaches as possible: from traditional rationalist topologies to phenomenologically reducing models of types of places: private, public, urban, etc., as far as mapping already long time is an instrument not only of geography but also of metaphysics.

Smilen Markov
leading editor

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