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Heidegger's writings are among the most formidable in recent philosophy. The pivotal concepts of his thought are for many the source of both fascination and frustration. Yet any student of philosophy needs to become acquainted with Heidegger's thought. "Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts" is designed to facilitate this. Each chapter introduces and explains a key Heideggerian concept, or a cluster of closely related concepts. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Heidegger's thought in its early, middle, and later phases. ... Read more

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A landmark discussion between two great thinkers--the second (combining volumes III and IV) of two volumes inquiring into the central issues of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Invaluable
This text is a continuation of Heidegger's lecture series on Nietzsche. It includes Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, and Volume IV: Nihilism. There is also further commentary on the much misunderstood doctrines of 'eternal return,' and the 'overman.' Heidegger argues against the fascistic Nietzsche interpretations by Baeumler and the like. Heidegger's Nietzsche is a metaphysical thinker, he shakes him off all attempts to situate him as a thinker of biologism or crude nihilism. Rather, Nietzsche is a thinker of affirmation and enhancement. Although many are hesitant to fully accept Heidegger's preoccupation with Being in this work, there are few who reject the significance of this insightful exegesis. David Krell's analysis is also helpful and thoroughly researched.

A deep meditation
One of the greatest works on Nietzsche and about the end of Metaphysics. Heidegger re-discovers Nietzsche as a thinker, and not merely as a "critic of culture".

The Heideggerian view of Nietzsche in its entirety
Due to the political affiliation of Martin Heidegger and his place in history, it is perhaps difficult to analyze his works objectively. The temptation might be then to lift him from history, with the imagined goal of perhaps cleansing him from the troubling influences he chose to be in. But however Heidegger is read, whether in historical context, or from a "modern standpoint", he does have some interesting and original things to say about Friedrich Nietzsche. His politics was destructive, as history has shown, and that is a fact that can be discussed completely outside the context of this book.

This is a lengthy book, and concentrates on Nietzsche's work "The Will to Power". Space therefore prohibits a detailed review, but some of the more interesting discussions by the author include:

1. The classifying of Nietzsche as being the "last metaphysician" of the West. The author believes that his thought was a consummation of Western philosophy, and that the will to power is an appreciation of the decision that must be made as to whether the this final age is the conclusion of Western history or a prelude to another beginning. Nietzsche wanted philosophy to not shy away from the predicament it found itself in. Therefore the author encourages philosophers to not merely "toy" with philosophical thoughts, as this will place them merely at the boundary of the set of important philosophical issues. The will to power is a sign of courage that consists of shedding one's reservations, and in recognizing the stakes in the issues at hand.

2. The reading of Nietzsche as someone who believed that the essence of life is in "self-transcending enhancement", and not in Darwinian struggle. Value is to be equated with the enhancement of life.

3. The author's overview and explanation, and deduction of what "truth" meant for Nietzsche. Truth can become a "de-realization" and a hindrance to life, and therefore not be condition of life, and thus not a value. But for the author, Nietzsche wants to overcome nihilism, and this implies therefore that there must be a value greater than truth. And what is this value? It is art, says Nietzsche, which is "worth more than truth".

4. The author's discussion of the alleged biologism of Nietzsche. A reading of Nietzsche might tempt one to conclude that he was, but the author cautions that such a characterization of his writings would be unfounded. One must not base an understanding on mere impressions, and "unlearn" the abuse that has been leveled against the "catchword" called "biologism". The author therefore suggests that we must learn to "read".

5. The description of Nietzsche's epistemology as "schematizing a chaos". For Nietzsche, this schematizing is an act of imposing upon chaos as much regularity and as many forms as our practical needs require. This is an interesting move, for is the characterization of something as chaotic itself subject to the imposition of this regularity? But the author is certainly aware of this problem, for he discusses in detail the Nietzschean concept of chaos. His reading of Nietzsche in this regard is that chaos does not mean confusion or the removal of all order. It rather means that order is concealed, and is not understood immediately. Most eloquently, the author describes the Nietzschean epistemology as a "stream that in its flow first creates the banks and turns them toward each other in a more original way than a bridge ever would." Such a concept of knowledge may seem poetic and too ephemeral to support what is needed for activities such as science and technology, and this is correct.

6. The discussion of Nietzsche's stand on the law of contradiction. Heidegger reads Nietzsche as holding to (without an explicit admission on Nietzsche's part) an Aristotelian notion of this law, saying in effect that taking the position that the law of contradiction is the highest of all principles demands an answer to the question of what sorts of assertions it already fundamentally presupposes. Again following Aristotle, Heidegger uses 'Being" in his most powerful sense here, as it is 'Being' that has its presence and in permanence. This means that beings represented as such will take into account these two requirements via being "at the same time" and "in the same respect". But this permanence is disregarded when an individual makes a contradiction. It is a loss of memory about what is to be grasped in a "yes" and "no". Such an activity will not be harmless, says Heidegger, as one day its catastrophic consequences will be manifested. Heidegger sums up the law of noncontraction as that the "essence of beings consists in the constant absence of contradiction". Further, Heidegger says, Nietzsche's interpretation of the law of contraction is one of an "imperative". This means that its use is a declaration of "what is to count" and follows Nietzsche's conception of truth as a "holding-to-be-true". Nietzsche therefore says that "not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of a 'truth.'"

Heidegger in Secret Sacred Cowsville
This is heavy reading, as only philosophy would dare to be.It involves internal hysteria about matters which ordinary people are supposed to avoid in a way which Heidegger called the "often practiced procedure" of taking Nietzsche's revelations "as the harbinger of eruptingmadness."(p. 3)What Heidegger contributes to the psychoticmultiplicity is the recognition that Nietzsche's thought illustrates aparticular philosophy.As the first paragraph of this book puts it,"Nietzsche is that thinker who trod the path of thought to 'the willto power.'"By the next page, Heidegger turns away from individualmatters to what he feels, in the agony of our times, to be reallyphilosophical issues."Neither the person of Nietzsche nor even hiswork concern us when we make both in their connection the object of ahistoriological and psychological report."(p. 4)This is not simplereporting: people tend to think most deeply about whatever they find mosttroubling.Nietzsche could relate this kind of thing to the bite of a dogon a stone.Nothing is yielding here.Objections which suggest themselvesto anyone who tries to observe this effort might best be directedelsewhere, but in the realm of philosophy, this is the best example of thenotion that science is a sacred cow.A full understanding of the mentaleffort involved in this exercise might be closer to stripping away anyindividual's defenses than to the kind of herd instinct of those partieswhose imperviousness to thought is typical of what a political philosophywould normally represent.This is not an effort to produce a sacred cow. This is an attempt to penetrate the heart of secret sacred cowsville. ... Read more

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This volume focuses on a neglected aspect of the Heidegger controversy: the question of Martin Heidegger's relationship--as a person and as a thinker--to the indulstrialization of death as symbolized by the smokestacks at Auschwitz.The contributors seek to comprehend the meaning of Heidegger's postwar silence about the Holocaust, as well as the meaning of his several explicit references to the Extermination, in the light of his preoccupation with the nihilism that he believed to be the hallmark of our technological world.The essays reflect the editors' concern to avoid both censorship and partisanship in their selections.As a result, the book reflects the wide diversity of viewpoints, and the full spectrum of views, that have arisen in the course of the ongoing Heidegger debate.

"Milchman and Rosenberg have edited a collection of essays that focus on the German philosopher and Nazi party member-in-good-standing Martin Heidegger and his alleged 'silence' about the Holocaust in the years after its perpetration.Many of the contributors make clear that Heidegger's approach to his Nazi past is not unlike that of a whole generation of Germans who falsified or suppressed their shameful complicity in support of Hitler's Third Reich." -- Choice

"This title contains a good deal of interesting commentary on, and sharp criticism of, Germany's most puzzling and infamous twentieth-century thinker." -- Bridges ... Read more

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This brand new translation of Martin Heidgger's Mindfulness (Besinnung) makes available in English for the first time Heidegger's second major being-historical treatise. Here Heidegger returns to and elaborates in detail many of the individual dimensions of the historically self-showing and transforming allotments of be-ing. In addition to the main text, this volume also includes two further important texts, A Retrospective Look at the Pathway (1937/8) and 'The Wish and the Will (On Preserving What is Attempted)' (1937/8), in which Heidegger surveys his unpublished works, gives instructions for their eventual publication, talks about his relationship to Catholic and Protestant Christianity, and reflects on his life's path. This is a major new translation of a key text from one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

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"Highly recommended." -- Choice

Martin Heidegger's reading of Aristotle was one of the pivotal influences in the development of his philosophy. This 1931 lecture course shows the close correlation between Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of the Greeks (especially of Aristotle) and his critique of metaphysics.

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Martin Heidegger's 1925--26 lectures on truth and time provided much of the basis for his momentous work, Being and Time. Not published until 1976 as volume 21 of the Complete Works, three months before Heidegger's death, this work is central to Heidegger's overall project of reinterpreting Western thought in terms of time and truth. The text shows the degree to which Aristotle underlies Heidegger's hermeneutical theory of meaning. It also contains Heidegger's first published critique of Husserl and takes major steps toward establishing the temporal bases of logic and truth. Thomas Sheehan's elegant and insightful translation offers English-speaking readers access to this fundamental text for the first time.

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"Students and scholars alike can now see for themselves why Heidegger's lectures on the Greeks in the 1920s caused such a stir, and they can judge just what it means to read a Greek text with Heidegger." -- John Ellis, University of Memphis

"... thematic and methodological parallels render this volume a fine source for those interested in the archaeology of Being and Time.... The text shows us a young Martin Heidegger at ease and passionate about his subject...." -- International Philosophical Quarterly

This volume reconstructs Martin Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the winter semester of 1924-25, which was devoted to an interpretation of Plato and Aristotle. Published for the first time in German in 1992 as volume 19 of Heidegger's Collected Works, it is a major text not only because of its intrinsic importance as an interpretation of the Greek thinkers, but also because of its close, complementary relationship to Being and Time, composed in the same period. In Plato's Sophist, Heidegger approaches Plato through Aristotle, devoting the first part of the lectures to an extended commentary on Book VI of the Nichomachean Ethics. In a line-by-line interpretation of Plato's later dialogue, the Sophist, Heidegger then takes up the relation of Being and non-being, the ontological problematic that forms the essential link between Greek philosophy and Heidegger's thought.

Customer Reviews (2)

Don't circumscribe your philological opportunities
One of Heidegger's finest! The philosopher comes within reach of ancient Greek thought in Plato, primarily through Book VI of Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics," and a scrupulous interpretation of Plato's later dialogue, the "Sophist." The treatise is an important and inimitable interpretation of the Greek thinkers, and the connection of their thought with Heidegger's own "Being and Time." The author adduces the ontological problem of the relation of Being and non-being; the essential correlation between the ancient Greek thinkers and Martin Heidegger's own philosophy. Most of the Greek is defined by the author, or through sense expression and translation. Otherwise, a Greek-English Lexicon is of great value.

Heidegger's Plato's Sophist
If you want to read this book you do need to have an extensive knowledge of the Greek language. If you can't read Greek, don't buy this book! If you can, it is a very interesting lecture course (1924-1925) and interpretiveessay by Heidegger. Leiden, Holland ... Read more

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Estos ensayos constituyen las unicas reflexiones que Martin Heidegger ha dedicado a responder estrictamente al problema de la estetica. Se trata de El origen de la obra de artey Hölderlin y la esencia de lapoesia , reunidos con el titulo abreviado de Arte y poesia. ... Read more

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Karl Barth is doubtless one of the most important and influential theologians of the twentieth-century. The Radical Orthodoxy movement has made major contributions to the debate about the return to metaphysics in Christian theology and philosophy. In this groundbreaking book which challenges much of what is regarded as orthodoxy in Barthian circles, Timothy Stanley makes a distinctly Protestant contribution to this debate. ... Read more

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Timothy Stanley: Protestant Metaphysics After Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger
Timothy Stanley, Protestant Metaphysics After Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger.

Bridge-building can be risky in process and consequences. Those on opposite sides may not welcome direct exchanges. Timothy Stanley succeeds in building bridges which are needed and so are (or should be) very welcome. Bridges should not be equated with compromise or confusion, especially when encouraging responsible exchanges. Figurative ramifications of bridges and bridge-building attracted both Barth and Heidegger, not forgetting versions of the supreme bridge-builder (pontifex maximus) of Rome. Stanley, however, does not pontificate.

Stanley's bridges stretch between three main sites, triangularly: between a lively (plurivocal) movement in current Christian theology, labelledRadical Orthodoxy; one of the most controversial and elusive of recent philosophers, Martin Heidegger; and one of the boldest Christian theologians of the same century - Karl Barth. Some of the radically orthodox have tended to be suspicious of Protestantism in general and Barth in particular, while seeming to some, including Timothy Stanley and Stanley Hauerwas, to protest too strongly about their radically orthodox difference. Heidegger, brought up a Roman Catholic, was influenced by (amongst others) Paul and Luther, and sounds at times somewhat like them and Barth in his radical denunciation of `metaphysics' and avowals of separation between faith and philosophy. Barth, a radical Reformed and reforming Protestant, says little explicitly about Heidegger. However, Barth is clearly interested in Heidegger. Moreover, Barth, differently yet similarly, aims to acknowledge being and time, and act and being, as woven together in the living God. For Barth, the Holy One, who reveals and shares his mystery in Christ, calls for and gives ecumenical hope that all may live and move and have their being as participants in the triune God.

Most of this book explores Barth's theological and Christological ontology, suggesting judiciously some similarities to, and differences from, Heidegger, as well as Radical Orthodoxy. Perhaps consideration of Heidegger serves as a catalyst for reconsidering relations between the other two. Barth and Heidegger seem somewhat more similar to each other in their earlier years, when Barth's explosive second-edition commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans was highly influential, and when diverse thinkers associated with Barth were labelled as dialectical theologians. The young Heidegger was, for a time, connected with these circles, not least because of a shared affinity for the young Luther.

At that time Barth stressed what he called the otherness of God over against the world (creation) apparently dominated by sinful humanity. Critics have alleged this account of God's otherness over against the world's otherness wavers too close to a metaphysical or theological dualism, with redemption (as reversal) swerving towards some version of monism or pantheism. Some recall Hegel's criticism of `the bad infinite' which, despite its apparent otherness, is nevertheless dependent on, or inter-dependent with, the finite beings which it supposedly transcends. Whether the younger Barth really fell into this double-bind of dualism versus pantheism, or simply explored it with an empathy not credibly turning into Christian constancy, need not be settled here, as Stanley recognises.

What Stanley does, however, is suggest, with an opening gambit or teacher's tactical move, that Heidegger and Barth at this stage shared the same cluster of problems, this being close to what Heidegger meant by the ontological difference between being and beings. Stanley also makes good use of evidence that the younger Barth and Heidegger were similarly preoccupied by Luther's theology of the cross, and that Luther's ambiguous account of the hidden God lends some support to dualism. Stanley also shows how Luther does not fit the allegedly Protestant and anti-ontological stereotypes on which Radical Orthodoxy has tended to rely.

Stanley introduces enough Heidegger to help readers unfamiliar with him to make sufficient sense of Heidegger's ontological difference and associated critique of onto-theology for betraying this difference, issuing in critique of many versions of theology for collusion with metaphysics, philosophical theology and ontology.. As Stanley explains, in the wake of these aspects of Heidegger, many others currently stress what they see as a need for God without being, or faith without any metaphysical philosophy. Surprisingly, some of those labelled as radically orthodox, and some of those labelled as Barthians, have tended to read Barth as a whole in such ways. Probably because Stanley is so engaged in explaining why such readings of Barth amount to caricatures, he seems not to have space to develop his account of the later Heidegger. For Heidegger may well have modified his earlier attempts to articulate the ontological difference, as implied for example by Julian Young in chapter one of his book on the later Heidegger, and in explaining Heidegger's later meditations on the fourfold.

Instead, Stanley unfolds an importantly coherent re-reading of Barth's development, focussing on his Anselm book and Church Dogmatics.Stanley's re-reading makes impressive use of Eberhard Busch's essay on Barth's great theme, `God is God', while critically and constructively reviewing relevant controversies, including Balthasar and McCormack on analogy and dialectic, and Hunsinger and McCormack on God's election. All this shows how the living, triune God differs differently from the `divinities' of dualism and pantheism. Rather than attempting too much in this book, Stanley promises us his next book will develop further what all this implies for the being of the church. Perhaps such development may include engagement with John Zizioulas and William Desmond, amongst others? Overall, this is a book of rich and rare promise, as well as attractive achievements. I recommend you try these bridges and improve your bridge-building.

Longer reviews will include my equally positive contribution for the International Journal of Systematic Theology (2011).

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

excellent study of Heidegger's philosophy
This is an excellent study of Heidegger's philosophy by following a detailed study of "Being unto death". The author begins with Being and Time and includes Heidegger's later works.
This includes a clear discussion of a topic which has been difficult for me : the four quadrants.

Being-unto-death as man's existential condition.
This work is an examination of Heidegger's thinking about death and its relationship to the questioning of being.The book looks at Heidegger's early thought in _Sein und Zeit_, with his notion of an authentic being-unto-death as an existential modality for man through the "turning" in his thinking to his mature thought.I found the section of the book which deals with "being-in-death" and Heidegger's thought as it relates to an "after-death" to be particularly interesting.Heidegger takes no position on the possibility of a "being-in-death", but this work examines some of the thinking around this issue.Overall this is a good introduction to both Heidegger's early and later thought and a good discussion of the philosophical issue of death. ... Read more

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Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy presents a lecture course given by Martin Heidegger in 1926 at the University of Marburg. First published in German as volume 22 of the collected works, the book provides Heidegger's most systematic history of Ancient philosophy beginning with Thales and ending with Aristotle. In this lecture, which coincides with the completion of his most important work, Being and Time, Heidegger is working out a way to sharply differentiate between beings and Being. Richard Rojcewicz's clear and accurate translation offers English-speaking readers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on Ancient thought and concepts such as principle, cause, nature, unity, multiplicity, Logos, truth, science, soul, category, and motion. ... Read more

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out of print--available as public download
careful of the money you spend--this is now free as a .pdf.At least as of this writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

I disagree
with T. Beers' otherwise excellent review: this book IS for specialists, and for specialists particularly interested in Heidegger, at that.

For others it's mildly interesting, as might be a reality show (without the vulgarity and banality, of course). But you have to know at least how to read Greek, as citations are not invariably translated (although the majority is), and only the first time they appear. Since the book has several misspellings in Greek (i.e., "Hesisdos" for "Hesiodos" in p. 43; unfortunately, as I didn't plan to write a review, I didn't take note of the pages where the others are located when I was reading the book, so I can't correct them here), this is a forbidding difficulty for nonspecialists.

The reality show (unfortunately deprived of its philological content, as we are informed in page 105, Note 1 to the text) consists of Fink, Heidegger and the seminar's participants reasoning aloud, as unselfconsciously as two teachers can before their pupils and viceversa (to top it, Fink had also been Heidegger's pupil a generation before), about the interpretation of "hen" (the one) and "ta panta" (all there is, the totality, the Universe, etc.), basing themselves on every surviving Heraclitean fragment where those words/concepts are explicitly or implicitly mentioned. The interpretations are, for me, sometimes too farfetched. They are tainted with Heidegger's very original and sometimes (to me) constrained views on the Greeks generally, and the Presocratics particularly (although during at least his early years H. admired Aristotle the most, see for example Brogan's "H. & Aristotle"), and also with his unsupported metaphysical belief that they had found another, more meaningful, way of looking at/understanding/intuiting reality. Always for me, the most interesting new thing I found is that H.'s "Unverborgenheit" is in the text rendered as "nonconcealment" instead of "unconcealment" as is customary. I don't think the Master would have approved.

A book for Heideggerians. One amongst very many indeed, as the totality of his written and spoken output is being slowly but surely published.

After all these years, still a great guide to early Greek
I would like to suggest that the widest stance that I have encountered reading philosophy shows up in Greek on page 18 of HERACLITUS SEMINAR: Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, translated by Charles H. Seibert (Northwestern University Press, 1993). The English translation was copyright 1979 by The University of Alabama Press. First published in German as HERACLIT. I have the second paperbound printing, 1994. The hermeneutical circle is correlated to fragment 7, translated in Note 4 on page 163, but the discussion of the Greek terms involving a moving relatedness of things that actually exist which elucidates an indeterminate number of things of a quintessential kind. "In smoke, to be sure, things become elusive, but it does not eliminate those distinctions which become evident . . ." (Fink, p. 18). Heidegger becomes interested in the gnosis of "grasping humans" on page 19.

This book does not have an index. The page guide on page 171 shows that every ten pages in English is 16, 15, 14, or 17 pages in the German. Heraclitus wrote a book which was familiar to many thinkers in the ancient world, but all we can do now is "cast light on an inner coherence of the fragments' meaning, but without pretending to reconstruct the original form of Heraclitus' lost writing, [On Nature]. We shall attempt to trace a thread throughout the multiplicity of his sayings in the hope that a certain track can thereby show itself. Whether our arrangement of the fragments is better than that adopted by Diels is a question that should remain unsettled." (Fink, p. 4).

I believe the Fr. 1 mentioned by Heidegger on page 7 is the beginning of Heraclitus' book. In the discussion, we have the exchange of ideas:

Heidegger: Since when do we have concepts at all?
Participant: Only since Plato and Aristotle. We even have the first philosophical dictionary with Aristotle.
Heidegger: While Plato manages to deal with concepts only with difficulty, we see that Aristotle deals with them more easily.(p. 7).

One of the problems with concepts is how they are applied:

Heidegger: Thus, you mean the transformation of things with respect to one ground.
Fink: The ground meant here is not some substance or the absolute, but light and time. (p. 10).

Fink: . . . The transformations of fire then imply that everything goes over into everything; so that nothing retains the definiteness of its character but, following an indiscernable wisdom, moves itself throughout by opposites.
Heidegger: But why does Heraclitus then speak of steering?
Fink: The transformations of fire are in some measure a circular movement that gets steered by lightning, . . . The movement, in which everything moves throughout everything through opposites, gets guided.
Heidegger: But may we speak of opposites or of dialectic here at all? Heraclitus knows neither something of opposites nor of dialectic.
Fink: True, opposites are not thematic with Heraclitus. . . . (p. 11).

The set-up is basically a dialog, and considers topics like:

Fink: The problem of constitution in Husserl's phenomenology . . . (p. 84).

Heidegger: From this it follows once again that we may not interpret Heraclitus from a later time. (p. 85).
Fink: All the concepts that arise in the dispute over idealism and realism are insufficient to characterize the shining-forth, the coming-forth-to-appearance, of what is. It seems to me more propitious to speak of shining-forth than of shining-up. . . . (p. 85).

The poem "Hyperion" mentions Heraclitus and Heidegger discusses being as beauty in Hegel along with "The one that in itself distinguishes itself." (p. 113).

Participant: "There is no sentence of Heraclitus' that I have not taken up in my LOGIC."
Heidegger: What does this sentence mean? (p. 113).

Fr. 88 of Heraclitus, as Diels translates, "And it is always one and the same, what dwells (?) within us: living and dead and waking and sleeping and young and old. For this is changed over to that and that changed back over to this." (p. 118).

Heidegger then has to correct himself on Hegel by reading some lecture:

"The true deficiency of the Greek religion as opposed to the Christian is that in it appearance constitutes the highest form, in general, the whole of the divine, while in the Christian religion appearing obtains only as a moment of the divine." (p. 122).

But he can also complain about being translated into French:

Heidegger: In French, Dasein is translated by [being there], for example by Sartre. But with this, everything that was gained as a new position in BEING AND TIME is lost. Are humans there like a chair is there? (p. 126).

Heidegger is quite interested in how well he is understood in German, but he finally comes back to the plight of what is unthought in the end.

needless to say, it was all "Greek" to me...
I must admit from the outset that my familiarity with Heidegger's philosophy, not to mention Fink's (a philosopher I'd never heard of), is not up to par with my fellow commentators (this is a generous assessment in my favor, to say the least--and obvious). That said, this review is not intended to sway Heideggar junkies one way or the other re: purchase, nor will it aid those who know Heraclitus' Fragments backwards and forwards; I am not in a position to do either. I aim to address only those nonspecialists who--like myself--are interested in Heraclitus, and who are considering making a purchase for that reason, and that reason alone.

I ordered "The Heraclitus Seminar", perhaps naively, in order to gain a better understanding of Heraclitus and his Metaphysics--I came away from the ordeal completely dumbfounded. This is partially my own fault--I knew going in that Heidegger makes for difficult reading, and that his precipitous works are, almost without exception, extremely abstruse. As such, his books require great dedication and patience. This, I was prepared for. However, I came to an impasse with the book almost immediately. This resulted from the multitude of passages that were written, within the body of the text, in Attic Greek--with *no* translations. (no kidding)

This one is better left for the later grad students and/or their profs--that is, unless you happen to be an extremely patient novice, who can read Greek without a lexicon, and who has a penchant for Heideggarian analysis of the pre-Socratics.

A Great Intro. to Difficult Thinking
Martin Heidegger's special intellectual relationship with the Presocratics is often discussed as if the German philosopher was some sort of romantic originalist or nostalgist. But Heidegger always insisted that the point about going back to Heraclitus, Parmenides and rest was not to recover the specific contents of their thought (or, worse, to wallow in their supposed primitive "purity"), but to recapture the spirit of their efforts to "think the question of Being." You won't find a better presentation of this - or a more candid glimpse of Heidegger as a working philosopher - than in this text. It presents the record of a seminar on Heraclitus conducted by Heidegger and the German scholar Eugen Fink in the late 1960s. Heidegger's discussion of specific Heraclitian texts makes for difficult reading but is, generally speaking, quite lucid. And the dialog with Fink and student participants is eye-opening. (Heidegger's pronouncements are by no means always taken as Gospel!) Most important, in spite of their rather recondite subject matter, these seminar records wonderfully illuminate Heidegger's own philosophical development in the last two decades of his life. Although this book does require familiarity with Heidegger's work and somewhat unique philosophical terminology, as well as familiarity with the history of philosophy generally, I wouldn't call it a text "for specialists only." Unless, of course, all readers of philosophy are specialists! And it does provide a welcome corrective to current "New Age" tendencies to view Heraclitus and the other Presocratics as authors of quasi-religious wisdom manuals. No dumbing-down here; just a tough confrontation with difficult material!

Heidegger Freaked
In terms of personal experiences, Heidegger is most revealing on page 5, in the first session of a seminar in the winter semester of 1966-67, when he mentions in his third comment to the participants, "Suddenly I sawa single bolt of lightning, after which no more followed.My thought was:Zeus."This experience is a link to the antiquity also experienced inthe Biblical book of Job, in the speech of Elihu, at Job 36:27-33 and Job37:3-24, leading up to the speeches of Yahweh.By page 7 of thistranslation of the seminar, Heidegger is demonstrating his link with"Fr. 1" of Heraclitus by quoting more than five lines in theoriginal ancient Greek.Those who would prefer to know the English aregiven the Diels version in Note 3 on page 163.I find that Note 4, theDiels translation of Fragment 7, quoted (in Greek) by Eugen Fink in thesecond session of these seminars, is a bit easier for me to understand. The Glossary on pages 166 to 169 is a great guide to the Greek words forthe major topics in this book.There is no index, but the approach beingpursued in the fashion of this book could hardly gain any clarity by anattempt to locate the ideas in this book by any system related to pagenumbers.My comment on this reflects Heidegger's reaction to a participantwho noted that the first philosophical dictionary didn't occur untilAristotle.(p. 7)Before things were sorted out, Heraclitus was trying tocommunicate something in Fr. 11 about "Everything that crawls . .." (p. 31).The excitement picks up on page 32, when Fink quotes apoem by Holderlin called "Voice of the People." ... Read more

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In this volume Martin Heidegger confronts the philosophical problems of language and begins to unfold the meaning begind his famous and little understood phrase "Language is the House of Being."

The "Dialogue on Language," between Heidegger and a Japanese friend, together with the four lectures that follow, present Heidegger's central ideas on the origin, nature, and significance of language. These essays reveal how one of the most profound philosophers of our century relates language to his earlier and continuing preoccupation with the nature of Being and himan being.

One the Way to Language enable readers to understand how central language became to Heidegger's analysis of the nature of Being. On the Way to Language demonstrates that an interest in the meaning of language is one of the strongest bonds between analytic philosophy and Heidegger. It is an ideal source for studying his sustained interest in the problems and possibilities of human language and brilliantly underscores the originality and range of his thinking. ... Read more

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Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century: viewed by some as a charlatan; as a leader and central figure to many philosophers.Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, "Being and Time," and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. These themes are then reassessed in the light of Heidegger's later work, together with the extent of his philosophical importance and influence. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A superb yet brief introduction to Heidegger's most important ideas
I have developed the habit of reading one of the Very Short Introduction books each day during my lunch break.My current plan is to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.Maybe I'll eventually get around to reading every book in the series.And a very good series it is.I've encountered only a couple of weak entries to the series (like Patrick Gardiner's woefully inadequate book on Kierkegaard), while several have been outstanding, such as Quentin Skinner's intro to Machiavelli and Simon Critchley's magnificent reflection on the difference between Continental and Anglo-American philosophy.Most of the books that I have read have tended to be closer in quality to Skinner and Critchley than to Gardiner.Happily, Michael Inwood's wonderfully little book on Heidegger is another excellent volume in the series.

There are few if any philosophers more difficult to read than Heidegger.Frankly, my own belief is that he is a great deal more difficult than he needed to be.There is a tradition in German philosophy, noted and passionately criticized by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, of writing more obscurely than needed.The example of needlessly torturous philosophical writing was established by Immanuel Kant's immediate predecessors, especially the highly influential Christian Wolff and A.G. Baumgarten.Kant did not depart from their style of writing, nor did a succession of later German philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.Schopenhauer was trilingual, able to speak French and English without an accent (he in fact pronounced his first name "Arthur" in English fashion, not "Artur" as in German).Although a self-styled Kantian, he thought David Hume the model of how someone should write philosophy, with straightforward prose, not relying on obscure terminology or inventing neologisms.His sometimes disciple Nietzsche agreed and they are among the very few Germans who wrote in a less prolix fashion (though there were occasional exceptions, like Hamann and to a degree Herder).

Heidegger is hard primarily because he chose to write in a thick, turgid prose laced with countless neologisms.Understanding Heidegger becomes first and foremost cracking the code of his language.The great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor says many of the things that Heidegger does, but in relatively easy to understand prose.As an example, contrast Taylor's work on the idea of authenticity and Heidegger's.In fact, Heidegger himself was often less opaque than he would be in his greatest work BEING AND TIME.He wrote the lectures that were later published as THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY at precisely the time he was looking at the galleys for SEIN UND ZEIT.He covers there many of the same ideas that he broaches in his more famous work, but in relatively clear fashion.Dedicated Heideggerians insist that Heidegger wrote the way he did because he had to, because the difficulty of the ideas demanded it.I do not believe this.I believe that one could write a paraphrase of BEING AND TIME that would do no damage to the central ideas, but that would instead express all the ideas in ordinary language.

Michael Inwood does an admirable job in only about 130 pages of explaining many of Heidegger's main ideas in remarkable clear language.The book strictly speaking is not an introduction to all of Heidegger's thought.The focus is overwhelmingly on BEING AND TIME.I don't fault his decision.While people have studied many of Heidegger's writings, the vast majority of work has beenon his one indisputable masterwork (though in recent years there has been increasing attention to his later and very difficult work CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY, which Inwood does not discuss at all).Basically, if you understand BEING AND TIME, you will understand Heidegger.All of his later work can be seen as an expansion on it.Inwood works through most of the key ideas in BEING AND TIME, provides some helpful keys and concrete contexts for understanding much of what Heidegger was asserting.I believe that Heidegger, once stripped of his unforgivable verbiage, does a remarkably good job of describing a rather common sense understanding of the world.His description is actually rather commonsensical, something that is obscured by his language.Inwood helps bring this out.Heidegger's great contribution to philosophy was to counter the understanding of the philosophical project as viewed by Descartes and many coming in his wake, including Kant.

The book concludes with a brief description of Heidegger's views on art, which I have always found to be of far less interest than BEING AND TIME.Finally, there is a brief discussion of the most controversial part of Heidegger's career, his membership from 1933 to 1945 in the Nazi party.The major text for any discussion of Heidegger's political beliefs (which interestingly do not appear to any great degree in his philosophical writings) is Hugo Ott's HEIDEGGER: A POLITICAL LIFE.Inwood barely touches upon this complex and difficult issue, but Ott shows that Heidegger was guilty of a kind of inauthenticity that he criticized in BEING AND TIME.Heidegger was not terribly informed on political matters, does not seem to have had passionately held political beliefs, but nonetheless remained nominally a Nazi.Interestingly, he seems to have been more interested in Nazi ideas than he was in Hitler.Philosophically, his allegiance was more to the figures associated with the Brown Shirts, whom Hitler had murdered in 1934.It would be misleading to call the Brown Shirts the liberal wing of the Nazis, but their leaders did have somewhat different priorities.For one thing, they were more concerned with economic equality and were critical of capitalism.And unlike Hitler and Goebbels and the dominant figures in Nazism, they considered the problem with Jews to be their mode of thought.Heidegger definitely felt that Jews did not need to be killed but have their way of thinking corrected.For Heidegger and the Brown Shirts, the Jewish Problem was not one of biology.Inwood barely touches upon all this, but it is understandable given the space he had to work with.Anyone interested in the topic should read Ott's biography or the essays in Richard Wolin's THE HEIDEGGER CONTROVERSY.

But for a short and very good introduction to Heidegger's thought, especially in BEING AND TIME, you can hardly do worse than this fine little book.The one competitor might be Richard Polt's equally excellent HEIDEGGER: AN INTRODUCTION.Both can be read with great profit.

Don't start here, but stop by later for Division II discussions...
Any book on the philosopher Martin Heidegger, even an introduction, will contain numerous brow pursing passages. His valiant attempt to sweep up some 2000 years of philosophic dust necessitated voluminous neologisms and esoteric constructions. Though he remains controversial not only for this opacity but also for having joined the Nazi party, his influence has nonetheless mushroomed in recent years both in and outside of academia. Even sections of the Analytic school have embraced his irreverent and unconventional approach to some of the tradition's most intractable problems. Understanding the thick pudding text that goops up his work remains well worth the effort but nonetheless requires help. This not really all that short introduction will help those who have some familiarity with Heidegger speak, but absolute beginners may struggle with its largely academic tone. New terms appear can without introduction (e.g., "existentiall" pops up from the text unexpectedly at least once). True, there's a handy Heideggerese glossary at the back, but not explaining terms in context may throw the uninitiated.

The book covers the usual territory of Heidegger introductions. A little biography gets followed up with expositions of the major themes comprising his magnum opus, "Being and Time": Being, Dasein, World, Being-In-The-World, care, throwness, etc. But it also dares to delve into the murky loch of Division II where the brave only venture. More fundamental terms such as "phenomenology" and "anxiety" receive mere skimmings while far more puzzling concepts such as "ecstatic time" and "Historiology" get multi-page discussions. Regardless, the latter discussions illuminate this dredge to the point of peaking interest. While some introductions excuse or completely ignore Division II (such as Blattner and Dreyfus) this one embraces the sludge. As such, those looking for basic material on the shadowy side of "Being and Time" should scan their pupils across this book's late chapters.

The usual themes also get juxtaposed and sequenced differently here than in other introductions. For example, inauthenticty and the "They" appear early instead of in a later chapter on Heidegger's so-called "existentialist" themes. The rather Merleau-Pontyesque theme of "body" also makes a guest appearance. This will please some and possibly annoy others, but the unorthodox order allows for new and fresh conceptual comparisons. Pros and cons, as usual.

A section on "The Origin of the Work of Art" also appears. This piece introduced the concepts of "earth" and elaborated on the notion of truth as "disclosedness." The famous examples of Van Gogh's peasant shoes (as a "world discloser") and the Greek Temple (as a "world originator") provide an intriguing glimpse into the "later Heidegger." Apart from a short final chapter on Heidegger's influence and politics, the book focuses almost exclusively on "Being and Time." Lastly, interesting photographs of the young and old Heidegger along with pertinent locations pervade the text.

This book provides a great overview for those with some knowledge of Heidegger. Absolute beginners might struggle more with this one than with other texts (such as Wrathall's facile "How To Read Heidegger"). Those with some familiarity will see different shades of Heideggerian themes. For that alone it provides plenty of value (and it doesn't take up much space). But, as with any book of this kind on this subject, this slim volume will not prepare one for a plop into the primary texts. But it provides a great touch point on the way to comprehending one of the twentieth century's most influential and controversial thinkers.

Fine intro to a difficult subject
Heidegger was an obfuscator of the first order.Still, he had much to say as well as much influence on academia today.He is therefore worth getting to know.Rather then wade through several hundred pages of the deliberately (imo) opaque text in Being and Time, as I mistakenly did, this would be a nice start.

Truth is, Heidegger's ideas are not all that complex, it is his language that gives the appearence of difficult thought.Inwood clarifies but succeeds in avoiding over simplification. Still, I believe someone could do an even better job of presenting Heidegger's thought to the average reader.

Definitely recommended over any of those cartoon books on Heidegger which are not only too simple, but extremely dishonest and innacurate.

A standard academic treatment of Heidegger.
This is your standard garden-variety academic treatment of Heidegger, alright so far as it goes, but rather dry reading. One interesting feature is its short 4-page Glossary of Heidegger's German terminology. It also has an index in which one notes the total absence of any mention of Buddhism, Mahayana, Zen, or the 'Tao Te Ching' (a text which Heidegger worked on), despite the fact that Heidegger's thought quite often reminds one of the great Taoist and Buddhist thinkers.

Anyone new to Heidegger who is looking for a good Introductory survey of the man and his thought would do much better to take a look at George Steiner's 'Martin Heidegger.' In contrast to Inwood, Steiner writes with real passion and leaves one with a desire to know more about this amazing thinker. In fact, Steiner's book is so good that you'll probably want to read it again. I was left wishing it had been two or three times longer.

A standard academic treatment of Heidegger.
This your standard garden-variety academic treatment of Heidegger, alright so far as it goes, but rather dry reading. One interesting feature is its short 4-page Glossary of Heidegger's German terminology.It also has an index in which one notes the total absence of any mention of Buddhism, Mahayana, Zen, or the 'Tao Te Ching' (a text which Heidegger worked on), despite the fact that Heidegger's thought quite often reminds one of the great Taoist and Buddhist thinkers.

Anyone new to Heidegger who is looking for a good Introductory survey of the man and his thought would do much better to take a look at George Steiner's 'Martin Heidegger.'In contrast to Inwood, Steiner writes with real passion and leaves one with a desire to know more about this amazing thinker.In fact, Steiner's book isso good that you'll probably want to read it again.I was left wishing it had been two or three times longer. ... Read more

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There is a growing urgency in the worldwide environmental crisis. In INHABITING THE EARTH, Bruce Foltz, philosopher and environmental spokesperson, undertakes the first sustained analysis of how Heidegger's thought can contribute to environmental ethics and to the more broadly conceived field environmental philosophy. Through a comprehensive study of the status of "nature" and related concepts such as "earth" in the thought of Martin Heidegger, Foltz attempts to show how Heidegger's understanding of the natural environment and our relation to it offers a more promising basis for environmental philosophy than others than have so far been put foreword.

Dr. Foltz finds that to ecofeminism and social ecology, whose prescriptions are based on historically oriented etiologies of domination and oppression, Heidegger's work offers what is arguably the first comprehensive and nonreductive philosophy of history since Hegel that can embrace both nature and humanity in one narrative, and the first since Augustine that can do this while granting to nature a measure of self-standing. But it is probably for the environmental philosophies of deep ecology, bioregionalism, and ecological holism that Heidegger's work has the most immediate and extensive implications, because it is to them that it has the most affinity. Finally, as a corrective challenge to deep ecology, which has tended to valorize the scientific approach to nature, Heidegger's work provides a sophisticated basis for showing the primacy of the poetic in the task of learning to inhabit the earth rightly.

"Thinkers concerned with environmental philosophy will find this book a profound clarification of our concept of nature." by Professor Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University. ... Read more

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One of the century's greatest philosophers, without whom there would be no Sartre, no Foucault, no Frankfurt School, Martin Heidegger was also a man of great failures and flaws, a Faustus who made a pact with the devil of his time, Adolf Hitler. The story of Heidegger's life and philosophy, a quintessentially German story in which good and evil, brilliance and blindness are inextricably entwined and the passions and disasters of a whole century come into play, is told in this brilliant biography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Martin Heidegger: A Biography
I ordered this book in hardcover (publisher:Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA) because of its lasting value. It was in excellent condition, and was shipped promptly. This book is also available in soft cover (paperback).

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a genius in philosophy (born in Germany as
was another emblematic genius, Albert Einstein) and his thinking will last through the ages. He has had a profound impact on psychology and psychiatry
(see his Zollikon Seminars, authored by Martin Heidegger and edited by a very famous Swiss German psychiatrist, Medard Boss), as well as upon other fields of inquiry. Heidegger's Collected Works approach 100 volumes. He was extremely bright, and all of his manuscripts were handwritten because he did not want a typewriter or personal computer to come between his mind and the written word. His hand was part of who he was, and his thinking would flow from his mind, heart, spirit through his hand onto the manuscript page. His Magnum Opus is Sein und Zeit (translated by Macquarrie and Robinson as Being and Time - the best translation available in English) completed in 1926 and dedicated to his mentor, Edmund Husserl (the father of phenomenological philosophy and a Jew).
This biography is a wonderful introduction to Martin Heidegger, the human being and the philosophical genius. Professor Heidegger himself always downplayed the significance of his biographical narrative. He preferred that others would focus on his thinking in and of itself. However, there is something magnetic about human genius and we can all benefit from knowing the human being who was so gifted with genius (and wisdom). He loved his native land and very much regretted Germany's tragic immersion in World War I, the Nazi scourge on humanity, and World War II. He loved his native tongue, but also loved the language of Ancient Greece. His "conversational partners" spanned the centuries. Genius has a way of finding other genius. This biographer has done a masterful job of telling one story of the life and works of Martin Heidegger. Other stories of this genius also need to be told.

An informative biography of one of the greats
Writing about philosophers is a rather difficult task in most cases.The author has to be able to separate the philosophy from the man without making too many conjectures as to how the man shaped the philosophy or how the philosophy shaped the man.It's rather understandable the different opinions on him.He was a rabid National Socialist, hough he saw the errors of this ideology with time, he alienated many of his close friends for petty reasons, and showed blatant infidelity towards his wife.

His writing had a tendency to be obtuse, but this book is anytihng but.His philosophy is well covered, and there are some instances of a tongue -in-cheek amusement at his play on words.Like every philosopher, the philosophy changed with him, and there were times he was writing almost incoherently.It seemed he was in love with his own words as opposed to being at certain points, or perhaps couldn't come up with a logical structure to explain what he felt.Regardless, his influence is without question, and with time he always recomposed himself to the core of his teaching, to be-in-the-world, and to be open to one's own Dasein.

An excellent biography that is a good introduction to his core teachings.

Absolutely worth time and effort
Rüdiger Safranskis biography on Heidegger combines a profound understanding of Heidegger's philosophy with a wealth of anecdotes and perceptive analysis of Heidegger the man and his relationships. In particular, Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism is well covered.

Overall, the book is very impressive and well worth time and effort. As I am quite familiar with the young Heidegger via Theodor Kisiel's "The Genesis of heidegger's Being & Time" and the work of Scandinavian philosophers on the subject, my only regret is that Safranski didn't write more about the "thinking" of the late Heidegger.

A reluctantly written review of perhaps a great 'thinker' but a contemptibly small human - being
I have read four chapters of this book, the ones on Anti-Semitism, Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, and the concluding chapter. The book is clearly written and the philosophical exposition outstanding.
I was interested more in the whole question of Heidegger's Anti- Semitism, and his relationship with Hannah Arendt- in part because I just finished Elisabeth Young- Bruehl's excellent biography of Arendt.
My sense of it all is that Heidegger was not at all a Socrates willing to take the hemlock for a higher ideal. His relations to his great mentor , the Jewish Husserl are shabby to say the least. He did not stand for him in any way, removed the original dedication to Husserl of 'Time and Being' from later editions of the work. He did not go out of his way to save Jewish friends.
And in fact he became a Nazi ideologue at a certain point.
His 'rehabilitation' in the eyes of the world owes a lot to Jaspers and Arendt. She especially showed a lifelong devotion to him. His failure to recognize the quality of her own work, the power of her mind in anything but understanding him shows a certain obtuseness, and inhumaneness.
It is always disturbing to deal with a creator who may well have done great work when that creator's personal life is not commendable. It is all the more so when the creator is one like Wagner , truly evil.
Heidegger obviously does not fit 'the evil category'. He may not be exactly midway between good and evil, but he was not the worst of the worst.
I myself cannot read his Philosophy simply because I would feel very guilty in doing so. The thought of all the innocent dead murdered by the Nazis by a regime he served, cannot let me do this.

How to begin.....
There are a lot of reasons why I was interested in picking this book up: my mentor at Georgetown, Wilfrid Desan, stressed how important it was to know the life of a philosopher, even the likes of Quine, because philosophy is ever and always about one's life. In the case of Heidegger, the mysteries of this man, the profound impact of his work on the course of 20th century thinking, the controversies of his politics all left me wondering how to get a grip on this man.
This book is not for beginners. I've spent my undergraduate and graduate years studying Heidegger. Like a moth to the flame, and it consumed me in every regard. His books have totally spun me inside out, shook me to my soul, sent me off into Asian thought. If ever there was a Dasein thrown, yers trewly is it. How to begin to come to terms with this writer?
Safranski does an absolutely brilliant job at delineating the strands of thinking leading up to the advent of phenomenology. But, as I say, this isn't for the novice or the casual reader. This is disciplined, committed writing in service of Thinking itself. There are no two ways about it, Heidegger erupted into the Twentieth Century. There seemed to be a sense among his teachers that this was an extraordinary thinker. As he gains the acceptance and posts of influence in German university life, he gains his confidence and from the point of BEING AND TIME onward, nothing, absolutely nothing will ever be the same.
This book documents the transitions remarkably and with great clarity.
Of course, one of the things that troubled me the most in my undergraduate days was the prospect of Heidegger's anti-Semitism and his political allegance to the Nazis in the early days of their rise to power, all the while entering into a passionate romance with Hannah Arendt. The book does not hide or apologize for Heidegger. But it seems clear that it is not real clear just how anti-Semitic he was. He quite directly states to Arendt that he finds his Jewish students annoying, and he somewhat buys into the supremecy of the German state espoused by the 1920's and early 30's Nazis. And he very definitely benefits from their appointments. Yet, he witholds. His wife does not. She is clearly and vehemently disgusted by Jewish people. I'm sure that her husband's affair with Arendt only added fuel to that fire. Yet Heidegger does not seem to buy the whole program. On the other hand, he does little or nothing to help Arendt get out of Germany, and nothing at all to save Edith Stein, his colleague from their days with Husserl, who had become a Catholic nun, was murdered at Auchwitz and has since been canonized. Nor is he willing to give a full and clear account of himself in the trials after the war. I am as puzzled now as I have always been. Was this incredible thinker also so filled with narrow mindedness that he could watch a people get exterminated because some of his students were annoying him?
And as his thought began to walk more Buddhist paths, how did he resolve this great beginning of thinkng with the conflicts in his life? Those questions are not answered. Still in all, this book is a remarkable achievement. I could go on about so many other aspects, but I'll leave it at this: this is a book about a man's beginning, about being thrown fully consciously into the ground of thinking, and it uncovers what he found in the clearing with great insight. ... Read more

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These letters, translated into English here for the first time, provide extraordinary insights, both personal and philosophical, into two major thinkers of the twentieth century.Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers met in 1920 at a celebration marking the sixty-first birthday of Edmund Husserl.Recognizing in each other a shared vision of what philosophy should be, they struck up a friendship, which continued through correspondence carried on over four decades and which weathered intellectual, social, and personal struggles.

While the first thirteen years of their acquaintance were marked by a collegial exchange of views on philosophical issues of mutual interest, their relationship changed significantly in 1933, when Heidegger publicly supported the National Socialist revolution, and, as a party member, implemented the National Socialist agenda as rector of Freiburg University.By contrast, Jaspers, whose wife was Jewish, was forced into retirement.After the war, during the Freiburg de-Nazification process, Jaspers sharply criticized Heidegger's conduct but nonetheless stressed the lasting value of his philosophical contributions.Despite this conflict, the two men continued to find common ground and correspnded until 1963.

The letters touch on many points of philosophical interest to both men, yet only hint at the political turmoil that swirled around them.They discuss how they came to see themselves as personally connected but publicly misidentified as "existentialists."There are also many illuminating exchanges concerning Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and others.Editors Walter Biemel and Hans Saner provide a wealth of references and annotations that make these personal letters accessible to contemporary readers.

This first English translation of the correspondence between two giants of twentieth-century German philosophy will be of great interest to philosophers, historians, and anyone intrigued by the Heidegger controversy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

They Were Giants Then
The history of 20th century German philosophy can be neatly summed up in three words: Husserl, Heidegger and Jaspers. They were the giants of the rich philosophical tradition and most of 20the century thought is influenced by them, either as followers who adapted their thought to other paths or as opponents, deriding what was seen as a preponderence of metaphysics over "clear thinking."

The emphasis on Heidegger in recent years has expanded into an investigation of his personal life, intertwined as it was with the Nazi regime during the '30s. We have access to the Arendt-Jaspers correspondence, but only get to know Heidegger second-hand. That is why the release of the Heidegger-Jaspers correspondence is a tresure for every student of philosophy. Not only do we gain valuable insights into the workings of each author's conception of existentialism, but we also get to soak in the atmosphere of German university life, and its view of scholarship, so different from our own universities today, which now serve as little else than extensions of high school.

The letters also give us the opportunity to see how the Heidegger-Japsers friendship fared over the years. (The letters are from 1920 to 1963.) During the '20s, the two are very close and share critiques of each others philosphy. During the '30s, with the rise of the Nazis, we see a cooling off due to the fact Heidegger sides with the Nazis and Jaspers, whose wife was Jewish,was appalled by what was happening to Germany. Very few letters are exchanged during the period from 1936 to 1948, when Heidegger, by now defanged by the Allied occupation, once again ventures into the public eye. The letters of this perios lack the warmth of the letters from the '20s, with Heidegger wishing to forget what happened in the '30s and Jaspers wanting an explanation.

This is an unforgettable foray into the livers anf thought of two giants of twentieth century philosophy, and, as such, is a must for every philosophical library. ... Read more

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"... Heidegger's reading of The Ister is thoughtful and rich. It provides his readers with the tools to build on his interpretation and to correct any missteps without doing violence to the whole."  -- Review of Metaphysics

Martin Heidegger's 1942 lecture course interprets Friedrich Hölderlin's hymn "The Ister" within the context of Hölderlin's poetic and philosophical work, with particular emphasis on Hölderlin's dialogue with Greek tragedy. Revealing of Heidegger's thought of the period are his discussions of the meaning of "the political" and "the national," in which he emphasizes the difficulty and the necessity of finding "one's own" in and through a dialogue with "the foreign."

Customer Reviews (2)

Heidegger's "Later" Thinking
This is one of the most important of Heidegger's "later" texts that deals with the question of how we may recover what is most proper to a people by encountering the other. The poetic discussion of the Greek Ister and the journeys that it take serves as an image for an encounter which will unveil the proper of the people.

The text will be of great importance for those who are engaged in the study of Heidegger, Levinas and Holderlin's thinking.

Typically Great Lecture Course by Heidegger
This lecture course from 1942 has as its subject Holderlin's poem "The Ister."The Ister is the river known in English as the Danube, a river that marked the edge of the Roman Empire, and that roughly divides Eastern and Western Europe.Heidegger's reading of Holderlin leads us to reflect on the nature of nature: there is a spontaneous emergence of reality that provides the insurpassable context for all our life, all our experience, all meaning.Reflecting on the river is reflecting on this _phusis_ in its specificity and singularity, and becomes a way for us to reflect on the most profound dimensions of our existence--our mortality, our creativity, our ability to care--in their most creatively transformative and in their must destructive forms.The reflection on Holderlin and on the river leads especially into reflection on technology (especially as embodied in Americanism) and its dangers, and on art and its powers.Though the lecture course is officially about Holderlin's poem, much of the course is devoted to careful study of Sophocles _Antigone_, which Heidegger sees as closely related to _der Ister_ in what is makes manifest about nature and humanity.The reflections on _Antigone_ especially lead into reflections on the _polis_.These political reflections of course resonate with the prominent political events of the day--Nazi Europe facing the American West and the USSR to the East.This is a provocative, brilliant, and difficult text, well worth study by those interested in continental philosophy, Greek literature, technology, and many other topics.The film "The Ister," that was made to accompany this text is also excellent, and works wonderfully as a complement to Heidegger and to the texts of Holderlin and Sophocles.I recommend this highly. ... Read more

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Eminent Heidegger scholar, Theodore Kisiel's work has found world-wide critical acclaim, his particular strength being to set Heidegger's thinking in the context of his life, time and the history of ideas. This volume brings together Kisiel's most important critical and interpretative essays. They can be regarded as a succession of "signposts" enabling the reader to follow Heidegger in his often difficult path of thinking. At the same time, this volume can be regarded as a companion to the author's key work, "The Genesis of Heidegger's "Being and Time""(1993). ... Read more

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Many people consider Martin Heidegger the most important German philosopher of the twentieth century. He is indisputably controversial and influential. Athough much has been written about Heidegger, this may be the best single volume covering his life, career, and thought. For all its breadth and complexity, Heidegger's perspective is quite simple: he is concerned with the meaning of Being as disclosure.

Heidegger's life was almost as simple. He was a German professor, except for a brief but significant period in which he supported the Nai regime. While that departure from philosophy continues to haunt his name and work, one must question whether his thought from 1912 to 1976 should be measured by the yardstick of his politics from May, 1933, through February, 1934. Th is anthology addresses his complex but simple thought and his simple but complex life.

In a real sense, Sheehan claims, there is no content to Heidegger's topic and legacy, only a method. But method must not be taken to mean a technique or procedure for philosophical thinking. Rather, the topic of Heidegger's thought and his pursuit of that topic, the "what" and the "how," are one and the same thing.

Heidegger writes, "Alles ist Weg," "Everything is way," and man's Being is to be on-the-way in essential movement. Heidegger, argues in our essence we humans are the topic and the point is not to be led there so much as to come to know what we already know and to become what we already are. This brilliant collection confirms this truism, and is an excellent introduction to the work of this seminal thinker.

Thomas Sheehan is professor emeritus of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and professor of religious studies at Stanford University. He is the author of The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity, Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations and co-editor and translator of Edmund Husserl’s, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology, and The Confrontation with Heidegger.