Abstract

In her book Heidegger: On Being Uncanny, Katherine Withy sets up three seemingly straightforward projects—explaining what Heidegger means by Unheimlichkeit, translated as ‘uncanniness’; explaining its underappreciated central role in his conception of Dasein; and using these to “illuminate something about what it is to be human”. Yet, the projects are not as straightforward as they might seem. ‘Unheimlichkeit’ is a technical term in Heidegger’s philosophy, so appeals to common experiences of uncanniness are of limited help. The interpretive focus must be on the conceptual connections Heidegger makes between Unheimlichkeit and other, more familiar, terms, such as ‘Angst,’ ‘ownedness’ (‘Eigentlichkeit,’ often..