_Heidegger_ is a classic introduction to Heidegger's notoriously difficult work. Truly accessible, it combines clarity of exposition with an authoritative handling of the subject-matter. Richard Polt has written a work that will become the standard text for students looking to understand one of the century's greatest minds.

Richard Polt takes a fresh approach to Heidegger’s thought during his most politicized period, and works toward a philosophical appropriation of his most valuable ideas. Polt shows how central themes of the 1930s—such as inception, emergency, and the question “Who are we?”—grow from seeds planted in Being and Time and are woven into Heidegger’s political thought. Working with recently published texts, including Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, Polt traces the thinker’s engagement and disengagement from the Nazi movement. He (...) critiques Heidegger for his failure to understand the political realm, but also draws on his ideas to propose a “traumatic ontology” that understands individual and collective existence as identities that are always in question, and always remain exposed to disruptive events. Time and Trauma is a bold attempt to gain philosophical insight from the most problematic and controversial phase of Heidegger’s thought. (shrink)

In the Black Notebooks, Heidegger portrays actual National Socialism as an Un-wesen or "distorted essence" that must be "affirmed" because it will bring about the collapse of modernity.

In its early modern form, philosophy gave a decisive impetus to the science and technology that have transformed the planet and brought on the so-called Anthropocene. Can philosophy now help us understand this new age and act within it? The contributors to this volume take a broad historical view as they reflect on the responsibilities and possibilities for philosophy today.

This volume presents a survey of critical appropriations of Heidegger’s thought for the 21st century. It includes all the most well-known and respected Heidegger scholars working today and offers a wide range of perspectives in engaging and accessible essays, altogether representing the most comprehensive overview of Heidegger Studies available.

He describes this most private work of Heidegger's philosophy as "a dissonant symphony that imperfectly weaves together its moments into a vast fugue, under the ...

This paper agrees with Thomas Sheehan that Heidegger inquires into the source of meaning in finite human existence. The paper argues, however, that Sheehan’s paradigm for interpreting Heidegger should be expanded: Heidegger is also concerned with “excess” and “event”. Excess and event are crucial to being and history, as Heidegger understands them.

This chapter contains sections titled: 1919: My Own Event 1936–8: The Happening of Owndom 1962: The Giving of the Own The Promise of Ereignis Textual differences Appropriating Ereignis.

Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an English-language anthology. Two of the essays have never before been published in any language ; three of (...) the essays have never been published in English before, and two of the essays provide previews of works in progress by major scholars. (shrink)

The discovery of a 1932 typewriter apparently signed by Heidegger raises questions about its authenticity and purpose, and prompts us to reconsider the validity of Heidegger’s portrayal of typewriters as devices that alienate writing from the hand and exemplify the modern oblivion of being.

Martin Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, first published in 1953, is a highly significant work by a towering figure in twentieth-century philosophy. The volume is known for its incisive analysis of the Western understanding of Being, its original interpretations of Greek philosophy and poetry, and its vehement political statements. This new companion to the Introduction to Metaphysics presents an overview of Heidegger’s text and a variety of perspectives on its interpretation from more than a dozen highly respected contributors.

The essay investigates two personae: Socrates as depicted by Plato and Descartes as narrator of the Discourse on Method and Meditations. Socrates is aware of his ignorance and insists on remembering to care for the self; Descartes claims to have overcome ignorance through a method that breaks problems into simple and certain elements, establishing a self-certain yet impersonal subject that comprehends and controls objects. The Cartesian approach has led to the modern process of “liquidation” that reduces beings, property, and truth (...) to resources, wealth, and information – initiating the dangerous and unprecedented epoch known as the Anthropocene. The Socratic approach offers some promise of reintegration and resistance to liquidation by urging us to care for wholeness and recognizing that being exceeds what we comprehend. (shrink)

Aristotle’s concept of dynamis (potentiality) is distinct from the modern concept of energy. Both concepts have problematic limitations. We need a third alternative that is here called “sway.”.

According to Heidegger, his key word Ereignis “can no more be translated” than “guiding words” in other languages, such as logos and dao. This essay presents a few reflections on the sense of Ereignis in Heidegger's thought and on the problem of translation. I distinguish three phases in Heidegger's use of the word Ereignis and draw on Paul Ricoeur and John Sallis to establish a view of translation that lies between the extremes of perfect translation and complete untranslatability. I argue (...) that while perfect translation is impossible, imperfect translations—illuminating shifts from one context or language to another—are both possible and necessary, even when it comes to the word Ereignis. This position is compatible with Heidegger's view that encounter is made possible by distance. (shrink)

“Irrealis” grammatical moods, such as the subjunctive, provoke linguistic, literary, and phenomenological questions. What is the ontological status of the domain revealed by irrealis moods? How does it solicit signification? Is it a mere illusion or a distraction from the real? I propose not only that our ventures into the irreal are indispensable ways of making sense of things, but that the irreal is necessary to the being of language and to our own being.

A survey and critique of John Haugeland's interpretations of being, Dasein, and truth.

Heidegger’s 1936 notes titled “Running Notes on Being and Time” (“Laufende Anmerkungen zu Sein und Zeit”) are impatient, even irritable reactions that characterize both major and minor moments in Being and Time as “superficial” (GA82 60), “inadequate” (GA82 36), “ridiculous” (GA82 123), or “wholly off track and erroneous” (GA82 52). Among the many thoughts in the “Running Notes,” one theme emerges as paramount: what was presented in Being and Time as a phenomenology of Dasein—understood as the human way of being—should (...) instead be conceived as projecting a new possibility for humanity, a possibility into which we are invited to “leap” to initiate a new epoch. (shrink)

Peter Trawny’s Heidegger: A Critical Introduction examines the various phases of the philosopher’s thought, with special attention to questions of politics and antisemitism. This review sums up the book and discusses the relevance of Heidegger today for analytic philosophy, Jewish thought, and political philosophy.

Discussion of Heidegger's politics for a general audience.

An interpretation and critique of Heidegger's concept of liberalism.

The article defines being and emergency in terms of sense and what exceeds sense: the sense of being implies an excess over sense; an emergency is a clash between sense and excess. The article then argues deductively that, as entities for whom being is an issue, we depend on greater and lesser emergencies thanks to which entities become accessible. Emergencies reshape the possible, the past, and the present; they call for emergent thinking, or thinking that is itself undergoing an emergency.

Zizek is right to focus on the element of action in Heidegger's political engagement and to try to develop what I call a traumatic ontology that would supplement Heidegger's thought of the 1930s . However, I draw on Arendt's distinction between work and action to show that both Zizek and Heidegger misunderstand the nature of action. Work can be carried out by a lone, silent creator and normally requires violence; action is necessarily interpersonal and consists of speech, first and foremost. (...) When we substitute work for action, we lay ourselves open to irresponsible revolutionary enthusiasms and run the risk of condoning tyranny. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant attempts to solve two problems about our knowledge of the world. First, how can we know any necessary truths about the world, such as the principle that every event must have a cause? Second, how can I know that things other than I exist at all? Kant’s strategy for dealing with both these problems is to repudiate the kind of distinction that Descartes and Hume had made between self-knowledge and our knowledge of ‘outer’ (...) things. Kant’s innovation is to distinguish sharply between two sides of what his predecessors understood as self-knowledge: ‘inner sense’ and ‘apperception.’ This paper shows how Kant's conception of ‘apperception’ is meant to overcome Humean skepticism, and how ‘inner sense’ is meant to overcome Cartesian skepticism; I then touch upon a complication in Kant’s view of the relation between apperception and inner sense, a complication which relates directly to the problem of the ‘thing in itself.’. (shrink)

This collection offers a generous and thought-provoking sample of recent scholarship on Heidegger. Most of the essays take little for granted, and make the effort to sum up the very heart of Heidegger’s project. This makes them suitable for beginners, but by no means restricts them to such an audience: all are rich in detail and contribute to ongoing interpretive controversies, as is typical of the fine Cambridge Companion series. A good number of the essays cast Heidegger’s thought in terms (...) such as “coping,” “cultural practices,” or “forms of life,” and illustrate these concepts with familiar, commonsense examples. I will refer to this as a “practical” approach. In a practical reading, Heidegger comes to light primarily as an anti-Cartesian who points to the primacy of meaningful agency, in a broad sense, over the epistemological distinction between subject and object: Heidegger’s writings thus reveal that all cognition is made possible by practices, that is, by shared and tacit patterns of dealing with the things that matter to us. It is in this guise that Heideggerian ideas have entered the sphere of traditional Anglo-American philosophy, where they promise to enrich and recast old debates. Those who insist on remaining within Heidegger’s own language may fear that such an approach is reductive; but it is better seen as a genuine attempt to think independently about Heidegger’s topic of thought. The goal of these readings is not solely to explicate Heidegger, but to enhance “our understanding of ourselves and our world,” as Charles B. Guignon puts it in his introduction ; and Heidegger himself would certainly endorse that goal. (shrink)

In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the (...) lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity. (shrink)

This new edition of one of Heidegger’s most important works features a revised and expanded translators’ introduction and an updated translation, as well as the first English versions of Heidegger’s draft of a portion of the text and of his later critique of his own lectures. Other new features include an afterword by Petra Jaeger, editor of the German text. “This revised edition of the translation of Heidegger’s 1935 lectures, with its inclusion of helpful new materials, superbly augments the excellent (...) translation provided in the first edition. The result is a richly rewarding volume, to be recommended to every student of Heidegger’s works, whether a novice or a long-time reader.”—Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University. (shrink)

This is the second volume to be published in Division III of Heidegger’s collected works, which is devoted to texts never before presented to the public, either in print or as lectures. The first such was volume 65, Beiträge zur Philosophie —a crucial text from 1936–8 which appeared in 1989. Besinnung dates from 1938–9, and is a sequel of sorts to the Contributions, for it is rooted in the fundamental experience described in that text: we stand at a juncture between (...) “the first beginning” of Western thought and “the other beginning.” The first beginning attempts to represent beings as such; the other beginning inquires into “the truth of be-ing [Seyn].” This truth occurs as the event of appropriation in which be-ing both displays itself and withdraws, beckoning us into our role as Dasein, or the creative preservers of meaning. (shrink)

Louis Dumont is a distinguished and versatile French social anthropologist. His Homo Hierarchicus examined the Indian caste system; in a series of writings under the general title Homo Aequalis, he has investigated modern European ideology, moving deftly through intellectual history from Aquinas to Schiller, from Adam Smith to Thomas Mann. German Ideology forms part of this general project; it comprises a number of essays, some previously published, centering on the distinctive German understanding of the individual's relation to society.