This volume, dedicated to Rudolph Bultmann, contains the text of a lecture held in 1927 and that of a letter addressed to the participants in a colloquium held at Drew University in 1964. Separated by thirty-seven years and the workings of the "turn" in Heidegger's thought, the texts are profoundly different. In "Phenomenology and Theology", seeking to delineate the notion of Theology as a science, Heidegger says that Theology is a "positive" science in the somewhat Wolffian sense that its subject (...) matter is a "posit," an "existent" being: God. Christian theology is centered on the positing of Christ and concerns "Christianliness", which is the existentiell posture of belief in the "Crucifixion." As such, Christian Theology concerns a specific "Way of Being" and to this extent is subordinate to Philosophy, which deals with the more radical realm of Being itself. Theology seeks to explicate "believing existence" but Philosophy provides the categories with which Existenz itself is to be understood. Philosophy is ontological-existential; Theology is ontico-existentiell. The whole discussion is determined by the terms of Being and Time, § 3. The second text, "The Problem of a Non-Objectifying Thought and Language in Contemporary Theology," holds out to Theology the ideal of a thinking which is neither ontic nor ontological, neither existentiell nor existential, but altogether beyond the realm of concepts. Once again Theology is directed to follow the lead of a more radical undertaking now no longer called Philosophy but simply Thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume, which contains the 1962 lecture "Zeit und Sein," is the most important publication by Heidegger since Unterwegs zur Sprache appeared in 1959. Bearing the same title as the much discussed missing part of the first half of Sein und Zeit, "Zeit und Sein" is the best demonstration we have of how the later Heidegger carries out the program which was outlined in Sein und Zeit, i.e., how the clue which the analytic of Dasein provides--that Being is to be (...) understood in terms of time--is followed out in the later works. Heidegger explicates the temporality of Being in terms of its character as a "gift" and an epochal sending which "is" both as having been and as to come. Being as time is thus the "event of appropriation". In addition to "Zeit und Sein," Zur Sache des Denkens also contains: The notes of a seminar which Heidegger conducted at Todtnauberg in 1962 upon the "Zeit und Sein" lecture. As Professor Alfredo Guzzoni, the editor of these notes, indicates this is the only time that Heidegger has conducted a seminar on a text of his own composition. A lecture entitled "The End of Philosophy and the Problem of Thought," which was delivered at a Kierkegaard colloquium in 1964. An autobiographical description of Heidegger's growing interest in and attraction to Husserl's phenomenological method in the pre-Sein und Zeit period; this was prepared in 1963 for a Festschrift in honor of Hermann Niemeyer.--J. D. C. (shrink)

As Gelven points out in his Preface, this is the only section-by-section commentary on the full text of Being and Time. Being and Time is divided not only into two "divisions" of six chapters each but also into eighty-three numbered "sections". As such it provides an efficient and useful handbook for those who try to make their way through the rugged terrain of Heidegger's text, especially for the beginner. Gelven's prose is crisp and clean and uncluttered by Germanicisms. He often (...) uses uncomplicated and helpful illustrations. The interpretation stresses the importance of the analysis of "understanding" taking § 31 as "the key to Being and Time". In fact, Gelven groups §§ 25-38 as a whole under the single heading "Understanding". Such an emphasis seems entirely legitimate. He treats the historical sources of Being and Time but often leaves them undeveloped. He is content, for example, to devote a single paragraph to Dilthey whose influence upon Heidegger is so decisive, with the comment that not much is ever said about Dilthey in English philosophical literature. One also finds it a bit hard to swallow the author's argument that "Dasein" means literally "to be here" and, in sentence form: "Here I am, open to possibilities". In all, however, Gelven's work is a distinctive contribution and not a mere reworking of already familiar themes.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a somewhat unusual account of the philosophy of Jaspers. The "Introduction" contains an historical survey of Existentialism which is rather out of date. It associates Heidegger and Sartre together, and as philosophers of the absurd--a mistake for which by now there is no excuse. It sees a "way out of this barren desert" of the philosophy of absurdity in Jaspers--which is a misleadingly religious way to introduce Jaspers. The body of the work contains chapters (...) on the foundations of Jaspers' thought in Kant, on the concept of philosophical faith, a comparison of Jaspers with some contemporaries, such as Whitehead, and a final comparison of Jaspers' "ciphers" with Maimonides' negative theology. The 79-page long text is heavily punctuated with citations and so does not make for smooth reading. This is followed by nearly half that many pages of notes, some of which are rather interesting and which provide the whole with extensive documentation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This second of the three volumes of Philosophy is entitled "Existential Elucidation". Existential man is characterized by two features, historicity and freedom. Like Heidegger, Jaspers stresses that existential decisions receive their content and raw material from the historical situation. But unlike Heidegger his account of historicity also involves a theory of "communication." Part III of this book consists in the famous description of "boundary situations." A boundary situation is the encounter of man with his own limits and finitude. The most (...) important boundary situation is—like Heidegger—death, but once again—unlike Heidegger— Jaspers lays emphasis upon the death of the beloved as well as on one’s own death. In the limit situation man is summoned to embrace his life and to give it an "absolute" worth, despite its inevitable empirical dissolution. In so doing man transcends mere empirical reality and achieves "absolute consciousness." Then alone can man acquire an authentic attitude towards the universal—the law and the state—and then alone can he enter into true community. The follow up volume of Philosophy—"Metaphysics"—will discuss what the boundary situation reveals: being in itself or "transcendence." Ashton’s translation is admirable throughout. There is no index.—J. D. C. (shrink)

Fr. James Demske first published this book in 1963 in Germany under the title: Sein, Mensch und Tod: Das Todesproblem bei Martin Heidegger. Except for minor revisions--such as changing the numeration and headings of the chapters and the occasional expansion of paragraphs--this is substantially the same book. The author follows the development of the problem of death in Heidegger through the famous discussion in Being and Time and into the later works. The fact of the continuing importance of "death" in (...) Heidegger's work is easily overlooked. But while the phrase "Being-unto-death" disappears after Being and Time the same phenomenon of Dasein's mortality reappears in the later accounts of the "Quadrate" : the heavens and earth, gods, and mortals. Chapter six of Demske's book is one of the few and clearest accounts of this central theme in Heidegger's thought. The book as a whole, apart from its thematization of the problem of death, presents a sound appraisal and a clear overview of the development of Heidegger's "path of thought" and is, on that account too, a welcome addition to the literature.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Dr. Fuad Nucho, a native Jordanian and presently a pastor in Yeadon, Pa., provides us with a lucid and illuminating account of the central problem of freedom in the Christian existentialism of Nicolas Berdyaev. Confident that the thought of Berdyaev, while professedly not a "System," suffers no distortion from an organized and systematized explication, Dr. Nucho orders his work around the problem of freedom conceived of as a paradox demanding resolution. He deals in turn with the nature, implications, and solution (...) of the paradox, after a brief, informative discussion of the influences on Berdyaev's thinking. Critical and evaluatory remarks are reserved for a final chapter, so as not to interrupt the progress of his argument. For Berdyaev, man is a citizen of two worlds, divided between an inclination toward material objects which enslave him, and an aspiration toward the transcendent world of divine freedom. Nature, society, and history all tend to enslave man, yet they are also the theater in which his freedom must be exercised. Man himself is conceived of essentially as a free being. Freedom for Berdyaev means creativity, where creativity is taken in the radical sense of production out of nothing. Hence the alliance of freedom with the "nothing," and so with Boehme's Ungrund. The paradox is resolved only when, first, the world of natural necessity is recognized as perfused with symbol and when, finally, the revelation of Christ is taken as the meaning of that symbolization. Such a liberation comes to historical man in metahistorical moments when he grasps the eternal meaning behind the phenomena of nature and history, that is, when he grasps the end of history and nature. Nucho concludes that Berdyaev is a religious thinker in the tradition of the early Christian Fathers—a modern parallel, in particular, to Clement of Alexandria.—J. D. C. (shrink)

Along with Charles Walraff's The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, Schrag's work is the second book-length study of Jaspers' thought in as many years. As such it is very welcome, for Jaspers' philosophy has not yet been fully explored in English. And now that his three-volume Philosophie has been translated, we should see a great reawakening of interest in this distinguished German thinker. Schrag's book is an exposition of Jaspers' notion of the "Encompassing", that pivotal notion in his thought which refers (...) to Being as the primal and originary source of beings. The Encompassing can only be approached through its "modes," which Jaspers diagrams at the beginning of his lengthy treatise Von der Wahrheit. Schrag's book follows this diagram implicitly and its somewhat awkward title is based upon it. The Encompassing manifests itself in man on the one hand and in the non-human or objective on the other. Part One of Schrag's book is devoted to the "immanent" mode of the "Encompassing which we are," while Part Two discusses the Encompassing in man in its transcendent mode. The third and final part is devoted to the "Encompassing which Being itself is", which is a study of Jaspers' metaphysics. The reader will be especially interested in Schrag's Chapter Five, "Jaspers and Phenomenology," in which he discusses Jaspers' relationship to Husserl, who like Jaspers came to philosophy from psychology; and to Heidegger's "existential phenomenology." There is an index but no bibliography.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Kostos Axelos, Greek-born Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne and author of a trilogy in French, Le Déploiement de l'errance, and of several French translations of Lucás and Heidegger, attempts an important confrontation of the two thinkers whom many regard as the major thinkers in European thought today: Marx and Heidegger. To some this is a confrontation of the left and the right, but Axelos moves in an entirely different range altogether. Heidegger himself remarks that a confrontation with Marx must (...) be made in terms of the problem of history. Both Heidegger and Marx--to some extent as the heirs of Hegel--are philosophers of the future. Axelos' book is written from the Heideggerian standpoint, centering on Heidegger's interpretation of the present age in terms of Technik, which is itself a movement in the mission of Being. The movements of the Geschick, as Heidegger says in Der Satz vom Grund and as Axelos emphasizes, are a world-play. The task of a thinking concerned with the future is to play along with the play. The future in Marxist and Heideggerian terms is a "planetary" age, beyond all nationalism, ruled by a global or planetary technology. Thinking must decide whether and how such technology will be an instrument of liberation or of oppression. Axelos' confrontation raises many central and interesting questions: what is the relationship between Heidegger's Gelassenheit and Marx's praxis? What hope is there for a future governed by a play? etc. The book can be recommended as both original and provocative.--J. D. C. (shrink)

One can only look with favor upon the appearance of the English translation of this tremendously important work in the history of ethical theory in twentieth century European philosophy. We are also fortunate to have in Manfred Frings both the general editor of the German edition of the collected works of Scheler and a skillful translator of this significant work. In this work, Scheler hopes to mediate between Kant’s empty formalism and ethical relativism by developing an absolutistic ethics which nonetheless (...) does not focus on mere "duty" but on a definite moral "content". In the absence of an adjectival form for "content," Frings and Funk have decided to translate "die materiale Wertethik" by "non-formal ethics of values." Such an ethics centers on the absolute value of persons; thus the subtitle of the work: "A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism." Scheler’s method in this work is, as is well known, "phenomenological," i.e., concerned with intuiting the essence or absolute being of ethical values. There is a helpful bibliography, an index of names, and a detailed index of subjects.—J.D.C. (shrink)

One of the scandals of Anglo-American philosophical scholarship is its neglect of the German Idealist tradition. Even in the case of Hegel himself, many important works are either untranslated or have received only inadequate or outdated renderings and suffer from a lack of first-rate, full-length commentaries. The situation is much worse, when one turns to Schelling and Fichte. Lachs and Heath have rendered a real service in providing us with a new translation, available in a well-bound papercover edition, of Fichte's (...) major work, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, to supplant the very objectionable Kroeger translation which is, in any case, long since out of print. This is an essential work for comprehending the development of European philosophy in the short but extraordinarily productive period from 1781 to 1807. Along with Schelling's System des transzendentalen Idealismus, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre constitutes the bridge between Kant's three Critique's and Hegel's Phenomenology. Both of the famous "Introductions" are translated in the current edition. Despite their torturous text, their renderings are clearer than one might expect. There is an extremely helpful introduction by Lachs (who also translated the "First Introduction of 1797," a German-English glossary, and a detailed index. The translators also supply the standard marginal pagination from the Gesamtausgabe of 1834-1846. In all, the work is professionally done, a permanent and much needed contribution of the study of Fichte for English-reading students.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Arnold Metzger is one of Germany’s leading philosophers. He served as an assistant to Husserl at Freiburg from 1919 to 1924 and published his first major book—Der Gegendstand der Erkenntnis —in Husserl’s Jarhbuch. [[sic]] The present title is a second unchanged edition of the work which appeared in 1955, and which received a warm reception in Germany. Metzger’s philosophy is concerned with working out the implications which lie in the concept of Being. There are two "mythologies" about Being which Metzger (...) hopes to dispel. The one hypostasizes Being as something transcendent and permanent, while the other is a reductionism which hypostasizes the factual. The problem of freedom and death must be understood within the context of the question of Being so formulated. Metzger’s approach is in the broad sense "existential," but it is developed out of a constant dialogue with Socrates, Plato and Kant. His German is highly readable and unencumbered. His book which is a cross section of the major themes of twentieth century German philosophy, is a thoughtful meditative study of one of the major themes in contemporary thought.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This work is an invaluable aid to Heidegger scholars. It brings the bibliography of Heidegger to completion through 1967. The work begins with a presentation of the writings of Heidegger in chronological order. Next the author lists all the translations of Heidegger's works, following the order in which those works were presented in the previous section. It is interesting to note that there are no less than four translations of Sein und Zeit in Japanese. The literature on Heidegger comes next. (...) It is presented year by year, with the authors within a single year listed alphabetically. This section includes both books and articles. A spot check reveals inevitable omissions and mistakes. No entry occurs for the partial translation of Vom Wesen des Grundes in The Search for Being, trans. and ed. by J. Wilde and W. Kimmel, pp. 507-520. The fascinating fact that Gilbert Ryle reviewed Sein und Zeit in Mind, 38, pp. 355-370) is obscured by referring to "Ryle, E." in both the entry and the index. This is unfortunate because of the many favorable things that Ryle has to say about Heidegger in this review. None of the good articles and translations of originally foreign articles into English on Heidegger that appear in Philosophy Today are to be found. Helene Weiss' "The Greek Conception of Time and Being in the Light of Heidegger's Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, II, pp. 173-187 does not appear, although an article on Heidegger in the previous issue of the same journal does. There is no index of topics but only of authors. Building on H. Lübbe's twelve-year old bibliography this work is of great service to Heideggerians.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Otto Pöggeler is among the most distinguished living German scholars. He is the coeditor of the new critical edition of the works of Hegel published by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In addition he is the author of what many regard as the book on Heidegger. He has access to documents that Heidegger makes available to only a few and is considered to have an acquaintance with the pre-Sein und Zeit period that is matched by none. This latest volume--a collection of important (...) articles that have appeared in European periodicals on Heidegger, and offered on the occasion of his 80th birthday--is exactly what one would expect of Pöggeler. The contributions are most distinguished. To name a few: Löwith on Heidegger and Protestant theology; Schulz's famous article on the place of Heidegger in the history of Philosophy; Gadamer on Heidegger and Marburg theology; Beda Allemann on Heidegger's engagement with the National Socialists; Tugendhat on Heidegger's idea of truth; and finally an article by Pöggeler on Heidegger's hermeneutics. Pöggeler also provides a 38-page introduction entitled "Heidegger Today." In addition to a helpful index, there is a tripartite bibliography including not only Heidegger's works and the important secondary literature but also the works of independent thinkers who think out of the context and under the influence of Heidegger--such as Binswanger, Bultmann, Fink, Löwith et al.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume contains the minutes of a seminar which was held on Heraclitus in the University of Freiburg under the joint direction of Heidegger and Fink. The seminar was to be conducted over a series of semesters, but since only the Winter Semester in 1966-1967 proved feasible, the current work is in Fink's words "a fragment on the Fragments." The text takes the form of a dialogue between "Heidegger," "Fink," and "Participant," Using the fragments of Heraclitus as a point of (...) departure, the dialogue partners cover a terrain by now familiar to readers of Heidegger: the hermeneutic circle, metaphysics, the "mortals" and the "gods," Hegel's idea of Logic. Heidegger clearly leads the discussion and hence his unique reading of the pre-Socratic philosopher is always the central theme. As Fink says, not the philological problematic, as important as that may be, but rather the attempt to think through the thought of Heraclitus is the issue in this seminar. Fink usually opens the discussion with a preliminary interpretation of Heraclitus in order to provide a common basis for the participants which will be more familiar to them. The volume is frequently punctuated with insights into Heraclitus' text, as anyone who has learned to stay with Heidegger's thoughtful dialogue with classical sources has discovered.--J. D. C. (shrink)

John Sallis of Duquesne University has edited this fine collection of essays on Heidegger as a tribute to the latter on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Some of the contributions are papers that were read at a Heidegger Symposium at Duquesne in October, 1966. There is a brief letter by Heidegger addressed to Arthur Schrynemakers, chairman of the Symposium, in which Heidegger submits a set of questions for the consideration of the Symposium participants. Sallis contributes an article which responds (...) to these questions. Zygmunt Adamczewski's contribution is a commentary and elaboration of some issues, e.g., the translation of Wesen, which he discussed personally with Heidegger in 1968. Edward Ballard gives a very clear-headed account of Heidegger's critique of science. There is an excellent account of the "Ereignis" by Theodore Kisiel and of "Time and Being" by André Schuwer. Other contributors include C. D. Keyes, Thomas Langan, Ralph Powell, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and John Wild. The volume is lacking in two respects. Except for a brief piece by Langan and for certain implications of Powell's study, there is no really sustained and well-developed critique of Heidegger either internal or external, sympathetic or unsympathetic, a failure not uncommon among Heideggerians. Moreover, there is no index of any kind--of topics, of names, or of texts of Heidegger--which impairs the book's usefulness. --J. D. C. (shrink)

With the publication of this translation the quality of Heidegger literature available in English takes a quantum leap forward. No book--save perhaps Otto Poeggeler's--can match Marx's for its depth of insight into Heidegger's thought. The central theme of the book is as follows. Hegel's claim to have consummated the Western "tradition" is accepted by Heidegger. The foundations of this tradition are in Greek ontology. Marx locates the classic formulation of the basic tenets of Greek ontology in the Aristotelian doctrine of (...) ousia. Being as ousia is the perduring, necessary and intelligible. The Hegelian idea of Being remains within the Aristotelian perspective because it determines Being as the unfolding of the self-same substance according to necessary law and so as to develop into a stage of maximum intelligibility. Being is more radically temporal, of course, for Hegel but this stays within the perspective of the Greek notion of eternity, because the Hegelian "substance" is relentlessly working out an eternal pattern of categories which is inscribed in its very essence, and which the Logic articulates. Heidegger's philosophy seeks to "overcome" the "tradition," and so the whole metaphysics of "substance and subject." Being is even more radically temporalized, for Heidegger does not think time on the "model" of eternity. Being as time is not the movement of the self-same through time but time itself--as Being. The necessity and lawfulness of Being, moreover, is replaced by the "play" of the "fourfold." And the radical intelligibility of Being is overcome in Heidegger's thought by the interplay of concealment and unconcealment. Finally, against the Aristotelian-Hegelian teleology Heidegger posits the hope of a "new beginning" of history whose coming to pass--by a "turn" on Being's part--can only be obscurely intimated and at best "awaited." Not the least among this book's merits is the refreshingly critical attitude of the author to Heidegger--the book he says was prompted by a reflection on Heidegger-critic Lowith's [[sic]] work on Heidegger. His criticism of Heidegger in the conclusion of this book sets out important objections which the usual commentator ignores or evades or attributes to a "fallenness" into "calculative" thinking.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This is a lengthy study which, appearing as it does contemporaneously with Sherover's Heidegger, Kant and Time, underlines the importance not only of Kant's influence on Heidegger but also of Heidegger's unorthodox but intriguing interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason. In his Introduction Declève discusses at some length Heidegger's involvement with the National Socialists, pointing out in particular Heidegger's tendency at that time to fuse the technical language of philosophy with the jargon of the Nazi ideology. It is of (...) some importance, Declève holds, that Heidegger saw for a time the historical and political consequences of his thought in the Nazi's, whereas the political applications of Kant's thought are considerably more praiseworthy. Where Heidegger approves of Hitler's decision to withdraw--from the League of Nations, for example, Kant's thought lays the theoretical foundations of a world society. Accordingly Declève sees a radical shortcoming in Heidegger's whole approach to Kant: if it is true that Kant is laying the foundations of metaphysics, this must be understood to include the foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Heidegger ignores the second Critique. Nonetheless, Declève's treatment of his topic is, on the whole, sympathetic to Heidegger's approach to Kant, and he regards the confrontation of Heidegger and Kant as a dialogue of the greatest importance between philosophical geniuses of the highest order. The book is richly documented and very carefully executed. It is certain to become standard fare for anyone interested in Heidegger's challenging "retrieve" of Kant.--J. D. C. (shrink)

After Being and Time itself, A Letter on Humanism is perhaps Heidegger’s most important work. It is a comparatively clear statement of the "later Heidegger" which focuses on the possibility of a "humanism" and the meaning of "ethics" for the thinking-committed-to-being. It is also Heidegger’s own retrieval of Being and Time twenty years later, giving a decisive self-interpretation of the main lines of this so-called "early work." Cousineau aims at providing the reader with a "handy, scholarly tool" for interpreting the (...) Letter. He does this in three ways. 1) He provides a running commentary on selected but important passages from the Letter, with a generous use of the original German followed by a translation or paraphrase. 2) He takes a great deal of pain with Heidegger’s German and does not hesitate to call the only currently available translation of the Letter in English "deplorable", a judgment this translation frequently merits. 3) Finally, he presents us with an extensive annotated bibliography of works in seven languages which has the unusual feature of being coded by the letters A, B, and C which he defines as follows: anti-humanism, i.e., the interpretation of the relation between Being and Dasein advanced by the author sees Heidegger as devaluing man’s essence; metahumanism, the relationship is seen as unrealistic and mythical, and man’s essence is absent; authentic humanism, the interpretor [[sic]] sees in Heidegger’s view a representation of man’s true possibility for being human. Cousineau wisely reserves a category "D" for those whose position does not accommodate itself to these classifications. There are 95 entries in this bibliography which ranges over most of the important literature.—J.D.C. (shrink)

This book attempts to collect Heidegger’s scattered and often very puzzling observations about the holy, divinity, God, and the gods in order to make them a coherent statement. The first three chapters present clearly and soundly the by now familiar material of Heidegger’s attempt, first, to lay the foundation of metaphysics, then, to overcome metaphysics altogether. Chapter 4 draws the conclusion that Heidegger stands in opposition to any metaphysical account of God and that theology, if it is possible at all, (...) must be nonmetaphysical. Chapter 5 argues that Heidegger’s approach to God, centered primarily in the account of the Geviert, is mythical rather than metaphysical, though it does not recommend that we in the twentieth century simply adopt the Homeric or Hesiodic myths. The heart of the book is Chapter 6, in which Perotti analyzes the Hölderlin commentaries. On this basis he claims that, for Heidegger, any word about God’s coming—for we live after the flight of the gods-must come from the poets. Thinking dwells in subordination to poetry, and its role is to cultivate and preserve the poet’s words. On the question of God for Heidegger, according to Perotti, there is nothing to do but wait—for the poets to speak. Perotti’s text is quite brief and, in the opening chapters, covers familiar ground. He makes no use of Phaenomenologie und Theologie. Unfortunately, he often quotes the Lohner translation of the Letter on Humanism, although he always supplies the German. On p. 27, 1934 is mentioned where 1943 is intended. There is ample footnoting, a bibliography, and an index.—J.D.C. (shrink)

As Ihde points out, he has undertaken the perilous task of writing a book about a philosopher who is still actively at work and developing his thought. Yet he has succeeded in providing the reader with an access to Ricoeur’s work which makes it plain to those who are not familiar with Ricoeur why he has achieved such prominence. After an illuminating introduction, Ihde devotes the opening chapters of his book to Ricoeur’s "structural phenomenology," a more or less orthodox Husserlian (...) employment of the phenomenological method. This is exemplified by Ricoeur’s "eidetic" analysis of the will in Freedom and Nature and in a modified way in Fallible Man. Ihde then passes on to Ricoeur’s later "hermeneutic phenomenology," a phenomenology of interpretation which is to be found in his analysis of myth and symbol in The Symbolism of Evil. The growing interest in hermeneutics explains Ricoeur’s concern with the problem of language, which is Ricoeur’s current line of interest. The study translated under the title Freud and Philosophy is discussed in this context. There is much to recommend Ricoeur to the English reader, not the least of which is his open admission of the limits of the phenomenological method and his attempt to complement it with the "objectivistic" approaches, and particularly in recent years with linguistic analysis and the various linguistic sciences. For Ricoeur, no one philosophical method is exclusively valid; the true method is a dialectic between various and even opposed methods. There is an extensive bibliography of Ricoeur’s works and a helpful index of names and topics.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Miss Stambaugh's new translation of Identität und Differenz is a welcome addition to the growing body of English translations of Heidegger. The special merit of Miss Stambaugh's work is that the translator was a student of Heidegger's and was able to prepare this translation in consultation with him. Her work should be particularly well received in view of the very poor quality of the previous translation of the same work, published for some reason under the title Essays in Metaphysics. The (...) "Introduction" is well done but regrettably short as the work stands in need of further explication. There certainly is room for an expanded introduction, as the lectures--even in both languages--barely fill their 146 pages. Miss Stambaugh's linguistic decisions are usually sound. For example, faced with the Heideggerian ambiguity of "Er-eignis," she simply combines the dual meanings into "the event of appropriation," which is as much as one can do with this critically important word in Heidegger's vocabulary.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The author, a professor of psychiatry and religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is interested in developing a religious consciousness which is in many ways opposed to that of the existentialists, at least the more anguished existentialists. "Many contemporary Christians appear to be taking the advice of the Apostle Paul to 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling' out of context." And again: "Modern man's nibbling on intellectual fodder and breathing of 'existential' complaints has led him far (...) astray from his true destiny and rendered him a caricature of his true nature." Play is neither deadly serious nor mere fun, but these are the only alternatives of which modern man is aware. Modern man has forgotten the unique character of play and since this belongs to the essence of religion and liturgy, he has forgotten the essence of Christianity. True religion is playful. And the age of leisure has the time to cultivate play if it would set about doing so. In the course of his argument the author surveys the views of Freud, Erikson, Brown, Eliade, Otto, Huizinga, and Callois.--J. D. C. (shrink)

From the title of this volume—which resists the temptation to call Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander "pre-Socratics"—to the high quality of the translations, this book is an extended exercise in faithfulness to the text of Martin Heidegger. This is in my judgment the most successful attempt yet in the Sisyphian task of translating Heidegger’s works into English which Harper & Row has been undertaking in the past fifteen years. The volume consists in three essays on Parmenides and Heraclitus which appear together (...) and in the same order in Heidegger’s Vorträge und Aufsätze ; these are preceded by the important essay on Anaximander which is taken from Holzwege. These essays in the original German are written in the full bloom of Heidegger’s attempt to liberate language from logic and to find, not only the vocabulary, but also the grammar which is required in order to bring the matter to be thought into language. They are therefore in any strict sense untranslatable. They exist only in German, in the language in which they have come to birth. But the Krell-Capuzzi translation is as faithful an attempt as one could hope for to bring this matter into English, and so to introduce those who are coming to grips with Heidegger for the first time to a very important dimension of his thought, and to help those of us who have been at this for some time to hear these German words anew. What more can one say about a translation than that it helps one to understand the original? And that is what this volume does. (shrink)

In this volume, the author is concerned with working out one of the most fundamental themes in Heidegger’s thought, the "difference" between Being and that-which-is. The expression "ontological difference" is found neither in Being and Time nor Heidegger’s later works, where the term "ontological" is abandoned; nonetheless, what the term signified when it was used—the distinction itself—is central to all of Heidegger’s writings. Vail has written a careful analysis of the role this distinction plays in Heidegger’s later writings, examining it (...) from a multiplicity of perspectives. After discussing the way in which this distinction is opened up by Being itself, viz., by Being’s withdrawal in the very process of revealing itself in beings, Vail then analyzes the relation of this distinction to human thinking, to the "destiny" which lies behind the history of metaphysics, to the Region and, finally, to language. (shrink)

The importance of this book, which appeared in the original German in 1969 under the title Zur Sache des Denkens, 743), is attested to by the rapidity with which it has been translated into English. The title of the English translation is that of the lead essay, the highly celebrated lecture which Heidegger gave in 1962 and which bears the same title as the never published "third division" of the "first half" of Being and Time. This lecture is perhaps the (...) most significant document to be added to the Heideggerian corpus since the Letter on Humanism. It is of course dramatically different from Being and Time and so cannot be regarded as a "continuation of the text of Being and Time." "Time and Being" thematizes the central notion of Heidegger’s later work, "Das Eregignis," [[sic]] translated happily by Miss Stambaugh as "Event of Appropriation". The "Event of Appropriation" is the "It" which "gives" Being and time in the sequence of epochs which constitute the history of Western metaphysics. The lecture is followed by an instructive "seminar" conducted by Heidegger on the text of "Time and Being." There is found here also a penetrating essay entitled "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," as well as a fascinating piece of autobiography entitled "My Way in Phenomenology." Miss Stambaugh’s translation is superb, something readers of the "Heidegger, Works" series which she edits with J. Glenn Garay have become accustomed to.—J. D. C. (shrink)

Heidegger's Unterwegs zur Sprache is one of his most important books and this English translation is a timely addition to the English edition of his "Works." No other single topic is of more interest to the current commentators on Heidegger than that of language. There is a growing sense of a kinship between Heidegger and Wittgenstein and an increasing number of efforts to link continental and Anglo-American thought more closely together--all of which should be stimulated by the appearance of this (...) translation. The work is also interesting from another perspective. The central document in the attempt to relate Heidegger to the East is found in this work in the opening dialogue between Heidegger and Professor Tezuka of the Imperial University of Tokyo about the nature of the experience of language in the East and in Western "metaphysical" Europe. The other essays, particularly "The Way to Language," offer an excellent presentation of the later Heidegger's general view of language. Original language itself, according to Heidegger, is Being and it is this which stirs man into speaking. Human utterance is the revelation or expression of Being rather than, as in the traditional view, a representation or "picture" of "objects" symbolized by sounds or words. If man is "open" to Being then Being will find in language its "house"--implying thereby that the dimensions of the house are the limits of the revealability [[sic]] of Being. Human utterance is "closed off" from "original language" insofar as "Logos" is reduced to "logistics," that is, insofar as all other talk than the mathematico-logical talk of the age of Technik is dismissed as belonging to "unreason." The translation itself is well-done. The Editors of the "Works," in consultation with Heidegger, have chosen to omit the first essay in the 1959 German original in order to publish it in another volume yet to appear. The translators have supplied us with no index, only a few footnotes, explaining their decisions, no "Introduction," no bibliography--all of which can only be regretted.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume is a translation of the last three essays of Nietzsche, Vol. II and of the essay "Overcoming Metaphysics" from Vorträge and Aufsätze. There is a brief introduction to the volume, the most interesting feature of which is a translation of Heidegger’s response to three questions put to him by the translator concerning the subject matter of this volume. In the first two studies, "Metaphysics as the History of Being" and "Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics," Heidegger (...) develops his interpretation of metaphysics as the history of Being itself. He traces the way that Being is first understood by the Greeks as ousia, and shows how in Plato and Aristotle, ousia is determined in such a way as to give rise to the later notions of essentia and existentia. The history of these terms is then followed all the way up to Schelling, Kierkegaard, and Being and Time itself. The third essay, "Recollection in Metaphysics" is a very penetrating and sharp formulation of Heidegger’s attempt to think upon that from which metaphysics originates but from which it is also essentially closed off, viz., the truth of Being itself. The last essay, included at Heidegger’s own request, deals with the same theme in terms of "overcoming" metaphysics. Stambaugh’s translation goes as far as can be hoped in providing a readable English text. There is no index.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Josiah Thompson, who has authored a previous work on Kierkegaard in 1967 and just recently edited Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, has, with the present title, made a memorable contribution to Kierkegaardian literature. Kierkegaard may be best described as a philosophical-biographical essay. It studies the development of Kierkegaard’s life from his birth in 1813 to his burial in 1855 in a funeral which results in a "near riot" at the graveside. Thompson has produced a continuous, compelling narrative which is (...) vividly and often beautifully written. There are no footnotes to interrupt the almost novel-like quality of the prose, which often includes even bits of dialogue. Yet, at the end of the 238 pages of prose, there are 37 pages of notes, referring back to page and line, which richly document the facts, scenes, and often the conversation which Thompson has presented. In Chapter 12, "Master of Irony," in the most philosophically important discussion in the book, Thompson develops his thesis that the aim of the pseudonymous writings is to portray "the necessary failure of all human projects". There is a shattering discussion of Kierkegaard’s final reflections on Christianity in the next to the last chapter. In all, Thompson has written a superb and penetrating study of Kierkegaard.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957 under the title Sunrise to Eternity, this Seabury edition performs the welcome service of presenting again the outstanding English exposition of Boehme's mystico-philosophical thought. The book is extremely sober and scholarly, systematically demythologizing the standard account of Boehme's life and work. Many expositions of Boehme are cluttered with unlikely and distracting accounts of his personal sanctity and numerous revelations. Stoudt, however, gives a tightly argued, well-documented account of Boehme's biography, alternating chapters on Boehme's life with chapters (...) on the works of the same period. This is extremely helpful, for it exhibits Boehme's development quite clearly. Stoudt makes it very plain that Boehme's early thought is couched in the language of alchemy but that it outgrows that strange vocabulary to become by the end of his life a mature spirituality, steeped in the earlier German mystical tradition and with a speculative depth which anticipates the main lines of German idealism. Boehme is not, then, as the standard hagiographers would have him, an unlettered shoemaker, sprung untainted from the breast of God and untaught by any mortal predecessor. Stoudt is not always as clear as we would hope, but, considering Boehme's notorious obscurity he is clearer than most. While Stoudt points out Boehme's origin in the German tradition that precedes him, he underplays the dependence of Boehme on Meister Eckhardt, or at least leaves that whole problem insufficiently analyzed. There is a brief preface by Paul Tillich.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Grimsley has written a work which combines a sketch of Kierkegaard’s biography with an account of the contents of his major writings. A good part of the time, his efforts are directed almost exclusively to studies of Kierkegaard’s works, and these are only thinly threaded together by biographical information. His exposition is clear, and his interpretations are often interesting. Thus, in Chapter 5, he explores the possibility that Kierkegaard’s "secret," which lay behind his great melancholy, and which stood in the (...) way of marrying Regina, may have consisted in "partial or complete impotence". While Grimsley, in general, takes the pseudonymous character of Kierkegaard’s authorship seriously, he shows something of a lapse from this in Chapter 7 where the views of Johannes Climacus and of Kierkegaard are all but identified. At one point he even speaks of "Kierkegaard’s philosophy" in respect to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. There is a helpful bibliography and index at the end.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Edited by the author of The Lonely Labyrinth, this anthology is a superb collection of Kierkegaard studies. It begins with two general statements of Kierkegaard’s thought: Louis Mackey’s previously published and tightly packed essay "The Poetry of Inwardness," and a chapter from Prof. Thompson’s newest book on Kierkegaard entitled "The Master of Irony." There is also Sartre’s essay "The Singular Universal" from Kierkegaard Vivant and an interesting historical essay by Richard Popkin which situates Kierkegaard in the history of modern skepticism (...) and shows his affinities with Hume. If there is a common theme to this collection it is the notion that Kierkegaard has persistently separated himself from the statements of his pseudonymous authors and that what has come to be known as "Kierkegaard’s philosophy" is really the product of Kierkegaard’s irony. Otherwise Kierkegaard’s entire literary effort becomes self-contradictory. The essays by Thompson, Crites and Allison are especially relevant in this regard. Editor Thompson has also done us the splendid service of updating the 1962 Kierkegaard Bibliografi with a supplement which includes all the literature in English for the years 1956-70. There is also a most helpful index locurum of the works of Kierkegaard cited in this anthology.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Strange as it may seem, this volume is the first booklength study of Jaspers in English And it is certainly very welcome and long overdue. The author studied under Jaspers in 1934-1935 at Heidelberg. After a brief biography he clarifies a number of issues which always arise and frequently obfuscate discussions of existential philosophers--such as the problems of demonstration and of clarity. Wallraff then treats in turn: philosophy and science, Jaspers' theory of society and its institutions; the existential themes of (...) freedom, communication, and ultimate situations. The following chapters concern Jaspers' metaphysical views: transcendence, cipher-reading, and the encompassing. Wallraff is thus plainly following the outline of Jaspers' thought which is provided by Jaspers' own magnum opus, Philosophy: I. World-Orientation; II. Existenz-illumination; III. Metaphysics. The treatment is always clear and sympathetic. The author avoids any sustained criticism of Jaspers; nor does he conduct any investigation of the once much discussed relationship between Jaspers and Heidegger. The author also provides his readers with a helpful bibliography of Jasper's works and their English translations.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Wood's book argues for the integral place of the "moral arguments"--the arguments for freedom, immortality, and the existence of God--in Kant's total philosophical work. These arguments have always been the object of some suspicion not only as regards their internal plausibility but also because it has been maintained that they constitute a surreptitious reintroduction of the speculative way of arguing clearly banned by the first Critique. This suspicion was reinforced by Adickes' edition of the Opus Postumum in which the editor (...) contended that Kant had therein repudiated the moral arguments in favor of a personal experience of God through the Categorical Imperative. Wood's argument to the contrary is vigorous and extremely interesting. He holds that Kant's notion of "rational faith" is a profound religious insight, one whose importance Wood does not hesitate to say is directly proportionate to that of the critical theory itself.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Erickson has written an exceptionally interesting book which belongs to the growing body of literature seeking to find the common points of philosophic concern that exist between phenomenology and analytic philosophy--to "swim the Channel" as it is put. He thinks primarily in the analytic tradition, but, from a purely quantitative point of view, most of this study is devoted to the analysis of Heidegger's thought. The most frequent analytic references are to Wittgenstein. In the first chapter, he seeks to find (...) some linguistic basis for raising the question of the meaning of Being--and not just of 'Being' and he engages in a lengthy discussion of the possible kinds of participal [[sic]] uses 'Being' might have in Heidegger's celebrated "question of Being." In the second chapter, he argues strongly for the possibility of an extra-linguistic meaning, a possibility uniformly neglected by the analytic "monoscopic" tradition. In Chapter three, he finds a common basis for phenomenology and for the analytic tradition in the "transcendental turn" that contemporary philosophy has taken. He rightly points out that for both phenomenology and analysis it is in language that, as Heidegger says, "things first come into being and are." This is an extremely important observation and fundamental to any bridge-building of these two traditions. The last chapter discusses the fact that Dasein understands itself in terms of its world: self-reflection is mediated by things. Among other things he argues in favor of Heidegger's views on the "ready-to-hand."--The most serious objection one can raise against this book is its character as a book: it has no really apparent beginning, middle and end. It originated in four previously published articles and it is doubtful that Erickson has succeeded in welding them together into a unity. The four chapters considered separately however are insightful and suggestive.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This interesting volume approaches Heidegger in a fresh and suggestive way. The author views Heidegger's thought as a confrontation with the history of metaphysics, an assumption which can hardly be contested. After a preliminary characterization of the essence of "metaphysics" as the later Heidegger understands that word, Laffoucreière reconstructs, chronologically, the history of metaphysics as Heidegger conceives it, studying in turn Heidegger's interpretation of: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Nietzsche. She approaches Heidegger's thought through the eyes (...) of his Nietzsche-interpretation. Heidegger sees the history of the west in profoundly Nietzschean tones: it is the history of nihilism and of the domination of western thought by Christian-Platonic metaphysics whose pivotal concept, God as the first cause, has deteriorated to the point of meaninglessness. The times are needy and it is only by a new turn, a new sending of Being as Mission, that nihilism can be overcome. Laffoucreière explains clearly and forcefully that Heidegger's Seinsdenken is not atheistic, except in the sense of the theos of western metaphysics. She shows that a major concern of Heidegger's thought is to overcome the God of metaphysics in favor of the divine God to whom man can bend his knee. She argues that Heidegger's attempt to retrieve the original sense of Being and man, far from being atheistic, aims in fact at making possible a renewed sense of the living God. The interpretation is sound and for those who doubt it there is a three sentence endorsement of the work by Heidegger himself in which he welcomes the publication of "a clear and pertinent exposition of my thought."--J. D. C. (shrink)

This compact sketch of Fichte's idealism is No. 82 in the PUF series "Initiation philosophique," directed by Jean Lacroix. Bourgeois' book follows the classic division proposed by Gueroult of the genesis of Fichte's thought into three stages: the early philosophy of the ego up to 1800, including the 1794 edition of the Wissenschaftslehre and the celebrated "two introductions" of 1794; the philosophy of Being, 1800-1804, especially The Vocation of Man; and finally the philosophy of the Absolute, 1804 and thereafter, which (...) includes the Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age and The Way to the Blessed Life. For Bourgeois, these may be just as well characterized, respectively, as the philosophy of moral obligation, of vocation, and of love. He hopes to defend the early Fichte against the charge of "subjective" idealism levelled at him by Schelling and Hegel. He singles out for emphasis the close connection that Fichte makes--Kierkegaard notwithstanding--between life and idealism, and finds this a recurrent characteristic of all of Fichte's works. His interpretation of the first Wissenschaftslehre focusses upon Fichte's remark in the First Introduction that "the kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon the kind of man that one is." This deserves emphasis, anticipating as it does not only the Existentialist interpretation of philosophy but also the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey. The book is brief and to the point and should prove helpful in the difficult task of unravelling Fichte's thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)