"....an admirably clear account of Heidegger's relation to the philosophical tradition, and especially of his criticism of Cartesianism." -- Richard Rorty, University of Virginia.

In this book Lars Svendsen examines the nature of boredom, how it originated, its history, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will.

Heidegger is one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. A difficult and powerful philosopher, his work requires careful reading. _Being and Time_ was his first major book and remains his most influential work. _Heidegger and Being and Time_ introduces and assesses: Heidegger's life and the background of _Being and Time_; the ideas and text of _Being and Time_; Heidegger's importance to philosophy and to the intellectual life of this century. Ideal for anyone coming to Heidegger for the (...) first time, this guide will be vital for all students of Heidegger in philosophy and cultural theory. (shrink)

This book is a systematic reconstruction of Heidegger's account of time and temporality in Being and Time. The author locates Heidegger in a tradition of 'temporal idealism' with its sources in Plotinus, Leibniz, and Kant. For Heidegger, time can only be explained in terms of 'originary temporality', a concept integral to his ontology. Blattner sets out not only the foundations of Heidegger's ontology, but also his phenomenology of the experience of time. Focusing on a neglected but central aspect of Being (...) and Time, this book will be of considerable interest to all students of Heidegger both inside and outside philosophy. (shrink)

In his Contributions to Philosophy, Martin Heidegger introduces "acceleration" as one of the three symptoms--along with "calculation" and the "outbreak of massiveness"--of our technological way of "being-in-the-world." In this article, I unpack the relationship between these symptoms and draw a twofold conclusion. First, interpreting acceleration in terms of time pathologies, I suggest the self is becoming increasingly fragmented and emotionally overwhelmed from chronic sensory arousal and time pressure. This experience makes it difficult for us to qualitatively distinguish what matters to (...) us in our everyday lives, resulting in a pervasive cultural mood of indifference, what Heidegger calls "profound boredom." Second, by drawing on Heidegger's hermeneutic method, I argue that the practice of mainstream psychology, by adopting the reductive methodology of the empirical sciences, largely ignores our accelerated socio-historical situation, resulting in therapeutic models that have a tendency to construct and perpetuate the very pathologies the psychologist is seeking to treat. (shrink)