First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger's Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger's own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, the war, and evil; and the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, (...) a scholar, and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger's two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, the lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger's wartime and postwar thinking. (shrink)

For your students, celebrating this day is a source of rare and pure joy. The only way we can be adequate to this occasion is to let the gratitude that we owe you become the fundamental mood suffusing everything from beginning to end. In keeping with a beautiful tradition, today on this celebratory occasion we offer you as our gift this slender volume of a few short essays. In no way could this ever be an adequate return for all that (...) you, our teacher, have lavished upon us, and awakened and nourished in us. In the coming days many will try to survey your work in philosophy and to evaluate its impact and effect on various scales. In so doing, they will bring to mind many things that we should not forget. However, that way of parceling out a person's intellectual impact and of calculating the influence of his writings fails to grasp the essential matter for which we owe you our thanks. That essential element will not be found by considering how fruitful your teaching career has been. Surely such effectiveness will continue to be the prerogative and good fortune of every professor as long as German university escapes the doom of getting turned into a mind-numbing trade school. No, the essence of your leadership consists in something else, namely that the content and style of your questioning immediately forces each of us into an intense, critical dialogue, and it demands that we always be ready to reverse or even abandon our position. There is no guarantee, of course, that any of us will find our way to the one thing that, so unpretentously, your work sought to lead us to: that releasement in which one is seasoned and ready for the problems.2 So too the works we present to you are mere witnesses to the fact that we wanted to follow your guidance, not proof that we succeeded in becoming your disciples.3 But there is one thing we will retain as a lasting possession: Each of us who had the privilege of following in your footsteps was confronted by you, our esteemed teacher, with the option either of becoming the steward of essential matters or of working against them. On this celebratory occasion, as we view your philosophical existence in this light, we also acquire secure points of reference for giving a true assessment of the value of your work in philosophy. Does it consist in the fact that some decades ago a new movement emerged in philosophy and gained influence among the then-dominant trends? Or that a new method was added to the list of previous ones? Or that long-forgotten problem-areas got reworked.. (shrink)

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism--of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought--they still want to today--to oppose to the inhuman. "Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism. . . . . This study of (...) Heidegger is a fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."--David Hoy, London Review of Books "Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. . . . Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."--David Farrell Krell, Research in Phenomenology "The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."--Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 83-101 [Access article in PDF] Martin Heidegger and his Japanese InterlocutorsAbout A Limit of Western Metaphysics Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 1 Quite obviously, the central position that Western philosophical discourses have assigned, over the past two centuries, to the concept of "sense" hinges upon the epistemological dominance of the Subject/Object paradigm. In whichever specific ways this concept has been defined (and we all know how confusing (...) the range of those proposals has become), 1 it always ends up referring to the modalities in which an "Observer-Subject" can refer to what (s)he is observing as the "World of Objects." "Making sense," then, may be described as the selection, performed by an observer, of a specific object of reference among all the objects of which the world is believed to consist; or as the drawing of a line by which (s)he makes a distinction, at every given moment, between those parts of the world that (s)he is observing and those that (s)he is not observing; or as the positioning of a chosen topic within a preexisting context of possible associations. All these different descriptions can be turned into definitions of "sense making" as long as they point to the awareness that whatever has been chosen, divided, or contextualized could have been chosen, divided, or contextualized differently. Another way of evoking the same type of relation between what remains "potential" and what becomes "actual" would be to say that the concept of "sense" always refers to cases of entropy transformed into structure—under the condition that alternative patterns of transforming entropy into structure remain available. What we call the Subject's consciousness (Bewusstsein) is the place where these selections take place and where their alternatives are held available.If we consider the Subject/Object paradigm as the core element of that style of philosophizing which has been called (sometimes from a purely descriptive and sometimes from a critical angle) "Western metaphysics," then it is a both true and trivial conclusion to say that, within Western metaphysics, sense making is inevitable (that is, that Subjects cannot help producing sense and, also, that there can be no effects of sense without pointing to a Subject). An interesting case that proves the point of this implicational relationship is Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. Despite Luhmann's sustained effort to be epistemologically eccentric, despite all his great conceptual ambition to bypass the instance of the Subject, 2 his books (and, above all, their reception) make it [End Page 83] very clear how a philosophical discourse that gives as central a position to the concept of "sense" as Luhmann's cannot help producing Subject-effects. The frequently used everyday expression, on the other hand, that "something makes no sense" is not in conflict with our point about the inevitability of sense making within the metaphysical—and also within our Western everyday—framework of discursive presuppositions.For if we say that "something makes no sense," we are not using the word "sense" in accordance with the conventional philosophical meaning of "sense making," and we are thus not referring to individual phenomena that would "resist" individual acts of sense attribution. 3 Rather, when we say that "something makes no sense," we react to situations where a (shorter or longer) sequence of those elementary and inevitable acts of sense attribution does not produce an impression of "coherence" or "consistency"; we refer to situations where we lack a larger perspective from which we could subsume the results of different individual acts of sense making [see Hahn]. Astonishingly enough (or not astonishingly at all), all those loud intellectual slogans from a decade or two ago about the "death of the Subject" never reached this—altogether unsurprising—point: that any attempt at (or the mere historical process of) overcoming a Subject-centered epistemological tradition (or, with the more Heideggerian concept, of overcoming "metaphysics") would have to ask how one could—begin to—avoid sense making. On the contrary, that "weak subject" and that so-called "weak thinking" as which the Subject/Object paradigm seems to... (shrink)

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) influenced the work of such diverse thinkers as Sartre and Derrida. In Tool-Being, Graham Harman departs from the prevailing linguistic approach to analytic and continental philosophy in favor of Heideggerian object-oriented research into the secret contours of objects. Written in a colorful style, it will be of interest to anyone open to new trends in present-day philosophy.

This article considers the differences between Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in light of Pascal’s distinction between the esprit de géometrie and the esprit de finesse. According to Pascal, the essential “principles” dominating our perceptual lives cannot be clearly and confidently demonstrated in a manner akin to logic and mathematics, but must be discerned in a more spontaneous or intuitive manner.It is unsurprising that Husserl, originally a student of mathematics, might seem closer to the esprit de géometrie, whereas (...) class='Hi'>Heidegger, trained in theology and drawn to poets and poetic thinkers, is closer to the esprit de finesse. This difference is clear from the styles of writing of these two seminal figures. I consider how this stylistic difference is also linked with the substance of their respective philosophies, and with the approaches they recommend for exploring subjective life. A related difference concerns how each theorist responds to what Husserl called the “paradox of human subjectivity” and what Michel Foucault later termed the “empirico-transcendental doublet”: the fact that, in doing phenomenology, human consciousness exists as both the subject and the object of our knowing. Husserl mostly emphasized the advantages, epistemological and existential, that this potential reflexivity can afford. Heidegger was more interested in the obstacles or traps it sets—both for accurate self-knowledge and for authentic living. These issues are discussed in relation to the “natural attitude” and “everydayness,” and to the linguistic grounding of human existence and knowledge—especially as these issues emerge in Foucault’s Les mots et les choses and Eugen Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation. (shrink)

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism—of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought—they still want to today—to oppose to the inhuman. "Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism..... This study of Heidegger is a (...) fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."—David Hoy, London Review of Books "Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit.... Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."—David Farrell Krell, _Research in Phenomenology_ "The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."—Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review. (shrink)

This collection of texts (originally published in German under the title Holzwege) is Heidegger's first post-war book and contains some of the major expositions of his later philosophy. Of particular note are 'The Origin of the Work of Art', perhaps the most discussed of all of Heidegger's essays, and 'Nietzsche's Word 'God is Dead',' which sums up a decade of Nietzsche research. Although translations of the essays have appeared individually in a variety of places, this is the first (...) English translation to bring them all together as Heidegger intended. The text is taken from the last edition of the work, which contains the author's final corrections together with important marginal annotations that provide considerable insight into the development of his thought. This fresh and accurate new translation will be an invaluable resource for all students of Heidegger, whether they work in philosophy, literary theory, religious studies, or intellectual history. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event.

A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work.

A major work by one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, published here in English for the first time.

The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

A new, definitive translation of Heidegger's most important work.

The work is significant not only for its illuminating assessment of Kant's thought but also for its elaboration of themes first broached in Being and Time, ...

Identity and Difference consists of English translations and the original German versions of two little-known lectures given in 1957 by Martin Heidegger, "The Principle of Identity" and "The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics.

Contrary to the idea that there are fundamental differences between the work of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin, the thesis shows that there exists a profound similarity in the direction of their projects, by exploring how they took up Kant's critical legacy concerning the temporality of language: the belonging together of language and time. The ground of Kant's system and of the necessity of systematicity - the three-fold synthesis which 'generates' time under the direction of conceptuality - is elucidated (...) via the Second Analogy and the Critique of Teleological Judgment. It is argued that Kant's understanding of language and time remains fixed within a circular justification of Newtonian Science, which prevented him from taking up the critical resources of his treatment of teleological concepts and applying it to his idea of the critical system itself. Heidegger's and Benjamin's work may be understood as taking up the hermeneutic circularity of Kant's philosophical system, though freeing it from its appeal to a limited time determination. They both develop notions of a more originary temporality in conjunction with a linguistic phenomenology. They further allow this more critical thinking of language and time to reflexively fall back on the writing of philosophy itself. Their understanding of the temporality of language is explored through the way 'translation' focuses, in each case, a thinking of tradition and of linguistic works. The thesis rejects attempts to separate Heidegger's early work from his later approach, and further rejects a tendency to focus on Benjamin's style of writing in isolation from its theoretical basis. The thesis concludes by arguing that the work of both Heidegger and Benjamin points to a rethinking of Kant's legacy of the necessity of system, in terms of system as the inescapable belonging together of language and time. (shrink)

Being and time : introduction -- What is metaphysics? -- On the essence of truth -- The origin of the work of art -- Letter on humanism -- Modern science, metaphysics, and mathematics -- The question concerning technology -- Building dwelling thinking -- What calls for thinking? -- The way to language -- The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.

This work, the text of Martin Heidegger's lecture course of 1929/30, is crucial for an understanding of Heidegger's transition from the major work of his early years, Being and Time, to his later preoccupations with language, truth, and ...

Continues and extends explorations begun in Being and Time.

"Collects Martin Heidegger's pivotal writings on art, its role in human life and culture, and its relationship to thinking and truth"--Publisher description.

Long awaited and eagerly anticipated, this remarkable volume allows English-speaking readers to experience a profound dialogue between the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss.

Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

This is the first time that a seminal collection of fourteen essays by Martin Heidegger (originally published in German under the title Wegmarken) has appeared in English in its complete form. It includes new or first-time translations of seven essays, and thoroughly revised, updated versions of the other seven. Amongst the new translations are such key essays as 'On the Essence of Ground', 'Hegel and the Greeks' and 'On the Question of Being'. Spanning a period from 1919-1961, these essays (...) have become established points of reference for all those with a serious interest in Heidegger. Now collected for the first time in translations by an experienced Heidegger translator and scholar, they will prove an essential resource for all students of Heidegger. (shrink)

Discourse on Thinking questions that must occur to us the moment we manage to see a familiar situation in unfamiliar light.

This volume consists of two lecture series given by Heidegger in the 1940s and 1950s. The lectures given in Bremen constitute the first public lectures Heidegger delivered after World War II, when he was officially banned from teaching. Here, Heidegger openly resumes thinking that deeply engaged him with Hölderlin's poetry and themes developed in his earlier works. In the Freiburg lectures Heidegger ponders thought itself and freely engages with the German idealists and Greek thinkers who had (...) provoked him in the past. Andrew J. Mitchell's translation allows English-speaking readers to explore important connections with Heidegger's earlier works on language, logic, and reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram EilenbergerDavid HermanTime of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside; 432 pp. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.Is it possible to write a deeply researched and technically precise contribution to the history of philosophy that reads like a gripping novel? (...) Time of the Magicians, originally published in German in 2018 as Zeit der Zauberer, convincingly demonstrates that this feat can indeed be accomplished. However, it may be achievable only by the rare expert who, like Wolfram Eilenberger, combines a thoroughgoing knowledge of the field, an unstinting commitment to recreating a public forum for philosophy, and a gift for the exposition—and dramatization—of philosophical debates, the broader circumstances in which they took place, and the motivations and aims of those who participated in them.The book, stylishly translated by Shaun Whiteside, begins by plunging us into the middle of things. Eilenberger provides snapshots of what his four focal thinkers were up to in 1929, before backtracking, in subsequent chapters, to cover key events in the decade that brought them to this point. Then, in the epilogue, he briefly sketches their post-1929 lives and careers. The book's readability is further enhanced by the way the text is broken up into short sections with eye-catching titles ("A Hut of One's Own," "Existential Health Check," "Self-Fashioning through Openness").The opening pages center on June 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein, having previously renounced his portion of his family's fortune and taught for several years at primary schools in rural Austria, undertook an oral defense of his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge at age forty. Wittgenstein's "thesis" just so happened to be Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the influential, sometimes gnomic book he had published in 1921; and at the conclusion of the defense, the candidate is rumored to have said to his examiners, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."In fact, as Eilenberger discusses in a later chapter, by 1929 Wittgenstein's own thinking was no longer where it had been when he wrote the Tractatus. The [End Page 492] philosopher's primary concern had shifted away from identifying the logical structure of meaningful propositions; instead, he had become interested in how meaning emerges from the way language is used in particular, concrete contexts. Apropos the evolving nature of Wittgenstein's ideas, one of the funniest parts of the book describes the philosopher's meetings with members of the Vienna Circle, a group that, in seeking to reorient philosophy around the natural sciences, had come to see the Tractatus as a touchstone for their work. During his first meeting with the group, in 1927, Wittgenstein, instead of talking shop, recited poems by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, standing with his back turned to the audience. Later discussions did involve philosophy, but eventually, as Eilenberger puts it, although the "Vienna Circle had hoped for something that coincided with their ideal of objective research," they "were instead left to grapple with an extremely idiosyncratic style of thinking that, in both execution and results, seemed directly contrary to it" (p. 274).Meanwhile, a few months prior to Wittgenstein's defense of a thesis that no longer reflected his real tendencies of mind, two of Eilenberger's other focal thinkers, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, engaged in a much-anticipated public debate at the Grand Hôtel Belvédère in Davos, Switzerland. When he first mentions it, Eilenberger furnishes just enough detail to whet readers' curiosity about this epochal contest between the eminent neo-Kantian Cassirer, whose reputation for encyclopedic erudition had just been sealed by the publication of the final volume of his masterwork, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and the considerably younger Heidegger, a one-time student of Edmund Husserl who had made a radical departure from Husserlian phenomenology in Being and Time.By the time readers return to the debate, some three hundred pages later, Eilenberger has provided a decade's worth of historical context, which casts a... (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th Century. A major figure in the development of phenomenology, his work also profoundly influenced many of the intellectual movements that followed in his wake, from Sartre's Existentialism to Derrida's deconstructionism. Towards the Definition of Philosophy brings together two seminal lectures that mark a breakthrough moment in Heidegger's thought and introduces the major themes that he would develop in his opus Being and Time.

"[Heidegger's] greatest work... essential for all collections." —Choice "... students of Heidegger will surely find this book indispensable." —Library Journal Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936-38 and first published in 1989 as Beiträge zur Philosophie, is Heidegger’s most ground-breaking work after the publication of Being and Time in 1927. If Being and Time is perceived as undermining modern metaphysics, Contributions undertakes to reshape the very project of thinking.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram EilenbergerDavid HermanTime of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside; 432 pp. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.Is it possible to write a deeply researched and technically precise contribution to the history of philosophy that reads like a gripping novel? (...) Time of the Magicians, originally published in German in 2018 as Zeit der Zauberer, convincingly demonstrates that this feat can indeed be accomplished. However, it may be achievable only by the rare expert who, like Wolfram Eilenberger, combines a thoroughgoing knowledge of the field, an unstinting commitment to recreating a public forum for philosophy, and a gift for the exposition—and dramatization—of philosophical debates, the broader circumstances in which they took place, and the motivations and aims of those who participated in them.The book, stylishly translated by Shaun Whiteside, begins by plunging us into the middle of things. Eilenberger provides snapshots of what his four focal thinkers were up to in 1929, before backtracking, in subsequent chapters, to cover key events in the decade that brought them to this point. Then, in the epilogue, he briefly sketches their post-1929 lives and careers. The book's readability is further enhanced by the way the text is broken up into short sections with eye-catching titles ("A Hut of One's Own," "Existential Health Check," "Self-Fashioning through Openness").The opening pages center on June 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein, having previously renounced his portion of his family's fortune and taught for several years at primary schools in rural Austria, undertook an oral defense of his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge at age forty. Wittgenstein's "thesis" just so happened to be Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the influential, sometimes gnomic book he had published in 1921; and at the conclusion of the defense, the candidate is rumored to have said to his examiners, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."In fact, as Eilenberger discusses in a later chapter, by 1929 Wittgenstein's own thinking was no longer where it had been when he wrote the Tractatus. The [End Page 492] philosopher's primary concern had shifted away from identifying the logical structure of meaningful propositions; instead, he had become interested in how meaning emerges from the way language is used in particular, concrete contexts. Apropos the evolving nature of Wittgenstein's ideas, one of the funniest parts of the book describes the philosopher's meetings with members of the Vienna Circle, a group that, in seeking to reorient philosophy around the natural sciences, had come to see the Tractatus as a touchstone for their work. During his first meeting with the group, in 1927, Wittgenstein, instead of talking shop, recited poems by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, standing with his back turned to the audience. Later discussions did involve philosophy, but eventually, as Eilenberger puts it, although the "Vienna Circle had hoped for something that coincided with their ideal of objective research," they "were instead left to grapple with an extremely idiosyncratic style of thinking that, in both execution and results, seemed directly contrary to it" (p. 274).Meanwhile, a few months prior to Wittgenstein's defense of a thesis that no longer reflected his real tendencies of mind, two of Eilenberger's other focal thinkers, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, engaged in a much-anticipated public debate at the Grand Hôtel Belvédère in Davos, Switzerland. When he first mentions it, Eilenberger furnishes just enough detail to whet readers' curiosity about this epochal contest between the eminent neo-Kantian Cassirer, whose reputation for encyclopedic erudition had just been sealed by the publication of the final volume of his masterwork, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and the considerably younger Heidegger, a one-time student of Edmund Husserl who had made a radical departure from Husserlian phenomenology in Being and Time.By the time readers return to the debate, some three hundred pages later, Eilenberger has provided a decade's worth of historical context, which casts a... (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 paper provides an exposition and critical assessment of a fundamental disagreement between Løgstrup’s and Levinas’s otherwise closely aligned ethical phenomenologies. The disagreement concerns the putative compatibility of ethics and ontology, where in stark contrast to Levinas’s ethics, which proceeds from a critique of the ‘primacy of ontology’ in Western thought, Løgstrup brands his own ethical project as ‘ontological ethics’. First, I provide an interpretation of Løgstrup’s ontological ethics, clarifying in particular the influence of hermeneutic and existential analysis on Løgstrup’s (...) methodology. Second, I bring Løgstrup’s ontological ethics into critical dialogue with Levinas’s thought. Here, I home in on two Levinas-style worries that appear to have traction against Løgstrup’s ontological ethics. However, ultimately, I argue that both can be defused. (shrink)

Heideggers Sprachphilosophie gehört, neben der analytischen Beschäftigung mit der Sprache, zum Angelpunkt der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts und beeinflußte vor allem die philosophische Hermeneutik.

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. (shrink)

The German existentialist delineates his theories concerning the nature, problems, and limitations of man's being.

A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work.

Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation (...) to politics, his turn toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

Offering a full-scale study of the theory of reality hidden beneath modern logic, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, a lecture course given in 1928, illuminates the transitional phase in Heidegger's thought from the existential analysis of Being and Time to the overcoming of metaphysics in his later philosophy. In a searching exposition of the metaphysical problems underpinning Leibniz's theory of logical judgment, Heidegger establishes that a given theory of logic is rooted in a certain conception of Being. He (...) explores the significance of Western logic as a system-building technical tool and as a cultural phenomenon that is centuries old. (shrink)

This book concerns the relationship between language and poetry in Heidegger's later writings. Gerald L. Bruns illuminates these difficult and strange writings by analyzing his style and form and by reflecting on the philosopher's insights.