This important book opens a new path in Heidegger research that will stimulate dialogue within Heidegger studies, as well as with philosophers outside the phenomenological tradition and scholars in theology, literary criticism, and existential psychiatry.

The Beiträge zur Philosophie mandates a paradigm shift in Heidegger scholarship. In the face of (1) widespread disarray in the current model, the new paradigm (2) abandons Sein as a name for die Sache selbst, (3) understands Welt/Lichtung/Da as that which gives being, (4) interprets Dasein as apriori openedness rather than as being-there, (5) understands the Kehre as the interface of Geworfenheit and Entwurf, not as a shift in Heidegger's thinking, (6) interprets Ereignis as the opening of the Da rather (...) than as appropriation, and (7) understands human finitude as what gives all forms of being and all epochs in the history of being. The conclusion alludes to the function of Mitdasein (co-openness) as die Sache selbst. (shrink)

by Victor Farías, translated from Spanish and German into French by Myriam Benarroch and Jean-Baptiste Grasset, preface by Christian Jambet. Editions Verdier, 332 pp., Fr125 (paper).

Interpretations of Heidegger often fail to distinguish between two very different matters -- on the one hand “the turn” (die Kehre), and on the other hand “the change in Heidegger’s thinking” (die Wendung im Denken), that is, the shift in the way Heidegger formulated and presented his philosophy beginning in the 1930s. Failure to make this distinction can be disastrous for understanding Heidegger, and the danger becomes more acute the closer one gets to texts like Introduction to Metaphysics, where both (...) the “turn” and the “change” begin to come into their own.1.. (shrink)

Two problems continue to haunt Heideggerian scholarship and to pose needless obstacles to those who seek to enter his thought. One is the almost ritualistic repetition of the master’s terminology—especially at its most manneristic—on the part of his disciples. Another is the tendency, which is found in Heidegger as well as in his disciples, to hypostasize “being” into an autonomous “other” that seems to function on its own apart from entities and from man. Both of these problems gather around Heidegger’s (...) key word Ereignis and therefore around his interpretation of the history of philosophy, and they obscure a clear insight into what he was trying to say. (shrink)

In 1987 Victor Farías' Heidegger et le nazisme dropped like a bomb on the quiet chapel where Heidegger's disciples were gathered, and blew the place to bits. The myth Heidegger had concocted after the war -- that he supported the Nazis briefly and only to protect the university -- was shattered by the evidence Farías mustered of Heidegger's deep and long-lasting commitment to National Socialism, his blatant anti-Semitism, his blackballing of colleagues for no more than holding pacifist convictions, associating with (...) Jews, or being "unfavorably disposed" toward the Nazi regime. (shrink)

Aristotle's treatment of logos apophantikos is found within the treatise that bears the title Peri Hermeneias, On Hermeneia. And it was to this treatise -- or, more accurately, to the first four sections of it -- that the early Heidegger turned again and again in his courses during the 1920s in an effort to retrieve from this phenomenon a hidden meaning.

L’affaire Faye: Johannes Fritsche’s bizarre Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time mistranslates every key term in Sein und Zeit §74 and distorts the entire book. Gaëtan Pégny’s justification of Emmanuel Faye’s mistranslations of Heidegger is beyond irresponsible. François Rastier’s “Open Letter to Philosophy Today” lends uncritical support to Faye’s dubious “scholarship.”.

Many people consider Martin Heidegger the most important German philosopher of the twentieth century. He is indisputably controversial and influential. Athough much has been written about Heidegger, this may be the best single volume covering his life, career, and thought. For all its breadth and complexity, Heidegger's perspective is quite simple: he is concerned with the meaning of Being as disclosure. Heidegger's life was almost as simple. He was a German professor, except for a brief but significant period in which (...) he supported the Nazi regime. While that departure from philosophy continues to haunt his name and work, one must question whether his thought from 1912 to 1976 should be measured by the yardstick of his politics from May, 1933, through February, 1934. Th is anthology addresses his complex but simple thought and his simple but complex life. In a real sense, Sheehan claims, there is no content to Heidegger's topic and legacy, only a method. But method must not be taken to mean a technique or procedure for philosophical thinking. Rather, the topic of Heidegger's thought and his pursuit of that topic, the "what" and the "how," are one and the same thing. Heidegger writes, "Alles ist Weg," "Everything is way," and man's Being is to be on-the-way in essential movement. Heidegger, argues in our essence we humans are the topic and the point is not to be led there so much as to come to know what we already know and to become what we already are. This brilliant collection confirms this truism, and is an excellent introduction to the work of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

L’affaire Faye: Johannes Fritsche’s bizarre Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1999) mistranslates every key term in Sein und Zeit §74 and distorts the entire book. Gaëtan Pégny’s justification of Emmanuel Faye’s mistranslations of Heidegger is beyond irresponsible. François Rastier’s “Open Letter to Philosophy Today” lends uncritical support to Faye’s dubious “scholarship.”.

The period after World War Two saw the emergence both of the so-called later Heidegger and of the corresponding problem of the unity of his thought. Although his major work, Sein und Zeit, 1927 (=SZ) had announced Heidegger's intention of working out the meaning of being (Sein), his publications up through 1943, with the exception of the brief Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, presented only his preparatory analysis of human openness (Dasein). However, Heidegger's post-war publications seemed to emphasize “being itself” (the (...) history of being, being as language, pre-Socratic notions of being, the withdrawal of being in the modern world) and indeed almost seemed to hypostasize being into an "other" with a life of its own. This state of affairs, combined with Heidegger's announcement in 1953 that SZ would be left a torso, gave rise to such questions as whether his later thought was still phenomenological, how it might be continuous with his earlier writings, and how, if indeed at all, it was to be understood. (shrink)

The essay shows how Heidegger's understanding of physis in Aristotle lays the foundation for his understanding of Ereignis. The essay draws on Heidegger's lecture courses, published and unpublished, particularly "On the Being and Conception of Physis." After introductory remarks on how Heidegger reads Aristotle "phenomenologically" in general, the essay focuses on how Heidegger reads physis as a mode of Being (ousia) by reading kinesis as a mode of Being, specifically as energeia ateles (incomplete Being). But energeia ateles is characterized by (...) Heidegger as Wiederholung (retrieve of possibility) and as Eignung (appropriation of dynamis for appearance). On the basis of that crucial reading of physis, the essay goes on to show how physis-as-dynamis is the foundation for Ereignis in Sein und Zeit through the radical transformation of Wiederholung in natural beings into resolve in Dasein. (shrink)

These are two of the questions that inform the extraordinary open letter that Martin Heidegger published in 1955 in a Festschrift celebrating Ernst Jünger's sixtieth birthday.2 Heidegger's letter was in response to an essay that Jünger had contributed six years earlier, in 1949, to a Festschrift on Heidegger's own sixtieth birthday. So there was a certain reciprocity in the exchange: a favor returned, a public gesture of respect mirroring an earlier one.

Martin Heidegger taught philosophy at Freiburg University (1915-1923), Marburg University (1923-1928), and again at Freiburg University (1928-1945). Early in his career he came under the influence of Edmund Husserl, but he soon broke away to fashion his own philosophy. His most famous work, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) was published in 1927. Heidegger's energetic support for Hitler in 1933-34 earned him a suspension from teaching from 1945 to 1950. In retirement he published numerous works, including the first volumes of (...) his Collected Edition. His thought has had strong influence on trends in philosophy ranging from existentialism through hermeneutics to deconstruction as well as on the fields of literary theory and theology. (shrink)

Phenomenology offers the only proper entrée to Heidegger’s work, a fact overlooked by ‘Right Heideggerians’ such as Professor Richard Capobianco, with disastrous results. This essay traces Heidegger’s path through Husserl’s doctrine of categorial intuition to his own question about what makes possible the meaningful presence of things.

The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein). The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Such meaningful presence is (...) the Befragtes of Heidegger’s question, not the Erfragtes. (3) Being and Time’s goal was to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4) Ereignis—the appropriation of ex-sistence to sustaining the clearing—is the later Heidegger’s reinscription of thrown-openness, der geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e., unknowable.Some preliminariesI cite Heidegger’s texts by page and line (the line-number follows the period) in both the Gesamtausgabe and the current English translations where available, all of which are listed in the bibliography at the end of this issue of the journal. I cite Sein und Zeit in the Niemeyer 11th edition and in the ET by Macquarrie-Robinson.Sinn and Bedeutung are closely related, although Sinn is broader than Bedeutung. Sinn refers either to intelligibility as such or to the fact of something being intelligible, whereas Bedeutung is the specific meaning that a thing has. Sinn as intelligibility is generally interchangeable with Bedeutsamkeit and Verständlichkeit. Thus I translate Sinn as “intelligibility” or “meaningfulness.” Sinn in turn allows for Bedeutung as the particular meaning of a specific thing.I take “intellect” in the broad sense of νοῦς and in the specific sense of λόγος understood as discursive intellect, whether practical or theoretical.Dasein, Existenz, and Da-sein are all translated as "ex-sistence." The context indicates whether that is meant in an existentiel or an existential sense. The word “man” refers to human being, not the male of the species. I render das Seiende as “beings,” “things,” and “entities” ex aequo. All German words referring to ἀλήϑεια (e.g., Wahrheit, Erschlossenheit, Unverborgenheit, Entborgenheit, etc.) are translated by “disclosedness” or “openness.” Translations from the German are often my own. (shrink)

In 1983 Otto Pöggeler wrote: "Regrettably, even today there is still no reliable overview of Heidegger's early lecture courses based on the extant student transcripts and Heidegger's manuscripts." Ten years later, and the lacuna has been filled with Theodore Kisiel's The Genesis of Heidegger's BEING AND TIME. This brilliant and complex work provides, in its own words, the first "reliable, complete, and relatively uninterrupted story" of how Heidegger got from there to here, where "there" is 1915 and "here" is the (...) spring of 1926. By the end of his treatise Kisiel can make the justifiably proud claim: "BT can now be understood genealogically." (K 457). (shrink)

What follows is an English reading of the first edition of Martin Heidegger's inaugural lecture at Freiburg University,“Was ist Metaphysik?” delivered on Wednesday, July 24, 1929. The German text was first published in December of 1929, some five months after it was delivered, by Friedrich Cohen Verlag in Bonn, to whose heirs gratitude is expressed for the requisite arrangements. The original German publication of 1929 differs in a number of relatively minor ways from later editions -- for example, changes in (...) wording, additions of certain phrases (and at one place two sentences), paragraphization, and the like – without any basic alteration of sense. Some of those changes are listed in an appendix at the end. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

A book review of Richard Kearney and Jens Zimmerman, eds., Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God.

Heidegger’s phenomenological readings of Aristotle on πάσχειν and πάθος revolutionized the phenomenology of affect, and he carried that revolution into his later work on πάθος, Lichtung, and Ereignis. This chapter argues that πάθος, read as Dasein’s thrownness or appropriation, is die Sache selbst of Heidegger’s thought.

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)

(1) The “thing itself” of Heidegger’s thinking was Ereignis. (2) But Ereignis is a reinscription of what Being and Time had called thrownness or facticity. (3) But facticity/Ereignis is ex-sistence’s ever-operative appropriation to its proper structure as the ontological “space” or “clearing” that makes possible practical and theoretical discursivity. (4) Such facticity is the ultimate and inevitable presupposition of all activities of ex-sistence and thus of any understanding of being. (5) Therefore, for ex-sistence – and a fortiori for Heidegger as (...) a thinker of Ereignis – there can be no going beyond facticity. (shrink)

_The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_ provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Martin Heidegger's 1925–26 lectures on truth and time provided much of the basis for his momentous work, Being and Time. Not published until 1976 as volume 21 of the Complete Works, three months before Heidegger's death, this work is central to Heidegger's overall project of reinterpreting Western thought in terms of time and truth. The text shows the degree to which Aristotle underlies Heidegger's hermeneutical theory of meaning. It also contains Heidegger’s first published critique of Husserl and takes major steps (...) toward establishing the temporal bases of logic and truth. Thomas Sheehan's elegant and insightful translation offers English-speaking readers access to this fundamental text for the first time. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's 1925–26 lectures on truth and time provided much of the basis for his momentous work, Being and Time. Not published until 1976 as volume 21 of the Complete Works, three months before Heidegger's death, this work is central to Heidegger's overall project of reinterpreting Western thought in terms of time and truth. The text shows the degree to which Aristotle underlies Heidegger's hermeneutical theory of meaning. It also contains Heidegger’s first published critique of Husserl and takes major steps (...) toward establishing the temporal bases of logic and truth. Thomas Sheehan's elegant and insightful translation offers English-speaking readers access to this fundamental text for the first time. (shrink)