Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The question of being
- 2 Reading a life
- 3 The unity of Heidegger's thought
- 4 Intentionality and world
- 5 Time and phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger
- 6 Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn
- 7 Death, time, history
- 8 Authenticity, moral values, and psychotherapy
- 9 Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology
- 10 Heidegger and theology
- 11 Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics
- 12 Engaged agency and background in Heidegger
- 13 Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the reification of language
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Engaged agency and background in Heidegger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The question of being
- 2 Reading a life
- 3 The unity of Heidegger's thought
- 4 Intentionality and world
- 5 Time and phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger
- 6 Heidegger and the hermeneutic turn
- 7 Death, time, history
- 8 Authenticity, moral values, and psychotherapy
- 9 Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology
- 10 Heidegger and theology
- 11 Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics
- 12 Engaged agency and background in Heidegger
- 13 Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the reification of language
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Heidegger's importance lies partly in the fact that he is perhaps the leading figure among that small list of twentieth-century philosophers who have helped us emerge, painfully and with difficulty, from the grip of modern rationalism. Others on the short list would include Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. But one might claim some preeminence for Heidegger, in that he got there first. In the case of Merleau-Ponty, the breakthrough plainly built on Heidegger's work.
The emergence these philosophers helped us toward has, alas, been only partial and is still very contested; indeed, it is always menaced with being rolled back - hence the continuing relevance of their works, some of which appeared more than half a century ago.
In this essay, I shall discuss Heidegger, though with a side-glance at the others from time to time. I shall try to formulate the way in which his thinking takes us outside the traditional epistemology, using the notions of engaged agency and background.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger , pp. 317 - 336Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
- 65
- Cited by