Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Heidegger's life
- 2 The meaning of life: the question of Being
- 3 The central ideas in Being and Time
- 4 Conscience, guilt and authenticity
- 5 Being-towards-death
- 6 Dasein's primordial temporality
- 7 The “truth of alētheia” and language
- 8 Heidegger on poetry, poets and Hölderlin
- 9 Heidegger on art
- 10 Heidegger on technology
- 11 Tao, Zen and Heidegger
- 12 Heidegger's politics
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Heidegger's life
- 2 The meaning of life: the question of Being
- 3 The central ideas in Being and Time
- 4 Conscience, guilt and authenticity
- 5 Being-towards-death
- 6 Dasein's primordial temporality
- 7 The “truth of alētheia” and language
- 8 Heidegger on poetry, poets and Hölderlin
- 9 Heidegger on art
- 10 Heidegger on technology
- 11 Tao, Zen and Heidegger
- 12 Heidegger's politics
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
No Western philosopher since Socrates has attracted such varied, often totally opposed, views as Heidegger. In a popular history of philosophy by Bertrand Russell, the entry on Heidegger comprises only one short paragraph. The first line reads: “Highly eccentric in its terminology, his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot” (1989: 303). The analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer once accused him of charlatanism (1984: 228); Roger Scruton, a contemporary conservative British philosopher, described Heidegger's most important work Being and Time as “formidably difficult – unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy” (2001: 270). Against these dismissals, the American philosopher Richard Rorty (1981: 5) rates Heidegger as one of the three most important philosophers of the twentieth century, along with John Dewey and Wittgenstein.
Heidegger also, frequently, has been damned both as a man and as a thinker for his brief but enthusiastic support of the Nazis. This was symbolized by his acceptance of the post of rector of Freiburg University in 1933, where he proved a passionate advocate of subordinating the university to the new Nazi regime. Although he resigned the rectorship after only a year, and became increasingly critical of the direction taken by the Nazi party, he never uttered a full apology for his support of National Socialism, nor admitted guilt for having done so, during the thirty-one years he lived after 1945.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Philosophy of Heidegger , pp. vii - ixPublisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2011