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The Sorrow of Thinking

John T. Hamilton

in Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care

This chapter begins by discussing Heidegger's thoughts on security. For Heidegger notions of security should be treated with utmost caution. If human being is a manifestation of Being—Being as Time, ... More

This chapter begins by discussing Heidegger's thoughts on security. For Heidegger notions of security should be treated with utmost caution. If human being is a manifestation of Being—Being as Time, self-disclosing and self-concealing—then any project designed to contain Being or evade its destabilizing call would be a failure in thinking. The chapter then turns to Carl Schmitt and the ambivalence of security that underlies his political theorizations. On the surface, Schmitt's much discussed notions of sovereignty, the exception, and decisionism reflect a committed belief in the primacy of state safety classically expressed in the Ciceronian formula salus populi suprema lex—“The safety of the people is the highest law.” However, Schmitt at times challenges this prioritization of security, whose privative force, in his view, tends to become manifest in the way the private sphere dangerously impinges upon state policy.Less

Against Historicism: History, Memory, and Truth

Robert Eaglestone

in The Holocaust and the Postmodern

This chapter offers a new way to understand the relationship between history and truth, drawing on Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that debates about history and representation, ... More

This chapter offers a new way to understand the relationship between history and truth, drawing on Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that debates about history and representation, about history and memory, about whether history is an art or a science, are really debates about the sort of truth to which history aspires. Drawing on Bernard Williams and Donald Davidson, it argues that there are two rival conceptions of truth: truth as correspondence, and following Heidegger, that this relies upon the second sense of truth, truth as uncovering. The chapter then reinterprets Heidegger's understanding of truth in the light of Levinas's ethical philosophy, and argues for a new, ethical understanding of the role of history (history without historicism). It offers two examples of thinkers who implicitly draw on these distinctions, Isaiah Berlin and Hayden White.Less

Recovering Futurity: Theorizing the End and the End of Theory

Elliot R. Wolfson

in Jews and the Ends of Theory

This chapter addresses the co-dependence of people's conceptions of end and of beginning. To comprehend the beginning, one must think of it from the perspective of futurity, from the perspective, ... More

This chapter addresses the co-dependence of people's conceptions of end and of beginning. To comprehend the beginning, one must think of it from the perspective of futurity, from the perspective, that is, of the ultimate end. Consequently, the beginning lies not in the past but, rather, in the future. The chapter then relates this mode of philosophizing with the way people understand Jewish eschatology, which lies at the center of Jewish theorization about time. In Jewish eschatology, what is yet to come is understood as what has already happened, whereas what has happened is derived from what is yet to come. Martin Heidegger has dismissed Judaism as a religion that by its very nature cannot experience temporality authentically. Yet his own understanding of temporality accords well with rabbinic conceptions of temporality and later kabbalistic eschatologies.Less

‘About nothing, about everything’: listening in/to Tim Robinson

Gerry Smyth

in Unfolding Irish Landscapes: Tim Robinson, culture and environment

Gerry Smyth considers the question of ‘listening’ as it relates to two philosophical systems: the phenomenology of listening associated with Jean-Luc Nancy and the existentialist listening associated ... More

Gerry Smyth considers the question of ‘listening’ as it relates to two philosophical systems: the phenomenology of listening associated with Jean-Luc Nancy and the existentialist listening associated with Martin Heidegger. Smyth argues that each of these systems connotes metaphysical and ethical approaches to listening, which are of particular relevance to Robinson in his various roles as cartographer, environmentalist, scientist, folklorist and dweller in the landscape.Less

The “Letter on Humanism”: Reading Heidegger in France

Ethan Kleinberg

in Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context

This chapter examines the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s work and existential philosophy by focusing on the first three “readings”—or understandings—of his work in France. The first reading ... More

This chapter examines the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s work and existential philosophy by focusing on the first three “readings”—or understandings—of his work in France. The first reading of Heidegger in France, perhaps best articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre, is characterized by a focus on the individual subject. The second reading, which followed on the heels of Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” and the Heidegger Affair of 1945–1946, emphasized Heidegger’s ontological antisubjectivism and dismissed the more individualistic aspects of Being and Time. The third reading resulted from the response to the first and second readings and also to Heidegger’s political affiliation with National Socialism. The work of both Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas attempts to use Heidegger’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition, existentialism included, to move beyond Heidegger and to construct a new type of ethics in the aftermath of World War II and the Shoah. The chapter also considers why Levinas’s approach transcended both the existentialist and the antihumanist interpretation of Heidegger.Less

Introduction: The Dialogue Between Poetry and Thinking

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

in Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language: Toward a New Poetics of Dasein

Martin Heidegger's thinking, from the beginning, anticipates a turn to poetic language and to Friedrich Hölderlin. Although Heidegger became seriously occupied with Hölderlin ... More

Martin Heidegger's thinking, from the beginning, anticipates a turn to poetic language and to Friedrich Hölderlin. Although Heidegger became seriously occupied with Hölderlin in his writings and lectures in the 1930s, he had read him decades earlier, even before the publication of Hellingrath's edition of Hölderlin's collected works, which began to appear in 1916. For Heidegger, what arrives in the wake of philosophy's end is above all the demand to requestion the meaning of language—of that which makes everyone human; for everyone is endowed with language, the site of transcendence, wherein beings can appear in their Being. Poetic language has been an incipient source for the critique and self-address of philosophy since Plato banned the poets from the polis and Aristotle relativized this expulsion by granting poetry a philosophical, cathartic social function.Less

Twilights and New Dawns: Revaluation and De(con)struction

Fred Dallmayr

in Freedom and Solidarity: Toward New Beginnings

Among Western thinkers deeply embroiled in the transition between paradigms, two stand out from the rest: Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, the former serving in a way as precursor or ... More

Among Western thinkers deeply embroiled in the transition between paradigms, two stand out from the rest: Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, the former serving in a way as precursor or pacemaker of the second. This chapter illustrates Nietzsche and Heidegger’s anticipatory outlook by focusing on a limited number of their writings, detailing how the endeavors launched by Nietzsche were pursued and intensified by Heidegger in the changed twentieth-century context—a context marked by the rise of phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics. Moreover, the chapter discusses how the closest parallel between Nietzsche and Heidegger resides in their critique of the antinomies of the modern philosophical paradigm and their commitment to an “overcoming” of traditional metaphysics through an “other thinking” and new beginning.Less

Heidegger's Phenomenological Ontology

in Kant and Phenomenology

This chapter examines Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, explaining that Heidegger claims that phenomenological ontology is not epistemology and arguing that his analysis of being is a ... More

This chapter examines Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ontology, explaining that Heidegger claims that phenomenological ontology is not epistemology and arguing that his analysis of being is a restricted form of epistemology. It addresses Heideggerian concerns with the ontological theory of truth as aletheia, the relation of phenomenology to things themselves, and the history of ontology. The chapter also provides an account of Heidegger's critical readings of Immanuel Kant in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and of Kant and René Descartes in Being and Time.Less

The Political Subject Lost between Heidegger and Nietzsche

John Martis

in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Representation and the Loss of the Subject

This chapter looks at the Lacoue-Labarthian political dimension. In doing so, it turns also toward Martin Heidegger, particularly the Heidegger of the 1930s. Philippe ... More

This chapter looks at the Lacoue-Labarthian political dimension. In doing so, it turns also toward Martin Heidegger, particularly the Heidegger of the 1930s. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is tracking a deeper question, one that goes to but also through Heidegger—and then as much through Friedrich Nietzsche as through Heidegger. It asks about the subject of philosophy in its political dimension. Hyperbology is a motif that tries to link various modes and contexts in which Lacoue-Labarthe notices the loss of the subject. An imbalance that is curious at first sight is evident in the way in which Lacoue-Labarthe treats subjectal loss in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Nietzschean overdetermination of Heidegger forms the backdrop for the analysis of the link between Heidegger and Nazism in Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art and Politics and is also explicitly addressed by him in the essay that is the final chapter in Typography.Less

Heidegger, Klee's Turn, and the Origin of the Work of Art

in Crescent Moon over the Rational: Philosophical Interpretations of Paul Klee

This chapter analyzes Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Paul Klee's works based on his essay The Origin of the Work of Art, explaining that Heidegger described Klee's works as he did the Greek ... More

This chapter analyzes Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Paul Klee's works based on his essay The Origin of the Work of Art, explaining that Heidegger described Klee's works as he did the Greek temples and claimed that, in Klee, something has happened that none of us yet grasps. It also mentions Heidegger's discussion with Shinichi Hisamatsu in 1958, where he declared that he valued Klee higher than Pablo Picasso. The chapter also discusses Heidegger's condemnation of surrealism, abstract art, and objectless art to the failures of metaphysics, and highlights his belief that Klee is something of an exception to this.Less

Heidegger and the grammar of being

Graham Priest

in Beyond the Limits of Thought

This chapter examines philosopher Martin Heidegger's views on the grammar of being. It states that considerations about logical grammar have driven Heidegger into exactly the same sort of paradoxical ... More

This chapter examines philosopher Martin Heidegger's views on the grammar of being. It states that considerations about logical grammar have driven Heidegger into exactly the same sort of paradoxical conclusions as they did the analytic philosophers. This chapter argues against Heidegger's claims that the ineffability of being is required by logic and the law of non-contradiction. It suggests that true contradictions are entirely possible and the law of non-contradiction is a historical mistake.Less

Weimar Philosophy and the Crisis of Historical Thinking

Charles Bambach

in Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy

This chapter addresses the philosophy of history and the so-called crisis of historicism. For proponents of the Weimar “crisis theology,” the breakdown of historical norms and values had led to a ... More

This chapter addresses the philosophy of history and the so-called crisis of historicism. For proponents of the Weimar “crisis theology,” the breakdown of historical norms and values had led to a “permanent Krisis of the relation between time and eternity.” In this void “between the times” the work of Spengler, Barth, and Gogarten came to signify a “crisis of historicism”: not merely of the empirical research paradigm of practicing historians, but rather a crisis in the foundations of historical thinking, of Nietzsche's question about whether history itself has any meaning for life. It is this crisis that came to shape German historical thinking in decisive ways during the Weimar era, especially in the work of four philosophers of history: Oswald Spengler, Ernst Troeltsch, Heinrich Rickert, and Martin Heidegger.Less

Two: Dwelling: Between Poiēsis and Technē

Gabriel Riera

in Intrigues: From Being to the Other

This chapter discusses the contribution of German philosopher Martin Heidegger to literary theory. In his book Being and Time, Heidegger has provided important insights into ... More

This chapter discusses the contribution of German philosopher Martin Heidegger to literary theory. In his book Being and Time, Heidegger has provided important insights into the metaphysics of being and the contents of the book are ideal materials for addressing the problematic articulation or dialogue between poetic saying and thinking. This chapter examines other relevant works of Heidegger, including his courses on Friedrich Holderlin and Friedrich Nietzsche, and “The Origin of the Work of Art”.Less

Apologist or Critic?: On Arendt's Relation to Heidegger

Dana R. Villa

in Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem

The fact that Hannah Arendt was Martin Heidegger's student was never a secret. Nor was his philosophy's influence upon her analysis of totalitarianism and her thinking about politics. What was a ... More

The fact that Hannah Arendt was Martin Heidegger's student was never a secret. Nor was his philosophy's influence upon her analysis of totalitarianism and her thinking about politics. What was a secret, at least until the publication of Elisabeth Young–Bruehl's biography in 1984, was that she and Heidegger were lovers while Arendt was his student in Marburg during the period from 1924 to 1929. This chapter focuses on the two moments in Arendt's work when Heidegger's philosophical legacy is most strongly and most controversially felt. The first is The Human Condition (1958), generally described as her “most Heideggerian book.” The second is the essay “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” in which Arendt allegedly exonerates Heidegger of his Nazi involvement. Both texts reveal a far more complicated and critical attitude toward Heidegger than is usually allowed.Less

Heidegger's Critique of Subjectivity and the Poetic Turn

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

in Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language: Toward a New Poetics of Dasein

Martin Heidegger's poetics, especially its Hölderlinian elements, can be understood only within the context of a consideration of his theory of Being in its broader ... More

Martin Heidegger's poetics, especially its Hölderlinian elements, can be understood only within the context of a consideration of his theory of Being in its broader development. What is important here is that the trajectory of Heidegger's ontological concerns spans several stages, from his early treatments of facticity to his later theory of language, and at each stage the strategies of phenomenological engagement shift accordingly. At each stage, however, it can be said that a continuity with the whole of Heidegger's thought—despite the well-known notion of the “turn” and the suggestion of a radical break with his earlier work—is maintained by the persistence of a dual concern: a critique of the modern model of subjectivity, and the analysis of the subject's “forgetting” of Being. This chapter traces Heidegger's philosophy through the guiding motif of the subject's “forgetting” and its relationship on one hand to facticity and on the other to artistic-poetical creation. In order to outline the phenomenological and ontological movements in Heidegger's thought, a brief outline of what Heidegger calls phenomenological ontology is presented.Less

Afterness and Translation: The Politics of Carrying Across

Gerhard Richter

in Afterness: Figures of Following in Modern Thought and Aesthetics

This chapter examines translation as a form of afterness. It first considers Odo Marquard’s interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s aesthetic gestures, and in particular of the latter’s understanding of ... More

This chapter examines translation as a form of afterness. It first considers Odo Marquard’s interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s aesthetic gestures, and in particular of the latter’s understanding of Friedrich Schiller. It explores how Marquard implicitly distances himself from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s argument that Heidegger’s “national aestheticism” is a formation of political involvement that is structured, even haunted, by an abiding attachment to techné and its myths. It also discusses the underlying politics in Heidegger’s concept of translation as Übersetzen, or “carrying across,” and the ways in which it is lodged at the core of Heidegger’s philosophy of language. It reads Heidegger’s ideas on translation in light of his 1936/1937 Freiburg seminar on Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind in order to understand how translation provides Heidegger with a privileged paradigm for conceptualizing the problematic relation between a so-called original and the translation commonly thought of as following it in a straightforward sense.Less