Basic Writings

by Martin Heidegger, David Farrell Krell (Editor)

Few philosophers have had more influence on the shape of western philosophy after 1900 than Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings offers a full range of this profound and controversial thinker's writings in one volume, including:

The Origin of the Work of Art
The introduction to Being and Time
What Is Metaphysics?
Letter on Humanism
The Question Concerning Technology
The Way to Language
The End of Philosophy

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Theory, Metaphysics, German Literature, Classics

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I created a podcast version of this review, which you can find here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

_______________________________

Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivizing. It does not let things: be.

A Gentle Warning

In matters philosophical, it is wise to be skeptical of interpretations. An interpretation can be reasonable or unreasonable, interesting or uninteresting, compelling or uncompelling; but an interpretation, by its very nature, can never be false or true. Thus, we must be very careful when relying on secondary literature; for what is secondary literature but a collection of interpretations? Personally, I don’t like anybody to come between me and a philosopher. When a philosopher’s views are being explained to me, I feel as if I’m on the wrong end of a long game of telephone. Even if an interpreter is excellent—quoting extensively and making qualified assertions—his interpretation is, like all interpretations, an argument from authority; to interpret a text is to assert that one is an authority on the text, and thus should be believed.

Over generations, these interpretations can harden into dogmas; we are taught the “received interpretation” of a philosopher, and not the philosopher himself. This is dangerous; for, what makes a classic book classic, is that it can be read repeatedly—not just in one lifetime, but down the centuries—while continuing to yield new and interesting interpretations. In other words, a philosophical classic is a book that can be validly and compelling interpreted a huge number of ways. So if you subscribe to another person’s interpretation you are depriving the world of something invaluable: your own take on the matter.

In matters philosophical, I say that it is better to be stupid with one’s own stupidity, than smart with another’s smarts. To put the matter another way, to read a great book of philosophy is not, I think, like reading a science textbook; the goal is not simply to assimilate a certain body of knowledge, but to have a genuine encounter with the thinker. In this way, reading a great work of philosophy is much more like travelling someplace new: what matters is the experience of having been there, and not the snapshots you bring back from the trip. Even if you go someplace where you can't speak the language, where you are continually baffled the whole time by strange customs and incomprehensible speech, it is more valuable than just sitting at home and reading guide books. So go and be baffled, I say!

This is all just a way of warning you not to take what I will say too seriously, for what I will offer is my own interpretation, my own guide-book, so to speak. I will make some assertions, but I’d like you to be very skeptical. After all, I’m just some dude on the internet.


An Attempt at a Way In

The best advice I’ve ever gotten in regard to Heidegger was in my previous job. My boss was a professor from Europe, a very well educated man, who naturally liked to talk about books with me. At around this time, I was reading Being and Time, and floundering. When I complained of the book's difficulty, this is what he said:

"In the Anglophone tradition, they think of language as a tool for communication. But in the European tradition, they think of language as a tool to explore the world." He said this last statement as he reached out his arm in front of him, as if grabbing at something far away, to make it clear what he meant.

Open one of Heidegger's books, and you will be confronted with something strange. First is the language. He invents new words; and, more frustratingly, he uses old words in unfamiliar ways, often relying on obscure etymological connections and German puns. Even more frustrating is the way Heidegger does philosophy: he doesn't make logical arguments, and he doesn't give straightforward definitions for his terms. Why does he write like this? And how can a philosopher do philosophy without attempting to persuade the reader with arguments? You're right to be skeptical; but, in this review, I will try to provide you with a way into Heidegger's philosophy, so at least his compositional and intellectual decisions make sense, even if you disagree with them. Since Heidegger's frustrating and exasperating language is extremely conspicuous, let us start there.

Imagine a continuum of attitudes towards language. On the far end, towards the left, is the scientific attitude. There, we find linguists talking of phonemes, morphemes, syntax; we find analytic philosophers talking about theories of meaning and reference. We see sentences being diagrammed; we hear researchers making logical arguments. Now, follow me to the middle of this continuum. Here is where most speech takes place. Here, language is totally transparent. We don’t think about it, we simply use it in our day to day lives. We argue, we order pizzas, we make excuses to our bosses, we tell jokes; and sometimes we write book reviews. Then, we get to the other end of the spectrum. This is the place where lyric poetry resides. Language is not here being used to catalogue knowledge, nor is it transparent; here, in fact, language is somehow mysterious, foreign, strange: we hear familiar words used in unfamiliar ways; rules of syntax and semantics are broken here; nothing is as it seems.

Now, what if I ask you, what attitude gets to the real essence, the real fundamentals of language? If you’re like me, you’d say the first attitude: the scientific attitude. It seems commonsensical to think that you understand language more deeply the more you rigorously study it; and one studies language by setting up abstract categories, such as 'syntax' and 'phoneme'. But this is where Heidegger is in fundamental disagreement; for Heidegger believes that poetry reveals the essence of language. In his words: “Language itself is poetry in the essential sense.”

But isn’t this odd? Isn’t poetry a second or third level phenomenon? Doesn’t poetry presuppose the usual use of language, which itself presupposes the factual underpinning of language investigated by science? In trying to understand why Heidegger might think this, we are led to his conception of truth.

If you are like me, you have a commonsense understanding of what makes a statement true or false. A statement is “true” if it corresponds to something in reality; if I say “the glass is on the table,” it is only true if the glass really is on the table. Heidegger thinks this is entirely wrong; and in place of this conception of truth, Heidegger proposes the Greek word “aletheia,” which he defines as “unconcealment,” or “letting things reveal themselves as themselves.”

It’s hard to describe what this means abstractly, so let me give you an example. Let’s say you are a peasant, and a rich nobleman just invited you to his house. You get lost, and wander into a room. It is filled with strange objects that you’ve never seen before. You pick something up from a table. You hold it in your hands, entranced by the strange shape, the odd colors, the weird noises it omits. You are totally lost in contemplation of the object, when suddenly the nobleman waltzes into the room and says “Oh, I see you’ve found my watch.” According to Heidegger, what the nobleman just did was to cover up the watch in a kind of veneer of obviousness. It is simply a watch, he says, just one among many of its kind, and therefore obvious. The peasant, meanwhile, was experiencing the object as an object, and letting it reveal itself to him.

This kind of patina of familiarity is, for Heidegger, what prevents us from engaging in serious thinking. This is why Heidegger spends so much time talking about the dangers of conformity, and also why he is ambivalent about the scientific project: for what is science but the attempt to make what is not obvious, obvious? To bring the unfamiliar into the realm of familiarity? Heidegger thinks that this feeling of unfamiliarity is, on the contrary, the really valuable thing; and this is why Heidegger talks about moods—such as anxiety, which, he says, discloses the "Nothing." Now, it is a favorite criticism of some philosophers to dismiss Heidegger as foolish by treating “Nothing” as something; but this misses his point. When Heidegger is talking of anxiety as the mood that discloses the “Nothing” to us, he means that our mood of anxiety is the subrational realization of the bizarreness of existence. That is, our anxiety is the way that the question faces us: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

This leads us quite naturally to Heidegger’s most emblematic question, the question of Being: what does it mean to be? Heidegger contends that this question has been lost to history. But has it? Philosophers have been discussing metaphysics for millennia. We have idealism, materialism, monism, monadism—aren’t these answers to the question of Being? No, Heidegger says, and for the following reason. When one asserts, for example, that everything is matter, one is asserting that everything is, at base, one type of thing. But the question of Being cannot be answered by pointing to a specific type of being; so we can’t answer the question, “what does it mean to be?” by saying “everything is mind,” or “everything is matter,” since that misses the point. What does it mean to be at all?

So now we have to circle back to Heidegger’s conception of truth. If you are operating with the commonsense idea of truth as correspondence, you will quite naturally say: “The question of ‘Being’ is meaningless; ‘Being’ is the most empty of categories; you can’t give any further analysis to what it ‘means’ to exist.” In terms of correspondence, this is quite true; for how can any statement correspond with the answer to that question? A statement can only correspond to a state of affairs; it cannot correspond to the "stateness" of affairs: that's meaningless. However, if you are thinking of truth along Heidegger’s lines, the question becomes more sensible; for what Heidegger is really asking is “How can we have an original encounter with Being? How can I experience what it means to exist? How can I let the truth of existence open itself up to me?”

To do this, Heidegger attempts to peel back the layers of familiarity that, he feels, prevents this genuine encounter from happening. He tries to strip away our most basic commonsense notions: true vs. false, subject vs. object, opinion vs. fact, and virtually any other you can name. In so doing, Heidegger tries to come up with ways of speaking that do not presuppose these categories. So in struggling through his works, you are undergoing a kind of therapy to rid yourself of your preconceptions, in order to look at the world anew. In his words: “What is strange in the thinking of Being is its simplicity. Precisely this keeps us from it. For we look for thinking—which has its world-historical prestige under the name “philosophy”—in the form of the unusual, which is accessible only to initiates.”

What on earth are we to make of all this? Is this philosophy or mystical poetry? Is it nonsense? That’s a tough question. If by “philosophy” we mean the examination of certain traditional questions, such as those of metaphysics and epistemology, then it might be fair to say that Heidegger wasn’t a philosopher—at least, not exactly. But if by “philosophy” we mean thinking for the sake of thinking, then Heidegger is a consummate philosopher; for, in a sense, this is the point of his whole project: to get us to question everything we take for granted, and to rethink the world with fresh minds.

So should we accept Heidegger’s philosophy? Should we believe him? And what does it even mean to "believe" somebody who purposely doesn’t make assertions or construct arguments? Is this acceptable in a thinker? Well, I can’t speak for you, but I don’t accept his picture of the world. To sum up my disagreement with Heidegger as pithily as possible, I disagree with him when he says: “Ontology is only possible as phenomenology.” On the contrary, I do not think that ontology necessarily has anything to do with phenomenology; in other words, I don’t think that our experiences of the world necessarily disclose the world in a fundamental way. For example, Heidegger thinks that everyday sounds are more basic than abstract acoustical signals, and he argues this position like so:

We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in the appearance of things—as this thing-concept alleges; rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds. In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly.

To Heidegger, the very fact that we perceive sounds this way implies that this is more fundamental. But I cannot accept this. Hearing “first” the door shut is only a fact of our perception; it does not tell us anything about how our brains process auditory signals, nor what sound is, for that matter. This is why I am a firm believer in science, because it seems that the universe doesn’t give up its secrets lightly, but must be probed and prodded! When we leave nature to reveal itself to us, we aren't left with much.

And it was clear that I'm not a Heideggerian from my introduction. As the opening quote shows, he was partly remonstrating against our dichotomy of subjective opinion vs. objective fact; whereas this notion is the very one I began my review with. You’ve been hoodwinked from the start, dear reader; for by acknowledging that this is just one opinion among many, you have, willingly or unwillingly, disagreed with Heidegger.

So was reading Heidegger a waste of time for me? If I disagree with him on almost everything, what did I gain from reading him? Well, for one thing, as a phenomenologist pure and simple, Heidegger is excellent; he gets to the bottom of our experience of the world in a way way few thinkers can. What’s more, even if we reject his ontology, many of Heidegger’s points are interesting as pure cultural criticism; by digging down deep into many of our preconceptions, Heidegger manages to reveal some major biases and assumptions we make in our daily lives. But the most valuable part of Heidegger is that he makes you think: agree or disagree, if you decide he is a loony or a genius, he will make you think, and that is invaluable.

So, to bring this review around to this volume, I warmly push it into your hands. Here is an excellent introduction to the work and thought of an original mind—much less imposing than Being and Time. I must confess that I was pummeled by Heidegger’s first book—I was beaten senseless. This book was, by contrast, often pleasant reading. It seems that Heidegger jettisoned a lot of his jargon later in life; he even occasionally comes close to being lucid and graceful. I especially admire "The Origin of the Work of Art." I think it's easily one of the greatest reflections on art that I've had the good fortune to read.

I think it's only fair to give Heidegger the last word:

… if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. In the same way he must recognize the seductions of the public realm as well as the impotence of the private. Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

220918 this is a much much much later addition (four years): in choosing the most interesting and influential philosopher of the 20th century, i nominate hd over say analytic favourite wittgenstein. i am also told w is interested in the 'therapeutic' use of philosophy, showing the insect's 'way out of the bottle' or breaking down questions 'dissolving' them by showing they are incoherent questions, rather than engaging and clarifying the questions... this attitude to me seems only appropriate if you think thinking is somehow a disability, an illness, rather than exploration, understanding, an opening of the world and of others through the medium of words, words you might have to recast or invent, words you might struggle with much as any artist to express ideas or senses or Being and this is no disease or disability or mistake...

this is a later addition: it is said that every writer begins as an obsessive reader, always looking for that perfect book for herself- inevitably failing, she must write it herself. i believe to some degree this applies also to philosophy, as read, as searched, as frustrated, so eventually writing out your own. this is construction, more than creation, by using thoughts previously read here or there, so this new philosophy is born of however much precedes it. this is definitely the case with hd, who is so conscious of the history, the thoughts, the worlds, the words he uses. for myself, there is desire to see how hd and all other European continental philosophy might engage with Indian philosophy, classical or current, but this is hampered for me in that i have not read much Indian philosophy, so at the moment trying to, knowing it is more than just the Buddhism read, more than the intros read... so very hopeful i can find this philosophical style...

080914 first review: a review? great. more review? great but helps to have already read so many works on the man's thought. tried to read one long or short chapter each time, tried to glean significant thoughts, almost enthuses me enough to try his being and time. almost... had read some previously, decided to try this after latest heidegger: Heidegger: Thinking of Being...

questions arise, as usual- do i like his thought or the way it is shared?- but this is the man himself, and not near as complicated to read if you are afraid of trying, if you have heard he is difficult. no more or less than kant. whom i do not read. and this selection has useful abstracts before each reading, chronologically follows him, shows how his original conception of 'being' and 'time' over the years becomes 'clearing' and 'presencing'- but he never abandons his primary concern: the 'question of being' even as his language matures, he forms neologisms, he offers provoking thoughts, engaging thoughts, and some of his concepts easily misinterpreted become decidedly clearer...

i do not know if this would work independently as introductory. i have had the good fortune of so many texts already read on him on his thought on how he is misunderstood. in some ways, i am sympathetic to those readers, those philosophers, who are annoyed by his 'ways' rather than rigorous logic or positivistic assertions they can take apart. he wants us to think, not just expect his answers, not just resolve questions. yes he is eventually more poet than philosopher, but this is intrinsic, this is there from the beginning. if husserl wanted to create philosophy as a first ‘science’, heidegger goes with phenomenology as a starting point, to express, to understand, philosophy as an ‘art’. this is fine with me...

there are eleven chapters, a forward, a preface, a general introduction: 'on the question of being'. read this introduction. this covers his work leading up to 'being and time' (hereafter bt), and clarifies the culture he came through, his religious background, his locale, his heritage in thought as well as beliefs. hd did not erupt with bt out of nowhere. he did arrive on campus, arrive as a lecturer, with great drama, and this introduction gives some idea of how well he must have engaged students. perhaps it is good to read the 'abstracts' before each chapter before deciding which to read when or why. this book could serve as research source and need not be read all in one go. i have read other books at the same time. not philosophy texts. but some selected texts are already familiar and possibly the reader is only interested in this essay or that essay...

the first chapter is 'introduction to bt' and covers the development, the ideas, the investigating concept hiedegger will use- 'dasein'- but this chapter also frustrates because he never did fulfill his plans, and later when he does go on, it is not the same structure. it is unfair to ask a thinker to stop thinking, to go back and elaborate previous work. but even had he never written anything else, his place as thinker in his time and ours would be assured. the next chapter is one that becomes a book, is 'what is metaphysics', after that 'on the essence of truth', next 'the origin of the work of art', next 'letter on humanism', next 'modern science, metaphysics, and mathematics', next 'the question concerning technology', next 'building dwelling thinking', then 'what calls for thinking?', then 'the way to language', finally 'the end of philosophy and the task of thinking'...

what a lineup. having just finished it, reading four chapters in a row, i am remembering thoughts sparking from these more than his earlier work. but i know those chapters were equally fascinating. i know they each gave me pleasure i do not know how else to find: everything from 'dasein' to 'clearing'- or is that 'lightning'?- from how there is a difference from 'speaking' and 'saying', there is language in which we 'dwell' and language we 'find ways to', that there is the unacknowledged metaphysics that underlies all 'regions' of science, that there is the conceptual mistake of believing science precedes technology, that technology is mastered rather than mastering, there is the argument that we diminish humanity or diminish 'Dasein' if we think of man only in body in mathematical, scientific, technological, terms... yes there is to much here to explain, to quote, and how much do i fully retain anyway...

and why do i read philosophy? am i doing so the right way? if i enjoy it am i mistaken? well, there is only the answer i gave previously in The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science and there is nothing here to add. just to say, yes really this is immensely fun. almost enthuses me enough to try his Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit almost...

and why am i so engaged by this selection, why do i find it easier to read than big books? yes partly it is all 19 (now 41) other books read on or involving him, plus 5 works by the man himself: Basic Concepts, The Concept of Time: The First Draft of Being and Time, What is Called Thinking?, Poetry, Language, Thought, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, this makes it easier to understand his discourse. without heidegger this past century would lack so much insight to our being, to Being as it is explored, theorized, in all social sciences. i have heard that his translations of aristotle, for example, are not necessarily agreed-upon. there is suspicion over his refusal to propose any ethics grown out of his thought, even when he uses ethically loaded terms like 'anxiety', 'fallenness', 'resolute', 'authentic', to characterize his conceptions. and is he avoiding actual failures of his own support of the nazis? this is the end of his thought, an irreconcilable, mistaken, appraisal of hitler say...

this is hindsight. 20/20. but cautionary as his real-life acts trying to link philosophical aspirations of some sort, yes i can see how many philosophers refuse to take anything from him. apologists use his dense, difficult prose, to avoid certain interpretations not the least favourable to h. in his later career, going back, going poetic, invents his fourfold- gods, mortals, earth, sky- to deal with what he sees as limits to causal theories of aristotle- material, formal, efficient, final- is this just a way to not talk about current horrors? so i still feel conflicted about where leads his thought. enough, now. i cannot offer an answer. i cannot say i refuse to read him... this is not the solution. read, read, read yourself free...

020220: more The Philosophy of Heidegger
Heidegger: Thinking of Being
The Heidegger Reader
The New Heidegger
What is Called Thinking?
Poetry, Language, Thought
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil
The Heidegger Reader
Basic Writings
The New Heidegger
Introduction to Metaphysics

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Heidegger changed my life. Really. Every aspect. I'm not joking.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

We read this collection for Tom Sheehan's "Continental German Thought: Heidegger" course during the second semester of 1981/82 at Loyola University Chicago.

Tom's treatment of Heidegger was exceptionally clear--clearer than any other commentator I've yet read. Two things were unusual in his approach. First, he put Heidegger in specific contrast to Aristotle. Second, he conceptualized the presence of beings as occurring by their absence--or what he termed "pres-absenciality". This latter point was reminiscent of Freud's treatment of the development of the sense of self as opposed to other when the infant begins to be denied instant gratification. It also made me think of what is traditionally termed "ordinary grace," like, for instance, our atmosphere. Unless confronted by inconvenient extremities like intense winds, or a vacuum, or painful pollution, we take it for granted, which is to say we are unconscious of it. Our lives are upheld by grace abounding in this sense and we are generally oblivious to our fortune until a breakdown of such vital relationships occurs. Think, for instance, of the unforeseen prolonged absence or even death of a companion. In the primary instances of such loss we become, according to classical psychoanalytic theory (and, one would imagine, common sense), conscious of things, of beings distinct from ourselves. Of course, this awakening can also occur in terms of self as when one become sick or disabled in a new way. And it can also, Heidegger would have us think, happen in even deeper ways as in the sense of Being and not just beings. The task of Heidegger's philosophy would seem thus to be in accord with the ancient sense of philosophy as being the love of wisdom, wisdom being to recognize and appreciate and be open to what the tradition termed "ordinary grace".

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the more accessible collections of Heidegger's work. In the decade since my immersion in Heidegger I've forgotten quite a bit of the nuances of his philosophy. All those German words that don't quite translate to English, and then with de put in front of them to make them mean something entirely new, and even more untranslatable.

Heidegger has a bad rap, not that it is undeserved, entirely. He flirted dangerously close to National Socialism, even after his 'disillusionment' with Hitler and company he still stayed very quiet about the whole incident (and the whole incident that could be called the Hitler years). At the same time Hannah Arendt could still praise works of his like "Letter on Humanism", probably the most striking silence of Heidegger's on the Nazi's. There is something reactionary, and old fashioned about Heidegger, but those same things are also what lead directly to the post-structuralist's and 'hip and edgy' philosophy.

Two works especially in this book, one on art and the other on technology are especially interesting, and have occupied my thoughts pretty regularly in the past ten years. Now I'm going to attempt to put them to some kind of, do I say practical?, use. Maybe there will be more of a review, some thoughts or something here or in the comment section while I try to figure out how I'm going to use this book to bewilder a professor and get myself invited to an academic conference.

[Mr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume, published by HarperCollins in the sixties and edited by translator David Farrell Krell serves as the perfect compendium to the thought of Martin Heidegger, one of the most significant thinkers of philosophy in the 20th century. Heidegger's methodology is necessarily difficult, as he is trying to remove himself from the `average-everyday' language we employ; and he is trying to approach the meaning of being concretely and originally. Therefore, stop complaining about the obscurity of his style and work your way through this text, for it will remain one of the major works of European thought.

The first essay is the introductory chapter to Heidegger's opus Being and Time. It is actually rather senseless to read it without going on to read the complete text. However, for those readers who simply want a taste of Heidegger's basic philosophic project and methodology, it is summarized here. He says at the outset: "This question has today been forgotten-although our time considers itself progressive in again affirming `metaphysics.' All the same we believe that we are spared the exertion of rekindling a gigantomachia peri tes ousias [a Battle of Giants concerning Being,' [Plato, Sophist]. But the question touched upon here is hardly an arbitrary one." (41). For Heidegger, philosophy has lost touched with the question `what is the meaning of being, as such?' However, in order to resolve the question of the meaning of Being, you must examine the Being of the questioner, (Dasein), leading us to do fundamental ontology.

The second essay in the collection is titled What is Metaphysics? It is an inaugural address the delimited many of the major ideas he would later expand in Being in Time. In it, Heidegger again examines the meaning of Being, but he also discusses the unheimlichkeit (the uncanny), and Dasein's confrontation with "the nothing" (100), and with attunement and Nihilism generally. This is a particularly famous, though cryptic essay, the major ideas in it are expanded at great lengths by Heidegger in his book `Introduction to Metaphysics,' published later in 1953.

The next essay is titled On the Essence of Truth, and it is particularly difficult. Heidegger begins with: "Our Topic is the essence of truth. The question regarding the essence of truth is not concerned with whether truth is a truth of practical experience or of economic calculation, the truth of a technical consideration or of political sagacity, or, in particular, a truth of scientific research or of artistic composition, or even the truth of thoughtful reflection or cultic belief. The question of essence disregards all this and attends to the one thing that in general distinguishes every `truth' as truth (115). Heidegger will later suggest in the essay that the essence of truth is freedom, or unconcealment. Heidegger does not adhere to radical skepticism, nor does he believe in eternal truths. He is interested in the essence of this question with regard to Da-Sein's `liberation' for `ek-sistence.'

The Origin of the Work of Art is unlike any essay in the history of aesthetic philosophy or criticism, because Heidegger is not at all concerned with the beauty of art, nor with the thinking of the artist. He is interested in the capacity for art to reveal worlds. He writes: "The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground. But men and animals, plants and things, are never present and familiar as unchangeable objects, only to represent incidentally also a fitting environment for the temple, which one fine day is added to what is already there" (168). Heidegger values the art of poetry more than any other. He says, "Art happens as poetry. Poetry is founding in the triple sense of bestowing, grounding, and beginning" (202), and he valued Holderlin, Trakyl, and Rilke above all other poets. Art is an origin, and it serves to preserve the historical existence of man.

One could go on and on. This volume also contains the Letter on Humanism, Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, the Question Concerning Technology, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, What Calls for Thinking?, the Way to Language, and the End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking. They will keep you busy for quite a while.

[sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

i never had heidegger prescribed to me at school, but i was given a lot of theorists whom you apparently can't understand without having read him. by consequence i've always thought of him as a big hole in my knowledge of philosophy and the history of ideas, but one that i've held off on reading because of his famously impenetrable prose. having now read a fraction of his writing, i feel i have at least some grasp on the project of phenomenology and how enormously important his thought is to later critical theory. the writing is tough (in large part because of the impossibility of translation, which leads to many paragraphs where the words Being and being are used 20+ times), but not as inaccessible as you might think, and it never leaves you floundering. i find hegel, derrida and deleuze to be much tougher sledding. and though i'm far from fully understanding his thought, i've so far found reading heidegger to be a pretty astonishing experience – maybe as powerful as first reading nietzsche's genealogy in high school philosophy class. the introductory material here is an extremely useful preliminary to reading the being and time/what is metaphysics stuff.

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

German philosopher Martin Heidegger is a strange figure in the history of philosophy. Arguably one of the most influential of the twentieth century philosophers, he’s also one of the most obscure and unintelligible writers of that century. Throughout his long life, Heidegger occupied himself almost solely with asking the question of Being.

In his early career, while he was a student of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, he was primarily occupied with the ‘theory of theory’ – that is, he was looking for a way, following his master, to ground all of human knowledge in some overarching theory (an ontology). During 1920’s he started to follow his own path, eventually ending up with an almost hostile vision on reality to that of Husserl.

It goes too far to dive into this divide. Safe to say, Husserl was looking for an ontology that was ultimately scientific/philosophical. Heidegger, in his magnum opus Seind und Zeit (1927) ended up with a rejection of such an ontology. For him, human existence is the foundation of all of Being, while at the same time Being is the foundation of human existence. It is through human existence, when authentic and not absorbed in its everydayness, that Being is enlightened, disclosed.

Bertrand Russell called Heidegger’s metaphysics “extremely eccentric and highly obscure”. Earlier that century, he called reading Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (1900/1901) – a huge work that tries to establish logical foundations through descriptive psychology – as “swallowing a whale”. Russell, himself a child of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy – which is characterized by rigorous and strict logical analysis as a means to establish certain knowledge -, is arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and these two quotes illustrate the divide between Anglo-Saxon analytic and continental phenomenological philosophy.

The nature of this divide, and the reasons for Russell’s characterizations of Husserl and Heidegger, lies in the following. Husserl developed a whole new method (descriptive psychology/phenomenology) in order to answer age-old questions of metaphysics. To master this new method, one has to work through hundreds and hundreds of pages of very convoluted and obscure prose, and after this, only a tiny portion of the whole programme is unfolded. Heidegger not only developed a whole new method (hermeneutics – the continuous interpretation of certain words/phrases), he developed a whole new language. To understand Heidegger’s worldview and its implications requires to learn a whole new language, at the end of which the new student isn’t any further – at all – since Heidegger never answers the question of Being.

This is not to downplay both Husserl’s or Heidegger’s importance nor to imply their barrenness: phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism – three of the most important modern philosophical schools – would not have existed without these two philosophers. Yet I do agree with Russell on his scepticism about both and I have my doubts about the usefulness or validity of all of 20th century continental philosophy. To be frank, it seems to be ‘much ado about nothing’.

Anyway, back to Heidegger. Sein und Zeit was meant to offer an analysis about how human existence ultimately is – first in its everydayness and then, when including time as a dimension, as an authentic existence. The third part of the book would use human existence in light of the horizon of time to answer the question of existence itself. After this, Heidegger wanted to show how the whole western tradition since Plato and Aristotle occupied itself with superficial questions – he wanted to destruct the philosophical tradition and to return to the original revelation of the question of Being (as took place in the earliest phases of Ancient Greece).

He never published both his answer to the question of Being (the third part of Sein und Zeit) and his destruction of western philosophy. Instead, the book secured him his rectorship at the University of Freiburg in 1929, after which he never published a major work anymore. During the 1930’s and 1940’s Heidegger became member of the Nazi’s and actively participated in their reign of terror: he initially governed the university on Nazi-principles, and after being sacked in 1935, he tried to develop a coherent Nazi-philosophy that would ‘fuhr’ the ‘Führer’. Of course, this never became reality and he devoted more and more of his time to lecturing and writing down his thoughts. After the war he downplayed his involvement with the Nazi’s – something he would keep up until his death – and never spoke about the calamities that had happened. From the 1940’s on, Heidegger basically lectured and published short works – which became ever more obscure and mythological.

Parallel to these developments, somewhere in the early 1930’s, his perspective on philosophy radically changed. He gave up his quest to answer the question of Being and he moved ever more radically into the position that his only mission was asking the question of Being – which meant to him “being able to wait, a whole life long”.

This whole process started with his inaugural lecture at Freiburg in (1929) ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’ In this lecture he posited two controversial claims: (1) The Nothing, which is revealed to man in anxiety, is not, as contemporary metaphysics had it, a negation but something positive – “Das Nichts nichtet” as he would claim. (2) This is no contradiction, since the principle of contradiction is a logical principle, and logic disintegrates when we ask original questions – questions about Dasein and Being.

Russell and Carnap claimed this view is psychologism – Heidegger reduced Nothing to a feeling. But philosophy is only occupied with logic (rules of reasoning), so – according to the logical-positivist verification criterion of truth – Heidegger’s claim is literally meaningless. For Heidegger truth is revealing (enlightening) which itself is intrinsically connected to our ‘throwness’ (Gewurfenheit) into the world: we feel in a certain way within our own world and we either act on it or not – this is prior to any scientific questioning. We understand beings (as wholes) and Being only when we transcend these beings, including ourselves as beings, through fear of death. This annihilation of all meaning allows us to relate to beings through conscious, resolute decisions in our world. Without Nothing there is neither self nor freedom.

The whole debate between Carnap and Heidegger remains unresolved, but it boils down to what came first: theory or life? Heidegger grounds truth and being in life (as mode of being) while someone like Carnap grounds truth and being in theory about theory (as logic). Even more short: Heidegger claimed, like Husserl did, that our existence is prior to any knowing – it is already given when we start raising questions.

In another lecture ‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’ (1930) Heidegger delves deeper into this notion of truth. He asks what is truth and how does it arise? He starts with the broadly accepted correspondence theory of truth – truth is the correspondence of a thought to an object. But Heidegger moves beyond this and asks: what allows correspondence?

And here he is able to plug in his own ideas. According to him, the openness of my disposition to the world (which he equates with freedom). I – literally – let beings be. In my wonder I let things show themselves as they are. So what Heidegger does is use human freedom (my openness to the world) as principle of truth. I un-cover things through my freedom, and while I do so the meaning of all things disappears into the background. I become absorbed in what I am doing – I become one of the many and stop existing as an individual (I become Das Man-selbst) – and in so doing I forget my own relationship with time, i.e. the past and the future. So un-covering leads to covering-up!
I now perceive a world in which un-covering of things seems to be natural, I forget my own role in this process of un-covering, and I lose sight of the mysteriousness of this process. So in living as a human being, delusion and error are intrinsic parts of my life. This means, for Heidegger, that perfect clarity and certainty (the aim of all of traditional philosophy, as well as science) are impossible. The best I can do is to recognize the mystery of un-covering things and my own role in this as Dasein.

This essay (based on the lecture) is the bridge between the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit and the later Heidegger. In it he seems to throw out any pretensions to truth and clarity and to set himself up for asking the question of Being – as a means to focus on the mystery of Being – the rest of his life.

After this essay, Heidegger becomes (to me at least) ever more obscure and ungraspable. He ventures into territories such as art, mysticism, technology, poetry and language and continuously seems to raise the same sort of questions but never offering any concrete answers. His whole undertaking seems to be pre-occupied with destructing all existing truths and to make himself invisible through the mists of obscure language. For example, in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (1935) he claims that art, just like political revolutions, religious revelations, essential sacrifices and philosophy, is a means to experience our own existence in a new light. Art thus functions as a tool with which we perceive how we inhabit a world that is filled with things. And supposedly political revolutions (1935 Germany, anyone?) and religious revelations (Question of Being in Ancient Greece, anyone?) share this function.

He now claims that ‘truth’ reveals itself – we seem to have become passive recipients of it – as a struggle between the world and the earth. The world is, according to Heidegger, the place we things receive their mode of existence – a destiny in relation to a historical people (Volk). Earth then functions as the foundation of this world, it is the mysterious source from which we and all other beings originate. And these two seem to be in conflict.

I literally don’t know what to make of this – and, unfortunately, it seems to be the bridge to even more obscure thoughts.

After World War 2, Heidegger wrote a letter to Jean Beaufret (a French philosopher/fan) on Jean-Paul Sartre’s adaptation of Heidegger’s earlier thoughts in Sein und Zeit. In this letter he criticizes Sartre’s generalization of his own work and the ‘Brief über den Humanismus (1947) is characteristic for the later Heidegger. He rejects existentialism – he calls it reversed metaphysics (Sartre’s claim that ‘existence precedes essence’) an accuses Sartre of using old metaphysical notions. He rejects humanism – he calls man the ‘shepherd of Being’, where Being is both the flock and authority of man. And he rejects ethics – any valuation is an objectification of things, a leaving behind of beings as beings and making them objects. How we should act or not, is something Heidegger basically cannot be bothered with – being resolute in the face of death seems to be the most concrete thing that comes out of his pen.

This letter is characteristic for the later Heidegger in two respects: (1) he rejects any definite claims that pin him to some circumscribed meaning of what he says, and (2) he shrouds himself in vagueness. For example, in rejecting ethics he claims that valuation of beings is part of the modern technological worldview (which has to be rejected) and he replaces this with an empty formalism (being resolute) – he doesn’t answer in what we should be resolute.

Heidegger takes this whole line of thinking ever further. In parts of Die Frage nach dem Ding (1962) he claims, for example, that humanity designs the ‘thingness’ of things and modern man does this through a mathematical design. We do this, because we are obsessed – at least according to Heidegger – with wanting to know everything in an axiomatic-deductive fashion. In short: us moderns want to know things with certainty and hence our will designs (Entwurf) the things that make up our world. And then we find the things that we wanted to find, all the while deluding ourselves in steering ever further from Being. Heidegger mentions Galilei, Newton and Descartes as the three godfathers of this modern worldview with respect to mathematics, physics and metaphysics.

One can see here a trace of Husserl’s philosophy. Husserl claimed that history is the sedimentation of ideas, and that the philosopher should trace these sedimentary layers, study them, and find the origin of this whole development. This process of sedimentation leads to the fading of the original questions and to our knowledge of the existence of original question as such. The later Heidegger follows a similar train of thought, in that he tries to trace the philosophical tradition back to its starting point – he tries to scratch off all the sediment and to find the original revelation of the question of Being. This offers us a very interesting interpretation of Heidegger’s later career, more on this at the end of the review.

In Die Frage nach der Technik (1953), another short essay, Heidegger asks: What is the essence of technology? According to him, technology is a way of revealing the totality of being which now permeates the whole western world. The origin of this way of viewing the world lies, not in the scientific revolution, but in Plato and Aristotle, especially the latter. Why? Because from Aristotle onwards the world was conceptualized in terms of matter and form. The technological worldview orders the world in such a way that manipulation of this world – all its objects – becomes possible.
For Heidegger, this technological framework reduces everything in the world – nature and man – to availability and manipulability and transforms both man and nature in ‘stock’ – something stored that can be used for technological aims. Basically in the same vein as Aristotle’s example (illustrating matter and form) of the sculptor who views the block of marble as matter and imposes his design on it.

Heidegger’s main problem with this technological worldview is the fact that it creates a world where things continuously become present to us and then disappear again. It diverts our attention from the underlying mystery that makes this presenting and disappearing possible in the first place. The un-covering of this underlying Being becomes possible when we stop being-in-the-World and become an authentic Dasein – a human being who fears death and in so doing wakes up to the world as it is. Art, especially poetry, is a useful tool to reveal this Being – a claim that seems to contradict Heidegger’s earlier remarks on art as a means of perceiving ourselves as being-in-the-world with other things.

The final essay that I’ve read from this bundle is Bauen Wohnen Denken (1951). Its central theme is the relationship between building and dwelling, and the type of thinking that springs from focusing on this relationship. The lecture is a further reflection of the divide between the modern technological-scientific worldview that sees things as objects and the authentic worldview that reveals things as the place were un-covering of Being happens.

This essay demonstrates the end of Heidegger’s path, where he ends up in the domains of language and poetry. He tries to explain how the modern notion of me as a thinking thing (Ich denke, ich bin) etymologically springs from the notion of building. ‘Bin’ derives from the Indo-Germanic ‘bheu’, from which ‘bau’ also derives. The original meaning of ‘bauen’ is living-in, dwelling. In short: building means claiming a piece of land, cultivating it, existing on it, making it your home.
So language connects building (bauen) with dwelling (wohnen) and both are intimately connected to thinking (as existing thing, ich bin). So a thinking thing builds a world for himself, in which it lives – and in this ‘it is’, it exists. As Heidegger concludes: this relationship un-covers Being.

But this is not all. Heidegger sees in this agricultural primitive human existence the source for a certain mythology. According to him, there is a ‘fourfold’ consisting of earth, sky, mortals and divinities. In building on the earth, we cultivate the land. Things grow upwards, towards the sky. This sky is the realm of divinities. These divinities ascend us, and in their ascendance ‘Being shows itself as contrasted with the Nothing’ to us earthly mortals. Being thus becomes a unifying principle of the fourfold.

After this essay, the bundle offers some more essays of Heidegger on language, poetry and the end of philosophy. But I have had enough of this – for a long while. It seems that with the years he became ever more convoluted and obscure, and also much more nonsensical.

To end this review on the later Heidegger, I will first mention my own thoughts (limited as they are)on this obscure philosophy, and after this I will briefly mention a very convincing analysis of a contemporary Dutch philosopher.

Personally, I think the post-Sein und Zeit Heidegger should be seen as someone who had the ambition to formulate a new philosophy and who saw in the Nazi’s an opportunity to carrying out this plan. Becoming frustrated within the Nazi apparatus – because who would have thought that they had no use of a philosopher-king? – he retreated more and more into his own personal sphere. Heidegger came from a provincial region and was raised as a catholic (he even studied theology) and I think there are clear signs of his revulsion and rejection of the modern world. The later Heidegger shows much resentment against modern technology and the accompanying worldview which he deems to be superficial and meaningless. Reading his essays on technology and modern science, combined with his later notion of the ‘fourfold’ that is heavily drenched in primitive agriculture, one can almost feel the nostalgia for a time that never was. Heidegger liked to retreat into his own hut in the forests and to ski in the winter – this was a man who was born many, many centuries too late. His flirt with mysticism, mythological archetypes and divinities seems – to me, at least – to be an escape valve from a world that he rejected but still was intrinsically a part of. And with the fear of psychologizing the man, this seems to mirror his earlier ideas of leading an authentic life in the face of death – anything but being absorbed in the world of everyday!

One can still see this type of mentality all around us today. Many people feel uncanny in the ever-changing global, digital and technological world and long for a mythological past. These people resent modernity so much that they flee into self-created realities. They truly believe their own stories and they genuinely feel threatened by the modern way of life. And I think this is one of the root causes of fundamentalism – then and now. Heidegger’s active participation with the Nazi party (much less innocent then he and many fellow-travellers and fans of his work like to admit) should be seen in the broader context of millions of uprooted people who felt alienated. (Again, the notion of ‘alienation’ forms an important part of the early Heidegger). As modern philosopher Sam Harris always proclaims: “Ideas have consequences” – and I think in Heidegger’s case this cannot be said enough.


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(Last two paragraphs in comments)

[Uxküll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review forthcoming...

[Crito · Rating 2 out of 5]

:(

[Sean Masterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, bravo to whoever is redesigning all the Harper Perennial philosophy stuff. Love all that constructivist / futurist stuff.

Why do we need Heidegger? For one thing, it sure is fun watching how worked up people get about him.

"He was a Nazi!"

Well, that's complicated. Fact is, he was a Nazi. However, he has never (as far as I've read, maybe something will be unearthed later) been linked to antisemitism and the arguments that he advocated a fascist totalitarian state are pretty thin. They are the same kinds of arguments that are easily spun to make Humanism sound like the root of all totalitarian philosophies. He also left the party 11 months after being sworn in and four-years before Kristallnacht. Still, he never renounced his time as a Nazi or spoke out against Germany's crimes. The poet Paul Celan, a German Jew, was a great admirer of Heidegger and the two men met for dinner once after the war. The meeting is now the stuff of myth, for some it is proof that Heidegger should be forgiven his Nazi affiliations. It is said that Celan was disappointed that Heidegger could not bring himself to acknowledge his controversial past.

"He is impossible to understand?!?! Why not write clearly?!?!"

Couple things here:
1. Yes, it does sometimes feel like he is confusing you on purpose. Diving right in may not be the best place to start. I found the Routledge Critical Thinkers volume on Heidegger extremely helpful when trying to navigate the Being and Time essays. The rest are fairly approachable, kind of like reading Faulkner: Once you get the rhythm you're in. There are a few other -isms and -ologies you might want to brush up on first, namely phenomenology and materialism.
2. Yes, it does sometimes feel like he is confusing you on purpose. And he is! Sorta. A lot of his philosophy revolves around questions of interpretation. One of his concepts is that of the "unthought". Realists hate this stuff. Basically, there exists a plane of knowledge that cannot be expressed directly or summarized. Often this is the notion he is approaching in the more convoluted passages of his writings. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you come back years later and now it does. Sometimes it doesn't make sense till his adherents restate his ideas in another context. Those adherents included just about everyone who philosophized during and after WWII. Sartre, Camus and the whole existentialist thing was an offshoot of Heidegger. Structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction all stand on the foundation that Heidegger built.

There aren't many disciplines where this is true, but some of Heidegger's work is more approachable after becoming familiar with those who came AFTER. His work is also visible in a lot of post-war fiction. Mostly European fiction, namely the existentialists and later in the work of Robbe-Grillet and lately in the work of Tom McCarthy, who has delivered lectures on Heidegger. He's a big fan.

It's a long way to go for a book review. In sum, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Heidegger is hard. Talking Heidegger is even harder. He is notorious for impenetrable writing. He is also notorious for having taken exception to being inadequately summarized and condensed. His views on Being, of human existence (Dasein), are the foundation for everything he writes but he viewed his own writings on this idea as expansive and dense and filled with nuance. So I am going to sidestep him for a minute and I am going to start by talking about George Orwell. Because, essay after essay, I thought of him.

In the Appendix of 1984, Orwell wrote about the principles of Newspeak. When I read 1984 as a teenager, like many others, that book left a huge impact. Not only for its authoritarianism warnings (which, ironically for this review, Heidegger would probably have rejected given his Nazi sympathies) but more impactful was the Appendix on Newspeak. The idea that language would be purposefully whittled away to reduce thought because thinking exists only at the limit of language. Throughout Heidegger’s essays, the constant undercurrent is his attempt to push language past where it currently exists. He pushes language to allow thought to expand. Just as trimming language reduces what we can conceive, grafting language results in greater comprehension.

Neologisms abound as he seeks words that can break the chains shackling Western philosophic tradition to interpretations of Greek thought that tie thinking to logic and the Cartesian premise “I think therefore I am.” Heidegger, in an attempt to reset Western thought, returns to an analysis of first principles. He is not prepared to accept that his “thinking” makes him an “am” because he does not even know what it means to be an “am”. What does it mean to “be” anything? That idea of “Being” is where Heidegger begins and subsequently spirals around. To discuss “Being”, Heidegger strives to broaden our concepts of what “Being” can entail. It has been such a given in Western thought that there has not been any real thought of what that even means.

Heidegger seeks new words, or using old words with new emphasis, to stretch what we may comprehend so there can be a discussion about “Being.” These concepts precede thought. It’s using language in an interesting “deed before creed” process. First expand language to permit comprehending concepts that can then be uncovered and then discussed. Make the tools that can then be used to make foundation upon which the house is built.

Ultimately, this leaves Heidegger from declaring succinct truths that we can grasp and hold as evidence of understanding Heidegger. He is not interested in falling in line with the Western thinkers since Descartes. He does not want to build a different house on the same foundation. He is tearing it all down and seeing what different foundation can be built. Whether he is successful or not others have much more knowledgably written about the details found in Heidegger’s essays. Personally, in this my first (and potentially last ) foray into Heidegger, I was drawn into his desire to push thought past language. In a new vocabulary he constructs new definitions all designed to reveal Being. For example; Nothing “does not merely serve as the counterconcept of beings; rather, it originally belongs to their essential unfolding as such.” (What is Metaphysics?, pg. 104); or Freedom is “understood as letting beings be, is the fulfillment and consummation of the essence of truth in the sense of disclosure of beings.” (On the Essence of Truth, pg. 127).

In the end, though I inadequately have a sense of where Heidegger propelled Western thought, I fully appreciate his desire to expand our ability to think. In what is otherwise a painfully deconstructive essay on art, he states this paragraph on language which I believe is a constant across all his writings:

Language, by naming beings for the first time, first brings beings to word and to appearance. Only this naming nominates beings to their Being from out of their Being. Such saying is a projecting of clearing, in which announcement is made of what it is that beings come into the open as. Projecting is the release of a throw by which unconcealment infuses itself into beings as such. This projective announcement forthwith becomes a renunciation of all the dim confusion in which a being veils and withdraws itself. The Origin of the Work of Art, pg. 198.

[Arkar Kyaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

The collection is very neat -- it collects Heidegger's writings in a sort of progressive manner which serves very well as an introduction to his thought. For Heidegger himself I am quite astonished. One of the most brazen thinkers and I can see why people are attracted to his thinking. The content of his thinking, I believe from what I am seeing so far, is hit or miss. Either you are already convinced by him and find him the most brilliant or all the talk about Being and unconcealment remains strange mysticism.

[saml · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm sure this is all very deep

[Gerald Sigmund · Rating 3 out of 5]

As i was reading, I was thinking more about how he connects to philosophers before him like nietzsche and post-heideggerians like foucault than Heidegger. Heidegger is terrifyingly brilliant, full of shit and boring. I liked it.

[Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's not talk falsely. This is probably the greatest anthology of Heideggerian thought collected. When I first read this book, I started with trying to read What is Metaphysics? I became perplexed and confused. Never had philosophical reading been such a difficult enterprise of attempting to understand what exactly the author was trying to explain. I talked it over with some professor's and was told, for the most part, that it didn't matter anyway because Heidegger was not that important. However, there was something about the things explained, and the great attention to detail in attempting to explain things that would not allow me to leave Heidegger alone. I read, analyzed, and wrote essay's about What is Metaphysics? in an attempt to just get a basic understanding of the subject material. When I was comfortable I went on to read The Origin of the Work of Art and The Question Concerning Technology . As my reading increased, so did my understanding of the important concepts that Heidegger was attempting to address.
From that point forward, everything I read and heard in lecture seemed to be pervaded by things I had previously heard addressed by Heidegger. Every time I was exposed to a new idea in philosophy I could see Heidegger in the background of my mind. When I could sneak a spare moment, I would go back to the Basic Writings and rediscover the way Heidegger approached metaphysical suppositions.
After I finished the spring semester, I immediately went to the library and checked out Being in Time . I had made the decision, once and for all to understand Heidegger from the beginning. What I found in Being and Time was like a revealing of all thinking in Philosophy. It was an attempt to come to terms with where Western thinking had gone wrong and how it could be saved. With every critique Heidegger offered of Kant, Descartes, and even at some points Hegel, I had a copy of the books referred to on hand so that I could read what Heidegger was reading.
Now, with a fresh understanding of Heideggerian thought, I re-approached the Basic Writings , this time reading them completely. Most philosophy becomes boring at some point, this was not the case with Heidegger. Each word, each sentence, each paragraph seemed to be carefully selected and placed. Heidegger was a master of the word game. I kept a 3 x 5 card (ending up with a stack of ten of them) in the book. Every time he would use and ancient Greek word or reference another philosopher, I wrote it down and studied it. Needless to say I think that a lot of what Heidegger wrote was correct.
This is the negative, it is true that some of the content is difficult to understand and interpret. My suggestion is to first read and understand Being and Time , then approach Basic Writings . Read for pleasure, read to understand, read and question. If you do all this, and disregard the "idle chatter" of those who tell you Heidegger is "x" (fill in the blank with whatever derogative statement you want)you may find something so brilliant that you will be surprised how simple and creative the work of Heidegger becomes.
Sorry this review could not be more complete... I have more to read, but I will always keep this copy of Basic Writings close to my mind whilst trying to understand further thinking in Western Philosophy.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget Being and Time, which Heidegger wrote in five weeks (?!) to secure tenure: this is definitely the place to start (along with Introduction to Metaphysics) if you're reading Heidegger for the first time. The sixth entry, "Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics," is probably the best philosophical essay written in the twentieth century.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of 11 Heidegger essays, or rather the Introduction to Being&Time as a prelude to 10 post-"Turn" essays. As such, most of it consists of semi-topical writings, ie art, technology, language, freedom, and his quasi-mystical fixations on thinking, 'dwelling', Nothingness, truth. I'm unsure the details on Heidegger's "Turn", but the initial sequence of essays of the 1927-1933 epoch seem to progressively demonstrate the emergence of his 'late' period, where historical reflections, metaphorical descriptions of thought, and linguistic apophenics overtake phenomenological argumentation as his primary mode. As with Nietzsche, the issue of systematizing an anti-systemic philosophy obstructed the more hard-minded approaches, and he arrives at something of a 'therapeutic philosophy', commonly compared to the method of a certain contemporary of Heidegger's.

This seems a little over-hated, and sometimes perhaps overly mis-appreciated as well. Heidegger's life was generally spent in close reading of the Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, and seeing their advanced level of nuance in asserting positive structures is the basic motivation for the thoughts&essayings here. As such, he writes in a generally poetical and instigative way (having learned in part from the great Hoelderlin) to avoid reneging into that which sounds platitudinous in traditional philosophical frameworks; this is something that seems to alienate a baffling number of readers. Nevertheless, in spite of his clearly meaningful ideas and his deliberate style, this collection seems to renege into a problem I've usually had with Heidegger: in not so many words, his basic issue is the alienating nature of scientific&technological thoughts&processes, and his solution is a basic return to a simpler, more pastoral mindset. Given that he seems to misapprehend the depth of Plato, offer far abstracter & less realistic advice than Nietzsche, and have essentially no refutatory argument against analytical philosophy beyond its limitations, it's hard for me to see why one would choose an Heideggerian perspective in any circumstance.

For example, in The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger unfurls a beautiful process whereby he links together the natural&organic activities of man, the spectacle of art, and our ability for absorptive vision. This essay is a poem in itself, no doubt, but unlike the comparable Symposium of Plato, it by its own admission can't lead into any more of an extended system of philosophy, but rather serves as a gentle guide to loosen up our mindset and leave us more sensitive to the world, eg what he says in the Letter on Humanism and the other essays in thinking. It's no wonder that even in his book on Hoelderlin years later, he speaks less of Hoelderlin and instead simply unfolds a similar series of connections. And indeed, in many of the late essays (such as What Calls For Thinking?) Heidegger seems to content himself SOLELY to questioning, perhaps in hopes that we will come to conclusions for ourselves. When it comes to essays like The Questioning Concerning Technology, it's hard to see how any of Heidegger's implicit value assertions concerning technology connect NECESSARILY to his treatment of the technology issue; it seems clear to me that the french deconstruction school is the natural end of this method, where the issue becomes entirely linguistic and essentially sophistical in its clever treatment of topics.

As such, it seems to me as though Heidegger is torn in two, wishing to assert (as in Building Dwelling Thinking) a more grounded, organic form of life is necessary, yet fearing any formulation thereof (and Thus Fled Zarathustra). The solution, he feels, must be a total change in mindset, and yet all his suggestions (particularly his last essay here, End Of Philosophy) point towards an objective, expansive mindset more characteristic of Emersonian learning than of Nietzschian or Heraclitan criticality. How thorough his critiques of Plato, Hegel et al are cannot to my eye be gleaned here, so I suppose the journey continues. 4 stars because it's massively entertaining reading and I like his method a lot, however else it stands with his conclusions.

[John Reis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Except for the Introduction to Being and Time all of the articles in this book were published subsequent to the 1927 book.

Heidegger is focused on the nature of Being. On the one hand he is impressed by the use of the term in ancient times, especially by Parmenides and Heraclitus, and to some extent, Aristotle. Though it is to be suspected that Aristotle destroyed the more ancient version of the word.

He is not willing to accept the correspondence theory of truth. Instead, he harkens back to the earlier Greek meaning of the word: unrevealing. When it comes to truth, as far as he is concerned, we humans have no agency. We do not “discover” the truth. We do not “work” for it. It is unconcealed or revealed to us. A very religious way of looking at it.

He seems to be creating a kind of modern, secular religion. Perhaps, he is creating a theory of psychology. He spends a great deal of time contemplating our position in this world: thrown, as he says. Remember, Howard the Duck? His tagline is “Trapped in a World he never Made.” This gives us anxiety. Thrownness disappears in the later essays.

He places language in high esteem, though never discussing Frege, Russell or Wittgenstein.

His article against scientism is quite good. His argument against modern technology is deeply flawed. He believes modern technology to be radically different from any earlier technology. He is wrong. To cut and save hay for the cattle during the winter two thousand years ago is no different than mining for great quantities of coal in his time. Perhaps a better example is chopping down trees. Are they there just for us to cut them down.

None of this looks like traditional philosophy. Heidegger does not argue for any of the positions he takes. He observes something, grabs an old Greek word and then is on his way. Throughout these essays he makes unusual etymological claims about commonly used modern terms. He rejects reason and logic. He wishes only to think about undifferentiated Being, after all, to think of differentiated being is to break up being into parts.

In the last essay called “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” his complaints are clearest: “the sciences are now taking over as their own task what philosophy in the course of its history tried to present in certain places, and even there only inadequately, that is, the ontologies of the various regions of beings (nature, history, law, art). “Theory” means now supposition of the categories which are allowed only a technological function but denied any ontological meaning.”

“But is the end of philosophy in the sense of its evolving into the sciences also already the complete actualization of all the possibilities in which the thinking of philosophy was posited?”

“We are thinking of the possibility that the world civilization that is just now beginning might one day overcome its technological- scientific- industrial character as the sole criterion of man's world sojourn.” Environmentalism?

Modern philosophy began with Rene Descartes and his use of methodological doubt to attain certain knowledge. One of the consequences was the primacy of the subject and the radical uncertainty of the nature of the outside world. Descartes left us with no way to achieve certain knowledge except for the thoughts in our head. This was a very bad move and philosophy has wandered around in the idealistic forest for the last 400 years because of it. Idealism leads to solipsism. There is only me. You are merely thoughts in my head just like the rest of the universe.

Heidegger lives in this world. He may sense something is wrong, but he does not find a way out for himself, at least so far as his writings indicate. He quotes approvingly from Goethe, “look for nothing beyond phenomena: they themselves are what is to be learned.”

He complains about instrumental knowledge, but our very lives depend on it. Contemplation we can do in what leisure time we produce for ourselves. Eastern monks meditate throughout their lives, but who bakes their bread, sews their robes and cleans their latrines?

[Alex]

The expression "appearance" itself in turn can have a double meaning. First, appearing in the sense of making itself known as something that does not show itself and, second, in the sense of what does the making known - what in its self-showing indicates something that does not show itself. Finally, one can use appearing as the term for the genuine meaning of phenomenon as self-showing

This is too much, I will try again later.

more review to come...

[Liza]

I didn't really know what I was getting in for. I just wanted to flip through it to see what all the fuss was about, but it didn't turn out to be that kind of book. Parts of it are really beautiful, kind of terribly beautiful. Here is an example:

"At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary. The essence of truth, that is, of unconcealedness, is dominated throughout by a denial. Yet this denial is not a defect or a fault, as though truth were an unalloyed unconcealedness that has rid itself of everything concealed. If truth could accomplish this, it would no longer be itself. This denial, in the form of a double concealment, belongs to the essence of truth as unconcealedness. Truth, in its essence, is un-truth."

And then two pages later: "Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealedness."

And then two more pages later: "Truth is un-truth, insofar as there belongs to it the reservoir of the not-yet-revealed, the un-uncovered, in the sense of concealment."

It kind of made me think someone should just write a poem about it instead. But then here is another quote which seemed almost like a direct challenge: "Occasionally we still have the feeling that violence has long been done to the thingly element of things and that thought has played a part in this violence, for which reason people disavow thought instead of taking pains to make it more thoughtful."

There is something so seductive about a sentence that begins "The essence of truth," even (especially) if it concludes with un-truth.

[Kiof]

I've been wondering where to put all my thoughts on MH, for I've been attacking the whole corpus at once. I decided to just put some here.
Heidegger has the qualities I appreciate most in my favorite artists. What these qualities are, I cannot say (if I could pinpoint them, then I don't think they'd be so powerful!) Another way to say it is: reading Heidegger, I'm reminded why I like this thing called art in the first place. Sure- this guy ain't everybody's cup of tea. I didn't even think he was mine. The Nilsson-esque (the Point!) study of the word being seemed idiotic, repetitive, pointless. Now it seems to me nothing short of revelatory.
The thing about MH is you gotta accept the rules of his world. Like any great major artist, MH invents a world. And the only way to make a world in art, an all-comprehensive one, is to invent rules, many of which are arbitrary. Also to appreciate him you gotta overlook the Nazism and the New Age twinge (though that is missing mostly from his most famous work, Being and Time). There are many, many things to overlook. But once you do, or if you do, you will be profoundly rewarded. No exag.
As for this book, it is by far the best one-volume summary of his work and philosophy I've found. The only other worthwhile introduction is On the Way to Language. I think anybody can love at least some of Heidegger and not be, that dreadful word, a Heideggerian.

[Drex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful introduction to Heidegger.

Very important essay "The Origin of the Work of Art" influenced me greatly. Helps one philosophically understand work, space, contexts, and other vital philosophical concepts.

[tout · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Here too the gods come to presence"!

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having known in essence nothing about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger before reading "Basic Writings", I am giving it four stars out of five because it left me with the impression that I had at least started on the path towards understanding his philosophy. This review should throw considerable light on how I currently misunderstand Heidegger.
The first sub-section of the book is entitled: "The necessity of an explicit recovery of the question of Being" where Heidegger firms that after Aristotle, the philosophical profession proscribed all discussion of the question of "Being". There were three reasons for this: (1) the subject was universal; (2) it was undefinable; and (3) the nature of being was self-evident.
Heidegger uses the term Dasein for being or existence. It is to be noted that Dasein, ("that it is") is not the same - as opposed to Wassein ("what it is". ) (p. 49) Heidegger assures the reader that no "circle in reason" occurs in his discussion. Personally I think that Heidegger's theses twirl around like whirligigs.
Heidegger adds phenomenology to the mix by arguing that through Being the thing ("ding") manifests itself. Being then is an act of un-concealment or self-revealing.
My reaction is that Heidegger mistakenly believes that a words (logos) possesses an absolute or divinely ordained meanings In this way Heidegger is in opposition with Jacques Derrida who argues that a word (logos) acquires its meaning through its reading or context. In short, at the end of the book I still was unsure of the pertinence of Heidegger's theses.
Roughly the first third of "Basic Writings" is devoted to Heidegger's definition of Dasein / Being. In the rest of the book, he applies his model to elucidate other philosophical domains.
In a long essay entitled "The Origin of the Work of Art", Heidegger writes: "The artwork opens up in its own way the Being of beings. This opening up, i.e. this revealing, the truth of beings happens in the work." (p. 165) Further on, he states that "Art is a becoming and happening of truth." (p. 196) Finally, Heidegger asserts: "Truth is the unconcealment of beings as beings." (p. 206) Heidegger demonstrates that he has read the poems of Novalis and Hölderlin very intensely. While the essay is very weak as aesthetic but it does serve to reinforce Heidegger's central argument that being is revealing.
There are several essays devoted to the role of science in contemporary philosophy. Heidegger argues that experiment has replaced experience in philosophy and asserts that science is mathematical:
"With these three characteristics of modern science, that it is a factual, experimental, measuring science, we still miss the fundamental characteristic of modern science. The fundamental feature consists in what rules and determines the basic movement of science itself. ... We attain this fundamental feature of modern science for which we are searching by saying that modern science is mathematical." (p. 273)
What Heidegger seems to be saying is that philosophers no longer believe that objects act according to their own internal natures but according to laws of the larger nature where they exist:
"In the Aristotelian view, bodies move according to their nature. heavy ones fall faster than light ones downward, the light ones upward. ... It becomes a decisive insight of Galileo [later Newton] that all bodies fall equally fast, and that the differences in the time of fall derive only from resistance of the air, not from the different natures of the bodies." (pp. 289)
The last chapter of the book is entitled: "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking". Heidegger in fact never asserts that philosophy is dead. Rather he argues that the metaphysical debate started by Plato has been completed and that philosophers must move on to new issues: "What characterizes metaphysical thinking which seeks out the ground for beings, is the fact that metaphysical thinking, starting from what is present, represents it in its presence and thus represents and thus exhibits it as grounded by its ground. ...What is meant by the talk about the end of philosophy? ... what we say about the end of philosophy means the completion of metaphysics. ... Metaphysics is Platonism. Nietzsche characterizes his philosophy as reversed Platonism." (pp. 432-433)

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

back to Onkel Martin & it was around this time last year I first read Sein und Zeit (coinciding with a Plato also but I’ve not finished that yet). Goodreads also informs me that this is the 666th book I’ve logged as Read which seems a bit harsh especially when marty wanders into his theistic registers here

Anyway unsurprisingly it’s a bit of a bastard though brilliant & the range of essays here is all over the place it’s career-spanning but beautiful to detect perennial interests especially that sordid job of poesie. The essay Building Dwelling Thinking is kind of a sore thumb in this for one thing it’s entirely readable and another it’s even more etymologically obsessed than usual. But I’d expect no less from a Burnside assignment. Loving notes on Errancy too Jorie I have my eye on you

Heideggerian sentences don’t disappoint I wonder how they string out in the German but I was enjoying

“The not does not originate through negation; rather, negation is grounded in the not that springs from the nihilation of the nothing. But negation is also only one way of nihilating, that is, only one sort of behavior that has been grounded beforehand in the nihilation of the nothing.”

It’s so difficult to polish off a couple paragraphs on Heidegger he’s the rare sort that seems capable of spawning a thesis with every page. I’m just going to leave with something i’m sure I’ll come back to from the essay The Way To Language:

Yet language is monologue. This now says something twofold: it is language alone that properly speaks; and it speaks in solitude. Yet only one who is not alone can be solitary; not alone, that is to say, not in separation and isolation, not devoid of all kinship.

Sydney I hope you’re listening

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this volume much easier to read than Being and Time, I don't know if that's due to translation or that Heidegger becomes less inscrutable in his later works. I like his vocabulary (nihilation, clearing, enframing) more than anything else. Several of the essays are pretty outstanding (the ones on technology, language, thinking). That said, I still disagree with his methodology (buying way too much into etymology, searching for essences instead of analyzing actualities, lots of reactionary thinking about how the Greeks were right and "authenticity" is somehow a value that matters at all). You'd think that poetry is the ultimate truth for him would be a good thing but it's not compelling. Still, it's amazing that he is simply thinking in writing, there are so few textual references, a thing that modern philosophy has pretty much lost in the effort to be the best reading list masquerading as original thought.

[Minäpäminä · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revolutionary thought. It's a difficult read because it forces one to think instead of just consuming information. If it is challenging, it is rewarding in equal measure. Heidegger is fundamental for contemporary continental philosophy. Worth the hype, really.

And it's frequently beautiful too. Heidegger is a magisterial artist with words, weaving these vast tapestries of concepts which ebb and flow from long stretches of rough hewn blocks to suddenly swooping-in currents of a crystal clear mountain stream (my English quite obviously fails me here).

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great selection that illustrates Heidegger's thinking path between 1927 and 1964.
In “Being and Time”, Heidegger presents for the first his ontological project and what he meant by the Being-beings difference. The Introduction to “Being and Time” presented here is not an introduction at all, but a dense summary of the entire book.
In “What is Metaphysics?”, Heidegger argues that anxiety gives us a positive content for nothing (instead of the usual and empty logic negation) and that Metaphysics in its forgetfulness of the Being is only some interpretation “beyond or over beings”.
In the “Essence of the Truth”, Heidegger points to us that the essence of truth is freedom – in the sense of letting beings be. This is what the earlier Greeks meant by aletheia/unconcealment; and this fundamental approach to truth is favored by Heidegger when opposed to the modern representational/agreement conception of truth.
A painting or a Greek temple are example of such unconcealments at work and both gave us some hints of what Being may be. “The Origin of the Work of Art” rests in truth and “beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcelment”.
In “Letter on Humanism” Heidegger dismisses Sartre's humanism as just another metaphysical stand that only diminishes human dignity. Man's homelessness is due to the fact that he forgot about the Being of beings and thus expelled from the truth of Being circles around himself as the animal rationale. Man is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being. Man should restrain from valuing - for even when done in a positive way (for example “God is the supreme being”) is a subjectivizing and consequently a degradation.
Heidegger presents Descartes's and the modern project of “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics” as an assault upon reality by “the mathematical”. The mathematical is nothing more than an axiomatic project that posits itself as the authoritative principle of knowledge. In other words, modern science is fundamentally defined by: “I posit”. “Pure reason” a la Descartes and Kant is nothing more than a mixture of logos and axiomatic. One cannot help but recount Kuhn popularization of this fundamental understanding: any major progress in a particular science is due to the postulation of new concepts and not as a consequence of more or new data.
“The Question Concerning Technology” is probably the most important, relevant, dark, and haunting essay in this book. The new understanding of Being as “resources standing in reserve” is so efficient and ubiquitous that nothing can escape it – hence “enframing”. The oblivion of Being is total and so is the danger; but as Holderlin said it: “where danger is, grows the saving power also.” After reading this essay, one may ask: is there any real hope that art can oppose the essence of technology in the future? If we think that we humans are not affected by this technological enframing these days, we just need to remember that we are no longer approached by our employers as “subjects” but as “human resources” and that we no longer see our children as ends in themselves but as possibilities to be maximized.
As mortals, we build and think only insofar as we are capable of dwelling – and we do so by gathering earth, sky, divinities, and mortals together. This is how we should understand a thing like a bridge in “Building Dwelling Thinking”. This is also how spaces receive their essential being from a thing like a bridge or a house.
The gods withdrew, we forgot the event, but there still lingers a memory of it. We somehow are still looking in that direction and by doing so we turn into a sign and carry a pale memory of the event. There is a call for us to think, to name this event, and to let it arrive and come to presence. Heidegger does not explicitly answer the question “What Calls for Thinking?” - but the answer presumably is: the Being. In order to hear the call, we need to properly inhabit language; moreover, as thinkers we can only respond to what addresses us in such a call.
What essentially unfolds in a language is saying as pointing – it lets what is coming to presence shine forth. This is what any “natural language” is fundamentally doing and cannot be formalized in any language proposed by information theory. Our human “Way to Language” is to stay within it and not try to step outside of it in order to look at it circumspectly from some alternative position. In the end, language is the “house of Being” and not a medium to exchange information.
With “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” the book returns to and dismisses metaphysical thinking that seeks out the ground for beings by starting from what is present and represents it in its presence. Philosophy by forgetting Being, turned into metaphysics and further turned into particular sciences. Since philosophy speaks only of the “light of reason” and knows nothing about the clearing of Being, should be abandoned in favor of thinking that thinks aletheia. “All metaphysics, including its opponent, positivism, speaks the language of Plato. The basic word of its thinking, that is, of its presentation of the Being of beings, is eidos, idea: the outward appearance in which beings as such show themselves. Outward appearance, however, is a manner of presence. No outward appearance without light – Plato already knew this. But there is no light and no brightness without the clearing. Even darkness needs it.”

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t understand half of what I read.
But of the half that I did, I did like.