Introduction to Metaphysics

by Martin Heidegger, Gregory Fried (Translator), Richard Polt (Translator)

Contains a series of lectures delivered by Heidegger in 1935 at the University of Freiburg. In this work Heidegger presents the broadest and most intelligible account of the problem of being, as he sees this problem. First, he discusses the relevance of it by pointing out how this problem lies at the root not only of the most basic metaphysical questions but also of our human existence in its present historical setting. Then, after a short digression into the grammatical forms and etymological roots of the word "being," Heidegger enters into a lengthy discussion of the meaning of being in Greek thinking, letting pass at the same time no opportunity to stress the impact of this thinking about being on subsequent western speculation. His contention is that the meaning of being in Greek thinking underwent a serious restriction through the opposition that was introduced between being on one hand, and becoming, appearance, thinking and values on the other.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, German Literature, Classics, Science, Germany

254 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1929

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

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And so they sent me away -
Taught me how to be sensible,
Logical...”
Supertramp, Logical Song

MANICHEANISM, ANIMISM & SPIDERWEBS...

An old school friend of mine has a Manichean mind.

Oh, that's not such a bad thing, considering the whole intent of our society is Manichean.

You know the story:

Night and day, wrong and right, dark and light. We live in a world of logical, common sense dualities.

But... do we, I mean, TOTALLY live in that world? Its strictures can strangle you! And you know what I think? I think we all need the LIVING areas Between the Polarities.

But I think we don’t always Want to be alive again, because it hurts too much! We’ve been dissed, we’ve been summarily dismissed, and as a result we’re now downright dejected.

But polarities aren’t the answer!

So we choose the Illusory.

I'm thinking now of another friend...

Something in her otherwise logical mind tells her that a spider web glistening with the dew of dawn light in a garden is a natural MASTERPIECE.

That it’s an Open Display of Sheer Wonder.

Well, we sophisticated might call that Animism. That’s our innocent starting point in life - the belief that the world around us has a soul!

We're human.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG
IT SEEMED THE WORLD WAS SO WONDERFUL!

Remember that tune?

Now we’re grown up.

And now, you know, for all our relentless logic there have appeared plenty of spider webs in our own minds.

Sometimes they even glitter with the light of dawn, at inspiring moments! For illusion is our natural state.

We are not robots, thank goodness!

But we can rid ourselves of our nastier spiderwebs - Manichaean and Animistic both - and be more truly Human for it... and not Forsake the Wonder.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes these spiderwebs Work.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Heidegger was a youthful Animist. And also, I think in his later life, when the unrelenting barrage of his critics was at its peak, he retreated into it.

Wooliness. Vagueness. Obscurity.

Don’t we ALL sometimes do that?

Once a group of elderly ladies had a weekday morning prayer group...

Usually it was at Adele's place, so she usually was given the honour of saying the first prayer. Invariably, Adele would open with the line, "Lord, free our minds of sticky cobwebs…."

After many, many reiterations, her neighbour, Hortense, also a member of the group, got a trifle miffed at what she happened to take rather personally. She reverted to a natural, fallen polarity:

So, by the end of that month, after Adele had finished, she bluntly chimed in, "It might make it easier, Lord, just to get rid of the spider!"

You know, there’s an much easier way to keep away the webs that clog our minds.

Have you ever noticed, that when we start to retreat into obscurity or polarity we JUSTIFY it to ourselves? That’s Adele’s stickiness.

But - to FREE your mind of sticky spiderwebs - simply look BACK in your mind on your obscurantism and polarities and cast an ETHICAL LIGHT on why you strayed into them.

If we examine our conscience we’ll SEE why we need a crutch - and that crutch can be our Illusion (Adele) OR our polarity (Hortense).

I think we need a Solider and more Secure Crutch!

Were our initial actions morally right? Or were they WRONG? Find out!

The answer may be just a bit too uncomfortably obvious.

And Manicheanism is just turning our ethical spotlight animistically on our polarities. Our escapes. It’s a double whammy. We’re not being ourselves.

Manicheanism is a grown-up Animism.

An escape from the guilt of being caught out, being condemned - being Wrong.

We have to open the windows of our mind, take out our ethically self-critical broomsticks, and SWEEP AWAY ALL OUR SPIDERWEBS!

AND SEE OURSELVES AS WE ARE.

Guilty, your Honour!

And cobwebs, spiders, and all our Manichean and Animistic crutches will finally be swept away - in the FRESH AIR of a NEW DAY.

And the Adeles and Hortenses inside our heads will stop their endless bickering and make a Clear New Beginning.

In Humble Faith -

In the God we’ve always Avoided.

[katie luisa borgesius · Rating 5 out of 5]

We wish to review a book on Goodreads. But we do not yet know what Goodreads truly means. We might say it is a social network for book readers. Certainly. But this statement does not touch upon what veils itself be-neath, be-hind and be-yond our subject matter. To arrive at our destination and let it show itself truly to our Dasein, we must first learn to inquire in a more originary manner about Goodreads. We must learn to think Goodreads, and therefore reviews, as the Greeks first thought it, and then even more originarily. For the Greeks, even before Homer and up to Plato, every review was kata ta onta no esti legein on to aletheia ta apophainestai, that which sustains its unveiling from be-hind a self-unveiling-of-itself and which be-yond its own it-self selfs an own and then selfs it again. This it-selfing of itself was the letting-review without which there could not be Goodreads in the first place. Reviewing is therefore not a mere re-viewing of what was viewed in a book or elsewhere, but a letting that precedes all opinion.

The essence of reviewing has now been made clear to us, but we still have not properly opened the question of Goodreads. Today, we hear this word as a mere name. We do not think anymore of Goodreads as Good-reads, that is, as the There in which the Good reads [in its Being, and thus holds sway over our reviewing]*; and everywhere we repeat this word as if it were nothing. All thinking surrounding this matter has become as goo on frail reeds. Until we learn to think Goodreads more originarily, it will remain to us the mere name of a mere social network. The Being of Goodreads must be fully experienced, lest the truth of reviewing on Goodreads remain forever concealed to our Dasein.

* In parentheses in the 1953 edition.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Adorno Perspective

"Heidegger's philosophy is fascist right down to its innermost components." (January, 1963)


Being and Time

I read "Being and Time", sensitive to the possibility that I might encounter these Fascist connotations.

The only context in which I felt there were any conceivable Fascist undertones was Heidegger's discussion of the authenticity of the individual in society.

Ironically, it seemed to suggest that the individual might become inauthentic in the face of peer group pressure from "das Man" or "the they".

The discussion used the language of community and the people (which might have been translated from "das Volk").

I would have expected a Fascist to suggest that authenticity might be found in "das Volk", but it seemed to me that Heidegger was saying that it was a potential source of the loss (not a gain) of authenticity.

To the extent that Fascism might have somehow derived a benefit from his philosophy, I even speculated that Heidegger might have been unknowingly lured into personal inauthenticity (i.e., into views with which he did not otherwise agree).

I certainly never suspected that Heidegger might willingly submerge his individual identity in the social apparatus of the Fascist state.

There is too great a sense of ego, even egotism, in his writing.





"The Fundamental Question"

The first lecture in this compilation was delivered in mid 1933.

For the first half of it, I was struck by the beauty of Heidegger's words and rhetoric.

He seemed to be the ideal teacher to get a student interested in philosophy.

In many ways, his explanation of the basis of "Being and Time" was more lucid, comprehensible and persuasive than in the book.

Here, he seemed to use words and ideas to even greater effect. Here, he seemed to be phenomenally charismatic.

The Turn

Two thirds of the way through the lecture, however, there is a turn. Heidegger's tone changes.

In order to achieve contemporary relevance, he mentions a conversation between the German chancellor (Fuhrer), Hitler, and the British foreign minister, Sir John Simon.

It's fairly innocuous, but it relates to the negotiation of a deal whereby Germany agreed to limit its naval fleet to 35% of the size of the British fleet.

Two pages later, he starts a polemic that lasts the rest of the lecture. It's worth setting out Heidegger at length in his own words:


"This Europe, in its ruinous blindness forever on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in a great pincers, squeezed between Russia on one side and America on the other.

"From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same; the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organisation of the average man...

"The spiritual decline of the earth is so far advanced that the nations are in danger of losing the last bit of spiritual energy that makes it possible to see the decline (taken in relation to the history of "being"), and to appraise it as such...

"We are caught in a pincers. Situated in the center, our nation...is the most endangered. With all this, it is the most metaphysical of nations...our people will only be able to wrest a destiny from it if within itself it creates a resonance...

"All this implies that this nation, as a historical nation, must move itself and thereby the history of the West beyond the center of their future 'happening' and into the primordial realm of the powers of being...

"...we have related the question of being to the destiny of Europe, where the destiny of the earth is being decided - while our own historic being-there proves to be the center for Europe itself.

"...does what is designated by the word 'being' hold within it the historical destiny of the West?

"...We have not yet come to the essential reason why this inherently historical asking of the question about being is actually an integral part of history on earth.

"We have said that the world is darkening. The essential episodes of this darkening are: the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the standardisation of man, the pre-eminence of the mediocre...

"What do we mean by the world when we speak of a darkening of the world?

"World is always world of the spirit...Darkening of the world means emasculation of the spirit, the disintegration, wasting away, repression, and misinterpretation of the spirit...

"What makes the situation of Europe all the more catastrophic is that this enfeeblement of the spirit originated in Europe itself and - though prepared by earlier factors - was definitively determined by its own spiritual situation in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was then that occurred what is popularly and succinctly called the 'collapse of German idealism'.

"...Spirit is neither empty cleverness nor the irresponsible play of wit, nor the boundless work of dismemberment carried on by the practical intelligence; much less is it world-reason; no, spirit is a fundamental, knowing resolve toward the essence of being.

"Thus, the inquiry into the being as such and as a whole, the asking of the question of being, is one of the essential and fundamental conditions for an awakening of the spirit and hence for an original world of being-there. It is indispensable if the peril of world darkening is to be forestalled and if our nation in the center of the Western world is to take on its historical mission."





The Naiveté of Egotism

I was quite shocked to read this blend of Spengler, Hegel and Hitler from a philosopher who is still so influential.

Moreso, to read defences of his work that seem to deny that he ever said such things or that deny that his work was intrinsically capable of manipulation in the cause of Fascism.

These words came from the horse's mouth. Heidegger knew what he was saying. He was the one doing the manipulating. He was manipulating himself and his philosophy in the service of Fascism.

Heidegger aspired to the ranks of great "poets, thinkers and statesmen." His literary and rhetorical style is to suggest that something important (an understanding of Being) has been lost, and he is the one who has found and repatriated it.

Here, he elects to make an offering of his discovery (or was it an invention?) to the German state.

He is like an architect who needs a client to realise his plans. If the client has the will and the resources, then that is enough. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? So it was that Heidegger granted Fascism entry into the realm of his philosophy.

The architect believed that his client would allow him to construct and fortify the historical destiny of Europe.

Unfortunately, Heidegger wasn't the only one to suffer as a result of his naiveté.

Heidegger and Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse was a postgraduate student of Heidegger's from 1928 to 1932.

He admired his teacher so much that he endeavoured to integrate Heideggerian Phenomenalism into his own Marxist analysis.

Because his family was Jewish, they departed Germany for Switzerland and ultimately America in early 1933.

Before Hitler's election as Chancellor in 1933, Marcuse was requested to act as an intermediary in the offer to Heidegger of the Fichte-Hegel-Schelling Chair at the University of Berlin. It is speculated that Heidegger declined the position, because he anticipated that Hitler would be elected and he didn't want to be associated with the previous government.

Marcuse and Heidegger attempted to discuss their differences after the War.

You can see Marcuse desperately trying to avoid the assessment that Adorno would make in 1963. There is a sense in which Marcuse is trying to give his teacher the benefit of the doubt, if only to excuse his own naiveté. (These lectures hadn't been published at the time, but their content was the subject of rumour.)

Below are some extracts from the correspondence that followed their post-war meeting.

Heidegger to Marcuse, January 20, 1948

"Concerning 1933: I expected from National Socialism a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety, a reconciliation of social antagonisms and a deliverance of western Dasein from the dangers of communism."

Marcuse to Heidegger, May 12, 1948

"The difficulty of the conversation seems to me rather to be explained by the fact that people in Germany were exposed to a total perversion of all concepts and feelings, something which very many accepted only too readily.

"Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain the fact that a man like yourself, who was capable of understanding Western philosophy like no other, were able to see in Nazism "a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety," a "redemption of occidental Dasein from the dangers of communism" (which however is itself an essential component of that Dasein!).

"This is not a political but instead an intellectual problem - I am tempted to say: a problem of cognition, of truth.

"You, the philosopher, have confused the liquidation of occidental Dasein with its renewal? Was this liquidation not already evident in every word of its "leaders," in every gesture and deed of the SA, long before 1933?"

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've never read Heidegger, this probably isn't too bad of a place to start out. He actually reveals a great deal more about his motives and methods in the first part of this than in a lot of his other writings. Both his circular style of questioning (and Heidegger is all about questioning, not arguing, not declaring, but really asking sincerely about what things are.) and his emphasis on close, intensely focused etymological readings are well laid out here and not as difficult to get at as a lot of his later writings on poetry, language and art can be. It's a 'hard' text regardless, not because Heidegger is a bad writer, but because focusing in on the things he does is sincerely difficult, it takes work. But sometimes he'll just come out of nowhere and clobber you with a brilliant, haunting thought amidst all of the dense word play and grammar. An intense inquiry from an intense mind.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last in Translation

I read this collection of lectures after reading "Being and Time".

There are two English versions of this work: one translated by Ralph Manheim, and this version by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt.

I acquired a cheap copy of the earlier version, before becoming aware that there was a more recent translation.

The Manheim version presents readers with a problem of comprehension, through no fault of its own.

There is nothing wrong with the translation from the point of view of comprehensibility.

The problem is solely that it was translated in 1959, the significance of which is that it was the first long-form work by Heidegger to be translated into English.

Although published in German in 1927, "Being and Time" itself wasn't translated until 1962, three years after these lectures were first translated. Thus, Manheim had no opportunity to compare it with established translations of Heidegger's neologisms. He really had to make his own decisions as to how to translate various crucial terms used by Heidegger.

"Das Seiende"

This is most obviously problematical when it comes to the translation of the term "das Seiende.

Convention now translates the term as "Being(s)" (i.e., what is, that which is).

Manheim considered this option, but felt that it might introduce confusion with respect to the various uses of the English word "being", some of which are nouns and others verbs.

"Existent"

He considered the word "existent" (i.e., what exists, that which exists), but rejected it, partly because it didn't derive from the word "to be".

I think it was worth considering, because the word "is" in some contexts is a synonym for the word "exist".

It also points the reader in the direction of the concept of "existence" (as opposed to "essence").

While Heidegger didn't consider himself an Existentialist, this choice might also have helped to contextualise the philosophy of Existentialism and its relationship with Phenomenology.

"Essent"

Ultimately, however, Manheim invented a neologism of his own: "essent".

As far as I am aware, this translation never got much traction, and has since been abandoned. Having got used to the conventional translation, it was hard to make the mental adjustment every time I encountered it.

Why are There Beings?

Fried and Polt are sympathetic to the choices made by Manheim and to his translation generally.

However, this issue alone made it virtually inevitable that Manheim's work would one day become obsolete.

Thus, the fundamental question of metaphysics asked by Heidegger in the lectures has changed from:

Manheim:

"Why are there essents rather than nothing?"

to:

Fried and Polt:

"Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?"

Elucidation of "Being and Time"

Whatever the merits of the translations, it's ultimately up to Heidegger to answer his own question.

Subject to my reservations about Heidegger's politics (discussed in my review of the Manheim translation), he does an amazing job in this collection (particularly in the last lecture, "The Limitation of Being", translated less eloquently here as "The Restriction of Being").

In many regards, the elucidation of the question of Being and its etymology is more persuasive and enlightening in this collection than in "Being and Time" itself.

[Theo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably clear writing even in spite of Heidegger having the gall to write a 90 odd page long chapter without any breaks. The unabashed discussions of the inner greatness of National Socialism and the determination of a people are quite rightfully toe curling but aside from the slapdash quibbles randomly strewn about in these lectures criticising the West and Russia etc. they’re thankfully mostly ignorable. Is Heidegger’s fundamental ontology fascist? I’m not in a good enough position to say, but I think his tenacious examination of the Presocratics as well as Plato and Aristotle are so bloody good (even if his etymologies and translations are spotty in parts - so I’ve heard at least) that I’m willing to throw up my hands and be a nonpartisan in the whole thing. I can now gladly admit to the Goodreads community at large that my cringeworthy Deleuzean sensibilities at 17 have been replaced by Heidegger’s investigation into Being. Brace yourselves folks, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!!

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is this book such a good book or what one can learn from it?

1) It's an incredibly easy to read book. At the high school or first year college level.
2) This is the book that Heidegger scholars love to quote since it is easy to follow
3) 'il n'y a pas de hors-texte', Derrida's French expression for there is nothing outside of the text. It doesn't matter who the writer was. It matters what he said. My wife and I disagree. She thinks that a philosophy matters on how the philosopher lived. I do not. (St. Paul is an excellent counter-example, he was a murderer zealot who had visions. That doesn't necessarily mean people won't follow what he has to say).
4) This book makes perfect sense outside of the context of "Being and Time", but makes even more sense within the context of "Being and Time"
5) no doubt that Heidegger is a Nazi from this book (which is actually a series of lectures).
6) I picked this book up for 95 cents at a used book store. A great deal at that price.
7) Heidegger is not an existentialist no matter that the jacket called him "the father of existentialism". He'll even attack their thought within this book.
8) never trust a summary of a book or a philosopher (unless done by an authentic scholar), read their original works for yourself and decide for yourself.
9) nothing is more important than understanding 'being' (okay there is a pun in this sentence, and the pun is not intended. 'nothing' is best thought of as not a thing instead of 'no thing').

I'll start by saying 'I doubt that'. What does that mean? 'Doubt' always means a 'not' it never means an affirmative of some belief. The modern Western tradition of skepticism since Descartes with his 'cogito' forces the thinking thing to be. How did we get to that place in thought from the pre-Socratics to the time of this book (1935). The opposite of being is not 'not being'. To not believe, to doubt, means something different. We no longer think of being as unconcealment ('alethia') but as correspondence to truth (comporting to reality), Western civilization took a wrong turn and this book will show it.

Why is there something rather than nothing? and what does that even mean. 'Being' is contrasted with either becoming, appearing, thought, or ought as this book will show. They are all related but each force us into traps of some kind. Thinkers beware!

Heidegger is going to throw a lot of Greek words around to make his point and I had to make my own lexicon on the back cover in order to follow the Greek, but his point will be that in the beginning of understanding being was an emerging light ('physis') and a gathering ('logos') and a permanence ('ousia'). The Aristotelian tradition of 'form' and 'matter' forced us into an 'essence' and 'substance' which morphed into midieval tradition of 'whatness' ('quiditty') and 'thatness' ('quoditty') and was no longer allowing us to see the trees for the forest, being as unconcealment.

There is a lot of depth to this book, but it's a simple book to understand and is not abstruse (a sentiment that I thought I'd never associate with Heidegger). It does lay the ground work for where Heidegger is going to take his thought in his later period. His most explicit pro-Nazi sentiment in this book is followed by a parenthetical and some what cryptic statement when considered in the context of this book or "Being and Time", when he says "the works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism but have nothing whatever do with the inner truth and greatness of the movement (namely the encounter between global technology and modern man)". He's weirdly attributing a back to nature anti-technology sentiment to his fellow Nazis. There is nothing in this book or his previous work that lays a foundation for that statement, but I know he takes that turn shortly within his other books

Heidegger is starting to appreciate Nietzsche in this book, but he mostly focus on just one of his books "Will to Power", a posthumous unpublished book edited by Nietzsche's proto-Nazi sister and almost for sure doesn't necessarily reflect Nietzsche's beliefs. (Heidegger makes a big distinction between a prototype and an archetype within this book).

There is a big overlap with the Unabomber and his views expressed in his manifesto and the Rousseauian back to nature anti-technology Heidegger. I despise Nazism and what the Unabomber thought, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in seeing how they thought (I'd recommend the manifesto, I gave it one star but that doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it as a gateway for how others think different(ly)). If all you ever want is just to read things by people who think the same as you do or who already agree with, just become a Christian and re-read the New Testament and never let your certainty get in the way of reason and become like an animal where its reason is always certain.

[Sajid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a classic analysis of the metaphysical condition of modern man and philosophy. In it, Heidegger turned against all those enduring prejudices since Plato concerning the philosopher's view of “Being” and how since then we misrepresented “Logos”, “idea”, “thinking”, “Truth” and language itself. Why did it happen then? Heidegger wanted to explore the root cause by questioning: “Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?” With this question, he began to explore why we never give enough emphasis to the word “Being”. Yes, we are always concerned with beings, or existent things, but has there been any true understanding of beings at all if we never tried to understand the “Being” with capital B? Philosophers, like linguists always considered it to be an empty word. But why? So the main question Heidegger raised again was: “How does it stand with Being?”.

Now Heidegger starts his journey to the ancient root of the meaning of the word “Being”. And he starts it with the study of grammar and etymology. And after that what he does throughout the book is as engaging and thought-provoking as it can be. Because he states untraditional thoughts like this:

“Truth, which was originally, as unconcealment, a happening of the beings themselves that held sway, and was stewarded by means of gathering, now becomes a property of logos. In becoming a property of assertion, truth does not just shift its place; it changes its essence.”

So for Heidegger , Being isn't like any other being. But Being is for the sake of which all the beings come into being. “Being” is the opening of space as such and the emerging sway of beings. The originary or authentic understanding of “Being” dispels the misunderstanding of what we understand by “Idea”, “Truth”, “Logos” and “Thinking”. And at the end, Heidegger shows us that Being and thinking aren't different, but the same. Even contradiction like “Being and becoming”, “Being and thinking”, “Being and seeming” and “Being and ought” was unnecessary and it happened because of our little concern for Being, which always grounds the historical grounding of Dasein.

[Αβδυλλα Aωαςhι · Rating 5 out of 5]

مراجعة كتاب " مدخل إلى الميتافيزيقيا "
لـ الفيلسوف الألماني "مارتن هايدغر"

مارتن هايدغر فيلسوف متأخر زمانياً عن العصور و القرون التي عرفت الفلاسفة من قبله ، لكني أعتبره مجدداً حقيقياً في عالم الفلسفة ، ذلك التجديد الذي أسس ركائزه من خلال إعادة نبش و استكشاف التراث الإغريقي الأول ، مخالفاً بذلك الطرح ��لمعتاد و المتكرر و القراءة التي تعوّد الفلاسفة السابقون أن يقرأوا بها التراث الفلسفي الإغريقي.

جوهر فلسفة هايدغر يمكن إعتباره في إعادة "التأويل" للتراث الفلسفي الإغريقي ، تأويلاً يغوص فيه لعمق الألفاظ اللغوية ، و يخرجها من صنمية اللغة التي تجمدت فيها لعشرات القرون بعد الإغريق لـ روح جديدة ، روح من عاد ليموضع نفسه مع الإغريق و كأنه سافر عبر الزمن للماضي و جلس على خشبة المسارح الإغريقية و شاهد الألعاب الأولومبية.

هكذا يعلمنا "هايدغر" كيفية القراءة بـ وعي و عمق و حضور ، ذلك الحضور الذي يعده أهم ركائز "الوجود"

"الوجود" ، و ما "الوجود" ؟ و "لماذا كان وجود الموجودات بدلاً من العدم ؟" بهذا السؤال يبدأ كتابه "مدخل إلى الميتافيزيقيا" الذي يتبين من خلال منتصف النص أنه اختار هذا العنوان عن قصد ، رغم أنه قد لا يساوي بالضبط مادة النص و مادة الطرح في هذا الكتاب الذي يتحدث كله عن ماهية الوجود.

و لماذا نبحث عن التساوي و التطابق ، هذا ربما هو أحد أهم الدروس التي يرغب هايدغر أن يعلمنا إياه من خلال تعمد اختيار عنوان مختلف عن جوهر الكتاب ، ليعلمنا أن لا قيمة للألفاظ دون الجوهر ، و أنما المهم هو جوهر الموضوع و جوهر اللفظ.

يبحر في اللغة و يفكك ألفاظها و يعود لأصولها الإغريقية و يبحثها كما لو أنه من أولئك الإغريق الذين عايشوا تبادل الكلمات و الـ logos "λογος

يتساءل في كتابه " مدخل إلى الميتافيزيقيا" عن الوجود و ماهيته ، و كيف لنا أن نعرفه أو نعرّفه ، و هل يمكن لنا أن نحده و نحيط به، و ما الفرق بين الموجود و الوجود.

طارحاً عدة أمثلة من ضمنها مثال البناية القائمة بذاتها فهي "موجودة" و لكن أين يكمن "الوجود" كـ وجود في هذه البناية و كذلك بالنسبة للإنسان ، "الموجود" ، أين يكمن "الوجود" فيه.

يبحر في تأمل معنى الوجود حتى يصل لأنه كالبخار الذي لا يمكن الإمساك به ، ثم هو يكاد يكون كالعدم ، ثم يتساءل عن العدم و كيف يصبح هذا العدم "شيئاً موجودا" من خلال اللغة و توظيفها لوصفه و التحدث عنه.

تلك المحاضرة التي حاضرها في فرايبوغ بـ ألمانيا عام ١٩٣٥ ، ثم قدمها في كتاب ، يسبر فيه أغوار الوجود محاولاً الإمساك به من كل ناحية ، مستعرضاً الدلالات التاريخية و مستعينا بمفردات اللغة اليونانية.

نعم .. إن فلسفة هايدغر حيّة بكل معنى الكلمة ، أخذتني في عالم من التأمل العميق ، حتى لأنني أقول إنه لنِعمَ المدخل إلى الميتافيزيقيا إن كان الوجود شيئاً لا يمكن الإحاطة به و لا معرفة كنهه ، بعكس الموجود الذي ينتمي لعالم الطبيعة و له أبعاد يمكن قياسها و حركة يمكن الإحساس بها.

بلا شك سأقرأ له كتباً أخرى.


Αωαςhι
٢٢ نيسان ٢٠١٦

[David Haines · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a very difficult book to read. Some books, twice as long, can be read and analyzed properly within a week. This book takes a long time. Each sentence is so full of meaning that it is impossible to read this book quickly! Heidegger begins by asking what he views as the fundamental question of Metaphysics, "Why is there something rather than nothing?". The rest of the book is his attempt to answer this question. The subject itself is difficult, so the reader needs to give Heidegger the benefit of the doubt. The question of being is the most important question, and the most difficult question, that we can ask. Heidegger asks the question, finds it difficult to answer, and seems to conclude that the best stance to take towards being is to remain in the authentic questioning of being.

[Zoonanism · Rating 3 out of 5]

Linguistic animism

[Paul Cockeram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before Martin Heidegger, the question of Being was studied the way science and rationalism study anything else: like dissecting a frog in Biology class. Whatever humans were, we were the product of sensory inputs, or phenomena, that could be quantified and analyzed where possible. Whatever parts of experience we could not measure, we ignored. Heidegger decided it was time to retrieve this forgotten question of Being, which became his lifelong project. He succeeded in putting the study of Being back on the table, making it a legitimate project for philosophers. His Introduction to Metaphysics tells the story of how the question of Being can best be asked, how it has been historically misunderstood, and how our answers to the question ended up taking us further away from Being.

For Heidegger, questions deserve our utmost respect and attention. Questions are pure; “Questioning is the piety of thought,” he has written. The ultimate question, for Heidegger, is the one that serves as the basis and foundation for all other inquiries, which he ends up formulating as “How does it stand with Being?” or, translated another way, “What is the status of Being?” This is the question he thinks we need to ask and then keep asking, over and over, to keep answering anew in every age. The problem is that Western culture answered the question once, long ago, in a limited way, and never bothered to take it up again. Heidegger wants to correct history’s mistake.

The book’s second chapter investigates the etymology of the word Being. Heidegger determines that the word has always contained several meanings—just consider how many uses the English language puts to the verb “to be,” or how versatile is our word “is.” A particularly illuminating and important early form of a word for Being is “phusis,” an ancient Greek term that Heidegger defines and analyzes and adopts into his own use: “[phusis] says what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.” Phusis is the interaction between everything around us and our consciousness, the gap of time between our seeing something and our recognizing it by representing it to ourselves. Phusis is an ongoing action, not a static idea. It is the totality of everything surrounding us, all the things we have tuned out and habitually ignore plus all the things we notice—except, actually, phusis refers to those things which emerge from the background of the present moment into our notice. Think of those optical illusion puzzles you probably saw as a child. Looked at in one way, a famous puzzle shows two people facing each other, seen in profile; but the image also looks like a vase. You might think of phusis as the moment when the two people seen in profile are replaced in your mind by the vase, which emerges almost brightly, almost shining into consciousness, so that the first time this happens we often gasp in delight. Or phusis might be what happens when you are looking at a Bev Doolittle painting of a sun-dappled woods and then, all at once, you see the spotted ponies standing between the trees. This emergence into our understanding is the first, most important aspect of Being, and it is followed quickly by truth, or “aletheia” for Heidegger, which he translates as “uncovering” or “disclosing”—in other words, truth is a revealing of what has formerly been hidden.

If these ideas seem difficult to understand, they are—but it’s not Heidegger’s fault. Part of the reason Heidegger is so difficult to understand comes from the nature of his project. When he talks about “phusis,” Heidegger is talking about an idea that fell out of favor more than two thousand years ago, an idea for which we no longer have a ready-to-hand language, an idea that seems to defy the common sense of our rational, scientifically-minded present moment. His ideas about phusis happen to closely match Iain McGilchrist’s explanation of how the human right brain thinks and perceives the world, as explained in the first chapter of his excellent “The Master and His Emissary.” In fact, McGilchrist quotes Heidegger extensively in his text, giving him credit for intuiting decades early what neuroscience is only beginning to uncover about how the right brain works in our perception of the world. McGilchrist also credits Heidegger as an early advocate of a culture-wide return to right-brain thinking, escaping from the tyranny of left-brain thought. For those with a lot of time, patience, and brain power to spare, I urge you to read “Introduction to Metaphysics” and “The Master and His Emissary” together, as McGilchrist helped me many times to comprehend Heidegger’s strange sentences, which he packs with so many abstractions they often resist understanding.

Things went wrong, Heidegger argues in his third and fourth chapters, when we stopped seeing Being in action-oriented terms and stabilized the idea of Being into a fixed concept, which we studied as if it were a frog pinned down to black wax. We needed a corpse to dissect because corpses do not change. We can be certain about corpses. Except, of course, the more certain we are about anything, the less we actually know about it. By stabilizing the idea of Being, by ignoring the way Being unfolds constantly, we lost a whole list of things: First, we mistook truth and learning for mere knowledge and ingenuity, thinking that knowing something was little more than identifying and memorizing a list of properties and facts. By doing so, we forgot that “to know means to be able to learn,” that “the only one who knows is the one who understands that he must always learn again, and above all, on the basis of this understanding, has brought himself to the point where he continually can learn.” Second, we lost a profound sense of connection with the world. Whereas we used to have what could be called a “spiritual” connection with everything around us, without any sense of being separate from our environment, we ended up reinterpreting “spirit as intelligence,” and then as “mere astuteness” in calculating and handling tools and building technology. By losing this spiritual connection with everything around us, we fell out of harmony with our surroundings. We fell into a way of thinking that takes any powerful new revelation—any true Being—and immediately starts representing it to death, until what was powerful loses all meaning and lapses into empty rituals. This idea resonates powerfully with William James’ criticism of religion (in his “Varieties of Religious Experience”), which argued that religions always, over time, corrupt the original power of the religious experience that founded them, degenerating into dogmas that utterly fail to connect their practitioners with true religious experience.

Finally, by turning Being into a fixed and stabilized idea, Heidegger shows how we put limitations upon Being and then refigured these limitations as opposites of Being. In doing so, we forgot the important ways in which Being and these supposed opposites of Being grew from the same roots, were the same thing. The four limitations Heidegger focuses upon are “Being vs. becoming,” “Being vs. seeming,” “Being vs. thinking,” and “Being vs. the ought.” This is the most suspiciously nostalgic part of Heidegger’s argument. To make it, he leans heavily on analyzing noteable pre-Socratic Greek poems and the etymologies of certain key words within them, trying to discover how the Greeks viewed Being. He assumes that the first, earliest uses of language were the truest, the most powerful. Fortunately, Heidegger has a gift for language and a powerful mind for analysis. But this way of reading will try the patience of certain people while thrilling others. Those who want to know first and foremost what a piece of poetry means, in clear and direct terms, with words that each refer to just one thing, should probably read something else. On the other hand, Heidegger appeals to anyone who enjoys reading poetry and sifting through possible double- and triple-meanings that good, complex works allow. That is the way he reads his pre-Socratic poets. His divergent interpretations form the foundation of his argument and the basis for his methodology.

For example, in analyzing “Being vs. seeming,” Heidegger discerns that every Being has a true and honest essence of itself, yet that true and honest essence always comes to light in fragments. Our best understanding of anything will come in the name we give it, the poetry we write about it, and each names, each poem will be composed from a slightly different version of how the thing seems. Every first look of anything is a partial look. Every viewpoint reveals one side of a thing while obscuring the side turned away from us. Every first idea is incomplete. This is the zone in which Being and seeming are the same. Worse, even after we have brought a thing as fully into our world as we are able, we put it to uses (as well as capture it with language) that inevitably dull the thing’s luster. The shine of its phusis dulls as it becomes part of our routine. Eventually, we forget that “table leg” was a thrilling bit of poetry revealing an anatomical connection between our furniture and ourselves, and “table leg” becomes just another piece of jargon we don’t even notice outside its dull utility.

Heidegger wants to remind us of the emergent sway all around. He wants to point out how far removed we have become from it, to the point that mere reality makes us nervous, fills us with anxiety, forces us onto medication or into distraction. The ancient Greeks needed no anti-anxiety pills because they were connected to Being in a way we have lost. They asked and answered the question of Being as a matter of culture and faith, and their struggle allowed them to live in peace with this ongoing, never-ending violence of Being. We are less advanced two thousand years later than they, and Heidegger shows us a way to recover what the Greeks had by introducing us to a lost metaphysics that, according to Iain McGilchrist, is still firmly within our reach.

[Xander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction to Metaphysics (1935) is a crucial work by Martin Heidegger. It is crucial in multiple ways. First, it marks the shift in Heidegger’s thinking as a professional philosopher – so it’s crucial to understand Heidegger’s own philosophical development. Second, the work is crucial in a historical sense, since it covers the lectures Heidegger gave in 1935 at his Freiburg University. Dark and looming vibes emanate from this book, reflecting the German atmosphere at the time.

Third, the work is crucial since in certain passages Heidegger reveals his revulsion against the Americanization of the Occident. In essence, he fulminates against technology and modern man – viewing them as distorted and horrible ways of understand both man and world. He explicitly claims the truth and grandeur of the Nazi movement lies in its confrontation with technology and modern man. Although he also explicitly states the Nazi philosophy is a base nihilism and as such is as deluded as any modern philosophy can be. And finally, the work is crucial as philosophical food for thought.

In his lectures, Heidegger wants to answer the question “Why is there being and not nothing?” In part I he analyses this question and comes to the conclusion that it reveals a more fundamental question: “What is being?” It is this question which is the fundamental question in philosophy and Heidegger sets out to develop this question in the following pages.

In part II he starts by analyzing being linguistically. That is, he looks at the word being both from a grammatical and etymological perspective. Basically, his conclusion is that we understand being as something substantive, something which exists as such. In this way, it is an empty and ambiguous term for us.

This leads Heidegger in part III to ask the essential question of being - What is the essence of being? His conclusion here is that being is a fundamental characteristic of Dasein (human being, being-there). It is the orientation of our understanding of being against the horizon against which it appears to us.

In the final part, Heidegger sets out his theory of the fall of being in the western tradition. According to him, we moderns view being as a thing, set apart from contrasting things. For Heidegger, being is opposed to becoming, appearance, thinking and belonging. Being is permanent, as opposed to all the becoming. Being is real, as opposed to how things appear to us. Being is available for our minds, waiting there to be grasped, thought about, judged about in logic. And finally, being exists so it has to have its ground in something else – it has to belong to something more fundamental. In short: we view being as determined by its boundaries (i.e. what it is, is defined by what it isn’t).

According to Heidegger this modern conception of being is a deluded one and it originated with Plato and Aristotle. For him, Heraclitus and Parmenides were the ones who asked the original question of Being, and this got covered up in the western tradition. Nowadays, when we read the remaining fragments of both of them, we project our own notion of being into them. And subsequently we view them as antagonistic philosophers: Heraclitus’ “all is flux” and “chaos” as opposed to Parmenides’ “all is one” and “order”. We simply fail to see their project for what it was.

So, Heidegger sets out on a tour de force, in which he interprets both Parmenides and Heraclitus in a highly original but also a highly dangerous way. According to him, there are no essential differences to what they said: both philosophers viewed being as the unity of physis and logos. Both are inseparable (so lose the subject-object distinction when reading this!) and are fundamentally one. Their relationship is polemos, strife. Physis is being as it appears and logos is the collecting of appearances, as in ordering them. Truth is nothing but the revelation of being as it shows itself. And this is what Parmenides means when he says that “thinking and being are one and the same.” How did the western tradition spiral so out of control, culminating in Hegel’s radicalization of Parmenidean idealism?

Well, that’s because of Plato. And Aristotle. Plato split the logos from the physis, and put it in opposition to being. With Plato, logos changed its meaning: it now meant grasping intellectually the ideas, which were themselves existing things and cut loose from the physical world. Since they existed as (ideal) things, they had to be grounded. Plato’s Idea of the Good is the ground of all ideas, which are the ground for all the (imperfect) physical things.

Then came Aristotle who, rejecting his master’s idealism, changed the meaning of logos again. For Aristotle, logos is reason – man is a rational animal – and logic is the study of reasoning and the formulation of rule of thought. For Aristotle, logos meant judgement – we judge about being and truth has now become the correctness or incorrectness of our judgements. As a criterion to evaluate judgements, Aristotle developed his logic, which is grounded in his theory of categories. What this all meant for being? From now on, being is ousia, i.e. that and what something is. It is a thing and exists as such and in way that makes a thing that thing.

What this all boils down to is this. We moderns look at the world and at ourselves in a technical way. We understand being as a collection of things, all to be understood technically. (Technical in the Greek sense of ‘knowing’ – this can be understanding something through art, science, technology, etc.). We have subjugated being, which is now the slave of our thinking. Our thinking is what drives us, is what drives the world, is all there is. We are obsessed by scientific and technological developments, we look at ourselves as things to be managed, ordered, controlled. And, most of all, we have forgotten that this is only a secondary way of looking at being.

The original way of looking at being, according to Heidegger, is what is needed to save the Occident from her doom. He sees the task of the philosopher (meaning, of course, himself) as asking the question of being. In this lies the salvation of European civilization – and Heidegger is here to lead the way. As a true prophet he preaches how we should stop living in “Seinsvergessenheit” – our forgetfulness about being. To be able to do this, we have to destroy the western tradition up to (going backwards) Plato.

Doing this, we will realize the originality of being, as violent encounter between man in his being (logos) and the world as being (physis). Man can only exist historically – and this (for Heidegger) is the only honourable way, since the alternative is endlessly spinning around in acid nihilism – when he violently confronts the world in its violent appearance. There is a lot of aggression and darkness in these pages and the way Heidegger embraces polemos (strife) and rejects the modern worldview (deluded epistemology) and all of its fruits – science, technology, civilization – betrays his own darker motives. The most important, the most fundamental, the most essential things in existence all are hidden from us by modernity and are attainable through or contain violence.

What Heidegger wants to do is to (literally) destroy the fourfold opposition of being, destroy its boundaries, and let being speak for itself again, through us as beings (who are the only beings who are occupied with being). In this, he sees the salvation of fallen European mankind. We should go back to the times when man was conceived as the vessel of being – when man was violence in opposition to the violent world.

And on this grim note, I’ll end this review. But not before emphasizing the originality of this work; the baffling analyses of Parmenides, Heraclitus and Sophocles; the deepness and grandeur of Heidegger’s project. It is all there to be enjoyed by modern day readers. But the darkness which emanates from (especially) the latter part of the work is as fundamental to it as are the mentioned beautiful aspects.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin Heidegger is a difficult philosopher to read. His own biography, serving as at least a passive supporter of Nazi Germany, makes him somewhat suspect. His opaque and challenging writing style can easily turn one off. However, whether or not one agrees with his ideas, this work is important to confront. He raises arguments that confront many of our beliefs about the way that things are. The struggle to understand--and critique--his views is well worthwhile.

According to Heidegger, the word "phenomenon" comes from the Greek term "to show itself." A phenomenon, then, is that which shows itself, that which is manifest. An appearance is not necessarily the thing itself, since appearances are merely referential to the underlying thing. For instance, a disease is the phenomenon itself, but we normally only recognize it through its appearance, that is, its symptoms. To know things, then, we must get beyond mere appearance. To do this, we must, in part, suspend our illusions that we truly "know" the thing (or "essent," as it is referred to in "An Introduction to Metaphysics" [trans. Ralph Manheim:]).

The opposite of a phenomenon is "covered-upness." This is when the essence of a phenomenon is hidden from us. This can come about in three ways: (1) it is as yet undiscovered; (2) it can be buried over or forgotten--it was once discovered but has since deteriorated, either by losing sight of the thing or by forgetting it; (3) it can be disguised (this is the most frequent and the most dangerous route). The third possibility can come about through deception or misleading.

We must beware of reifying concepts, treating them without questioning, without trying to get at their essence. Heidegger says:

"Whenever a phenomenological concept is drawn from primordial sources, there is the possibility that it may degenerate if communicated in the form of an assertion. It gets understood in an empty way and is thus passed on, losing its indigenous character, and becoming a free-floating thesis. Even in the concrete work of phenomenology itself there lurks the possibility that what has been primordially 'within our grasp' may become hardened so that we can no longer grasp it. And the difficulty of this kind of research lies in making it self-critical in a positive sense."

Again, we must not reify phenomena and lose sight of their primordial character. We must continue to question what we observe and not "take it for granted." He emphasizes in another work that we must ". . .push our questioning to the very end." He contends that, simplistically put, we should "challenge everything" or "question everything." We must not ". . .be led astray by overhasty theories, but to experience things as they are on the basis of the first thing that comes to mind."

He concludes by noting that "The true problem is what we do not know and what, insofar as we know it authentically, namely as a problem, we know only questioningly." That is, we are closest to knowing the essence of something when we recognize that that sense of knowledge is itself a problem, that is, that we cannot be sure that we really know it. If we come to think that we know something, we tend to do so theoretically and, in the process, distance ourself from the thing itself and its being.

Key points at which these thoughts challenge the dominant liberal tradition of which Americans are a part: skepticism about the power of human reason or logic to uncover what is and apprehend what should be (contra the ability of humans to divine natural law through the exercise of reason), avoidance of reifying concepts and theories (those in the liberal tradition, once more, believe that we can uncover the essence of reality and develop theories to explain what is), question those ideas that one develops and continue questioning one's understanding of what is. Finally, the subject and object are linked with one another; we cannot step back and understand objectively that which is around us, as Enlightenment thinkers believe.

At least for me, this was a tough read. But, in the end, it raises questions that are worth addressing, whether or not one has any level of agreement with Heidegger.

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. While I have found many of Heidegger's ideas useful in the past—ideas like "being-in-the-world," "being-with-others," "being ready-at-hand" vs. "being present-at-hand," "gelsassenheit," his phenomenology of tool use, etc.—and while I occasionally found things I liked in this book, I found more to dislike than like. I found his translations and hermaneutic interpretations of Heraclitis, Paramenides and Sophicles tortured and tendentious, and his overall casting of history of the philosophy of being as being a history of the fall and decline from the Golden Age of the Presocratics to be overwrought.

The book is best as a critique of modernity, quantification, mass culture, and social sciences that model themselves after the natural sciences. It's best when pointing to the fact that the way we symbolize reality obscures as much as it reveals. (On the other hand, his writing style is intentionally obscure in places where it could be much clearer—I disagree with those who argue that he had to torture language in order to reveal insights ordinary langauge denies us.) It's best when it recommends questionning Being rather than accepting any and all answers to the question of Being. It's at its absolute worst in its praise of the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism. As one reads this book, it is easy to see the slippery slope that lead from Heidegger's revulsion for modernity to his embrace of Nazism. We can't restore Western culture back to some lost imagined Golden Age—we can only go forward from where history has lead us. We already know where the restoration of Golden Ages leads us—from the Third Reich to MAGA. We can only embrace modernity—aware of all its deficits and inner contradictions—and move it incrementally forward.

[Amir matin Ghariblu]

میون آغاز و پایان بخش اصلی که خود درسگفتار-رساله هست و بخش ضمیمه که شرح‌ها هستند یک سالی برای من فاصله ایجاد شد، پس خیلی به ترجمه و مبحث رساله اصلی نمی‌پردازم در واقع چند نقد خوب در فضای مجازی و حتی همین‌جا و یکی دو مقاله ژورنالی هم در نقد و بررسی این کتاب و ترجمه اثر منتشر شده که کافی به نظر میان برای ترسیم خطوط کلی.
اما قسمتی که مجابم کرد کوتاه بنویسم راجع به کتاب توصیه به مطالعه مقالات ضمیمه بود که در اصل بابت پیش‌بینی غلطم که احتمالا تکرار مکررات هستند یک سال دیرتر از متن اصلی سراغشون رفتم. فارغ از خود اثر هم به نظرم مقالات موجز و به دردبخوری برای علاقه‌مندان پرداختن به هایدگر بودن و خیلی گزینش خوبی بوده. در واقع در سنت هایدگرپژوهی و ترجمه ایران خیلی به این مباحثی که از مقالات می‌شد پی برد پرداخته نشده (منظورم بیشتر پرداختن نظام‌مند هست وگرنه برعکس به شکل سردستی و ژورنالیستی به همین مطالب پیش از بسیاری دیگر از بنیان‌های تفکر هایدگر پرداخته شده) لذا حتی اگر کسی سراغ خود کتاب هم نرفت بد نیست با نگاه به فهرست که در اینترنت قابل دسترسی هست نسخه اصلی آثار ضمیمه کتاب رو دانلود و بعد از نیم‌نگاهی اگر قابل بودن مطالعه کنه. من باب مثال تا به حال طی چند مطلب ترجمه و تالیفی که خوندم راجع به هایدگر هیچکدوم مثل مقاله مایکل زیمرمان که ضمیمه شده به مسئله تبین مسئله ظهور و سقوط غرب در گفتار هایدگر نپرداخته بودن همگی رنگ و بوی حالات هیستریک فردید رو داشتن بالاخص تالیفی‌ها!

[Andrew]

I didn't have much to do at work. I looked down at Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics. He writes in angry little knots you have to untie, much like his idols Parmenides and Heraclitus. I read on, and envisioned Heidegger as the spider crawling up my back, as unsettling me in my chair.

Nothing is part of being. But real nothing is something you cannot say.

The answer is really another question.

And the question is probably the wrong question.

Those ideas sound fairly familiar to any reader of philosophy. But when Heidegger says them, you start to think you may have misunderstood them. And while it's dense and often disagreeable, it's something that should be read.

[Alex Kartelias · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my new favorite philosophers. In the beginning he was tough, but because they're lectures, he summarizes his points and repeats them often. Never have I thought this deeply about Being and Non-being and if you are looking to read his, "Being and Time", this is a good place to get warmed up.

I defintetly agree with him that philosophy from Aristotle onwards- abeit some exceptions- as being too mechanical and one-sided when it came to rationalism versus empiricism or monism versus pluralism. Like William James, he sees it fruitless to argue ad- nauseum about one theory being more true than another. The point is to just observe reality and contemplate it in its fullness: not to have rationalistic and empirical presuppositions getting in the way of your view of reality.

What I also admire is how he returns to the way the Greeks understand Being as being the totally of what there is without differentiating between different phenomena nor between the observer or observed. Everything is taken into account. Such makes Heidegger a very challenging philosopher because, it's a lot easy to just read Locke, Descartes or Hume who have slices of reality which they manipulate either to argue for a deductive truth- Descartes- or an inductive one- Locke. Heidegger digresses from that tradition, and doing so puts them to shame. Heidegger deserves more attention than he's given.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, brilliant exploration into the nature of Being and a total etymological explosion of Greek ontology. This lectures that comprise this book are Heidegger at his most accessible, intelligble and controversial. His method of inquiry and the fundamental concepts of Being that would lead his later work are laid bare in these examinations. For that, I'm sorry not to have been exposed to this book prior to wandering the wilderness of Being and Time.

[Amari · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read the golden oldie translation first (ralph manheim's [incidentally, i am utterly in awe of manheim, who also translated gunter grass' dog years and many other important works from several languages into english]) and then compared it to this nota bene edition.

i could write forever on this book, but i will limit myself to a few comments: first, i am so taken with heidegger's linguistic discussions that i feel as though i'm reading two texts at once whenever i examine chapter 2. second, i've decided to learn german, due in no small part to my desire to read what heidegger actually wrote. third, of the dozens of books i read in several months of hellish disillusionment and hatred of humanity in general, this book helped me the most as i arduously tried to find my way back to myself.

[Kiof · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would be a really hard read if you've never read MH before. But if you have, this long lecture (musta been 3-4 hours- goddamn!) is nothing but pure pleasure. There are few troubling things- a few blantantly pro-nazi comments, for example - that won't win over any of the unconverted. It all comes down to what you think of Heidegger's framework of being- whether you think it too new-agey, damn brilliant and life-affirming (me), or just can't get over the fact that he was a Nazi (which I totally understand...)
But in Heidegger's work, both early and late, you can find some of the most overlooked, under appreciated philosophy of the twentieth century. I'm sure everybody knows Being and Time (whether they've read it or not), but there's about a dozen other brilliant books I've found by the man. Take the dive.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best introduction to “Being and Time”.

At the end of the book, Heidegger hints why he dropped “Being and time” (and maybe the original project) in favor of the four contradistinctions presented here: “Being and becoming”, “Being and seeming”, “Being and thinking”, and “Being and the ought”.

To me, the best part of the book is the description of the initial inception of the Greek Dasein in the opening up of the Being. What we are left today with is just a remnant from the end of this inception; a remnant because the original true cannot be held fast.

Not much modesty in him when he mentioned “... that violent character and one-sidedness, which has already become proverbial, of the Heideggerian mode of interpretation.” :)

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Upon opening this book Dasein is being thrown into a brilliant exposition of the question of being and the occurence of an equally interesting interpretation of greek poetry along the lines of said exposition. In particular the split between thinking and being that Heideggers perceives to have taken place in the history of western thought is awarded a lot of spaces and should be awarded with adequate attention. However, what Heidegger has to say (in uncharacteristically clear terms) regarding politics is quite unsettling, is indeed unabashed facist thought and illuminates his ruinous politics.

[H M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first reading for Heidegger. What an introduction to his writing style and thinking! It provided a glimpse into his approach to philosophy_ an interesting continuous questioning. In the beginning, I thought that he unnecessarily digresses. However, I found that interesting as I continued reading his attempt answering these questions. It was as if he casually converses with the readers.

It took me more than expected to finish. Put in mind, this book dwells on linguistics more than philosophy sometimes.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first work of Heidegger's that I read (at age 17) and accordingly it had a huge effect on me, such that I wrote my dissertation on Heidegger a decade later. All of Heidegger's trademarks are there; he makes you see both language and the world anew.

[Vicy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Professor Heidegger, what is Metaphysics?"

"Good question."

Notoriously rigorous philosophy wherein it's all about the question.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not fun to read. This is Heidegger at his worst. His later meandering combined with his earlier penchant for long, tortured exposition. Combine that with the fact that this book is also him at his most fascist.... it's a disturbing chore of a book.

The first 70 pages are honestly pretty good. I enjoyed a lot of what he said about questioning and the nature of philosophy. After that is just so downhill. A lot of this book is dedicated to Heidegger's very unorthodox reading of the pre-socratics. I found it to be a fun game where after reading his translation, I'd look at the footnote where they'd list a more conventional translation that was always STARKLY different from what he wrote. I'm not linguist so I don't know if these etymological mutilations are warranted or not, but to the untrained eye they struck me as very strange.

His readings after these strange translations are equally awkward. It's like you're walking on a bridge with Heidegger, and then suddenly you've fallen into the creek below through a massive gap in the middle, while Heidegger just keeps walking on the other side. Like, dude, how did you get there? Give me anything!

This is a book where Heidegger does very little in the way of actual argument or analysis. He pretty much just makes claim after claim with little support. My favorite trick of his is when he says something like this: "What we mean by x is in no way what conventionally or traditionally has been intended, on the contrary, the original character of x is actually y." He often uses this to redefine words in ways that:
1. Are counter-intuitive
2. Are very poorly explained, if at all
3. Tend to deprive the words of content

He will also occasionally hint at some relatively commonplace idea being false, again with no argument. I couldn't find the exact quote I have in mind, so take this with a grain of salt.

This makes me sad. I really like a lot of Heidegger's work. In fact, in some ways, he may be the most influential thinker for me right now. But this book is lost on me. I found very little to enjoy here. Really, I found very little of the thinker that I've found to be so original and profound for the past few years.

Some say this is kind of what one should expect from his later works, but I genuinely disagree. Some of his later essays are extremely profound and beautiful. Sure, they're long and usually confusing, but it's like Heidegger's leading you on a journey into a strange land, unforeseen at the beginning yet still familiar, and the trail you took is still clear. Here he just jumps around and loses track and gets lost and it's not engaging and enchanting, it's just frustrating and annoying. Here, Heidegger comes across as little more than a sophist, obsessed with the sound of his own voice.

[saml · Rating 2 out of 5]

it is a marvel that heidegger is so influential

[Luis Agustín Txanpongile Münasteriotar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A veces está muy bien, a veces es un rollo, otras veces se hace unas pajas griegas etimológicas que no se las cree ni él, otras veces simplemente delira, como cuando dice que Alemania es el pueblo metafísico por excelencia de Europa o algo así (1935 era un buen año para decir este tipo de chorradas).Todo esto era de esperar antes de leerlo. Pero está bien eh, tiene su cosa, blablabla, etc.

[Joshua Finch]

What I remember from this read five years later is the significance of the question, Why is there anything rather than nothing at all? This isn't a question Heidegger thought up, but his wanderings around and around this question which I've forgotten now did impress on me the importance of the question, which it really does have. Even if the material world we see always was, just maybe in a different form (like some ultra dense ball prior to its 'big bang,' or an infinite regress of infinite multiverses), why is it there, rather than nothing? And why does it persist?

Also his articulation of the concept of the logos was very informative and paramount for me. The world we see is not just a heap of stuff. It is a gathering of stuff / energy / things into an arrangement, where each thing has its place, determined by what it is, which is in turn determined by its telos / purpose, which is given by - ___?. He describes how this relates to the ancient theory of justice. That's a lot of anti-Modern thinking right there.

A seemingly unique contribution here was about techne (or perhaps this was in Basic Writings? the only other one I read which it could be in). Modern technology is a product of the way of seeing / thinking of the faculty of techne when it is debilitated. This debilitated way of seeing / thinking he calls 'calculating.' He describes how the same faculty gives rise to the arts and crafts more generally. He also describes the more holistic functioning of this faculty that seems to him to also be able to give rise to new political units. I thought this was quite a surreal read of things I didn't understand like I was reading an epic, legendary, adventure-mystery story instead of philosophy, but hey that's partly why I like reading Heidegger. Some people can't stand the poeticizing of philosophy. I think it's a valid complaint because what he delivers after he goes beyond the beyond a bit too far often makes no rational sense - but maybe this is a problem with our IQ's, lack of the German language, background education, or translator with the right IQ / background education.

But how I would understand the techne thing now is that he was posing a type of theory of the good life, where instead of being naive Modernists who think we just need to be happy by perpetually assembling better gadgets and skills, and instead of grinding away at developing moral virtue like the ancients or monastics do, in order to develop thereby (or simultaneously) the authentic excellence of our 'souls' (our beings-there or whatever) as the kind of beings we are, he is of the sort who thinks you can get into that highest available state (if not stage) of our being by thinking / seeing in this right way, brought about by the works made by others who can see / think / be in that way, just by really participating in the art. It's 'vision' needed for virtue, granted by the works of those with vision, so to speak. Although how then did those artists get there? Somewhere there is a direct connection to the source, Being, which coming from my tradition I would say he's probably referring to the divine energy of the same name. And once in that state, presumably you either become virtuous, or becoming virtuous is made easier. I think something like this is true, but I don't accept the idea that struggle and affliction can be eliminated by being super smart or artsy and watching a Terrence Malick film - I would say painful purgation or purification that entirely eliminates the ego / false self / false mode of being is a prerequisite and glimpses of divinity by way of true art are available along the way, but especially available after this purification done in synergy with the divine.