Customer Reviews

Toward the Definition of Philosophy (Landcare Research Science Series,) (v. 56-57)

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The previous reviewer is correct that these lectures come from 1919, not 1918.

This course is Heidegger's breakthrough moment. The famous tool-analysis is first found here, not in Being and Time or History of the Concept of Time, as even some leading scholars (such as Rudolf Bernet) perpetually overlook.

The previous reviewer summarizes the details nicely, so I'll just add that the reader will be surprised at just how Heideggerian the young Heidegger already is in 1919. The early thesis work (one on the doctrine of judgment in psychologism, the other on Dun Scotus) still seems like student work, but this one reads like the Heidegger we know.

This is a must a read for any serious student of Heidegger because it introduces one to Heidegger's early reflections during the War Semester in 1919 on the nature of what philosophy is and is-not - a fundamental and absolute line that Heidegger draws between his own methods and the other Hegelian-Marxist methods.

As such, it also provides invaluable insights into the "way" that is already implicit in his monumental Being and Time. It is not too far to say that Being and Time in many ways presuppose or even extend the arguments that are already found in Definition of Philosophy.

This also provides a good way to approach his ideas about the nature of the university and academic study. The university is an institution designed for the transformation of human experience, instead of merely a factory for producing robots for the techno-capitalist industry or a diploma mill where signs are churned out for symbolic exchange. Hence, anyone interested in Heidegger and the transformation of university education should take this little book seriously.