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The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy

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I am a graduate student in philosophy and I am just finishing up a graduate seminar on Heidegger. I decided to write a final paper on the Contributions to Philosophy despite the fact that we did not spend any time reading the Contributions in class. I immediately realized, as soon as I sat down and started digging into the Contributions, that I had bit off more than I could chew. Unfortunately it was already too late to turn back. Anyone who has tried to read the Contributions can certainly attest to the fact that it is not an easy text to read by any means. I always smile when I hear people complaining about how opaque Being and Time is because compared to Contributions, Being and Time is a walk in the park.

I was ready to give into despair when I discovered Richard Polt's book. It would not be an exaggeration to say that without Richard Polt's book my paper would have been shipwrecked before it even got started. Richard Polt does what I would have thought impossible before reading his book: he makes the Contributions accessible, understandable and philosophically compelling. This is easily one of the best books I have ever read on Heidegger, period (and it saved me from the prospect of a truly horrendous and embarrassing paper; or, at least it has given me a fighting chance; whether I wind up embarrassing myself anyways has yet to be seen).

Richard Polt begins with a simple principle in his Heidegger interpretation. Rather than simply repeating the Heideggerian jargon Richard Polt, in his introduction, says that he is going to try to turn his attention to the matter that Heidegger is trying to think. This simple methodological decision is almost certainly the reason that Richard Polt was able to write such a clear and philosophically rich book. It is a method that, unfortunately, very few Heidegger scholars adopt in their attempts to interpret Heidegger which is why so many Heidegger secondaries wind up being just as opaque as Heidegger himself.

This book should be the first book you read if you are attempting to make your way through Heidegger's Contributions for the first time. There are a couple of other good books that deal with the Contributions as well. Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (Studies in Continental Thought) by Daniela Vallega-Neu. I actually have not read all of this yet (even though it is very short) but the first two sections which attempt to read Being and Time in the light of the Contributions and then the summarize the new departure of Contributions are excellent and worth the price of the book. I did not find Daniela Vallega-Neu quite as accessible as Polt so I still think it would be a good idea to read Polt first but Vallega-Neu should probably be next. Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (Studies in Continental Thought) by Miguel de Beistegui is a very interesting book. It is actually about Heidegger and Deleuze but the section on Heidegger is almost entirely about the Contributions. Beistegui's analysis is dense. I also do not think that Beistegui's analysis of the Contributions is an entirely accurate account of what Heidegger is up to in the Contributions. To be fair, I am not really sure whether providing an accurate summary of Heidegger was Beistegui's intention. His intention seems to be to work out a new differential ontology using both Heidegger and Deleuze and his readings of Heidegger are heavily influenced by his readings of Deleuze. But his readings are, whether accurate or not, extremely rich and exciting philosophically speaking.

Polt, while praising and admiring Besitegui's reading in this book, also does a good job (in his footnotes mostly) of critiquing some of Beistegui's interpretations of the Contributions so the two books are good to read together. The bottom line is: no one interested in the Contributions can afford to miss this one.

An excellent and well written introduction to this very difficult text. This book follows Introduction to Metaphysics by the same author and expands on his text in the Companion to Heidegger's Contribution to Philosophy.

Some knowledge and understanding of Heidegger's work would seem a useful prerequisite - especially Being and Time.

A useful addition to any bookshelf if the owner is interested in knowing what the world is all about.