Existence And Being [Paperback]

Martin Heidegger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 2008

FOREWORD In appearance, Professor Heidegger is short and slight his hair is thick and jet black with occasional white streaks. When he emerged from the small skiing hut, high up in the mountains, to greet me, he was dressed in the costume of a Swabian peasant, a dress he often also used to wear when he was Rector of Freiburg University. His heavy, squarish sluing boots it was summer emphasised still more strongly his relationship to the soil. He was born in 1889, in Messkirch and his brother still farms in the region. Martin Heidegger, too, has never left it. When Hitler called him to Berlin in 1935, he rejected the offer. The world had to come to him, to Freiburg. There he lives, with Hellingraths edition of Halderlins works. This closeness to Holderlin is no accident but an essential key to an understanding of Heideggers own philosophy. For Holderlin came from the same physical region, he faced the same spiritual problems, and he experienced more lucidly and bitterly the ultimate meaning of not than any other person who could give expression to it in song. The parallel with Heidegger is close, indeed, if thought is substituted for song. On both occasions when I met Professor Heidegger, in June, 1946, and in October, 1947, I had to drive for an hour to the small town of Todtnau in the Black Forest Mountains, then to climb still further until the road became a path and all human habitation scattered and invisible There on top of a mountain, with the valley deep down below, with nothing but space and wilderness all around, in that small skiing hut, I spoke to the phxlosopher. He had not been to Freiburg for six months when I saw him for the second time. His living conditions were primitive his books were few, and his only relationship to the world was a stack of writing paper. His whole life revolved within those white sheets and it seemed to me that he wanted nothlng else but to be left in peace to cover those white sheets with his writmg. The atmosphere of silence all around provided a faithful setting for Heideggers philosophy. I could not help comparing it with the atmosphere I had encountered in the house of Professor Berdyaev near Paris and that of Professor Jaspers in Heidelberg. In every case, the external world faithfully reflected the world of the mind. In Berdyaevs case it was the spirit of communion in Jasperss that of spiritual engagement. But in Heideggers case it was the spirit of overwhelming solitude. With the four essays in this book, which Professor Heidegger gave me, this much-discussed philosopher now appears for the first time before the English-speaking world. As Professor Heidegger pointed out to me, the four essays are complementary and have an organic unity...

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Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Foreman Press (October 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1443774936
• ISBN-13: 978-1443774932
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy, some on poetry, with a great ending, May 26, 2003

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Bruce P. Barten - See all my reviews

This review is from: Existence and Being (Paperback)

This is a good book for introducing a form of thinking that may be called for on special occasions, when people have to consider what is not truly mundane. My second-hand copy of this book, the Gateway edition, published 1979, based on the First American edition published 1949, begins with a long attempt to explain Heidegger's main early work, BEING AND TIME, Part I. (1927). Way back then "only the first two out of six planned sections of the book were published." (p. 8). I thought that the explanation by Werner Brock took too long to get to the items by Heidegger which finally appear from page 233 to the end of this book. As an example of the explanation for what is included, I would like to quote the following paragraph:

Some of the critics seem to think that there has been a considerable change in Heidegger's outlook, if not immediately after the publication of "Being and Time," at least since the first essay on Hoelderlin (1936). I for one do not share in this opinion. In my view, the themes of all the four essays, but especially of the two philosophical ones, are directly and most intimately related to "Being and Time," but not so much to the first two published Sections as rather to the third one on "Time and Being." (p. 119).

Heidegger's Inaugural Lecture, "What is Metaphysics?" is included at the end of this book. On page 349, an undated "Postscript" admits that "The question `What is Metaphysics?' remains a question. For those who persevere with this question the following postscript is more of a foreword." The obstacles encountered in the preceding lecture are described as "good. It will make our questioning more genuine." (p. 351). The first of the "misgivings and misconceptions to which the lecture gives rise" has been "The lecture makes `Nothing' the sole subject of metaphysics." (p. 352). The other problems are explained as mood problems we acquire when we do not "shut our ears to the soundless voice which attunes us to the horrors of the abyss" (p. 354) through such a concept. "Without Being, whose unfathomable and manifest essence is vouchsafed us by Nothing in essential dread, everything that `is' would remain in Beinglessness." (pp. 353-354).

After long consideration of "Nothing, conceived as the pure `Other' than what-is, is the veil of Being," (p. 360) comes some ancient Greek described as the last poem of a tragedy, "Oedipus in Colonos" by Sophocles, and at last, an English translation that also seems fair enough to be remembered on Memorial Day, 2003:

But cease now, and nevermore
Lift up the lament:
For all this is determined.