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5.0 out of 5 stars
Tribute from one great scholar to another,
By
This review is from: The Finitude of Being (SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy) (Paperback)
I have read this book once quickly and once with considerable care. My history is that I first read an article by Heidegger in Walter Kaufmann's book on Existentialism. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Revised and Expanded Edition He introduced it with remarks to the effect: Everybody seems to agree that Heidegger is an existentialist and important thinker, even while anyone who tells him what they understand him to mean can expect the reply that it is not what he intends. That was approximately 1967.I did not read anything else by him until I reread that same article ten years later. In the meantime, I had been studying Sartre. In Hazel Barnes' book on Sartre's ethics Existentialist Ethics (Midway Reprint), she warned readers to stay away from Heidegger. That whetted my appetite, and I have studied him on and off ever since, mostly on my own but also with some formal course work. In this volume, Joan Stambaugh gives us a comprehensive and accurate summary of Heidegger's life work. I mention my personal history because I cannot tell what someone who may be less familiar with his long career might find useful. We are approaching the end of modernism, identified by Heidegger as the end of metaphysics. If we manage to avoid the most extreme of our suicidal tendencies, it is to be expected that bringing modernism to an end involves an extended struggle. Heidegger does not predict such an end to be inevitable, only possible. He does offer an alternative way of thinking. He worked on the problems long enough not only to identify how we got to the place we find ourselves today but also outlines a vision of what to think about and how to think in order to correct our mistakes. Stambaugh makes that message as available and accessible as any scholar I have studied. While other scholars may delve more deeply into the complexities of Heidegger's work, Stambaugh's articulation of his likely intentions is a marvel of lucidity. She has made my long effort worthwhile, despite all the doubts I had along the way. Since being is finite, that allows it to show itself, to reveal itself to us. We are in the epoch of the withdrawal of being, so it does not currently show itself, but it remains possible. Still we can deduce from our mere existence that being wants us to be here, needs us to be for it to be. We must await the return of the gods, the last god, for a more adequate revelation, giving us time to prepare our part in Appropriation.
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