The ideas of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger have been described as an intellectual time bomb, as some of the most revolutionary thought in western history. Despite the enormous amount of secondary scholarship available on Heidegger, it is–due to the complexity of his thought and the density of his writing–difficult for the curious beginner to gain an insight into Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger For Beginners serves as an entry into the ideas of one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers, situating Heidegger’s thought within its philosophical and historical context–alongside such thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl and Sartre. Heidegger For Beginners explicates many of Heidegger’s central ideas, including the Nothing, average everydayness, care, existence, be-in-the-world, the One, the critique of technology, anxiety, and most importantly, Being–a notion which may offer us the key to understanding the very mystery of our own existence.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining and informative introduction for beginners.,
This review is from: Heidegger for Beginners (Paperback)
HEIDEGGER FOR BEGINNERS. By Eric LeMay & Jennifer A. Pitts. Illustrated by Paul Gordon. 120 pp. New York : Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1994. ISBN 0-86316-172-3 (Pbk).It's difficult not to be impressed by the audacity of the Heideggerian enterprise. Here is a philosopher who, at the outset of his career, decided that Western thought had been fundamentally in error about everything for the last two thousand years, and who set out single-handedly to rectify matters by showing us, not only how we ought to be thinking, but also what things were really all about. If he was right about the West being all wrong, and there are excellent reasons for supposing that he was, he clearly becomes someone we ought to know something about. But where to begin? The Heidegger opus is MASSIVE, and consists of upwards of a hundred or so volumes, none of them easy. His German is notoriously obscure, even for native speakers of that language, and translation does little to improve it. And the works of his commentators, which in 1989 ran to over four thousand books and articles and today numbers considerably more, can often be even more obscure than Heidegger himself. Happily authors LeMay and Pitts, with the collaboration of Paul Gordon, have come to the rescue of all of those dazed and bewildered beginners out there with their extremely well-done illustrated treatment of Heidegger's basic thought. The illustrations are both effective and amusing. The thought is authentic Heidegger and, so far as it goes, accurate. The treatment, while witty, is respectful. The book concludes with some good advice about Further Reading, a basic Bibliography, and a brief anthology of key extracts : 'Martin Heidegger : In His Own Words' - On the Essence of Truth; On the Subject; On Being; On Authentic Existence; On Technology, etc. The aim, in short, seems to have been, while not overburdening the beginner with too much of Heidegger's radically different style of thinking, to give him or her enough to stimulate a desire to know more. In this I think the authors have been successful. 'Heidegger for Beginners' will be enjoyed by many who are new to Heidegger, and perhaps by at least some who are not so new. Purists, of course, will shriek that beginners would be far better off reading Steiner, or Poggeler, or Safranski, or even Heidegger himself. Of course they would! But purists have a curious tendency to forget that they too were once BEGINNERS (i.e., persons who know nothing but who would like to know something), and that prior to having become self-appointed 'experts,' they might have taken a less snooty attitude to the book under review, a book which - I repeat - is for beginners who may not yet be ready for something more substantial. My advice to beginners would be to forget about the purists (who rarely know as much as they like to pretend), and to curl up for a few good hours of fun and edification with LeMay and Pitts. You'll be amused. You'll certainly learn 'something' about Heidegger. And some of you will be left with a desire to know more. For those who would like to know more, details of one of the finest available conventional Introductions to Heidegger for the general reader are as follows: MARTIN HEIDEGGER. By George Steiner. 173 pp. University of Chicago Press edition, 1987 (1978). ISBN 0-226-77232-2 (pbk.)
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great, Quick Survey for Difficult Ideas,
By A Customer
This review is from: Heidegger for Beginners (Paperback)
Don't kid yourself and pretend you're too good to read these '... For Beginner' books. They're an ideal way to gather together and encapsulate the key ideas of the primary texts to which they refer. They read quickly, have a sense of humor, and are great little summaries of key concepts.It goes without saying that they're no substitute for the real thing. That's a given. But Heidegger is difficult. (Are as most of the philosophers that these books deal with. Anybody who says otherwise is lying -- or has read so much Heidegger that he/she has started to get brain-blur.) The great thing about this Heidegger book (and all the books in the series) is that they present the key ideas in simple terms. And bear in mind that there's nothing wrong with simplicity. Good 'simplicity' is a lot more difficult than one might think. Writing simply and thinking critically is what these books are all about -- and for these reasons, I can't recommend them enough. I'm a few years out of graduate school, so I feel myself 'out of the loop.' These books are a great way to refresh key concepts, get a good solid fix on Heidegger's so-called project, and give you space enough to dive in (or at least poke about) in 'Being and Time'. Plus, they make Heidegger's difficult ideas ('Being' 'Dasein') accessible -- and, quite frankly, that's what learning (and reading) is all about. Yeah, they're no substitute for the real thing -- and anyone who thinks otherwise is sorely mistaken -- but they're great contextualizers -- and for that reason, they're quite valuable. Besides, everybody has hang-ups about the 'difficulty' of modern philosophy. What these books do is to say: Look, the ideas *are* difficult -- don't kid yourself -- but just because they're difficult doesn't mean they should be *inaccessible*. And that's what you want a good teacher to say, right? You want someone to clomp you on the back, tell you not to worry, and assure that if you just keep at it -- keep reading, keep grappling -- you'll do fine. That's what these books do. They're the teacher clomping you on the back, telling you not to worry.
20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
vulgarized Heidegger,
By whomi (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Heidegger for Beginners (Paperback)
This book is an extremely poor and misleading introduction to Heidegger's thought. Neither Heidegger's hermeneutical-phenomenological interpretive method, nor the "being" question as he understood it, nor his philosophical roots are even tolerably depicted. The special kind of inner coherency, rigor, and "feel" for the structures of "human experience" that makes Heidegger's thought stand out are mostly ignored here, and instead we are given a bizarre selection of decontextualized tidbits from Heidegger which, when interpreted in the sloppy and cliched way these authors prefer, almost make him look like some granola-crunching New Age guru. If you have read this book, please do not judge Heidegger by it. If you have not, don't- instead try the equally clear and much more accurate introductory texts written by Polt and Dreyfus.
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