A Heidegger Dictionary (Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries) [Hardcover]

Michael Inwood (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0631190945 | ISBN-13: 978-0631190943 | Edition: 1

A Heidegger Dictionary enables the student to read Heidegger's immensely rich and varied works with understanding, and assigns him to his rightful place in both contemporary philosophy and in the history of the subject.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Inwood provides a very good bibliography of primary and secondary sources, an essay on Heidegger's idiosyncratic language, a general index and another for "foreign words and expressions," and the dictionary itself....The dictionary consists of brief essays on concepts and concept clusters and on four of Heidegger's major works, all as clear as possible and very much to the point...One of the most intelligible books in the English about this thinker." J.M. Perreault, Choice.

From the Back Cover

This concise and accessible dictionary explores the central concepts of one of the most significant figures in the history of thought.

The author traces the history of 100 concepts from 'aletheia' to 'world' through Heidegger's entire career, from the earlier lectures to his later essays and seminars - including many that are not yet translated. The book is extremely user-friendly, containing a full index of the words and concepts discussed, and an introduction explaining Heidegger's use of language.

A Heidegger Dictionary enables the student to read Heidegger's immensely rich and varied works with understanding, and assigns him to his rightful place in both contemporary philosophy and in the history of the subject.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (October 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631190945
• ISBN-13: 978-0631190943
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,771,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wost of the series, February 4, 2000

By 

"tksc" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Heidegger Dictionary (Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries) (Paperback)

Anyone familiar with the Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries series will be disappointed by this edition from Michael Inwood. As far as I know, Inwood is primarily a Hegel scholar, and the lack of information (breadth and depth) on Heidegger demonstrates that this edition could have been better served by someone more familiar with Heidegger.

Now, Heidegger wrote a lot of books and Inwood doesn't do justice to the rest of Heidegger's oeuvre apart from Being and Time. For example, why is there no section on Heidegger and Leibniz? or Aristotle? or Heraclitus? and so on.

I would imagine that a dictionary of Heidegger should consist of far more pages than this volume which falls well short of 300. For example, Cygill's Kant Dictionary is replete with numerous entries and references to specific texts.

This edition of the dictionary series is in need of a dramatic overhaul.

Heidegger, who was so careful about his works, deserves a far better treatment than we have before us. This edition amounts to no better than a glossery of terms: terse and in many cases uninformative.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant, highly competent work with a host of inexplicable printing errors, June 29, 2009

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Heidegger Dictionary (Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries) (Paperback)

There are a couple of absolutely baffling reviews here. One suggests that someone other than Michael Inwood should have been asked to write it, preferrably "someone more familiar with Heidegger." This suggestion would surely baffle any Heidegger scholar, since Michael Inwood is regarded as a leading authority on Heidegger. If Michael Inwood is regarded as a major Heidegger scholar by the world's other leading Heidegger scholars, I presume that no reasonable person would question his familiarity with Heidegger's work.

The fact is that this book is enormously erudite and Michael Inwood both has a profound understanding of Heidegger's work and an unusual ability to express that understanding clearly. I'm not quite sure what the two reviewers who gave this outstanding work low ratings were looking for (I have other volumes in Blackwell's series of philosophical dictionaries as well), but this certainly didn't disappoint me in any way. It is very similar in format to the other volumes so that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The articles may be a tad longer, but in large part that is because, unlike Rousseau or Descartes, Heidegger uses words in highly unusual ways. He employs a very large number of neologisms and even familiar words are employed with unique or highly developed meanings. In flipping through the pages, I could not find a single entry that I felt was too long. Just as I could not find a single one that didn't reflect either a lack of familiarity with Heidegger's work or a difficulty in explicating it.

In short, this is a must-own study guide to any and every serious student of Heidegger.

The book does, however, had a rather serious flaw. It is perhaps the worst-printed book that I have ever seen. The other five-star reviewers alludes to this. Dozens and dozens of characters are simply missing. The article on "Being: An Introduction" is printed " eing: An Introduction." The one on "Life and Biology" becomes "Life and iology." The article on "Subject and Object" is rendered "Su ject and O ject." The headers at the top of the page for the entire "B" section is missing the initial "B" as are many of the "M" headers. Luckily, the text in the articles is pretty complete. But occasionally you will stumble over what section you are reading. You can puzzle it out, but given the cost of the book and the usual reliability of Blackwell as a publisher, the printing errors (I call them printing errors rather than misprints because the latter are usually the result of proofreading errors, while the mistakes in this book are the fault of the printers) are rather baffling. I've taken to writing in pencil the correct letters, but I've never had to do this in a book before. Still, while this is irritating -- indeed, sometimes highly irritating -- it does not diminish the value of this book. It belongs on the shortest of short bookshelves of important books on Heidegger.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Misprints Beware, June 15, 2008

By 

David Kreitner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Heidegger Dictionary (Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries) (Paperback)

Exceptional product--on part with Inwood's Hegel Dictionary.Entries start with etymologies, then history of usage in philosophy, then Heidegger's use(s) of a term.
Unfortunately the printing by Blackwell is corrupted. Capital "B"s missing in headings throughout. So e.g. Heidegger's major work comes out as " eing and Time". Amazon could not replace. Very annoying and disappointing. Agreed to a six-dollar refund since the error stems from the publisher.