Customer Reviews

Heidegger And Jaspers

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One could compose a collection about Heidegger and Jaspers that was solely focused on comparative readings. This wouldn't be very difficult; many inspired essays have been written comparing the two. Or, alternatively, one could compose a book of essays detailing Heidegger and Jaspers' personal affinities towards, and skirmishes with, one another. An interesting conflict surely lies in this; Heiddeger was pro-nazism and Jaspers was decidely not - like a 1930's German odd couple, only where biological tidiness is at issue. Either would be well worth reading.

Unfortunately, this book tries to traverse the boundary that lies between the philosophical systems these two espoused, and their own personal lives in a way that only the most sinister self-posturing biographer could conceive of. While some essays trace the contextualized line of the inter-personal relations of the two with a steady, biographical inclination, others are more apt toward a confoundingly acute, over-intellectualized reading that was almost certainly written for an academic journal. The conjuction creates a sloppy hodge-podge of writings that are only related by the pretense of the book: they use the words "Heiddeger" and "Jaspers" quite often.