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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A superb yet brief introduction to Heidegger's most important ideas, June 18, 2009
This review is from: Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
I have developed the habit of reading one of the Very Short Introduction books each day during my lunch break. My current plan is to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Maybe I'll eventually get around to reading every book in the series. And a very good series it is. I've encountered only a couple of weak entries to the series (like Patrick Gardiner's woefully inadequate book on Kierkegaard), while several have been outstanding, such as Quentin Skinner's intro to Machiavelli and Simon Critchley's magnificent reflection on the difference between Continental and Anglo-American philosophy. Most of the books that I have read have tended to be closer in quality to Skinner and Critchley than to Gardiner. Happily, Michael Inwood's wonderfully little book on Heidegger is another excellent volume in the series.
There are few if any philosophers more difficult to read than Heidegger. Frankly, my own belief is that he is a great deal more difficult than he needed to be. There is a tradition in German philosophy, noted and passionately criticized by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, of writing more obscurely than needed. The example of needlessly torturous philosophical writing was established by Immanuel Kant's immediate predecessors, especially the highly influential Christian Wolff and A.G. Baumgarten. Kant did not depart from their style of writing, nor did a succession of later German philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Schopenhauer was trilingual, able to speak French and English without an accent (he in fact pronounced his first name "Arthur" in English fashion, not "Artur" as in German). Although a self-styled Kantian, he thought David Hume the model of how someone should write philosophy, with straightforward prose, not relying on obscure terminology or inventing neologisms. His sometimes disciple Nietzsche agreed and they are among the very few Germans who wrote in a less prolix fashion (though there were occasional exceptions, like Hamann and to a degree Herder).
Heidegger is hard primarily because he chose to write in a thick, turgid prose laced with countless neologisms. Understanding Heidegger becomes first and foremost cracking the code of his language. The great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor says many of the things that Heidegger does, but in relatively easy to understand prose. As an example, contrast Taylor's work on the idea of authenticity and Heidegger's. In fact, Heidegger himself was often less opaque than he would be in his greatest work BEING AND TIME. He wrote the lectures that were later published as THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY at precisely the time he was looking at the galleys for SEIN UND ZEIT. He covers there many of the same ideas that he broaches in his more famous work, but in relatively clear fashion. Dedicated Heideggerians insist that Heidegger wrote the way he did because he had to, because the difficulty of the ideas demanded it. I do not believe this. I believe that one could write a paraphrase of BEING AND TIME that would do no damage to the central ideas, but that would instead express all the ideas in ordinary language.
Michael Inwood does an admirable job in only about 130 pages of explaining many of Heidegger's main ideas in remarkable clear language. The book strictly speaking is not an introduction to all of Heidegger's thought. The focus is overwhelmingly on BEING AND TIME. I don't fault his decision. While people have studied many of Heidegger's writings, the vast majority of work has been on his one indisputable masterwork (though in recent years there has been increasing attention to his later and very difficult work CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY, which Inwood does not discuss at all). Basically, if you understand BEING AND TIME, you will understand Heidegger. All of his later work can be seen as an expansion on it. Inwood works through most of the key ideas in BEING AND TIME, provides some helpful keys and concrete contexts for understanding much of what Heidegger was asserting. I believe that Heidegger, once stripped of his unforgivable verbiage, does a remarkably good job of describing a rather common sense understanding of the world. His description is actually rather commonsensical, something that is obscured by his language. Inwood helps bring this out. Heidegger's great contribution to philosophy was to counter the understanding of the philosophical project as viewed by Descartes and many coming in his wake, including Kant.
The book concludes with a brief description of Heidegger's views on art, which I have always found to be of far less interest than BEING AND TIME. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the most controversial part of Heidegger's career, his membership from 1933 to 1945 in the Nazi party. The major text for any discussion of Heidegger's political beliefs (which interestingly do not appear to any great degree in his philosophical writings) is Hugo Ott's HEIDEGGER: A POLITICAL LIFE. Inwood barely touches upon this complex and difficult issue, but Ott shows that Heidegger was guilty of a kind of inauthenticity that he criticized in BEING AND TIME. Heidegger was not terribly informed on political matters, does not seem to have had passionately held political beliefs, but nonetheless remained nominally a Nazi. Interestingly, he seems to have been more interested in Nazi ideas than he was in Hitler. Philosophically, his allegiance was more to the figures associated with the Brown Shirts, whom Hitler had murdered in 1934. It would be misleading to call the Brown Shirts the liberal wing of the Nazis, but their leaders did have somewhat different priorities. For one thing, they were more concerned with economic equality and were critical of capitalism. And unlike Hitler and Goebbels and the dominant figures in Nazism, they considered the problem with Jews to be their mode of thought. Heidegger definitely felt that Jews did not need to be killed but have their way of thinking corrected. For Heidegger and the Brown Shirts, the Jewish Problem was not one of biology. Inwood barely touches upon all this, but it is understandable given the space he had to work with. Anyone interested in the topic should read Ott's biography or the essays in Richard Wolin's THE HEIDEGGER CONTROVERSY.
But for a short and very good introduction to Heidegger's thought, especially in BEING AND TIME, you can hardly do worse than this fine little book. The one competitor might be Richard Polt's equally excellent HEIDEGGER: AN INTRODUCTION. Both can be read with great profit.
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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A standard academic treatment of Heidegger., June 28, 2001
This is your standard garden-variety academic treatment of Heidegger, alright so far as it goes, but rather dry reading. One interesting feature is its short 4-page Glossary of Heidegger's German terminology. It also has an index in which one notes the total absence of any mention of Buddhism, Mahayana, Zen, or the 'Tao Te Ching' (a text which Heidegger worked on), despite the fact that Heidegger's thought quite often reminds one of the great Taoist and Buddhist thinkers. Anyone new to Heidegger who is looking for a good Introductory survey of the man and his thought would do much better to take a look at George Steiner's 'Martin Heidegger.' In contrast to Inwood, Steiner writes with real passion and leaves one with a desire to know more about this amazing thinker. In fact, Steiner's book is so good that you'll probably want to read it again. I was left wishing it had been two or three times longer.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't start here, but stop by later for Division II discussions..., March 2, 2009
This review is from: Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
Any book on the philosopher Martin Heidegger, even an introduction, will contain numerous brow pursing passages. His valiant attempt to sweep up some 2000 years of philosophic dust necessitated voluminous neologisms and esoteric constructions. Though he remains controversial not only for this opacity but also for having joined the Nazi party, his influence has nonetheless mushroomed in recent years both in and outside of academia. Even sections of the Analytic school have embraced his irreverent and unconventional approach to some of the tradition's most intractable problems. Understanding the thick pudding text that goops up his work remains well worth the effort but nonetheless requires help. This not really all that short introduction will help those who have some familiarity with Heidegger speak, but absolute beginners may struggle with its largely academic tone. New terms appear can without introduction (e.g., "existentiall" pops up from the text unexpectedly at least once). True, there's a handy Heideggerese glossary at the back, but not explaining terms in context may throw the uninitiated.
The book covers the usual territory of Heidegger introductions. A little biography gets followed up with expositions of the major themes comprising his magnum opus, "Being and Time": Being, Dasein, World, Being-In-The-World, care, throwness, etc. But it also dares to delve into the murky loch of Division II where the brave only venture. More fundamental terms such as "phenomenology" and "anxiety" receive mere skimmings while far more puzzling concepts such as "ecstatic time" and "Historiology" get multi-page discussions. Regardless, the latter discussions illuminate this dredge to the point of peaking interest. While some introductions excuse or completely ignore Division II (such as Blattner and Dreyfus) this one embraces the sludge. As such, those looking for basic material on the shadowy side of "Being and Time" should scan their pupils across this book's late chapters.
The usual themes also get juxtaposed and sequenced differently here than in other introductions. For example, inauthenticty and the "They" appear early instead of in a later chapter on Heidegger's so-called "existentialist" themes. The rather Merleau-Pontyesque theme of "body" also makes a guest appearance. This will please some and possibly annoy others, but the unorthodox order allows for new and fresh conceptual comparisons. Pros and cons, as usual.
A section on "The Origin of the Work of Art" also appears. This piece introduced the concepts of "earth" and elaborated on the notion of truth as "disclosedness." The famous examples of Van Gogh's peasant shoes (as a "world discloser") and the Greek Temple (as a "world originator") provide an intriguing glimpse into the "later Heidegger." Apart from a short final chapter on Heidegger's influence and politics, the book focuses almost exclusively on "Being and Time." Lastly, interesting photographs of the young and old Heidegger along with pertinent locations pervade the text.
This book provides a great overview for those with some knowledge of Heidegger. Absolute beginners might struggle more with this one than with other texts (such as Wrathall's facile "How To Read Heidegger"). Those with some familiarity will see different shades of Heideggerian themes. For that alone it provides plenty of value (and it doesn't take up much space). But, as with any book of this kind on this subject, this slim volume will not prepare one for a plop into the primary texts. But it provides a great touch point on the way to comprehending one of the twentieth century's most influential and controversial thinkers.
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