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Martin Heidegger

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MARTIN HEIDEGGER. By George Steiner. 173 pp. University of Chicago Press edition, 1987 (1978). ISBN 0-226-77232-2 (pbk.)

The presence of Heidegger is so insistent that sooner or later we want to find out more about this controversial figure. But where to start? His most famous work, 'Being and Time,' is notoriously unapproachable by the unprepared, but where can we find a really good Introduction to the man and his main ideas? After tackling several well-known Introductory studies, and quickly abandoning them as just too dry and boring, I finally discovered George Steiner's short study.

What a joy it was to read Steiner! I'm one of those compulsive scribblers who always read pencil in hand, ready to annotate significant and memorable passages to make sure I'll be able to find them when I want to return and re-read them, and after a single reading pretty well every page was marked.

Steiner has a beautifully lucid style, and he writes with real passion. After a 28-page Introduction, 'Heidegger: In 1991,' and an 'In Place of a Foreword,' three Chapters follow : 1. 'Some Basic Terms;' 2. 'Being and Time;' 3. 'The Presence of Heidegger.' The book is rounded out with a Biographical Note, a useful Short Bibliography, and an Index.

Steiner throughout shows great skill in actually making us feel the movements of Heidegger's thought as it flows along totally unexpected and amazing paths, and one is left wondering what heights Western thought might have risen to if it had stayed true to its original impulse. It would seem that, for Heidegger, thought was not mere ratiocination, but something more akin to devotion, a devotion we come to share.

Here are a few lines from the book : "We are trying "to listen to the voice of Being"" (p.32); "Art is not, as in Plato and Cartesian realism, an imitation of the real. It is the more real" (p.136); "Creation _should be_ custody; a human construction _should be_ the elicitation and housing of the great springs of being" (p.136); "Man has labored and thought not with but against the grain of things. He has not given lodging to the forces and creatures of the natural world but made them homeless" (p.136); "... the Heideggerian asker lays himself open to that which is being questioned and becomes ... the permeable space of its disclosure" (p.55); "The earth, says Heidegger, must once again be made a _Spielraum_, literally, a space in which to play" (p.149). These are truly luminous thoughts, and the book is full of them.

I'm not sure what specialists may think of this book, but as a non-specialist I found it a very exciting book to read, and one that left me eager to know more. Steiner's study strikes me as what must be one of the best possible introductions to Heidegger for the ordinary reader.

Prof. Steiner's beautiful and precise prose clarifies the fundamental aspects of Heidegger's philosophy. Compared with similar introductions to the philosopher, Steiner's is particularly insightful and a pleasure to read by itself: the work is full of "sentences that arrest the spirit".

There are many very intelligent and careful studies on Heidegger's work that approach his lifetime question on Being from different angles and perspectives. Steiner seems to have understood Heidegger by sort of getting under his skin, lucid, inmersed in his thought he articulates the notion of Being clearly, even artistically, this is the turning point to understanding Heidegger, suddenly his difficult expressions come to life on a higher perspective, if you have been troubled by the lack of understanding on the Notion of Being in Heidegger, in this book somewhere within those pages you may get the insight, ah, eureka.

To read George Steiner is to bask in the presence of a great intellectual mind at work. The popular French frauds so à la mode today seem determined to instill nothing more than doubt, but I have always believed that clarity of thought (which does not preclude doubt) is what makes a critical text like Steiner's monograph on Heidegger valuable. Derrida merely muddies the water (as Nietzsche would say), but Steiner puts you in touch with one of the most obscure, difficult, and significant philosophers of the 20th century.

This is a short book, but it is slow reading. Not because of jargon-riddled wordplay, but because Steiner takes the time to untangle Heidegger's neologisms and strange, poetic language. Indeed, the first half of the book is titled "Basic Terms," an understanding of which will enable the reader to follow what Heidegger is trying to say about existence, authentic being, etc.. Steiner puts Heidegger's works into historical context and explains his methodology. To wit, Heidegger truly believes that we are spoken through language, so his philosophizing takes the form of etymologizing, going back to the origins of words, and recovering what can help us to think Being. According to Steiner, we never do get to defining Being, but the journey is rich and the effort is worthwhile.

Heidegger wants to overcome Western Metaphysics, which has been determined by Plato (who privileges the noumenal realm of ideas over the phenomenal world we live in) and Aristotle (who objectifies the natural, phenomenal world by subjecting it to study). Both strategies have left us without the ability to listen to or open ourselves up to Being, to standing in awe before its mystery.

Steiner also elucidates Heidegger's notion of authenticity (accepting that we are beings-toward-death), and his belief that anxiety, guilt, and care are inherent to authentic being. Why is this? Because we are both beings-in-the-world and beings-in-time. Death, for Heidegger, "is not an event; it is a phenomenon to be understood existentially," a process, part of our becoming. There is something extremely liberating in this notion, and both Heidegger and Steiner are aware of it. Angst, or existential anxiety, is not something to be eliminated with facile religious beliefs, counseling, or psycho-pharmaceuticals; it is to be understood as the mark, the indication of a being striving to live authentically, embracing fate (that which has been sent to a being-in-the-world).

Because we are beings-in-the-world we must also be beings that care: care about what others think of us; care about our world; and care for others. Steiner develops this idea as it is revealed in Heideggers' works, and he also addresses the issue of his involvement with Nazism. How does one reconcile caring, commitment, and concentration camps?

Recognizing that we are still too close to the Holocaust to be dispassionate, Steiner nonetheless attempts to understand this facet of Heidegger's life. Steiner is neither persecutorial nor apologetic. And he is much more disturbed by what was not said than by what was. Why, he asks repeatedly, was Heidegger silent about Europe's "season in Hell" after the war? Steiner has a difficult time getting past this, but does not belabor the issue. Heidegger's works are indeed part of the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, and have certain affinities with Nazi ideology. But Steiner is unable to conclude that Heidegger was an anti-Semite; there does not seem to be enough convincing evidence for that. But still, why the silence?

All in all, Steiner's book is the best introduction to this influential thinker. My field is Comparative Literature, not Philosophy, and I feel as though I learned a tremendous amount by reading this book. If you only read one introduction to Heidegger, this monograph should be it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be introduced to the work of Martin Heidegger.
It is eloquently written, has clarity in its expression, and is approachable by the reader who has not read philosophy systematically.
In addition, Steiner addresses in a remarkable way Heidegger's relationship with Nazism, and his "silence" after the Second World War.
Overall, it is not an easy read, but the best way to get introduced to Heidegger's work.

This shorter book is very understandable. My suggestion is to read the introduction, "Heidegger in 1991," last; the author's "introductory" essay really acts as a good summation for the entire project.

George Steiner's brief intro is surly competent and his investigation of Heidegger's use of the German language is particularly well informed. Steiner is commenting on Heidegger's corpus more as a cultural commentator rather than a philosopher, but he still gets most of the fundamentals correct. While often labeled as a work of populism, I found this monograph to be a fruitful study-Steiner shines in situating Heidegger in the greater context of German cultural life. It's also interesting to see the ways in which this text is hopelessly dated. Steiner mentions that the Gesamtausgabe will be over 60 volumes, today it's over 100. Nevertheless, this is not a bad introduction to the work of Heidegger, and it also provides some useful commentary on his infamous political behavior.

Steiner wrote with in an exceptioanlly clear style. This is the single best, most approachable and even-handed introduction to the intriguing thought of Heidegger. Part biographical, part historical, part critical. Lucidity is the key term here. Any serious aspiring student of philosophy would be hard-pressed to find better. Steiner doesn't bash H. (as i tend to do), not does he curl up to him in a servile and byzantine gesture of soulless academic praise 9and there is tons of that out there). I can't say enough.

I'd also recommend his excellent rumination on the history of Tragedy: "The Death of Tragedy."

This is a nicely written book, very easy to read, but a bit philosophically facile. More problematically, it was written before the biographical revelations came out in the 1990s and as a result it is dated and factually inaccurate. The Safranski biography is MUCH better.