Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Studies in Continental Thought) [Hardcover]

Martin Heidegger (Author), John Van Buren (Translator), John van Buren (Author)

Book Description

Series: Studies in Continental Thought | Publication Date: July 30, 1999

"With thematic trajectories pointing both toward and beyond Being and Time, this translation ...is of enormous significance for students of the development of Heidegger's early thought." - Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University. First published in 1988 as volume 63 of Heidegger's Collected Works, "Ontology" follows Heidegger's lectures at the University of Freiburg during the summer semester of 1923. In these lectures, Heidegger reviews and makes critical appropriation of the hermeneutical tradition from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Other important themes that are taken up are his turn to the facticity and everyday world of Dasein, his interpretation of human existence in the present historically and philosophically, his understanding of phenomenology, and his repeated insistence on the temporal dimension of interpretation and significance. Students of Heidegger's thought will find initial breakthroughs in his unique elaboration of the meaning of human existence and "question of Being," which received mature expression in Being and Time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"With thematic trajectories pointing both toward and beyond Being and Time, this translation ... is of enormous significance for students of the development of Heidegger's early thought." - Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University

About the Author

John van Buren is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. He is author of The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, and co-editor of Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (July 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253335078
• ISBN-13: 978-0253335074
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,649,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FASCINATING AND CHALLENGING, July 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Studies in Continental Thought) (Hardcover)

This translation of Heidegger's lectures at Freiburg during the summer of 1923 represents an important event in English-speaking Heidegger scholarship. Van Buren has done a masterful job, and rendered us all a real service.

This lecture contains some of the most interesting material from Heidegger's entire corpus. His historical analysis of hermeneutics and of the concept of "man" in the Western philosophical tradition are only the beginning - the whole lecture is simply riveting. Anyone with an interest in Heidegger needs to own this book. The same goes for those who have only heard of Heidegger from the blithering obscurantists who pass themselves off as "scholars." Here is Heidegger addressing issues of real philosophical import with insight and lucidity. A fascinating and challenging piece!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Preview of Being and Time with Some Distinctive Touches, October 29, 2010

By 

Doctor Moss (California) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ontology--The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Studies in Continental Thought) (Paperback)

This is a lecture course by Heidegger from 1923, 4 years before the publication of Being and Time, and it provides an earlier glimpse of some of the central themes of that book. The text was put together from Heidegger's own notes, augmented by those of others attending the lectures.

One of the critical themes previewed here is Heidegger's claim that the disclosure of things such as tables in an interconnected web of significance is prior, both in experience and in ontological order, to disclosures of those things as "objects" or "mere things." On pages 68-69 here, he makes a strong contrast between the table in his home, as a table for writing, sewing, or eating -- disclosed to us in a structure of such "in-order-to" relations, with the same table as "mere thing." The example mirrors his example of the hammer in Being and Time, but in more personal terms because the table he describes is one in his own house, used by himself, his own wife, and his children. I think the example comes across as more authentic and less abstract than the hammer, which reads in Being and Time, to me anyway, as an imagined rather than lived example.

That the table as "mere thing" is a construct, founded on the basis of the table as part of a web of significance, goes to the heart of Heidegger's early philosophy and to his reversal of the traditional search for a metaphysics of pure objectivity, one accounting for objects from no point of view, without interpretation. For Heidegger, the "question of being" is never one asked by no one, to be answered by an account of objects as disclosed to no one, but one that is necessarily asked by us ("Dasein"). Thus, we and the way in which the world is disclosed to us are unavoidable at the start of our investigation. That world, he claims, is the world characterized by "care" and through relations of significance -- the "in order to" of those things (e.g., tables) disclosed to us.

Reading this book won't take the place of reading the much longer, fuller account provided in Being and Time. In fact, if you started by reading only this book, I would think it would spur you on to want to read Being and Time to fill out the compressed insights and accounts given here. What remains distinctive is a freshness of insight and, sometimes, a less restrained and less formal critique of the state of philosophy in Heidegger's time.

2 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars bad comment, October 5, 2008

By 

C. M. Ellis (Real Town USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ontology--The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Studies in Continental Thought) (Paperback)

This book is thoroughly worthless. It will add absolutely nothing to your knowledge of Heidegger. It does not clarify Being and Time one bit. Do not waste your money on it. On the other hand, the History of the Concept of Time lecture is very worthwile; buy it instead: it will teach you something about Husserlian phenomenology qua categorial intuition, the apriori, and intentionality, and by reading between the lines you can get a sense of how Heidegger diverges. But with the book in question, you won't even learn anything about hermeneutics or about facticity. Instead you'll get a whole lot of talk about Spengler. NOT worth more than $5!!