Customer Reviews

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research

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This text holds a key place in the development of Heidegger's thought. As such, it is a must-read for scholars or philosophers who are already familiar with Heidegger's work. It is not, however, a good place to begin studying Heidegger. This is due more to the bizarre translation than to the much lamented difficulty of Heidegger's thoughts. Here, the reader should keep in mind that this text is a compilation of lecture notes by both Heidegger and his students, and so naturally lacks the polished form of a philosophical paper or book. Our translator, however, did not assist our understanding in the slightest by his inaccuracies and rigid word usages.

As for this being a book on Aristotle, one should have no illusions. However, the reader who found this disappointingly "flaky" seems to have missed the subtitle of the book (which our translator inscrutably renders as), "Initiation into Phenomenological Research." The lecture, like the "Natorp Report" of 1922, represents Heidegger's attempt to articulate a "hermeneutics of facticity" as the systematic starting point for a reading of key Aristotelian texts.

This book contains fascinating explorations of the idea of philosophy, critiques of culture and of intellectual discourse, and difficult but insightful expositions of the basic "categories" of everyday human life. Here is the early Heidegger at his best, if not at his most reader-friendly.

This is one of the best examples of hermeneutics I have ever come across. Gadamer systematized the dicipline of hermeneutics but it was Heidegger's genius who developed the practice of hermeneutics years before, explaining the development of the history of philosophical ideas.

Even though the way in which Heidegger scholars concentrate on his relationship to Aristotle is extremely conservative, this book itself is very interesting. If you are looking for an introductory book on Aristotle, this is not it.

I was hoping for a book that would present some new slant on Aristotle's thought. I didn't get it. This is just another attempt by Heidegger to set out his own philosophy, with all of the tortured grammatical constructions and neologisms that one might expect. I think that Heidegger is most interesting when he's actually engaging other philosophers, and less so when setting out his own bizarre and flakey ideas. So if you're expecting to get some new insight into Aristotle, look elsewhere.