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Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to the Later Heidegger (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks)

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Folks interested in Martin Heidegger's early work can choose among several excellent book-length commentaries and a small library of interpretive works. Heidegger's later meditations on art, poetry, and technology seem to rarely inspire such close inspection. One notable exception is HEIDEGGER'S ESTRANGEMENTS by Gerald Bruns (a great, great book). This new study by George Pattison shows that these later essays stand up very well indeed to sustained intellectual scrutiny. Not overly-ambitious in scope, this little volume is a handy guide to some of the major themes and obsessions of the mature Heidegger. Highly recommended.

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to THE LATER HEIDEGGER. By George Pattison. 230 pp. London: Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0-415-20197-7 (pbk).

George Pattison, Dean of King's College, Cambridge, is a clear-headed, vigorous, and eminently fair-minded scholar who writes beautifully and with a certain passion; who has been concerned throughout to make his meaning as clear as possible to the reader; and who even allows himself an occasional bit of humor.

His book, in short, is a joy to read, and despite the length and complexity of certain of his arguments, so careful is he in preparing the ground, in structuring his exposition, and in his various summings up that you are never in any doubt as to where you have come from, exactly where you are, and where you are going. A good writer will always keep the needs of the reader in mind, and this is what Dr Pattison has done.

In this book he sets out to describe Heidegger's life and the background to his later works; the ideas of some of the more important of these later works, including 'The Question Concerning Technology,' 'The Origin of the Work of Art,' and 'What is Called Thinking?'; and his continuing importance. The book contains the following eight chapters: 1 - Is there a later Heidegger?; 2 - 1933 and after; 3 - Technology; 4 - Seeing things; 5 - Nietzsche; 6 - The first and second beginnings of philosophy; 7 - Holderlin; 8 - What kind of thinker? The book is rounded out with a section of Notes, a useful Bibliography, and an Index, and is well-printed on excellent paper, bound in a sturdy plasticized wrapper, and, amazingly, even has a stitched spine.

Readers will come away from this book with an understanding of the relationship between Heidegger's earlier and later thought; with a perception that, far from being Nazistic, Heidegger's thought clearly shows signs of an early migration away from Nazism as a movement which had no answer to planetary technology; and with a fairly firm grasp of such key concepts as 'destining,' 'enframing,' 'intentionality,' etc., along with an understanding of such things as Heidegger's hermeneutic procedures, the unusual nature of his thought, and his status as a new kind of thinker. Some background in Heidegger would be useful, but Dr Pattison's expository skills are so effective that, as a non-specialist myself, I found his book hard going in only a few places.

If this book has a weakness, it seems to me to come at the end in the author's discussion of Heidegger's encounter with the East, a discussion whose conclusion left me personally dissatisfied (though I can't claim to be non-partisan). But even here Dr Pattison showed himself to be fair-minded, something it isn't always easy to be. One is left with the impression that, not only is he a thorough and extremely well-informed scholar, he is also very impressive as a person, and I have no hesitation in recommending his interesting, informative, and well-written book to anyone who may be at all interested in the later thought of Heidegger.