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Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting Hardcover – November 15, 2011

by Richard L. Velkley (Author)

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In this groundbreaking work, Richard L. Velkley examines the complex philosophical relationship between Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss. Velkley argues that both thinkers provide searching analyses of the philosophical tradition’s origins in radical questioning. For Heidegger and Strauss, the recovery of the original premises of philosophy cannot be separated from rethinking the very possibility of genuine philosophizing.

Common views of the influence of Heidegger’s thought on Strauss suggest that, after being inspired early on by Heidegger’s dismantling of the philosophical tradition, Strauss took a wholly separate path, spurning modernity and pursuing instead a renewal of Socratic political philosophy. Velkley rejects this reading and maintains that Strauss’s engagement with the challenges posed by Heidegger—as well as by modern philosophy in general—formed a crucial and enduring framework for his lifelong philosophical project. More than an intellectual biography or a mere charting of influence, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy is a profound consideration of these two philosophers’ reflections on the roots, meaning, and fate of Western rationalism.

Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting

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Product Details

Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226852547
ISBN-13: 978-0226852546
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,265,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #687 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Existentialism
- #5711 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Political
- #5783 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Modern

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Thoroughgoing and Imaginitive

By nealowens on March 24, 2012

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Over the course of 200 pages, Velkley manages to recast Strauss' frequently misunderstood thought as a response to and, in a sense, a continuation of Heidegger's "Destruktion" and, in doing so, Velkley's book manages to make more sense of Strauss' corpus than any other writing that I have come across. He argues convincingly that the single thread that unites all of Strauss' work is the duality of the human as both political and transcending the political. The very duality of the soul which problematizes knowledge of the whole--the end towards which all philosophic investigation aims--nevertheless makes possible and sustains the philosophic life. To understand the whole, we must study the soul, that peculiar part of the whole that is also open to the whole. A true account of the whole, or of the "fundamental problems" surrounding the whole, ends up necessarily taking the shape of an account of the problems manifested by the soul in its pursuit of knowledge of the whole. But as Velkley observes, "The study of politics is the study that most reveals the nature of the soul; at the same time, it allows one to see how the soul is the adumbration of the whole." Through this analysis, as wispy a sketch as I have provided, Velkley brings to light the real reason for Strauss' concern with political philosophy (it is the proper point of entry into the study of the whole) and thereby indicates that Strauss' real criticism of Heidegger--that he neglects to pay due attention to the political--is not undertaken on moral or political grounds, but rather on ontological grounds. This books is brimming with surprising insights, and Velkley has a way of addressing questions that I hadn't even thought to raise. Highly recommended.

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Finally I get it.

By Fred Baumann on February 3, 2013

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Understanding a philosopher means understanding his project; understanding his (or her) project means understanding the great question he is asking himself. In an earlier book Richard Velkley cleared up for me so much of what Kant was really up to, by showing how Kant's basic question, namely the ends of reason, emerged in large part from his confrontation with the thought of Rousseau. Now Velkley has done something similar in the controversial case of Leo Strauss , in showing how Strauss's philosophic project emerged out of a confrontation with the thought of Heidegger. At least, Velkley has made it far clearer to me than it ever was. The book is careful, scholarly, and above all clear about some very difficult things. The pace is deliberate, something for which I am very grateful For more serious students of Strauss's thought, it seems to me to show with great nuance just how Strauss views the political and moral world, and why he turned to its study. For those who have been beguiled by polemics that treat Strauss as simply a political ideologue, this book should demonstrate to them how utterly off the mark those polemics are, and should confirm that Strauss's concerns were from first to last philosophic.

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Strauss as modern thinker

By DKO on February 3, 2014

Format: Hardcover

This is the third of three remarkable volumes by Richard Velkley exploring the problems of freedom in modern philosophy of the last two and a half centuries. His earlier books, focused on Kant and Rousseau, took up a genealogical project that has come to completion in the present volume, with its focus on Heidegger. Velkley’s Heidegger is the final resolution of the project of German Idealism (10, 84). Heidegger intensifies Kant’s proposal that “the inquiry into the moral … can be divorced from the nature of man and … the human natural concern with happiness,” and “pushes human freedom to its limit” by “divorcing freedom from the good entirely” (89–90). Velkley has worked out a detailed and powerful view of how this modern celebration of the most extreme freedom possible for human beings leads into a moral and political abyss. Heidegger warns us of the abyss, and falls into it himself when he supports tyrannical politics. The only standard left is intellectual courage: “Questioning, no longer a preliminary step to the answer and thus to knowledge, becomes itself the highest form of knowledge” (Rectoral Address).
Leo Strauss figures into Velkley’s story as a thoroughly modern thinker who teetered on the edge of Heidegger’s abyss. Velkley’s Strauss discreetly but thoroughly agrees with Heidegger in rejecting any “guidance” that depends on philosophical access to a transcendent good, and accepts permanent questioning over any solution. The philosophical consummation of the book (112–14) is Velkley’s answer to the question, “What is the standard for political choices that replaces [Heidegger’s historicism] if it is not knowledge of moral-political absolutes?Read more ›

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