Abstract

This dissertation travels three routes. First, it explores the logic of Heidegger's readings. Second, it relates that logic to Heidegger's more radical remarks on the abysmal aspects of being, language, and history. Third, it examines those readings in light of Heidegger's belief that poetry promises a future at the end of metaphysics. In the first three chapters, I explain Heidegger's approach to poetic texts on the basis of two central claims. First, Heidegger's position on matters of poetics stems from the fact that, when reading, he wants to allow a body of work to furnish the poetics within which it will be read. In place of some previously established interpretive method , Heidegger defers to the poetics obliquely articulated in the key words, phrases, and stanzas of the work in question, what I term an "Ur-poem". Second, the relation of an author's corpus to its Ur-poem is akin to a musical work's relation to the tonal scale within which it was composed. In chapters Four and Five, I compare and contrast Heidegger's reflections on being, language, and history with his treatment of these themes in the readings of German poetry. Is he consistent? As is often the case with Heidegger, the answer is ambiguous. At times his readings seem to absorb the radicality of his thoughts on being, language, and history, at other times not. In chapters Six and Seven, I step back from Heidegger's readings in order to critically address them, and reflect upon Heidegger's sense of the role of poetry at the end of philosophy. Regarding the first issue, I argue that while there is ample ground upon which to disagree with Heidegger's readings, the overall project is both cogent and philosophically interesting. Concerning the place of poets at the end of philosophy, I argue that Heidegger's readings of poetry are ultimately devoted to exposing tonal ranges able to provide human beings with a poetic homeland