Heidegger's Unterwegs zur Sprache is one of his most important books and this English translation is a timely addition to the English edition of his "Works." No other single topic is of more interest to the current commentators on Heidegger than that of language. There is a growing sense of a kinship between Heidegger and Wittgenstein and an increasing number of efforts to link continental and Anglo-American thought more closely together--all of which should be stimulated by the appearance of this (...) translation. The work is also interesting from another perspective. The central document in the attempt to relate Heidegger to the East is found in this work in the opening dialogue between Heidegger and Professor Tezuka of the Imperial University of Tokyo about the nature of the experience of language in the East and in Western "metaphysical" Europe. The other essays, particularly "The Way to Language," offer an excellent presentation of the later Heidegger's general view of language. Original language itself, according to Heidegger, is Being and it is this which stirs man into speaking. Human utterance is the revelation or expression of Being rather than, as in the traditional view, a representation or "picture" of "objects" symbolized by sounds or words. If man is "open" to Being then Being will find in language its "house"--implying thereby that the dimensions of the house are the limits of the revealability [[sic]] of Being. Human utterance is "closed off" from "original language" insofar as "Logos" is reduced to "logistics," that is, insofar as all other talk than the mathematico-logical talk of the age of Technik is dismissed as belonging to "unreason." The translation itself is well-done. The Editors of the "Works," in consultation with Heidegger, have chosen to omit the first essay in the 1959 German original in order to publish it in another volume yet to appear. The translators have supplied us with no index, only a few footnotes, explaining their decisions, no "Introduction," no bibliography--all of which can only be regretted.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume, dedicated to Rudolph Bultmann, contains the text of a lecture held in 1927 and that of a letter addressed to the participants in a colloquium held at Drew University in 1964. Separated by thirty-seven years and the workings of the "turn" in Heidegger's thought, the texts are profoundly different. In "Phenomenology and Theology", seeking to delineate the notion of Theology as a science, Heidegger says that Theology is a "positive" science in the somewhat Wolffian sense that its subject (...) matter is a "posit," an "existent" being: God. Christian theology is centered on the positing of Christ and concerns "Christianliness", which is the existentiell posture of belief in the "Crucifixion." As such, Christian Theology concerns a specific "Way of Being" and to this extent is subordinate to Philosophy, which deals with the more radical realm of Being itself. Theology seeks to explicate "believing existence" but Philosophy provides the categories with which Existenz itself is to be understood. Philosophy is ontological-existential; Theology is ontico-existentiell. The whole discussion is determined by the terms of Being and Time, § 3. The second text, "The Problem of a Non-Objectifying Thought and Language in Contemporary Theology," holds out to Theology the ideal of a thinking which is neither ontic nor ontological, neither existentiell nor existential, but altogether beyond the realm of concepts. Once again Theology is directed to follow the lead of a more radical undertaking now no longer called Philosophy but simply Thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The present volume is one of the few recent works to devote its attention to the "early" Heidegger, yet it contributes significantly to our understanding of Heidegger's later development. "Transcendence" means crossing beyond the being to the horizon within which the being appears. The "transcendental" make-up of Dasein, which is the power of Dasein to make this crossing, is the principal theme of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik and Vom Wesen des Grundes. "Difference" is the "ontological difference" between Being (...) and beings which is discussed again in Vom Wesen des Grundes and--since Being is not-any-being--in the analysis of the Nothing in Was ist Metaphysik? The pivotal element in Rosales' interpretation is the radical finitude of Dasein's "transcendence." For transcendental-horizonal thinking is unequipped to explain the radical concealment of Being which Dasein experiences. While providing the horizon within which things appear, transcendental-horizonal thinking does not offer an explanation for the recalcitrant hiddenness of Being. Hence Being must be experienced as a-letheia, as the original, independent process of concealing itself, and of revealing itself. And a break with the early transcendental-horizonal or Kantian, and so "subjectivistic" or "metaphysical" perspective of Sein und Zeit is necessitated. While the author owes a clear debt to Marx and Schulz, his interpretation is impressive and a contribution.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Kostos Axelos, Greek-born Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne and author of a trilogy in French, Le Déploiement de l'errance, and of several French translations of Lucás and Heidegger, attempts an important confrontation of the two thinkers whom many regard as the major thinkers in European thought today: Marx and Heidegger. To some this is a confrontation of the left and the right, but Axelos moves in an entirely different range altogether. Heidegger himself remarks that a confrontation with Marx must (...) be made in terms of the problem of history. Both Heidegger and Marx--to some extent as the heirs of Hegel--are philosophers of the future. Axelos' book is written from the Heideggerian standpoint, centering on Heidegger's interpretation of the present age in terms of Technik, which is itself a movement in the mission of Being. The movements of the Geschick, as Heidegger says in Der Satz vom Grund and as Axelos emphasizes, are a world-play. The task of a thinking concerned with the future is to play along with the play. The future in Marxist and Heideggerian terms is a "planetary" age, beyond all nationalism, ruled by a global or planetary technology. Thinking must decide whether and how such technology will be an instrument of liberation or of oppression. Axelos' confrontation raises many central and interesting questions: what is the relationship between Heidegger's Gelassenheit and Marx's praxis? What hope is there for a future governed by a play? etc. The book can be recommended as both original and provocative.--J. D. C. (shrink)

John Sallis of Duquesne University has edited this fine collection of essays on Heidegger as a tribute to the latter on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Some of the contributions are papers that were read at a Heidegger Symposium at Duquesne in October, 1966. There is a brief letter by Heidegger addressed to Arthur Schrynemakers, chairman of the Symposium, in which Heidegger submits a set of questions for the consideration of the Symposium participants. Sallis contributes an article which responds (...) to these questions. Zygmunt Adamczewski's contribution is a commentary and elaboration of some issues, e.g., the translation of Wesen, which he discussed personally with Heidegger in 1968. Edward Ballard gives a very clear-headed account of Heidegger's critique of science. There is an excellent account of the "Ereignis" by Theodore Kisiel and of "Time and Being" by André Schuwer. Other contributors include C. D. Keyes, Thomas Langan, Ralph Powell, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and John Wild. The volume is lacking in two respects. Except for a brief piece by Langan and for certain implications of Powell's study, there is no really sustained and well-developed critique of Heidegger either internal or external, sympathetic or unsympathetic, a failure not uncommon among Heideggerians. Moreover, there is no index of any kind--of topics, of names, or of texts of Heidegger--which impairs the book's usefulness. --J. D. C. (shrink)

Miss Stambaugh's new translation of Identität und Differenz is a welcome addition to the growing body of English translations of Heidegger. The special merit of Miss Stambaugh's work is that the translator was a student of Heidegger's and was able to prepare this translation in consultation with him. Her work should be particularly well received in view of the very poor quality of the previous translation of the same work, published for some reason under the title Essays in Metaphysics. The (...) "Introduction" is well done but regrettably short as the work stands in need of further explication. There certainly is room for an expanded introduction, as the lectures--even in both languages--barely fill their 146 pages. Miss Stambaugh's linguistic decisions are usually sound. For example, faced with the Heideggerian ambiguity of "Er-eignis," she simply combines the dual meanings into "the event of appropriation," which is as much as one can do with this critically important word in Heidegger's vocabulary.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The author, a professor of psychiatry and religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is interested in developing a religious consciousness which is in many ways opposed to that of the existentialists, at least the more anguished existentialists. "Many contemporary Christians appear to be taking the advice of the Apostle Paul to 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling' out of context." And again: "Modern man's nibbling on intellectual fodder and breathing of 'existential' complaints has led him far (...) astray from his true destiny and rendered him a caricature of his true nature." Play is neither deadly serious nor mere fun, but these are the only alternatives of which modern man is aware. Modern man has forgotten the unique character of play and since this belongs to the essence of religion and liturgy, he has forgotten the essence of Christianity. True religion is playful. And the age of leisure has the time to cultivate play if it would set about doing so. In the course of his argument the author surveys the views of Freud, Erikson, Brown, Eliade, Otto, Huizinga, and Callois.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957 under the title Sunrise to Eternity, this Seabury edition performs the welcome service of presenting again the outstanding English exposition of Boehme's mystico-philosophical thought. The book is extremely sober and scholarly, systematically demythologizing the standard account of Boehme's life and work. Many expositions of Boehme are cluttered with unlikely and distracting accounts of his personal sanctity and numerous revelations. Stoudt, however, gives a tightly argued, well-documented account of Boehme's biography, alternating chapters on Boehme's life with chapters (...) on the works of the same period. This is extremely helpful, for it exhibits Boehme's development quite clearly. Stoudt makes it very plain that Boehme's early thought is couched in the language of alchemy but that it outgrows that strange vocabulary to become by the end of his life a mature spirituality, steeped in the earlier German mystical tradition and with a speculative depth which anticipates the main lines of German idealism. Boehme is not, then, as the standard hagiographers would have him, an unlettered shoemaker, sprung untainted from the breast of God and untaught by any mortal predecessor. Stoudt is not always as clear as we would hope, but, considering Boehme's notorious obscurity he is clearer than most. While Stoudt points out Boehme's origin in the German tradition that precedes him, he underplays the dependence of Boehme on Meister Eckhardt, or at least leaves that whole problem insufficiently analyzed. There is a brief preface by Paul Tillich.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This compact sketch of Fichte's idealism is No. 82 in the PUF series "Initiation philosophique," directed by Jean Lacroix. Bourgeois' book follows the classic division proposed by Gueroult of the genesis of Fichte's thought into three stages: the early philosophy of the ego up to 1800, including the 1794 edition of the Wissenschaftslehre and the celebrated "two introductions" of 1794; the philosophy of Being, 1800-1804, especially The Vocation of Man; and finally the philosophy of the Absolute, 1804 and thereafter, which (...) includes the Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age and The Way to the Blessed Life. For Bourgeois, these may be just as well characterized, respectively, as the philosophy of moral obligation, of vocation, and of love. He hopes to defend the early Fichte against the charge of "subjective" idealism levelled at him by Schelling and Hegel. He singles out for emphasis the close connection that Fichte makes--Kierkegaard notwithstanding--between life and idealism, and finds this a recurrent characteristic of all of Fichte's works. His interpretation of the first Wissenschaftslehre focusses upon Fichte's remark in the First Introduction that "the kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon the kind of man that one is." This deserves emphasis, anticipating as it does not only the Existentialist interpretation of philosophy but also the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey. The book is brief and to the point and should prove helpful in the difficult task of unravelling Fichte's thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Volume XVIII of the distinguished "Religious Perspectives" series, this translation of Jaspers' 1962 publication Der philosophische Glaube ansichts [[sic]] der Offenbarung is an important addition to the library of English translations of Jaspers' works. It is a lengthy work and, as is typical of Jaspers, is heavily punctuated with textual divisions and subdivisions--a procedure so exaggerated in Jaspers that it is quite distracting. The translation of E. B. Ashton, who has since translated Jaspers' three-volume major work Philosophie, is extremely good, (...) just as one would expect. Jaspers holds that there is an underlying metaphysical structure in being--the Encompassing--which eludes any final conceptual formulation. It can only be approached through "ciphers," symbols which obliquely intimate the nature of the ultimate, and which it belongs to the philosopher to read. While on the one hand Jaspers quarrels with the various religious faiths because of their tendency to take their own ciphers as final and definitive, he is on the other hand profoundly interested in the historical faiths inasmuch as they represent important and deep expressions of faith in the transcendent. In this book Jaspers seeks a rapprochement between "philosophical faith"--an idea which he has ultimately borrowed from Kant's notion of rational faith in the speculatively unknowable thing-in-itself--and the faith that is based on revelation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The present contribution to the continuing translation of the works of Heidegger into English under the editorship of J. Glenn Gray is one of the most valuable. The first-rate translation, preceded by an excellent Introduction, is by Albert Hofstadter, whose popular anthology, Philosophies of Art and Beauty, had included his translation of Heidegger's 1935 essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art." That essay, along with six other pieces, hitherto untranslated, make up the present volume--including the first essay of Unterwegs (...) zur Sprache, which was not included in the English translation, On the Way to Language. The volume also contains a translation of Heidegger's poem "Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens," under the title "The Thinker as Poet." Found here too are the two important essays "Building, Dwelling and Thinking," and "The Thing," which together represent the most important of Heidegger's all too brief but very suggestive treatments of the "world" as the "Foursome". Readers of Being and Time who consult these later essays will be surprised to discover what has come of the "world" in Heidegger's later thought, and in particular of the relationship of God to the world, a theme which was bracketed in Being and Time. As a whole this very valuable collection deals with the later Heidegger's highly aesthetic, highly poetic, view of Being and of Dasein's relationship to Being. These essays represent the final outcome of his use of the phenomenological method to approach Being; and they contain, if anything does, what Heidegger means by "overcoming metaphysics." If Heidegger's later thought is, as has been suggested, a Seinsmystik, it is no less a Seinsdichtung.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The present collection of essays was designed by translator David Lachterman to provide the reader with a better understanding of Scheler’s major work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Values, which will also be published in translation by Northwestern University Press. Lachterman provides us with an illuminating preface which sketches the general character of Scheler’s thought, particularly its relationship to Husserl and Heidegger, and which discusses each of the five selections. Four of the five essays presented here are incomplete (...) works, and three were never published in Scheler’s lifetime. The first, "The Idols of Self-Knowledge," is an attempt to differentiate psychical and physical phenomena and criticizes the way Brentano went about making this distinction. In "Ordo amoris" Scheler maintains with Augustine and Pascal, the priority of love over cognition. In "Phenomenology and the Theory Cognition," Scheler develops his own account of the phenomenological method. "The Theory of the Three Facts" represents Scheler’s views on the distinction between phenomenological, scientific and common sense "facts." The last essay is entitled "Idealism and Realism" and demonstrates "that it is a mistake to opt for either one of the parties to this conflict," and argues instead for a phenomenology of essences. The last section of this text, which was to be a confrontation of Scheler with the then recently published Being and Time, never appeared but is still awaiting publication in the critical edition of Scheler’s works. One welcomes Prof. Lachterman’s initiative in making available to the English reader these essays of one of the most significant figures in twentieth century German philosophy.—J. D. C. (shrink)

With the exception of three articles, all of the pieces collected here by Ballard and Scott appeared in the Winter, 1970 issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy commemorating Heidegger’s 80th birthday. The opening essay by Poeggeler, "Heidegger Today," masterfully reviews the state of Heideggerian scholarship, sketching the direction which Heidegger’s interpretations have taken, and outlining his own unitary view of Heidegger’s development. This is followed by an interesting essay from the Heidegger critic Karl Löwith who, after some revealing personal (...) recollections about Heidegger, takes up the question of the relationship of Dasein, which stands out from and transcends nature, with the natural world, a question Heidegger himself omits. There is also a close exposition by Joseph Kockelmans of the all-important "Time and Being" lecture of 1962 and of its relationship to Being and Time. Hans-Georg Gadamer contributes a philosophical essay—not a piece of Heideggerian scholarship—on the nature of "empty" time, i.e., the temporal project which we hope to "fill up," and of the "transition" into fulfillment. Editor Scott gives an account of Dasein in Being and Time by an analogy with Leibniz’s monad as a self-originating, purposeful unit of activity. Theodore Kisiel differentiates the mathematical a priori, described by Heidegger as the root conception of modern science, from Heidegger’s own "hermeneutical" a priori. There are three studies of language: Volmann-Schluck discusses language and myth, while John Sallis studies how language and the reversal are intertwined in Heidegger’s thinking; Don Ihde differentiates "existential" phenomenology as a phenomenology of perception from "hermeneutic" phenomenology as a phenomenology of meaning, signification, and language. In addition to essays by A. V. Schoenborn, F. J. Smith, and Edward Ballard, there is also a concluding contribution by Jean Beaufret who offers a portrait of Heidegger "as seen from France."—J.D.C. (shrink)

Mohanty’s work is a collection of essays whose range of interest is quite astounding: phenomenology, analytic philosophy and Indian thought. Part One is concerned with the problem of the given, a problem of great interest to both analytic and phenomenological philosophy, and argues against a theory of raw, uninterpreted sense data. The title of the book is drawn from one of the essays contained in this part, which makes a plea for a non-speculative, descriptive ontology of the given. Part Two (...) offers a series of critical essays on the work of Quine, Goodman, Ryle and Moore on the one hand, and Husserl and Hartmann on the other. The last part is devoted to a study of the Indian "Nyaya" philosophy, and shows its relevance to the epistemological issues that Mohanty has raised throughout this volume. Perhaps the major interest of this book is the striking unity the author finds among these diverse philosophical strains.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays and lectures which have all been published previously. Heidegger prefaces the volume with a series of remarks, written in 1967, which elaborate upon the title Wegmarken. The path in question is what he has called on numerous occasions his Denkweg. The path is the way of thinking into the truly thought-worthy. The path goes back into what was once thought out and is now covered over, and forward into what is to be thought out (...) but is still concealed. The thinker en route to Being has had his thinking set in motion by Being itself. Thinking travels a troubled path, for it stands in constant danger of being flooded by mere information. Whether or not it can bypass this roadblock is still the essential question for our time. Three of the texts collected here were available only in journals and Festschriften. It is also interesting that Heidegger includes all three segments of Was ist Metaphysik? He does not fuse them into a single text but arranges them separately. The other selections are: Vom Wesen des Grundes; Vom Wesen der Wahrheit; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit; Brief über den "Humanismus"; Zur Seinsfrage; Kants These über das Sein. Here we see what Heidegger himself has singled out as being representative of, and significant for, the course of his thought. The emphasis upon "path" argues strongly for those who would see in Heidegger's thought an evolving, developing growth. The unity of early and later Heidegger then is not the unity of a single doctrine but the unity of a single search or path, unified by a single object of pursuit.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Grimsley has written a work which combines a sketch of Kierkegaard’s biography with an account of the contents of his major writings. A good part of the time, his efforts are directed almost exclusively to studies of Kierkegaard’s works, and these are only thinly threaded together by biographical information. His exposition is clear, and his interpretations are often interesting. Thus, in Chapter 5, he explores the possibility that Kierkegaard’s "secret," which lay behind his great melancholy, and which stood in the (...) way of marrying Regina, may have consisted in "partial or complete impotence". While Grimsley, in general, takes the pseudonymous character of Kierkegaard’s authorship seriously, he shows something of a lapse from this in Chapter 7 where the views of Johannes Climacus and of Kierkegaard are all but identified. At one point he even speaks of "Kierkegaard’s philosophy" in respect to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. There is a helpful bibliography and index at the end.—J.D.C. (shrink)

This volume is a translation of the last three essays of Nietzsche, Vol. II and of the essay "Overcoming Metaphysics" from Vorträge and Aufsätze. There is a brief introduction to the volume, the most interesting feature of which is a translation of Heidegger’s response to three questions put to him by the translator concerning the subject matter of this volume. In the first two studies, "Metaphysics as the History of Being" and "Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics," Heidegger (...) develops his interpretation of metaphysics as the history of Being itself. He traces the way that Being is first understood by the Greeks as ousia, and shows how in Plato and Aristotle, ousia is determined in such a way as to give rise to the later notions of essentia and existentia. The history of these terms is then followed all the way up to Schelling, Kierkegaard, and Being and Time itself. The third essay, "Recollection in Metaphysics" is a very penetrating and sharp formulation of Heidegger’s attempt to think upon that from which metaphysics originates but from which it is also essentially closed off, viz., the truth of Being itself. The last essay, included at Heidegger’s own request, deals with the same theme in terms of "overcoming" metaphysics. Stambaugh’s translation goes as far as can be hoped in providing a readable English text. There is no index.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Dr. Fuad Nucho, a native Jordanian and presently a pastor in Yeadon, Pa., provides us with a lucid and illuminating account of the central problem of freedom in the Christian existentialism of Nicolas Berdyaev. Confident that the thought of Berdyaev, while professedly not a "System," suffers no distortion from an organized and systematized explication, Dr. Nucho orders his work around the problem of freedom conceived of as a paradox demanding resolution. He deals in turn with the nature, implications, and solution (...) of the paradox, after a brief, informative discussion of the influences on Berdyaev's thinking. Critical and evaluatory remarks are reserved for a final chapter, so as not to interrupt the progress of his argument. For Berdyaev, man is a citizen of two worlds, divided between an inclination toward material objects which enslave him, and an aspiration toward the transcendent world of divine freedom. Nature, society, and history all tend to enslave man, yet they are also the theater in which his freedom must be exercised. Man himself is conceived of essentially as a free being. Freedom for Berdyaev means creativity, where creativity is taken in the radical sense of production out of nothing. Hence the alliance of freedom with the "nothing," and so with Boehme's Ungrund. The paradox is resolved only when, first, the world of natural necessity is recognized as perfused with symbol and when, finally, the revelation of Christ is taken as the meaning of that symbolization. Such a liberation comes to historical man in metahistorical moments when he grasps the eternal meaning behind the phenomena of nature and history, that is, when he grasps the end of history and nature. Nucho concludes that Berdyaev is a religious thinker in the tradition of the early Christian Fathers—a modern parallel, in particular, to Clement of Alexandria.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This interesting volume approaches Heidegger in a fresh and suggestive way. The author views Heidegger's thought as a confrontation with the history of metaphysics, an assumption which can hardly be contested. After a preliminary characterization of the essence of "metaphysics" as the later Heidegger understands that word, Laffoucreière reconstructs, chronologically, the history of metaphysics as Heidegger conceives it, studying in turn Heidegger's interpretation of: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Nietzsche. She approaches Heidegger's thought through the eyes (...) of his Nietzsche-interpretation. Heidegger sees the history of the west in profoundly Nietzschean tones: it is the history of nihilism and of the domination of western thought by Christian-Platonic metaphysics whose pivotal concept, God as the first cause, has deteriorated to the point of meaninglessness. The times are needy and it is only by a new turn, a new sending of Being as Mission, that nihilism can be overcome. Laffoucreière explains clearly and forcefully that Heidegger's Seinsdenken is not atheistic, except in the sense of the theos of western metaphysics. She shows that a major concern of Heidegger's thought is to overcome the God of metaphysics in favor of the divine God to whom man can bend his knee. She argues that Heidegger's attempt to retrieve the original sense of Being and man, far from being atheistic, aims in fact at making possible a renewed sense of the living God. The interpretation is sound and for those who doubt it there is a three sentence endorsement of the work by Heidegger himself in which he welcomes the publication of "a clear and pertinent exposition of my thought."--J. D. C. (shrink)

One can only agree with Editor John R. Silber's observation on this little volume that it is "the finest introduction to Jaspers' own comprehensive philosophy...." Overshadowed in this country by the great attention currently given to Heidegger, the importance and power of Jaspers' thought has not yet been appreciated by English-speaking philosophers. Far from being opposed to the natural sciences, Jaspers-who began his intellectual life as a psychiatrist--says that without a grasp of science the philosopher is "like a blind man." (...) The properly philosophical subject matter, however, is the realm that inevitably eludes and "transcends" the scientific approach to man and natural objects. This he calls the "encompassing." The three lectures which compose The Philosophy of Existence, which was written after the publication of the three volumes of Philosophie and the composition of most of Von der Wahrheit, range over the whole of Jaspers' philosophical work. The first lecture concerns "The Being of the Encompassing"; the second, "Truth," which like the Encompassing is a continually receding ideal and so incapable of definitive articulation. The last deals with "reality," an ultimate which is grasped only in "ciphers" or symbols which are always able to be replaced by more adequate symbols. The Introduction and translation by Richard Gradau are marvelously done. The lectures themselves, delivered in 1937, were Jaspers' last public appearance, made shortly after his dismissal from his post at Heidelberg by the National Socialists.--J. D. C. (shrink)

With the publication of this translation the quality of Heidegger literature available in English takes a quantum leap forward. No book--save perhaps Otto Poeggeler's--can match Marx's for its depth of insight into Heidegger's thought. The central theme of the book is as follows. Hegel's claim to have consummated the Western "tradition" is accepted by Heidegger. The foundations of this tradition are in Greek ontology. Marx locates the classic formulation of the basic tenets of Greek ontology in the Aristotelian doctrine of (...) ousia. Being as ousia is the perduring, necessary and intelligible. The Hegelian idea of Being remains within the Aristotelian perspective because it determines Being as the unfolding of the self-same substance according to necessary law and so as to develop into a stage of maximum intelligibility. Being is more radically temporal, of course, for Hegel but this stays within the perspective of the Greek notion of eternity, because the Hegelian "substance" is relentlessly working out an eternal pattern of categories which is inscribed in its very essence, and which the Logic articulates. Heidegger's philosophy seeks to "overcome" the "tradition," and so the whole metaphysics of "substance and subject." Being is even more radically temporalized, for Heidegger does not think time on the "model" of eternity. Being as time is not the movement of the self-same through time but time itself--as Being. The necessity and lawfulness of Being, moreover, is replaced by the "play" of the "fourfold." And the radical intelligibility of Being is overcome in Heidegger's thought by the interplay of concealment and unconcealment. Finally, against the Aristotelian-Hegelian teleology Heidegger posits the hope of a "new beginning" of history whose coming to pass--by a "turn" on Being's part--can only be obscurely intimated and at best "awaited." Not the least among this book's merits is the refreshingly critical attitude of the author to Heidegger--the book he says was prompted by a reflection on Heidegger-critic Lowith's [[sic]] work on Heidegger. His criticism of Heidegger in the conclusion of this book sets out important objections which the usual commentator ignores or evades or attributes to a "fallenness" into "calculative" thinking.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This work is an invaluable aid to Heidegger scholars. It brings the bibliography of Heidegger to completion through 1967. The work begins with a presentation of the writings of Heidegger in chronological order. Next the author lists all the translations of Heidegger's works, following the order in which those works were presented in the previous section. It is interesting to note that there are no less than four translations of Sein und Zeit in Japanese. The literature on Heidegger comes next. (...) It is presented year by year, with the authors within a single year listed alphabetically. This section includes both books and articles. A spot check reveals inevitable omissions and mistakes. No entry occurs for the partial translation of Vom Wesen des Grundes in The Search for Being, trans. and ed. by J. Wilde and W. Kimmel, pp. 507-520. The fascinating fact that Gilbert Ryle reviewed Sein und Zeit in Mind, 38, pp. 355-370) is obscured by referring to "Ryle, E." in both the entry and the index. This is unfortunate because of the many favorable things that Ryle has to say about Heidegger in this review. None of the good articles and translations of originally foreign articles into English on Heidegger that appear in Philosophy Today are to be found. Helene Weiss' "The Greek Conception of Time and Being in the Light of Heidegger's Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, II, pp. 173-187 does not appear, although an article on Heidegger in the previous issue of the same journal does. There is no index of topics but only of authors. Building on H. Lübbe's twelve-year old bibliography this work is of great service to Heideggerians.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This translation of Heidegger's 1929 essay, Vom Wesen des Grundes, is overdue and will be gratefully received by the English-speaking student of Heidegger. The essay is quite technical as it works out the theme of Dasein's ability to transcend beings and comprehend them in their Being. The German text is exceptionally rugged going, even for Heidegger. For example, the important transition that Heidegger makes from umwillen to Wille, has no real correlate in English, but Malick handles such difficulties quite well. (...) One can, however, quarrel with two points in this edition. Malick's assertion that the essay is fundamentally concerned with the theme of the "world" is only quantitatively true. Its deeper interest is surely to go beyond the world and to explain its roots in transcendence and freedom. The most important part of the book is Part III in which the finite and groundless character of Dasein's freedom-transcendence is thematized. The translation of "Grund" as "Reasons" in the title is misleading as it lacks the necessary connotation of "foundation," "basis," "soil." Thus, although unwieldy, "The Essence of Ground" would perhaps be a more accurate translation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Rene Le Senne belongs to the classical tradition of French philosophy. Unlike Sartre and Merleau-Ponty who owe so much to German sources Le Senne draws his philosophical sustenance primarily from the French tradition of Descartes, Octave Hamelin, Maine de Biran, and Bergson. His thought is the primary form of "Neo-Cartesianism" in contemporary philosophy. He is most well known for the alliance he formed in 1934 with Louis Lavelle and which is known as the Philosophie de l'Esprit movement. This movement subscribes (...) to two principles: the primacy of the Cartesian experience of the thinking self, and the discoverability of God in the experience of the self. Obstacle and Value, Le Senne’s major work, was published in 1934. In this work he develops a concept of the "I" as the "unity of experience," the matrix of all particular experiences, of both ideal cognitions and concrete existential encounters. This "ideo-existential" complex is what he calls "spirit." Spirit develops in an opposition or tension with "obstacles" which resist it. Spirit overcomes these obstacles by subverting them to its own goals, thereby endowing them with "value." The experience of obstacles gives rise to the hope of an absolute value. The spirit and God exist in a reciprocal relationship. God is never something wholly other to the self; and the self is in its inner being divinized by its relationship to God. There is then a double cogito: the cogito as man and the cogito as God. All experience is dominated by this reciprocal relationship between the self and God. The concluding chapters of the book explain how man can have the experience of being independent of God, without God. There is a helpful introduction by translator Dauenhauer, a brief bibliography, and no index of any kind.—J.D.C. (shrink)

This is the second of a planned 5-volume translation of the most significant entries in Kierkegaard’s Papirer, which in the Danish edition consumes 20 volumes. The translation is done by Howard and Edna Hong, translators of the Philosophical Fragments and other works of Kierkegaard, and the winners of the National Book Award for Translation in 1967 for their translation of Volume I of the Journals. Volumes I through IV are arranged according to topics in alphabetical order, and within each topic (...) the entries appear in chronological order. Volume V will be devoted to autobiographical material. Some of the more significant themes covered in Volume II include faith, freedom, God, grace, Hegel, history, humor and irony, the individual, and knowledge. Each entry is numbered consecutively and then its source in the Danish edition and date are given. There is a collation of entries in the English edition with the Danish Papirer, and over 60 pages of notes by the translators. The journals of any philosopher are an important aid in understanding his thought, but in the case of Kierkegaard they are especially significant because of the indirect, pseudonymous and ironical character of Kierkegaard’s writings. We are fortunate to have this highly professional translation of these important texts at our disposal to assist us in the difficult work of interpreting Kierkegaard.—J.D.C. (shrink)

As Gelven points out in his Preface, this is the only section-by-section commentary on the full text of Being and Time. Being and Time is divided not only into two "divisions" of six chapters each but also into eighty-three numbered "sections". As such it provides an efficient and useful handbook for those who try to make their way through the rugged terrain of Heidegger's text, especially for the beginner. Gelven's prose is crisp and clean and uncluttered by Germanicisms. He often (...) uses uncomplicated and helpful illustrations. The interpretation stresses the importance of the analysis of "understanding" taking § 31 as "the key to Being and Time". In fact, Gelven groups §§ 25-38 as a whole under the single heading "Understanding". Such an emphasis seems entirely legitimate. He treats the historical sources of Being and Time but often leaves them undeveloped. He is content, for example, to devote a single paragraph to Dilthey whose influence upon Heidegger is so decisive, with the comment that not much is ever said about Dilthey in English philosophical literature. One also finds it a bit hard to swallow the author's argument that "Dasein" means literally "to be here" and, in sentence form: "Here I am, open to possibilities". In all, however, Gelven's work is a distinctive contribution and not a mere reworking of already familiar themes.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Fr. James Demske first published this book in 1963 in Germany under the title: Sein, Mensch und Tod: Das Todesproblem bei Martin Heidegger. Except for minor revisions--such as changing the numeration and headings of the chapters and the occasional expansion of paragraphs--this is substantially the same book. The author follows the development of the problem of death in Heidegger through the famous discussion in Being and Time and into the later works. The fact of the continuing importance of "death" in (...) Heidegger's work is easily overlooked. But while the phrase "Being-unto-death" disappears after Being and Time the same phenomenon of Dasein's mortality reappears in the later accounts of the "Quadrate" : the heavens and earth, gods, and mortals. Chapter six of Demske's book is one of the few and clearest accounts of this central theme in Heidegger's thought. The book as a whole, apart from its thematization of the problem of death, presents a sound appraisal and a clear overview of the development of Heidegger's "path of thought" and is, on that account too, a welcome addition to the literature.--J. D. C. (shrink)

After Being and Time itself, A Letter on Humanism is perhaps Heidegger’s most important work. It is a comparatively clear statement of the "later Heidegger" which focuses on the possibility of a "humanism" and the meaning of "ethics" for the thinking-committed-to-being. It is also Heidegger’s own retrieval of Being and Time twenty years later, giving a decisive self-interpretation of the main lines of this so-called "early work." Cousineau aims at providing the reader with a "handy, scholarly tool" for interpreting the (...) Letter. He does this in three ways. 1) He provides a running commentary on selected but important passages from the Letter, with a generous use of the original German followed by a translation or paraphrase. 2) He takes a great deal of pain with Heidegger’s German and does not hesitate to call the only currently available translation of the Letter in English "deplorable", a judgment this translation frequently merits. 3) Finally, he presents us with an extensive annotated bibliography of works in seven languages which has the unusual feature of being coded by the letters A, B, and C which he defines as follows: anti-humanism, i.e., the interpretation of the relation between Being and Dasein advanced by the author sees Heidegger as devaluing man’s essence; metahumanism, the relationship is seen as unrealistic and mythical, and man’s essence is absent; authentic humanism, the interpretor [[sic]] sees in Heidegger’s view a representation of man’s true possibility for being human. Cousineau wisely reserves a category "D" for those whose position does not accommodate itself to these classifications. There are 95 entries in this bibliography which ranges over most of the important literature.—J.D.C. (shrink)

As Ihde points out, he has undertaken the perilous task of writing a book about a philosopher who is still actively at work and developing his thought. Yet he has succeeded in providing the reader with an access to Ricoeur’s work which makes it plain to those who are not familiar with Ricoeur why he has achieved such prominence. After an illuminating introduction, Ihde devotes the opening chapters of his book to Ricoeur’s "structural phenomenology," a more or less orthodox Husserlian (...) employment of the phenomenological method. This is exemplified by Ricoeur’s "eidetic" analysis of the will in Freedom and Nature and in a modified way in Fallible Man. Ihde then passes on to Ricoeur’s later "hermeneutic phenomenology," a phenomenology of interpretation which is to be found in his analysis of myth and symbol in The Symbolism of Evil. The growing interest in hermeneutics explains Ricoeur’s concern with the problem of language, which is Ricoeur’s current line of interest. The study translated under the title Freud and Philosophy is discussed in this context. There is much to recommend Ricoeur to the English reader, not the least of which is his open admission of the limits of the phenomenological method and his attempt to complement it with the "objectivistic" approaches, and particularly in recent years with linguistic analysis and the various linguistic sciences. For Ricoeur, no one philosophical method is exclusively valid; the true method is a dialectic between various and even opposed methods. There is an extensive bibliography of Ricoeur’s works and a helpful index of names and topics.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Strange as it may seem, this volume is the first booklength study of Jaspers in English And it is certainly very welcome and long overdue. The author studied under Jaspers in 1934-1935 at Heidelberg. After a brief biography he clarifies a number of issues which always arise and frequently obfuscate discussions of existential philosophers--such as the problems of demonstration and of clarity. Wallraff then treats in turn: philosophy and science, Jaspers' theory of society and its institutions; the existential themes of (...) freedom, communication, and ultimate situations. The following chapters concern Jaspers' metaphysical views: transcendence, cipher-reading, and the encompassing. Wallraff is thus plainly following the outline of Jaspers' thought which is provided by Jaspers' own magnum opus, Philosophy: I. World-Orientation; II. Existenz-illumination; III. Metaphysics. The treatment is always clear and sympathetic. The author avoids any sustained criticism of Jaspers; nor does he conduct any investigation of the once much discussed relationship between Jaspers and Heidegger. The author also provides his readers with a helpful bibliography of Jasper's works and their English translations.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This book is a valuable contribution to the growing list of works appearing in English on Heidegger. Its special merit lies in the fact that its author brings to his discussion of Heidegger a familiarity with Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The author explains Sein und Zeit in a language with which any student of analysis would be comfortable. By way of example, Schmitt refers to Heidegger's idea of fundamental ontology by noting "a reform of talk about being involves a reform of (...) talk about human beings." The book does not attempt to recap all of Sein und Zeit but provides the reader who approaches that work for the first time with the basic concepts needed. The author's basic claim is that in Sein und Zeit Heidegger is making new "conceptual recommendations" for our understanding of man and the world. This represents, Schmitt argues, a break with his earlier, pre-Sein und Zeit and Husserlian conviction of the existence of an a priori and ideal language and its "objective meanings." The whole discussion of Sein und Zeit's idea of language is more original and illuminating than anything yet to appear in English. As the title of the work indicates, the author regards Heidegger's main contribution to lie in the theory of man, and he sees the celebrated "turn" as testimony to the failure of Sein und Zeit to provide a new way of speaking about being. But even as a theory of man, Schmitt warns, Sein und Zeit is blind to the social and the communal. Schmitt's book is a challenging and illuminating introduction of Sein und Zeit for the American reader and one which no Heideggerian can afford to miss.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Sefler has written a helpful book on the question of the relationship between Heidegger and Wittgenstein which should contribute to clearing up the grounds upon which this discussion must take place. Sefler’s book, based on his 1970 doctoral dissertation, employs what he calls a "methodological" approach. Instead of comparing Wittgenstein and Heidegger directly in terms of the content of their thought, he claims it is more fruitful to compare them "relationally," using Carnap’s "structural descriptions." Thus in Part One, he argues (...) that while Heidegger is speaking of the things themselves and Wittgenstein of language, still for both thinkers philosophy is an "interpretative description," which, having renounced the ideal of a "pure" description, always sees a thing "as" something. (shrink)

In this volume, the author is concerned with working out one of the most fundamental themes in Heidegger’s thought, the "difference" between Being and that-which-is. The expression "ontological difference" is found neither in Being and Time nor Heidegger’s later works, where the term "ontological" is abandoned; nonetheless, what the term signified when it was used—the distinction itself—is central to all of Heidegger’s writings. Vail has written a careful analysis of the role this distinction plays in Heidegger’s later writings, examining it (...) from a multiplicity of perspectives. After discussing the way in which this distinction is opened up by Being itself, viz., by Being’s withdrawal in the very process of revealing itself in beings, Vail then analyzes the relation of this distinction to human thinking, to the "destiny" which lies behind the history of metaphysics, to the Region and, finally, to language. (shrink)

M. Palmier has made a valuable contribution to one of the most controversial issues in contemporary philosophy: the problem of Heidegger and the Nazis. Palmier does not side-step the issue by writing off the political works of 1933-1934 as a regrettable "mistake." "These writings belong to the work of Heidegger as the theological works at Tübingen belong to that of Hegel". He analyzes what is known of Heidegger's early life in a somewhat sketchy way, omitting, e.g., any mention of Karl (...) Braig. After discussing Brentano, Rickert, Lask, and Dilthey, he studies Heidegger's relationship with Cassirer and clears up most convincingly the charge of anti-Semitism levelled against Heidegger in 1950 by Cassirer's wife. This is followed by an equally persuasive and sympathetic account of Heidegger and Husserl. The heart of the book, however, is an analysis of the remark made in 1935 in which Heidegger refers to the "inner truth and grandeur" of the Nazi movement which became so notorious when Heidegger allowed it to appear unchanged in the 1953 edition of those lectures under the title An Introduction to Metaphysics. The grandeur Heidegger has in mind is the confrontation of modern man and planetary technology. This phrase must be understood, Palmier argues, in connection with a book by Ernst Jünger which appeared in 1932 entitled Der Arbeiter. The analysis the author offers is most illuminating. Palmier's interpretation is happily reenforced by an appendix which consists in a selection of texts from Ernst Krieck, an official Party philosopher, in which Heidegger is violently attacked--thus making the distance which Heidegger had put between himself and the Nazis abundantly clear, and effectively counterbalancing Schneeberger's one-sided documentation in Nachlese zu Heidegger.--J. D. C. (shrink)

A clear restatement of the essentials of the Maritain approach to Christian Wisdom, the work is concerned with the nature and hierarchy of the kinds of knowledge. This hierarchizing is accomplished from that standpoint of the philosophizing Christian in which the scientific is subordinated to the philosophic and especially the metaphysical, and in which the human is subordinate to the theological and especially mystical. In such a world view the ultimate value term is the contemplative, and the possibility and actuality (...) of a "Christian Humanism" is affirmed through a relating of natural human knowledge and divine contemplation. The Christian philosopher is a finite intelligence confronting "Being" which is ultimately trans-conceptualizable and so mysterious; but God is Being Itself and so the finite intelligence tends toward God by a native and internal dynamism. The author is not concerned with the esthetico-epistemological reflections of Maritain but does carefully analyze knowledge through affective connaturality. He also attempts to develop a closer relation between a metaphysical "philosophy of nature" and modern science, construed as a mathematical interpretation and organization of phenomena, in his concept of "integrated knowledge of nature." Unfortunately there is a striking disaffection for dissenting philosophical views. In defending Thomism against its critics the author not only says that the critics do not understand it, but he also suggests that this is because its opponents, when they are sceptics and agnostics, lack Grace and so are deprived of a purely natural intellectual strength which accompanies its presence and are therefore intellectually defective. Such narrowness is offensive, not necessary to the author's thesis, and seems opposed to the spirit of Aquinas himself.—J. D. C. (shrink)

One can only look with favor upon the appearance of the English translation of this tremendously important work in the history of ethical theory in twentieth century European philosophy. We are also fortunate to have in Manfred Frings both the general editor of the German edition of the collected works of Scheler and a skillful translator of this significant work. In this work, Scheler hopes to mediate between Kant’s empty formalism and ethical relativism by developing an absolutistic ethics which nonetheless (...) does not focus on mere "duty" but on a definite moral "content". In the absence of an adjectival form for "content," Frings and Funk have decided to translate "die materiale Wertethik" by "non-formal ethics of values." Such an ethics centers on the absolute value of persons; thus the subtitle of the work: "A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism." Scheler’s method in this work is, as is well known, "phenomenological," i.e., concerned with intuiting the essence or absolute being of ethical values. There is a helpful bibliography, an index of names, and a detailed index of subjects.—J.D.C. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a somewhat unusual account of the philosophy of Jaspers. The "Introduction" contains an historical survey of Existentialism which is rather out of date. It associates Heidegger and Sartre together, and as philosophers of the absurd--a mistake for which by now there is no excuse. It sees a "way out of this barren desert" of the philosophy of absurdity in Jaspers--which is a misleadingly religious way to introduce Jaspers. The body of the work contains chapters (...) on the foundations of Jaspers' thought in Kant, on the concept of philosophical faith, a comparison of Jaspers with some contemporaries, such as Whitehead, and a final comparison of Jaspers' "ciphers" with Maimonides' negative theology. The 79-page long text is heavily punctuated with citations and so does not make for smooth reading. This is followed by nearly half that many pages of notes, some of which are rather interesting and which provide the whole with extensive documentation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

One of the scandals of Anglo-American philosophical scholarship is its neglect of the German Idealist tradition. Even in the case of Hegel himself, many important works are either untranslated or have received only inadequate or outdated renderings and suffer from a lack of first-rate, full-length commentaries. The situation is much worse, when one turns to Schelling and Fichte. Lachs and Heath have rendered a real service in providing us with a new translation, available in a well-bound papercover edition, of Fichte's (...) major work, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, to supplant the very objectionable Kroeger translation which is, in any case, long since out of print. This is an essential work for comprehending the development of European philosophy in the short but extraordinarily productive period from 1781 to 1807. Along with Schelling's System des transzendentalen Idealismus, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre constitutes the bridge between Kant's three Critique's and Hegel's Phenomenology. Both of the famous "Introductions" are translated in the current edition. Despite their torturous text, their renderings are clearer than one might expect. There is an extremely helpful introduction by Lachs (who also translated the "First Introduction of 1797," a German-English glossary, and a detailed index. The translators also supply the standard marginal pagination from the Gesamtausgabe of 1834-1846. In all, the work is professionally done, a permanent and much needed contribution of the study of Fichte for English-reading students.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This book attempts to collect Heidegger’s scattered and often very puzzling observations about the holy, divinity, God, and the gods in order to make them a coherent statement. The first three chapters present clearly and soundly the by now familiar material of Heidegger’s attempt, first, to lay the foundation of metaphysics, then, to overcome metaphysics altogether. Chapter 4 draws the conclusion that Heidegger stands in opposition to any metaphysical account of God and that theology, if it is possible at all, (...) must be nonmetaphysical. Chapter 5 argues that Heidegger’s approach to God, centered primarily in the account of the Geviert, is mythical rather than metaphysical, though it does not recommend that we in the twentieth century simply adopt the Homeric or Hesiodic myths. The heart of the book is Chapter 6, in which Perotti analyzes the Hölderlin commentaries. On this basis he claims that, for Heidegger, any word about God’s coming—for we live after the flight of the gods-must come from the poets. Thinking dwells in subordination to poetry, and its role is to cultivate and preserve the poet’s words. On the question of God for Heidegger, according to Perotti, there is nothing to do but wait—for the poets to speak. Perotti’s text is quite brief and, in the opening chapters, covers familiar ground. He makes no use of Phaenomenologie und Theologie. Unfortunately, he often quotes the Lohner translation of the Letter on Humanism, although he always supplies the German. On p. 27, 1934 is mentioned where 1943 is intended. There is ample footnoting, a bibliography, and an index.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Wood's book argues for the integral place of the "moral arguments"--the arguments for freedom, immortality, and the existence of God--in Kant's total philosophical work. These arguments have always been the object of some suspicion not only as regards their internal plausibility but also because it has been maintained that they constitute a surreptitious reintroduction of the speculative way of arguing clearly banned by the first Critique. This suspicion was reinforced by Adickes' edition of the Opus Postumum in which the editor (...) contended that Kant had therein repudiated the moral arguments in favor of a personal experience of God through the Categorical Imperative. Wood's argument to the contrary is vigorous and extremely interesting. He holds that Kant's notion of "rational faith" is a profound religious insight, one whose importance Wood does not hesitate to say is directly proportionate to that of the critical theory itself.--J. D. C. (shrink)

From the translator of The Future of Mankind and The Future of Germany comes this most welcome English rendering of the first volume of Jasper's Philosophie, considered by many his main work. Of all the great figures of the existential-phenomenological movement--Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel--Jaspers has been the most neglected in the Anglo-American world. Jaspers alone among these figures has a work as important as his Philosophie still untranslated into English. This work, which consists of three volumes, was originally (...) published in 1932. The present edition contains: a 1955 Epilogue by Jaspers who comments on the intent of the book and the criticism it received; an "Introduction to Philosophy" which prefaces the body of Philosophy; and then the main body of this title: "Book One: Philosophical World Orientation." Here Jaspers carves out the proper structure of philosophy--not as a science which must compete with other sciences but as thinking concerned with man's place in the world and which regulates the role that science plays in man's world. There is, unfortunately, no index nor any glossary of German-English and English-German.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Along with Charles Walraff's The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, Schrag's work is the second book-length study of Jaspers' thought in as many years. As such it is very welcome, for Jaspers' philosophy has not yet been fully explored in English. And now that his three-volume Philosophie has been translated, we should see a great reawakening of interest in this distinguished German thinker. Schrag's book is an exposition of Jaspers' notion of the "Encompassing", that pivotal notion in his thought which refers (...) to Being as the primal and originary source of beings. The Encompassing can only be approached through its "modes," which Jaspers diagrams at the beginning of his lengthy treatise Von der Wahrheit. Schrag's book follows this diagram implicitly and its somewhat awkward title is based upon it. The Encompassing manifests itself in man on the one hand and in the non-human or objective on the other. Part One of Schrag's book is devoted to the "immanent" mode of the "Encompassing which we are," while Part Two discusses the Encompassing in man in its transcendent mode. The third and final part is devoted to the "Encompassing which Being itself is", which is a study of Jaspers' metaphysics. The reader will be especially interested in Schrag's Chapter Five, "Jaspers and Phenomenology," in which he discusses Jaspers' relationship to Husserl, who like Jaspers came to philosophy from psychology; and to Heidegger's "existential phenomenology." There is an index but no bibliography.--J. D. C. (shrink)

In Being and Time and What is Metaphysics? Heidegger made a revolutionary use of the "mood". He said that the mood, and in particular the mood of Anxiety, had ontological significance. Not only is the mood nothing merely "subjective," but it has significance for the understanding of universal being itself. Anxiety is a "moodful experience of Being," a mood in which not one thing or a few things, but the very Being of beings itself, is illuminated and brought into view (...) for "Dasein." In a 1960 review of the third edition of Otto Bollnow's Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Otto Poeggeler reprimanded Bollnow for misunderstanding the genuinely ontological character of Heidegger's investigation, and thus for having reduced it to something anthropological; at the same time Poeggeler called for a recognition of the important place that such an ontological analysis has in the Western tradition. In 1958 Karl Rahner had suggested that the ontological analysis of mood in Heidegger had been anticipated in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, in the latter's discussion of a "consolation without a preceding cause." De Mendoza's book is an attempt to confirm Poeggeler's criticism of Bollnow and to work out, expand upon, and justify Rahner's thesis. He does this in an elaborately argued work filled with careful textual analyses of the writings of both Loyola and the early Heidegger. The thesis, as De Mendoza points out, is especially provocative in view of the three years which Heidegger spent in Jesuit training, during which time he was thoroughly exposed to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius may represent another of the long line of religious figures--Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard--who have influenced Heidegger's thinking in Being and Time.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This volume, which contains the 1962 lecture "Zeit und Sein," is the most important publication by Heidegger since Unterwegs zur Sprache appeared in 1959. Bearing the same title as the much discussed missing part of the first half of Sein und Zeit, "Zeit und Sein" is the best demonstration we have of how the later Heidegger carries out the program which was outlined in Sein und Zeit, i.e., how the clue which the analytic of Dasein provides--that Being is to be (...) understood in terms of time--is followed out in the later works. Heidegger explicates the temporality of Being in terms of its character as a "gift" and an epochal sending which "is" both as having been and as to come. Being as time is thus the "event of appropriation". In addition to "Zeit und Sein," Zur Sache des Denkens also contains: The notes of a seminar which Heidegger conducted at Todtnauberg in 1962 upon the "Zeit und Sein" lecture. As Professor Alfredo Guzzoni, the editor of these notes, indicates this is the only time that Heidegger has conducted a seminar on a text of his own composition. A lecture entitled "The End of Philosophy and the Problem of Thought," which was delivered at a Kierkegaard colloquium in 1964. An autobiographical description of Heidegger's growing interest in and attraction to Husserl's phenomenological method in the pre-Sein und Zeit period; this was prepared in 1963 for a Festschrift in honor of Hermann Niemeyer.--J. D. C. (shrink)