Including books about specific works.
This page lists books I have sitting on my shelves. For a more complete list of English translations, visit: HyperJeff's Quick reference guide to the English translations of Heidegger.
Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1-3 On the Essence and Actuality of Force (GA33). Translated by Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995.
This is a lecture course, "Interpretations of Ancient Philosophy",
presented at the University of Freiburg during summer semester 1931.
Heidegger translates Metaphysik Theta 1-3,
on the way to a very close reading of Aristotle's ideas on the question of being.
Basic Concepts (GA51). Translated by Gary Aylesworth, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993.
Text of a lecture course given at Freiburg in the winter semester of 1941. Following a discussion of the title of the course, Grundbegriffe or "concepts of ground", Heidegger devotes half of the course to what the ontological difference "is", and the other half to two fragments from Anaximander.
Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy (GA22). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2007.
This 250 page volume has Heidegger's notes for a lecture course given at Marburg summer semester of 1926. The final third is comprised of excerpts from two students' transcripts of the course. At the time of this course, Heidegger was busy preparing Being and Time for publication, consequently, unlike most lecture courses for which Heidegger wrote his notes in full sentences, these notes are in a more abbreviated form.
Heidegger covers the ancient Greek philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, using the latter's Metaphysics as a guide. Plato's allegory of the cave and Theatetus get extended treatment, as do Aristotle's texts that address being. Plato on the idea of the αγαθόν is excerpted here, and the concluding remarks of the course here.
Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA24). Translated by Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982.
This is a lecture course presented at the University of Marburg during summer semester 1927. Heidegger looks at the philosophical history of ontology, with an emphasis on Kant in the first half, and then examines time as temporality and its relation to being. The material covered was intended for, the never published, division 3 of part 1, and part 2 of Being and Time.
In the first part of the course, Heidegger describes four theses about being in Western Philosophy.
In the second part of the course, he discusses the problem of the ontological difference via Aristotle's notion of time as a series of events, and temporality and being. In the introduction to the course, he introduces the ontological difference to describe ontology.
We said that ontology is the science of being. But being is always the being of a being. Being is essentially different from a being, from beings. How is the distinction between being and beings to be grasped? How can its possibility be explained? If being is not itself a being, how then does it nevertheless belong to beings, since, after all, being and only beings are? What does it mean to say that being belongs to beings? The correct answer to this question is the basic presupposition needed to set about the problems of ontology regarded as the science of being. We must be able to bring out clearly the difference between being and beings in order to make something like being the theme of inquiry. This distinction is not arbitrary; rather, it is the one by which the theme of ontology and thus of philosophy itself is first of all attained. It is a distinction which is first and foremost constitutive for ontology. We call it the ontological difference--the differentiation between being and beings.
P. 17
Basic Questions of Philosophy. Selected "Problems" of "Logic" (GA45). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1994.
'First published in German in 1984 as volume 45 of Martin
Heidegger's collected works, this book translates a lecture
course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1937-1938.
Heidegger here raises the question of the essence of truth, not
as a "problem" or as a matter of "logic", but
precisely as a genuine philosophical question, in fact the one
basic question of philosophy. Thus, this course is about the
intertwining of the essence of truth and the essence of
philosophy. On both sides Heidegger draws extensively upon the
ancient Greeks, on their understanding of truth as aletheia
and their determination of the beginning of philosophy as the
disposition of wonder. In addition, these lectures were presented
at the time that Heidegger was composing his second magnum opus, Beiträge
zur Philosophie, and provide the single best introduction to
that complex and crucial text.'
Basic Writings. Edited by David F. Krell, New York, Harper & Row, 1977, 1993.
Contains:
This book is the best collection of Heidegger's works. It collects some of Heidegger's key essays with Krell's helpful introduction. One caveat is that there's more to Heidegger than can be collected in one book. Readers looking for a particular facet of Heidegger's thought may find that it is not addressed here. Heidegger's own writings may not be everyone's best introduction to his thought.
The Letter on Humanism is in part a response to Sartre's 1946 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism.
Sartre expresses the basic tenet of existentialism in this way: Existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which from Plato's time on has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being. For even if philosophy wishes to determine the relation of essentia and existentia in the sense it had in medieval controversies, in Liebniz's sense, or in some other way, it still remains to ask first of all from what destiny of Being this differentiation in Being as esse essentiae and esse existentae comes to appear to thinking.
P. 232
Here the presence of things before man is neatly summed up.
Man does not decide whether and how beings appear, whether and how God and the gods or history and nature come forward into the clearing of Being, come to presence and depart. The advent of beings lies in the destiny of Being. But for man it is ever a question of finding what is fitting in his essence that corresponds to such destiny; for in accord with this destiny man as ek-sisting has to guard the truth of Being. Man is the shepherd of Being. It is in this direction alone that Being and Time is thinking when ecstatic existence is experienced as "care",
P. 234
The Letter on Humanism addresses the question of whether his way of thinking can be used as the basis for an ethics.
If the thinking that ponders the truth of Being defines the essence of humanitas as ek-sistence from the latter's belongingness to Being, then does thinking remain only a theoretical representation of Being and of man; or can we obtain from such knowledge directives that can be readily applied to our active lives?
The answer is that such thinking is neither theoretical nor practical. It comes to pass before this distinction. Such thinking is, insofar as it is, recollection of Being and nothing else. Belonging to Being, because thrown by Being into the preservation of its truth and claimed for such preservation, it thinks Being. Such thinking has no result. It has no effect.
P. 259
Becoming Heidegger has its own page.
Being and Time has its own page.
The Concept of Time.
Translated by William McNeill, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992.
A lecture delivered to the Marburg Theological Society in 1924.
Includes the German text on the facing page. A different translation appears in Becoming Heidegger.
Contributions to Philosophy has its own page.
Discourse On Thinking. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, New York, Harper & Row, 1966.
Contains:
The Memorial Address was delivered to the public in 1955. The Conversation--between a scholar, teacher, and scientist--is based on a longer dialogue written in the mid-1940s. There's an excerpt on Αγχιβασιη (Heraclitus, Fragment 122), here.
Early Greek Thinking. Translated by David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi, New York, Harper & Row, 1975.
Contains:
In the first essay on the Anaximander Fragment, Heidegger describes how Being is concealed more in λήθη than it is revealed in Αλήθεια. This sentence summarizes things nicely:
As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.
P. 26
Later in the same essay Heidegger discusses the ontological difference and celebrates its concealment in Western philosophy.
The oblivion of the distinction, with which the destiny of Being begins and which it will carry through to completion, is all the same not a lack, but rather the richest and most prodigious event: in it the history of the Western world comes to be bourne out. It is the event of metaphysics. What now is stands in the shadow of the already foregone destiny of Being oblivion.
P. 51
Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry (GA4). Translated and introduction by Keith Hoeller, Amherst, New York, Humanity Books, 2000.
Contains:
There's a bit on the center of the fourfold here.
The End of Philosophy. Translated and introduction by Joan Stambaugh, New York, Harper and Row, 1973.
Contains:
In the introduction the translator relates the ontological difference to Appropriation/Ereignis:
What does metaphysics, which Heidegger defines as the separation of essence and existence that began with Plato, have to do with the ontological difference of Being and beings? One might say that the tradition, particularly the medieval tradition, would equate these two distinctions. Being (esse) is the essence of beings, of what exists (existentia), the essence in the sense of the universal One which unifies everything. For Heidegger, the distinction essence-existence actually belongs in the tradition on the side of Being, but the difference between Being and beings, although constantly presupposed by all metaphysics, was never thought. Only when metaphysics reaches its completion does the possibility arise of transforming the ontological difference, of thinking it from the unthought presupposition of all metaphysics back to its essential origin in Appropriation.
The Essence of Human Freedom (GA31). Translated by Ted Sadler, London, Continuum, 2002.
In this course, presented at the University of Feiburg during
winter semester 1930, Heidegger addresses first the meaning of being in
Aristotle's Metaphysics, and then uses that as a basis to study
freedom and causality in Kant's Critiques.
Reviews:
William McNeill,
Jonathan Derr,
Mark Blitz
The Essence of Reasons. Translated by Terrence Malick, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1969.
This essay was written in 1928, contemporaneously with What is Metaphysics?; both are included in Pathmarks. This book has the original German text on facing pages.
And yes, this was translated by
Terrence Malick,
the famous film director.
The Essence of Truth (GA34). Translated by Ted Sadler, London, Continuum, 2002.
This course, presented at the University of Freiburg during winter semester 1931-32, covers both an exploration of truth as unhiddeness via a close reading of the Allegory of the Cave from Plato's Republic, and a reading of the discussion of knowledge in the middle of Plato's Theaetetus.
But the question is what truth itself is. The first step towards understanding this question is the insight that man comes to himself, and finds the ground of his Dasein, in that event of deconcealment which constitutes the unhiddenness of beings.
P. 56
Reviews:
William McNeill,
Mark Blitz
Existence and Being. Introduction and Analysis by Werner Brock, Washington, D.C., Regnery Gateway Company, 1949.
Contains:
Four Seminars (GA15). Translated by Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003.
Contains:
This book collects the three seminars (1966, 1968, 1969) Heidegger participated in at Le Thor, France, and the Zähringen seminar (1973), along with a couple ancillary papers. These are especially interesting because they are the last of Heidegger's "works", and because Heidegger is involved in thoughtful dialogue with others.
The seminars touch on familiar themes of presence and Ereignis, Heidegger's interpretations of Parmenides and Heraclitus, his reflections on Hegel's ideas and Husserl's Categorical Intuition, and he reaches out to the seminar participants by commenting on French artists and thinkers. He also criticizes aspects of his earlier works, including Being and Time.
The text of the seminars comes from the notes of the participants. First published in book form in France, the work was later translated to German and added to the Gesamtausgabe. As usual Indiana University Press and the translators have done an excellent job and created a first class English edition.
In 1969, at Le Thor, the seminar addresses Ereignis:
It is then asked: what relation does enowning have to ontological difference? How is enowning to be said? How does it fit into the history of being? Is it supposed to be the countenance of enowning for the Greeks? Finally is it possible to say: "Being is enowned through enowning"? Answer: yes.
In order to take a few small steps into these difficult questions (which remain all too difficult as long as their understanding is not sufficiently prepared), let us first consider a few indications that could help us discern various and yet convergent paths of access to the question of enowning?
--The most appropriate text for a clarification of this question is the lecture "The Principle of Identity," which is even better heard than read.
--An excellent way of approaching enowning would be to look into the essence of enframing [Ge-Stell], insofar as it is a passage from metaphysics to another thinking ("a Janus head" it is called in On Time and Being), for enframing is essentially ambiguous. "The Principle of Identity" already says: enframing (the gathering unity of all ways of positing [Weisen des stellens]) is the completion and consummation of metaphysics and at the same time the disclosive preparation of enowning. This is why it is by no means a question of viewing the advent of technology as negative occurrence (but just as little a positive occurrence in the sense of a paradise on Earth).
--Enframing is, as it were, the photographic negative of enowning.
--Thinking enowning with the concepts of being and the history of being will not be successful; nor will it be with the assistance of the Greek (which is precisely something "to go beyond"). With being, the ontological difference also vanishes. Looking ahead, one would likewise have to view the continual references to the ontological difference from 1927 to 1936 as a necessary impasse [Holzwege].
Page 60-61
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics World, Finitude, Solitude (GA29/30). Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995.
Heidegger's lecture course of winter semester 1929/30.
Probably his most extended discussion of the theme of biological organisms and nature,
along with the notion that "Man is World-forming".
He also addresses the history of metaphysics,
explains the essence of philosophy,
and analyzes phenomenologically the mood of boredom,
which he describes as a "fundamental attunement" of modern times,
much like he used anxiety in Being and Time.
Hegel's Concept of Experience (GA5). With a section from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Kenley Royce Dove. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989.
Later translated in Off The Beaten Track.
In his comments on paragraph 15, on the science of the experience of consciousness, Heidegger relates Aristotle metaphysics to ontotheology.
The science Aristotle has described--the science that observes beings as beings--he calls First Philosophy. But first philosophy does not only contemplate beings in their beingness; it also contemplates that being which corresponds to beingness in all purity: the supreme being. This being, to qeion, the divine, is also with a curious ambiguity called "Being." First philosophy, qua ontology, is also the theology of what truly is. It should more accurately be called theiology. The science of beings as such is in itself onto-theological.
P. 135
Theiology is the study of the highest being, theion.
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (GA32). Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988.
Lecture course from winter semester 1930-31, on Hegel's concepts of being, time, temporality, and dialectics.
Heraclitus Seminar (GA15). With Eugene Fink. Translated by Charles H. Seibert, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1993.
At seminar from winter semester 1966-67 at Freiburg.
Heidegger and Fink, and other participants, discuss many of the Heraclitus fragments.
History of the Concept of Time (GA20). Translated by Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1985.
This book has the lectures from a course Heidegger taught at the University of Marburg during the summer semester of 1925. In the first part Heidegger critiques Husserl's phenomenology, then he presents what is essentially Being and Time Division I and a bit of Division II.
Heidegger describes the key contributions of phenomenology (intentionality, categorical intuition, the original sense of the apriori) and then asks if phenomenology has really asked the ontological questions at its core.
In the section on Discoveredness he describes communication, not as the transmittal of information between two subjects, but as appropriation.
Communication accordingly means the enabling of the appropriation of that about which the discourse is, that is, making it possible to come into a relationship of preoccupation and being to that of which the discourse is. Discourse as communication brings about an appropriation of the world in which one always already is in being with one another. The understanding of communication is the participation in what is manifest.
It is not a matter of transporting information and experiences from the interior of one subject to the interior of the other one. It is rather a matter of being-with-one-another becoming manifest in the world, specifically by way of the discovered world, which itself becomes manifest in speaking with one another. Speaking with one another about something is not exchange of experiences back and forth between subjects, but a situation where the being-with-one-another is intimately involved in the subject matter under discussion. And it is only by way of this subject matter, in the particular context of always already being-with in the world, that mutual understanding develops.
P. 263
Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" (GA53). Translated by William McNeill and Julia Davis, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1996.
This is a lecture course presented at the University of Freiburg
during summer semester 1942. The course is split into three parts.
First Heidegger looks for metaphysics in "The Ister",
then he examines a part of Sophocles' Antigone he had used,
more briefly, in a 1935 course, Introduction to Metaphysics.
Finally he examines more of "The Ister". Hölderlin's
poems have been translated especially for this book, to help
understand Heidegger's interpretation of the German.
In the first lecture Heidegger refers to Ereignis in poetry.
This distinctive significance of the "Now" demands that in this word of time we also come to hear something distinctly significant and await a concealed fullness of poetic time and so its truth. The "Now come" appears to speak from a present into the future. And yet, in the first instance, it speaks into what has already happened. "Now"--this tells us: something has already been decided. And precisely the appropriation that has already "occurred" [sich "ereignet"] alone sustains all relation to whatever is coming. The "Now" names an appropriative event [Ereignis].
Page 9
Heidegger remarks on the USA's entry into the war.
We know today that the Anglo-Saxon world of Americanism has resolved to annihilate Europe, that is, the homeland [die Heimat], and that means: the commencement of the Western world. Whatever has the character of commencement is indestructible. America's entry into this planetary war is not its entry into history; rather it is already the ultimate American act of American ahistoricality and self-devastation. For this act is the renunciation of commencement, and a decision in favor of that which is without commencement.
Page 54-55
Identity and Difference has its own page.
Introduction to Metaphysics has its own page.
Introduction to Phenomenological Research (GA17). Translated by Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005.
Heidegger's first lectures at Marburg from winter semester 1923-1924.
Phenomenolgy is introduced in terms of Aristotle, Descartes, and Husserl.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (GA3). Translated by Richard Taft, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997.
This book was first published in 1929, and is partially based on a lecture course from winter semester 1927-28,
a lecture delivered in Riga in 1928, and lectures at Davos in March 1929.
Several editions of this book were published over the years.
This translation is based on the Gesamtausgabe edition, and includes several editions' prefaces and appendices.
Letters 1925-1975. Edited by Ursula Ludz, translated by Andrew Shields, Orlando, Harcourt Books, 2004.
Correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt.
All the surviving written documents of the personal relationship between Arendt and Heidegger are presented here for the first time, from the Marbach papers of Arendt and Heidegger as well as from the Hannah Arendt Papers in Washington, D.C. They include 119 letters, postcards, and notes from him to her and 33 texts from her, many of which only survive as copies or drafts.
Reviews:
Adam Kirsch,
Simon Blackburn,
Mark Lilla,
Mark Greif
The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (GA26). Translated by Michael Heim, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984.
This is a lecture course, Logik, presented at the University of Marburg during summer semester 1928. In the first part of this course Heidegger examines Leibniz's Doctrine of Judgment. In the second he studies the Principle of Reason.
The Translator's Introduction to The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic by Martin Heidegger.
Mindfulness (GA66). Translated by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, London, Athlone, 2006.
The volume was written immediately following Contributions to Philosophy and is similar to it in content and style. There are 135 chapters, some a few sentences and others essay length, arranged in 28 sections. This translation also shares a translator with the Contributions, which is a good thing for consistency's sake, yet also revisits some of the issues with the previous translation: Seyn (beyng) is translated as be-ing, wesen (essence) as sway, and so on. The German title of this work is. The translators' reasons for chosing to translate the German title Besinnung into Mindfulness is explained here.
As with Contributions, some of the shorter chapters sound like mantras, or a catechism. For example, here's chapter 25:
Be-ing is the en-owning of truth.
Truth is the clearning of refusal, which in refusal and as refusal is a prime-leap--an out-lay of lighting up.
En-owning is the originary allotting of human beings both unto the truth (of be-ing) and thus, simultaneously, unto the distressing-need of the godhead of gods.
The strife of the world and the earth arises from within the en-ownment of enowning, and things that are in strife arise above all from that strife.
Page 82
The term mindfulness appeared in Contributions, but this is where Heidegger expands on it. He returns to familiar themes: truth, nothingness, enownment, ontological difference, art, the Greeks, Nietzsche, Spengler, and more, as well as commenting on his earlier texts. All are examined alongside mindfulness and some other themes that are here elaborated more fully: the withdrawal, the rupture and gathering, the dynamic inbetween, and the ab-ground (translated as abyss in other texts) that is not ground.
The books ends with two essays from the same period, A Retrospective Look at the Pathway and The Wish and the Will, and an editor's epilogue. Mindfulness was not left as a finished manuscript, but, as with Contributions, was compiled from a typescript and ancillary notes by Wilhelm von Herrmann, the designated director of the Gesamtausgabe.
Reviews:
Miguel de Beistegui
Nietzsche I: The Will to Power as Art. Edited and Translated by David F. Krell, New York, Harper & Row, 1979.
Contains:
Lecture course from winter semester 1936-1937.
In this lecture course Ereignis appears as the "event of nihilism" during a discussion of Nietzsche's interpretation of Platonism, and why he had to overturn it.
Nietzsche's fundamental experience is his growing insight into the basic development of our history. In his view it is nihilism. Nietzsche expresses incessantly and passionately the fundamental experience of his existence as a thinker. To the blind, to those who cannot see and above all do not want to see, his words easily sound overwrought, as though he were raving. And yet when we plumb the depths of his insight and consider how very closely the basic historical development of nihilism crowds and oppresses, then we may be inclined to call his manner of speech almost placid. One of the essential formulations that designate the event of nihilism says, "God is dead." The phrase "God is dead" is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history.
...
By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i.e. event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are annihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.
P. 156
Nietzsche II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Edited and Translated by David F. Krell, New York, Harper & Row, 1984.
Contains:
Nietzsche III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and Metaphysics. Edited by David F. Krell, translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York, Harper & Row, 1987.
Contains:
Nietzsche IV: Nihilism. Edited by David F. Krell, translated by Frank A. Capuzzi, New York, Harper & Row, 1982.
Contains:
The ontotheology in Nietzsche's thought is explained with reference to earlier scholasticism:
As an ontology, even Nietzsche's metaphysics is at the same time theology, although it seems far removed from scholastic metaphysics. The ontology of beings as such thinks essentia as will to power. Such ontology thinks the existentia of beings as such and as a whole theologically as the eternal recurrence of the same. Such metaphysical theology is of course a negative theology of a peculiar type. Its negativity is revealed in the expression "God is dead." That is an expression not of atheism but of ontotheology, in that metaphysics in which nihilism proper if fulfilled.
P. 210
Off The Beaten Track (GA5). Edited and Translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Contains:
Published in Germany as Holzwege in 1950
"The Age of the World Picture" includes this note (Appendix 12) Heidegger added later explaining somewhat how he viewed America:
Americanism is something European. It is that still uncomprehended species of the gigantic -- the gigantic that is still not properly assembled and still fails to arise from the complete and collected essence of modernity. The American interpretation of Americanism in terms of pragmatism still remains the realm of metaphysics.
P. 85
Appendix 8, on Protagoras and metaphysics, is excerpted on the blog enowning.
On the Essence of Language (GA85). Translated by Wanda Torres Gregory and Yvonne Unna, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2004.
A seminar on Herder's On the Origin of Language in 1939.
On the Way to Language has its own page.
On Time and Being has its own page.
Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity (GA63). Translated by John van Buren, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999.
From Heidegger's lectures at the University of Freiburg during the summer semester of 1923. He begins the lectures by reviewing the history of hermeneutics beginning with the use of the term by Plato and Aristotle. He examines the concept of man in theology, and man as the one that λόγον ἔχον, and then the role of hermenutics as historical interpretation and in phenomenology.
Referring to the title the translator explains:
Heidegger's course is "ontology" because it investigates the "be-ing" (Sein) of facticity and more concretely the "be-ing there" (Dasein) of factical human Dasein and its world and even more concretely the be-ing there of factical Dasein and its world in the "awhileness of their temporal particularity" (Jeweiligkeit).
P. 91
Parmenides (GA54). Translated by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992.
This is a lecture course, Parmenides and Heraclitus, presented at the University of Freiburg during winter semester 1942-1943. Heidegger examines Parmenides's poem and the question of truth. Towards the end he notes that the Greek understanding of truth is critical to Western history.
The primordial essence of truth is alhJeia not because the Greeks were visual, but instead the Greeks could only be visual because it is alhJeia that determines the relation of their humanity to Being. This and only this, namely that the essence of truth originates as alhJeia, but precisely in such a way as to conceal itself forthwith, is the event of the history of the Occident.
P. 147
Pathmarks has its own page.
Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle Initiation into Phenomenological Research (GA61). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001.
A lecture course from winter semester of 1921-22.
Heidegger first discussion of factical life and its relation to care,
and the beginning of a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle.
Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (GA25). Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997.
Winter semester 1927-28 lecture course on Kant's book.
The Phenomenology of Religious Life
(GA60).
Translated by Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Bloomington, Indiana University Press,
2004.
This book contains the lectures from two courses at Freiburg, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion from winter semester 1920 and
Augustine and Neoplatonism from summer semester 1921. In addition there are twenty pages of
notes for a course on The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism that was not held
because Heidegger decided to lecture on another subject in winter semester 1919.
Reviews:
Sean J. McGrath
Philosophical and Political Writings.
Edited by Manfred Stassen, New York, Continuum, 2003.
Contains:
A bit of a mixed bag here. There's a good selection of Heidegger's writings from B&T onwards.
This volume can function as an introductory Heidegger reader.
In my opinion, Basic Writings had a better selection, but this one has more material from B&T.
Those in the market might consider that B&T, in the original translation, is cheaper than this book.
All the Joan Stambaugh pieces, except for "My Way to Phenomenology", are from her translation of B&T.
There are a few hard to find pieces that completists will have to have,
but these mainly deal with
Heidegger's political troubles and not with his philosophical contributions.
Certainly for those interested in Heidegger's Nazi period,
the editor here is more honest about Heidegger's involvement than was the case in Basic Writings.
On the other hand there are only twenty odd pages of introduction at the beginning,
while in Basic Writings all the essays have an introductory essay providing some context
for the neophyte and Krell's introduction to the book does a good job of describing Heidegger's
place in Western Philosophy.
The Piety of Thinking. Translated by James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1976.
This book has sixty pages with the following by Heidegger, plus an additional 150 pages of commentary from the translators.
Plato's Sophist (GA19). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997.
Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the winter semester of 1924-25,
devoted to an interpretation of Plato and Aristotle.
The first part of the lectures to an extended
commentary on Book VI of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics,
folowed by a line-by-line interpretation of Plato's dialogue.
Reviews:
Clifford Angell Bates, Jr.,
Jasmin Chen
Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, New York, Harper & Row, 1971.
Contains:
In the introduction the translator discusses the fourfold (earth, sky, gods, mortals) and Ereignis, and its translation.
Thus ereignen comes to mean, in his writing, the joint process by which the four of the fourfold are able, first, to come out into the light and clearing of truth, and thus each to exist in its own truthful way, and secondly, to exist in appropriation of and to each other, belonging together in the round dance of their being; and what is more, this mutual appropriation becomes the very process by which the emergence into the light and clearing occurs, for it happens through the sublimely simple play of their mutual mirroring. The mutual lighting-up, reflecting, eräugnen, is at the same time the mutual belonging, appropriating, ereignen; and conversely, the happening, das Ereignis, by which alone the meaning of Being can be determined, in this play of eräugnen and ereignen; it is an Eräugnen which is an Ereignen and an Ereignen which is an Eräugnen.
Is is because of this interpenetrating association of coming out into the open, the clearing, the light--or disclosure--with the conjunction and compliancy of mutual appropriation, that I have ventured to translate "das Ereignis," in the Addendum to "Origin," not just as "the event," "the happening," or "the occurence," but rather as "the disclosure of appropriation." This translation has survived the critical scrutiny of Heidegger himself, as well as J. Glenn Gray and Hannah Arendt, and therefore I repose a certain trust in its fitness.
P. xxi
In an addendum to "The Origin of the Work of Art" Heidegger indicates that art belongs to Ereignis.
Reflection on what art may be is completely and decidedly determined only in regard to the question of Being. Art is considered neither an area of cultural achievement nor an appearance of spirit; it belongs to the disclosure of appropriation by way of which the "meaning of Being" (cf. Being and Time) can alone be defined.
P. 86
In "The Thing" Heidegger tells us that the elements of the fourfold (earth, sky, gods, mortals) cannot be understood by their separate essential natures. The unity of the fourfold, their mirroring of each other, is Ereignis.
The fouring, the unity of the four, presences as the appropriating mirror-play of the betrothed, each to the other in simple oneness. The fouring presences as the worlding of the world. The mirror-play of the world is the round dance of appropriating. Therefore, the round dance does not encompass the four like a hoop. The round dance is the ring that joins while its plays as mirroring. Appropriating, it lightens the four into the radiance of their simple oneness. Radiantly, the ring joins the four, everywhere open to the riddle of their presence. The gathered presence of the mirror-play of the world, joining in this way, is the ringing. In the ringing of the mirror-playing ring, the four nestle into their unifying presence, in which each one retains its own nature. So nestling, the join together, worlding, the world.
P. 180
In "Language" Heidegger describes the speaking naming that calls.
The naming calls. Calling brings closer what it calls. However this bringing closer does not fetch what is called only in order to set it down in closest proximity to what is present, to find a place for it there. The call does indeed call. Thus it brings the presence of what was previously uncalled into a nearness.
P. 198
The Principle of Reason. Translated by Reginald Lilly, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991.
A lecture course from winter semester 1955-56 that focuses on Leibniz's principle
that nothing is without reason. Also included is an address with the same name
that Heidegger delivered in 1956.
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt, NewYork, Harper & Row, 1977.
Contains:
The first essay is one of Heidegger's most popular, showing up in many humanities courses about technology. That's generally a good thing because the essay starts with Aristotle's theory of forms, which will likely be most students first introduction to his Metaphysics. Heidegger then explores the different meanings of the Greek techne and its evolution to the modern term technology, and how the changes reflect how man thinking has changed since Aristotle's Athens.
The Nietzsche essay ends with a sentence that is a favorite of Heidegger's critics.
Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the most stiff-necked adversary of thought.
In the previous paragraph, Heidegger indicates that he is referring to reason as that quality of modern man that allows him to stop questioning.
Those standing about in the marketplace have abolished thinking and replaced it with dile babble that scents nihilism in every place in which it supposes its own opinion has been endangered. This self-deception, forever gaining the upper hand in relation to genuine nihilism, attempts in this way to talk itself out of its anguished dread in the face of thinking. But that dread is dread in the face of dread.
P. 112
The Question of Being. Translated by Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback, Albany, New York, New College University Press, 1958.
Also in Pathmarks.
Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom. (GA42). Translated by Joan Stambaugh, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1984.
Lecture course from summer semester 1936.
Sojourns The Journey to Greece. Translated by John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Foreword by John Sallis, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2005.
Heidegger takes a cruise ship with a friend around the Aegean, visiting many popular ancient sites. Visting the island of Delos leads him to the following reflection.
Every saying and, through it, every creation and work, every deed and action receives from ἀλήθεια and retains in it the determination of their type. For ἀλήθεια is this place [Bereich]: the open space that is taking place [sich darreichende] and gives place [erreichende] to every thing, that determines and liberates, that allows what is present and absent to come and last, to leave and err.
P. 32
Supplements From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond. Edited by John van Buren, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2002.
Contains:
Towards the Definition of Philosophy (GA56/57). Translated by Ted Sadler, London, Continuum, 2002.
This volume brings together the two lecture courses of 1918-- The Idea of Philosophy and the Problem of Worldview, and Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy Value--as well as the lecture, On the Nature of the University and Academic Study.
The first lecture course is from the Kriegsnotsemester, emergency war semester, following WWI. It has the earliest reference to Ereignis that I have found.
I ask: 'Is there something?' The 'is there' is a 'there is' for an 'I', and yet it is not I to and for whom the question relates.
A wealth of quite new problem-connections is loosened up: problems to be sure, but on the other hand matters of immediate intuition that point to new contextures of meaning. However simply and primitively the interrogative experience gives itself, in respect of all its components it is peculiarly dependent. Nevertheless, from this experience aground-laying and essential insight can now be achieved. (Characterizations of the lived experience as event [Er-eignis]--meaningful, not thing-like.)
P. 58
Heidegger begins to talk about his lectern, how his students and he 'see' it, and how someone who has never seen a lectern before would 'see' it. Then he contrasts how astronomers look at sunrise to how the Theban chorus in Sophocles' Antigone experiences sunrise after successfully defending Thebes from the invading army from Argos. Then he returns to the lectern.
In seeing the lectern I am fully present in my 'I'; it resonates with the experience, as we said. It is an experience proper to me and so do I see it. However, it is not a process but rather an event of appropriation [Er-eignis] (non-process, in the experience of the question a residue of this event). Lived experience does not pass in front of me like a thing, but I appropriate [er-eigne] it to myself, and it appropriates itself according to its essence. If I understand it in this way, then I understand it not as process, as thing, as object, but in a quite new way, as an event of appropriation.
P. 63
After the above, Heidegger does not use Ereignis as appropriation until after Being and Time.
What Is a Thing? (GA41). Translated by W. B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch,Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, 1967.
This is from a lecture course at Freiburg in winter semester, 1935-36, entitled "Basic Questions of Metaphysics".
Heidegger uses a particular definition of the mathematical.
The mathematical (mathemata, what is learnable) is that evident aspect of things within which we are always already moving and according to which we experience them as things at all, and as such things... the mathematical is the fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things.
P. 75
What Is Called Thinking? (GA8). Translated by J. Glenn Gray, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.
Lectures delivered at the University of Freiburg during the winter and summer semesters of 1951-2.
Lecture VI has some advice to neophyte philosophers.
From all that has been suggested, it should be clear that one cannot read Nietzsche in a haphazard way; that each one of his writings has its own character and limits; and that the most important works and labors of his thought, which are contained in his posthumous writings, make demands to which we are not equal. It is advisable, therefore, that you postpone reading Nietzsche for the time being, and first study Aristotle for ten to fifteen years.
P. 73
There a bit on why rationalism can't answer the question here.
What Is Philosophy? Translated by Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback, New Haven, College and University Press, 1958.
This is lecture given at Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy, in August 1955.
The lecture has been excerpted in the
What is Philosophy?
posts on the enowning blog.
Zollikon Seminars (GA89) Edited by Medard Boss Translated by Franz K. Mayr and Richard R. Askay, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2001.
The first half of this book is the actual seminars conducted by Heidegger at Dr. Medard Boss's home in Zollikon, mostly between January, 1964 and March, 1966. The rest of the book is records of Boss and Heidegger's conversations and their correspondence.
In one conversation, Heidegger explains why dasein is necessary for the clearing where things come into presence.
Presencing is [how] the being of beings has been determined since ancient times. Not only in ancient times, but also in modern times, objectivity [Objektivität], standing against[Gegenständigkeit], present-at-handness [Vorhandenheit], and presentness [Präsenz] are simply modifications of presencing.
There is no presencing without a "where-to" [Wohin] of such presencing and tarrying [Verweilen]--of tarrying on [An-weilen]; that is, it is a tarrying [Weilen] which approaches what lets itself be approached [i.e., Da-sein]. If there were not such a being [i.e., Da-sein] letting itself be approached, nothing could come to presence.
The human being is the guardian of the clearing, of the disclosive appropriating Event [of being]. He is not the clearing himself, not the entire clearing, nor is he identical with the whole of the clearing as such. But as the one ecstatically "standing out" into the clearing, he himself is essentially cleared [gelichtet], and thus cleared himself in a distinguished way. Therefore, he is related to, belongs to, and is appropriated by the clearing. Da-sein's being needed as the shepard of the clearing in a distinguished manner of belonging to the clearing.
P. 177-178
In a conversation on September 7, 1963, Medard's shorthand recorded Heidegger contrasting Ereignis to "being understood as presence."
As long as one understands being as presence as it was once understood and is still [understood], one cannot understand technology and surely not the disclosive appropriating Event at all.
The determination of what was designated in metaphysics as what is present [da Anwesende], the res, is [re]thought in the new interpretation of a thing (as presented in the lecture What Is a Thing?) from [the background of] the disclosive appropriating Event. In this interpretation of a thing, presence as the [metaphysical] determination of being is abandoned.
P. 182
Here are two excerpts on the Da and the clearing.
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