Publisher's Synopsis
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was, by all accounts, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, rivaled perhaps only by Wittgenstein. Interest in his work among philosophers, humanists, and social scientists, as well as artists, writers, and critics has grown steadily since his death nearly thirty years ago. And yet only now, and only gradually, with time and effort, is the full scope of Heidegger's achievement coming into focus. Indeed, only fairly recently in English-speaking countries has his work begun to receive the kind of rigorous philosophical attention it deserves. Especially as the supposed distinction between "Continental" and "analytic" philosophy has become ever more obscure and irrelevant, scholars have had to reassess their own interpretive schemas, their own assumptions, even their own habits of reading and thinking, in order to make sense of the contributions of recent great thinkers like Heidegger and Wittgenstein. To be sure, although his work is famous worldwide, Heidegger belongs firmly in the German tradition and has been popular and influential above all in France. With the demise of positivism and the emergence of an increasingly pluralistic philosophical culture in English-speaking countries, however, scholars of various methodological and stylistic persuasions continue to find Heidegger's texts immensely powerful, startlingly original, and philosophically fruitful.
The principal challenge involved in a book of the sort I am proposing here is to present as much of the full spectrum of Heidegger's thought as possible in accessible, nontechnical language, in a relatively short space (around 200 pages), and in a way that neither falsifies nor trivializes the material, but uncovers its true philosophical import. Many platitudes are often repeated about Heidegger and his work, and many sophisticated but specialized studies are now available to a scholarly audience. I propose to forge a path between the banalities and the academic debates in order to show students and scholars what Heidegger's principal contributions to philosophy amount to, how to understand them, and where they fit in his work as a whole. It will be a delicate balancing act, but I believe I am in a good position to carry it out. Rather than cluttering my presentation with references to minor secondary sources, I will mention in passing only those works I think most useful for students to inquire into further. Nor will I explicitly extend the discussion very far into other areas of philosophy, or other major figures. I will, however, try to articulate, analyze, and assess the philosophical issues in a natural-sounding idiom that will be broadly intelligible and engaging to readers from different intellectual backgrounds, with different intellectual reference points. Again, I think I am well poised to pull this off.
