Argues that Herman Melville’s later work anticipates the resurgence of an American exceptionalist ethos underpinning the U.S.-led global “war on terror.”

"To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure. The essays in this volume--intriguing, challenging, and often baffling to the reader--call him always to abandon all superficial scanning and to enter wholeheartedly into the serious pursuit of thinking.... "Heidegger is not a 'primitive' or a 'romanitic.' He is not one who seeks escape from the burdens and responsibilities of contemporary life into serenity, either through the re-creating of some idyllic past or through the exalting of some simple experience. Finally, Heidegger is not a foe of technology and science. He neither disdains nor rejects them as though they were only destructive of human life. "The roots of Heidegger's hinking lie deep in the Western philosophical tradition. Yet that thinking is unique in many of its aspects, in its language, and in its leterary expression. In the development of this thought Heidegger has been taught chiefly by the Greeks, by German idealism, by phenomenology, and by the scholastic theological tradition. In him these and other elements have been fused by his genius of sensitivity and intellect into a very individual philosophical expression." --William Lovitt, from the Introduction

Heidegger’s radical thinking on the meaning of truth in a “clear and comprehensive critical edition” (Philosophy in Review). Martin Heidegger’s 1925–26 lectures on truth and time provided much of the basis for his momentous work, Being and Time. Not published until 1976—three months before Heidegger’s death—as volume 21 of his Complete Works, it is nonetheless central to Heidegger’s overall project of reinterpreting Western thought in terms of time and truth. The text shows the degree to which Aristotle underlies Heidegger’s hermeneutical theory of meaning. It also contains Heidegger’s first published critique of Husserl and takes major steps toward establishing the temporal bases of logic and truth. Thomas Sheehan’s elegant and insightful translation offers English-speaking readers access to this fundamental text for the first time.

The first book to document Heidegger's close connections to Nazism-now available to a new generation of students

The question of being was integral to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and was a large factor in the development of his political and aesthetic thought. In Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism, Bernhard Radloff investigates the philosophical foundations and cultural context of Heidegger's conception of being, focusing on the idea of gestalt as the guiding thread that determined German conservative thought throughout the 1930s. In doing so, Heidegger's philosophy is related to the whole of German society at the time, a society in which gestalt was the guiding light and the ultimate aspiration of artists, technicians, and politicians. Throughout the book, Heidegger's own understanding of gestalt is used as a window to his thoughts on being, which is conceived of as incorporated, finite, and historically situated in beings. Concentrating on the years between 1933 and 1942, Radloff seeks to capture the response of Heidegger's philosophy to National Socialism, examining key works and relating them to the literature of the German conservative revolution. Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism is, therefore a thorough treatment of his political philosophy as it relates to the question of being. Adopting both a historical and phenomenological approach to the subject, this book is equally an examination of German conservative ideology, a critique of technological determinism, and a study of one of the most controversial philosophers of twentieth century.

Few philosophers held greater fascination for Jacques Derrida than Martin Heidegger, and in this book we get an extended look at Derrida’s first real encounters with him. Delivered over nine sessions in 1964 and 1965 at the École Normale Supérieure, these lectures offer a glimpse of the young Derrida first coming to terms with the German philosopher and his magnum opus, Being and Time. They provide not only crucial insight into the gestation of some of Derrida’s primary conceptual concerns—indeed, it is here that he first uses, with some hesitation, the word “deconstruction”—but an analysis of Being and Time that is of extraordinary value to readers of Heidegger or anyone interested in modern philosophy. Derrida performs an almost surgical reading of the notoriously difficult text, marrying pedagogical clarity with patient rigor and acting as a lucid guide through the thickets of Heidegger’s prose. At this time in intellectual history, Heidegger was still somewhat unfamiliar to French readers, and Being and Time had only been partially translated into French. Here Derrida mostly uses his own translations, giving his own reading of Heidegger that directly challenges the French existential reception initiated earlier by Sartre. He focuses especially on Heidegger’s Destruktion (which Derrida would translate both into “solicitation” and “deconstruction”) of the history of ontology, and indeed of ontology as such, concentrating on passages that call for a rethinking of the place of history in the question of being, and developing a radical account of the place of metaphoricity in Heidegger’s thinking. This is a rare window onto Derrida’s formative years, and in it we can already see the philosopher we’ve come to recognize—one characterized by a bravura of exegesis and an inventiveness of thought that are particularly and singularly his.

A new 2024 translation of Martin Heidegger's major work "Being and Time" (Sein und Zeit), originally published in 1927 in multiple publications. This edition contains a new afterword by the Translator, a timeline of Heidegger's life and works, a philosophic index of core Heideggerian concepts and a guide for terminology across 19th and 20th century Existentialists. This translation is designed for readability and accessibility to Heidegger's enigmatic and dense philosophy. Complex and specific philosophic terms are translated as literally as possible and academic footnotes have been removed to ensure easy reading. Being and Time presents a complex philosophical discourse on the nature of being (Sein) and time (Zeit), focusing in particular on the temporal-existentialist concept of Dasein, a term that combines the German words for "to be" (sein) and "there" (da). This classic philosophic work examines the traditional metaphysical understanding of being, arguing that this understanding, typically based on the idea of a constant presence, fails to account for the temporal and existential dimensions of being. Heidegger proposes that an understanding of being requires an analysis of Dasein, which is characterized not only by its existence, but also by its being in the world and its temporal existence. The concept of Dasein is central to the his argument, emphasizing that Dasein is always already situated in a world, and its understanding of being is shaped by its temporal existence. This perspective challenges traditional metaphysical notions of being as static and unchanging, proposing instead that being is fundamentally temporal and connected to human existence and understanding. As the title suggests, Heidegger sees the question of Being as indistinguishable from Time, arguing that Newtonian conceptions of time as a series of now-points are inadequate for understanding the being of Dasein. His Ontochronology argues that the existential and ontological analysis of Dasein reveals a more fundamental concept of time, one that is integral to the structure of Being itself. The text further elaborates on the idea of "thrownness" and several other existentialist themes. Thrownness is one of the three conditions that signifies Dasein's immersion in the world, where it finds itself already entangled in a web of relations and meanings. This "thrownness", combined with Dasein's inherent being-toward-death, underscores the existential condition of human beings, framing their existence as a continual engagement with their own finitude and the possibilities of their being. Heidegger posits that understanding the nature of being requires a fundamental rethinking of both being and time, dogmatically stating that the true nature of being can only be grasped through an understanding of the temporality that characterizes the existence of being.

This volume traces the ways in which Heidegger’s philosophical thinking has been taken up, critically re-appropriated, and disseminated in literary and poetic writing since the middle of the 20th century.