A view of Heidegger's divergence from the traditional philosophies of reason.

The ideas of Martin Heidegger, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, have had a profound influence on work in literary theory and aesthetics, as well as on mainstream philosophy. This book offers a clear and concise guide to Heidegger's notoriously complex writings, while giving special attention to his major work Being and Time. Richard McDonough adds historical context by exploring Heidegger's intellectual roots in German idealism and ancient Greek philosophy, and introduces readers to the key themes in Heidegger's work including Dasein, Existenz, time, conscience, death, and phenomenology. This book, which also considers Heidegger's controversial ethics (or «anti-ethics») and politics, would make an excellent text for both introductory and advanced undergraduate courses on existentialism, phenomenology, continental philosophy, and Heidegger himself.

Interrogating the Tradition interprets figures in the history of Western thought from a broad, "continental" perspective. Divided into three major sections—hermeneutical thought, Heidegger and the Greeks, and the question of nature in German Idealism—the question of origins is central throughout and takes various shapes, all within the context of the history of Western philosophy. Addressed are the form inquiries take into manners by which we receive our philosophical tradition, the originary force of Plato and Aristotle in the formation of philosophical interpretations of time and human life, and inceptional concepts of nature in the nineteenth century. The philosophers treated here are primarily ancient Greek and nineteenth-century German, but also included are careful discussions of Heidegger and Gadamer. Coming from both sides of the Atlantic and representing various approaches to the issues, the contributors showcase their work on one of the major cutting edges of philosophy. Contributors to this book include Robert Bernasconi, Walter Brogan, Tina Chanter, Françoise Dastur, John Ellis, Günter Figal, Rodolphe Gasché, Jean Grondin, David Farrell Krell, Michael Naas, James Risser, John Russon, John Sallis, Charles E. Scott, Ben Vedder, and Jason M. Wirth.

What Guignon does, very skillfully, is to use the problem of knowledge as a focus for organizing a discussion of Heidegger's thought in its entirety. . . . Places him squarely within the philosophical tradition he struggled to overcome and provides an account of his development from Being and Time to the last writings.

This book presents a selection of essays by the Indian philosopher J.L. Mehta on the topics of hermeneutics and phenomenology containing many original reflections on questions of interpretation and the creative retrieval and renewal of meanings from ancient traditions. Beginning with essays on sources of modern phenomenological methods, the work goes on to articulate principles of phenomenology and to apply them to the interpretation of Hindu traditions and texts. The final group of essays consider the problems of East-West understanding and issues of intercultural relationships and the possibilities of planetary thinking. In the fourteen essays brought together here, Mehta elucidates the contributions of continental philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer, and interprets meanings of the Rig Veda, Krishna in the Mahabharata, and the life of Sri Aurobindo. He also critically examines Western perceptions of India as a culture steeped in its own dreams, and explores the processes of rediscovering and re- appropriating through interpretation and translation one's ideological roots. The book contains an introductory and a concluding essay by the editor, contextualizing Mehta's life and studies. Thoughtful and provocative pieces by Wilhelm Halbfass and Raimondo Panikkar lead into the main body of the work. This is an especially useful work because Mehta was a rare kind of international thinker. In his mature essays his thinking came full circle - having grown from Hindu origins, expanding through Western psychology and continental philosophy, and returning to re-assess profound questions in Indian thought.

In this groundbreaking work, Richard L. Velkley examines the complex philosophical relationship between Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss. Velkley argues that both thinkers provide searching analyses of the philosophical tradition’s origins in radical questioning. For Heidegger and Strauss, the recovery of the original premises of philosophy cannot be separated from rethinking the very possibility of genuine philosophizing. Common views of the influence of Heidegger’s thought on Strauss suggest that, after being inspired early on by Heidegger’s dismantling of the philosophical tradition, Strauss took a wholly separate path, spurning modernity and pursuing instead a renewal of Socratic political philosophy. Velkley rejects this reading and maintains that Strauss’s engagement with the challenges posed by Heidegger—as well as by modern philosophy in general—formed a crucial and enduring framework for his lifelong philosophical project. More than an intellectual biography or a mere charting of influence, Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy is a profound consideration of these two philosophers’ reflections on the roots, meaning, and fate of Western rationalism.

"What is the meaning of being?" This is the central question of Martin Heidegger's profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism—as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought—Being and Time forever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. As Richard Rorty wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "You cannot read most of the important thinkers of recent times without taking Heidegger's thought into account." This first paperback edition of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson's definitive translation also features a new foreword by Heidegger scholar Taylor Carman.

The thirteen original essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought—both early and late—and the tradition of transcendental philosophy.

In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger’s Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism’s influence on the philosopher’s thought and politics. In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger’s philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds expressions of racism and exterminatory anti-Semitism. Faye disputes the view of Heidegger as a na�ve, temporarily disoriented academician and instead shows him to have been a self-appointed “spiritual guide” for Nazism whose intentionality was clear. Contrary to what some have written, Heidegger’s Nazism became even more radical after 1935, as Faye demonstrates. He revisits Heidegger’s masterwork, Being and Time, and concludes that in it Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare. Faye’s book was highly controversial when originally published in France in 2005. Now available in Michael B. Smith’s fluid English translation, it is bound to awaken controversy in the English-speaking world.