An Introduction to Metaphysics

An Introduction to Metaphysics
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1999
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9788120816459

This book contains a series of lectures delivered by Heidegger in 1935 at the University of Freiburg. In this work Herdegger presents the broadest and the most inteligible account of the problem of being, as he sees this problem. First, he discusses the relevance of it by pointing out how this problem lies at the root not only of the most basic metaphysical questions but also of our human existence in its present historical setting. Then after a short digression into the grammatical forms and etymological roots of the word "being", Heidegger enters into a lengthy discussion of the meaning of being in Greek thinking, letting pass at the same time no opportunity to stress the impact of this thinking about being on subsequent western speculation. His contention is that the meaning of being in Greek thinking underwent a serious restriction through the opposition that was introduced between being on one hand and becoming, appearance, thinking and values on the other.

Introduction to Metaphysics

Introduction to Metaphysics
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0300186126

Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics is one of the most important works written by this towering figure in twentieth-century philosophy. It includes a powerful reinterpretation of Greek thought, a sweeping vision of Western history, and a glimpse of the reasons behind Heidegger's support of the Nazi Party in the 1930s. Heidegger tries to reawaken the "question of Being" by challenging some of the most enduring prejudices embedded in Western philosophy and in our everyday practices and language. Furthermore, he relates this question to the insights of Greek tragedy into the human condition and to the political and cultural crises of modernity. This new translation makes this work more accessible to students than ever before. It combines smoothness with accuracy and provides conventional translations of Greek passages that Heidegger translated unconventionally. There are also extensive notes, a German-English glossary, and an introduction that discusses the history of the text, its basic themes, and its place in Heidegger's oeuvre.

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being

Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being
Author: Philip Tonner
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441161716

In Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being, Philip Tonner presents an interpretation of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in terms of the doctrine of the 'univocity of being'. According to the doctrine of univocity there is a fundamental concept of being that is truly predicable of everything that exists. This book explores Heidegger's engagement with the work of John Duns Scotus, who raised philosophical univocity to its historical apotheosis. Early in his career, Heidegger wrote a book-length study of what he took to be a philosophical text of Duns Scotus'. Yet, the word 'univocity' rarely features in translations of Heidegger's works. Tonner shows, by way of a comprehensive discussion of Heidegger's philosophy, that a univocal notion of being in fact plays a distinctive and crucial role in his thought. This book thus presents a novel interpretation of Heidegger's work as a whole that builds on a suggested interpretation by Gilles Deleuze in Difference and Repetition and casts a new light on Heidegger's philosophy, clearly illuminating his debt to Duns Scotus.

Being and Time

Being and Time
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2008-07-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0061575593

"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.

A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics

A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics
Author: Richard F. H. Polt
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2001-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780300085242

Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, first published in 1953, is a highly significant work by a towering figure in twentieth-century philosophy. The volume is known for its incisive analysis of the Western understanding of Being, its original interpretations of Greek philosophy and poetry, and its vehement political statements. This new companion to the Introduction to Metaphysics presents an overview of Heidegger's text and a variety of perspectives on its interpretation from more than a dozen highly respected contributors. In the editors' introduction to the book, Richard Polt and Gregory Fried alert readers to the important themes and problems of Introduction to Metaphysics. The contributors then offer original essays on three broad topics: the question of Being, Heidegger and the Greeks, and politics and ethics. Both for readers who are approaching Heidegger for the first time and for those who are studying Heidegger on an advanced level, this Companion offers a clear guide to one of the philosopher's most difficult yet most influential writings.

Heidegger's De(con)Struction of Metaphysics

Heidegger's De(con)Struction of Metaphysics
Author: Reiner Schürmann
Publisher:
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9783035803693

In Being and Time, Heidegger announced the "Task of Destroying the History of Ontology" in order to free what had remained "unthought" in Western metaphysics. The unpublished part of that work was to be titled "Basic Features of a Phenomenological Destruction of the History of Ontology. According to the Guiding Thread of the Problem of Temporality." This latest work in the Reiner Schürmann Selected Writings and Lecture Notes series aims to carry out Heidegger's plan. The destruction, or, as it is later called, the deconstruction of metaphysics, has a negative side--the peeling off, or the archeology, of metaphysical history by means of the guiding thread of the question of Being--and a positive side--"retrieval" of the original experience of Being in ancient Greek philosophy. "The destruction has no other intent than to win back the original experience of metaphysics through a deconstruction of those conceptions which have become current and empty." The purpose of taking to pieces the fabric of Western metaphysics is to show how at each important stage "the question of the meaning of Being has not only remained unattended to or inadequately raised, but that it has become quite forgotten in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'."

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling
Author: Sharin N. Elkholy
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441154914

The early Heidegger of Being and Time is generally believed to locate finitude strictly within the individual, based on an understanding that this individual will have to face its death alone and in its singularity. Facing death is characterized by the mood of Angst (anxiety), as death is not an experience one can otherwise access outside of one's own demise. In the later Heidegger, the finitude of the individual is rooted in the finitude of the world it lives in and within which it actualizes its possibilities, or Being. Against the standard reading that the early Heidegger places the emphasis on individual finitude, this important new book shows how the later model of the finitude of Being is developed in Being and Time. Elkholy questions the role of Angst in Heidegger's discussion of death and it is at the point of transition from the nothing back to the world of projects that the author locates finitude and shows that Heidegger's later thinking of the finitude of Being is rooted in Being and Time.

What is Metaphysics?

What is Metaphysics?
Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: Livraria Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2024-05-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

A new translation of Martin Heidegger's major work "What is Metaphysics?", originally published in 1929. 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. This edition contains his last introduction to the third edition Heidegger published a Foreword consisting of his letter to Ernst Jünger on his sixtieth birthday (where he muses on What is Metaphysics decades later) and his Afterword and Epilogue, which he published years after the original. This classic treatise begins by questioning the nature of metaphysics, pondering its fundamental principles and the nature of its inquiry into being. The paper critically examines the concept of being, not only in its existence, but in its essence and truth. This leads to an examination of the role of metaphysics in understanding the nature of reality and existence. The text deals with the idea of being as it is perceived within metaphysical thought, where being is often illuminated only in relation to itself, leaving other aspects of its essence unexplored. This approach highlights the limitations of metaphysical thought in fully comprehending the essence of being, suggesting a kind of inherent blindness within metaphysical philosophy to certain aspects of reality. Heidegger comments extensively on the relationship between metaphysics and the concept of nothingness, or 'the nothing', as a crucial aspect of understanding being. It discusses how metaphysics, in its traditional form, tends to overlook the significance of nothing in its quest to define and understand being. This oversight is presented as a critical gap in metaphysical thought, as it fails to recognize the integral role that nothingness plays in the broader context of existence and reality. The discussion extends to the implications of this oversight, suggesting that a deeper understanding of metaphysics requires a reevaluation of the role and significance of nothingness within philosophical discourse. This aspect of the paper reflects a profound challenge to conventional metaphysical doctrines, urging a rethinking of fundamental philosophical concepts in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of being and existence.

Complicated Presence

Complicated Presence
Author: Jussi Backman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2015-03-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438456506

From its Presocratic beginnings, Western philosophy concerned itself with a quest for unity both in terms of the systematization of knowledge and as a metaphysical search for a unity of being—two trends that can be regarded as converging and culminating in Hegel's system of absolute idealism. Since Hegel, however, the philosophical quest for unity has become increasingly problematic. Jussi Backman returns to that question in this book, examining the place of the unity of being in the work of Heidegger. Backman sketches a consistent picture of Heidegger as a thinker of unity who throughout his career in different ways attempted to come to terms with both Parmenides's and Aristotle's fundamental questions concerning the singularity or multiplicity of being—attempting to do so, however, in a "postmetaphysical" manner rooted in rather than above and beyond particular, situated beings. Through his analysis, Backman offers a new way of understanding the basic continuity of Heidegger's philosophical project and the interconnectedness of such key Heideggerian concepts as ecstatic temporality, the ontological difference, the turn (Kehre), the event (Ereignis), the fourfold (Geviert), and the analysis of modern technology.

Metaphysics and Oppression

Metaphysics and Oppression
Author: John McCumber
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1999-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253213167

"In this stunning philosophical accomplishment, McCumber sheds important new light on the history of substance metaphysics and Heidegger's challenge to metaphysical thinking. . . . Well-documented, brilliant, definitely a major contribution to philosophy!" —Choice In this compelling work, John McCumber unfolds a history of Western metaphysics that is also a history of the legitimation of oppression. That is, until Heidegger. But Heidegger himself did not see how his conception of metaphysics opened doors to challenge the domination encoded in structures and institutions—such as slavery, colonialism, and marriage—that in the past have given order to the Western world.