Tom Rockmore

Heidegger’s Being and Time has been accused of espousing empty decisionism and relativism. I argue, first, that in fact Being and Time’s stress on the situated character of human judgment is supplemented by a very Kantian account of being human that defi nes appropriate behavior towards all entities possessing a certain character. Its analysis of conscience and guilt attempts to uncover the existential basis for the distinction Kant draws between the phenomenal and the noumenal aspects of the self. Building on this analysis, I claim, Being and Time reaffirms the second version of Kant’s categorical imperative, which states that humanity should never be treated merely as a means, but always also as an end in itself. In the second part of the paper, however, I argue that this proximity to Kant is part of the problem with Being and Time, that some of this work’s shortcomings and dangers in relation to ethics rest precisely in its very Kantian view of what makes an entity worthy of moral concern, and what is owed to others in virtue of their being such worthy entities. As a consequence of this view, not only are all nonhuman animals excluded from moral concern, but, strangely, the intrinsic value of human well-being is itself threatened.

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger's Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger's colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger's heirs and critics in France and Germany.In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with Jacques Derrida as a springboard for examining questions about the nature of authorship and personal responsibility that are at the heart of the book.Richard Wolin is Professor of Modern European Intellectual History and Humanities at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, and The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism and Poststructuralism

For Martin Heidegger the "fall" of philosophy into metaphysics begins with Plato. Thus, the relationship between the two philosophers is crucial to an understanding of Heidegger--and, perhaps, even to the whole plausibility of postmodern critiques of metaphysics. It is also, as the essays in this volume attest, highly complex, and possibly founded on a questionable understanding of Plato. As editors Catalin Partenie and Tom Rockmore remark, a simple way to describe Heidegger's reading of Plato might be to say that what began as an attempt to appropriate Plato (and through him a large portion of Western philosophy) finally ended in an estrangement from both Plato and Western philosophy. The authors of this volume consider Heidegger's thought in relation to Plato before and after the " Kehre " or turn. In doing so, they take up various central issues in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and thereafter, and the questions of hermeneutics, truth, and language. The result is a subtle and multifaceted reinterpretation of Heidegger's position in the tradition of philosophy, and of Plato's role in determining that position.