Michael Bowler

Hermeneutical Heidegger critically examines and confronts Heidegger's hermeneutical approach to philosophy and the history of philosophy. Heidegger's work, both early and late, has had a profound impact on hermeneutics and hermeneutical philosophy. The essays in this volume are striking in the way they exhibit the variety of perspectives on the development and role of hermeneutics in Heidegger's work, allowing a multiplicity of views on the nature of hermeneutics and hermeneutical philosophy to emerge. As Heidegger argues, the rigor and strength of philosophy do not consist in the development of a univocal and universal method, but in philosophy's ability to embrace—not just tolerate—the questioning of its basic concepts. The essays in Hermeneutical Heidegger are exemplars of this kind of rigor and strength.

I examine the two different accounts of the activity of philosophy and the nature of the philosophical life put forward by Heidegger and Aristotle. I do so by examining Heidegger’s well-known claim that for Aristotle sophia is the arete of techne. It is argued that this claim is the result of Heidegger’s deep engagement with critical philosophy, which his own early philosophy develops in interesting ways, and that this claim results in Heidegger overlooking crucial elements of Aristotle’s account of philosophy. I maintain that Aristotle’s conception of philosophy represents a counter-point to the critical conception of philosophy developed by Heidegger, one that focuses upon the importance of the leisure embodied in philosophical activity. I suggest that it would be especially fruitful to compare and contrast these two conceptions of philosophy from the perspective of the ethical question of the nature and value of philosophical activity and the life of philosophy.