Richard Polt

The essay investigates two personae: Socrates as depicted by Plato and Descartes as narrator of the Discourse on Method and Meditations. Socrates is aware of his ignorance and insists on remembering to care for the self; Descartes claims to have overcome ignorance through a method that breaks problems into simple and certain elements, establishing a self-certain yet impersonal subject that comprehends and controls objects. The Cartesian approach has led to the modern process of “liquidation” that reduces beings, property, and truth to resources, wealth, and information – initiating the dangerous and unprecedented epoch known as the Anthropocene. The Socratic approach offers some promise of reintegration and resistance to liquidation by urging us to care for wholeness and recognizing that being exceeds what we comprehend.

Heidegger’s 1936 notes titled “Running Notes on Being and Time” (“Laufende Anmerkungen zu Sein und Zeit”) are impatient, even irritable reactions that characterize both major and minor moments in Being and Time as “superficial” (GA82 60), “inadequate” (GA82 36), “ridiculous” (GA82 123), or “wholly off track and erroneous” (GA82 52). Among the many thoughts in the “Running Notes,” one theme emerges as paramount: what was presented in Being and Time as a phenomenology of Dasein—understood as the human way of being—should instead be conceived as projecting a new possibility for humanity, a possibility into which we are invited to “leap” to initiate a new epoch.

This collection offers a generous and thought-provoking sample of recent scholarship on Heidegger. Most of the essays take little for granted, and make the effort to sum up the very heart of Heidegger’s project. This makes them suitable for beginners, but by no means restricts them to such an audience: all are rich in detail and contribute to ongoing interpretive controversies, as is typical of the fine Cambridge Companion series. A good number of the essays cast Heidegger’s thought in terms such as “coping,” “cultural practices,” or “forms of life,” and illustrate these concepts with familiar, commonsense examples. I will refer to this as a “practical” approach. In a practical reading, Heidegger comes to light primarily as an anti-Cartesian who points to the primacy of meaningful agency, in a broad sense, over the epistemological distinction between subject and object: Heidegger’s writings thus reveal that all cognition is made possible by practices, that is, by shared and tacit patterns of dealing with the things that matter to us. It is in this guise that Heideggerian ideas have entered the sphere of traditional Anglo-American philosophy, where they promise to enrich and recast old debates. Those who insist on remaining within Heidegger’s own language may fear that such an approach is reductive; but it is better seen as a genuine attempt to think independently about Heidegger’s topic of thought. The goal of these readings is not solely to explicate Heidegger, but to enhance “our understanding of ourselves and our world,” as Charles B. Guignon puts it in his introduction ; and Heidegger himself would certainly endorse that goal.

This is the second volume to be published in Division III of Heidegger’s collected works, which is devoted to texts never before presented to the public, either in print or as lectures. The first such was volume 65, Beiträge zur Philosophie —a crucial text from 1936–8 which appeared in 1989. Besinnung dates from 1938–9, and is a sequel of sorts to the Contributions, for it is rooted in the fundamental experience described in that text: we stand at a juncture between “the first beginning” of Western thought and “the other beginning.” The first beginning attempts to represent beings as such; the other beginning inquires into “the truth of be-ing [Seyn].” This truth occurs as the event of appropriation in which be-ing both displays itself and withdraws, beckoning us into our role as Dasein, or the creative preservers of meaning.

Richard Polt takes a fresh approach to Heidegger’s thought during his most politicized period, and works toward a philosophical appropriation of his most valuable ideas. Polt shows how central themes of the 1930s—such as inception, emergency, and the question “Who are we?”—grow from seeds planted in Being and Time and are woven into Heidegger’s political thought. Working with recently published texts, including Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, Polt traces the thinker’s engagement and disengagement from the Nazi movement. He critiques Heidegger for his failure to understand the political realm, but also draws on his ideas to propose a “traumatic ontology” that understands individual and collective existence as identities that are always in question, and always remain exposed to disruptive events. Time and Trauma is a bold attempt to gain philosophical insight from the most problematic and controversial phase of Heidegger’s thought.

Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an English-language anthology. Two of the essays have never before been published in any language ; three of the essays have never been published in English before, and two of the essays provide previews of works in progress by major scholars.

In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity.