| ||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Thinking is not inactivity, but rather it is in itself the way of acting that stands in dialogue with the destiny of the world' Martin Heidegger
Product Description
Heidegger is perhaps the most influential, yet least readily understood, philosopher of the last century. Mark A. Wrathall unpacks Heidegger's dense prose, and guides the reader through Heidegger's early concern with the nature of human existence, to his later preoccupation with the threat that technology poses to our ability to live worthwhile lives. Wrathall pays particular attention to Heidegger's revolutionary analysis of human existence as inextricably shaped by a shared world. This leads to an exploration of his views on the banality of public life, and the possibility of authentic anticipation of death as a response to that banality. Wrathall reviews Heidegger's scandalous involvement with National Socialism, situating it in the context of his views about the movement of world history. He also explains Heidegger's important accounts of truth, art, and language. Extracts are taken from Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time, as well as a variety of his best known essays and lectures.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an introduction that allows you to think,
By
This review is from: How to Read Heidegger (Paperback)
I think these general introduction-type books are often... more confusing than tackling the real thing... in this case though Heidegger was just too much for me all on my own. And in fact this book is absolutely superb. The way this series is structured means you get a little segment of Heidegger, to read for yourself, and then an explanation afterwards, which takes you through a general introduction to his ideas, too. I thought it was brilliantly done, and have spent time in the day pondering some of the philosophical questions involved... which seems to me a proper testament to the book actually WORKING. It's doing what it's meant to do - helping you think - and not just confusing you by trying to pass judgement on a whole life and work at once. I knew nothing about Heidegger when i started, now i feel motivated to learn more. I think that's probably the best account I can give of the book!
4 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Why read Heidegger?,
This review is from: How to Read Heidegger (Paperback)
No one can doubt that Heidegger is difficult to read. So Wrathall's first task is to convince readers that he is worth reading at all. He starts by bringing out the stock villain of the Heideggerians: the naive analytic philosopher.
Wrathall makes the silly error of suggesting that all analytic philosophers are naive. But this is far from the case. Bryan Magee, as one example among many, takes on 'lived experience' just as much as Heidegger does; but in a readable manner. His Confessions Of A Philosopher doesn't need a book to tell you how to read it. In Wrathall's favour, he does give the opposition some space. He quotes John Searle: 'Most philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition seem to think that Heidegger was an obscurantist muddle-head at best or an unregenerate Nazi at worst'. But Wrathall runs away from arguing against Searle, leaving one thinking that Searle is probably right. Wrathall takes chunks of Heidegger's Being and Time and tries to tell you how to read them. For instance, the first sentence he quotes is "Dasein is an entity which, in its very being, comports itself understandingly towards that being." He points out the unfamiliar term "Dasein", and the ordinary terms used in unfamiliar ways: "entity", "being", "comports". So far so good. But instead of then suggesting the obvious (that Heidegger shouldn't have been so obscurantist!) he says that Heidegger did this "to help us understand experiences and things that cannot readily be captured in words and concepts." Wittgenstein had the solution to things that could not be captured in words and concepts. Be silent about them! My approach to reading Heidegger was to try to translate him into understandable English. So the sentence quoted takes "Dasein" as "human being" and becomes, roughly, "You understand your own existence". I did this for 250 pages of Being and Time, only able to keep going by thinking "Heidegger must be really important, look at all those clever professors and books out there saying he is." But after trying to decipher one unreadable paragraph too many, I gave up. If I had been sensible I would have given up at the first weasel word. "Dasein" is not a philosophical term, it is pretentious, obscurantist rubbish. Remember all the medieval theologians who argued about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Heidegger is their heir, and Wrathall his apologist. Don't be deceived. This emperor has no clothes.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews) 37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A perfect primer for reading Heidegger!,
By A reader reader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How to Read Heidegger (Paperback)
Written with genuine insight and astounding clarity, Wrathall's How to Read Heidegger is a perfect choice for anyone looking for a short introduction to Heidegger's thought. Proceeding chronologically from Heidegger's early to his later work, each of the book's ten chapters begins with a longish excerpt in Heidegger's own words, which Wrathall then clearly explains and contextualizes philosophically. The result is indeed a "master class" in close reading (as Critchley, the series editor, suggests). If this book is any indication, this series seems to me to be a wonderful, hermeneutic application of Marx's famous dictum: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." Wrathall won't just give you a reading of Heidegger, he'll help you learn How to Read Heidegger for yourself. As a result, Wrathall's book will be a succinct and eminently readable primer for those new to Heidegger and a thought-provoking refresher course for more experienced Heideggerians.
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From German to English to Comprehensibility,
By Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How to Read Heidegger (Paperback)
An interesting aspect to this book is that every chapter starts out with about a page of Heidegger's actual writing. I would read this dense prose before and after reading Mr. Wrathall's discussion of the chapter topic. After reading the author's interpretation I would go back and read Heidegger's words again, and find that I had a better understanding of the original.
I would assume that the main reason one writes a review of a book like this is not to critique the philosophy that it contains, but to inform the prospective reader as to the comprehensibility of the presentation of that philosophy. Mr. Wrathall performs admirably in this regard. As a relative philosophical novice I found that this book turned night into day. The author covers the topic of Heidegger's views of our being in the world; how our place in the world creates our possibilities and our constraints. It discusses how our culture forms us and can limit us. Do we become authentic or inauthentic beings in terms of how much we conform to culture. Heidegger's views on technology are presented. He feels that we should be part of the earth, and not conform the earth to our every need. We should not view that earth as something that merely provides us with resources. There is also a chapter on Heidegger's views of art and truth. I found that I had a harder time relating to his views on aesthetics, than I did with the rest of his philosophy. This is an excellent book for those with limited backgrounds in philosophy and/or Heidegger's works. It might also be worthwhile to those who have encountered Heidegger in the past, and need a littler refresher to his works. One final comment: The author is evidently fluent in German. He frequently disagrees with some of the German to English translations, and provides his ideas of what the German words really mean in English. I found this to be an added bonus 14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning introduction to Heidegger's thought,
By Benjamin Smith - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: How to Read Heidegger (Paperback)
Quite simply this is by far the best introduction to Heidegger's thought I have come across. Dreyfus' books and lectures are highly insightful, Blattner's book on Being and Time is also a superlative work for those working through the text. But Wrathall will serve as a far superior introduction. His prose is friendly, lucid, and beautifully constructed, the book's structure is logical, and he presents Heidegger's thought not by translating it, but by letting it be understood in a straightforward manner.
If you are an academic venturing into Heidegger, begin here. If you are simply interested in his thought, you will be richly rewarded by countless insights. This is what academic writing SHOULD be. |
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
