Heidegger S Metaphysical Abyss

Heidegger presented reflections on animality most extensively in his 1929-30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. In these lectures, Heidegger poses two provocative metaphysical theses: The human, he claims, is 'world-forming'; in contrast, the animal is 'poor in world.' Contemporary secondary literature has emphatically criticised these theses on account of the objection that they forge an 'abyss of essence' between human and nonhuman organisms. The theses undermine scientific developments by breaking apart the biological continuum in order to secure the human within in its own unique category, all the while leaving the world-poor animal on the other side of the abyss. Heidegger thus reinstates an outmoded dualism that he ought, on his own terms, to renounce: human versus animal. Heidegger's Metaphysical Abyss undertakes a close examination of the lecture course in order to clarify the true meaning, scope, and significance of Heidegger's theses. Drawing on other places within Heidegger's writings where the theme of animality features, Cykowski demonstrates that Heidegger's examination of animality points beyond received dualisms back to a more essential way of philosophising about life and the human's relationship to it. Heidegger thus intended to examine and illuminate, rather than simply to repeat the orthodox metaphysical hierarchies that we have inherited, and his exploration of animality raises deep questions about the status of the human within nature that continue to be important today.

Heidegger presented reflections on animality most extensively in his 1929-30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. In these lectures, Heidegger poses two provocative metaphysical theses: The human, he claims, is 'world-forming'; in contrast, the animal is 'poor in world.' Contemporary secondary literature has emphatically criticised these theses on account of the objection that they forge an 'abyss of essence' between human and nonhuman organisms. The theses undermine scientific developments by breaking apart the biological continuum in order to secure the human within in its own unique category, all the while leaving the world-poor animal on the other side of the abyss. Heidegger thus reinstates an outmoded dualism that he ought, on his own terms, to renounce: human versus animal. Heidegger's Metaphysical Abyss undertakes a close examination of the lecture course in order to clarify the true meaning, scope, and significance of Heidegger's theses. Drawing on other places within Heidegger's writings where the theme of animality features, Cykowski demonstrates that Heidegger's examination of animality points beyond received dualisms back to a more essential way of philosophising about life and the human's relationship to it. Heidegger thus intended to examine and illuminate, rather than simply to repeat the orthodox metaphysical hierarchies that we have inherited, and his exploration of animality raises deep questions about the status of the human within nature that continue to be important today.

"Philosophy has come to an end" claimed Heidegger in the final posthumous interview he granted to Der Spiegel. The goal of Janicaud's chapters ("Overcoming Metaphysics?," "Heideggeriana," "Metamorphosis of the Undecidable," and the dialogue "Heidegger in New York") first of all is to clarify the project of "overcoming" metaphysics, a project that Heidegger himself recognized as open to innumerable misunderstandings. Is it really possible to surmount metaphysics, not by transgressing it, but by means of a patient elucidation of its key concepts? In the effort to underscore the originality of his own enterprise, doesn't Heidegger tend to project too harsh a dichotomy between the forgetfulness of Being and its authentic recollection? By raising these questions, Janicaud suggests that Heidegger himself does not elude the objections that he directs toward the great metaphysical thinkers. The final recourse to dialogue in the midst of twentieth-century New York - a landscape intentionally "different" from one expectedly Heideggerian - intends to hint at another possibility than the indefinite deconstruction of metaphysical texts. It suggests new ways for thoughtful meditation and a new cast for action. At the center of the book, Mattei evokes the "Heideggerian Chiasmus or the Setting-apart of Philosophy." Through an inquiry into the major Heideggerian texts produced between 1935 and 1969 and inspired by Holderlin's poetry, Mattei gradually detects the cosmic figure of the Geviert, the initial Fourfold where "earth and sky, the divine ones and the mortals" gather. Such a community, whose meaning Heidegger is the only one to decipher in our times, silently conforms to what is truly the archaic path to philosophy. The cosmic game of the Geviert also evokes, for Heidegger, the path of the Tao in the Chinese tradition. In this epoch characterized by the destruction of ontology, the two paths in which East and West meet may grant us moderns the hope one day of "dwelling" in the world.

This book takes Angst in the face of the abyss as its unifying metaphor. After a historical survey of Angst from ancient religions to Jacob Boehme, David K. Coe goes on to examine critically Angst in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, and Tillich. He concludes by summarizing Angst in two modes: as a "reflective apprehension" of a self standing at the abyss (Sartre and Tillich), and as a "pre-reflective apprehension of the abyss itself (Kierkegaard and Heidegger).

The two treatises The Overcoming of Metaphysics (1938/39) and The Essence of Nihilism (1946–1948) do not belong together temporally or formally, but they are brought together in this volume because they both treat a common thesis from the standpoint of different questions – namely, that nihilism is the essence of metaphysics in relation to the history of being. The overcoming of metaphysics is, for Heidegger, the decisive historical moment in which metaphysics is experienced as the history of the abandonment by being and overcome at the same time. The abandonment of beings by being reveals itself in the final and most extreme intensification of metaphysics as the “unconditioned predominance of manipulation.” Manipulation means here the all-dominating producibility of beings. The Essence of Nihilism is linked to the idea of overcoming. This text deals with the attempt to elucidate the essence of nihilism through Nietzsche’s words “God is dead.” The killing of God springs from the will to power as the most extreme form of manipulation. The being of beings is grasped here as the positing of values emanating from the will to power. In this positing of being as value, it becomes clear that being itself remained unthought in metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysics as such is nihilism proper. These key works by Heidegger, now available in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and to anyone interested in Heidegger’s thought.

What does Heidegger mean by 'Dasein'? What does he say in Being and Time? How does his phenomenology differ to that of his teacher, Husserl? Answering these questions and more, The Heidegger Dictionary provides students with all the tools they need to better understand one of the most influential yet complex philosophers of the 20th century. Easy to use and navigate, this book is divided into four main parts, covering Heidegger's life, ideas and innovative terminology, related thinkers, and published and unpublished works. Updated with significant new material throughout, the 2nd edition has been expanded to engage with the latest Heidegger scholarship, and features: · A new A-Z section on Heidegger's influences, past and contemporary, from Aristotle and Nietzsche to Husserl and Dilthey · Summaries of Heidegger's entire 102-volume Collected Works, including the Black Notebooks · Expanded coverage of Heidegger's thought, with straightforward explanations of his views on modernity, science and more · An updated glossary of Heidegger's key terms, listing all the major translation alternatives alongside his original German Providing a road-map to how Heidegger's ideas developed over his long philosophical career, this is an essential research companion for all students of Heidegger, from beginners to the advanced.

Heidegger holds that our age is dominated by the ambition of reason to possess the world. And he sees in Leibniz the man who formulated the theorem of our modern age: nothing happens without a reason. He calls this attitude `calculating thought' and opposes to it a kind of thought aimed at preserving the essence of things, which he calls `meditating thought'. Cristin's book ascribes great importance to this polarity of thinking for the future of contemporary philosophy, and thus compares the basic ideas of the two thinkers. Leibniz announces the conquest of reason; Heidegger denounces the dangers of reason. Their diversity becomes manifest in the difference between the idea of reason and the image of the path. But is Leibniz's thought really only `calculating'? And do we not perhaps also encounter the traces of reason along Heidegger's path? With these questions in mind we may begin to redefine the relation between the two thinkers and between two different conceptions of reason and philosophy. The hypothesis is advanced that Heidegger's harsh judgment of Leibniz may be mitigated, but it also becomes clear that Heidegger's rewriting of the code of reason is an integral part of our age, in which many signs point to new loci of rationality. With his original interpretation, aware of the risks he is taking, Renato Cristin offers a new guide to the understanding of reason: he shows forth Leibniz as one who defends the thought of being in the unity of monadology, and Heidegger as a thinker who preserves the sign of reason in his meditating thought.

"For those who want to think rigorously with Heidegger and with the movement of thinking set forth in Contributions, Vallega-Neu's book will prove to be an invaluable guide and resource. One of the great virtues of the book is its impeccable clarity and readability." -- Peter Warnek In her concise introduction to Martin Heidegger's second most important work, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Daniela Vallega-Neu provides guidance and structure to readers attempting to navigate this much-discussed but difficult text. Contributions reflects Heidegger's struggle to think at the edge of words and to bring to language what remains beyond the written or the spoken. In view of the centrality of Being and Time to Heidegger interpretation in recent decades, Vallega-Neu introduces Contributions first by reconsidering Being and Time in light of the transformative turn from prepositional thought to the poietic, performative character of thinking and language that marks the passage between the two works. She then discusses each of the "joinings" that structure the composition of Contributions. This graceful introduction provides students and scholars with a much-needed key for unlocking the thinking that underlies Heidegger's later writings.