The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude

by Martin Heidegger

A crucial work for understanding a major turning point in Heidegger's thought. "...an important addition to the translations of Heidegger's lecture-courses."--International Philosophical Quarterly
"The translators of these lectures have succeeded splendidly in giving readers an intimation of the tensely insistent tone of the original German. Heidegger's concern with a linguistic preconsciousness & with our entrancement before the enigma of existence remains intensely contemporary."--Choice
"There is much that is new and valuable in this book, & McNeill & Walker's faithful translation makes it very accessible."-- Review of Metaphysics
"Whoever thought that Heidegger...has no surprises left in him had better read this volume. If its rhetoric is 'hard & heavy' its thought is even harder & essentially more daring than Heideggerians ever imagined Heidegger could be."--David Farrell Krell
First published in German in 1983 as volume 29/30 of Heidegger's collected works, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics includes an extended treatment of the history of metaphysics & an elaboration of a philosophy of life & nature. Heidegger's concepts of organism, animal behavior & environment are uniquely developed & defined with intensity.
William McNeill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is co-translator (with Julia Davis) of Holderlin's Hymn "The Ister" by Martin Heidegger. Nicholas Walker is Research Fellow in philosophy and literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Studies in Continental Thought: John Sallis, general editor

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, German Literature, 20th Century, Psychology, Science

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

This is a fascinating lecture course which substantially supplements Heidegger's Being and Time. Here we see in addition to Dasein's fundamental attunement of anxiety as presented in Being and Time a description and analysis of another form of fundamental attunement -- boredom. In both anxiety and boredom Dasein confronts its originary opening to the question of its own being. Also of especial interest in this lecture course is the only sustained engagement in Heidegger's works with the natural sciences. In further developing the phenomenological description of world Heidegger analyses the sense in which animals can be said to be "poor in world" in contrast to Dasein's "worlding." The descriptions of what it is like to be a bee are a fascinating piece of phenomenological imagining oneself into the world of a substantially other kind of being. The text is somewhat easier going than Being and Time but the analyses are very close, precise and slow moving. Unfortunately, as with many such lecture courses, the full extent of the intended argument was cut short by the end of the semester leaving Finitude and Solitude unexamined. But the expansion of Heidegger's work on the description of the experience of world is a substantive addition to our understanding of world as presented in Being and Time.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Novalis “philosophy is really homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere”. For Heidegger this demand to be at home everywhere means to exist among beings as a whole; a peculiar way of questioning about the meaning of this “as a whole” that he calls world. For him, homesickness is ultimately the fundamental attunement of philosophizing. In this course/book Heidegger is going to redefine philosophy in terms of boredom as a fundamental attunement that reveals the world as a whole to Dasein, Dasein who is world-forming. In order to do so, Heidegger is going back to Aristotle, to the origins of metaphysics, to the history of philosophy, and to the ontological difference between Being and beings. This book/course parallels and expands several topics from “Being and Time” published a few years before.
For Heidegger, philosophy is the opposite of all comfort and assurance; that is questioning is the right attitude, while any answer is just dogma. Descartes wanted to turn philosophy into absolute knowledge and as such he questioned everything except the I/ego/Dasein. Moreover, Descartes's stance is a scientifically critical one, not a philosophical one; that is the objects must be eventually secured by science. Since Dasein itself is never put into question, fundamentally nothing at all is at stake with Descartes. As such, it is just critical, non-binding, non-perilous, inherently assured in advance that nothing will happen with Dasein; and consequently outside philosophy. Rather than such commonplace and bliss of knowledge, philosophy according to Heidegger should be terror and an attack by Dasein upon man. All man's self-conceptions, certainties, and answers are nothing else but mediocrity raised to the status of deity. Dasein needs to become what it can be and these possibilities are happening in time, are limited by each epoch, are factual, and are happening in a confrontation with beings as a whole. Truth is this confrontation of Dasein with the whole of beings. As the early Greeks expressed it with Aletheia - truth must be stolen and torn from concealment in a dangerous confrontation. This understanding of philosophy and truth has nothing to do with sitting in a room and doubting yourself or by stating or proving propositional truths in some harmless or indifferent ways. Proper philosophy in each case happens only in and through a fundamental attunement. Fundamental concepts are not universals, not some formulae for the universal properties of a field of objects; they always comprehend within themselves the comprehending human being in his or her Dasein. For Heidegger, mathematical knowledge is in itself and in terms of its content, the emptiest knowledge imaginable, and as such is at the same time the least binding for men. Moreover, to judge philosophy according to the idea of science is the most fateful debasement of its innermost essence; science is philosophy, but philosophy is not science.
According to Aristotle, proper philosophy is a dual questioning: questioning concerning beings as a whole and questioning concerning the Being of beings. This insight was lost as philosophy was institutionalized in metaphysical schools and the roots of it were forgotten. According to this commonplace knowledge, philosophy's truths are available to everyone by being formalized in concepts/statements and by being repeated/taught in such schools. Ironically enough, “Metaphysics” is the name that we are stuck with because some librarians gave it to diverse and unconnected Aristotle's writings just because they were collected together and placed on a shelf “alongside/behind/after” the book “Physics”. In other words, “metaphysics” is an expression which arose from being at a loss as to what to do, an embarrassment, a librarian's technical title for positionality, and something completely rootless. Since with Plato and the Christian theology a supersensuous world was postulated (mainly concerned with the existence of God and the immortality of soul), the “metaphysics” label was attached to the science of such a world and consequently understood as rational theology. Thus a labeling error became the fate of the Western philosophy. In this classical understanding of metaphysics as theology and ontology, metaphysics deals with God and first causes, sciences deal with beings, while philosophy is left with not much. On the other hand, the modern and current metaphysics is mainly represented by the mathematical approach to the natural sciences via absolute certainty - as initiated by Descartes and Fichte. In the modern metaphysics, God is replaced by consciousness/I as the foundation and as such never put in question.
Heidegger's project in this book is to philosophize again from within philosophy itself. That is, not out of science, metaphysics, or any other theoretical considerations; but out of a fundamental attunement and as a living philosophizing. If in “Being and Time” anxiety, as one fundamental mood of attunement, reveals to Dasein the Nothing and consequently the totality of beings (i.e. “why is there something rather than nothing”); here an analysis of boredom, as it springs from the temporality of Dasein, is done. In boredom, Dasein's being is delivered to beings' refusal of themselves as a whole; thus boredom reveals the whole of beings to Dasein.
Human beings are world-forming; while the animals are poor in the world. By world, Heidegger means the manifestation of beings as such and as a whole. The “as-structure” and the “as a whole” point to the Aletheia and to the formal indication of discourse/logos. The propositional truth/logic, as adopted by positivists, grammarians, and sciences after Aristotle, is just a derivative form and is fundamentally based on this original disclosure/unconcealing/revealing of the world through logos. On the other hand, the “as-structure” is deeply connected with the “is” and the essence of Being. This in turn leads to the ontological difference; that is the distinction between Being and beings. In the last pages of the book, Heidegger is trying to say something about the primordial structure of this fundamental occurrence/distinction/irruption between Being and beings; a topic that he will substantially elaborate later in the “Of the Event” book.

[Gene Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a set of H's lectures from the late 1920s. It was very much worth the effort for three reasons. First it contains the most detailed treatment of boredom ever written by anyone--it goes on for over a hundred pages! (I kept wondering how the students kept awake during all of it!). Second, it contains some fascinating insights into Heidegger's view of animal life, something about which he did not write elsewhere that I know of. Third, the book moves past Being and Time up to the point of a potential turn in his thought. For all these reasons I recommend it highly.

[Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first section of FCM deals largely with boredom as the fundamental attunement of contemporary Dasein (human being). A boring read. Kudos to Heidegger for successfully conveying to the reader - through affect - exactly what he means by boredom. Part One also addresses the relationship between temporality and boredom.

Part Two is where the good stuff happens. Here, Heidegger takes up the question of world: "What is world?" To provide an initial understanding of what he means by world (e.g., what does it mean to have a world?) he conducts a comparative examination of three theses: (i) The stone is worldless; (ii) The animal is poor-in-world, and (iii) Man [sic] is world-forming. Heidegger makes this comparison by examining the specific relations that the stone, animal, and man each have to the world. As an aside, Uexküll's Environment and Inner World of Animals and Theoretical Biology give insights into how the biological sciences influenced Heidegger's formulation of his threefold thesis.

As mentioned by others, the lecture courses end before Heidegger has the opportunity to examine finitude and solitude.

FCM supplements Being and Time. The form of philosophizing Heidegger uses in this text is an example of what he calls a "metaphysical unfolding of questions." Part Two is useful for obtaining a better understanding of Heidegger’s conception of world. Part One presents an interesting treatment of the relations between temporality and boredom; it also works as a fantastic alternative to popping a sleeping pill.

[I-kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Misleading subtitle as usual in H.'s seminars. I propose "boredom, bees, and the ground of propositional comportments". While a bit repetitive at many points there is still much valuable reflection going on.

[Renxiang Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A transcript of the lectures he gave at Freiburg University in Winter 1929 semester, this book has a unique status in Heidegger's oeuvre. It was composed during a period when Heidegger was reflecting upon the approach he had been taking till then, an approach from existential analytic of Dasein to fundamental ontology, which was best exemplified in Being and Time . In the current book, Heidegger beings to doubt his formulation of the problematic of ontology, though this without turning away from the question of Being.

It seems that "metaphysics" is becoming a more proper name of philosophy than "ontology", because the latter implies that Being (onta) should be and can only be articulated via discourse (logos). This was the case for early Heidegger, but gradually he found logos, together with its Greek origin, still not originary enough. Something obscure must underlie the disclosure of logos, and this, briefly, is a primordial concealment, a darkness that first makes light possible. The discovery of this darkness, or of the undifferentiatedness of Being and Nothing, is a result of Heidegger's constant theoretical movement toward a more fundamental "ground".

The book can be divided roughly into four parts ("Preliminary Appraisal"; "Part One"; "Part Two", Chapters 1-5; "Part Two", Chapter 6), each of which exhibits the uniqueness of the book in a different way.

First, Heidegger provides a renewed definition of "metaphysics" in the "Preliminary Appraisal", and in so doing distances philosophy from inquiries of science. He is not satisfied with the literal meaning of metaphysics ("after physics"), but instead points out that this name witnesses the awkwardness of the time when what properly belongs to metaphysics cannot be categorized - thus the strange way of compiling Aristotle's work on "first philosophy" in a volume following his Physics.

Neither does Heidegger agree that metaphysics has to define itself with respect to physics, as if it were to rest on physics and then transcend the latter. For him, the task of metaphysical thinking is “dealing with the whole”. As soon as this whole is demarcated into several realms (e.g. logic, physics and ethics), metaphysics finds nowhere to fit in. All it can do is to reduce the theme it studies to something at hand, albeit a higher one (e.g. God). Thus a revival of metaphysics consists in retrieving the horizon of the whole that precedes all specific domains and indeed makes them possible.

This task is carried out in "Part One" of the book. The interesting side is that Heidegger refrains here from either of the approaches announced in Being and Time: a "destruction" of the history of philosophy, and an explication of the meaning of Being-in-the-world - the latter is reserved for the last chapter of the entire book. Instead, Heidegger reminds us of the whole by awakening a "fundamental attunement" of Dasein, namely profound boredom. Whereas attunement [Stimmung] was treated only briefly under the section of Befindlichkeit in Being and Time, here it is given a leading role. The reason behind is Heidegger's increasing belief that philosophy works not so much by logically persuading than by eliciting a transformation in each particular Dasein. Accordingly, something as "subjective" as attunement (sometimes translated as "mood") can have a determinative role.

Heidegger starts with the most frequent and ordinary mode of boredom ("becoming bored by something"), then proceeds to "being bored with something", and finally to profound boredom ("it is boring for one"). Throughout these modes, two temporal characteristics are recognized: boredom is "being left empty" and "being held in limbo by time as it drags". This is where Heidegger's notion of a temporality more originary than clock time comes into play; with this insight he is able to recognize a running-through structure despite the apparent discrepancy between different modes of boredom.

Significantly, boredom is an attunement par excellence for metaphysics because of its evasive tendency. It does not usually manifest itself as it is, but manifests through out evading it, for example in our wanting to pass the time (78). We constantly cause boredom to "fall asleep" (79), but this only corroborates rather than annihilates its existence. It becomes more and more evident, as we proceed ti more profound modes of boredom, that this has little to do with clock time. Clock time is only a measurement post facto of experienced time.

On page 123 Heidegger talks about the fact that we take some time "so as to leave it for ourselves"; we waste time so that "we do not have to reckon with it". A radical interpretation of this: boredom, as something we constantly evade, constitutes our "passing" any time. A duration can occur only because we are bored enough so as to let it go unnoticed. In other words, forgetting underlies the flow of clock time (while not-forgetting creates moments of vision [Augenblick], which cannot be measured by clock time). Under the power of forgetting, however, the flow of clock time only conceals its utmost homogeneity; it amounts to a big "now" when becoming is suppressed - and that, Heidegger implies, is the source of the "entirely present" in the metaphysical tradition (124).

So much for the input of temporality. Another aspect of the boredom that is relevant to the project of renewing metaphysics is its unconcealment of "beings' telling refusal of themselves as a whole". When we no longer dwell in the fascination with beings and instead find ourselves, in profound boredom, refused by them as a whole, this "whole" comes into our horizon, which is usually filled with beings. It is for this reason that boredom qualifies as a "fundamental" attunement for metaphysics.

A comparison between the roles of boredom and Being-towards-death (the fundamental attunement in Being and Time) may be illuminating. While boredom discloses the wholeness of beings and hence the meaning of the world, Being-towards-death reveals the unity of Dasein qua its "possibility of impossibility". The focus has shifted from Dasein to the world, though boredom is still anchored in Dasein.

Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of different modes of boredom is rich and penetrating. Its value is independent of his project that interpretation serves.

In "Part Two", Heidegger deals thematically with the notion of the world. Chapters 1-5 constitutes its negative side, as they amount to an interpretation of the claim "the animal is poor in world". There Heidegger criticizes reducing animals to machinary or understanding their behavior in terms of human concepts.

He claims that the animal's being is bound to a "self-encirclement open to disinhibition", that it is characterized by "the capability of behavior in the unity of captivation". This is a rare case where Heidegger deals with philosophy of biology. Though this detour is a means rather than an end, Heidegger exhibits a surprising familiarity with biological researches at his time. His aim, however, is never to deny the validity of such researches - at most he is willing to provide them with a metaphysical foundation.

The interesting side of Heidegger's rendering of the animal is that, although the animal is essentially restricted (encirclement), it is capable not despite but because of this restriction. Restriction prescribes the direction of the animal's attention, so that it is sensitive to something while insensitive to others. Without restriction, the animal would be indifferent to everything, like a stone. This point in fact also applies to human being, e.g. to the notion of freedom. There is no meaningful freedom without some restriction.

Indeed, Heidegger's discussion of the animal can, mutatis mutandis, be applied to what Merleau-Ponty says about perception or to what Bourdieu says about social behaviors. However, he does not think that these exhaust what it is to be a human. On the contrary, what is properly human is different in kind (not in extent) from captivation. Characterizing human being solely in terms of captivation (Merleau-Ponty does this implicitly, Bourdieu most straightforwardly) amounts to giving up humanity and satisfying oneself with animality. But this is self-contradictory, because even to satisfy oneself with something presumes humanity.

So what are fundamental for humanity? Having a world, the manifestness of beings as beings as a whole, and the relation to beings as letting be and not letting be - all assumed under the notion of comportment. These are discussed in the Chapter 6 of "Part Two".

According to Heidegger, human and human alone is able to see something as something>. This consists in distancing oneself from the referential network of everydayness, within which we approach beings primarily with respect to their utility. By seeing something as something, one holds oneself "toward the binding character of things". This means that we have to release things from the categories we impose on them and to listen to them in openness.

In order to tie the "as"-structure to the notion of the world, Heidegger traces back to Aristotle's doctrine of logos apophanticos (the propositional statement), which is both how we normally interpret the "as" and how we usually understand worldly truth. In this approach Heidegger finds Aristotle's idea that an assertion is "a taking together that takes apart", both of which happens in a single occurrence. This, furthermore, is transformed into the belonging-together and (simultaneously) standing-apart of beings and the Being of beings. Here Heidegger is not so much concerned with discovering the latter (as he is in Basic Problems of Phenomenology ) than with the primordial occurrence [Geschehen] that gave rise to the relation and distinction between the two. This might be a precursor of his later concept of Ereignis, and is discussed in a rather obscure manner in the final pages of this book.

Heidegger never reached a thematic discussion of finitude or solitude, as announced in the title. However, he does say that finitude, the middle term of the three, is a "rupture within Dasein itself" that founds the link between the world and solitude (individuation) (170).

There is one place where Heidegger notes, though only in passing, the significance of finitude for a proper metaphysics. There he is criticizing idealism from Kant to Hegel for attempting to found metaphysics on the subject and consciousness. Hegel's dialectic is characterized as a (failed) attempt to correct the tradition within the tradition: with the self-contained notion of the absolute spirit, the problem of Dasein and especially of its finitude did not become a problem. (208) Whereas Kant turns "away from an uncomprehended finitude toward a conforting infinitude", Hegel's dialectic is "a sign of overconfidence in attempting to grasp the infinite" (209). Both ignore the effective power of finitude and characterize it as something deficient that eventually has to be superseded by the infinite.

Interestingly, this contradicts with Hegel's criticism of sticking to the finite and not allowing it to "pass over into" the finite - the reason being that, in sticking to the finite, we make it into something absolute, which contradicts with its transient status by definition. So is Heidegger making finitude (and hence Dasein) into something absolute as well? Indeed, its moments ("inconsequence, ground-lessness and fundamental concealment") all attach to important aspects of Heidegger's thought, yet the current text does not allow us to decide whether they serve as a "ground" like in Schelling (if so, Heidegger would fall victim to Hegel's criticism). A further investigation into this requires us to take into consideration Heidegger's novel discovery of an originary temporality, exemplified, though in a brief manner, in "Part One" of the book.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Went on about boredom and do animals have souls and then tries to bring it together and connect it with metaphysics but I’m not sure if it works out

[Lucas Sipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly important part of Heidegger's thought, 'The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics' explores the fundamental attunement of boredom and the problem of world in metaphysics. Like all Heidegger lectures and texts, he covers countless topics and each tome is so incredibly rich and deep that only multiple reads will tap into the ideas expressed. For a first read, however, Heidegger's lecture course in the years after the publication of 'Being & Time' function as a sort of sequel to the ideas in the first half of that crucial work.

In 'Being & Time', Heidegger explores the attunement of anxiety and how anxiety opens us to beings in a fundamental way (likely butchering the explanation but close enough for present purposes.) Attunements are the 'how' according to which one is in such a way. Fundamental attunements are those attunements that open up the problem of being in a unique way. In 'Fundamental Concepts', Heidegger explores a different attunement - that of boredom. Taking the average everyday experience of boredom, Heidegger talks about two different kinds of boredom. Being bored by something as expressed by being held in limbo and coming to be left empty. Both expressions of boredom involve much analysis of how boredom holds us, how we suppress it, and how we deal with it. It's not necessary to explore each variation but they are quite interesting and full of insight. Yet these two do not exhaust boredom but prepare us for 'It is boring for one.' 'It is boring for one' is the fundamental attunement of boredom as it is the original expression of boredom. 'It' here refers not to anything but to all that encompasses dasein.

From there, we move into a discussion of world. Heidegger here famously explores the animal as being poor in world as opposed to man which is world forming. To be quick, Heidegger holds that animals experience world (which means manifestness of beings as such as a whole but we don't know that yet) in a way that is driven/ captivated. An animal, say a bee, does experience the honey as honey nor it's mate as a mate. Rather, their instinct drives them to gather honey or to copulate with their mate. Now, this is pretty simple in someway but very profound in others - honey as such is incapable of being accessed as the bee only ever gets the one view of honey as food or whatever. The bear only ever sees the salmon as food. Man, on the other hand, gets to experience the salmon as salmon in manifold ways. Of course, never one to rest on his laurels, Heidegger immediately launches us into a discussion of the 'as' and how it relates to world. A very complicated discussion follows that is incredibly rich and worthy of examination on it's own.

Beyond those two main areas, however, Heidegger explores literary criticism, philosophy of science, and even explores the ideas and meaning of his past work. At one point, he directly critiques his explanation of truth in 'Being & Time.' On the whole, this is a work of incredible importance. I haven't had the chance to read him yet but Jean-Luc Marion writes about givenness in relation to the phenomenology of Heidegger & Husserl and I saw traces of what I would call givenness in this text where Marion might have drawn from. Also there is discussion of image and projection throughout the text that are crucial to work I am hoping to do in the coming months.

Likely not as important (and for sure not as impactful) as 'Being & Time', 'Fundamental Concepts' is by far the most important text of Heidegger for myself. It looks into themes and ideas that I find concerning and seek to elucidate. A background in Aristotle was needed to really "get" the final sections (which I sort of have - not Aristotle as a writer but what people say about Aristotelian metaphysics) but nowhere near as dependent on the history of philosophy like his 'Logic | The Question of Truth' was. After I tackle 'Being & Time' again, this will be number one on the follow up as it clears up many of the difficulties in that more seminal text.

[Solomon Selah · Rating 5 out of 5]

In conclusion, it seems that Heidegger does not only criticize the traditional understandings of animal, but also their traditionally metaphysical foundation.

Firstly, for Heidegger, the decline of metaphysics begins when Aristotle’s two meanings of φύσις are damaged by scholastic disciplines.[ Heidegger, McNeill, and Walker, 34.] In so far as scholastic philosophy was “not in a position to take on board what Aristotle designates as philosophy proper”.[ Heidegger, McNeill, and Walker, 37.] This means the true Aristotle’s philosophy, “how this unitary problematic looks which takes as its object φύσις in this dual sense”,[ Heidegger, McNeill, and Walker, 34.] is forgotten. And then, the scholastic disciplines change the meanings of metaphysics. According to Heidegger, “Meta” became “behind (physics)” and “turns away from the φύσις and turns toward other beings”.[ Heidegger, McNeill, and Walker, 38–39.] Here, even though not apparently, it is still possible to detect these two changes are the Metaphysical foundation of the mechanism interpretation: on the one hand, organism is behind physics, which means physics can explain life, and on the other hand, life is a machine, which indicates the process of life is turning away from the material and turns toward its self-existence (for example, to eat).[ The first meaning of “φύσις”.]

Secondly, where does another kind of unessential idea originate?[ Uexküll’s “enviroing world”.] For Heidegger, this type of idea is cultivated by modern metaphysics. Because in modern metaphysics, “I or consciousness is precisely placed at the basis as the most secure and unquestioned foundation”.[ Heidegger, McNeill, and Walker, 55.] This indicates, “I” is “natural” (do not need demonstrations).[ The second meaning of “φύσις”.] So, Uexküll’s opinion seems not to force any human hegemony on animal, but actually, the validity of his arguments is still based on the solidarity of human self-transportation, in another word, “I”. This also means: human explanation of the world (self-transportation or self-extension) is essentially their self-internalized knowledge.

[Tom Romer · Rating 5 out of 5]

DENSE AND INTENSE

Philosophy is philosophizing.

And this book is philosophizing on a dense and intense level.

The structure of the philosophizing of this lecture course by the German philosophy professor Martin Heidegger, on my reading, follows a six part movement.

(1) The first movement concerns what philosophy is which, according to German poet Novalis, lies in 'the desire to be at home everywhere', i.e. the act of philosophising stems from a form of homesickness.

In this first part, Heidegger looks into the history of the word 'metaphysics' and what that history tells us about our philosophical tradition.

This is more of a historical analysis and I was particularly piqued by the realisation that causal knowledge, i.e. knowledge of causes, stems from Medieval preoccupations around God, the ultimate cause or uncreated being, and all that follows from that.

(2) The second movement takes a long, hard look at boredom and dissects it in three main forms: being bored by... (e.g. waiting for a train); being bored with... (e.g. a dinner party); it is boring for one... (e.g. walking through city streets on a Sunday afternoon).

The third form, the most profound, underlies and sustains the other two forms.

Boredom is an attunement and as such has the potential to bring us to an awareness of our being as human beings, i.e. our temporality.

Heidegger asks: has contemporary man become boring for himself?

For Heidegger, what is oppressive in feeling bored is precisely the lack of oppressiveness on our there-being, i.e. our Da-sein is not yet burdened, it is free-floating and thus susceptible to being oppressed by temporality which we try hard to outdo by 'passing the time'.

Within Heidegger's anatomy of time, three perspectives come to the fore: prospect with regards to the future, respect with regards to the present and retrospect with regards to the past.

(3) The third movement, in anticipating a discussion on the animal as distinguished from man, analyses in some depth organs and the organic as distinguished from instruments or equipment.

For Heidegger, it is because we are capable of seeing that we have eyes; not the reverse.

While equipment or products, such as a pen, are characterized by readiness for use, they are not in themselves capable; i.e. the pen lying on the table without being put into use by a hand is incapable of writing, whereas my eye sees, is capable, and does not require me to 'use' it to see: it is inherently capable of seeing as part of the capability of my organism which includes it.

That is, the organ is subservient to the organism, i.e. the eye is subservient to the organism which is capable of seeing, whereas a product is only ever serviceable in the sense of apt (or not) to be put to use.

(4) The fourth movement concerns the metaphysical understanding of the word 'world'.

In order to bring about an understanding of 'world', Heidegger, in perhaps my favourite analysis of his I have read so far, distinguishes man and animal, not on the basis of the absence or presence of 'reason', but in terms of their relationship to the world, defined as 'the accessibility of beings as such and as a whole.'

The animal is poor-in-world in that while it is taken in or captivated by beings in its own 'encircling disinhibiting ring', it does not apprehend beings as beings.

A dog may lie under a table, say, but the dog does not apprehend the table as a table.

For Heidegger, behaviour is proper to animals, whereas comportment is proper to human beings, because we are not merely taken in by beings and captivated by them in a moving behavioural pattern, but we apprehend them and acknowledge them as such.

Man, therefore, is world-forming, world is given to man as world and from this manifestness of beings (world) derives the logos apophantikos, propositional discourse.

(5) The fifth movement goes on to analyse propositional discourse, the logos apophantikos, and takes its cue from Aristotle as well as Kant.

Words are symbols (from the Greek συμβάλλω, 'to bring together'), with a meaning that emerges from the agreement or disagreement we have with one another on beings around us.

Philosophical concepts, for their part, are indicative concepts that point to there-being.

Propositional discourse is an asserting or denying which conceals (pseudesthai) or reveals (aletheuein) by pointing out something.

Deception lies in the fact that when I assert something I am pointing out something and my listener takes that pointing out to to be true.

Heidegger goes on to analyse the copula, i.e. something 'is' something, e.g. the board in the lecture theatre 'is' black, the board in the lecture theatre 'is' badly positioned and so on.

Interestingly, when considering the possibility of whether or not the blackboard is badly positioned in the lecture theatre, Heidegger states that it matters not in relation to whom this is the case but only in relation to the room itself.

To summarize, logos, in the sense of discourse or speech, hinges on the manifestness of beings as such and as as a whole which constitute the 'world' and the world thus manifested comes to prevail in the word.

(6) The sixth movement is basically a summation of the previous five movements and deals with the concept of projection as an opening for human beings for that which makes the possible possible.

Conclusion to my review: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics—World, Finitude, Solitude, provided me with a much clearer understanding of the phenomena that Heidegger analyses, which all forms part of a program of transforming oneself into the there-being of Dasein.

Short of coming into one's own and having the will to do so, Heidegger can only ever come off as turgid verbiage.

At any rate, as a direct result of reading this book, not only do I understand myself better as an organism, such as when I had my eyes tested earlier this week for a new pair of glasses, but his analysis of animality also makes me grasp animals and their difference with ourselves in a much clearer way, such as when I see my local cats going round their daily business.

[decu777 · Rating 2 out of 5]

My experience with Martin Heidegger's "Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics" was ultimately frustrating. The impenetrable prose and deliberate obscurity of the writing leaves much to be desired, as Heidegger often uses obscure terms that are never properly explained or exposed.
Throughout the entirety of the book, Heidegger uses excessive repetition as a method for exposition, which to some (myself included) might come across as excessive padding that fails to advance the arguments he presents.
In his habit of refusing to explain key concepts (Heidegger assumes the reader has preexisting knowledge of what his fundamental, self-defined concepts mean, such as the trifecta of "worldless, poor in world, and world-forming"), the reader is ultimately left to fend for themselves. Combined with frustrating use of language, the book demands excessive patience from the reader.
The one saving grace of the book is that it does genuinely hold some valuable ideas under all the pompous stylization. The more patient readers will be able to extract his ideas scattered throughout hundreds of pages of academic fluff.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heidegger has a very known reputation for grandiose verbosity, and though FCM (especially the very first section in which he speaks on boredom (and successfully conveyed the idea of it through providing me with actual boredom)) happened to be full of it, FCM was quite enjoyable.

While reading FCM, I came to a better understanding of boredom as a fundamental attunement of Dasein, as well as of the world itself and the relations between stone, man, and animals. Though FCM was repetitive at times, it was ultimately thought-provoking and provided many great analyses that furthered my knowledge of metaphysics.

[Maciej · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are 4 good ideas here and 550 pages of meandering about the linguistic equivalent of numerology. 3 of the good ideas aren't the authors. The second star is for forcing me to learn the ancient Greek alphabet twice ( because the book/course is so tedious it's been ages for me between starting and finishing it)

[Olga Jaworska]

I'm sorry I just don't like Heidegger very much. This is the kind of wishy-washy metaphysics that doesn't tickle my pickle.

Also, I dislike philosophers that put humans and all other animals in separate ontological categories. I mean...for the purposes of certain discussions? Yeah, sure. But for ontological purposes? The nerve.

[Ozifer Eris]

I Loved this book, with a capital L.
First part about Boredom, second part about zoology.

[Zakir · Rating 3 out of 5]

probably would have dropped this lecture course, if i was enrolled. the last 100 or so pages were pretty rewarding though

[Finn Bosscher · Rating 4 out of 5]

having had to read this book for university gave me nightmares and made me cry on multiple occasions

[Eszter]

Heidegger leave me alone !! aaaahhh !! AAAAHHHHHH !!!

[Mills College Library]

110 H465m 1995

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is misleading but I suppose it might not have had the appeal if they had included "Boredom" along with other descriptors. Excellent discussion throughout and opened my mind to the presence of a major illusion in our understanding of reality. As with all of his works the writer in me says "Revise, rewrite and condense - be concise". Most of what was writen here could be improved to make it is less opaque. This is the problem with most philosophers. The best thing however is that he is philosophizing which most so called philosophers avoid.

[Christian Kiefer]

Did not read the whole thing--only the parts related to Uexküll.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts were great, parts were not-so-much-so.

[Hash Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best introduction to Heidegger.