Heidegger: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Interventions

by S.J. McGrath

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is one of the greatest conundrums in the modern philosophical world, by turns inspiring and mind-bogglingly frustrating. In this critical introduction S. J. McGrath offers not a comprehensive summary of Heidegger but a series of incisive takes on Heidegger's thought, leading readers to a point from which they can begin or continue their own relationship with him.

Genres: Philosophy

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2008

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

For reasons of egoism, it seems I can’t get over the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. I can’t let that dead German beat me!

But beat me he does, over and over and over again. (Heidegger, you slippery fiend!) Being and Time will chew you up and spit you out. It’s the verbal equivalent of getting drawn and quartered. The agony is slow and painful—seemingly endless. And every time you think you can see the light—that the pain will lessen—it gets worse.

Nevertheless, the most frustrating part of all this (to me) is that, when other authors translate Heidegger into digestible prose, the result strikes me as nothing profound—almost trivial, even. Was Heidegger an idiot? A loon? A quack? Or is it that Heidegger’s thinking is inextricable from his abstruse language?

Sean J. McGrath strikes a fine balance in this fine little book. Heidegger’s message is denuded (mostly) of its opaque linguistic cloak; but McGrath also avoids translating Heidegger into something he most definitely is not (like Dreyfus does, in my opinion). Another pitfall that McGrath skillfully dodges is to sound like a mindless evangelist of Heidegger’s (another thing Dreyfus does), and to voice some sensible criticisms of his ideas along the way.

The only major disappointment for many will be that McGrath is writing from a quasi-Christian perspective. To be sure, he’s no Jesuit. His opinions regarding Christianity are one of historical appreciation rather than unthinking obedience. Nevertheless, I feel it to be somewhat shallow to criticize Heidegger for rejecting “Christian humanism,” since ejecting the concerns and biases of the philosophical tradition is precisely what Heidegger aims to do.

That being said, I don’t wish to criticize McGrath too much on this head. It’s a relatively minor part of the book. What’s more, the connections he draws between Heidegger’s thinking and Luther’s writings are genuinely interesting. But perhaps what’s most impressive is that McGrath avoids bivouacking in the two major camps of those who write about Heidegger: (1) that he was a Nazi pig, and his philosophy is evil; and (2), that he was the greatest genius of all time, and pointed out everything that’s wrong with Western philosophy, and Western culture on the whole.

I should say at this point that this book is probably not best for those who actually want an introduction to Heidegger. (The Very Short Introduction on Heidegger would be a much better book for that purpose.) It’s more interesting (and more intelligible) to those who have struggled, or are struggling, with that great behemoth of twentieth century thought. Aside from few stray bits of academese that slip in, the book is well-written and clear. But what’s most important—it’s nuanced.

[Dylan]

Could also be titled “Heidegger: A User’s Guide” even though McGrath maintains a fairly skeptical distance from H at all times. Usefully, he remains fairly restricted to Being and Time along with some important historical context and biographical details; in other words, the stuff I have already read and other information that will help me to understand it. I think this approach is a good one for a figure as simultaneously polarizing and unavoidable as Heidegger. In particular, I found McGrath’s account of his early infatuation with, modifications of, and later departure from the phenomenological method to be extremely illuminating, and an excellent way to narrate what really amounted to Heidegger picking a fight with the whole Cartesian-Kantian tradition of western metaphysics—which is all stuff he says himself in B&T, but it’s so spread out it can be hard to synthesize into a couple of paragraphs, let alone sentences. McGrath helps explain how the subject-object distinction is only one out of many possible modes of relating to the world, that these twin concepts are defined and reified in relation to one another in the context of the kind of experience which we like to call “knowing”—a kind of experience which sucked all of the air out of western philosophy for like 400 years. This is not to say that we are not ever subjects; only that we experience subjectivity precisely insofar as we make things in the world into objects, an activity which is momentary and which we only do for part of the time.

All of this is extraordinarily useful, I think. Not only to help me understand Heidegger’s intervention in philosophy of mind (or as he would prefer, in ontology/metaphysics) but also to help me think beyond the self-imposed limits of earlier philosophers, who so frequently set the horizon of their philosophical imagination at what could be rationally or transcendentally deduced from particular kinds of experiences (i.e. from what they called “knowledge”).

McGrath’s critique at the end of the book picks up steam precisely where I stop caring, in theology. But he also makes the very sharp observation that Heidegger’s supposed abdication of ethical or political considerations (of “axiology” to use her term) does not by any means protect him from the obvious normative implications of his employment of theologically loaded terms like “fallenness” and “authenticity.” After all, he observes, an axiologically neutral philosophy would not encourage us to live radically different lives in the way that Heidegger so forcefully does.

And finally I must say that I appreciated the patience and insistence with which McGrath parsed the question that Heidegger asks again and again and again and again throughout B&T—you know, the one about the meaning of being. McGrath helped to get it through my thick skull that H is really, simply, literally asking what the fraught word “being” means, because in his view 3000 years of philosophical handwringing has provided little in the way of a satisfactory answer.

So this was quite measured, focused, and I might add well-written. Thank you, Cuck Philosophy, for the recommendation.

[Chase Moloney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent explanation of, and discourse with, core ideas in Heidegger‘s thought. McGrath engages Heidegger with much of the Western tradition of both Philosophy and Theology, interrogates the Heidegger against the politics of his time, and shows how all such errors can be surmised down to a single error, assumed at the outset of Being and Time. All within 130 pages! Recommended for anyone with philosophical or theological inclinations, regardless of their level of experience with Heidegger.

[Van Jones]

It was hard reading in the middle of the book and the last 2 chapters were much clearer to me.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful introduction to Heidegger. I especially found helpful McGrath’s discussion of the subterranean influence of Christian theology on Heidegger’s thought.

[Andy Stager · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea Heidegger could be understood.