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Heidegger
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
7 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Rée
29 books22 followersJonathan Rée is a freelance philosopher who used to teach at Middlesex University in London, but gave up lecturing in order to "have more time to think," and was for many years associated with the magazine Radical Philosophy. His work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 12, 2015
Suspicious Minds
My Heidegger reading project rolls on, mainly in preparation for reading subsequent continental philosophy.
The more I read him, the more I am torn between two suspicions.
One is whether Heidegger's appeal is that his work is radically simple, and no more (as if that were not enough).
The other is whether he was merely a wordsmith, a charlatan, a chameleon who has simply created a mirage that dissipates when we try to grasp it. Meaning sometimes coheres with intense concentration, but then seems to fall apart as soon as we avert our eyes.
Charlatan or Chameleon?
Jonathan Rée doesn't obviously adopt one stance or other. He is known as a Heidegger sympathiser. In this work, he summarises his understanding of Heidegger's key ideas in 50 pages.
He tries his best to write lucidly, but I'm not sure whether this book is an ideal entry point for Heidegger. While it deals with the key issues, it superimposes a different order of explanation on them. It takes us away from Heidegger's framework in order to explain it. As a result, it requires some creative thinking to piece together the analysis of such fundamental issues as being and time.
Rée twice mentions that "Being and Time" owes its existence to Heidegger's need to publish a philosophical work in order to get a job. As soon as he achieved his goal, he ceased work on the projected second part of the work and never returned to it. Most of the rest of his career was restricted to lectures and essays. Either he couldn't achieve what he had originally set out to do, or he had realised that it wasn't worth doing, i.e., he had moved on (but where?).
If Heidegger turned his back on the first part of the work, then you have to question why we shouldn't equally do so.
Everyday Simplicity
When writing in German, Heidegger used very commonplace or everyday words. When translated into more technical English, these words look unfamiliar, which undermines the ordinariness of the meaning they were intended to convey. Equally, the translation can detract from the nuance of the intended meaning.
However, at its simplest, you can summarise Heidegger something like this:
Being is existence
Being is in the world
The world is space
Time is now
Now is the present
That which exists is in the present
That which exists is present
That which exists is
Present in time and space.
Whether or not this accurately reflects Heidegger's philosophy, it's an attempt to draw together the two key concepts of being and time.
We exist between birth and death, between here and there. The real issue is what we do in between, what we do in our "concernful dealings or praxis". We don't just do whatever it is alone, we do it with others.
But then what are we supposed to infer from this? What does it all mean? What's the big deal?
Attack on the West
Heidegger's job application effectively attacks the direction of Western philosophy, from Plato to Descartes to Kant to Hegel. However, it doesn't clearly offer an alternative, at least not a prescriptive one. Perhaps this is Heidegger's point: that there is no external or internal truth, that truth isn't the correspondence of this with that, that instead being or existence is its own truth, insofar as it discloses itself (and is therefore "true to itself" in a colloquial sense, as well as in the sense meant by Polonius: "This above all: to thine own self be true").
Heidegger's worldview contrasts with the dialectical conflict at the heart of Hegel's philosophy. He says that the motor of history is not "the tremendous power of the negative", but the "quiet force of the possible."
This leads Rée to conclude:
"Perhaps we can already make out the path that Heidegger will want us to take: a path that keeps us away from both absolutism and relativism, and repeatedly brings us back, surprised, to our own finite existence as interpreters and misinterpreters of the world, as askers of the question of the meaning of being, and as ontologists who can at last see why history is truth's best friend."
Thus, arguably, we exist here, in the world, temporarily, with one object, one quest: to explore and achieve the possible. History is the record of that achievement. And that, perhaps, is the truth!
My Heidegger reading project rolls on, mainly in preparation for reading subsequent continental philosophy.
The more I read him, the more I am torn between two suspicions.
One is whether Heidegger's appeal is that his work is radically simple, and no more (as if that were not enough).
The other is whether he was merely a wordsmith, a charlatan, a chameleon who has simply created a mirage that dissipates when we try to grasp it. Meaning sometimes coheres with intense concentration, but then seems to fall apart as soon as we avert our eyes.
Charlatan or Chameleon?
Jonathan Rée doesn't obviously adopt one stance or other. He is known as a Heidegger sympathiser. In this work, he summarises his understanding of Heidegger's key ideas in 50 pages.
He tries his best to write lucidly, but I'm not sure whether this book is an ideal entry point for Heidegger. While it deals with the key issues, it superimposes a different order of explanation on them. It takes us away from Heidegger's framework in order to explain it. As a result, it requires some creative thinking to piece together the analysis of such fundamental issues as being and time.
Rée twice mentions that "Being and Time" owes its existence to Heidegger's need to publish a philosophical work in order to get a job. As soon as he achieved his goal, he ceased work on the projected second part of the work and never returned to it. Most of the rest of his career was restricted to lectures and essays. Either he couldn't achieve what he had originally set out to do, or he had realised that it wasn't worth doing, i.e., he had moved on (but where?).
If Heidegger turned his back on the first part of the work, then you have to question why we shouldn't equally do so.
Everyday Simplicity
When writing in German, Heidegger used very commonplace or everyday words. When translated into more technical English, these words look unfamiliar, which undermines the ordinariness of the meaning they were intended to convey. Equally, the translation can detract from the nuance of the intended meaning.
However, at its simplest, you can summarise Heidegger something like this:
Being is existence
Being is in the world
The world is space
Time is now
Now is the present
That which exists is in the present
That which exists is present
That which exists is
Present in time and space.
Whether or not this accurately reflects Heidegger's philosophy, it's an attempt to draw together the two key concepts of being and time.
We exist between birth and death, between here and there. The real issue is what we do in between, what we do in our "concernful dealings or praxis". We don't just do whatever it is alone, we do it with others.
But then what are we supposed to infer from this? What does it all mean? What's the big deal?
Attack on the West
Heidegger's job application effectively attacks the direction of Western philosophy, from Plato to Descartes to Kant to Hegel. However, it doesn't clearly offer an alternative, at least not a prescriptive one. Perhaps this is Heidegger's point: that there is no external or internal truth, that truth isn't the correspondence of this with that, that instead being or existence is its own truth, insofar as it discloses itself (and is therefore "true to itself" in a colloquial sense, as well as in the sense meant by Polonius: "This above all: to thine own self be true").
Heidegger's worldview contrasts with the dialectical conflict at the heart of Hegel's philosophy. He says that the motor of history is not "the tremendous power of the negative", but the "quiet force of the possible."
This leads Rée to conclude:
"Perhaps we can already make out the path that Heidegger will want us to take: a path that keeps us away from both absolutism and relativism, and repeatedly brings us back, surprised, to our own finite existence as interpreters and misinterpreters of the world, as askers of the question of the meaning of being, and as ontologists who can at last see why history is truth's best friend."
Thus, arguably, we exist here, in the world, temporarily, with one object, one quest: to explore and achieve the possible. History is the record of that achievement. And that, perhaps, is the truth!
June 11, 2017
فرو افتادن در گفت و گوی بیهوده، کنجکاوی و ابهام یکی از ویژگی های "جامعه ابتدایی" و ویژگی یونان باستان و به همان اندازه ویژگی "اروپای مدرن" است.
"از متن کتاب"
"از متن کتاب"
August 5, 2016
This analysis of Heidegger's Being and Time helps a lot in making just a bit clearer what he was trying to get across. Ideas like Dasein become just a little bit more approachable and friendly. It is a dense book, just like the original I suspect, and will require many re-reads to catch everything. That is to be expected however. Jonathan Rée provided this Dasein's world with a good companion to a very important philosophical publication of the 20th century.
This book was lent to me by Despina Catapoti to help me grasp Heidegger's take on 'temporality'.
This book was lent to me by Despina Catapoti to help me grasp Heidegger's take on 'temporality'.
December 30, 2025
Because of the brevity of each volume in this series, 56 pp including notes, we get but a snapshot of the subject’s philosophy. In this case, the author addresses Being in Time Part I.
I know very little about H other than notorious aspects of his biography, such as his embrace of Nazism. Reading this book, I’m torn between judging his philosophy as obscure word salad and having some passages (such as the discussion of anxiety and authenticity in pp27-28) ensnare my interest. Further exploration to be continued in the new year?
I know very little about H other than notorious aspects of his biography, such as his embrace of Nazism. Reading this book, I’m torn between judging his philosophy as obscure word salad and having some passages (such as the discussion of anxiety and authenticity in pp27-28) ensnare my interest. Further exploration to be continued in the new year?
October 19, 2007
Maybe it's that I haven't read Being and Time, or that I'm not in the right frame of mind, but I really found this exposition of its ideas horribly unclear: the uniquely Heideggerian phrases are poorly explained and cavalierly used, to the point that you're relieved to read the actual excerpts from Heidegger. There are a few nice metaphors, and I like the author based on a podcast interview with him I once heard, but this really didn't do it for me. I might take another look after reading Being and Time.
February 6, 2016
This was a decent intro to Heidegger's Being and Time. It wasn't very readable, and he didn't explain some of Heidegger's terminology very well, but it certainly gave me some insights on a very large, and complex philosophical work. I am working my way towards reading Being and Time and wanted a bit of background before I started. This sort of did that for me.
August 17, 2008
Probably the clearest accound of Heideger's thought that I have read.
November 28, 2013
خیلی فوق العاده نبود . یکی از استادای دانشگاه ییل نوشتدش . من خیلی حال نکردم باهاش :(
August 10, 2016
in spots, almost as difficult as the original
July 23, 2016
Didn't care for it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews