The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

Good

Those who truly know Heidegger do not need this book. Those who do not know Heidegger at all will not understand it.But for all of us in between, this is the best guide to Heidegger I’ve encountered. I found myself understanding the forgetting of being, care, authenticity and other key Heideggerean concepts significantly more than from a lecture series or other supplementary material.Of course, all of these ideas continue to be debated and refined by contemporary philosophers and this book won’t give you the ability to make a professional stance on one side of those debates. But it will enable you to understand these debates and that’s really all you can ask for in a companion text.Further, the importance of Heidegger on later philosophers such as Gadamer and Derrida is fully set forth. I was able to read it in a mere two days because I felt so often like, “Gosh, this is what Heidegger actually meant.”Highly recommended for those who understand something of Heidegger but want to understand more. Honestly one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read this year.

No popular audience exists for the work of Martin Heidegger. Yet the implications of his ideas do lend themselves to popular topics. In the mainstream media daily are stories about how the 'mind' does this and 'consciousness' does that; we have magazines titled "Self," while grave doubts exist about whether that word means anything. Such conceptualizations now, since Heidegger, come under the rubric of quaint, antique, and, one of these days though not likely soon, obsolete.That is a radical development and explaining how such a change happens is not easy. Discussions of Heidegger's work are usually confined to high-level philosophical debate. One exception is the topic of his political stumbling, thinking he could turn Hitler into his student. That practical blunder is sometimes used to discount the significance of his philosophy and avoid the hard work of understanding what Heidegger offers.This volume does include commentary on the infamy of Heidegger's dalliance with the Nazis. More so, it tackles his permanent and lasting contribution to the advancement of philosophy. With thirteen separate articles plus the editor's Introduction, this volume can serve for those interested in a general overview. The articles are not written for a popular audience. The authors are leading scholars of philosophy who were assigned specific topics to allow them to avoid the elaborate and interwoven intricacies of the scholarly discussion currently underway. So rather than written for their peers, they appeal to a more general understanding. Not easy reading. Still, not mountains of philosophical jargon.In this volume the result for one such as myself, a non-philosopher who has been following the literature on Heidegger for more than 35 years, is also what I anticipate will become a useful reference work. The major themes that interested Heidegger are represented. In addition it has an excellent bibliography, accurate at the time of the book's publication.Some of the articles are conventional academic surveys of the topic. Others are wonderfully original pieces that have led this reader to follow some of those authors in works of their own. David Couzens Hoy has written an accessible volume on time.The Time of Our Lives: A Critical History of Temporality Dreyfus is co-author of a 2011 book described by one reviewer as from "an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people's everyday lives."All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age I highly recommend Olafson's latest Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against ScientismHeidegger stirred worldwide attention that continues to grow even at the present time An opportunity to see what all the fuss is about via this companion can be of interest not only to philosophers but to anyone interested in the evolution of sophisticated thinking, outside the sciences, underway today.