Martin Heidegger: in Europe and America. Ed. by Edward G. Ballard and Charles E. Scott

When Heidegger's influence was at its zenith in Gennany from the early fifties to the early sixties, most serious students of philosophy in that country were deeply steeped in his thought. His students or students of his students filled many if not most of the major chairs in philosophy. A cloud of reputedly Black Forest mysticism veiled the perspective of many of his critics and admirers at home and abroad. Droves of people flocked to hear lectures by him that most could not understand, even on careful reading, much less on one hearing. He loomed so large that Being and Time frequently could not be seen as a highly imaginative, initial approach to a strictly limited set of questions, but was viewed either as an all-embracing fmt order catastrophy incorporating at once the most feared consequences of Boehme, Kierkegaard, RiIke, and Nietzsche, or as THE ANSWER. But most of that has past. Heidegger's dominance of Gennan philosophy has ceased. One can now brush aside the larger-than-life images of Heidegger, the fears that his language was creating a cult phenomenon, the convictions that only those can understand him who give their lives to his thought. His language is at times unusually difficult, at times simple and beautiful. Some of his insights are obscure and not helpful, others are exciting and clarifying. One no longer expects Heidegger to interpret literature like a literary critic or an academic philologist. Front Matter....Pages I-XII Heidegger Today....Pages 1-36 The Nature of Man and the World of Nature for Heidegger’s 80th Birthday....Pages 37-46 Heidegger’s Question: An Exposition....Pages 47-54 Heidegger on Time and Being....Pages 55-76 Concerning Empty and Ful-Filled Time....Pages 77-89 Heidegger and Consciousness....Pages 91-108 The Mathematical and the Hermeneutical: On Heidegger’s Notion of the Apriori....Pages 109-120 The Problem of Language....Pages 121-128 Language and Reversal....Pages 129-145 Language and Two Phenomenologies....Pages 147-156 The Work of Art and Other Things....Pages 157-169 Two Heideggerian Analyses....Pages 171-182 On the Pattern of Phenomenological Method....Pages 183-193 Heidegger Seen from France....Pages 195-200 "Most of the articles ... first appeared in The Southern journal of philosophy, v. 8, no. 4, 1970." Includes bibliographical references