Martin Heidegger is one of the most important as well as one of the most difficult thinkers of the last century. His masterpiece Being and Time has been described as the most profound turning point in German philosophy since Hegel. Raymond Tallis, who has been arguing with Heidegger for over thirty years, illuminates his fundamental ideas through an imaginary conversation, which is both relaxed and rigorous, witty and profound. The Conversation defines Heidegger's relevance to the philosophical agenda of the present century by illuminating his great contribution to our thinking about what it is to be a human being while identifying the weaknesses in his thought.

Article, television broadcasts, interviews, etc., about Martin Heidegger, b. 1889, German philosopher.

The philosopher’s meditations on nature, technology, and evil, written in the final years of WWII, presented in “clear and highly readable translation” (Philosophy in Review). First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger’s Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger’s own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, World War II, and the nature of evil. Heidegger also delves into the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, a scholar, and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger’s two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, this lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger’s wartime and postwar thinking.

This work explores the troubled relationship and unfinished intellectual dialogue between Paul Celan, regarded by many as the most important European poet after 1945, and Martin Heidegger, perhaps the most influential figure in twentieth-century philosophy. It centers on the persistent ambivalence Celan, a Holocaust survivor, felt toward a thinker who respected him and at times promoted his poetry. Celan, although strongly affected by Heidegger's writings, struggled to reconcile his admiration of Heidegger's ideas on literature with his revulsion at the thinker's Nazi past. That Celan and Heidegger communicated with each other over a number of years, and in a controversial encounter, met in 1967, is well known. The full duration, extent, and nature of their exchanges and their impact on Celan's poetics has been less understood, however. In the first systematic analysis of their relationship between 1951 and 1970, James K. Lyon describes how the poet and the philosopher read and responded to each other's work throughout the period. He offers new information about their interactions before, during, and after their famous 1967 meeting at Todtnauberg. He suggests that Celan, who changed his account of that meeting, may have contributed to misreadings of his poem "Todtnauberg." Finally, Lyon discusses their two last meetings after 1967 before the poet's death three years later. Drawing heavily on documentary material—including Celan's reading notes on more than two dozen works by Heidegger, the philosopher's written response to the poet's "Meridian" speech, and references to Heidegger in Celan's letters—Lyon presents a focused perspective on this critical aspect of the poet's intellectual development and provides important insights into his relationship with Heidegger, transforming previous conceptions of it.

The combination of author and subject matter found here makes an unusually interesting text on the Continental European Philosophy of the twentieth century. As Heidegger's former student, colleague and lifelong friend, Gadamer offers a particularly insightful commentary on Heidegger's thinking. Not only do the essays focus on Heidegger's thought, but they also often begin with a description of the philosophical scene in which he first appeared, giving the reader a genuine feel for the kind of impact he made. But the essays do not leave off in the past; rather, they lead into the present, giving Heidegger a voice which continues to have a revolutionary impact. The text does not only provide a commentary on Heidegger; it also provides a fascinating look at Gadamer himself. The narratives provide us with an intimate look at both the author and his hermeneutics at work, and his commentary on Heidegger's thought is a commentary on his own thought as well.

Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human is an unprecedented study of the ideas and methods developed by the thinker Werner Erhard. In this book, those ideas and methods are revealed by presenting in full an innovative program he developed in the 1980s called The Forum—available in this book as a transcript of an actual course led by Erhard in San Francisco in December of 1989. Since its inception, Erhard’s work has impacted the lives of millions of people throughout the world. Central to this study is a comparative analysis of Erhard’s rhetorical project, The Forum, and the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger. Through this comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how each thinker’s work sometimes parallels and often illuminates the other. The dialogue at work in The Forum functions to generate a language which speaks being. That is, The Forum is an instance of what the authors call ontological rhetoric: a technology of communicating what cannot be said in language. Nevertheless, what does get said allows those participating in the dialogue to discover previously unseen aspects of what it currently means to be human. As a primary outcome of such discovery, access to creating a new possibility of what it is to be human is made available. The purpose of this book is to show how communication of the unspoken realm of language—speaking being—is actually accomplished in The Forum, and to demonstrate how Erhard did it in 1989. Through placing Erhard’s language use next to Heidegger’s thinking—presented in a series of “Sidebars” and “Intervals” alongside The Forum transcript—the authors have made two contributions. They have illuminated the work of two thinkers, who independently developed similar forms of ontological rhetoric while working from very different times and places. Hyde and Kopp have also for the first time made Erhard’s extraordinary form of ontological rhetoric available for a wide range of audiences, from scholars at work within a variety of academic disciplines to anyone interested in exploring the possibility of being for human beings. From the Afterword: I regard Speaking Being as an enormously important contribution to understanding Heidegger and Erhard. The latter has received far too little serious academic attention, and this book begins to make up for that lack. Moreover, the book’s analysis of Heidegger’s thought is among the best that I have ever read. I commend this book to all readers without reservation. Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder

Heidegger discusses early Greek thinking in friendly letters to French philosopher, Jean Beaufret.