Heideggarian encounters from one whose being is at issue
Simon Critchley has a piece in The Guardian about Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. (Yes, the Simon Critchley who Brian Leiter ripped to shreds back in 2007.) The comments are filled with lots of ad hominem complaints about Heidegger’s politics. I haven’t read much Heidegger: I bought a cheap, second hand copy of B+T. My mother told me a story of how she found a copy in a local bookshop which had been returned by a customer who had bought it because of a recommendation on Radio 4, but who had such difficulty reading it that he gave up and took it back - the bookseller wasn’t sure what to do with it. I popped in and purchased it half price. I haven’t read it because I’ve been too distracted with real - no, sorry - more analytic philosophy. I did read a little bit though, and found that I had to do a sort of strange circular motion in the reading: I’d start and read twenty or so pages sitting at a desk, then I’d put it aside, and I’d re-read it while out walking. (To mangle: What is a hermenaut? That for which interpretation is an issue for it. One doesn’t bump into hermeneutic circles - loops which look at first glance rather more infinite than they are - reading Harry Potter or Wikipedia.)
I’ve certainly gotten Heidegger from elsewhere: I spent a lot of time reading Truth and Method, and you can’t read that without inheriting Heidegger at second hand. I’m very ambivalent about the whole thing though: I’m not at all sure whether there is a there there or not. Reading Heidegger properly is certainly on my list of things to do, although I’m trying to figure out whether it should be before or after figuring out Quine, Davidson, Gilbert Ryle, Jaegwon Kim, Goldman, Dummett, David Lewis and so on. Perhaps it should be a parallel project.
The BBC did a fantastic programme about Heidegger a few years back (they also did one on Sartre and Nietzsche). Someone has put it up on YouTube - they’ve screwed the sound up (it all comes out the left channel) - but do watch it. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. Even if you aren’t a Heidegger fan, there’s some rare footage of Gadamer in there.
