Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #025

by Michael J. Inwood

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century. Considered by some to be the greatest charlatan ever to claim the title of 'philosopher', by some as an apologist for Nazism, he was also an acknowledged leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, 'Being and Time', and its major themes of existence in the world,inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. These themes are then reassessed in the light of Heidegger's later work, together with the extent of his philosophical importance and influence. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-centuryexistentialist philosopher.ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Germany, Reference, Audiobook

169 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Michael Inwood is an emeritus fellow and tutor of philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford.

Reviews

[فؤاد · Rating 3 out of 5]

اگر اشتباه نکنم، زمانی کارل پوپر با تئودور آدورنو (یا یکی دیگه از فلاسفۀ قاره ای) مناظره ای کرد، و بعد راجع به اون مناظره گفت: فیلسوفان قاره ای، اگر با زبان معمولی و قابل فهم حرف بزنن، معلوم می شه که چیز زیادی در چنته ندارن.

هر چند با تالی موافق نیستم، اما مقدّم رو تا حدّی قبول دارم. خیلی زیاد دفاع شده از این شکل زبانی فیلسوفان قاره ای. یکی از این مدافعین هم خود هایدگر در مقدمۀ هستی و زمان (یکی دو سال قبل فقط مقدّمه ش رو خوندم، بدون این که جرئت کنم جلوتر برم). اما با تمام این دفاع ها، باز فکر می کنم می شد همین حرف ها رو با زبانی معمولی تر و قابل فهم تر زد. این کتاب نشون می ده که می شد.

[امیر لطیفی · Rating 4 out of 5]

چطور خوانده شود
الف) ضمن خواندن کتاب یک کاغذ دم‌دست داشته باشید و واژه‌های مختص هایدگر را با مفهوم‌شان یاداشت کنید. به آن‌ها بارها نیاز پیدا می‌کنید.

ب) کتاب دو مقدمه دارد: مقدمه‌ی نویسنده بر ترجمه و مقدمه‌ی مترجم. این کتاب متمرکز است بر «وجود و زمانِ» هایدگر. هایدگر در زندگی فکری‌اش «گشتی» داشته است، مرکز توجه‌اش جابجا شده است. در نتیجه کتابی که بیشتر متمرکز بر «وجود و زمان» است، به‌روز یا کامل نیست. هدف اصلی مقدمه‌ی نویسنده بر ترجمه، به‌روزرسانی کتاب، پرداختن بیشتر به گرایش هایدگر به ناسیونال سوسیالیسم و توجه بیشتر به جایگاه خدا در آثار متأخر اوست. مترجم نیز با عنایت به این مقدمه، در بسط این سه موضوع مقدمه‌ای مفصل نوشته است. هر دو مقدمه هم‌زمان مؤخره هم هستند. یعنی به دلایلی بهتر بود در پایان کتاب جای بگیرند. خواننده پیش از آشنایی با واژگان هایدگر در متن، در مقدمه در معرض آن‌ها قرار می‌گیرد. به هر صورت، بهتر است صبور باشید. در همین مقدمه‌ی مؤخره‌گونه بعضی از مفاهیم و واژه‌ها بسط داده می‌شوند که خوانش کتاب را تسهیل می‌کنند. خوب است پس از پایان کتاب، دوباره مقدمه‌ی مفصل مترجم را بخوانید.

ج) گوگل کنید، اول پرگاری را ببینید که در مورد هایدگر است. کمک می‌کند جایگاه هایدگر را دریابید و به خواندن کتاب مشتاق‌تر شوید. می‌توانید درسگفتارهایی از رامین جهانبگلو هم پیدا کنید. شاید قسمت اول این درسگفتارها برای دست‌گرمیِ پیش از کتاب بد نباشد.

د)‌ خیلی از ادموند هوسرل (بنیانگذار پدیدارشناسی) نام برده می‌شود. هایدگر در دانشگاه دستیار هوسرل بوده. فلسفه‌ی هایدگر از هوسرل متاثر است. من از هوسرل چیزی نخواندم ولی شاید بهتر باشد اول از او بخوانید.

هایدگر
هایدگر به پدیدارها می‌پردازد و انسانی که در جهان است، «در جهان بودنی» که مشخصه‌ی اصلی اوست. پدیدارها نمایانی جهان و اجزای آن هستند، آنچنان که بر ما پدیدار می‌شوند، آنچنان که برای ما «نمود» دارند. هایدگر چندان دغدغه‌ی «بودِ» اشیا، آنچنان که فرای حضور ما می‌توانند در خود باشند، ندارد. پدیدارشناسی با مرکزیت انسان شکل می‌گیرد، مرکزیتی که وجودباور است. به این نحو، نوعی از اگزیستانسیالیسم نیز از پدیدارشناسی منبعث می‌شود.

مطالعه‌ی بیشتر
دلیل سخت‌خوانیِ کتاب، هایدگر است، نه مترجم و نویسنده. گرچه برای شروع انتخاب خوبی‌ست، برای فهمیدن هایدگر کافی نیست.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very concise introduction of Heidegger's work, life and philosophy. Michael Inwood's writing somehow makes Heidegger's dry philosophy comprehensible. After reading this short book, if you were to become a philosophy majour, then you certainly will not be intimidated by Heidegger any more. Nor will you simply dismiss his because of his illusions with Narzis. Walking us through Heidegger's main work "Being and Time", Inwood shows us both the thoughts and the philosopher behind those thoughts. Once a while you could see Inwood's own voice pops up. But I do not find it offensive. Rather they provoked my thinking more. In some sense, I could find a lot of parallel of Heidegger's thoughts in traditional Chinese ideas. Ancient Chinese created a completely different system of thoughts, nonetheless, human similarity seem to prevail after the initial alienating moments of encountering. The selections for further reading seem also well balanced and focused.

[Campbell Rider]

wtf i love Being now

[Brad Lyerla · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is much about Heidegger that eludes me. When that happens, I often turn to secondary sources for help. But if you are looking for a quick orientation on Heidegger to get your head around him and to prepare yourself to dig in to Being and Nothingness, then keep looking. This slim (tiny) volume did not do the trick for me, and my expectations were low, as they must be for publications like the Very Short Introductions series. They have their place, but the format does not work well for someone as dense and contrarian as Heidegger.

[Aurelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being and Time is the oldest book I own and still have not yet read. I bought it in my days of youthful conceit. Nowadays I wonder it is even worth investing time and effort in reading this German philosophy which borders on charlatanism, written by this questionable character with Nazi affiliation. To find a way out of this, this small volume tackles briefly the life and the work of Martin Heidegger, trying to make it as concise and simple as possible to the unfamiliar reader.

Being and Time is by far the most important work of Heidegger’s career. Sure, he wrote and lectured on other subjects such as language, technology, philosophy of history but it seemed like they were all side products of his biggest philosophical statement and always stemmed from the new paradigm he first published in his major work. One starts to wonder what is so new and so groundbreaking about this book?

Being and Time is a response and a challenge to science and to Phenomenology as practiced in the early XXth century. They both claim to know the world by introducing a subject object dualism, by dividing the world into fields of study and observation, by highlighting this feature and relegating the other to the background. They describe a world as an aggregate of entities but they never answer the real question, what is Being? Aristotle did better with his categories of substance, quality, quantity… but he still divides beings into separate entities. Even when philosophers try to get away from this disparate realm of modes, they find themselves describing the world as a realm of extended matter, or variables which accept values, all in a hopeless effort to homogenize it.

Heidegger believe all this confusion is due to a bad start. The good one is to go back to the origin of things. Our being in the world is already an engagement in the world, which cannot fit into a subject and object scheme. We are already here or there. For us, the world is not a collection of extended objects with geometrical shapes or inert matter, to systemize and describe in a disinterested way. The world is tools, objects of interest and significance to us, interrelated in a vast web of other objects and events. Our being in the world is experienced as one, as a whole. Every time we highlight a chunk of the world and interact in a certain way with it but at the same time other possibilities are kept in the background of our minds, to be brought into focus whenever we need them.

Existing in the world is thus more about possibilities of interactions with other entities. But these possibilities are not limitless. We are thrown into the world and most of time have only limited options to choose from. This is facticity. Yet most of us even abandon these limited options by following the crowd. Most of us are inauthentic people who gave up their possibilities to the “They”, doing what “they” did, thinking what “they” thought and following what “they” believe. This is a significant feature of our being in the world and of our way of experiencing it. Not only among average people more concerned about career or fashion choices than with questions related to the nature of being, but even among philosophers who often fall to what Plato, Kant and Aristotle believed.

Surprisingly this is not morally problematic to Heidegger, he is not at all concerned with ethics. The inauthentic being is in no sense inferior to that of the authentic one. It is simply a mode of being. The problem with inauthenticity is that it misleads man and makes him unable to uncover the truth about his being, so he constantly misinterprets himself. This brings us to Heidegger’s notion of Truth.

In his sense, Truth is not correctness, correspondence with facts or with assertions, Truth is unconcealment and uncovering of our being in the world, as it is only for us that being is an issue, unlike trees or stones. The traditional definition of Truth neglects our constant engaging in and dependance of the world. Truth is thus an ongoing project to unfold and illuminate this interrelated existence, and not divide it or transform it into separate entities the way science and traditional philosophers did. Heidegger views the work of philosophy as hermeneutics, an ongoing project of understanding and interpreting, to provide an accurate description of our existence in the world.

Our being in the world exposes at the same time our features and those of the world. The two cannot be separated. However, this does not exclude some a priori conditions in the Kantian sense of the word. To start with, we are fundamentally spatial, we experience the world in directions, we are also familiar with tools and objects in the world. We have this innate and somehow preconceptual understanding of our being in the world, allowing us to engage with it, but this understanding is not a “knowledge” of the world. Heidegger again, hardly deals with knowledge or epistemology.

By far the most important feature of our existence in the world is the fact that it is temporal. More than spatiality or intuitive understanding of the objects of the world temporality is a key aspect of existence in the world. Once again, Heidegger rejects traditional conceptions of Time, it is not for him an endless series of “nows”, Time depends closely on our experience of the world. This experience is a constant rushing towards the future, going back to the past, and bouncing back to the present. The future is marked by one event which is of enormous significance: death. The past can be limited by an individual’s birth but usually it stretches back to historical events. The present is the place where we consider our possibilities, for authentic being at least. Death is particularly important as it pushes us to consider our time and our options, and think about the right investment we ought to make. In the case of inauthentic existence, the constant possibility of death is dismissed, it is lost in the chatter of the crowd and thrown as far as possible from consideration.

Existing authentically supposes surveying one’s life, his possibilities and taking a stance, becoming resolute about what to do. He might not have many options, or not even know exactly what to do but a moment of vision is present at hand, just like that of Saint Paul’s conversion or Martin Luther in the storm. It is about withdrawing from the crowd and taking responsibility for one’s life.

Once again resoluteness is not superior to sinking in the crowd. It is just another mode of being. But why should one become resolute? This mode of being makes the best out of the temporality of being, it uses it to transcend the past, the future and the present. In being resolute one steps out of the world and keep objects at a distance, he sees only possibilities and escapes the grips of facticity. It is the only way to transcendence and to freedom.

This is a fair dose of what this little book is trying to showcase, and of course Being and Time will have even much more elaborated developments to ponder. It seems that this German charlatan is quit an interesting fellow, to be read not only for the sake of some intellectual conceit.

[Dvdlynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reader beware: There is no royal road to understanding Heidegger. Processing this slim volume will get you started but much arduous work will remain. This book will help you decide if you want to plunge in deeper so it is still of value. I would recommend pairing it with Heidegger in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern which does a better job of providing context - both sociopolitical (Germany between World Wars I and II) and philosophical (Heidegger in contrast to contemporaries like Wittgenstein and to his predeccessors in the tradition of sprawling German Metaphysical systems Kant and Hegel) -for Heidegger's work and the particular problems he was trying to solve. The current volume gives the barest of biographical outlines before diving directly into Being and Time. An analysis of that work occupies the majority of the page count. The last two chapters cover how Being and Time relate to some of Heidegger's later work and Heidegger's association with the Nazi party.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're ever going to attempt reading Heidegger, don't make the same mistake as I did. Read this first.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A clear account of a philosopher who is often, and probably correctly, accused of obscurantism.

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly lucid and understandable introduction to Heidegger. Some of it was pretty funny because Inwood doesn't really let you know why these problems are important but will say very obvious stuff like "Dasein will eventually die" as if it were a profound thought.

Overall I think this gave me a much better understanding of Heidegger's goals and his place in the history of philosophy.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Works as a pretty decent introduction to Heidegger's thought. It's both clear and incisive, which is how a very short introduction should be. The emphasis in this book is mostly on "the Early Heidegger", with most of his later ideas compressed into the chapter on art.

Next stop: Being and Time!

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rated for usefulness and not necessarily enjoyment lol

[Amir · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب درواقع ترجمۀ فارسی عنوان «مارتین هایدگر» از مجموعۀ A very Short Introduction انتشارات دانشگاه آکسفرد است. کتب‌های این مجموعه درآمدهایی عمومی‌اند و به‌هدف مخاطبین عام و غیرمتخصص تألیف می‌شوند. نویسندگان برخی از عناوین اما شارحین و متخصصینی طراز اول درزمینۀ موردبحث محسوب می‌شوند (مثلاً «ماکیاولی» نوشتۀ کوئنتین اسکینر [که به فارسی هم ترجمه شده] یا «توکویل» نوشتۀ هاروی منسفید). مایکل اینوود، نویسندۀ این کتاب، بیشتر به‌عنوان یکی از مهم‌ترین مفسرین معاصر فلسفۀ‌ هگل شناخته می‌شود (بهترین ترجمۀ انگلیسی که از «پدیدارشناسی روح» دردست است کار اوست) اما واژه‌نامۀ‌ توصیفی مبسوط و بسیار مفیدی هم دربارۀ مفاهیم اندیشۀ هایدگر تألیف و تدوین کرده است.
اینوود در اینجا استراتژی جالبی اتخاد کرده و به جای آنکه، به‌مانند بسیاری از درآمدهای عمومی، سیری سطحی و عمومی در تمام وجوه اندیشۀ متفکر داشته باشد، در عمدۀ حجم کتاب، بر «وجود و زمان» هایدگر متمرکز شده و کوشیده مسیر بحث‌ها و استدلال‌های فیلسوف را در این اثرش دنبال و آنها را، با مثال‌هایی روشنگر و انضمامی، برای خواننده شرح کند. توانایی اینوود در انجام این کار به‌راستی غبطه‌برانگیز است اما فراموش نباید کرد که این کتاب به‌هرحال درآمدی بسیاری «عممومی» و فشرده بر اندیشۀ هادیگر است. کتاب، ضمناً، یک واژه‌نامۀ تشریحی ارزشمند آلمانی‌به‌انگلیسی دارد که درواقع نسخه‌ای بسیار فشرده از اثر پیش‌گفتۀ اینوود است.
در ترجمۀ فارسی کتاب، که از روی ترجمۀ آلمانی صورت گرفته و با اصل انگلیسی مقابله شده، آلمانی و انگلیسیِ بیش‌و‌کم تمامیِ اصلاحات هایدگر در پانوشت‌ها آمده و ضمناً معادل‌های فارسی خوبی نیز برایشان اختیار شده و ازاین‌لحاظ همیشه می‌تواند مورد رجوع باشد.

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 2 out of 5]

In defence of Inwood: I don’t think Heidegger knew what was going on either.

That being said, I have read other books which were much clearer at summarising Heidegger’s life and philosophy and their journey. I feel like it was the manner (structure, order, angle, things like that) rather than the exact wording (explanations) of talking about Heidegger’s philosophy and its development which I found peculiar and quite confusing at times. I can not offer any exact reasoning or alternative, though, so I guess I’ll have to leave the review here. I just wish the chapters felt like they went from A to B to C to D rather than C to A to D to B. At times I felt like I was reading it on shuffle.

[John France · Rating 3 out of 5]

The choice to end the book with frankly shocking apologetics for Heidegger’s Nazism was surprising.

Otherwise a decent overview of Being and Time and The Origin of the Work of Art

[Falk · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Heidegger is a notoriously difficult read, Michael Inwood has written a lucid and eminently readable introduction. This is masterfully done and perfectly fitted to the VSI format - one of the best I have come across in this series.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

i want to read heidegger but i'm scared i'm not smart enough to understand heidegger :-(

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up as a short refresher on the thought of Martin Heidegger. I had studied him in graduate school and read the first third of his work Being and Time and a couple shorter works. But that was over 30 years ago and the thought of reading him again was unpleasant. So hence the short refresher.

This review will consist of quotes and comments from the book.The world of Dasein, according to Heidegger is a spatial world, it is a world of directions, it is a world where things are near or far and things have the rightful places. It is not a Euclidean world or a mathematical world.

“Dasein and the world are not two distinct entities that can vary independently of each other. They are complementary.”

“The world is spatial because Dasein is spatial.”

“The distinction between what is so and itself and what is so only for us is a distinction drawn from our own understanding of being, not from the Dasein-independent nature of things.”

This is a crucial point: “Dasein is care; it has to order its life by undertaking various projects and allowing a certain time for them. How could it do that if it had an eternity of time at its disposal?”

Whether I learn from others, ask for their advice or merely copy them it is in the end my choice. However, according to Heidegger, “So Dasein remains in the embrace of the ‘they’. In this condition Dasein does not really have a conscience, it is not responsible for what it is and does and it is not guilty of anything. ‘They’ take responsibility for things since all I am and do I am and do because it is what one is and does.” “Guilt and responsibility are placed on their shoulders. I do not even make real choices: I just follow the routines that they prescribe.”

It seems that I am not responsible unless I do something arbitrary, unexpected, wacky or unprecedented all with the object of not copying society. But by keeping an eye on what society is doing and doing something contrary to it aren’t I still influenced by society?

“Every Dasein is guilty, but only authentic Dasein realizes it’s guilt and acts in full awareness of it. “It is only because everyone is guilty that anyone can be guilty. “This is an extraordinarily bizarre position to take. A feature cannot be specific to an individual person unless it is a feature of everyone? But that’s simply not true; that’s the fallacy of composition or division, I don’t remember.

On the matter of choice, “Any choice will have consequences that Dasein did not foresee or intend, but for these too it must take responsibility.” Well this is simply true.

“What then does authentic Dasein do? It becomes resolute…”. “Does resoluteness err?” “Heidegger gives no indication that it can, or that there is any way in which his choice might be assessed apart from the resoluteness in which it is made. Any code or criterion that might be suggested to it is itself something that has to be chosen or rejected.“

So this is an extreme subjectivism all the way down. Do what you want and never apologize. Yikes.

Despite his talk of “to– hand” his extended discussion of time and temporality is solipsistic. He falls on intersubjectivity like other idealists.

“The complex is not composite: it is not built up by the combination of simpler elements, and it cannot be analyzed as if it were.“ Ah, maybe a fan of emergent properties(?)

“Heidegger tries to steer a course between extreme individualism and complete absorption in the day.”

Much of what he has to say is not his original design. Often it is simply a renaming of well-known facts and beliefs.

In chapter 10, Inwood turns to a discussion of Heidegger‘s thoughts on art.

“Creation is quite distinct from the manufacture of a tool; art is not craftsmanship plus something extra…“ Now this is odd because the design of the tool was in fact an act of creation. So, this example is comparing apples and oranges.

“A work, unlike a tool, bears the scars of its production. The rift needs a creator to contain it.“ “A work needs an audience of observers as well as a creator.“ I’m not exactly sure that that’s true. I seem to recall that Emily Dickinson wrote her poems in her home and never sought publication for any of them. Are they not art? Is she not a creator?

“Creators are agents of a force larger than themselves: art.“

“Art lets truth leap fourth. Art is the origin or leaping forth of the work of art. “

Inwood spends a paragraph on his Nazism, not exactly exonerating him or condemning him.

This is actually a good introduction to Heidegger, although it is not a critical one. Some of what Heidegger was trying to do can be done in reading Ayn Rand or David Norton. Authenticity parallels independence in these thinkers. At least that way you ignore all the mysterious jargon and renamed relationships. I thought I might finish quicker but it is as dense at times as its source.

[Seth Benzell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cogent and clear (or at least, clear as I think is possible) explanation of the ideas and vocabular of Being and Time. I liked this book particularly in that I feel like I don't need to read Heidegger now.

If I were to summarize the message of this book's version of Heidegger, it's that Phenomenology is primary (i.e. the lived experience of being a person) and that everything else about the world (i.e. our day to day concepts, science, the concept of atoms etc.) is derivative. This is a valid, and intriguing move to take, but H doesn't really stick the landing. He ends up being very credulous about many aspects of his lived experience, and in particular he doesn't really have a good theory of "illusions", which are going to be a problem for anyone who puts phenomenology before metaphysics (he says that 'truth' isn't about correct vs. incorrect statements, but rather "uncovering" and "revealing" -- but this makes truth completely relative -which IDK maybe he is a complete relativist - but that's a problem because he doesn't want to be an idealist, he wants there to be a 'real' world that we all participate in).

Some other concerns:

>H is very big on not doing incremental philosophy working through other people's ideas. Fair enough, we should question everything, but his radical insistence that every individual start completely fresh is a recipe for both lack of group progress and the atomization of thinking. We >NEED< paradigms that groups of people work together in, because it is only within paradigms that epistemological progress is possible. A paradigm is something to be rejected only as a last extremity (in my opinion) not something to immediately reject.

>This is related to the begging-the-question that H does regarding why being resolute/authentic is the right way to live. I ~guess~ you could tell a teleological story where Dasein's good is only realized when it's resolute, but I don't think H's metaphysics has a strong argument for why you would want to persue the good of Dasein. H suggests that not caring about anything (i.e. being completely apathetic) would put you beyond the realm of Dasein and into some sort of god. But why not focus on the Buddhist goal of stopping caring about stuff then? There is no clear reason not to take that path given in this book.

>Finally, let's talk about the stupidest part of H -- the being towards death part. It is clearly NOT the case that being immortal strips an agent of desires and goals. It's very easy to write down a utility function for an agent with all these. Have no idea where H got this idea.

[Joyce · Rating 1 out of 5]

"For example, Rilke, I suppose my favorite writer, is full of shit. I mean his ideas are nonsensical. As philosophical notions I have no respect for them at all, but as poetic notions they are absolutely beautiful. This is one of the reasons I am really a Heidegger hater, because Heidegger gets most of his ideas from Rilke and does not have the sense to see that this is great poetry. He projects it into religion, and I have an immense distrust of that." - William H. Gass

how could i disagree with him? but this book really has it all, nazi apologia, sloppy copyediting, a total refuse to what this series is intended to (that is, explicate, introduce, explain). inwood appears to be aping heidegger's style to the degree that he will occasionally make statements in the first person as if he were heidegger.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent intro (as all the books in this series, I very much love to get into them when needing intros), but I still fail to grasp why Heidegger is such a significant thinker in the 20th century. The only thing I grasp clearly here is his assertion that world of objects is mainly not an objective world, but a relationship between objects. I'm still rather puzzled with Dasein. I'm familiar with the general outline of his thoughts, and my purpose for reading this is to get into a deeper understanding. I expect more clarity, but okay, it's a tall order considering the number of pages.

[Barry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I don’t think it’s Michael Inwood’s fault that I didn’t get much out of this book. It’s partly my fault, but mostly Heidegger’s. Elsewhere Roger Scruton wrote, “It is impossible to summarize Heidegger’s work, which no one has claimed to understand completely.” My experience can be taken as further evidence that Scruton is correct. Of course I wish I had known that before starting this dead-end of a book.

[Magdelanye · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not engage me at all and now I have lost it, just short of finishing'
I may get back to this at some point, but I did not get much out of it.

Not a good intro, if I weren't already enmeshed I would not follow up on this

[Maryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it works better to dive deep into the original text by a philosopher first and then go through the related VSI book. I did this with 'Being and Time.' I barely understood the text itself, but the VSI book was a really good guide to help me go back and read important sections.

[Tyler Holley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful overview! And helpfully short!

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful but didn’t help me get over my fear of reading Being and Time.

[Sam Nesbitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-structured and clearly written. Overall good introduction to the complex thought of Heidegger.

[Myat Thura Aung · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite an accessible introduction to Heidegger's notoriously obscure philosophical thoughts

[Frido Alonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably quite stupid that the first book that i read on Heidegger is in English. still, a great and rather digestible intro to his philosophy

[Josie M]

im not gonna pretend i understood much of this