Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World

by Jeff E. Malpas

This groundbreaking inquiry into the centrality of place in Martin Heidegger's thinking offers not only an illuminating reading of Heidegger's thought but a detailed investigation into the way in which the concept of place relates to core philosophical issues. In Heidegger's Topology, Jeff Malpas argues that an engagement with place, explicit in Heidegger's later work, informs Heidegger's thought as a whole. What guides Heidegger's thinking, Malpas writes, is a conception of philosophy's starting point: our finding ourselves already "there," situated in the world, in "place." Heidegger's concepts of being and place, he argues, are inextricably bound together.

Malpas follows the development of Heidegger's topology through three stages: the early period of the 1910s and 1920s, through Being and Time, centered on the "meaning of being"; the middle period of the 1930s into the 1940s, centered on the "truth of being"; and the late period from the mid-1940s on, when the "place of being" comes to the fore. (Malpas also challenges the widely repeated arguments that link Heidegger's notions of place and belonging to his entanglement with Nazism.) The significance of Heidegger as a thinker of place, Malpas claims, lies not only in Heidegger's own investigations but also in the way that spatial and topographic thinking has flowed from Heidegger's work into that of other key thinkers of the past 60 years.

Genres: Philosophy

456 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 2006

About the author

Jeff Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Latrobe University. He is the author of Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World and Heidegger and the Thinking of Place: Explorations in the Topology of Being, both published by the MIT Press.

Reviews

[Lukáš · Rating 5 out of 5]

After months of on-and-off reading with frequent recourse to Heidegger's primary texts, I can say this is an excellent and valuable interpretational work (one of the best I've seen so far), that can be of interest both to experts and Heidegger starters. First, the book, in its 300+ pages is not afraid to use large portions of its space for extremely detailed discussions of Heidegger's concepts and arguments - often nearly in the mood of analytical philosophy with its abstract examples, that nevertheless work well as illustration. Second, considering myself quite well-acquainted with Heidegger's major arguments and ideas, the book nevertheless provides valuable in setting up a number of interesting and novel connections between them. Third, the book's overall methodological orientation is another strong case - while reading Heidegger's work chronologically, it nevertheless reads into it a series of 'productive failures', which, despite the language of the 'turning' do not assume linear breaks, but instead look at Heidegger as constantly reflecting back on thoughts he's put forward, revising them (both with respect to his resources and with respect to historical events), and Heideger's increasing awareness (and explicitness) that the problem of place occupies in his system throughout the evolution of his thought. Even though the book does not engage with Heidegger's politics as directly as for example Elden's Speaking against Number, this also brings to light much about his involved-ness with National Socialism and a later, imperfect, but philosophically challenging 'sobering up' from such a politics (culminates in the last part of the last chapter on Heidegger's critique of technology, its 'intersections' with the work of Arendt and Camus and the questions of democracy and totalitarianism) both in reading Heidegger's ideas against history and history against Heidegger's ideas.

[Ahmet Bakir Sbaai]

يستكشف جيف مالباس كيف يرتبط مفهوم الوجود عند هايدجر بفكرة المكان (Place) وكيف يتشكل العالم من خلال هذا الارتباط، بغرض تقديم رؤية شاملة لفلسفة هايدجر الطوبولوجية، مع التركيز على المكان كعنصر مركزي في فهم الوجود البشري.
يستخدم جيف مالپاس مصطلح "الطوبولوجيا" لوصف منهج هايدجر في فهم الوجود. الطوبولوجيا، في هذا السياق، هي دراسة العلاقة بين الوجود والمكان. يرى مالپاس أن فلسفة هايدجر هي طوبولوجية بطبيعتها لأنها تركز على كيفية تشكل الوجود من خلال المكان. هذا النهج يختلف عن الميتافيزيقيا التقليدية التي تركز على الجوهر أو الذاتية. بدلا من ذلك، يقدم هايدجر رؤية ترى الوجود كحدث مكاني، حيث يتشكل المعنى من خلال التفاعلات في العالم.
حسب مالباس، في فلسفة هايدجر، يظهر المكان كعنصر مركزي في فهم الوجود. من خلال مفهوم الدازاين، العالم، والسكن، يقدم هايدجر رؤية طوبولوجية ترى الوجود كحدث مكاني. المكان ليس مجرد إطار مادي، بل هو المجال الذي يتكشف فيه المعنى والحقيقة. من خلال الفن، السكن، والتفاعل مع العالم، يخلق الإنسان أماكن تجعل الوجود ممكنا. في الوقت نفسه، يحذر هايدجر من مخاطر التكنولوجيا التي قد تفصلنا عن هذا الارتباط الوجودي بالمكان.