What do you think?
Rate this book
Heidegger: An Essential Guide For Complete Beginners
Short extracts from reviews of A Beginner’s Guide“The merit of Michael Watts work – what I find particularly appealing about it – is his ability to grasp the abstruse and abstract nature of someone’s thought, and render it in clear, concise, and concrete terms. He is a master at this!” (Roy Martinez, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Spelman College, Atlanta, USA).“To write clearly and accessibly, and yet present a philosopher’s ideas without trivialising or distorting them requires considerable intellectual discipline. This challenge is, arguably, all the more severe in the case of philosophers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein…Michael Watts has understood his responsibilities to the ‘newcomer’ very well.” (Extract from The Philosophers’ Magazine [Summer 2002] review by Jonathan Derbyshire, Culture Editor of New Statesman and Managing Editor of Prospect).“Michael Watts gives an exceptionally clear and readable account of Being and Time, while also performing the difficult feat of weaving this into an account of Heidegger’s later writings. He provides valuable guidance for the beginner through the complexities of Heidegger’s thought and much of interest for those who are already ‘on the way’.” (Michael Inwood, Trinity College, Oxford).Ideal for complete beginners, this is an exceptionally readable and reliable overview of Heidegger's thought, refreshingly free from the complex jargon typical of most academic philosophy. Full of concrete examples, Watts provides easy access to key Heideggerian notions of authenticity, falling, throwness, angst, guilt, conscience, technology and death, while also navigating the difficult relationship between earlier and later texts, to provide readers with a strong sense of the overall continuity of the Heidegger's thought.About the AuthorPhilosophy Philosophy of Heidegger, Acumen Publishing, Durham (2011)2.Kierkegaard, Oneworld Publications, Oxford (2003) E book An Essential A Beginner’s Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London, (2001) 4. A Beginner’s Guide, Spanish Language Heidegger Guia para Jovenes, Logues Ediciones, Madrid (2003)5. A Beginner’s Guide, Korean Language Korean Translation Joong-Ang Inc. Seoul, (2006)Psychology A Beginner's Guide, Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London (2000)7. What Handwriting Reveals About Love & Romance, St Martins Griffin, New York, (1996)8.The Naked Sexuality Revealed Through Handwriting, Headline Book Publishing, London (1995)9. What Your Handwriting Reveals About You, Your Friends and Your Enemies, Simon & Schuster, New York (1991)Michael Watts graduated with honors in 1980 in Experimental Psychology, (Sussex University, UK). Continuing with post-graduate research in Graphology, he became a personnel consultant for companies worldwide, and in 1983 assisted the Security Commission in Whitehall.Writing for numerous magazines and national newspapers in the UK and USA, he has also been a frequent guest on radio and television (ITV, BBC and Sky News channels).An independent scholar and writer, his specialist interests are in philosophy, in particular in the practical application of East Asian thinking and Western Existentialism.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
121 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 19, 2014
139 people are currently reading
157 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 29, 2024
A very readable and manageable volume focusing on the life and work of Martin Heidegger, the Philosopher of Being. I found it immensely useful in helping to understand and interpret Heidegger’s complex philosophies.
Raised a catholic in southern Germany, initially destined for the priesthood. A controversial figure – at one time being a signed up national socialist in Hitler’s third Reich.
His thoughts seem highly relevant to the issues of our time - the future of the planet, the downsides of technology, animal welfare..... He saw Art as complementary, even essential to offset the dangers of technology and soulless modernism. Must read more.
Raised a catholic in southern Germany, initially destined for the priesthood. A controversial figure – at one time being a signed up national socialist in Hitler’s third Reich.
His thoughts seem highly relevant to the issues of our time - the future of the planet, the downsides of technology, animal welfare..... He saw Art as complementary, even essential to offset the dangers of technology and soulless modernism. Must read more.
May 28, 2020
Excerpts
"To grasp Heidegger’s thought, it is essential to begin with a clear understanding of two terms used throughout his writing: being (or beings), which is always written with a small ‘b’, and Being, which is always capitalized. The distinction between these two terms forms the foundation of Heidegger’s entire philosophy.
A being (or entity) refers to anything that has an existence of some sort – humans, animals, chairs, atoms, molecules, chemical processes; it is any event or thing in existence. In contrast to this, Heidegger uses the word ‘Being’ to refer to the existing ‘isness’ or essence of these entities – the primordial condition or fundamental ground that allows everything in the universe to come into existence. It is the shared factor of ‘Being’ that inhabits all entities, which makes our own existence inseparable from everything else. In this sense, all ‘beings’ truly are the same.
Since Being is invisible – hidden in the beings or things that it brings into existence – it cannot reveal itself outside of the beings it inhabits. So Heidegger approaches the question of Being by investigating the Being of beings.
Heidegger chooses us as the logical starting point for his inquiry, because he observed that we have a unique and privileged relationship to Being. Of all entities in existence, organic and inorganic, only humans can question and seek to understand Being.
He concluded that the inherent limitations of human speech prevent us from intelligibly explaining the ‘isness’ or meaning of Being. Consequently we can only speak of it tautologically: ‘Being is Being’.
Heidegger claims that the ‘Nothing’ is constantly in the background of our existence. The state of deep anxiety (Angst) and despair, which sometimes arises in people for no apparent reason, is often caused by a sudden perception of the Nothing (that may or may not have occurred at a conscious level of awareness). This creates a sense of emptiness and insignificance. All beings appear to be threatened by the Nothing, which makes everything seem non-sense.
He considers Being and the Nothing to be mutually dependent and indivisible, like two sides of a coin. This close connection between Being and Nothing is also evidenced by the fact that they share an important intrinsic attribute. Being (like Nothing) is not a thing – if it were, it would instead be a being (rather than Being) – so in this sense one can conclude that Being is no-thing. Humans participate in both Being, by existing, and the Nothing, by ceasing to exist. Only the two possibilities of Being and Nothing are constant. Heidegger felt that the world we live in, and the entities it contains, can be understood only in the light of this existence and non- existence of Being and Nothing.
So it would seem reasonable to conclude that Heidegger’s ‘Why is there something rather than Nothing?’ is not actually a question that is asking for an answer, but rather an expression of sheer astonishment and wonder over the fact of existence.
At the root of Heidegger’s entire enterprise in Being and Time is his claim that Dasein has an a priori awareness of its own existence, in other words, we possess a rudimentary comprehension of our existence, prior to any life experience, that allows us to make sense of the world we live in.
if we treat things generally as present-at-hand, we are limiting ourselves to a much narrowed perception of Being.
We are disregarding our fundamental unity with the world, the interconnectedness of everything around us and our practical and personal concerns, which constitute our primary way of Being in the world. This attitude allows humans to be treated as ciphers in statistics as though they are mere present-at-hand ‘scientific objects’ or, alternatively, as ready-to-hand ‘tools’ for business or political purposes.
We are ‘thrown’ into the world, according to Heidegger. The random forces of chance or destiny determine our country and place of birth, race, religion, culture and the family and environment surrounding us – our world. Aside from knowing the facts of our conception and birth, ultimately – from the larger more universal perspective – we have no idea whatsoever where we came from, or why we are here. We did not choose any of the aspects of our existence and yet they fundamentally influence our current situation and all our future possibilities for Being. Heidegger calls this event of being thrust into an involuntary existence our thrownness, and the ‘burden’ we carry as a result is termed our facticity. Our facticity is the sum total of our current situation, combined with what this enables us to become in terms of our own future possibilities.
Heidegger claims that we live most of the time in a constant state of inauthenticity. The inauthentic mode of living is characterized by a lack of self-awareness that is rooted in our absorption in the ways of living that others provide us.
As Heidegger says: ‘The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self’.
In fallenness one drifts along with the fads and trends of the crowd, caught up in the mindless busy-ness, and tranquillized by the secure feeling that everyone else is doing the same thing; things in general seem to have been worked out by us. Heidegger says that, in its fallenness, Dasein ‘becomes blind to all its possibilities, and tranquillizes itself with that which is merely “actual”‘. In its simplest form, fallenness is the non-awareness of what it means to be.
When we live inauthentically, our general way of living is based upon a means-ends perspective on life, in which all our actions are in order to get something. So we might swim fifty lengths per day in order to get healthy. We might live for weeks on a diet we dislike in order to get thin. We might accept dinner invitations in order to make contacts. In addition, we constantly check our performance against public criteria, because we worry about what others think of us and fear that we will not meet the standards of success set by the ‘they’ of our particular ‘world’.
In this means-ends approach to life, our moment-by-moment existence becomes unimportant as we are like the proverbial donkey chasing the carrot at the end of the stick, unconcerned with the quality of the route we are taking.
Heidegger observed that words in general had become impotent: worn out and emptied of meaning from overuse and thus unfit for ‘thinking Being’ in depth. For instance, look at how the word ‘love’ is used today: ‘I love beer’, ‘I love football’, ‘See you later, love’. Add to this the appearance of the word on thousands of shirts, greeting cards and commercials and it comes as no surprise to learn that the word has now been sucked dry of the original meaning and intensity it once had.
The parallels between Heidegger and Asian thought are clear. What is not certain is whether Heidegger was directly influenced by such thought, or whether this is merely an example of what has been called by some philosophers ‘the universality of truth’ expressing itself in a variety of ways.
One of the dominant themes of Heidegger’s later writing is his critique of modern technology. Heidegger had never liked the modern cosmopolitan lifestyle, with its consumerism, shallow values and disregard for nature, but from the late 1950s onwards this feeling intensified considerably. He wrote: ‘Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm it or deny it.’
He saw mankind in the grip of an obsession with production and profit – maximum yield at minimum cost, irrespective of the current or future consequences – and this calculating, mercenary behaviour governed all decisions. What most terrified Heidegger was his realization that these were only the very earliest symptoms of a ‘diseased’ way of thinking that set itself no limits, the certain prognosis being infinite technological expansion that would eventually eradicate all other ways of thinking.
Human existence would eventually become completely subordinate to technological ‘dictatorship’.
Consequently, for the ‘enframed’ technologically minded Dasein, ‘to be’ simply means to be the manipulator and exploiter of other beings, or to be personally available for manipulation and exploitation.
According to Heidegger, this outlook is destroying the intrinsic value or importance of everything around us, and to compensate for the resulting impoverished existence in which we now live, we desperately seek experiences in the form of superficial stimulation that leaves us fundamentally ‘untouched’. So we consume never-ending quantities of entertainment and information and interact with representations of reality rather than reality itself: the epitome of this is seen in the virtual reality of the computer world.
Heidegger wrote: ‘it seems time and time again as though technology were a means in the hand of man. But, in truth, it is the coming to presence of man that is now being ordered forth to lend a hand to the coming to presence of technology’.
This is why Heidegger, controversially, thinks that even if we resolve all the negative expressions and consequences of technology, and use it only in ‘positive’ ways, the outcome may still be disastrous. The planet could be transformed potentially into a peaceful place, with nature perfectly controlled and providing food for everyone. Humans may achieve apparent ‘harmonious satisfaction’ with abundant entertainment offered by a plethora of pleasure-oriented hi-tech innovations. But Heidegger points out the very real danger here of becoming entrapped and entranced by such a lifestyle. In the process we are likely to lose all awareness of more meaningful and natural ways of living that allow us contact with the mystery of nature and the wonder of the meaning of Being."
"To grasp Heidegger’s thought, it is essential to begin with a clear understanding of two terms used throughout his writing: being (or beings), which is always written with a small ‘b’, and Being, which is always capitalized. The distinction between these two terms forms the foundation of Heidegger’s entire philosophy.
A being (or entity) refers to anything that has an existence of some sort – humans, animals, chairs, atoms, molecules, chemical processes; it is any event or thing in existence. In contrast to this, Heidegger uses the word ‘Being’ to refer to the existing ‘isness’ or essence of these entities – the primordial condition or fundamental ground that allows everything in the universe to come into existence. It is the shared factor of ‘Being’ that inhabits all entities, which makes our own existence inseparable from everything else. In this sense, all ‘beings’ truly are the same.
Since Being is invisible – hidden in the beings or things that it brings into existence – it cannot reveal itself outside of the beings it inhabits. So Heidegger approaches the question of Being by investigating the Being of beings.
Heidegger chooses us as the logical starting point for his inquiry, because he observed that we have a unique and privileged relationship to Being. Of all entities in existence, organic and inorganic, only humans can question and seek to understand Being.
He concluded that the inherent limitations of human speech prevent us from intelligibly explaining the ‘isness’ or meaning of Being. Consequently we can only speak of it tautologically: ‘Being is Being’.
Heidegger claims that the ‘Nothing’ is constantly in the background of our existence. The state of deep anxiety (Angst) and despair, which sometimes arises in people for no apparent reason, is often caused by a sudden perception of the Nothing (that may or may not have occurred at a conscious level of awareness). This creates a sense of emptiness and insignificance. All beings appear to be threatened by the Nothing, which makes everything seem non-sense.
He considers Being and the Nothing to be mutually dependent and indivisible, like two sides of a coin. This close connection between Being and Nothing is also evidenced by the fact that they share an important intrinsic attribute. Being (like Nothing) is not a thing – if it were, it would instead be a being (rather than Being) – so in this sense one can conclude that Being is no-thing. Humans participate in both Being, by existing, and the Nothing, by ceasing to exist. Only the two possibilities of Being and Nothing are constant. Heidegger felt that the world we live in, and the entities it contains, can be understood only in the light of this existence and non- existence of Being and Nothing.
So it would seem reasonable to conclude that Heidegger’s ‘Why is there something rather than Nothing?’ is not actually a question that is asking for an answer, but rather an expression of sheer astonishment and wonder over the fact of existence.
At the root of Heidegger’s entire enterprise in Being and Time is his claim that Dasein has an a priori awareness of its own existence, in other words, we possess a rudimentary comprehension of our existence, prior to any life experience, that allows us to make sense of the world we live in.
if we treat things generally as present-at-hand, we are limiting ourselves to a much narrowed perception of Being.
We are disregarding our fundamental unity with the world, the interconnectedness of everything around us and our practical and personal concerns, which constitute our primary way of Being in the world. This attitude allows humans to be treated as ciphers in statistics as though they are mere present-at-hand ‘scientific objects’ or, alternatively, as ready-to-hand ‘tools’ for business or political purposes.
We are ‘thrown’ into the world, according to Heidegger. The random forces of chance or destiny determine our country and place of birth, race, religion, culture and the family and environment surrounding us – our world. Aside from knowing the facts of our conception and birth, ultimately – from the larger more universal perspective – we have no idea whatsoever where we came from, or why we are here. We did not choose any of the aspects of our existence and yet they fundamentally influence our current situation and all our future possibilities for Being. Heidegger calls this event of being thrust into an involuntary existence our thrownness, and the ‘burden’ we carry as a result is termed our facticity. Our facticity is the sum total of our current situation, combined with what this enables us to become in terms of our own future possibilities.
Heidegger claims that we live most of the time in a constant state of inauthenticity. The inauthentic mode of living is characterized by a lack of self-awareness that is rooted in our absorption in the ways of living that others provide us.
As Heidegger says: ‘The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self’.
In fallenness one drifts along with the fads and trends of the crowd, caught up in the mindless busy-ness, and tranquillized by the secure feeling that everyone else is doing the same thing; things in general seem to have been worked out by us. Heidegger says that, in its fallenness, Dasein ‘becomes blind to all its possibilities, and tranquillizes itself with that which is merely “actual”‘. In its simplest form, fallenness is the non-awareness of what it means to be.
When we live inauthentically, our general way of living is based upon a means-ends perspective on life, in which all our actions are in order to get something. So we might swim fifty lengths per day in order to get healthy. We might live for weeks on a diet we dislike in order to get thin. We might accept dinner invitations in order to make contacts. In addition, we constantly check our performance against public criteria, because we worry about what others think of us and fear that we will not meet the standards of success set by the ‘they’ of our particular ‘world’.
In this means-ends approach to life, our moment-by-moment existence becomes unimportant as we are like the proverbial donkey chasing the carrot at the end of the stick, unconcerned with the quality of the route we are taking.
Heidegger observed that words in general had become impotent: worn out and emptied of meaning from overuse and thus unfit for ‘thinking Being’ in depth. For instance, look at how the word ‘love’ is used today: ‘I love beer’, ‘I love football’, ‘See you later, love’. Add to this the appearance of the word on thousands of shirts, greeting cards and commercials and it comes as no surprise to learn that the word has now been sucked dry of the original meaning and intensity it once had.
The parallels between Heidegger and Asian thought are clear. What is not certain is whether Heidegger was directly influenced by such thought, or whether this is merely an example of what has been called by some philosophers ‘the universality of truth’ expressing itself in a variety of ways.
One of the dominant themes of Heidegger’s later writing is his critique of modern technology. Heidegger had never liked the modern cosmopolitan lifestyle, with its consumerism, shallow values and disregard for nature, but from the late 1950s onwards this feeling intensified considerably. He wrote: ‘Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm it or deny it.’
He saw mankind in the grip of an obsession with production and profit – maximum yield at minimum cost, irrespective of the current or future consequences – and this calculating, mercenary behaviour governed all decisions. What most terrified Heidegger was his realization that these were only the very earliest symptoms of a ‘diseased’ way of thinking that set itself no limits, the certain prognosis being infinite technological expansion that would eventually eradicate all other ways of thinking.
Human existence would eventually become completely subordinate to technological ‘dictatorship’.
Consequently, for the ‘enframed’ technologically minded Dasein, ‘to be’ simply means to be the manipulator and exploiter of other beings, or to be personally available for manipulation and exploitation.
According to Heidegger, this outlook is destroying the intrinsic value or importance of everything around us, and to compensate for the resulting impoverished existence in which we now live, we desperately seek experiences in the form of superficial stimulation that leaves us fundamentally ‘untouched’. So we consume never-ending quantities of entertainment and information and interact with representations of reality rather than reality itself: the epitome of this is seen in the virtual reality of the computer world.
Heidegger wrote: ‘it seems time and time again as though technology were a means in the hand of man. But, in truth, it is the coming to presence of man that is now being ordered forth to lend a hand to the coming to presence of technology’.
This is why Heidegger, controversially, thinks that even if we resolve all the negative expressions and consequences of technology, and use it only in ‘positive’ ways, the outcome may still be disastrous. The planet could be transformed potentially into a peaceful place, with nature perfectly controlled and providing food for everyone. Humans may achieve apparent ‘harmonious satisfaction’ with abundant entertainment offered by a plethora of pleasure-oriented hi-tech innovations. But Heidegger points out the very real danger here of becoming entrapped and entranced by such a lifestyle. In the process we are likely to lose all awareness of more meaningful and natural ways of living that allow us contact with the mystery of nature and the wonder of the meaning of Being."
March 11, 2022
Heidegger is one of the most confusing philosophers I've come accross. This book is still pretty confusing but definitely a great place to start.
December 31, 2021
5 stars for the author but not sure how to rate Heidegger though.
Watts does a great job at simplifying Heidegger's somewhat obscure ideas and language. The book is easy to read and contains a much-needed glossary in case one gets lost in Heidegger’s prose – a very likely occurrence.
Regarding Heidegger’s philosophy, some core principles (Being & being, thrownness, technology) are interesting to try grasping whereas others concepts (time & death, nothingness) will spark intense debates and eye-rolling.
Also, Heidegger was a member and supporter of the Nazi Party. Whether that influences one’s reading of this book or his work is entirely up to one.
Watts does a great job at simplifying Heidegger's somewhat obscure ideas and language. The book is easy to read and contains a much-needed glossary in case one gets lost in Heidegger’s prose – a very likely occurrence.
Regarding Heidegger’s philosophy, some core principles (Being & being, thrownness, technology) are interesting to try grasping whereas others concepts (time & death, nothingness) will spark intense debates and eye-rolling.
Also, Heidegger was a member and supporter of the Nazi Party. Whether that influences one’s reading of this book or his work is entirely up to one.
December 8, 2018
It is what it says it is: a guide for beginers, and nothing more, nothing less.
There 's hardly a more difficult thinker whose writing can be deciphered than Heidegger, because in his objective to reframe the vision of modernity he has had to inaugurate a new vocabularies to rescue buried meanings, new concepts and future possibilities. To renderings these goal accessible to the the reader not versed in philosophy, requires a simplification that Watts has achieved, for he has rendered Heidegger's principal ideas plastic to the understanding. And this, as an intro, and perhaps incitement to further readings about Heidegger, if not yet by the man himself, is to be commended. But the price for this readiness has been steep: historical background, comparative renderings, philosophical context. Many citations, e.g., have no references, there is no indication of Heidegger's own development: his insastisfaction with the western modelled Weimar constitution and it's atomic citizen model, his participation in the nascent Nazi movement as a potential counter model, his early resignation from power position as rector, and the transformation of the Late Heidegger. In short, even for beginneers, a fuller and more enticing presentation of man, thinker, philosophy and times could well be made.
There 's hardly a more difficult thinker whose writing can be deciphered than Heidegger, because in his objective to reframe the vision of modernity he has had to inaugurate a new vocabularies to rescue buried meanings, new concepts and future possibilities. To renderings these goal accessible to the the reader not versed in philosophy, requires a simplification that Watts has achieved, for he has rendered Heidegger's principal ideas plastic to the understanding. And this, as an intro, and perhaps incitement to further readings about Heidegger, if not yet by the man himself, is to be commended. But the price for this readiness has been steep: historical background, comparative renderings, philosophical context. Many citations, e.g., have no references, there is no indication of Heidegger's own development: his insastisfaction with the western modelled Weimar constitution and it's atomic citizen model, his participation in the nascent Nazi movement as a potential counter model, his early resignation from power position as rector, and the transformation of the Late Heidegger. In short, even for beginneers, a fuller and more enticing presentation of man, thinker, philosophy and times could well be made.
May 1, 2024
I did my struggle with Heidegger decades ago when there were few useful secondary texts. I think I must have plowed through ‘Being and Time’ and others of his works four or five times More recently there have been quite a few stimulating guides, but I was drawn to what this appears to be, a guide for complete beginners. For me, it turns out to be what I expected, not deep enough to be of interest if you have done a couple of courses on Heidegger, and not the least bit useful if you are reading Heidegger from scratch. Some interesting parts, so I am not knocking it, but don’t expect too much.
January 29, 2019
Heidegger is an infamously difficult philosopher to understand, and this book was not my first attempt at understanding Heidegger abstract, but deep inquiry into being. Michael Watts has done an excellent job of making the inaccessible accessible and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the basis of existentialism. It is still a challenging read and I found myself re-reading paragraphs and flipping back and forward between pages to understand Heidegger's argument, but I doubt it could be explained any better. 5/5
December 22, 2023
For those who really want to reach Martin Heidegger's philosophy this is the best way to start!
I had tried many times to understand this philosopher but I always had to stop because of his difficult language and because all the former books I read about him were either too abstract or too complicated. This book is exactly what I needed: simple but not simplistic and it takes the reader step by step from easy and simple terms to the most complex. I feel grateful to the author and I would certainly give it 5,5 stars if I could! It takes a lot of effort and skill to wtite a book for the Beginners. It also needs to know your subject perfectly.
I had tried many times to understand this philosopher but I always had to stop because of his difficult language and because all the former books I read about him were either too abstract or too complicated. This book is exactly what I needed: simple but not simplistic and it takes the reader step by step from easy and simple terms to the most complex. I feel grateful to the author and I would certainly give it 5,5 stars if I could! It takes a lot of effort and skill to wtite a book for the Beginners. It also needs to know your subject perfectly.
March 30, 2020
Far easier than Heidegger himself
Reading Heidegger directly is a brutal experience. Michael Watts’ introduction is a far gentler experience - highlighting key ideas without getting bogged down in the arguments that support them in the original.
Reading Heidegger directly is a brutal experience. Michael Watts’ introduction is a far gentler experience - highlighting key ideas without getting bogged down in the arguments that support them in the original.
April 22, 2021
Great overview of Heidegger.
Very well written overview of Heidegger. It was written clearly, and the author had a good grasp of Heidegger's main ideas. Probably one of the best books on him.
Very well written overview of Heidegger. It was written clearly, and the author had a good grasp of Heidegger's main ideas. Probably one of the best books on him.
February 21, 2023
A concise intro to Heidegger's philosophy and thinking; I knew next to nothing about him but learned a lot. I particularly liked Heidegger's views on anxiety (as a potentially enlightening emotion) and technology.
May 20, 2021
This is a great read even if you don't plan to get into Heidegger's original text!
Read
July 19, 2021sounds about right
November 20, 2023
The best intro to Heidegger I’ve read.
August 28, 2025
An absolute 'must-read' for anyone contemplating on diving in to Heidegger's Being and Time. The author did a tremendous job of elucidating Heidegger's recondite philosophy in everyday language.
December 30, 2020
Best into on Heidegger. Great read.
May 25, 2021
Can't recommend this enough for a first step into Heidegger. It's very short, you can read it in a day or two if you need to, but it's incredibly precise and presents all of Heidegger's complexities in a way that anyone can grasp. Not only this but it also compels you to want to dig deeper. It has really opened the door to Heidegger for me and I've even come back to it over and over again when venturing into new Heidegger topics.
So it's a faultless book in my opinion because it does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it impeccably.
So it's a faultless book in my opinion because it does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it impeccably.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews