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Country Path Conversations
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, the war, and evil; and 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, the lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger’s wartime and postwar thinking.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
232 pages, Hardcover
First published May 19, 2010
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About the author
Martin Heidegger
518 books3,270 followersMartin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 7, 2021
With the end of the WW2, Heidegger is contemplating the devastation around him and he is looking for a reason. In doing so, he points at the essence of technology, subjectification, objectification, will to will, planning and obtaining everything in reach, and as usual - at the forgetfulness of Being. However, the end of the war is not going to solve the devastation and will decide nothing according to Heidegger; that is because the war itself is just a manifestation of our long ongoing metaphysical and rebellion uprising against Being.
One of the main topics in these three dialogues is the “will not to will” or “of letting go of things”. In Meister Eckhart's words: “where I will nothing for myself, there wills instead my God”. Against this “will not to will” stands the modern framing of men as the culmination of two thousand years of metaphysics; or in Nietzsche's words, the men who “would rather will nothingness than not to will”. Heidegger talks about evil, malice, and violence – identified as this “will to will” and as it stands together with forgetfulness, subjectivity, objectification, technology, and so on; evil that blocks us from going into nearness, waiting, and respectful intimacy with Being and beings. According to Heidegger, evil dwells in the essence of Being and conceals itself as “a secure state of the world, in order to hold out to the human a satisfactory standard of living as the highest goal of existence and to guarantee its realization”. In other words - the prosperity and welfare societies are seen by him as artificial and concealing worlds and as culminations of metaphysical devastation - and thus as evil.
It seems to me that Heidegger's goals here are: (1) to unsettle us, to break open, and to loosen up the metaphysical grip on us; (2) to teach us how to wait, to do nothing, to allow, to become who we are, to listen to the language and its call, to rest in the essence, to think, to give thanks, to be astonished, to search for the near and the simple, to turn back, to will not to will, to experience to open-region/Being; (3) and to open a path for us.
One of the main topics in these three dialogues is the “will not to will” or “of letting go of things”. In Meister Eckhart's words: “where I will nothing for myself, there wills instead my God”. Against this “will not to will” stands the modern framing of men as the culmination of two thousand years of metaphysics; or in Nietzsche's words, the men who “would rather will nothingness than not to will”. Heidegger talks about evil, malice, and violence – identified as this “will to will” and as it stands together with forgetfulness, subjectivity, objectification, technology, and so on; evil that blocks us from going into nearness, waiting, and respectful intimacy with Being and beings. According to Heidegger, evil dwells in the essence of Being and conceals itself as “a secure state of the world, in order to hold out to the human a satisfactory standard of living as the highest goal of existence and to guarantee its realization”. In other words - the prosperity and welfare societies are seen by him as artificial and concealing worlds and as culminations of metaphysical devastation - and thus as evil.
It seems to me that Heidegger's goals here are: (1) to unsettle us, to break open, and to loosen up the metaphysical grip on us; (2) to teach us how to wait, to do nothing, to allow, to become who we are, to listen to the language and its call, to rest in the essence, to think, to give thanks, to be astonished, to search for the near and the simple, to turn back, to will not to will, to experience to open-region/Being; (3) and to open a path for us.
July 21, 2025
For a non-professional philosopher, Heidegger is a challenge. More often than not I had the impression that he was merely playing with words rather than getting to a philosophical essence. Fortunately, the translator often included the German original words, which are closer to my mother tongue (Dutch) and therefore easier to understand.
As for the philosophy, I cannot escape the impression that Heidegger came close to non-dual thinking, where the object and the observer are essentially the same, viz. consciousness. I could not find any evidence of his dallying with Eastern philosophy, though. In any case, this is what resonated with me while struggling through this book, which may as well simply be a reflection of my own belief system.
As for the philosophy, I cannot escape the impression that Heidegger came close to non-dual thinking, where the object and the observer are essentially the same, viz. consciousness. I could not find any evidence of his dallying with Eastern philosophy, though. In any case, this is what resonated with me while struggling through this book, which may as well simply be a reflection of my own belief system.
April 9, 2018
Written in the mid-1940s (but published posthumously), these three "conversations" provide a unique perspective on Heidegger's critique of technology and his development of "releasement" as its counterpoint. Other treatments, such as The Question Concerning Technology and Discourse on Thinking (both written about 10 years later) are more or less traditional lectures or philosophical essays, while these are presented as conversations among participants who, like the reader, are trying to follow the tortuous path of Heidegger's later thinking.
The first conversation, among a physicist, a scholar, and a "guide", leads through some familiar late-Heidegger themes -- the limits of representational thought (and language), subject-object metaphysics, the dependence of modern science upon the technological world-view, and his emerging way of speaking about what he believes has been covered up by these prevalent ways of living in and making the world understandable.
It's the last of those themes that I think is most distinctive in this and in the other two conversations as well. Heidegger develops more clearly, for me at least, a sense of why the traditional methods of philosophy -- precisely stated propositions methodically constructed and argued for -- fail to provide what he needs to articulate his later thinking. What he means to do is to point, to lead by speaking, or "surmising", to a thoroughly different, and for him more primordial way of having a world. Even phrases like "having a world" fail because they inevitably conjure elements of exactly the metaphysics he means to call into question and counter. The difficulty of his own language -- terms like "regioning", "non-willing", "releasement", "unconcealing" , "waiting" -- is that we are compelled to fit what he is saying back into the very metaphysics and the very understanding of language that he is opposing.
Also in that first conversation is a consistent thread about willing in its relationship to technology and the understanding of the world as a world of objects over against a subject. Here Heidegger espouses "non-willing" as a releasing of this kind of demand toward the world that it offer itself up for human understanding and use.
The final conversation, between an "older man" and a "younger man" in a Russian prisoner of war camp, provides some relatively rare discussion of how Heidegger saw the war itself within the dangers of technology, expanding on some enigmatic remarks in Discourse on Thinking about a danger greater than weapons of self-annihilation. Here Heidegger is clear and explicit in his claims that the very ideals of modern life -- the securing of a high standard of living for all through modern technology and what we would now call the life of consumption -- represents the triumph of a devastating forgetfulness of the more primordial relationship to being, to the world, that he is trying to remind us of and bring us back to.
In the end, I think what we get out of these conversations is a sense of speaking or conversing as a way of coming to recognize, without the kind of propositional clarity we long for, the direction in which Heidegger is taking us and what he means by "releasement". The metaphor of the country path is apt, in that Heidegger certainly doesn't take us to a sure destination but rather only farther along a path.
No one should be misled into thinking that, because these three writings are presented as "conversations", they will flow more easily or be more easily comprehended than Heidegger's other later writings. These conversations are difficult to follow.
The first conversation, among a physicist, a scholar, and a "guide", leads through some familiar late-Heidegger themes -- the limits of representational thought (and language), subject-object metaphysics, the dependence of modern science upon the technological world-view, and his emerging way of speaking about what he believes has been covered up by these prevalent ways of living in and making the world understandable.
It's the last of those themes that I think is most distinctive in this and in the other two conversations as well. Heidegger develops more clearly, for me at least, a sense of why the traditional methods of philosophy -- precisely stated propositions methodically constructed and argued for -- fail to provide what he needs to articulate his later thinking. What he means to do is to point, to lead by speaking, or "surmising", to a thoroughly different, and for him more primordial way of having a world. Even phrases like "having a world" fail because they inevitably conjure elements of exactly the metaphysics he means to call into question and counter. The difficulty of his own language -- terms like "regioning", "non-willing", "releasement", "unconcealing" , "waiting" -- is that we are compelled to fit what he is saying back into the very metaphysics and the very understanding of language that he is opposing.
Also in that first conversation is a consistent thread about willing in its relationship to technology and the understanding of the world as a world of objects over against a subject. Here Heidegger espouses "non-willing" as a releasing of this kind of demand toward the world that it offer itself up for human understanding and use.
The final conversation, between an "older man" and a "younger man" in a Russian prisoner of war camp, provides some relatively rare discussion of how Heidegger saw the war itself within the dangers of technology, expanding on some enigmatic remarks in Discourse on Thinking about a danger greater than weapons of self-annihilation. Here Heidegger is clear and explicit in his claims that the very ideals of modern life -- the securing of a high standard of living for all through modern technology and what we would now call the life of consumption -- represents the triumph of a devastating forgetfulness of the more primordial relationship to being, to the world, that he is trying to remind us of and bring us back to.
In the end, I think what we get out of these conversations is a sense of speaking or conversing as a way of coming to recognize, without the kind of propositional clarity we long for, the direction in which Heidegger is taking us and what he means by "releasement". The metaphor of the country path is apt, in that Heidegger certainly doesn't take us to a sure destination but rather only farther along a path.
No one should be misled into thinking that, because these three writings are presented as "conversations", they will flow more easily or be more easily comprehended than Heidegger's other later writings. These conversations are difficult to follow.
November 1, 2013
this is phenomenal. An elaboration and complete presentation of Heidegger's dialogue concerning "Gelassenheit"> A must read for Heideggerian fans who want to understand and enter into an experience of Gelassenheit
October 28, 2023
I learned more from this book than I originally anticipated!
The concept of Glassenheit (releasement) is a very Eckhartian way of thinking about de-subjectification and self-annihilation. Indeed, even though Heidegger is not one to cite many thinkers, the Meister's name appears at several junctures in the book.
More than anything else, this is a thoughtful reflection on what it means for thinking as surmising rather than thinking as calculative, ordered, and representational. Heidegger's 'releasement' of the subject and releasement from the force of perceiving the world as a set of representational objects, rather than things, was really onto concepts that would later become 'academically sexy.' For instance, this releasement and 'pure waiting' entail that the world is given to us first as a set of moods and affects, rather than theoretical dispositions (i.e., what affect theory starting developing nearly 60 years after Heidegger). Additional, many of the 'new materialists,' insofar as look for immanent modes of causation, seem to be deeply Heideggerian, whether they know it or not.
Another great theme in this book concerns what a conversation is and how this conversation connects to futurity. Conversations are most attuned with our Dasein when they are not forced down some previously walked path that revisits and reaffirms our long held assumptions. Rather than have a representation of what a conversation ought to entail and then labor to pull that future representation towards ourselves, we release ourselves from such representational futurity and allow the conversation to present to us in whatever manner it may. There is a deep refusal to labor for or work on behalf of the future that Heidegger's concept of Glassenheit, conversation, and surmising are getting at.
On another point: I think that many Heidegger scholars and perhaps Heidegger himself misunderstood Eckhart. They imagine Eckhart thought of self-emptying as a way to let the self's will give way to God's will and presence. However, that is precisely not what Eckhart articulates. Eckhart calls for a self-emptying that results in our becoming Nothing in the same way that God is Nothing or non-thing or no-thing-ness. There is wonderful 'whylessness' and loafing that come from this self-emptying and I think Heidegger and many of his readers miss this crucial, crucial point.
Anyways, I was skeptical of going back to Heidegger (I had not read him in many years), but was pleasantly surprised at what was given in the text.
The concept of Glassenheit (releasement) is a very Eckhartian way of thinking about de-subjectification and self-annihilation. Indeed, even though Heidegger is not one to cite many thinkers, the Meister's name appears at several junctures in the book.
More than anything else, this is a thoughtful reflection on what it means for thinking as surmising rather than thinking as calculative, ordered, and representational. Heidegger's 'releasement' of the subject and releasement from the force of perceiving the world as a set of representational objects, rather than things, was really onto concepts that would later become 'academically sexy.' For instance, this releasement and 'pure waiting' entail that the world is given to us first as a set of moods and affects, rather than theoretical dispositions (i.e., what affect theory starting developing nearly 60 years after Heidegger). Additional, many of the 'new materialists,' insofar as look for immanent modes of causation, seem to be deeply Heideggerian, whether they know it or not.
Another great theme in this book concerns what a conversation is and how this conversation connects to futurity. Conversations are most attuned with our Dasein when they are not forced down some previously walked path that revisits and reaffirms our long held assumptions. Rather than have a representation of what a conversation ought to entail and then labor to pull that future representation towards ourselves, we release ourselves from such representational futurity and allow the conversation to present to us in whatever manner it may. There is a deep refusal to labor for or work on behalf of the future that Heidegger's concept of Glassenheit, conversation, and surmising are getting at.
On another point: I think that many Heidegger scholars and perhaps Heidegger himself misunderstood Eckhart. They imagine Eckhart thought of self-emptying as a way to let the self's will give way to God's will and presence. However, that is precisely not what Eckhart articulates. Eckhart calls for a self-emptying that results in our becoming Nothing in the same way that God is Nothing or non-thing or no-thing-ness. There is wonderful 'whylessness' and loafing that come from this self-emptying and I think Heidegger and many of his readers miss this crucial, crucial point.
Anyways, I was skeptical of going back to Heidegger (I had not read him in many years), but was pleasantly surprised at what was given in the text.
September 18, 2024
gelassenheit ::::::)))) back to my schanalecy life
September 12, 2022
Very chicken and the egg about essence versus existence. At least that’s what I got out of it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews