… and experienced, shall we say, the anxiety of incomprehension — then here is some possible consolation. In their 20s, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were among the very top philosophy students of their generation in France. Yet when they tried to read Heidegger in 1931, Beauvoir reported, “since we could not understand a […]
If you’ve tried to read Heidegger … Read More »
Nietzsche: “Being profound and seeming profound. —Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into
Nietzsche and Heidegger on clarity Read More »
[First published at EveryJoe.com.] Full disclosure at the outset: I’m a philosopher, and this new series of columns on The Good Life will often be about human nature, knowledge, the meaning of life, and of course politics. So let me start by indicating some of my colleagues’ opinions about politics. A favorite party game for
Are Philosophers Stupid about Politics? [The Good Life] Read More »
Will Altman: “It is perfectly natural to feel loyalty to the thinker who set you to thinking, to the writer whose writings first made you a careful and devoted reader, and whose example inspired your own way of life as a philosopher.” Altman’s words appear in the concluding chapter of his book on Martin Heidegger,
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Dr. Przemysław Zientkowski’s foreword to the Polish edition of my Nietzsche and the Nazis, translated into English. A PDF version is here, and the HTML version follows. Foreword to the Polish edition of Stephen Hicks’s Nietzsche and the Nazis By Przemysław Zientkowski, Ph.D. History teaches us that in politics—in order to reinforce the message, achieve
Zientkowski’s foreword to *Nietzsche and the Nazis* Read More »
And they will no doubt ignite another round of debate about Martin Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and Nazism. History professor Robert Zaretsky summarizes the evolution of the debate to date. My thoughts here.
Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” to be published in Germany Read More »
This is the third chapter of the audiobook version of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Chapter Three: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [mp3] [YouTube] [50 minutes] Heidegger’s synthesis of the Continental tradition [mp3] [YouTube] Setting aside reason and logic [mp3] [YouTube] Emotions as revelatory [mp3] [YouTube] Heidegger and postmodernism [mp3] [YouTube]
The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason [EP audiobook] Read More »
This week in Contemporary European Philosophy we are reading Martin Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?” In this recent survey (dominated by philosophers from the English-speaking world), Heidegger ranks as the 18th most-identified-with non-living philosopher. “What Is Metaphysics?” was first delivered in 1929 as Heidegger’s inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg. Here is my summary of
Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?” Read More »