beginning Heidegger • gary e. davis • berkeley



		for thinking with “Heidegger” in English gary e. davis		March 15, 2017
		Why this sequence of things below (all are PDF documents) is beyond a short note. The entire book that contains some of these essays is available as PDF here (PLT, OWL, I&D, OT&B), linked from the first relevant essay for each book. Several major essays are from Pathmarks, which is well worth purchasing, if you’re seriously interested in Heidegger. [February 2021: I’ve discovered that my PDFs don’t open in a Firefox browser automatically after clicking my text link, but the PDF window opens. So, click the upper right “Download” icon in the PDF window, then choose to open with Firefox (if that’s not already default). That works. The Chrome and Safari browsers work automatically, when my text link is clicked. I don’t know about Windows browsers. Let me know if there’s a problem.] I’ve mainly listed constructive work by Heidegger (oriented to facilitating others’ potentials), rather than deconstructive work (critique of metaphysicalism, technocentrism, treating Nietzsche, etc.)—though I’m listing some major early deconstructive work at the end here. His major works (Contributions to Philosophy, Being and Time— not available here) and his many lecture courses were supposed by him, late in life, to be introduced through work that he published after 1950 and while he was still alive.

1	what calls for thinking (1951)
		This is a selection of passages from What Is Called Thinking?, Heidegger’s first public lectures after the war. The 11 lecture series is exemplary of methodic teaching. The rather simple-mindedness of his address to a (presumably) non-professionally-academic audience is not only a good message for citizens who are learning to make post-War democracy emerge authentically from regional engagement. That’s also instrumental for displaying a methodic approach to showing how to teach. These are implicitly lectures in philosophy of education. The series is divided into two Parts. The PDF here includes only the first lecture of each part; then the last lecture of the series. So, the reader may get a good sense of an overt pathmaking at its start, its midpoint, and its ending. One can sound out the Greek words usefully sometimes (because so much of English—a germanic language!—has Greek etymological correlates) by transliteration. It’s not the early 1950s anymore! So, what about the content of his methodicness is exemplary for us now? We are historically far beyond his Time (in our ever future-shocked times). Yet profoundly for him, as well as us still, the times are post-Hiroshima, post-Holocaust, and, for him, following years of solitude, following his most challenging work (unpublished) more than a decade behind him, yet implicitly there to him for others ahead of him in death, as he is speaking with a new century like any author to an invisible audience. In his published work of the 1950s and the following decade (and in his near-death 1975 television interview), he called himself a “precursor.” He wants to make contributions to enabling. The entire set of lectures is also available here.

2	on the era of Being and Time
		The foremost scholar of Heidegger is Theodore Kisiel. Here’s his review of a recent book about Being and Time that provides an excellent sense of Heidegger’s thinking during the 1920s. Kisiel is disagreeing with the author of the book at times, but in the process, he provides an excellent sense of Heidegger. Who would have guessed that he was so in love with Hannah, that he felt his work was all for her? I posted about this review earlier (not there about the man with umbrella).

3	what philosophy is (1955)
		“The end of philosophy and the task of thinking,” nine years later (below) isn’t about not doing philosophy anymore! Getting beyond the telos of so-called “philosophy” (i.e., beyond that which gravitates toward metaphysicalism—toward onto-theologicality, so to speak) is—to my mind—to find how the ultimacy of philosophy is ever generative—is betrothed to intrinsic openness of Our being in time, of Time. Here, Heidegger is once again addressing a non-professionally-academic audience. The underlining and bracketing of text, showing in this PDF, is a long story for later. For now, I’ll just say that my strike-through of underlining at one point is not a negation of the paragraph, merely a 1992 negation of my 1971 underlining for some long-forgotten reason.

4	Heideggger letter about his career (1962)
		In 1962, Heidegger wrote a letter to an American scholar, William J. Richardson, indicating his own perspective on his career. A keynote is that he wants his pre-War published work to be regarded relative to his later work. (And he’s got those unpublished major works of the late 1930s for which he’s been implicitly preparing audiences and readers.) This is a good introduction to Heidegger writing late in life in a very accessible way. But it’s Heidegger being synoptic; it gets difficult. The letter linked above isn’t Richardson’s translation. But here also is Richardson’s translation (with the German version as the second half of the PDF). And I made some more comment at an earlier posting.

5	the way to language (1959)
		This is a chapter of On the Way to Language. The entire book is available. Here, like all of his work, the “logic” (rigorous rhetoric) of teaching is the implicit, though main, point.

6	origin of the work of art (1936 / 1956)
		This is a chapter of Poetry, Language, Thought, which is available here. “Earth” and “World” are archetypes—implicitly lived conceptions—that precede ideologies of “Being” and antedate such ideologies.

7	building dwelling thinking (1951)
		This is a chapter of Poetry, Language, Thought. What’s environmentally, holistically exemplary in the 1950s is ambiguously (or not) “news” now. But the fourfold is a trope set (archetypal) that can be applied rather amazingly across many modes of understanding.

8	experience of thinking (1947)
		I did a note earlier about this first part of Poetry, Language, Thought. I feel that the kindred spirit of this is well displayed in the “Letter to a Young Student” (pp. 181-4 of PLT) from which I quoted earlier (“for Its Arriving”).

9	language in the poem (1953)
		from On the Way to Language. Enowning “our” region is integral to being well. Poets channel such embodiment of regioning. Being well is a mindful heartfulness whose legacy is always to be understood in light of our potentials.

10	principle of identity (1957)
		This is the first half of Identity and Difference. How the logic of constructiveness— belonging together in The Same—enlightens deconstruction of metaphysicalism (second half of I&D).

11	the thing (1950)
		I posted a note about this. The essay/lecture is probably my favorite work by Heidegger. He notes in Identity and Difference that he is on the way to his lecture “The Thing.”

12	the question of being (1955)
		After so many years, the question of being remains, as a matter of common care and as a matter of “Heidegger.” Late in life, he returns to it here. (He never taught Being and Time—except to make it the topic of a seminar late in life.)

13	phenomenology and theology (1927)
		How best to read this in light of where his path took him decades later? His inaugural lecture at Freiburg, “What is metaphysics?” is from the same period, and that called for an introductory essay years later, regarding earlier work relative to later thinking. That regard for “What is metaphysics?” is below. It exemplifies his concern to understand earlier work relative to later work.

14	essence of truth (1930)
		When he sought in 1945 to justify his administrative time, he relied on reference to this breakthrough lecture, which he presented several times, 1931-32.

15	end of philosophy and the task of thinking (1964)
		There will be much to say about this.

16	letter on “humanism” (1946)
		This merits a book.

17	what metaphysics is (1949)
		The above links to his "Introduction" to the 1929 lecture: • What is metaphysics?(1929) • Postscript to “What is metaphysics?” (1943) A keynote for me is the difference between metaphysicalism and real metaphysics (now evolved beyond what Heidegger could anticipate).

After WW-II, Heidegger was more interested in enabling others’ thinking than representing his own thinking (i.e., no trying to overtly introduce work which would appear posthumously). “Thinking is not re-presentation,” he said over and over, during the What is called thinking? lectures. Thinking reaches for the heartfulness, the mindfulness of being well among us and within us.

Nonetheless, he always had in mind major work of his that he never discussed. The “event of Appropriation” belongs to us all: the listener/reader, to Heidegger implicitly channeling his unpublished futurity, and for-and-to Heidegger, Unsayable origination of Contributions to Philosophy and The Event during the late 1930s. “The Appropriation appropriates,” he said in “Time and Being” (if I recall correctly).


		Be fair. © 2017, g. e. davis.