How to Read Heidegger

How to Read Heidegger

<p><strong>Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the <em>How to Read</em> series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon.</strong></p> Martin Heidegger is perhaps the most influential, yet least readily understood, philosopher of the last century. Mark Wrathall unpacks Heidegger€s dense prose and guides the reader through Heidegger€s early concern with the nature of human existence, to his later preoccupation with the threat that technology poses to our ability to live worthwhile lives.<br /><br /> Wrathall pays particular attention to Heidegger€s revolutionary analysis of human existence as inextricably shaped by a shared world. This leads to an exploration of Heidegger€s views on the banality of public life and the possibility of authentic anticipation of death as a response to that banality. Wrathall reviews Heidegger€s scandalous involvement with National Socialism, situating it in the context of Heidegger€s views about the movement of world history. He also explains Heidegger€s important accounts of truth, art, and language.<br /><br /> Extracts are taken from Heidegger€s magnum opus, <em>Being and Time</em>, as well as a variety of his best-known essays and lectures.