Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century. Considered by some to be the greatest charlatan ever to claim the title of 'philosopher', by some as an apologist for Nazism, he was also an acknowledged leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, 'Being and Time', and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. These themes are then reassessed in the light of Heidegger's later work, together with the extent of his philosophical importance and influence. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century. Considered by some to be the greatest charlatan ever to claim the title of 'philosopher', by some as an apologist for Nazism, he was also an acknowledged leader and central figure to many philosophers. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, 'Being and Time', and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time. These themes are then reassessed in the light of Heidegger's later work, together with the extent of his philosophical importance and influence. This is an invaluable guide to the complex and voluminous thought of a major twentieth-century existentialist philosopher.

2007-12-07 Splendid!

A scintillating foray into this burdensome thinker which rather puts one in mind of the young lady I met at a recent exhibition in a Cork Street gallery (she was indeed a corker!) who offered the opinion (gratefully received) that Martin (as she called him) was " a bit of a bounder" on account (so I gathered) of the cowboy Stetson he affected at one of Husserl's seminars on the ticklish merits of Kant's taking umbrage with Berkeley over the vexed issue of contiguous contingency - a quirk of attire which prompted the savant to deride the (then) upstart younger philosopher as "Buffalo Heidegger." At which point (naturally, as one might suppose) Martin (as we shall continue to call him), flew into one of his considerable rages and stalked from the room yelling that he would report Husserl to the authorities, which he duly did but nothing came of it as Husserl later recalled gaily to an interlocutor, Dr John Beamish, while quaffing a litre in a Düsseldorf tavern. Anyway, as this young lady was telling me all this I couldn't help glancing into her cleavage (a metaphorical "falling-in"): a perfect nestling of palpating orbs which put me in mind of Heidegger's cautionary tale of not permitting Dasein to enter into the state of "being-in-ineptitude," that is, of swimming helplessly in the "falling-down" of primordial tensions, and, above all, to resolutely be-not and yet traverse that split in being, that stunning cleft in existance, that apartness-yet-meetingness, that Nothingness of expectation and breathlessness betwixt the soft and sloping mounds of Being-for-itself (to paraphrase Sartre), that home/coming resolutely raised and yet summoned to perfectability (what is and yet what is not), climaxed as it were, by this mammarial display!