What Is Called Thinking?

Rating:
Summary: Important Work
Review: "What is called Thinking" is Heidegger's attempt to put an ontological spin on the act of thinking, whereby he believes that Being will make itself present to us, if we are open to the reception of it. As mystical as that sounds, this book is far more than just an abtruse piece of metaphysical speculation. It is also a powerful cultural critique. Within it's pages Heidegger discusses the way in which modern man has come to forget being and thus build modern culture and society on nothingness instead (or what Nietzsche sometimes called "the wasteland"). As such this book is both a bracing indictment of contemporary nihilism, and a diagnosis of society that finds that nihilism EVERYWHERE, and also a call to a more authentic way of being human, that stands in recpetivity to Being. This is corrosive, revolutionary stuff. It is also a dificult text to read - but it is worth it for anyone who wants to hear an explanation for what is fundamentally wrong with modernity.

Rating:
Summary: Important Work
Review: "What is called Thinking" is Heidegger's attempt to put an ontological spin on the act of thinking, whereby he believes that Being will make itself present to us, if we are open to the reception of it. As mystical as that sounds, this book is far more than just an abtruse piece of metaphysical speculation. It is also a powerful cultural critique. Within it's pages Heidegger discusses the way in which modern man has come to forget being and thus build modern culture and society on nothingness instead (or what Nietzsche sometimes called "the wasteland"). As such this book is both a bracing indictment of contemporary nihilism, and a diagnosis of society that finds that nihilism EVERYWHERE, and also a call to a more authentic way of being human, that stands in recpetivity to Being. This is corrosive, revolutionary stuff. It is also a dificult text to read - but it is worth it for anyone who wants to hear an explanation for what is fundamentally wrong with modernity.

Rating:
Summary: Imprecise
Review: Heidegger gets attacked from all sides these days - analytic philosophers, postmodernists (if misinterpreting constitutes an attack) - but the fact remains that, although he does make it worse for himself by using an idiosyncratic style, that certainly doesn't mean it's meaningless, it just means it's a lot more work than most philosophers (to read Heidegger). "Being and Time" and his late '20s/'30s work on Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche have established him as the most important philosopher of the 20th century, but this isn't his best work at all. I'd recommend beginning with Sartre's "Being and Nothingness", which explains a lot of Heidegger's main themes in terms intelligible to the traditional philosopher, and then Husserl's "Logical Investigations", and THEN "Being and Time". This work's far down the line of importance. You feel like he's already struggled with inexpressible ideas, explained them the best he could in the most controlled way he could, and can't get much further by the time he came to write this. For treatment of this more "non-logical" style of philosophy Kierkegaard or Nietzsche are just as good - Heidegger excels more in phenomenology than anywhere else.

Rating:
Summary: A Book that Produces Thinking
Review: This is an important work of philosophy, but it's probably a mistake to look in it for a statement about the nature of thought. Rather, Heidegger seeks to open up thinking, for himself and for the reader (originally the listeners of this lecture course). The questions he asks are as important, if not more so, as any potential answers. And as with almost all works of Heidegger after Being and Time, Heidegger's writing constitutes a kind of performance which fends off easy, facile conclusions. Objections to the idiosyncracies of his style fail to recognize that Heidegger's style is inseperable from the sort of open-ended thinking he promotes. Of all the many questions he asks, the most important is, "What calls for thinking?" We do not simply decide to think, according to Heidegger, but rather Being, the Being of beings, calls on us to think, and thereby realizes itself through our thinking. To read Heidegger is to step back from your everyday, taken-for-granted assumptions and thereby create a space for reflection. And this, as he says, is a gift.

Rating:
Summary: A Book that Produces Thinking
Review: This is an important work of philosophy, but it's probably a mistake to look in it for a statement about the nature of thought. Rather, Heidegger seeks to open up thinking, for himself and for the reader (originally the listeners of this lecture course). The questions he asks are as important, if not more so, as any potential answers. And as with almost all works of Heidegger after Being and Time, Heidegger's writing constitutes a kind of performance which fends off easy, facile conclusions. Objections to the idiosyncracies of his style fail to recognize that Heidegger's style is inseperable from the sort of open-ended thinking he promotes. Of all the many questions he asks, the most important is, "What calls for thinking?" We do not simply decide to think, according to Heidegger, but rather Being, the Being of beings, calls on us to think, and thereby realizes itself through our thinking. To read Heidegger is to step back from your everyday, taken-for-granted assumptions and thereby create a space for reflection. And this, as he says, is a gift.