I take it that one of the reasons Heidegger wrote [Discourse on Thinking] was to invite us to think. And if we are aware of the difficulties of reading and thinking, we might fairly assume that Heidegger was aware of them too. Indeed, we may assume he was more aware of them than most of us are. Further, if I or anyone else claims to be able to help us to read Heidegger, we need to discover some clues as to how to go about it and then pass these on. I say discover, rather than invent, because I believe Heide...

Some day the major significance of the existentialist movement may be seen to lie in the recovery of poetry (in the generic sense of imaginative literature and art) as a subject matter for philosophy. For many generations philosophers have looked to natural science for a model of philosophic method as well as for standards by which to judge the worth of philosophic effort. Anglo-Saxon philosophers have also used the findings of the sciences, social and natural, increasingly as the proper material for reflec...

The influence of Martin Heidegger on recent German letters has so far outweighed that of any other contemporary German thinker and has had such a profound influence on so many aspects of contemporary German thought that it is only to be expected that German literary criticism and literary theory have also felt the impact of his thinking. Without a doubt, the contribution of Heidegger to modern philosophical thinking surpasses that of any other contemporary philosopher. His work represents in a very true sen...

[BRYAN MAGEE]: Professor Barrett, if you can imagine that I am somebody who knows absolutely nothing at all about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and you are going to set about giving me some basic idea, how would you begin? PROFESSOR WILLIAM BARRETT: … I would start with the fundamental concept of 'being in the world'. You and I are together in the same world. You are not a mind attached to a body, and I am not a mind attached to a body; primarily, we are two human beings within th...

Since Heidegger's discussion of language in any form nearly always originates from a consideration of poetic texts, his own hermeneutical techniques and those of literary critics are frequently at odds. But at the very outset of the fourth edition of the Hölderlin lectures, Heidegger clearly states his position with respect to literary criticism. His writings on Hölderlin are not intended to be contributions to "literary and historical research"; but are rather a series of...

The mere fact that Heidegger has thought Trakl worthy of his particular form of exegesis, which combines what seems like close textual analysis with the most far-reaching philosophical deductions, implies one kind of affinity between Trakl and the other German poets—Hölderlin and Rilke—to whom Heidegger has devoted [studies similar to his Georg Trakl]; this affinity, of course, is one of perception, and it undoubtedly exists. But only a poet who uses words with the utmost precision, and...

What has this Heidegger, the prophet of the Seinsfrage, to say to us? That is hard to assess. German philosophical thinking speaks a language doubly different from English: different not only in the language itself, but in its conception of language. British philosophers are haunted by Berkeley's distrust of words; yet distrusting words as guides, they limit themselves happily to the study of words as instruments. A German philosopher is much more inclined to trust to "the wisdom of language,&...

The evident impact of Heidegger's thought on modern critical theories has resulted from three aspects of his system: he replaces, first, in Sein und Zeit and in his later lectures, particularly in his reexamination of Nietzsche, the classical concept of thought by a modern notion of thinking, idea by process, Gedanke by Denken. Thinking is for Heidegger the act of giving "presence" to an object, to remain within the resonance of the object which offers itself to thinking in order to be ...