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Loading... Heidegger's Confusionsby Paul Edwards
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A book this short should be a quick read, and actually, it was, but not because the reading is captivating or enjoyable. In fact, it was because I forced myself forward so I could get it behind me and move on to a different book. Dense and obscurantist, the author fails to clarify Heidegger's thought, and seems in fact to muddle his own. Perhaps he can be forgiven, since he was dealing with a subject who feels that the being of being is beingness, but actually, that seems to make him an easy target. Still, I read the entire book carefully, and still didn't get any real specific arguments against Heidegger, other than the sense that he was just sort of making things up as he went along (Heidegger, not the author). For the most part, he deals with Heidegger's work more by incessant quoting from both him and other authors that wrote about him, rather than direct confrontation. Overall, the entire work left me with nearly as bad a feeling about the author as about his subject. Overall, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who isn't prepared to wade through the deliberate obfuscation that is all too common in philosophical works these days, as though merely saying something incomprehensible is the same as saying something deep. ( ) no reviews | add a review
In this thorough critique of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, philosopher Paul Edwards continues a project that he began several years ago. As he once stated in the New York Review of Books (June 11, 1981), Edwards’s goal has been "to rescue [Heidegger’s] valuable ideas from the logical confusions in which they are embedded and from the willfully obscure and perverse language in which they are frequently expressed." In this penetrating and witty book, Edwards insightfully analyzes Heidegger’s quest for being; his treatment of death, anxiety, and nothingness; and his double-talk about life after death. In a brief preface Edwards aptly sums up the thrust of his criticism: "Bertrand Russell once referred to Kant as the greatest catastrophe in the history of philosophy. C. D. Broad commented that this position surely belonged to Hegel. Russell and Broad were wrong, because this title undoubtedly belongs to Martin Heidegger. Some years ago, Anthony Quinton spoke of Heidegger’s ‘ponderous and rubbishy woolgathering.’ Until fairly recently, Heidegger was not taken seriously by philosophers in Great Britain and the United States. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. One goal of the present study is to stem this tide of unreason." No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)193Philosophy and Psychology Modern western philosophy German and AustrianLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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