Synopses & Reviews
In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity.
Review
"Fried and Polt's translation of Martin Heidegger's Being and Truth is a well-crafted and careful rendering of an important and demanding volume of the Complete Works." --Andrew Mitchell, Emory University Indiana University Press
About the Author
Gregory Fried is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Suffolk University. He is author of Heidegger's Polemos: From Being to Politics and editor (with Richard Polt) of A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics.
Richard Polt is Professor in the Philosophy Department at Xavier University. He is author of The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy and Heidegger: An Introduction.
Table of Contents
Translators' Foreword
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Summer Semester 1933
Introduction: The Fundamental Question of Philosophy and the Fundamental Happening of Our History
Main Part: The Fundamental Question and Metaphysics: Preparation for a Confrontation with Hegel
Chapter One. The Development, Transformation, and Christianization of Traditional Metaphysics
Chapter Two. The System of Modern Metaphysics and the First of Its Primary Determining Grounds: The Mathematical
Chapter Three. Determination by Christianity and the Concept of Mathematical-Methodological Grounding in the Metaphysical Systems of Modernity
Chapter Four. Hegel: The Completion of Metaphysics as Theo-logic
Conclusion
ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH
Winter Semester 1933-1934
Introduction: The Question of Essence as Insidious and Unavoidable
Part One. Truth and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic
Chapter One. The Four Stages of the Happening of Truth
Chapter Two. The Idea of the Good and Unconcealment
Chapter Three. The Question of the Essence of Untruth
Part Two. An Interpretation of Plato's Theaetetus With Regard to the Question of the Essence of Untruth
Chapter One. Preliminary Considerations on the Greek Concept of Knowledge
Chapter Two. Theaetetus's Answers to the Question of the Essence of Knowledge and their Rejection
Chapter Three. The Question of the Possibility of
Appendix I
Notes and drafts for the lecture course of Summer Semester 1933
Appendix II
Notes and drafts for the lecture course of Winter Semester 1933-1934
Editor's Afterword
German-English Glossary