Cazeaux, C. (2011). „Introduction to Martin Heidegger‟, in C. Cazeaux (ed.), The Continental Aesthetics Reader, 2nd edition, Abingdon: Routledge, 79–86.

4 Martin Heidegger

Some of the most important connections between phenomenology and hermeneutics

occur in the work of Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl. Heidegger is one of the

most important European philosophers of the twentieth century, influencing thinkers

from Gaston Bachelard and Hans-Georg Gadamer to Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc

Nancy. However, he was an active member of the National Socialist party during the

1930s and the second World War, and this has dramatically affected how his philosophy

has been received and interpreted.1

Heidegger reasserts the Kantian claim that experience is not the reception of sense

impressions but a form of prospection or questioning: to have experience is to be in an

active state of finding out about the world. In his principal work, Being and Time (1927),

he asks: what is the meaning of being? What does it mean to have experience, to be

located within a world, to be human? The question of being stimulated the metaphysical

schemes of Plato and Aristotle but, since then, according to Heidegger, it has been

forgotten. The notion of „being‟ has become ordinary and universal, applying to

anything and everything in existence. However, what is distinctive about human being,

Heidegger avers, is that it is a form of being for which being itself is an issue:

Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to

it – all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore

are modes of being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are

ourselves. Thus to work out the question of being adequately, we must

make an entity – the inquirer – transparent in its own being. The very

asking of this question is an entity‟s mode of being; and as such it gets its

Martin Heidegger 108

essential character from what is inquired about – namely, being. This entity

which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the

possibilities of its being, we shall denote by the term „Dasein‟.2

„Dasein‟ is an everyday, colloquial German word meaning „being there‟ or a human‟s

sense of existence. The fact that being is an issue for us is tremendously important for

Heidegger‟s thesis. Something‟s „being an issue‟, Heidegger writes, „is a constitutive state

of Dasein‟s being‟ and this shows that Dasein „in its being, has a relationship towards

that being – a relationship which itself is one of being‟. We are not just aware of the

world, but aware of the fact that we are aware of the world. „Understanding of being‟, he asserts,

„is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is

ontological‟.3 „Ontic‟ is Heidegger‟s term for the objects and events which feature in

experience, and „ontological‟ refers to the structure of experience, that is, in Heidegger‟s

idiom, the structure of the ontic. What distinguishes Dasein from other kinds of being

in the world is that its character, and its character alone, represents the possibility of

there being other kinds of being in the world.

Heidegger is sensitive to the complexities of introducing terminology which avoids the

divisions of subject−object and inside−outside metaphysics. In Being and Time, he insists

that „subject and object are not the same as Da-sein and world‟, adding in a footnote:

„Certainly not. So little that even rejecting this by putting them together is fatal‟.4 As

Stambaugh notes in her 1996 translation of Being and Time, „it was Heidegger‟s express

wish that in future translations the word Dasein should be hyphenated‟.5 Heidegger‟s

thinking, Stambaugh continues, was that, with hyphenation,

the reader will be less prone to assume he or she understands it to refer to

„existence‟ (which is the orthodox translation of Dasein) and with that

translation surreptitiously bring along all sorts of psychological

connotations. It was Heidegger‟s insight that human being is uncanny: we do

not know who, or what, that is, although, or perhaps precisely because, we

are it.6

Martin Heidegger 109

With Stambaugh, the hyphen in Da-sein introduces a sense of the uncanny. Rather than

having Da-sein remain as a word which refers straightforwardly to human being as a

clearly circumscribed thing – to existence or to the subject – the hyphen maintains the

reference to us but at the same time makes it other than us. It emphasizes that human

being is distributed in a way that dualistic, Cartesian, subject–object terminology does

not easily accommodate: a „being there‟, an entity whose being is located and extended in

the world. Despite the claim for the relationship between typography and ontology, this

Reader will nevertheless adhere to the traditional convention of presenting „Dasein‟ as an

unhyphenated word, although readers are advised to bear in mind the warnings given

here against the word performing a familiar „existence-‟ or „entity-denoting‟ function.

Heidegger is pursuing the Kantian project of drawing out the conditions of possibility

of experience: the structures which have to be at work in and around experience for

there to be any experience at all. Experience takes the form of a question, Heidegger

argues, in the sense that there always has to be an opening-up of possibilities in advance

of experience in order for experience to take place. Just as the kind of question asked

influences the answer, he avows, so the way in which we approach reality affects how it

appears. In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), Heidegger shows that experience is

made possible by the projection in advance of experience of the concept of an object in

general as a horizon of possibility, and this opens up a „space‟ in which objects can

appear before consciousness. The „Kant book‟ (as Heidegger refers to it) develops some

of the connections implicit but never realized in Kant‟s Critique of Pure Reason (1781,

1787) and was written as preparation for the second part of Being and Time, but

Heidegger never completed the project. The concept of a horizon projected prior to

experience raises the question of the source of the projection, but this is one of the

complexities involved in developing an ontology which does not take subject or object,

or the terms of dualistic philosophy in general, as its foundation. Both Heidegger and

Kant are seeking to formulate the structures which allow a world, including human

subjectivity within the world, to come into being in the first place.

If the question of being has been forgotten, if being has become ordinary, then we must

draw it out and make it prominent again. Phenomenology, Heidegger asserts, is the

Martin Heidegger 110

method of enquiry whereby something is brought out „into the open‟. He defines it as

letting „that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows

itself from itself‟.7 However, this phenomenological disclosure is also hermeneutic, in

two senses: (1) because it involves interpretation, and (2) because we are working

towards an understanding not just of how things appear to us, but of how things appear

per se. As Heidegger writes, his enquiry „becomes a “hermeneutic”‟ to the extent „that by

uncovering the meaning of being and the basic structures of Dasein in general we may

exhibit the horizon for any further ontological study of those entities which do not have

the character of Dasein‟, in other words, we work out „the conditions on which the

possibility of any ontological investigation depends‟.8 This is „hermeneutic‟ in the

(recent) sense of transcending one‟s subjective standpoint to approach objectivity. It is

reminiscent of Kant‟s attempt to secure objectivity given his investment of the

possibility of experience within the subject. We can make the comparison with

conversation again: asking a question elicits a response and, although the response is

influenced by the phrasing of the question, it nevertheless represents the willingness to

approach a shared understanding which is constitutive of all communication.

Heidegger develops a new ontology – the way in which experience and the world are

shaped and organized – based on processes of disclosing and concealing, opening and

closing. Apart from the times when we are amazed by the extent and complexity of the

universe, we ordinarily take the existence of objects for granted; we assume they are

simply „there‟, waiting for us to perceive or interact with them. The tyranny of the

ordinary again. Heidegger is interested in how things come to be for us, how they are

bound up with our subjective experience and the meanings, values, and dispositions

which experience involves. Our everyday ontology of stable, mind-independent objects,

he asserts, presupposes a prior, „fundamental‟ ontology whereby things are disclosed or

concealed. Before things can exist, the conditions that allow things to come into being,

that allow the formation of the environment in which Dasein finds itself, must apply.

Heidegger gives the senses as an illustration of disclosure.9 When we see, we are not

passively receiving what is „out there‟ in the world. Rather, the optical and neural

processes that take place within us open up the world for us in a certain way, that is,

they allow us to interpret the world in terms of colour and as something which is

Martin Heidegger 111

continuously there. Hearing makes the world available to us in alternative ways, allowing us

to be aware of things that are not yet visible, e.g. the person singing next door, and to be

aware of things intermittently, that is, only when they are making a noise. For the blind,

rain behaves like light: raindrops bouncing off different surfaces give texture and depth

to an otherwise silent, featureless world.

The concept of disclosure is central to the essay representing Heidegger here, „The

Origin of the Work of Art‟, first given as a series of lectures in 1935 and 1936. The essay

brings together some of the most complex ideas in his philosophy while at the same

time trying to make art central to his fundamental ontology. As well as „disclosure‟,

other key concepts include: truth as aletheia, truth as untruth, concealment, the concept

of world, and the strife of world and earth. The origin of the work of art is not the artist,

nor is it the institution of art. Rather, the origin of art is truth as aletheia. The concept is

the subject of extensive debate within Heideggerian scholarship. Dasein and aletheia,

Heidegger asserts, are related „in terms of the temporality of existence‟, and fathoming

this arrangement is the „central problematic‟ of Being and Time.10 As an initial definition,

„aletheia‟ means „the unconcealedness of beings‟. It is a concept of truth distinct from and

logically prior to the conventional, Roman notion of truth as veritas or „correspondence

with the facts‟. For there to be any objects to make up states of affairs to which our

statements can correspond, there must be the „truth‟ which lets these objects first come

to be. To make aletheia the origin of the work of art is therefore to make art

fundamentally ontological, to make its origin a process which is intrinsic to the

organization of the world and Dasein‟s being in the world. It is to position art as

something which is active in shaping human being and its activity in the world.

While there is general agreement that aletheia can be translated as „unconcealment‟ or

„disclosure‟, there is disagreement as to what is meant by truth as „unconcealment‟ or

„disclosure‟. For example, to adapt the title of Sallis‟s book, there is the suggestion that

Heidegger „doubles truth‟ by introducing a form of truth as unconcealment which

stands as the originary ground of truth as veritas, that is, truth as „correctness‟ or

„correspondence‟.11 Tugendhat takes Heidegger to be introducing „a new concept of

truth‟ on the grounds that the conventional notion of truth as correspondence does not

Martin Heidegger 112

include disclosiveness as a principle.12 The problem here, according to Tugendhat, is

that Heidegger‟s concept of truth discloses a world but does not provide us with a

means of testing any part of it: „if truth means unconcealment, in the Heideggerian

sense, then it follows that an understanding of world in general is opened up but not

that it is put to the test‟.13 But these problems only arise for Sallis and Tugendhat,

Wrathall maintains, because they interpret truth as unconcealment, as a form of truth

distinct from correspondence. Against this, Wrathall argues, unconcealment is in fact

positioned by Heidegger as a condition of the possibility of truth as correspondence.14 This

effectively moves disclosure from being treated as an alternative form of truth to being a

ground for truth as correspondence. In support of this reading, Wrathall argues, is

Heidegger‟s announcement in „The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking‟ that

„to raise the question of aletheia, of unconcealment as such, is not the same as raising the

question of truth. For this reason, it was immaterial and therefore misleading to call

aletheia, in the sense of clearing, “truth”‟.15 Furthermore, Wrathall asserts, irrespective of

this announcement, it is possible to read Heidegger‟s prior accounts of unconcealment

as grounding correspondence in the sense that what is unconcealed is a situation about

which a correspondence claim can be made.16 While the importance of these

uncertainties over truth should not be dismissed, it is less questions of correctness and

more matters of „world‟ and „the strife between world and earth‟ that are to the fore in

„The Origin of the Work of Art‟.

Art is true, Heidegger claims, in that it lets us see the tension between concealment and

disclosure. He calls this the „strife of world and earth‟. „World‟ is an ambiguous word.

Heidegger in fact identifies four senses of the word in Being and Time: (1) the sum total

of beings and things in existence; (2) all the possible things which fill up a life, „for

example, when we speak of the “world” of the mathematician, we mean the region of

all possible mathematical objects‟; (3) similar to (2) but with more emphasis on „lived

reality‟, that „in which‟ a factical Dasein „lives‟, for example, the „public world of the we or

one‟s “own” and nearest (in the home) surrounding world‟; and (4) „the ontological and

existential concept of worldliness‟ understood as „the respective structural totality of

particular “worlds”, [containing] the a priori of worldliness in general‟.17 Meanings (1)

and (2) are in common usage but are not intended here. As Heidegger writes, „the world

Martin Heidegger 113

is not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar

things that are at hand. But neither is it a merely imagined framework added by our

representation to the sum of such given things‟. Instead, as he indicates in „Origin‟, it is

meanings (3) and (4) which are intended:

The world worlds, and is more fully in being than the tangible and perceptible

realm in which we believe ourselves to be at home. World is never an object

that stands before us and can be seen. World is the ever-nonobjective to

which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death, blessing and

curse keep us transported into Being. Wherever those utterly essential

decisions of our history are made, are taken up and abandoned by us, go

unrecognized and are rediscovered by new inquiry, there the world worlds.

With meaning (3), according to Krell, „“world” is that already familiar horizon upon

which everyday human existence confidently moves‟; it is „the structural whole of

significant relationships that Dasein experiences – with tools, things of nature, and other

human beings – as being-in-the-world‟.18 The example of the temple from the „Origin‟

essay helps to clarify this meaning. „A building, a Greek temple‟, Heidegger declares,

„portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley‟. Yet, as a

work, it establishes a series of relations between its own material elements, its location

on rocky ground, and the lives of the ancient Greeks: „it fits together and at the same

time gathers round itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death,

disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape and

destiny for human being‟.

Meaning (4), „the a priori of worldliness in general‟, I suggest, is also at work, because we

have the enigmatic phrase „the world worlds‟. This phrase, alongside others such as „the

thing things‟, „care cares‟, „temporality temporalizes‟, would seem to be a tautology,

amounting to saying a thing is what it is or does what it does. As Schöfer indicates, it is

the form of „natura naturans‟ used by the scholastics „to signify divine nature, which

renews itself from itself, circles in itself, and remains identical with itself, and whose

activity was thought to consist in the fact that it had to create and perform for itself‟.19

Martin Heidegger 114

However, with Heidegger‟s phrases, Schöfer argues, more is being asserted than self-

identity. By using verbs that are „synonymous‟ with their nouns, he suggests, the verb

content is „deconcretized‟ and made „functional‟, which is to say that what are

customarily referred to as things, such as a world „out there‟, temporality as something

which „passes by‟, in Heidegger‟s phrases, become generative processes in which our

being, Dasein, is set;20 the world is not simply „out there‟, laid out and inactive, but is

rather a state of being which is brought into being and organized through a series of

operations. If you are seeking to formulate an ontology in which entities unfold through

structured, articulated openings that do not break down into subject–object

compartmentalization, then one way to achieve this formulation is to turn what are

ordinarily „object‟ words into „action‟ words. The worldliness is a priori – prior to

experience – in the sense that it is the articulacy or jointedness of the structure which

has to be in place to allow worldly relations to open and form. So the world worlds in

that the space and time in which we find ourselves are not properties of a domain that is

external to us, surrounding us, but a dynamic set of relationships structuring, coursing

through and making possible all the interactions which we come to think of us our

locatedness in (of course, I can‟t say „the world‟ so instead I shall employ Heideggerian

terminology for human existence) a series of engaged concerns.

The term „earth‟, as in the truth of art letting us see the „strife of world and earth‟,

reinforces this sense of worldliness. „Earth‟ for Heidegger is not simply matter

conceived of as an inert substance, the stuff out of which something is made. Rather, it

is a ground of potency, a condition out of which something can arise as well as a

condition which that something can sink back into. Bear in mind that Heidegger is

erecting an ontology in which things are drawn into being, as opposed to things already

existing within an external, mind-independent realm, and so he needs to refer to a

background or potent source out of which entities can arise. He often relies on the

metaphor of „flowering‟ to describe truth as disclosure. For example, modern physics,

he claims in „The Question Concerning Technology‟, is dependent upon technical

apparatus for the disclosure or „bringing-forth‟ of a realm of representation beyond

human visualizability – „the bursting of a blossom into bloom‟, as he describes it21 – but,

he warns us, unless we are we aware of the fundamentally disclosive nature of

Martin Heidegger 115

technology, we stand to lose sight of the fact that for each realm which is revealed to us,

other potential realms remain undisclosed.22

In creating a world, the truthfulness of a work resides not solely in its creating a series of

relations which open onto the way someone might abide, but also in its standing or

remaining as the material object which achieves the opening of a world. „In fabricating

equipment – for example, an axe‟, Heidegger observes, „stone is used, and used up. It

disappears into usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it

resists perishing in the equipmental being of the equipment‟. In other words, the more a

material „disappears‟ or „perishes‟ in its application, the more readily it enables the task in

hand. „By contrast‟, he continues, „the temple-work, in setting up a world, does not

cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time

and to come into the Open of the work‟s world‟. That is to say, the „strife of world and

earth‟ in the artwork is the tension between, on the one hand, the artwork stimulating

our perception of a world of possible events and interactions while, on the other hand,

our remaining aware that this world has been achieved – opened up – through materials.

When we use a tool successfully, we see or feel right through it; we are not aware of it.

But with an artwork, our perception doesn‟t just pass through the pigments, the stone,

the setting. Rather, we maintain a simultaneous double-awareness of material and the

lived associations which the worked material evokes. Braver makes the point well in

relation to Van Gogh‟s painting Starry Night: „We can look “through” the painting to

what it depicts, namely, the villagers‟ world – their daily routines, emotional lives,

spiritual state, etc. The painting can, however, undergo a Gestalt switch into a piece of

fabric with thick globs of paint on it, which would be earth‟.23

Heidegger‟s interpretation of one of Van Gogh‟s „peasant shoes‟ paintings in the essay

has attracted criticism. According to Schapiro, Heidegger commits the very act which he

warns others against: projecting a meaning onto a painting.24 Heidegger writes:

The artwork lets us know what shoes are in truth. It would be the worst

self-deception to think that our description, as a subjective action, had first

depicted everything thus and then projected it into the painting… What

Martin Heidegger 116

happens here? What is at work in the work? Van Gogh‟s painting is the

disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant shoes, is in truth.

That the shoes belong to a peasant is simply an idea projected onto the painting by

Heidegger, Schapiro argues, for there is biographical information on Van Gogh which

indicates that the shoes depicted in actual fact belonged to the artist. Furthermore, „the

being of the shoes‟ which Heidegger claims to find in the painting, Schapiro asserts, is

nothing „that could not have been imagined in looking at a real pair of peasants‟

shoes‟.25 This would appear to undermine the case Heidegger makes for the capacity for

world-disclosure to lie in the work of art and not in some old shoes, some old

equipment. Derrida also finds Heidegger‟s interpretation of Van Gogh‟s painting

initially „ridiculous and lamentable‟.26 Early in his essay „Restitutions of the truth in

pointing‟, Derrida is disappointed by Heidegger‟s „consumer-like hurry toward the

content of a representation‟ and „the massive self-assurance of the identification: “a pair

of peasants‟ shoes”, just like that!‟.27 It is almost as if Heidegger has undergone a

transition from „great thinker‟ to tour guide „from the neighbouring farm‟.28

But Derrida also seeks to „shield Heidegger from Schapiro‟s verdict‟ on the grounds that

Schapiro makes „a certain number of simplifications, not to call them anything worse‟.29

Perhaps the greatest „simplification‟ is Schapiro‟s assumption that Heidegger‟s account is

intended to be a study which draws out the content of the painting on a one-to-one

correspondence relation with reality. Although Heidegger states that Van Gogh „painted

such shoes several times‟, Schapiro seeks to identify which particular painting Heidegger

was looking at, assisted by personal correspondence with Heidegger, so that he can

establish which pair of shoes is depicted.30 Yet, as Derrida points out, Heidegger does

not chose a painting in the first instance but a piece of equipment; in Heidegger‟s words,

„a pair of peasant shoes, for instance‟ (emphasis added). Furthermore, Heidegger

introduces the painting as an accessory „to facilitate intuitive presentation

(Veranschaulichung). By way of an accessory aid (Für diese Nachhilfe), a pictorial

representation (bildliche Darstellung) suffices. For this purpose we choose a famous

picture by Van Gogh‟.31 As Derrida is all too aware, this so-called line of defence only

threatens to condemn Heidegger further, since he now appears to be using an artwork

Martin Heidegger 117

merely as a stand in for the shoes. But Heidegger is primarily interested in equipment, in

objects as clusters of ways of being, the networks of lines of action through which

Dasein defines its world, rather than objects as external, mind-independent items. To

dismiss Heidegger‟s use of the painting as an accessory overlooks the fact that the

painting is introduced as part of a world: a world of the rural, the soil, the artisanal. As

Derrida asks: is this „so alien to Van Gogh?‟.32 On this reading, the painting serves not

as a representation, an image at one remove from the world it depicts, but stands, like

the temple, as a part of the world it depicts. The painting stops us in our tracks and

makes us aware of the shoes. It stops them from being lost in their equipmentality, from

being lost in the day-to-day pattern of use. What would help to reinforce this

interpretation (but which is not given by Heidegger) is an account of how the „earth‟ of

Van Gogh‟s handling of paint opens onto the world of the rural.

Ultimately, for Heidegger, „the nature of art is poetry‟. It is not his intention to construct

a hierarchy of the arts, like Hegel, with poetry at the top. Rather, he is proposing that art

is truest, at its most aletheic, when it is poetic. Verbal language, Heidegger argues, is the

principal form of projection whereby a space is opened, allowing an object to appear. In

projection, he writes, „announcement is made of what it is that beings come into the

Open as‟. When we use words, we are drawing on the associations and significations

which constitute everyday discourse. What the poet does is work with these in a way

which defamiliarizes the familiar, which makes the usual unusual. An opening appears in

the ordinariness of being, allowing new possibilities to come to light. In the „open place‟

of projection, Heidegger writes, „everything is other than usual... everything ordinary and

hitherto existing becomes an unbeing‟. Metaphor is a good example: two familiar but

unrelated words are combined to produce a novel description, often leading to a new

way of seeing the object in question, e.g. „time is a river‟, „rain is the light of the blind‟.

Generating „new‟ ideas from „old‟ concepts reflects the hermeneutic principle of

speakers transcending their initial perspectives through conversation. Heidegger though

would not necessarily approve of making metaphor an example. He sees the figure as

being bound by the divisions of traditional metaphysics; „the metaphorical‟, he writes in

The Principle of Reason, „only exists within metaphysics‟.33 Our concepts apply to reality

carved up in a particular way, and their combination in a metaphor, no matter how

Martin Heidegger 118

creative or unprecedented, he thinks, only serves to reassert this metaphysical order. But

Heidegger‟s concept of metaphor is a limited one: he takes it to be only a device for

combining terms and leaving their boundaries intact, when, as several commentators

have observed, the interaction between terms in a poetic conjunction can have

ontological consequences, can affect the shape of Dasein‟s world.34 Metaphor, Casenave

writes, „is a deviance in language use… which goes on to propose a new vision of

things‟ and, as such, is congruent with the „way-making [nature] of language‟ sought by

Heidegger.35 He does not discuss metaphor in the „Origin‟ essay but does considers the

concepts of „own‟ (eigen) and „appropriate‟ (eigentlich) – vital for the ontological task of

rethinking what belongs to categories once they have been shaken up by metaphor – in

the later essays „The Nature of Language‟ and „The Way to Language‟.36

Martin Heidegger 119

4 The Origin of the Work of Art

Martin Heidegger

[Insert original Heidegger essay]

Translated by Albert Hofstadter

Select bibliography of major works by Martin Heidegger in English

History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena (1925), trans. T. Kisiel, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1985.

Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), trans. A. Hofstadter, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1982.

Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1927-8), trans. P. Emad and

K. Maly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Being and Time (1928), trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Being and Time (1928), trans. J. Stambaugh, New York: State University of New York,

1996.

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), trans. J.S. Churchill, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1962.

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), trans. R. Taft, Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1990.

The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and ‘Theaetetus’ (1931-2), trans. T. Sadler,

London: Continuum, 2002.

An Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), trans. R. Manheim, New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1959.

Martin Heidegger 120

An Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), trans. G. Fried and R. Polt, New Haven: Yale

University Press, 2000.

Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art (1936-7), trans. D.F. Krell, New York: Harper & Row,

1979.

Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (1936-8), trans. P. Emad and K. Maly:

Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1999.

The End of Philosophy (1941), trans. J. Stambaugh, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Off the Beaten Path (1934-46), eds. and trans. J. Young and K. Haynes, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2002.

What is Called Thinking? (1954), trans. F.D. Wieck and J.G. Gray, New York: Harper and

Row, 1968.

The Question Concerning Technology (1955), trans. W. Lovitt, New York: Harper and Row,

1977.

Identity and Difference (1957), trans. J. Stambaugh, New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

The Principle of Reason (1957), trans. R. Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1991.

On the Way to Language (1953-9), trans. P.D. Hertz and Joan Stambaugh, New York:

Harper and Row, 1971.

What is a Thing? (1962), trans. W.B. Barton, Jr. and V. Deutsch, Chicago: Henry Regnery

Company, 1967.

Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry (1930s-70s), trans. K. Hoeller, New York: Humanity

Books, 2000.

Zollikon Seminars (1947-71), ed. M. Boss, trans. F. Mayr and R. Askay, Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 2001.

Discourse on Thinking, trans. J. Anderson and E. Freund, New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter, New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Basic Writings, ed. D.F. Krell, New York: Harper and Row, 1993.

Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The Heidegger Reader, ed. G. Figal, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Further reading

Martin Heidegger 121

For concise introductions to Heidegger‟s philosophy, see Inwood, and Steiner. Fuller

introductions, with commentaries on specific texts, are provide by Blattner, Braver,

Dreyfus, Figal, Mulhall, Wrathall (2006), and Young (2002). Wider examinations of the

nature and implications of Heidegger‟s thought are conducted by Friedman, Guignon

(1983, 1993), Lafont, Olafson, Rapaport, Richardson, and Rorty. Examinations of

Heidegger‟s concept of truth are given by Dahlstrom, Tugendhat, and Wrathall (1999),

with Derrida and Sallis subjecting Heidegger on truth to a deconstructive reading.

For accounts of Heidegger‟s aesthetics, consider works by Bartky, Bernasconi (1998,

1999), Dreyfus (2005), Gover, Guignon (2003), Harries, Kockelmans, Mitchell,

Scheibler, Singh, Taminiaux, Thomson, and Young (2001). Studies focusing on the

relation between art and truth are offered by Brogan, Guignon (1989), Schufreider, and

Vattimo. For responses to Heidegger‟s treatment of Van Gogh‟s „peasant shoes‟

painting, and the Heidegger–Shapiro exchange, see Babich, Craven (1994, 1997),

Derrida, Payne, and Shapiro. Heidegger‟s emphasis on poetry is considered by Bruzina,

Casenave, Cazeaux, and Wright (1993, 1998). Heidegger‟s Nazism is addressed by

Collins, Hodge, Lyotard, Wolin, and Young (1998).

B.E. Babich, „From Van Gogh‟s museum to the temple at Bassae: Heidegger‟s truth of

art and Schapiro‟s art history‟, Culture, Theory & Critique, 2003, vol. 44, pp. 151–

69.

S. Bartky, „Heidegger‟s philosophy of art‟, in T. Sheehan (ed.), Heidegger: The Man and the

Thinker, Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1981, pp. 257-74.

R. Bernasconi, „Heidegger‟s displacement of the concept of art‟, in M. Kelly (ed.),

Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 377-

80.

–––––, „The greatness of the work of art‟, in J. Risser (ed.), Heidegger Toward the Turn:

Essays on the Work of the 1930s, Albany: State University of New York Press,

1999, pp. 95-118.

W. Blattner, Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’, London: Continuum, 2006.

L. Braver, Heidegger’s Later Writings, London: Continuum, 2009.

Martin Heidegger 122

W. Brogan, „The battle between art and truth‟, Philosophy Today, 1984, vol. 28, pp. 349-

357.

R. Bruzina, „Heidegger on metaphor and philosophy‟, Cultural Hermeneutics, 1973, vol. 1,

pp. 305-24.

G. Casenave, „Heidegger and metaphor‟, Philosophy Today, 1982, vol. 26, pp. 140-47.

C. Cazeaux, Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida, New York:

Routledge, 2007, pp. 150-98.

J. Collins, Heidegger and the Nazis, Cambridge: Icon, 2000.

D. Cooper (ed.), A Companion to Aesthetics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 188-91.

D. Craven, „Meyer Shapiro, Karl Korsch, and the emergence of critical theory‟, The

Oxford Art Journal, 1994, vol. 17, pp. 42-54.

–––––, „A series of interviews: Meyer Shapiro and Lillian Milgram Shapiro with David

Craven‟, Res, 1997, vol. 31, pp. 151-68.

D.O. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2001.

J. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. G. Bennington and I. McLeod, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1987.

H.L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’, Division I,

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

–––––, „Heidegger‟s ontology of art‟, in H.L. Dreyfus and M.A. Wrathall (eds.), A

Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp. 407-19.

G. Figal (ed.), The Heidegger Reader, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.

M. Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Chicago: Open Court,

2000.

K. Gover, „The overlooked work of art in “The origin of the work of art”‟, International

Philosophical Quarterly, 2008, vol. 48, pp. 143-54.

C. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983.

–––––, „Truth as disclosure: art, language, history‟, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1989, vol.

28, pp. 105-120.

–––––, (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1993.

Martin Heidegger 123

–––––, „Meaning in the work of art: a hermeneutic perspective‟, Midwest Studies in

Philosophy, 2003, vol. 27, pp. 25-44.

K. Harries, „Heidegger‟s confrontation with aesthetics‟, in M. Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia of

Aesthetics, vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 375-7

J. Hodge, Heidegger and Ethics, London: Routledge, 1995.

M. Inwood, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

J. Kockelmans, Heidegger on Art and Art Works, Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985.

C. Lafont, Heidegger, Language and World-Disclosure, trans. G. Harman, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000.

J.-F. Lyotard, Heidegger and ‘the Jews’, trans. A. Michel and M. Roberts, Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

A.J. Mitchell, Heidegger Among the Sculptors, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

S. Mulhall, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and ‘Being and Time’, London:

Routledge, 2005.

F.A. Olafson, Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind, New Haven, Yale University Press,

1987.

M. Payne, „Derrida, Heidegger, and Van Gogh‟s “old shoes”‟, Textual Practice, 1992, vol.

6, pp. 87-100.

H. Rapaport, Heidegger and Derrida: Reflections on Time and Language, Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1989.

J. Richardson, Existential Epistemology: A Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project,

Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.

P. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in

Language, trans. R. Czerny, K. McLaughlin and J. Costello, London: Routledge

1978, pp. 283-84.

R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991.

J. Sallis, Double Truth, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

I. Scheibler, „Art as festival in Heidegger and Gadamer‟, International Journal of Philosophical

Studies, 2001, vol. 9, pp. 151-75.

G. Schufreider, „Art and the problem of truth‟, Man and World, 1980, vol. 13, pp. 53-80.

Martin Heidegger 124

M. Shapiro, „The still life as a personal object – a note on Heidegger and van Gogh‟, in

M. Shapiro, Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, New York:

George Braziller, 1994, pp.135-42.

–––––, „Further notes on Heidegger and van Gogh‟, in M. Shapiro, Theory and Philosophy

of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, New York: George Braziller, 1994, pp. 143-52.

R.R. Singh, „Heidegger and the world in an artwork‟, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,

1990, vol. 48, pp. 215-22.

G. Steiner, Heidegger, London: Fontana, 1978.

J. Taminiaux, „The origin of “The origin of the work of art”‟, in J. Sallis (ed.), Reading

Heidegger: Commemorations, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

I. Thomson, „Heidegger‟s aesthetics‟, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, eds. E.N. Zalta, U.

Nodelman, and C. Allen, 2010. Online. Available HTTP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/ (accessed 4 April

2010).

E. Tugendhat, „Heidegger‟s idea of truth‟, in C. Macann (ed.), Critical Heidegger. London:

Routledge, 1996, pp. 227-40.

G. Vattimo, Art’s Claim to Truth, ed. S. Zabala, trans. L. D‟Isanto, New York: Columbia

University Press, 2008.

R. Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.

M.A. Wrathall, „Heidegger and truth as correspondence‟, International Journal of

Philosophical Studies, 1999, vol. 7, pp. 69-88.

–––––, How to Read Heidegger, New York: Norton, 2006.

K. Wright, „Heidegger‟s Hölderlin and the mo(u)rning of history‟, Philosophy Today, 1993,

vol. 37, pp. 423-435.

–––––, „Heidegger and Hölderlin‟, in M. Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. 2,

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 383-6.

J. Young, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

–––––, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

–––––, Heidegger’s Later Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Martin Heidegger 125

Notes

[to follow Editor‟s introduction to Martin Heidegger]

1 See, for example, J. Collins, Heidegger and the Nazis, Cambridge: Icon, 2000; J.

Hodge, Heidegger and Ethics, London: Routledge, 1995; J.-F. Lyotard, Heidegger and ‘the

Jews’, trans. A. Michel and M. Roberts, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1990; R. Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993; J.

Young, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford,

Blackwell, 1995, H. 7, pp. 26-27. „H‟ refers to the pagination of the later German

editions, reproduced in the margins of the translation.

3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, H. 12, p. 32.

4 Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh, New York: State University

of New York Press, 1996, H. 60, p. 56. „H‟ refers to the pagination of the later German

editions, reproduced in the margins of the translation.

5 Stambaugh, J., „Translator‟s Preface‟, Being and Time, New York: State University

of New York Press, 1996, p. xiv.

6 Ibid.

7 Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson, H. 34, p. 58.

8 Ibid., H. 37, p. 62.

9 Ibid., H. 33, p. 57.

10 Ibid., H. 357, p. 327; original emphasis.

11 J. Sallis, Double Truth, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

12 E. Tugendhat, „Heidegger‟s idea of truth‟, in C. Macann (ed.), Critical Heidegger.

London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 227-40; p. 229.

13 Ibid., p. 238.

14 M.A. Wrathall, „Heidegger and truth as correspondence‟, International Journal of

Philosophical Studies, 7 (1999): 69-88.

15 M. Heidegger, „The end of philosophy and the task of thinking‟, in D.F. Krell

(ed.), Basic Writings, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 446.

16 Wrathall, „Heidegger and truth as correspondence‟, p. 78.

Martin Heidegger 126

17 Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, H. 64-65, pp. 60-61.

18 D.F. Krell, „Introduction to The Origin of the Work of Art‟, in M. Heidegger, Basic

Writings, London: Routledge, 1993, p. 145.

19 E. Schöfer, „Heidegger‟s language: metalogical forms of thought and

grammatical specialties‟, in J.J. Kockelmans (ed.), On Heidegger and Language, Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1972, p. 292.

20 Ibid.

21 M. Heidegger, „The question concerning technology‟, in D.F. Krell (ed.), Basic

Writings, p. 317.

22 Although Heidegger employs the „photosynthesis‟ (or „light‟) metaphor from

Plato, Rouse observes, Heidegger rejects both Plato‟s „identification of this “lighting”

with an entity (a Form)‟ and the notion that it can be known through reason, since, on

Heidegger‟s terms, this would amount to turning the condition of the possibility of

objects into an object. See J. Rouse, „Heidegger on science and naturalism‟, in G.

Gutting (ed.), Continental Philosophy of Science, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp. 123-41; p. 132.

23 L. Braver, Heidegger’s Later Writings, London: Continuum, 2009, p. 52.

24 M. Schapiro, „The still life as a personal object – a note on Heidegger and Van

Gogh‟, in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist and Society, New York: George Braziller,

1994, pp. 138.

25 Ibid.

26 J. Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. G. Bennington and I. Macleod, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 292.

27 Ibid., pp. 292-93.

28 Ibid., p. 293.

29 Ibid., pp. 295, 368.

30 M.Schapiro, „The still life as a personal object – a note on Heidegger and Van

Gogh‟, p. 136.

31 Quoted in Derrida, The Truth in Painting, p. 309. These lines, Derrida and his

translators tell us, were omitted in the French and English translations of „The Origin of

the Work of Art‟.

32 Derrida, The Truth in Painting, p. 367.

Martin Heidegger 127

33 M. Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. R. Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1991, p. 48.

34 See R. Bruzina, „Heidegger on metaphor and philosophy‟, Cultural Hermeneutics 1

(1973) pp. 305-24; G. Casenave, „Heidegger and metaphor‟, Philosophy Today 26 (1982)

pp. 140-47; C. Cazeaux, Metaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida, London:

Routledge, 2007, pp. 175-98; P. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of

the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. R. Czerny, K. McLaughlin and J. Costello,

London: Routledge 1978, pp. 283-84.

35 Casenave, „Heidegger and metaphor‟, p. 146.

36 Both „The Nature of Language‟ and „The Way to Language‟ can be found in M.

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. P.D. Hertz and J. Stambaugh, New York:

Harper and Row, 1971.