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The Beginning of Western Philosophy
Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides
Translated by Richard Rojcewicz
Published by: Indiana University Press
232 Pages
- eBook
- 9780253015617
- Published: February 2015
$9.99
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Volume 35 of Heidegger's Complete Works comprises a lecture course given at the University of Freiburg in 1932, five years after the publication of Being and Time. During this period, Heidegger was at the height of his creative powers, which are on full display in this clear and imaginative text. In it, Heidegger leads his students in a close reading of two of the earliest philosophical source documents, fragments by Greek thinkers Anaximander and Parmenides. Heidegger develops their common theme of Being and non-being and shows that the question of Being is indeed the origin of Western philosophy. His engagement with these Greek texts is as much of a return to beginnings as it is a potential reawakening of philosophical wonder and inquiry in the present.
Contents
Translator's Introduction
The beginning of Western philosophy
Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides
Part One
The dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th-5th Century
Introduction
1. The mission and the dictum
Chapter I
The first phase of the interpretation
A. The first section of the statement
2. The theme of the dictum: beings as a whole
B. The second section of the statement
3. Beings in the relation of compliance and noncompliance
C. The third section of the statement
4. Being and time
Chapter II
The second phase of the interpretation
5. The unitary content of the pronouncement on the basis of its central core
Chapter III
The other dictum
6. The sovereign source of beings as the empowering power of appearance
Part Two
Interposed considerations
7. Four objections to the interpretation
8. The negative relation to the beginning
9. Meditation on the "current situation"
10. The grounding utterance of Being
11. The actual asking of the question of Being
12. Review of the linguistic usage
13. The basic question of existence
14. Commentary on our concept of existence
15. The full rendering of the understanding of Being
16. The liberation toward freedom
17. Transition to Parmenides: the first explicit and coherent unfolding of the question of Being
Part Three
The "didactic poem" of Parmenides of Elea
6th-5th Century
18. Introduction
19. Interpretation of fragment 1. Preparation for the question of Being
20. Interpretation of fragments 4 and 5
21. Interpretation of fragments 6 and 7
22. Interpretation of fragment 8
23. The fragments 9, 12, 13, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19 (in the order of their interpretation)
Conclusion
24. The inceptual question of Being; the law of philosophy
Appendix
Drafts and plans for the lecture course
Editor's afterword
German-English Glossary
English-German Glossary
Richard Rojcewicz is Scholar-in-Residence in the Philosophy Department at Duquesne University. He has translated (with Daniela Vallega-Neu) Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event (IUP, 2012) and The Event (IUP, 2012).
"A review cannot do justice to the entire richness of this lecture course . . . . The present course is thus in every sense a transition: harking back to the temporal analyses of Being from the period of 'Being and Time' and anticipating the increasing preoccupation with the Presocratics and with Greek tragedy that would mark Heidegger's work from the mid-1930s onward.10/4/16"
~Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Publication of this volume will motivate further scholarship on Heidegger's relation to the Pre-Socratics and on the intertwined topics of ontological difference, truth, metaphysics, and attunement. It will serve novice and seasoned Heidegger scholars alike."
~Jerome Veith, Seattle University
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