Heidegger on Literature, Poetry, and Education After the "Turn": At the Limits of Metaphysics by James M. Magrini and Elias Schweiler

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heidegger on Literature, Poetry, and Education After the "Turn": At the Limits of Metaphysics by James M. Magrini and Elias Schweiler Shawn Loht MAGRINI, James M. and Elias Schweiler. Heidegger on Literature, Poetry, and Education After the "Turn": At the Limits of Metaphysics. New York: Routledge, 2018. xi + 234 pp. Cloth, $140.00 This study provides an overview of principal themes in Martin Heidegger's philosophy in the post-Being and Time work of the 1930s and 1940s. It also considers these themes as they offer new ways of regarding poetry, literature, and education according to the post-metaphysical turn contained in Heidegger's notions of Ereignis (commonly translated as "the event of Being") and philosophy's "other beginning." Although the book is branded within the series Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education, only one chapter addresses the subject of education. In the introductory chapter, the authors survey current perspectives on the "turn" in Heidegger. A middle-ground approach is adopted, according to which Heidegger's post-Being and Time thought is characterized by an engagement with thinking conceived from out of the domain of truth, rather than the transcendental subjectivism of Dasein; a receptivity to Being, as seen in notions like Gelassenheit and Being's "mystery"; a concentration on the "event" of Being, understood communally and historically; and philosophy conceived as a practice rather than an academic exercise. For the authors, the concept of language is an especial locus around which Heidegger's post-turn thinking takes shape. The first main chapter of the book examines the issues prompting Heidegger's turn by contrasting the Cartesian-Kantian framework pervading Being and Time's portrayal of Dasein with the historical, destiny-laden conception of being-there Heidegger comes to formulate in 1936's Contributions to Philosophy, the various Hölderlin lectures, and 1938's "The Origin of the Work of Art." The authors suggest that in these works, Heidegger aims to articulate a conception of Being not predicated on the metaphysical confines of describing Dasein; as a result, Heidegger's accomplishment is to articulate Being's aspect of transcending human existence, where Being is understood as an event, and where language is of a piece with this event. On the whole this chapter provides a very balanced and informative account of precisely why Being and Time's approach is problematic and the manner in which the later Heidegger attempts to correct it. The second main chapter, on the topic of Heidegger's engagement with Hölderlin and Rilke, takes up the question of how Heidegger conceives poetry to exhibit a saving power from the dangers of modern technology, and why Hölderlin in particular reinvigorates the nonmetaphysical poetic thinking initially fostered in Presocratic thought. The authors hold that Hölderlin's poetry is nonrepresentational; it gestures toward images that communicate clues about the original event of Being and a time when gods were present to the human realm. The book's second half begins with a chapter on the poetry of French Arthur Rimbaud and the twentieth-century Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. What may seem an arbitrary pairing bears a fruitful [End Page 393] outcome; the authors read selections from these two poets in light of the later Heidegger's suggestion emphasizing the "path" or "way" of thought rather than its content (not out of step with the adage "ways, not works" with which Heidegger prefaces the Gesamtausgabe). Indeed, although greater poets could have been chosen from the canon of Western poetry, the authors aim to illustrate through modern and contemporary poets the "ways" poetic thinking can take when it is nonmetaphysical. Whereas, too often scholars rely on Heidegger's own preferred poets without making an effort to consider whether other poets might equally exhibit poetry expressive of the kind of poetic thinking the later Heidegger envisions. The penultimate chapter of the book explores a similar track with a reading of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, a novel whose main character appears to transcend metaphysical analysis. The book's final chapter, on education, is slightly out of step with the rest of the book; however, this chapter comes off as the most original in that...