Heidegger's Position Research Articles

The Restitution of Truth in Painting: Vincent Van Gogh's "Shoes" and their Explication in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida.

Using Jacques Derrida's polylogue "Restitution, From truth to size" as a starting point of analysis, the article examines the problem of truth in painting. Derrida, referring to the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger and Meyer Sсhapiro over Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Shoes", not only reconstructs the details of this correspondence discussion, which stretched for many years, but also makes a sharp criticism of academic discourse, both philosophical and art criticism, equally limited in its total claim to knowledge truth in painting. Derrida comes to the conclusion that despite the external differences and internal opposition, the positions of Heidegger and Sсhapiro are completely in tune. Recreating the main directions of Derrida's analysis, the author reveals the idea of the "restitution of truth" in painting, embedding it in a more general philosophical context of the deconstruction of art. Restitution is inevitably associated with the appropriation and re-attribution of the meanings and images of an artistic work. This is exactly what happened in the "mirror speculation" of Heidegger and Sсhapiro, who sought to appropriate the truth of the "shoes" from Van Gogh's painting. Heidegger puts the shoes "on the ground", gives them to a peasant woman, Shapiro writes about their belonging to the artist Vincent himself, but, in the end, both famous professors only project their own identity onto Van Gogh's painting and force them to tell their truth, while embedding it in the framework of academic discourse.

Acontecimiento y abismo. Diálogo crítico entre Heidegger y Deleuze

En el presente artículo nos proponemos abordar y pensar al acontecimiento, la diferencia y el abismo. Esto resulta de suma relevancia ya que nos permite pensar la individuación de lo nuevo. Para ello, exponemos las posiciones de Heidegger y Deleuze. A modo de conclusión, intentamos hacer dialogar ambas filosofías de modo que estas se pujen entre sí tratando de evitar justificar a una posición por sobre la otra.

Modern Technology's Effort to Master Time as a Challenge for Ethics

Modern technology has been striving to free humans from their subjection to space and time since its very beginnings. Overcoming spatial distances, intrinsically linked to the phenomenon of globalisation, and the parallel process of gaining mastery over time by new means of production and communication, has promised to bring man closer to a fulfilled life. However, instead of giving us more time for an authentic existence, the acceleration of time in modernity (as analysed by sociologist Hartmut Rosa) has led to a chronic lack of time and poses a general question of a good life and ethics. In this article, I intend to refer to Heidegger's view on the essence of modern technology as an endeavour to win victory over time, and the need of philosophical reflection regarding the positive nature of time. However, authentic time cannot come about without relationships to our fellow humans, and Levinas' account of temporality will serve as both a correction to Heidegger's position and a way towards an ethical consideration of time.

National Socialism, Anti-Semitism, and Philosophy in Heidegger and Scheler

Peter Trawny, Heidegger & Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).Glasses can be half-empty or half-full, and a beige-colored vest a stained white one or a brightened brown one.1 In case of a stained white vest, one can try to whitewash it and restore it to its original purity. Many of Heidegger's apologists have taken this path, when, that is, they did not deny Heidegger's National Socialism and from outset. Peter Trawny-the editor of so-called Black Notebooks, voluminous private notes of Heidegger's from 1931 to 1975, which according to his will were to be published as conclusion to Gesamtausgabe (HM 5)-has interpreted passages that he, rightly, regards as anti-Semitic and concluded that one has to talk of a beinghistorical [seinsgeschichtlicher] anti-Semitism (HM 2) in Heidegger.2 Despite this finding, however, even Trawny's book is a kind of whitewash, interestingly enough already in its terminology. In this paper, I present framework within which Trawny interprets Heidegger's anti-Semitic statements, and show that it is too narrow. Trawny focuses on anti-Semitic sentences in Black Notebooks from years from 1937 (HM 20) to around 1945 (HM 88) and relates them to a (HM 8) that Heidegger began to develop in 1930 and used up into 1940s. However, Heidegger had employed such a narrative already earlier, namely in Being and Time. Thereafter, I clarify Heidegger's position by comparing him with Scheler-who, because of Hitler, gave up any rightist politics and turned to center-and relate Trawny's narrative to one in Being and Time to conclude that Heidegger's National Socialism and most probably also his extended significantly further than Trawny assumes. In an appendix, I suggest alternatives to Trawny's detailed interpretations of three of Heidegger's anti-Semitic statements, show that Trawny misconstrues and downplays Heidegger's and that his criterion for in Heidegger is false, and summarize anti-Semitic aspects of history of Being (or 'history of beyng [Geschichte des Seyns]' [HM 11]).TRAWNY'S INTERPRETATIVE FRAMEWORKAccording to Trawny, after Being and Time Heidegger found himself in a crisis in which finally, in 1930, something came to philosopher that well-nigh revolutionized his (HM 8), namely history of Being, history of first beginning and its repetition in other beginning (see HM 8-17). There are two main actors in this history, Greeks and Germans. In first beginning, Greeks-Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides-conceived of theory and logic in an appropriate fashion; thereafter, however, philosophy decayed. The history of Being is, therefore, a story of the relationship between origin and decline, i.e., fallenness (HM 12) in which destiny has reserved for Germans task to break, in end phase of that decay, with modern philosophy and to repeat abandoned first beginning.Trawny emphasizes that this was at first a purely philosophical undertaking (HM 14). How, then, did real history enter picture? According to Trawny, narrative offered Heidegger opportunity to link his thinking to entire course of a European history that was revolutionary to its core (HM 10). In explosive political situation, Heidegger got impression that what he was articulating philosophically was taking place historically; and that-so it seemed to him-could be no accident (HM 10). How did Jews come into this world history? This question Trawny answers in two steps. Heidegger claims that end-formation of metaphysics-namely, 'machination [Machenschaft],' that is, modern technology-covers . . . over first beginning and thus blocks possibility of experiencing happening of truth of Being. Hence machination must disappear in order for repetition of first beginning to occur (HM 12). …

What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Heidegger)

To understand and begin to answer the question of this article, I compare Heidegger's position to Hegel's, since the two appear structurally similar and Heidegger is explicitly indebted to Hegel's aesthetics. On the basis of this comparison, I argue that abstract art has the potential to play an important role on Heideggerian grounds. I conclude that modernist art should be understood not as a supplement to the project of self-realization that characterizes Hegelian freedom but rather as a disruptive event that could potentially challenge the constraining technological mindset that is characteristic of our time.

Heidegger on Assertion, Method and Metaphysics

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative.

The relevance of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology for biomedical ethics

Heidegger's thoughts on modern technology have received much attention in many disciplines and fields, but, with a few exceptions, the influence has been sparse in biomedical ethics. The reason for this might be that Heidegger's position has been misinterpreted as being generally hostile towards modern science and technology, and the fact that Heidegger himself never subjected medical technologies to scrutiny but was concerned rather with industrial technology and information technology. In this paper, Heidegger's philosophy of modern technology is introduced and then brought to bear on medical technology. Its main relevance for biomedical ethics is found to be that the field needs to focus upon epistemological and ontological questions in the philosophy of medicine related to the structure and goal of medical practice. Heidegger's philosophy can help us to see how the scientific attitude in medicine must always be balanced by and integrated into a phenomenological way of understanding the life-world concerns of patients. The difference between the scientific and the phenomenological method in medicine is articulated by Heidegger as two different ways of studying the human body: as biological organism and as lived body. Medicine needs to acknowledge the priority of the lived body in addressing health as a way of being-in-the-world and not as the absence of disease only. A critical development of Heidegger's position can provide us with a criterion for distinguishing the uses of medical technologies that are compatible with such an endeavor from the technological projects that are not.

Heidegger's Last God

In this paper, we discuss Martin Heidegger's position on the so-called godlessness of our current age. Rather than holding that we must either await the advent of god or enthusiastically embrace our godlessness, Heidegger holds that a third option is available to us: we could fundamentally change the way we experience the world by leaving behind all remnants of metaphysical thinking. In Section II, we show that, despite the absence of god, our current historical moment shares a metaphysical structure with the god-oriented epochs that preceded it. A metaphysical epoch involves a single, all-encompassing understanding of the entities in the world and how they ought to be arranged, usually established by a God who serves as a paradigm for those entities. In Section III, we discuss how the metaphysical age arose in the first place; the polytheistic world of the ancient Greeks was tumultuous and unpredictable, such that its inhabitants began to desire a stable, planned-out world that could be established by a single God. In the final section, we examine Heidegger's obscure discussion of the last god, who is to lead us out of metaphysics by a fundamental shift of the sort that led us into metaphysics. We discuss the basic features that will define a post-metaphysical age, and the last god's role in bringing this age about. We argue that this age resembles the pre-metaphysical age of the ancient Greeks, but rather than being polytheistic, it will be “polydivinistic”.

Merleau-Ponty’s Criticism of Heidegger

It now clear that took seriously the criticism that Being and Time did not adequately address the human body.1 He addresses this criticism in the Zollikon Seminars2 and provides a brief outline of an existential theory of the body, one that bears a striking similarity to Merleau-Ponty's, as both Richard Askay and Kevin Aho have recently claimed.3 Another thing that clear that MerleauPonty was among the most Heideggerian of the French philosophers of his generation, since he adopts Heidegger's etoasis characterization of human existence, i.e., the subject's active transcendence toward the world, and speaks of perception as occurring through the anonymous of the body and not as a personal choice.4 It also true, as some have claimed, that The Visible and Invisible5 Merleau-Ponty 's most Heideggerian text,6 since, in his own words, he attempts to move even further from the of Phenomenology of Perception - by developing an ontology of the Flesh, by developing a theory of perception that nature perceiving itself through one of its own, through the human body. In a Heideggerian spirit, Merleau-Ponty claims that the individual's experience rests upon the body that opens to a world that includes it and other human bodies. The individual's Flesh blends with the greater Flesh of the world. Yet, even though recent commentators have claimed that a similarity between Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body, they have also claimed that Heidegger's Being-in-the-world supersedes the body and remains more primary. Heidegger's position remains more worldly and less attached to the subjectivism that necessarily remains a part of an individual's orientation toward the world, and, apparently, the subjectivism that remains a part of Merleau-Ponty 's theory of the body (Askay 32). Kevin Aho presents Heidegger's analysis of the body in the Zollikon Seminars as similar to Merleau-Ponty's in that each seeks to overcome the body understood merely as an object or merely as a vehicle for a Cartesian subject. For both the body must be understood as Uvedthrough (Aho 15). However, Aho also claims that the Zollikon Seminars remain at the level of the ontic-existetiell, describing the concrete activities and perceptions of a 'factical' individual. This of course means that the comparable analysis provided by MerleauPonty, especially in Phenomenology of Perception, also remains at the level of the ontic, at the level of the individual's body (Aho 16; see Askay 32-33). Aho also points out that Being and Time, on the other hand, more primarily concerned with the ontological structures that determine the of beings ___ These constitute the Da, the disclosure site in which any entity whatsoever can show up as such and such. That why claims that it a mistake to interpret as . . . in a determinate place, 'here and not there' (Aho 16).7 One thing, then, that distinguished from Merleau-Ponty that the latter adheres to the here-there structure of a particular embodied opening upon the world, while Heidegger, at least in Being and Time, focuses on the there in a way that supposedly transcends the here of the situated, embodied subject. As Richard Askay expresses it, referring to and quoting Heidegger, bodily possible because our beingin-the-world always already consists 'of a relatedness in which we perceive-apprehend that which addresses us out of the openness of our world' (Askay 32: see ZS-G 293, ZS-E 232).8 Bodily-being, he continues, is 'founded upon' Dasein's responsiveness to the clearing (Askay 32: see ZS-G 232, ZS-E 186). Moreover, he states that Dasein 's existence the precondition for the possibiUty of being (Askay 32; see ZS-G 113, ZS-E 86-87). Askay thus concludes that Heidegger . . . would no doubt have accepted MerleauPonty's premise that the Uved body and existence 'presuppose each other,' and yet deny his conclusion that neither 'can be regarded as the original of the human being' (Askay 33). …

Kontroversen um Nietzsche: Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption (review)

Reviewed by: Kontroversen um Nietzsche: Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption Martin Liebscher Peter Köster . Kontroversen um Nietzsche: Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption [Controversies around Nietzsche: Studies on the Theological Reception]. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2003. 384 pp. ISBN 3–290-17277–5. In the introduction to the first volume of his Apokalypse der Deutschen Seele (1937–39), Hans Urs von Balthasar coins the phrase "Dionysos and the Crucified," consciously replacing Nietzsche's "versus" from Ecce Homo with "and." According to Balthasar, there is no difference between the world of Dionysos and the Christian world—the Dionysian reduced to its foundations shares common ground with Christianity. Thus, Balthasar's line of argumentation follows a fairly common theological reaction to Nietzsche's critique of religion. He simply appropriates the content of the critique for the purposes of the theological interpretation. When Balthasar's studies were reprinted in 1998, Peter Köster objected to this attempt to re-Christianize Nietzsche. Calling upon the likes of Franz Overbeck, Köster claims that Christian theologians like Balthasar have not been able to cope with Nietzsche's uncompromising atheism, an atheism that denies the possibility of returning to Christianity. Rather than trying to appropriate Nietzsche's thought for their own purposes, Köster thinks that theologians should simply confront the radical challenge that his thought presents. Köster's critique of the Apokalypse der deutschen Seele has now been republished in a collection of his articles that bear witness to his lifelong encounter with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His critical review of Balthasar's work exemplifies Köster's approach to Nietzsche, one that he describes as persistently posing fundamental questions to the philosopher from a theological point of view. The eight articles from 1972 to 2000 found in Kontroversen um Nietzsche: Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption reflect Köster's attempt to persuade theologians to accept, on the one hand, the "anti-Christian" antagonism found in Nietzsche's work and, on the other, to appreciate the deeply spiritual-practical confrontation. The title of the volume is well chosen. It emphasizes the way in which Köster's persistent questioning of Nietzsche's philosophy puts him at the center of a number of crucial debates in both the theological and the philosophical reception of Nietzsche's work. In raising doubts about all-too-comfortable and seductive interpretations, he seeks to clarify the assumptions of the interpreters he examines and, in so doing, he sharpens their respective points of view. Moreover, by critically engaging with the work of opponents such as Martin Heidegger, Eugen Biser, and Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Köster affords himself the opportunity to develop and unpack his own rendering of Nietzsche's thought. One of the cornerstones of Köster's interpretation is his insistence that Nietzsche's work constitutes a unified whole. Thus, he rejects those interpretations that posited an inner, even constitutive contradiction in Nietzsche's philosophy. This, however, was not a very popular position to take at the beginning of the 1970s. When he published his article, "Die Renaissance des Tragischen," in 1972, the work of interpreters such as Karl Jaspers, who placed contradiction at the center of Nietzsche's thought, and of Martin Heidegger still dominated Nietzschean scholarship. To present [End Page 71] his case in the aforementioned article, Köster contrasts his own reading of Nietzsche with Heidegger's position, highlighting the continuities in Nietzsche's philosophy from his early writings to his 1888 works. As is well known, Heidegger based his interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy primarily on the Nachlaß fragments from the late 1880s and, as a result, demoted Nietzsche's published works to mere Vordergrund, which naturally led to the virtual exclusion of The Birth of Tragedy from Heidegger's reading. Köster, however, adamantly rejects this view, and he tries to show that the decisive questions of Nietzsche's philosophy, ones that remained consistent throughout his productive career, had already been formulated in his first work. More specifically, he maintained that the philosophical issues found in both the early and the late Nietzsche could be expressed in one word, "Dionysos." In contrast to Köster, Heidegger argued that there were significant differences between the...

Dementia: sociological and philosophical constructions

This analysis presents a challenge to the biomedical view of dementia as a disease. This view is critiqued from two perspectives: those of sociology and philosophy. Because these domains inform the creation of the medical discourse, their analysis provides an important refinement to the apprehension of the phenomenon of dementia. From the work of Foucault, and in particular his analysis of the historical origins of modern medicine, the sociological construction of dementia is considered. Following this, the philosophical question of Being is discussed, considering particularly the positions of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Lastly aspects of dementia nursing that are damaging to those relatives forced to take on the role of primary carer are isolated, in the context of Kitwood's view that it is possible to maintain personhood at the extremes of this condition. It is suggested that this critique of sociological and philosophical foundations of dementia might offer a way of approaching the dismantling of the self and revise current conceptions of dementia care for the better.

Heidegger and `the concept of time'

This article explores the extent to which Heidegger promises a novel understanding of the concept of time. Heidegger believes that the tradition of philosophy was mistaken in interpreting time as a moveable image of eternity. We are told that this definition of time is intelligible only if we have eternity as a point of departure to understand the meaning of time. Yet, Heidegger believes that we are barred from such a viewpoint. We can only understand the phenomenon of time from our mortal or finite vantage point. Contrary to the tradition of philosophy, Heidegger argues that time does not find its meaning in eternity, time finds its meaning in death. The article takes Heidegger's position to task. It argues that it is not evident why Heidegger's account of time should in any way be superior to the traditional conception of time. Drawing on the criticism raised by Lévinas and Blanchot, that death — like eternity — is never at our disposal to understand the phenomenon of time, it shows that although Heidegger is aware that death is never an event in our life, he nonetheless claims that it is the awareness of our finitude that informs our understanding of time. Yet if Heidegger does not see it as a problem that death is never at our disposal, then it becomes questionable whether Heidegger's initial critique launched against the tradition of philosophy still holds, because it is no longer evident why it matters that eternity, as a point of departure, is never at our disposal to understand the phenomenon of time.

Heidegger's Discussion of "The Thing": A Theme for Deep Ecology

history of environmental philosophy testifies to two strands of tbought tbat stand in stark contrast to one anotber: antbropocentrism and biocentrism. In reaction to tbe traditional antbropocentric position, deep ecology has argued for a biocentric view of tbe humanity-nature relation. Against antbropocentrism, the deep ecologists have challenged the basic assumptions of tbe Western scientific-technological paradigm by proposing alternative paradigms that support biocentrism. One of the central issues confronting tbe development of an environmental etbic is the manner in which paradigms prefigure attitudes about nature. approach of some deep ecologists is straightforwardly ontological as evidenced by the attempt to challenge scientific materialism as a paradigm about the nature of being. In this paper I want to explore some of the ideas in the later writings of Heidegger in order to show how they may be placed in tbe context of deep ecology. His ontology, I believe, sponsors a biocentric view that regards all natural entities as possessing inherent value by virtue of their interrelation to tbe surrounding world. In particular, I will discuss Heidegger's position in his essay The Thing.1 distinction he draws between

Who has difficulty making which aspect of the world intelligible to whom?

Abstract Following Hubert Dreyfus, this paper takes up the debate over the limits on what can be articulated by means of intentional analysis. Section 1 reviews the contrast between Husserl's position and Heidegger's position. Husserl's is an ‘inexhaustibility theory’ of the inarticulable, according to which, although it is in principle impossible to articulate everything, there is not anything that it is in principle impossible to articulate. Heidegger's is a genuine ‘inarticulability‐in‐principle theory’ of the inarticulable, according to which it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the whole of what makes human understanding possible. On this view, it is, in principle, impossible to articulate the background of skills and practices presupposed by and taken for granted in all our everyday human activities. Whereas Dreyfus has been largely interested in this debate for the sake of its parallels to developments in cognitive science, this paper aims, in Section 2, to consider the political importanc...

Dasein and Others: Heidegger's Ontology of Intersubjectivity

Martin Heidegger's existential analytic in Being and Time articulates the essential structures and characteristics of Dasein in the endeavor to elucidate the nature of Being in general. As such Heidegger is led to offer an ontology of intersubjectivity, i.e., an account of the essential structures of Dasein's interaction with others. I argue in this essay that Heidegger's depiction of the two intersubjective existentiala—Being-with and the they with all their attendant modes and features—is an inadequate characterization of the range of interpersonal life. 1 explicate and explore in the spirit of Heidegger a further existentiale, Being-questioned, as a required addition to Being and Time. Being-questioned at once challenges Heidegger's position that authenticity is an individual project necessarily occurring in the absence of other people and allows for a richer and thus more plausible ontology of human interaction.

Heidegger's Reflection on Aletheia: Merely a Teminological Shift?

In The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, Heidegger discusses the need to move beyond prior philosophical thinking to the determination of the proper matter of thinking. In first encountering this idea, which has the form of an injunction to think the philosophical tradition in a way which enables us to overcome that tradition, one may be seized with the inclination to lodge the kind of thoroughgoing critique of the tradition which puts one in position to bury and forget it as if it were a bad dream. Some self-styled Heideggerians employ this tack in an attempt to exponge from philosophy the notions of and presence, as if these notions were nothing more than an elaborate and painfully embarrassing mistake which should simply be forgotten; then the task of philosophy, if there still is one, is to articulate a realm of non-metaphysical discourse in which anything goes as long as it does not involve the dirty words Subjectivity and .presence. But at best such a posture bears only a superficial resemblance to Heidegger's position. While Heidegger does seek to overcome the tradition and its fundamental presuppositions about Being, he is not enjoining us to jettison the tradition but rather to appropriate it productively, to transform its concepts in the way in which concepts become aufgehoben in Hegelian dialectic. It is in this spirit that Heidegger devoted his life to the study of the history of philosophy. (Here we should bear in mind that Heidegger considered philosophy to be a peculiarly occidental pursuit.) And it is in this spirit that we must interpret Heidegger's reflection on aletheia in The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking: if we try to think unconcealment in isolation from the traditional understanding of Being as presence, and if we try to understand our own being in isolation from traditional concepts of human being which culminate in the modern notion of Subjectivity, then we fail to think the matter of philosophy authentically and end up engaging in meaningless word-play. It is true that on Heidegger's account the tradition has gone astray, but it is the very crux of his account that we are destined to do so. And perhaps the most conspicuous example of this er-

Deformalization, Sight, and Phenomenology

In December of I976 Professor Seigfried sharply took certain phenomenologists to task for misunderstanding the relation between science and phenomenology between scientific research and phenomenological research.' In March of i980 Professor Schrag published a reply that was accompanied by Seigfried's response.' In essence there were two parts to Professor Schrag's reply and Seigfried rightly observed in his response that the first part was misdirected insofar as it was a defense on this point of Husserl, against whom Seigfried was not speaking. Now Professor Schrag is a more careful reader of texts than many phenomenologists. While his concise recital of Husserl's position does not meet Seigfried's critique, it was not wasted effort, for it set the stage for the second part of his reply a clear delineation of the problematic areas in Heidegger's position, from which Seigfried was speaking. As concerns, then, the polemical intent of Seigfried's article, there has been in effect no response. More's the pity, for on the face of their writings there are many phenomenologists who are open to Seigfried's criticism and it is only to be hoped that some will yet see fit to reply. Polemics aside, the second part of Schrag's reply, as Seigfried also rightly acknowledged, brings us straight to the underlying and basic issue that so much of Heidegger's work is obscure. On the whole this obscurity has occasioned no great surprise, for both partisans and opponents of Heidegger all agree at least that the subject of his work is itself obscure. Small wonder that what he said is obscure. We have Heidegger as the Sisyphus figure in the edifying drama of the thinker grappling with the unthinkable. This pleasing metaphor also aside, however, there is at least one area of Heidegger's work where obscurity really

Ideas of Substance (review)

570 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY cusses Heidegger's Nietzsche interpretation Magnus consults mainly two essays, the one Wer ist Zarathustra?, Who is Zarathustra7 (Magnus has translated this into English ) and Gott ist Tot, God is dead. This being the case we can hardly expect a true picture of Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche and especially of his concept of eterna/ recurrence. Magnus quotes for example from God is Dead, where Heidegger states that nihilism for Nietzsche is "the inner logic" of Western history (p. 100). Magnus accuses Heidegger of superimposing his view of nihilism on Nietzsche although in his notes Nietzsche makes such a statement. In addition, Heidegger is not guilty of overlooking Nietzsche's many references to nihilism. It is true that Heidegger sees in the forgetfulness of Being the real nihilism. This, however, does not prevent him from exploring where Nietzsche stands in regard to nihilism. In fact Nietzsche distinguishes two types of nihilism, one passive and the other active, and Heidegger deals with both (Nietzsche II, pp. 49-55, 272-282). Nobody can write properly about Heidegger 's interpretation of eternal recurrence without a thorough acquaintance with his Nietzsche. In these volumes he reformulates and expands on what he had said before about Zarathustra, eternal recurrence, Nietzsche's reasons for proclaiming God is dead etc. Without going into any detail of Magnus' discussion of Heidegger's position on Nietzsche, I would like to give just two further examples of his unfamiliarity with Heidegger's Nietzsche. He says: "Although Heidegger is to some extent justified in failing to stress the cosmological interpretation of eternal recurrence, it does not follow from this that he is justified in ignoring it altogether, which, of course, he does" (p. 134). The fact is that in vol. I, pp. 365-402 Heidegger, of course, deals with the proof for the eternal recurrence and its consequences. Did Heidegger ignore as Magnus claims (p. 138) "the dialectical relation between the religions and the metaphysical"? Of course not. See Nietzsche I pp. 318-329; 487 f and so on. Magnus never comes to grips with Heidegger's real achievement in relation to eternal recurrence. Already Prof. Kaufmarm in his stimulating Nietzsche has stated that the eternal recurrence and the will to power are related concepts. Heidegger went a step further: He has shown that the two terms are inseparable. ELISABETH F. HmSCH Trenton State College Ideas o/ Substance. By Albert L. Hammond. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969. Pp. x.iv q- 146) This is a difficult little book, subtle and suggestive. As part of The Johns Hopkins University series, Seminars in the History of Ideas, it addresses itself to substance. It is in a sense a highly personal document. It reveals the effort of a mind to enter into intellectual history in its moments of criticism and insight in a manner that is also critical and searching. Apparently for Professor Hammond the history of ideas is, to use one of his favorite expressions, integral. The philosopher in studying the history of his subject is already carrying it about within him. There is no purely objective history of ideas, unless one wants to say that the objectivity is in the making. "We want to know about the history of the word 'substance'," says Hammond, "and about the answers that have been given and the answer we should give to the question traditionally associated with 'substance': what is really there?" (p. 5). This expresses a concern for meanings and for a vital problem. He compares scientific, philosophical, and common sense usages. This is significant, since philosophy in his estimation is not always the bearer of the full meaning of its problems. He feels that something has gone radically wrong in the facing up to the basic question, what is really there7 This would not be a reasonable attitude if he thought that the history of ideas were the history of BOOK REVIEWS 571 utterances or even the history of intellectual interests. It is for Hammond the history of problems, and the problems endure. The philosopher does not have to assume the idea of intellectualprogress. The principle underlying Hammond's judgment that something has gone wrong in the conception...