Tuesday, September 06, 2011

A question about Steiner's Heidegger

I recently picked up a very cheap second hand copy of George Steiner’s Heidegger. Polt, in his highly praised intro to H., suggests that Steiner contribution is not always reliable – any of my distinguished readers know why, beyond it being a bit dated? I'll read the book anyway, but it would be nice to know what I am being mislead about!

5 Comments:

At 9/06/2011 5:59 PM, Blogger enowning said...

Steiner's is not a bad introduction, you'll get a sense of why Heidegger is important, what he said that's original, but Steiner is not radical enough in his interpretation of Heidegger. He says that Heidegger is on about "the Beingness of being", an understanding of Being as the universal property of beings. Heidegger says in several places that is not what he's on about.

 
At 9/06/2011 7:34 PM, Blogger Chris Tilling said...

Thank you, this is very helpful.

When I read in Steiner, that H. is about "the Beingness of being", what should I replace this claim with? I.e., if this is not what H. is about ,what is he about? Thanks for your time and help.

 
At 9/07/2011 12:16 AM, Blogger enowning said...

In general, Heidegger's concern is: that which makes beings possible. He went back and forth on whether to use the term "being" for that. Sometimes he used the German term Sein (being, as such, as different from one of many beings), other times he spelt it Seyn (beyng), or crossed it out, to differentiate it from previous uses of being. Scholars still debate the issue, but "the Beingness of being" is not something Heidegger came up with - I think that's one of Aristotle's.

 
At 9/11/2011 4:02 PM, Blogger Chris Tilling said...

Thanks, that is very helpful again. I'll work my way through Steiner but perhaps you could recommend an article that discusses these matters?

 
At 9/11/2011 4:02 PM, Blogger Chris Tilling said...

Thanks, that is very helpful again. I'll work my way through Steiner but perhaps you could recommend an article that discusses these matters?

 

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