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Translations: Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian
Martin Heidegger is one of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, both in terms of the depth and originality of his ideas and the breadth of his influence in philosophy, theology, the human sciences, and culture in general.
Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889, in the town of Meßkirch in the district of Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He died on May 26, 1976 in Freiburg and was buried in Meßkirch. (more…)
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The Charge
One of the most sensational charges against Heidegger is that he claimed that the Holocaust was the “self-annihilation” (Selbstvernichtung) of the Jews. This charge was first made by Italian philosophy professor Donatella di Cesare in an article in Corriere Della Sere on February 9, 2015: “Heidegger: ‘Jews Self-Destructed’: New Black Notebooks Reveal Philosopher’s Shocking Take on Shoah.”[1] (more…)
You can order Greg Johnson’s Graduate School with Heidegger here.
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What a gift it is, to have this collection of Greg Johnson’s essays on Heidegger available together in a real book, on real paper! All sorts of readers will appreciate Johnson’s lively, unpretentious, and accessible presentations of Heidegger’s thought, both those who have never read a word of Heidegger—and may thus stand in need of good reasons for doing so—and those, like me, who have been poring over the German philosopher’s writings for years now.
Johnson gives due credit to the best academic commentators on Heidegger, (more…)
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This is what I believe:
“That I am I.”
“That my soul is a dark forest.”
“That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.” (more…)
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
Mitch gathers Melanie’s still unconscious body into his arms and carries her down the stairs. Lydia walks ahead of him, carrying an oil lamp. “Oh, poor thing! Poor thing!” she says. Her resentment toward Melanie now completely gone, she feels only pity. Lydia goes to fetch bandages, as Mitch lays Melanie on the living room sofa. He asks Cathy to get some brandy, (more…)
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
At first, we hear the sound of birds singing. The sound is pretty and harmless. Is it the lovebirds in the kitchen? Then we hear fluttering and flapping. This grows louder and louder and the pretty singing of a moment before is replaced by angry cawing and screeching. It is one of the most interesting scenes in the entire film. (more…)
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
With the gulls now retreating, Mitch and Melanie leave the Tides restaurant and make their way up the hill to Annie’s house to retrieve Cathy. All is deathly quiet. As they approach the schoolhouse, they see that the crows are back and perched all over. “Look, the crows again!” Melanie says breathlessly. (more…)
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
(Editor’s Note: Mr. Hawthorne apologizes for repeatedly announcing the conclusion of this series. He is making it up as he goes along.)
For the last two installments, I have been principally occupied with an exposition of the ideas of the later Heidegger, and with a Heideggerean interpretation of The Birds. There is much more to be said, (more…)
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Richard Polt
Time and Trauma: Thinking Through Heidegger in the Thirties
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019
Richard Polt is one of the most distinguished and prolific Heidegger scholars active today. He is the author of one of the best introductory books on Heidegger, Heidegger: An Introduction, as well as a commentary on one of Heidegger’s most difficult texts, The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.”[1] (more…)
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
In the last installment, I began to explore the possibility that The Birds can be understood as an “existentialist” parable. I argued that the film depicts what Heidegger calls das Ereignis (the event): a sudden and fundamental transformation of the meaning of everything. (more…)
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We ended our last installment in the midst of the pivotal scene in the Tides Restaurant. There, we met Mrs. Bundy, a droll parody of modern, Western, pig-headed scientism. With arch condescension, she refuses to believe Melanie’s stories about the bird attacks. “Impossible!” Mrs. Bundy declares. “Their brain pans aren’t large enough. . . Really, let’s be logical about this,” (more…)
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The police are called, and Mitch is asked to meet the sheriff at the Fawcett farm. Some detectives from Santa Rosa are going to join them there. Presumably, Mitch is expected to repeat his mother’s account of finding the corpse of Dan Fawcett, its eyes pecked out by homicidal birds. (more…)