Hegel once accused the philosopher Schilling of "Educating himself in public." Herman Philipse, in his excellent "Heidegger's Philosophy of Being," does something like this, but does it in a rather endearing way. He starts out in his introduction indicating how inspired he was by Heidegger's writing and why the youth of his generation were so drawn to Heidegger's philosophy and how earthshaking Heidegger's thought seemed to be to his generation. Through the course of the book, Philipse's close reading and analysis of Heidegger becomes more and more critical; and by the time of his summation at the end of the book, Philipse has concluded that Heidegger's philosophy is essentially worthless. Along the way, he uses phrases like "Nazism by other means," although he also suggests that Heidegger's philosophy is Lutheranism by other means, Pascalism by other means, and above all, hogwash by other means. It makes for a fun read.



To be fair, Philipse is sometimes overly critical. Heidegger could be clear and insightful when he wanted to be (which was not very often); see, for example, the first volume in his Nietzsche series regarding Nietzsche's aesthetic philosophy. But the fact that Heidegger was capable of penetrating and lucid analysis may ultimately be all the more problematical -- if he was capable of cogent explanation, why did he not use it in expounding his own philsophy? Philipse makes an excellent case (citing some of Heidegger's own texts) that the man was being deliberately obscure and that Heidegger felt if a philosopher could be understood, he was not doing his job. Philipse goes on to suggest, correctly, that such a strategy is dishonest.



Philipse seems to come from the analytic school of philosophy and thus subjects many of Heidegger's assertions to logical analysis. This is extremely helpful to any ready of Heidegger, because it provides a perspective rare in continental critques. The usual question in Heideggerian interpretation is "What does he mean"? Granted that this is a very important question, given the murkiness of his writings (other philosophers have characterized Heidegger as everything from a pragmatist to a theologian). But Philipse's further question, "Given that Heidegger means such-and-such a thing, is what he means right?" This latter question is not asked often enough. It is if interpreters are so transfixed by the daunting project of figuring out the text that, having accomplished it to their satisfaction, they often end their analysis in exhausted triumph. Philipse, by contrast, subjects Heidegger's texts to the further question, "Is he right?" and finds Heidegger's claims to be wanting.





Where Philipse manages to squeeze meaning out of Heidegger's late texts, the propositions Heidegger seems to be advancing are often contradictory, shifty, nasty, rhetorical and simplistic. Philipse concludes that the greatest value in reading Heidegger (besides an education in how not to do philosophy) may be that of a Rorschach test -- it stimulates the mind by permitting it to read into the text anything that one chooses.

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