Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"

"... Heidegger's reading of The Ister is thoughtful and rich. It provides his readers with the tools to build on his interpretation and to correct any missteps without doing violence to the whole."  -- Review of Metaphysics

Martin Heidegger's 1942 lecture course interprets Friedrich Hölderlin's hymn "The Ister" within the context of Hölderlin's poetic and philosophical work, with particular emphasis on Hölderlin's dialogue with Greek tragedy. Revealing of Heidegger's thought of the period are his discussions of the meaning of "the political" and "the national," in which he emphasizes the difficulty and the necessity of finding "one's own" in and through a dialogue with "the foreign."