WHAT CALLED THINKING PB

I am working my way through this series of lectures the Professor gave in the 1950's. His work in the area of metaphysics and his commitment to this philosophy is breathtaking. I am a novice with respect to philosophy and I read Prof. Heidegger's thought humbly, recognizing his immense intellect and his treatment of philosophic thought. According to this books introduction, as a lecturer and teacher, Professor Heidegger naturally approaches this profession as a vocation. Academic freedom afforded him as a scholar and lecturer provides him full reign of thoughtful literature which he has studied and then interprets for us, his students. His efforts at making metaphysics applicable to ordinary life moves and inspires me. The connections he makes between notable thinkers is impassioned and reading through this work is something of a mosaic, as he maintains his life long focus, metaphysics, and relates it to the great thinkers he contemplates

This book will make you sweat, make you wonder if Heidegger finally lost his marbles, but most of all make you think. If you are willing to do a little mental bench-pressing, get out of your rut of how philosophy should be written, and meditatively contemplate what he is saying... then this mine is worth digging for the intellectual gold you will receive.

MH has a lot to say about our post-modern, high-technology lives. These essays are not that difficult to read -- once you understand these are translations from German, Heidegger does not know English and uses a lot of German colloquial phrases, and he's a fanatic, in a good way, about the etymology of words that we throw around with careless ease. Approach it a bit like poetry, take a couple of days to get used to the pace and repetition, and you're off to quite a thoughtful experience.

Like all Heidegger's works, difficult but repays effort.Proves, somewhat disturbingly (?), that you can be a (sort-o) Nazi and yet also a great philosopher at the same time.

I read the essay version found in Basic Writings of Heidegger several years ago. But that version is nothing like the full text here of Heidegger's seminar. It is one of his clearest reads and, in a reader who has some background in Greek philosophy, unfolds as a profound meditation on one's engagement with thought.