Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy ended, failed even, in the German Idealist tradition. In The Culmination, Robert B. Pippin explores the ramifications of this charge through a masterful survey of Western philosophy, especially Heidegger's critiques of Hegel and Kant. Pippin argues that Heidegger's basic concern was to determine sources of meaning for human life, particularly those that had been obscured by Western philosophy's attention to reason. The Culmination offers a new interpretation of Heidegger, German Idealism, and the fate of Western (...) rationalism. (shrink)

(2002). Global Nihilism and Local Meanings? Dreyfus on Kierkegaard and Heidegger Today. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 395-401.

This article examines Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s Sophist, focusing on his attempts to grasp Plato’s original thinking of being and non-being. Some contemporary thinkers and commentators argue that Heidegger’s view of Plato is simply based on his criticism against the traditional metaphysics of Platonism and its language. But a close reading of his lecture on the Sophist reveals that his view of Plato is grounded in Plato’s questioning struggle with the ambiguous nature of human speech or language. For Heidegger, Plato’s (...) way of philosophizing is deeper than the metaphysical understanding of Platonism which sees only fixed ideas of being. In the Sophist, dialectical thinking of Plato constantly confronts the questionable force of the logos which betrays the natural possibility of non-being based on the tension between movement and rest. Thus, from Plato’s original insight Heidegger uncovers the dynamic association of being and non-being as a natural ground of everyday living with others. However, although Heidegger’s understanding of the Sophist powerfully demonstrates the lively possibility of being beyond the customary perspective of Platonic metaphysics, his interpretation fails to further disclose Plato’s political question of being emerging in the Sophist, which seeks the true associative ground of human beings. (shrink)