Existentialism Books

There are some books that require more than one reading. Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" is such a book and The Filth is another. Read "The Filth" through once and then go back and read it again. Repeat twice more. Like "Gravity's Rainbow", when you "get it", it will knock your socks off. This book really raises the bar for the graphic novel genre.

This is one of the best stories Grant has ever written. Please resort to your non-linear, artistic, symbolic lobe when reading. If you do you will "get it". If you can understand THE INVISIBLES you will "get it". If you can appreciate DOOM PATROL you will "get it". If not, then buy it anyway.

Fantastic book; incredibly detailed, terrific art, bizarre and surreal, while maintaining a strong storyline and interesting characters. 5 stars. Not for the faint hearted though. ;)

Hands down one of my top three essential, could not live without graphic novels.
People always say "yeah, that doesn't make any sense," when i bring up this book. Seriously, they're stupid. The entire thing has a complete, self-contained system. The stories get very broad, and unless you've got a photographic memory, WILL require some re-reading and back-tracking to either recall character names or situations or complex ideas that are referenced only liminally later. But, the art is fabulous, each issue has it's own specific smaller story (usually the premises are HILARIOUS and absurd, all too gruesome to describe here) and relates to the plot's overture...which, when it hits, will really knock you flat. Morrison, I'm pretty sure you're a genius.

Morrison getting freaky again. There is some whackiness here reminiscent of Robert Anton Wilson. Secret agencies trying to keep consensual reality intact, porn star superhumans with semen weapons, crazy guys, split personalities, and old bachelor guys that live with cats.

I don't think it is supposed to make sense, some of the time, either.

This book is very good overview of the history and origin of the continental tradition with an inspiring vision of continental thought in action. It reaches a high point in chapter 6 with an apology for continental philosophy in the court of analytical rigor. The books only glaring flaw lies in Critchley's own vision of philosophy's proper character- a rather dour and chained down phenomenology. As with everything I find unfortunate in the philosophical discourse of the last one hundred years, I blame England.

Also, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, and twentieth century French thought receives very little narrative attention despite the obvious importance of these schools to contemporary academic discourse. Zizek, Althusser, and the rest of the new motley crew doesn't even receive a passing mention. Instead, this book is heavy with (non-Marxist) Germans: Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, and especially Heidegger who serve as the central axis around which everything turns.

From time to time, Critchley comes off a self-hating continental philosopher. For example, he fears both obscurantist tendencies in the field and the immanent end of the field in its entirety. After praising, clarifying, defending, and employing continental philosophy's method of getting at issues through authors and contexts (as opposed to disembodied arguments of the now delivered as intuitions from the gods of logic) he blames the very same method for stifling originality. Go figure! This disharmony is probably aided by Chritchley's having compiled the book from prior works. But, after all, what is a good journey through German thought without self-hatred and eschatology?

I do enjoy most of these short introductions. As a layman interested in Philosophy I will often read one to see if I want to delve deeper into the topic being discussed. This book is analogous to a collapsed star: small, but heavy and dense. Some of the reviewers of this book seem to have significant backgrounds in Philosophy, which, to me, prompts the question "Why read a little introductory book on the subject if you are not a novice?"

I assume this is written for folks who are unfamiliar with a lot of philosophical concepts, and want a fairly easy introduction to a topic. I didn't like this book at all, and at its conclusion I decided to try again. I reached into my book case and pulled out a book on the same topic that was much bigger: "Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self", by Robert C. Solomon. Easy to read, lucid, informative and quite enjoyable. I would suggest Solomon's book to anyone wanting an introduction to this subject.

Since the early twentieth century, two major schools or viewpoints have bisected the philosophical landscape. Logic and Science, with their multitudinous formulas and quest for the incorrigible foundation of knowledge - the "fountain of truth" - dominates the "analytic" school with geographical associations in Great Britain and The United States. Hop across the channel and the aptly named "Continental" philosophy predominates. Associated mainly with France and Germany, this school focuses on historical and textual analysis and speaks in terms of "crises" such as nihilism or human emancipation through art or culture. This outlook has bequeathed Existentialism and Deconstruction to the world. Whereas the less lofty "analytic" philosophy has stayed confined to academia, "Continental" philosophy has sprouted world celebrities such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Analytic's closest analogue is Bertrand Russell. These two schools experienced a major schism that evolved throughout the twentieth century into a relationship of outright malice. Until very recently, many university students that studied one learned nothing substantial about the other. Some have undoubtedly emerged from Anglo-American philosophy departments with no idea of what cogitations stirred in Francophone or Germanophone brains, and vice versa. The multicultural synthesis and fusion crazes that have pervaded so much of academic and mainstream culture have apparently not infiltrated philosophy departments. Contemporary philosophy thus begs the question: "love of which wisdom?"

Anyone attempting to stride the goliath chasm between these philosophic modes faces considerable challenge. The differences in terminology, methodology, perspective, and theme insinuate different fields, not sections of a whole. Those conversant in Quine or Putnam might struggle with Husserl or Heidegger. Connoisseurs of Foucault or Gadamer might flinch at the formalism of Kripke or Strawson. Frustration and ire on both sides might swell and burst (well, it has). Something akin to a paradigm shift seems to exist in the waters of the channel. Luckily, the curious and adventurous have this small book. Those who wade in Anglophone waters will learn much about their friends (or enemies) on the continent. They may even learn something about their own domain. This 140 page book allows for a safe and objective ankle wetting.

Author Simon Critchley argues that both schools of thought have their pros and cons. Even dangers. The extreme analytic side can succumb to scientism. In this state science is seen as the only, or at least so dominant as to be the only, mode of valid knowledge available to humans. In simpler terms, "if it ain't science it ain't knowledge." Conversely, Continental leanings and tippings can foster what Critchley called "obscurantism." This results in an all-out rejection of scientific method or "the X-Files Complex" where the paranormal and pernicious become foundations for human existence. This book argues that a "middle path" exists between these two viewpoints; one that avoids the excesses of both.

The book uses a dominant methodology of Continental philosophy, "historicity," to explicate Continental philosophy. Tracing the split back to Frege and Husserl, and ultimately back to Kant, the ultimate dividing point between the analytic and continental schools lands on dual interpretations of Kant's work. One encompasses the epistemological and metaphysical arguments of "The Critique of Pure Reason" and stops there. The other moves on from the 1st Critique and examines the problems arising from "The Critique of Judgment," Kant's 3rd Critique largely ignored outside of Continental contexts. Continental philosophy, according to Critchley, jumps off from the dualisms of Kant's system. The search for "some higher, unifying principle" begins along with the German Idealism of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and onwards to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Heidegger. By this view Kant becomes a central figure, if not the central figure, of Continental Philosophy.

From this point on, "Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction" covers voluminous ground. This includes: Mill's dichotomy of Coleridge and Bentham ("Two cultures in philosophy"); Critique, praxis, and emancipation; the "Oldest System Programme of German Idealism" (included as an appendix); Husserl and philosophy as crisis; Russian (political) and Nietzschean (the implications of the "death of God") nihilism; the classic "misunderstanding" between Carnap and Heidegger (they accuse each other of being metaphysicians); phenomenology as the "pre-theoretical layer"; the state of Continental philosophy in 2001 (Critchley does not paint a rosy picture here).

Given the Herculean ambitions of this tiny treatise, philosophical beginners will probably not comprehend every sentence or reference in this book. That shouldn't stop anyone. Critchley's ultimate hope, as outlined in the final section, is that philosophy may once again interact with culture. Along the way he not only gives an intriguing outline of Continental philosophy, but also suggests ways that the Analytic and Continental traditions could function as a unity. Though the book remains engaging and challenging throughout, its main hope seems far off. But maybe a new generation, inspired by books like this, can rethink the old vicious dichotomies into a new dynamic synthesis. Or perhaps they'll just find new ways to hate one another. Hopefully a desire for mutual understanding will prevail.

I agree with other reviewers who point out that this is not an introduction to Continental Philosophy, in any ordinary meaning of 'introduction.' But it is a heartfelt attempt to defend that tradition for what is valuable in it and generally given short shrift in Anglo-American analytic philosophy: namely a concern with the once-traditional Big Questions concerning the meaning of life, what it means to lead a good life, what constitutes wisdom as contrasted with mere knowledge, and so forth. Most of the book is concerned with describing the failure to communicate that developed between these two philosophical cultures, and with suggesting how that gap might be bridged to the benefit of both (Critchley believes that both sides have lately become somewhat exhausted). He thinks the best chances for a mutually-rejuvenating middle ground, or even partial synthesis, might be found in a pragmatic phenomenology which could, perhaps, be equipped to take an active part in the world. The hope would be to thus rescue philosophy from being mostly a parochial exercise in historical commentary or detailed exegesis of no conceivable interest outside some tiny community of sub-specialists. Philosophy should, he writes, "form an essential part in the life of a culture, in how a culture converses with itself..."

I do think that if such a bridging occurs, it will mostly be built from one bank. Specifically, it will most likely occur as analytic philosophers decide to take on the Big Questions themselves, or at least to tackle the job of deciphering the writings of their Continental counterparts who have. That is something devoutly to be wished for, because although the Continentals have taken on those questions, they have tended to do so in prose that is virtually unreadable. I think a distinction has to be made between taking on certain questions vs. doing a good job of taking them on. For Analytic philosophers to declare the concerns of Continental Philosophy to be meaningless may have been a good breakaway tactic at one time; now maybe it's time now to go back and start digging through those stables.

Exactly, not an introduction, but a very (extremely!) informative discussion of the continental/analytic split + overview of philosophy since Kant. I've been studying CP for about a year now and this is the first book I've read to really (really!) put the subject in perspective (historically, and otherwise).

Book makes a terrific power-point presentation in the undergraduate classroom. Takes about 2.5 hours to explain Heidegger in all the basics. An excellent teaching tool.

HEIDEGGER FOR BEGINNERS. By Eric LeMay & Jennifer A. Pitts. Illustrated by Paul Gordon. 120 pp. New York : Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1994. ISBN 0-86316-172-3 (Pbk).

It's difficult not to be impressed by the audacity of the Heideggerian enterprise. Here is a philosopher who, at the outset of his career, decided that Western thought had been fundamentally in error about everything for the last two thousand years, and who set out single-handedly to rectify matters by showing us, not only how we ought to be thinking, but also what things were really all about. If he was right about the West being all wrong, and there are excellent reasons for supposing that he was, he clearly becomes someone we ought to know something about. But where to begin?

The Heidegger opus is MASSIVE, and consists of upwards of a hundred or so volumes, none of them easy. His German is notoriously obscure, even for native speakers of that language, and translation does little to improve it. And the works of his commentators, which in 1989 ran to over four thousand books and articles and today numbers considerably more, can often be even more obscure than Heidegger himself. Happily authors LeMay and Pitts, with the collaboration of Paul Gordon, have come to the rescue of all of those dazed and bewildered beginners out there with their extremely well-done illustrated treatment of Heidegger's basic thought.

The illustrations are both effective and amusing. The thought is authentic Heidegger and, so far as it goes, accurate. The treatment, while witty, is respectful. The book concludes with some good advice about Further Reading, a basic Bibliography, and a brief anthology of key extracts : 'Martin Heidegger : In His Own Words' - On the Essence of Truth; On the Subject; On Being; On Authentic Existence; On Technology, etc. The aim, in short, seems to have been, while not overburdening the beginner with too much of Heidegger's radically different style of thinking, to give him or her enough to stimulate a desire to know more. In this I think the authors have been successful. 'Heidegger for Beginners' will be enjoyed by many who are new to Heidegger, and perhaps by at least some who are not so new.

Purists, of course, will shriek that beginners would be far better off reading Steiner, or Poggeler, or Safranski, or even Heidegger himself. Of course they would! But purists have a curious tendency to forget that they too were once BEGINNERS (i.e., persons who know nothing but who would like to know something), and that prior to having become self-appointed 'experts,' they might have taken a less snooty attitude to the book under review, a book which - I repeat - is for beginners who may not yet be ready for something more substantial.

My advice to beginners would be to forget about the purists (who rarely know as much as they like to pretend), and to curl up for a few good hours of fun and edification with LeMay and Pitts. You'll be amused. You'll certainly learn 'something' about Heidegger. And some of you will be left with a desire to know more. For those who would like to know more, details of one of the finest available conventional Introductions to Heidegger for the general reader are as follows:

MARTIN HEIDEGGER. By George Steiner. 173 pp. University of Chicago Press edition, 1987 (1978). ISBN 0-226-77232-2 (pbk.)

I wish I had found this book before starting on Heidegger in a class. It is a simple (simplified) overview of the complex and integrated thought of Heidegger. But I believe it will give beginners an overview of what to expect as they dig deeper. Then the digging will be less painful and more profitable.

In our class, it became known as the "Heidegger Coloring Book", but others were eager to borrow my copy.

A good starting point, no matter how serious you are or are not.

I picked this up after reading Sartre For Beginners -- an entertaining, smart, and humorous intro to Sartre. This book, however, was a big disappointment. It runs about half the length of Sartre for Beginners with hardly any text, the humor is stale, and Heidegger's work is glossed over so poorly and with such brevity that its more apt to confuse a reader of Heidegger than help them.

This book does not explain Heidegger's use of phenomenology and how it differs from Husserl's, how Heidegger relates Being with temporality (!), or even, in any depth, how Heidegger escapes the subject/object problem. Aside from these key points, the author doesn't seem to touch on almost ANY of Heidegger's work -- which might be understandable, considering Heidegger's enormous output, but this book is woefully short in pages and on text.

Lastly, there is a page in this book that has Heidegger set on a backdrop of a concentration camp. It condemns Heidegger for being a dedicated Party member who unapologetically followed the ideology of the Nazis. It ends by calling Heidegger a "Gernman Redneck."

While Heidegger's participation in the Nazi party was contemptible, to say the least, it does not warrant such treatment. He was never an Anti-Semite, and openly condemned racism as "biological liberalism" as early as 1935. He also came to understand the Nazi movement, in these same lectures, as a mobilization enterprise, the likes of which he condemned as a technological worldview. What he did do as a Nazi, his rectorship at Freidburg, is worthy of full condemnation, but the author doesn't even mention it.

In all, a disappointment.

This book is excellent for the beginner who does not understand the basics of Heidegger. Everything from Dasein to the concept of rebirth of Being and what went wrong with the Modern Philosophical tradition is listed here in cartoon form. It is a book similar to that of Donald Palmer's Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy made lighter. It skims the surface of Heideggerian thought and introduces the novice to most of the terms used by Heidegger in his philosophy. Sometimes it is profound, but it is basically meant for the beginner as a springboard for Heideggerian thought.

I must first confess that I am not a student of philosophy. I have become interested in the subject at the age of 38. I have now read books on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hobbes, Hume and Schopenhauer. I have to admit that I don't think that I understand half of what I read. This is the reason why I don't read the actual work of the philosopher at this time. I need to understand a little more about the philosophy of the author before I can understand the actual works.

With that being said, I did read the Geneology of Morals by Nietzsche before I read the Guidebook. I was not sure I understand half of what Nietzsche had to say in the acutal work. Because I had read the actual work, I believe I got more out of the Guidebook. I would suggest reading the work first or at least each essay before that portion of the book.

The Guidebook is a very good book for a full and better understanding of Nietzsche's thoughts on morality. I was happy to learn that I understood more of the actual work than I thought I had. However, the Guidebook was a wonderful book to follow the reading of the actual work. Mr. Leiter has a wonderful way of explaining Nietzsche's writing. He is clear and concise and places the writing in its proper historical context.

If you are interested in Nietzsche's view of morality and don't quite understand it, then this book will assit you in that understanding. If you don't read the actual work, this book will still be clear enough so that you can understand Nietzsche's thoughts on morality.

I realize that some may not agree with Lieter's interpreation of Nietzsche's Geneology of Morality. However, in philosophy, I am not sure there is one correct way to interpret such writings. Therefore, in the end, this is one very good book on Nietzsche's morality.

Contrary to what Leiter has repeatedly claimed, there are such things as `analytic' and `Continental' philosophical approaches. Leiter seems quick to point out that these two `categories' defy single-criterion descriptions, but that does not preclude the existence of these categories in terms of what Wittgenstein calls `family resemblance.' With that, it's more than accurate to say that Brian Leiter takes an analytic approach to Continental figures. John Protevi once distinguished between `continental Continental philosophy' and `analytic Continental philosophy', whereas the former is distinguished by a `Continental' approach, the latter is, (very) roughly, a dissection of the Continental tradition through the lens of analytic concerns.

No doubt that anyone engaged in `continental Continental philosophy' will readily understand the importance and the meaning of these distinctions - if for no other reason than to distance themselves from Leiter's approach. Perhaps it's that the difference between the analytic and Continental traditions involve a shared set of assumptions distinct to each approach, regardless, however, Leiter's philosophy seems unproblematically linked with an analytic approach.

I would not wish to disparage either the analytic or Continental approaches, both have their own merit on their own ground, but Leiter, with his analytic mind frame, dare I say, seems a bit narrow in his interpretation of Nietzsche. Narrow, perhaps, to the point of (often) sheer inaccuracy. Leiter seems fond of making claims and citing passages where, only pages before, another passage problematized and challenged his claims. I would thus level charges of selective reading against Leiter. Selective reading of Continental figures, however, seems a bit rampant among so-called analytic philosophers. Leiter's recent collection of essays titled Nietzsche and Morality is rife with equally narrow interpretations of Nietzsche. The very first essay, for instance, wishes to claim Nietzsche as a moral perfectionist. Certainly the author of that essay clarifies himself a bit, but his claims are ultimately, if not radically, unconvincing. That essay, like Leiter's book here, seem to fail to look "at the big picture" - they ignore certain passages in favor of others in order to make a certain claim. But it remains to be seen why those passages are more important than the one's ignored...

I cannot recommend this book as a genuine work of careful Nietzsche scholarship, for it seems to me rather uncareful and almost revisionist. Instead, I would recommend articles by Keith Ansell-Pearson, who seems much more in-tune with the subtleties of Nietzsche's philosophy.

Brian Leiter is a very active academic and not only in his publishing productivity but even more so in his enthusiasm and advocacy of good scholarly work. He also happens to be one of the foremost contemporary Nietzsche scholars. Yay for us!

Leiter is cutting edge. He's active and engaged in the philosophic and legal communities, and it shows throughout this book. It is structured very well so as to be easy to follow, but it doesn't drop any academic quality in order to be accessible to the uninitiated. It's a great guide for introducing Nietzsche but would also be beneficial to philosophers and educated lay people.

An earlier commenter noted that Leiter spends all his time talking about how much better he knows Nietzsche than the earlier scholars. This a claim that is wholly without merit. Any corrections and harsh words the author has for earlier N scholars are necessary not only because they inform the development of N scholarship but because they ARE wrong. Leiter's vigor in this area is not unusual or off-putting.

As a conservative type, I don't particularly agree with or even like Brian Leiter's views generally, but no one can deny him just desserts. He's written a book that holds even against his own high standards and done so in a way that most everyone can enjoy. Highly recommended!

I've looked at a number of analyses of Nietzsche's writings, and this one is by far the best for someone reading this philosopher for the first time, as well as for anyone who has read around in Nietzsche without coming away with any clear conception of what exactly it was all supposed to be about. The book focuses on Nietzsche's theories of morality as set out in 'On the Genealogy of Morality,' but in doing so it also provides entre to the man's work and his central concerns more generally. The great virtue of Leiter's book is its organized and systematic approach to Nietzsche; what Leiter has provided is essentially a carefully crafted and well supported argument as to what Nietzsche was up to, and why. You can't jump around in the text, and you have to read carefully. But if you do, you will discover a model of how to lay out a clear intellectual case, end to end, and without skipping any steps.

Leiter's book also succeeds in rescuing Nietzsche from interpreters who had distorted his work as part of an effort to enlist Nietzsche in support of one or another relativist, postmodern agenda. Nietzsche's style and form of exposition has always lent itself to cherry-picking, unfortunately; but this book will make it much more difficult to do that sort of thing convincingly in the future.

A superb job. Highest possible recommendation.

I can understand why many reviewers have found Leiter's Nietzsche accessible however I believe Leiter ultimately misleads his readers into believing that Nietzsche is in fact a ''classical realist''. Whilst such a metaphysical label may seem besides the point when dealing with Nietzsche's views on ethics readers should be advised that any reading of Nietzschean ''perspectivism'' will be highly significant in the interpretation of Nietzsche that follows, and and this is nowhere more clearly evidenced than in Leiter's ''guidebook''.

This is not to say that one should not read Leiter's book (which I had wanted to rate with two and a half stars) for it does supply a clear/jargon-free, if imperfect, reading of ''On the Genealogy of Morals'' as well as serving to introduce the reader to the contemporary contoversies surrounding exactly what Nietzsche's philosophical activity ammounts to.

Leiter's polemical interpretation is frequently dogmatic in its assertions, and in that it is aimed at undergraduates, and is written in an unambiguous analytical style, will no doubt prove highly influential to many budding students of philosophy. Knowing what undergraduates can be like I only hope that students coming to Nietzsche for the first time round will read Nietzsche themselves (don't forget his important prefaces) rather than simply viewing him through Leiter's ''lens''.

I advise reading both this book and Clark's ''Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy'' (Clark's reading of Nietzsche as an empirical realist is similar to Leiter's, and both authors agree to a certain extent in their (mis)interpretations of GM III: 12 and TI: IV), alongside Schrift's ''Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation'', Nehamas' ''Nietzsche: Life as Literature'', and Allison's introduction: ''Reading the New Nietzsche'' for balance. Of course whilst these texts will provide this balance for any academic study of Nietzsche you must read him for yourself (and preferably before you resort to commentary). I made the mistake of reading Schacht's detailed ''Nietzsche'' before reading Nietzsche himself which, despite also being a clear and detailed commentary on Nietzsche (in Routledge's ''Arguments of the Philosopher's'' series), initially misled me: it soon became clear that on reading Nietzsche's remarkable works all systematic, and often dogmatic, accounts of Nietzsche's ''philosophy'' eventually over-determine the primary texts - for this reason I find the pluralistic (not necessarily relativistic) commentaries of Nehamas, Allison and Schrift to be more appropriate interpretations.

However we read Nietzsche we should be aware that that he sought to expose the fundamentally perspectival nature of existence, and the Heraclitian, perpetual flux of becoming. How we understand this will dramatically effect the way we interpret Nietzsche, including how we understand his genealogy and psychology. Ultimately I believe that an unhasty reading of Nietzsche reveals a thinker very different from the one Leiter portrays in ''Nietzsche on Morality''. Best of luck.

Totality and Infinity is Levinas's first magnum opus, one of two. It is truly an amazing and magnificient piece of work. I had read later Levinas first and began reading this one initially as a sort of self-imposed mandatory prerequisite to read his second magnum opus Otherwise Than Being. Being used to later Levinas, it was an adjustment to read this earlier text. The language of both eras is highly dense and complex (and original), but the earlier language is more pedagogic and the structure more methodic.
At times, I didn't think I would finish the book. I knew I loved Levinas, but in this book the phenomological analyses are so thorough and extensive, that I wondered if it was the same author at times or when I'd find the definitive Levinasian mark of ethics, of the face. However, I am very happy that I did finish this book. Virtually the first half of the book is about Separation - an ambivalence in which a being masters and enjoys but is also dependent on the resources of the world. Interiority does not commence as a cogito or reason, but as enjoyment (of the world). Every being, in their enjoyment of this life, is separated from a totality that would fully account for all of them. The vertigo of existence, of the "il y a" ("there is"), is subsided in the prolongation of labor and in the dwelling. However, the interior economy is still not in a "face to face."
Only separated beings can enter into a face to face and share their resources with an Other.
Finally, the last sections (beginning from section 3) of the book begin to look a lot like later Levinas, and he goes into extensive and radical analyses of the ultimate, irreducible relation of the face to face and its highly ethical situation. He ruminates on goodness, justice, language, plurality, and peace. He speaks of the end of philosophy, of its inadequacy to do justice to the uniqueness of a face. He deliberately and deservingly after many rigorous pages of working out an original and unforeseen thought invokes how this is a departure from and in opposition to most of Western philosophy.
No one who reads and truly understands this book will remain unchanged. To read the first magnum opus of such an original mind, to join Levinas in his thought process by way of the apex of the first part of his career, is truly an unparalleled and beautiful experience, and one you will never forget nor cease to take with you.

There's no doubt that this is a difficult read (though much easier than Deleuze's Difference and Repetition). I would urge anyone tackling this great book that they skip Levinas' Introduction, saving it until the very end. As is often the case with books of this nature, the Introduction was probably written last, and is more of a summary than an intro.

I have read others state that this is a book about morality. In fact, it is much more; it is a phenomenological description of the inner life in all its aspects. Morality is a consequence or an outcome of the inner life as it is portrayed here.

God is occasionally mentioned but only as a distant and remote observer. For example, Levinas' concept of Justice implies some kind of inscrutable Synoptic Insight (similar to what you find in Royce) which observes all the inward thoughts of men from an insurmountable distance and renders a final verdict so that the outward historicism of mankind never has the final word.

The shadow of Martin Heidegger is present throughout, but Levinas attempts to discredit him for the most part, or it might be more accurate to say that Levinas argues is that Heidegger is only partially correct in his observations, and that Levinas supplies the corrective revision.

The most difficult part of the book and the part which has generated the most controversy is a section toward the end where Levinas writes about fecundity and the father-son relation. If you take his words literally it is patently sexist language, which many critics have put down to the patriarchal tendencies of Levinas' Jewish faith. But Levinas states quite clearly that the biological father-son relation is only to be understood as the token of a more general prototype. The fecundity relation can also be tokenized by the mentor-student relation. This whole topic of fecundity is definitely a speed-bump on the way to navigating this thought-provoking volume, but the book does fail based on this one difficult topic.

In summary, this is a richly rewarding book that is not impossible to read or understand. Skip the Introduction, and go straight to Chapter One. The book is beautifully written and carefully translated. I loved the time I spent with this book. It was spiritually rewarding, an unforgettable experience. I am planning to read it again one of these days.

To previous reviewers:

~ Levinas is trying to uncover the source of the idea of infinity ~

No, infinity by definition is boundless and cannot be encompassed or reduced. Levinas is not asking the Cartesian question nor concerned with securing the `existence' of the external world. The concept of infinity is unique in that its content always exceeds or overflows its concept. Ethical relation operates in just this manner: the relation to the other is not negative (ala Idealism) but rather a relation to an excess. This excess is no Hinterwelt, but rather goodness.

~ Then he proceeds to "show" that the face to face relation with the Other is the source for our capacity to have theoretical and practical knowledge. ~

Indeed. Though the term `source' is very problematic. Levinas shows theoretical and practical `knowledge' - science and law/politics - are fundamentally social. In this way, the ethical relation opens and conditions this `knowledge,' while always exceeding it. What if science claimed to discover that women were `inferior' to men? We would no doubt question the `truth' of this discovery. Why? Because such a claim seems to exceed the bounds of what scientific activity can produce. This example shows how ethics exceeds theoretical knowledge. The same goes for the `practical.' Why do we think that segregation is wrong or unjust? Why is excluding the `other' from basic political participation, and the responsibility and rights it entails, a problem? Political theory and practice, which in its way is a kind of `scientific ethics,' can also lead to problematic situations. How are we able to judge or discern or resist claims that seek to justify unethical attitudes and practices? The face-to-face is Levinas's attempt to grapple with this perennial problem.

~ Oh yeah, the Other is a man, because the feminine other is not Other enough for Levinas, and romantic love is bad. ~

The problem of the feminine in Levinas is a real issue. Yet only a reductive and amateurish reading would pose the problem in these blunt terms. "The Other is man" and not women, is false according to any close reading of Levinas's texts. It is true that Levinas implicitly treats gender with a patriarchal slant, yet it is also true that he complicates and problematizes the way gendered is valued. There is a running debate on this within feminist camps. The more thoughtful and rigorous feminists realize the complexity and nuanced structural problems within Levinas's thinking of the feminine. Even if we admit that there is an undeniable patriarchal aspect in Levinas's work, we must also admit that he subverts that same patriarchy from within his own work. Here we may possibly oppose Levinas to Levinas. (Check out Tine Chanter's essay in `Addressing Levinas'). Oh ya, `romantic love is bad'?? Go read `Phenomenology of Eros' more carefully.

~Essentially, what he does is fuse Husserl and Heidegger's theories, to an extent, and replaces the transcendental ego of Husserl with the face to face relation with the Other.~

This sounds like a bad regurgitation of certain of Levinas's critics. The more precise way to put it is this: Levinas plays Heidegger's anti-scientism against Husserl, and Husserl's anti-historicism and relativism against Heidegger. There is a certain sense where the other displaces Husserl's T-Ego, in terms of its structural function. Yet Levinas is not after absolute knowledge, and `replacing' the ego with alterity precisely disturbs and relativizes - in fact renders impossible - constitution.

~ Levinas is just intentionally writing obscurely, perhaps because he realizes how silly his whole enterprise is and how much modernism is contained within it (still trying to find the condition for experience itself, did someone say German Idealism?).~

This comment shows the extent of our reviewer's ignorance. 1st: Levinas's entire project is one the most rigorous and non-reductive challenges to the Idealist tradition from Fichte to Husserl. Levinas's project is precisely a critique of the modernist project to secure absolute foundations. He ever retained an allergy to G-Idealism and saw within its totalizing logic the seeds of Auschwitz. 2nd: The claim that Levinas intentionally wrote obscurely betrays intellectual laziness and a certain chauvinism. A simple survey of Levinas's contemporaries, French philosophy of the mid-20th century, shows that Levinas is writing within a specific intellectual culture and style. Continental philosophy in general tends to be more difficult for us Anglophones in that we are socialized into an instrumental and minimalist stylistic culture. One need only read Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, or Derrida to the see the extent in which Levinas is operating within a certain tradition and style of philosophy.

Finally, the following suggestion by the above reviewer can help us understand Levinas's basic point:

~ you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words: --- "totality" --- "infinity" --- "other"
Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.~

As you sit `contemplating' your definitions, imagine you are right on the cusp of a new idea that will refute Levinas and bring you philosophic immortality. All of a sudden, a frantic bang on your door jars you. You open the door and there stands your neighbor with blood running down his face. He explains that while he was sitting watching water flow over rocks (while contemplating Aristotle); a tree branch fell on his head. You immediately begin to help your neighbor: bandages, ice, call the ambulance, and so forth. By the time the ordeal is over, you have forgotten the specifics of you idea and must start all over.

The supplicating demand of the other interrupts all self activity, rendering our clarity and certainty and sedentary contemplation secondary and relative. No matter how grand and all encompassing our ideas become, there always remains an exterior: an other who bangs on the door needing help; whom we feel obliged to help even if the don't agree with our ideas, even if they are stupid, confused, and so forth. This knock on the door is not another `meaning,' idea, world, or theory, not another term to be defined or explained. The knock on the door is the face of the other that needs and demands whether or not our theory or definition justifies it.

Totality and Infinity is, no doubt, one of the Great Books.

I only read parts of Totality and Infinity, but I found Levinas extremely hard and rewarding. His insights in the book are helpful to everyday life, and they've changed my world view altogether. read it, but preferably with someone else who is reading it, too, or have someone else who has read it help you.

I have to confess I didn't get very far with this one. If you have to read this for a course, I'm very sorry.

I'm not an academic, but I do I read a lot of philosophy. I'll put a lot of energy into a complex text, but I prefer to invest it with works that will enlighten, not confuse.

On the clarity-precision scale, I would push Levinas right past "dense" or "challenging" and put it somewhere between "turgid" and "impenetrable." (His apologists decry the inability of human language to convey Levinas' sophisticated thoughts. Maybe so, but perhaps the apology says more about his thoughts than it does about human language.)

In any case, it will take you a long time to genuinely read this book. If you're looking for truth (as opposed to a passing grade in a required course), you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words:

--- "totality"
--- "infinity"
--- "other"

Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.

Then get a decent translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. (I like the McKeon translation, but there are certainly newer, hipper ones.) Then read Aristotle instead of Levinas. If you find the idea of reading a Dead White Guy repugnant, spend the time watching water move over rocks. Either choice will provide you more wisdom than you could get from a lifetime studying An Essay on Exteriority.

Nietzsche has been interpreted to represent the last word in a line of thought which begins with Socrates, generally referred to as the era of Western classical philosophy. Like enormous bookends, Nietzsche and the object of so much of his thought, Socrates, sit, at the crucial intersections of the flow and development of ideas, and adjudicate, with all that came between and after somehow in the radius of their influence. Nietzsche, father of existentialism, intellectual father of the 20th century.
The battle will always rage (Nietzsche, true to the fire of his Herakleitian habit, would have liked that): which is better, this one, Hollingdale's anthology, A Nietzsche Reader, or Kaufmann's anthology, the venerable Viking Portable Nietzsche? I'll cop on that one. But, for the prospective buyer, I'll attempt a brief, opinionated comparison.
1) Translation: I was nurtured on the Kaufmann, which I used to carry around with me in my high school days, 40 years ago. Thus, for me, the Kaufmann translation rings truer to my tinny ear and limited knowledge of German. Besides, Kaufman was German. But, as Nietzsche gets down on the Germans at least as much as the English (a fact to which his Nazi misinterpreters liked to turn a blind eye), and, as Hollingdale's translations are accepted in the academic world to be at least as accurate as the revered Kaufman, pas differance there, or one merely of taste.
2) Organization: The Hollingdale is far better organized for quick reference or for the first time reader who wants an easily accessed guide to Nietzsche "from the horse's mouth" (with Nietzsche - this way is best, for so much of Nietzsche's power is in his enormous literary gifts). The creme de la creme of much of Nietzsche's most powerful work is arranged under the key rubrics: Philosophy and Philosophers; Logic, Epistemology, Metaphysics; Morality; Art and Aesthetics; Psychological Observations; Religion; Nihilism; Anti-Nihilism; Will to Power; Superman; Eternal Recurrence. The book ends with a truly neat 20 page collection of many of Nietzsche's best aphorisms and summary statements.
The Kaufmann, on the other hand, sprawls, and weaves a tapestry of the man's conceptions, which coalesce finally into a remarkably comprehensive summation of Nietzsche's basic positions. One could say that if the Hollingdale is the digital approach, the Kaufmann is the analog. The Kaufmann, however, has one insurmountable advantage: included are the complete texts of Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Neitzsche Contra Wagner, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Kaufmann translation of the latter is widely regarded as the best ever, and the book is an awesome masterpiece, at once hilarious and deep, a classic among classics, which says almost all that Nietzsche wishes you to hear in one loud shot.
3) Construction: Both have useful introductory sections, the Kaufmann is a bit better, including a helpful chronology. Neither has a particularly huge Bibliography, but the Kaufmann has been updated fairly recently by Viking. The Hollingdale is svelte, 285 pages, in the time tested Penguin format, tightly bound, light in the pack. The Kaufmann is chunky, 700 pages, a number of which are falling out of my 1968 edition bought for a pittance at a good, old fashioned, independent used bookstore.
My advice: Take the Hollingdale to school, but take the Kaufmann to that proverbial desert island.

THE way to start Nietzsche. It's good to know the basic philosophical currents of Western thought(at least Plato and Aristotle for the basic schools of philosophy, with Augustine, renaissance thinkers like Erasmus or Bacon, Kant, and the other German philosophers of the time being good addenda for added richness) before you get into this, because so much of this is either a recasting of those old thoughts or a vicious attack upon them. I didn't find the language difficult at all...every once and a while, there would be a convoluted sentence that took several passes to understand, but in general it's quite straightforward. A beautiful body of work condensed into some salient passages. Suggestion: start with this...you'll be able to have a perfectly educated conversation about all of his major ideas after reading this book, and you'll be able to tell how much you agree or disagree with him. Then, if his work agrees with you, pick up the Viking Portable Nietzsche, which has all of Thus Spake Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, the Antichrist, and Contra Wagner, and then a section of excerpts similar to this book. By that time, you'll know what other works you want to read in their entirety(I suggest Beyond Good and Evil, to begin with, along with The Birth of Tragedy as a side-endeavour), and you'll also know more Nietzsche than any pseudo-intellectual poseur who wants to sound good at parties could comprehend.

The philosophy itself deserves five stars for being eloquent, fully realised, and the work of an educated genius, not to mention its historical value on the way modern thought works, but I simply must subtract one star for its incompleteness. You get the ideas, but not the full range of its art and magesty.

The 240 extracts from Nietzsche's best known writings provide an ample introduction to his philosophy. The most powerful sections - 'Morality', 'Will to Power' and 'Superman' are well represented, and the slim volume is bolstered by some interesting sections on art and aesthetics. The novice Nietzsche reader will gain a good overall impression of Nietzsche's powerful philosophy, which aims to strip human morals down of all their falseness and affectations and misguided Christian influence.

Only one drawback - given the necessarily fragmented nature of the book, some sections hop disjointedly from one writing to another, giving a somewhat inconsistent impression of Nietsche's philosophy as a whole. For example, a long treatise deconstructing the impact of Wagner's music in sublime descriptive prose is followed by a terse section condemning literary style as an affectation as it purports to point to something beyond itself, which does not exist.

As long as one is still young, one tries to philosophize. One guesses the delirium which philosophy has produced, one dreams of copying it and of carrying it further. The youth likes itself in the trick of the heights; with a thinker youth loves the tightrope walker; in Nietzsche they loved his poses, his mystic clownery; really a summit fun fair ... " wrote Emile Cioran.

But nowadays with Nietzsche one has his problems. Maximum embarrassingly had been how Nazi-leaders misinterpreted and misused Nietzsche for their race theories, veiled by Richard Wagner's melodramatic style.

If one takes his gossip of the "Superhuman" [Übermensch], nevertheless, as the psychoanalytic classified attempt, to know himself as gotten sick in need of care (fallen ill with Syphilis) between sister and mother, rescueless wedged, and therefore, as a counterbalance, get lost in the daydream to be a new Dionysos or a Greek God (at first mockingly, then in the final stage schizophrenic megalomaniac), - then his efforts seem to be "human, all too-human".

"What does not kill me, will make me stronger ... " he tried to persuade himself euphorically, in fear to have a lack of courage. The treating physicians probably did not tell him (regarding the prudishness of that time) the shocking truth of the irreparable gravity of his illness.

"Philosophy is a kind of revenge versus reality ... " he wrote full energy, high-spirited. One dreams to have a power, which one does not possess in the reality. Nietzsche's writings are a sort of compensation of a frustrated human being, writings like a battle-cry, tattooed deep in the soul, hoping to get managed a departure into success.

The only germ of a flaming up love relationship - namely to Lou Salome (later companion of Rainer Maria Rilke and at the same time famous first female psychoanalyst in the circle of Freud) - this only germ, rich in chances of an erotic self-realization, was trampled down by the heavy envy and jealousy of his frigates-like sister and his mother.

Aged twenty, however, he had used a experimental way, practicing his sort of sexuality, which seemed at first sight easy and more cheap, in the final effect has been full of pain: "There are two things, a genuine man wants: danger and play. Therefore, he wants the woman, as the most dangerous toy ... " he noted in juvenile carelessness. He himself reported to the doctors in Leipzig and Jena, who should treat him against his Syphilis infection, that he had practiced brothel visits 1865 in Cologne and 1866 in Leipzig.

Indeed, he struck already in 1865 in Trieste by the fact that he, weeping, embraced a horse (hit by a coachman) and then broke down. The actually heavy outbreak of the illness is dated by doctors on 1888. Nietzsche's note "The degree and kind of a person's sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit ... " oscillates on this background ambiguously of course with a maybe unintentional double-sense. Certain is, that only the final phase of his writing (ecce homo) is to be considered as intellectually clouded.

Yet we have the duty to weigh with necessary care the writings before 1888. But even as a heavy nursing-destitute he still produced some special diamonds of written language: "If you look for a long time into an abyss, the abyss afterwards also looks into you inside ... "; "He who has a goal to live for, is able to endure almost everything ... " or: "There are servile souls, which propel the appreciation for given benefactions so far, that they strangle themselves with the snare of gratitude ... " That means evidently, that he only rather sullenly will have submitted himself under the over-protection, coming from his sister and mother. Nevertheless, no superhuman-power could help him to escape their claws.

On the other hand, maybe just by the distance to an everyday life Nietzsche was able to focus the society in such a cool manner - and to daydream completely undisturbed a total free self-reliant human being. This ideal type is a little bit shaped like Nietzsche himself: The "Superhuman" is a strong-minded and unbound philosopher, but sometimes the cautious and shy philologist Nietzsche is shining through.

On the one we remember the popular Nietzsche-slogan "God is dead", then, on the other hand, we feel, that his origin from a priest's family has not passed - and we even suppose, that the negative posture towards the religion and the minister's family, are finally only the two sides of the one and same coin.

Though - the religious criticism of Nietzsche is not to understand only psychologically as an opposition against his family background (11 forefathers on the paternal side were ministers): To see denominations critically has been the intellectual behaviour of that time. Nature science, Kant, Descartes: they shocked the church authorities of that days.

Nietzsche's mocking remark "Madness of single persons is something rare, but the madness of groups, parties, crowds seems to be the rule ... " qualifies his personal fate (syphilis) nearly not as bad as the ("healthy") foolishness of the masses - especially, if one considers, what the German history planned to bring up ...

And because he wrote (and his power-mad sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche has forgotten to censure and to extinguish that during the posthumous publication of his writings:) "He who thinks a lot, is not suitable for a party man; too soon he thinks through the party throughout ... " - because he wrote this, it is not to be accepted seriously, that he could have live in harmony with a National Socialist party.

Also he brought on paper: "I mistrust all dogmatics and systematic and avoid to contact them. The will to a system is a lack of righteousness." And, elsewhere: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies." Or (without ever having heard an O-tone of Goebbels or Hitler, Nietzsche formulated timeless brilliantly): "With a very loud voice in the neck one is nearly unable to think fine things."

"The most valuable examinations are found latest, but the most valuable examinations are the methods " - Nietzsche wrote. Indeed: if one did not take Zarathustra's words as instructions for war lords or other dubious idols, but, in the contrary, classifies this work as a brilliant, highly ironical effort to use language creatively, Nietzsche's books would have a fair chance to survive. Maybe his ability to describe psychological subjects will live longer than some of his philosophical disputes. The collection of R.J. Hollingdale (he died 2001) is a very good chance, to proof Nietzsche's message ...

Assigned as a textbook in my 19th century philosophy class, I must admit that this little volume was a pleasure to read - twice. While it may be criticized as a collection of Nietzschean quotable quotes, I was continually fascinated by his insights. It left me wondering if any of the ideas attributed to Freud were actually original, and it confirmed some of my own hard won critiques of contemporary evangelicalism.

Before the class was over I had purchased another half dozen books by this man!

A warning to those considering reading this - you will not receive pages of editorial content. Go elsewhere if you are looking for an interpretation of Nietzsche. Also, you may find this thinker as addictive as I have.

This is a much needed, well written, and finely translated defense of metaphysics in the light of Heideggerian and postmodern criticism. However it fails ultimately because of some bad choices in terminology, light scholarship, and a narrow understanding of metaphysics. The author doesn't quote any work by anyone written in the last 30 years and focuses only on a few lines of Heidegger ignoring some clear statements by Heidegger that would have resolved issues that trouble Sacchi. Not only that, but a more careful reading of Heidegger would show that his views are not as radically opposed to metaphysics as Sacchi understands it. Sacchi rejects the metaphysycs of "pagans" like the pre-Socratics, and while it would seem he represents Scholasticism, he will further claim that medieval Scholasticism is decadent. What we are left with is Aquinas's metaphysics alone, perhaps some Aristotle by extension. Not a word on whether Plato's ontology is to be rejected as well.

What is most frustrating about this book is how the word "being" is used. The ontological difference is clear and simple. There are beings and there is Being. Sacchi transforms this into "being and Sein". One has to read then the word "being" as "beings" most of the time I think. For Sacchi, Sein is a fabrication of Heidegger's mind and a replacement for god. So there are beings (being in Sacchi's terminology) and god. Fine. He also speaks of "being as such" and it is unclear if this means beings as such or something else. Then he introduces the act/process of entification which he later terms the act of being. Presumably one is to read this as "act of beings". The problem is that Sacchi assignes as the source of this act sometimes beings and sometimes something else, (god?). Beings, the act of being, and that which is by virtue of itself and nothing else all relate by participation-- reminding us of that pagan Plato. While I don't know Aquinas as well as Heidegger or ancient Greeks, Aquinas does not seem as complex as Sacchi makes him to be. Heidegger's phenomenology would be a great resource the think about this curious and almost Platonic in-between: the act of being. Chapter V is the most metaphysical but it's almost unintelligible by virtue of Sacchi's interpretation of Aquinas. Had this work been better organized it would have started by elucidating what the metaphysics that Sacchi defends looks like. Instead he starts immediately with criticising Heidegger and giving us only bits and pieces of what his "scientific" metaphysics is. When we finally get there in chapter V, it turns out to be more convoluted that anything Heidegger would devise.

Although Sacchi knows of Heidegger's Being of beings, he claims that Heidegger's Being is extra-entitative and has nothing to do with beings. Moreover, he is completely unaware of Dasein's fundamental ontology or doesn't want to accept Dasein as a being. He wants analytic scientific metaphysics to study beings to get to god syllogistically (no leap required) but he is silent on Heidegger's method of studying Dasein first instead of tables and chairs. Rather, he claims that Heidegger is an immanentalist idealist (and a transcendentalist at once) and neo-pagan for concerning himself with Dasein's thinking to get to the "essence of Sein" (according to Sacchi) and for accepting Parmenides's notion of the identity of Being and thinking.

This book has a great title, but it turns out that Sacchi claims that Heidegger saw himself as the only prophet to manifest in history the revelation of the essence of Being. A strange notion since Heidegger is not concerned with the "essence" of Being but with the meaning of it. Further, as far as I know, he never claimed to be the only human to reveal anything about Being, let alone its essence, especially when Heidegger shows such deference to Greek thought. Finally, the difference between history and historiography escapes Sacchi entirely, for he believes that Heidegger's Sein will reveal its essence in a specific event in human history.

For anyone worried that Heidegger is a Catholic thinker trying to introduce God in the guise of Being, Sacchi sets the record straight, in his mind, and claims that Heidegger removes God and introduces Sein instead! Moreover, he labels Heidegger as a Lutheran, atheist, agnostic, neo-pagan, barbarian, idealist, immanentalist, transcendentalist, poet, nominalist, gnostic, non-philosopher influenced by madmen like Nietzsche and Hoelderlin and who succumbed to his own affects.

Frankly, it behooves those like Sacchi who think that god belongs in metaphysics to make a case for it and explain what is gained by such a move. His answer is to repeat Aquinas that the uncaused cause is what "everyone calls God" , which clearly is not the case. Either that move brings a host of problems that are unresolvable by metaphysics and have lead to what Heidegger described as the history of philosophy, or it turns metaphysics into theology and answers all questions and thus constitutes the end of philosophy, for all loving search for wisdom has concluded.

It also noteworthy that the back cover of this book promises that Sacchi will address the issue of Nationalsocialism. Fortunatly for the reader and unfortunately for the reputation of the publisher, this topic doesn't arise at all.

Sacchi competently shows how Heidegger's use of the term "Being" is so nebulous that it cannot function as a sufficiently refined notion for a truly penetrating "thinking on being". By contrast, Sacchi explains, Aquinas' doctrine of "esse" (the act of existence) serves well for deep metaphysical reflection on God and His creatures (angels, man, animals, plants, minerals). Heidegger erred in departing from the traditional Scholastic machinery of potency/act, essence/existence, matter/form, substance/accidents. Only with these concepts ready at hand can one lay a firm philosophical foundation for theology and apologetics.
It seems to me that Heidegger's "critique" of the so-called "oblivion of being" by the Scholastics can be answered with a mere shoulder-shrug. I don't see how it is really a negative criticism (at least not anything devastating or monumental) to point out that they are "guilty" of promoting a congealed ontology of "sheer presence" rather than Heidegger's favored "emergence" or "unconcealment" or "presencing within absencing". It is doubtful whether this sort of "thinking about being" goes anywhere that is relevant for either philosophy or theology; it seems to lead to a dead-end, by contrast with the richly honed tools of Thomistic metaphysical analysis.

I waited at least 6 months for this book to finally become available. My anticipation was magnified by the remarkably cogent and faithfully Thomistic essays written by Mario Enrique Sacchi and posted at the Jacques Maritain Center. I still consider him to be one of a handful of the sharpest Thomists out there.

But, alas, the book fell far short of my expectations. The previous reviewer mentioned in a review of Caputo's Book on Aquinas and Heidegger that Thomists might prefer this more polemical work by Sacchi. Unfortunately, I think that the only people who will wade through this book at all are dyed-in-the-wool Thomists, which, given the capacities of the Argentine author, is a real disappointment. In fact, I now wish I had rated Caputo's book more highly, so that I would not equate the level of argumentation in the two by a common three-star rating.

This book, short as it is, could have been a lot shorter still. It seems to circle about in the same polemical tracks without showing for this any significant gain in understanding. In fact, Dr. Sacchi really missed the point on which the debate between Aquinas and Heidegger turns. Using Heidegger's terminology of the "ontological difference" between "being" and beings and the "theological difference" between the First Being (God) and beings, the two thinkers give a different priority to them. Aquinas makes the "ontological difference" subordinate to the "theological difference"; Heidegger does the opposite. So the burden of refuting Heidegger is to show that the "ontological difference" is indeed subordinated to the "theological difference". And that would require a deep investigation of the meaning of the "analogy of being" in Saint Thomas. That really does not take place, and I do not recall so much as a single productive reference to Thomas' "analogy of being". Rather, there is too much circular reasoning of the sort which says that Heidegger's mistake was that he was not a Thomist and did not understand the centrality of the act-of-being ("esse"). I think that Caputo in his own work showed decisively that repeating this word like a mantra does not really get at Heidegger's critique, because act-of-being ("esse") and essence ("essentia") would be another pair of poles in which "being" reveals itself, but in no way capture "being" exhaustively. Esse/essentia would merely be a temporally conditioned revelation of "being", but "being" itself withdraws from us.

Perhaps I will read the book again at some point to further sift his arguments. But I am far more inclined to reread Caputo at this point.

_The Apocalypse of Being_ by Thomist philosopher Mario Enrique Sacchi is an attempt to come to terms with Martin Heidegger's thinking on being and his revilement of classical Western metaphysics and to provide a critique of that thinking in terms of Scholastic philosophy. Heidegger regarded himself as a thinker on being, and made use of the term Sein (a German word translated roughly as "the act of Being") which he believed was concealed in being. To Heidegger, the Western metaphysical tradition had forgotten about Sein and it was to this forgetting that he turned his attention, in for example his greatest work _Sein und Zeit_. According to Sacchi, this revilement of classical metaphysics and first philosophy in fact rests upon a misunderstanding of Heidegger's. Thus, much of this work is spent defending the classical tradition from the light of Thomistic philosophy against Heidegger's radical critique. Sacchi argues that Heidegger's understanding of Sein degrades reason (calling to mind Luther's remark that reason is "the devil's prostitute" - recall that Luther was an important influence on Heidegger) as a means for ascertaining truth and turns towards a revelation in the thinking of Martin Heidegger himself. Heidegger rejects metaphysics as onto-theology (echoing the critique of Kant in his _Critique of Pure Reason_); however, Heidegger's thinking itself would come to reembrace metaphysics. Sacchi argues that Heidegger attempted to revise the paganism of Parmenedes against the Christian understanding of classical metaphysics in the form of Thomism and that Heidegger's insistence that his Sein is not to be understood as God, makes his thinking fundamentally atheistic. Here, the idealist/realist divide comes into play, and Sacchi will argue that Heidegger's thinking turns invariably towards idealism (e.g. Hegelianism) as against the realism of classical metaphysics and first philosophy. Heidegger's later thinking under the influence of poetics (ranging from Rilke to Holderlin's pantheistic neopaganism) becomes increasingly convoluted, and Heidegger himself will begin to emerge as an esoteric gnostic proclaiming a special revelation and un-concealment of Sein within history. Sacchi makes some interesting parallels between Heidegger's particular formulations of language and those of apocalyptic (apocalypsis: meaning "to reveal") writers of the first and second centuries AD and BC. This book is interesting in that it provides a fascinating critique at a figure who has remained problematic for many. Sacchi maintains a Thomistic outlook and thus shows that although Heidegger's thinking must ultimately be rejected (as possibly incoherent as well) it does contain some interesting insights into the un-concealment of Sein.

Sacchi's learned and erudite critique of Heidegger amounts to a complete rejection of Heidegger's insights based on the thesis that Heidegger's system does not allow for fruitful philosophic reflection, whereas the Scholastic-Thomist system does allow for deep reflection on the science of being.

I picked up this book expecting that Sacchi would thematize both the "Apocalptic" or revelatory aspect of Heidegger's thought as well as explicating the "esoteric" and "gnostic" aspects of Heidegger's early and later works. I was sadly disappointed, for Sacchi offers neither.

Instead Sacchi offers a sustained polemic (or more properly an apologia) in favor of Scholastic methods of metaphysics and against Heidegger's seemingly illogical and confusing attempts at approaching the question of being. It seems to me that Heidegger is saying something like: if we thinking about being using the tools and methods of Scholastic thought, we are already looking for a certain kind of being; whereas if we suspend one or more of these methods perhaps another kind of being will disclose itself to us. While this might be a radically different kind of investigation, I find Heidegger's claim not to be entirely disconnected to traditional philosophy as Sacchi wants to claim.

A more troubling quibble, Sacchi repeatedly argues that Heidegger follows in a line of idealistic thinkers from Parmenides to Kant to Hegel. Heidegger himself thought his system completely escaped the realism/idealism debate (we can dispute his claim, but we would need to understand why Heidegger thinks he can claim this).

Moreover, I particularly want to object to the claim that Parmenides is an "univocist monist" (p. 27). Some contemporary Parmenidean scholars (I'm thinking in particular of P. Curd: The Legacy of Parmenides) argue that the charge of monism is without foundation. Long before our modern debates about monism, dualism and pluralism, Parmenides articulated an original and altogether logical exposition of the meaning of being. I would be very interested if Sacchi or other Thomists could articulate a Scholastic response or commentary on the extant fragments of the Eleatic as it seems that Parmenides might have a lot to offer to philosophers who are rigorously and systematically trained.

Sacchi's claim that Heidegger is an alter Parmenides (p. 35) stands in tension with Sacchi's claim that Heidegger rejects traditional logic. If Heidegger rejects logic, then he would reject Parmenides too, for Parmenides relies above all else on the principle of non-contradiction as the first law of thought and of being to unfold his entire exposition of being. If however Heidegger is to be our alter Parmenides (in the line of idealistic monism as Sacchi claims), then Heidegger cannot reject logic. This tension seems to strike at the heart of Sacchi's treatment of Heidegger as both anti-philosophical and the end of a long line of idealist thinkers.

Stanley Rosen's The Question of Being: a Reversal of Heidegger is a much more sympathetic articulation of what's wrong with Heidegger, and I recommend Rosen's book very highly.