Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
Heidegger's importance lies partly in the fact that he is perhaps the leading figure among that small list of twentieth-century philosophers who have helped us emerge, painfully and with difficulty, from the grip of modern rationalism. Others on the short list would include Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty. But one might claim some preeminence for Heidegger, in that he got there first. In the case of Merleau-Ponty, the breakthrough plainly built on Heidegger's work.
The emergence these philosophers helped us toward has, alas, been only partial and is still very contested; indeed, it is always menaced with being rolled back - hence the continuing relevance of their works, some of which appeared more than half a century ago.
In this essay, I shall discuss Heidegger, though with a side-glance at the others from time to time. I shall try to formulate the way in which his thinking takes us outside the traditional epistemology, using the notions of engaged agency and background.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.