Heidegger : A Critical Reader

Martin Heidegger is known for rethinking the western understanding of what it means to be (a thing, a person, an institution, etc). Although this may seem to be an abstract, specialized, philosophical project, it has turned out to have profound implications for many aspects of contemporary life. The list of those whom Heidegger's work has decisively influenced reads like a roster of the major thinkers of the 20th century: Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Pierre Bourdieu. This book includes pieces by the above authors who have written essays on Heidegger's philosophy, as well as the best examples of the work of a new generation who have been attempting to put Heidegger's thought into an idiomatic English which captures the phenomena to which Heidegger sought to call our attention, and to draw out the implications of Heidegger's work for the current philosophical scene. These essays show how Heidegger opened up new approaches to central questions in the philosophy of language, mind, action, and technology. They provide an array of accessible entry points into Heidegger's sometimes impenetrable `paths of thought'.