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spenkevich's review against another edition
I can still hear the uproar of my university classroom on an early spring evening about a month before our Professor would suddenly vanish forever. We had just asked our her who her favorite philosopher was, and after a few laughed disclaimers she finally said the name: Martin Heidegger. There weren’t many of us, maybe a dozen, and almost entirely insufferable artsy dudes in our flannel shirts and emo haircuts though in my memory we were all mostly a faceless mass revolving around our professor like she was our sun, a sun who at this moment was parrying our complaints that she simply could not pick Heidegger. He was a Nazi, for one, he was practically unreadable, and he slept with all his students for another. Though that another of her favorites was [a:Hannah Arendt|12806|Hannah Arendt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608634661p2/12806.jpg] seemed to help elucidate why she would have an affinity with Heidegger’s philosophy. The professor gave it back to us: maybe if we had the capacity to understand him we’d like him better, and a conversation about separating art from the artist ensued. Poetry, she said, his writing on poetry and, of course, his important additions to the discourse on language.
It was Existentialism, a 400 level class, and I think every one of us was in love with our professor so I can promise I wasn’t the only one who went out and bought this book. She must have been in her late thirties and what I recall most was her enthusiasm for life because the class structure very quickly faded away along with the winter and just became more discussions on life with all of us reading the same texts outside of class. And music. On the first day of class she played us the music video for Bright Eyes - At the Bottom of Everything and had us discuss it in the realm of existentialism. I was thrilled, having long been a Bright Eyes fan at that point, and even the initial groans from classmates faded when it became clear she loved Bright Eyes. Had a classmate previously hated them, that moment transformed them into a fan. Like I said, we were all in love with her. Even the queer ones of us, of which there were a few of us, and became a topic we got to discuss really openly and securely in her class, which at the time felt very radical. Shoutout to the brave student who used the conversation on bad faith and the authentic self to approach the topic. To tease us, she had a framed photo of Heidegger she kept on her desk with a lipstick kiss on the glass. Fine, I made that lipstick part up, though it's certainly better this way. Rather a romanticized visual to focus the imagery than the grumpy face of a third Reich supporter.
When she realized we were all over 21 we began assembling at the bar just across from campus, a few of us arriving before her, most of us staying much after her and eventually meeting up for drinks or to play music outside of “class.” But she was the structure, we all came to hear her talk about her ideas on life and love. She had met someone, she hinted. A man who lived in France and had a kid, so certainly uprooting his life to be with her in this midwest college town was out of the question. Go there, we’d tell her. But don’t bring your Heidegger photo.
Spring break came and went, and we didn’t get an email to meet at the bar as usual so we shuffled back into the classroom where our lessons were supposed to have been taking place. It was a big building with many floors, and I always found a slight humor that the top floor was the philosophy department as I had this cliched image of all philosophy majors being heavy smokers and trying to look like Camus. Which wasn’t far off the mark for all of us in that class. But as we wheezed into our seats we noticed a new face standing at the head of the class. A young man, bleached blonde hair like a Sugar Rey music video, nervously nodding and smiling. Where is she, we said like a chorus. She would not be returning, we were told. Chaos ensued. What? Why? When? How? Was she in trouble? The teacher, at that point, didn’t know and was so dosed with a cocktail of nervousness and excitement taking over his first college lecture he probably hadn’t even bothered to ask. We ended up really liking him, and a very structured class resumed. I wrote a paper on No Exit by Sartre I’ve always been particularly proud of, but Heidegger never came up again.
A few weeks later we got an email. Sorry for the sudden disappearance, she wrote to us. And something about following her heart. Attached was a photo of her and a very studious looking older man beneath the Eiffel Tower.
I can’t see the name Heidegger without thinking about this story. This woman who had a classroom wrapped around her finger, most likely having a rough period of mental health but instead of spiraling, she turned it into a corkscrew roll and ascended to follow her heart. I don’t know what happened after that but I’d like to think it has been a lovely life. A life like poetry, which was what she loved about Heidegger to begin with. Fuck the Nazis, and honestly fuck Heidegger for having been one, but I have come to understand how his writings on language and poetry are still important in the progress of thought on phenomenology and do enjoy reading his works on language. In a way, the professor successfully separated the art from the artist for us all, fully admitting all his faults but also through association with that class we watched a lovely story of an existential crisis that had a happy ending to forever associate with the name.
It was Existentialism, a 400 level class, and I think every one of us was in love with our professor so I can promise I wasn’t the only one who went out and bought this book. She must have been in her late thirties and what I recall most was her enthusiasm for life because the class structure very quickly faded away along with the winter and just became more discussions on life with all of us reading the same texts outside of class. And music. On the first day of class she played us the music video for Bright Eyes - At the Bottom of Everything and had us discuss it in the realm of existentialism. I was thrilled, having long been a Bright Eyes fan at that point, and even the initial groans from classmates faded when it became clear she loved Bright Eyes. Had a classmate previously hated them, that moment transformed them into a fan. Like I said, we were all in love with her. Even the queer ones of us, of which there were a few of us, and became a topic we got to discuss really openly and securely in her class, which at the time felt very radical. Shoutout to the brave student who used the conversation on bad faith and the authentic self to approach the topic. To tease us, she had a framed photo of Heidegger she kept on her desk with a lipstick kiss on the glass. Fine, I made that lipstick part up, though it's certainly better this way. Rather a romanticized visual to focus the imagery than the grumpy face of a third Reich supporter.
When she realized we were all over 21 we began assembling at the bar just across from campus, a few of us arriving before her, most of us staying much after her and eventually meeting up for drinks or to play music outside of “class.” But she was the structure, we all came to hear her talk about her ideas on life and love. She had met someone, she hinted. A man who lived in France and had a kid, so certainly uprooting his life to be with her in this midwest college town was out of the question. Go there, we’d tell her. But don’t bring your Heidegger photo.
Spring break came and went, and we didn’t get an email to meet at the bar as usual so we shuffled back into the classroom where our lessons were supposed to have been taking place. It was a big building with many floors, and I always found a slight humor that the top floor was the philosophy department as I had this cliched image of all philosophy majors being heavy smokers and trying to look like Camus. Which wasn’t far off the mark for all of us in that class. But as we wheezed into our seats we noticed a new face standing at the head of the class. A young man, bleached blonde hair like a Sugar Rey music video, nervously nodding and smiling. Where is she, we said like a chorus. She would not be returning, we were told. Chaos ensued. What? Why? When? How? Was she in trouble? The teacher, at that point, didn’t know and was so dosed with a cocktail of nervousness and excitement taking over his first college lecture he probably hadn’t even bothered to ask. We ended up really liking him, and a very structured class resumed. I wrote a paper on No Exit by Sartre I’ve always been particularly proud of, but Heidegger never came up again.
A few weeks later we got an email. Sorry for the sudden disappearance, she wrote to us. And something about following her heart. Attached was a photo of her and a very studious looking older man beneath the Eiffel Tower.
I can’t see the name Heidegger without thinking about this story. This woman who had a classroom wrapped around her finger, most likely having a rough period of mental health but instead of spiraling, she turned it into a corkscrew roll and ascended to follow her heart. I don’t know what happened after that but I’d like to think it has been a lovely life. A life like poetry, which was what she loved about Heidegger to begin with. Fuck the Nazis, and honestly fuck Heidegger for having been one, but I have come to understand how his writings on language and poetry are still important in the progress of thought on phenomenology and do enjoy reading his works on language. In a way, the professor successfully separated the art from the artist for us all, fully admitting all his faults but also through association with that class we watched a lovely story of an existential crisis that had a happy ending to forever associate with the name.
lookingforvheissu's review against another edition
4.0
An absolutely fascinating book early off, it delves into the nature of poetry, language, and thought (shocking given the title). It asks about what art is, what work is, and how art is work, and in what way art exists. Early essays are reminiscent of Being and Time, but the later works are ephemeral and spiritual which lost quite a bit of my interest. As I continue through my Heidegger journey I may come back and reread these to see if I still hold the same opinion.
steveatwaywords's review
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
After reading around Heidegger for years, I'm grateful to engage his text directly rather than hear the opinions of others. That said, while his work is more accessible than later phenomenologists and philosophers like Michel Henry or Jacques Derrida, he is by no means an easy read. Misreading or over-simplifying are real dangers, so taking one's time following his threads which entwine increasingly is worth the effort.
Heidegger cannot be quoted or read out of context easily; since this a work of short lectures and essays, it soon becomes clear that they together weave a larger fabric: one cannot, for instance, imagine what he means to "dwell poetically" without understanding the function of poets and poetry from one essay and the etymological traces of "dwelling" from another; and virtually none of the common language Heidegger employs (truth, thing, open, live) have common meanings; more, thinking of them in conventional ways creates the misreading.
While I will not here dare to summarize these meanings, I will say instead that--while the margins of this work contain many question marks from me--he has challenged my idea of how I might language with significance, what is at stake in it, and he has established an aspiration different and perhaps more important than I imagined.
Heidegger cannot be quoted or read out of context easily; since this a work of short lectures and essays, it soon becomes clear that they together weave a larger fabric: one cannot, for instance, imagine what he means to "dwell poetically" without understanding the function of poets and poetry from one essay and the etymological traces of "dwelling" from another; and virtually none of the common language Heidegger employs (truth, thing, open, live) have common meanings; more, thinking of them in conventional ways creates the misreading.
While I will not here dare to summarize these meanings, I will say instead that--while the margins of this work contain many question marks from me--he has challenged my idea of how I might language with significance, what is at stake in it, and he has established an aspiration different and perhaps more important than I imagined.
lxmn_s's review
2.0
My views on this book are very much skewed by the fact that i spent 7 hours straight writing an essay about it, but i hate martin’s writing style it turns my brain to mush
franfernandezarce's review
i'm not going to rate this because i did not finish it. even more, i wasn't planning on finishing it from the get go.
as i'm currently building-up on my knowledge of aestheticism, i only bothered (at the moment, who knows what the future will hold) with the origin of the work of art, the thinker as poet and the introduction by the translator which gave a handy summary of the whole text.
alas, i couldn't tell you what the essays i read are about. i sense that it would take me at least ten more re-reads of my notes to properly give my on summary on heidegger's concepts. which i am more than okay with considering how difficult he is as a philosopher.
so i think i can pat myself on the back for not being totally lost with his writings. yay me!
as i'm currently building-up on my knowledge of aestheticism, i only bothered (at the moment, who knows what the future will hold) with the origin of the work of art, the thinker as poet and the introduction by the translator which gave a handy summary of the whole text.
alas, i couldn't tell you what the essays i read are about. i sense that it would take me at least ten more re-reads of my notes to properly give my on summary on heidegger's concepts. which i am more than okay with considering how difficult he is as a philosopher.
so i think i can pat myself on the back for not being totally lost with his writings. yay me!
lookingforvheissu's review
4.0
An absolutely fascinating book early off, it delves into the nature of poetry, language, and thought (shocking given the title). It asks about what art is, what work is, and how art is work, and in what way art exists. Early essays are reminiscent of Being and Time, but the later works are ephemeral and spiritual which lost quite a bit of my interest. As I continue through my Heidegger journey I may come back and reread these to see if I still hold the same opinion.
williamzzengg's review
3.0
In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field.
Art is something something truth about things in themselves something
Art is something something truth about things in themselves something
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