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A review by steveatwaywords
Poetry, Language, Thought by Martin Heidegger
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.