With the recent publication of works from Heidegger’s Collected Edition, it has become evident that language occupied a central place in his thought “from early on,” as he claimed in his later years. Heidegger’s Path to Language takes on the timely task of guiding us through the development of his reflections on language from his younger years as a doctoral student to the later period of being-historical thinking. Wanda Torres Gregory argues that Heidegger continually pursued the question concerning the essence of language in what he later called his “background” discussions. She proposes that the clue lies in his often-implicit use of Aristotle’s definition of logos in terms of apophansis, synthesis, and phone as the guideword for his thoughts on language. Torres Gregory uncovers three different stages of this buried path of logos that she correlates with his key philosophical principles at each step: the ideal of a pure logic, the existential analytic in the project of fundamental ontology, and the meditations on the appropriating-event. Her analysis of the constants and changes in Heidegger’s way to language via logos continues with a systematic comparison of his different answers to age-old philosophical problems concerning how language relates to reality, thought, meaning, and truth. Torres Gregory concludes with a critique that unveils the later Heidegger’s dogmas and inconsistencies and challenges his concept of the mysterious language of Er-eignis with an alternative (bio-linguistic) model of its appropriating force. Heidegger’s Path to Language contributes to the scholarship in Heidegger, continental philosophy, philosophy of language, comparative literature, German studies, and linguistics. It is intended primarily for specialists in those fields and will thus be of interest mainly to college professors and graduate students.

In this volume Martin Heidegger confronts the philosophical problems of language and begins to unfold the meaning begind his famous and little understood phrase "Language is the House of Being." The "Dialogue on Language," between Heidegger and a Japanese friend, together with the four lectures that follow, present Heidegger's central ideas on the origin, nature, and significance of language. These essays reveal how one of the most profound philosophers of our century relates language to his earlier and continuing preoccupation with the nature of Being and himan being. One the Way to Language enable readers to understand how central language became to Heidegger's analysis of the nature of Being. On the Way to Language demonstrates that an interest in the meaning of language is one of the strongest bonds between analytic philosophy and Heidegger. It is an ideal source for studying his sustained interest in the problems and possibilities of human language and brilliantly underscores the originality and range of his thinking.

The philosopher’s meditations on nature, technology, and evil, written in the final years of WWII, presented in “clear and highly readable translation” (Philosophy in Review). First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger’s Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger’s own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, World War II, and the nature of evil. Heidegger also delves into the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, a scholar, and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger’s two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, this lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger’s wartime and postwar thinking.

If one takes Heidegger at his word then his philosophy is about pursuing different "paths" of thought rather than defining a single set of truths. This volume gathers the work of an international group of scholars to present a range of ways in which Heidegger can be read and a diversity of styles in which his thought can be continued. Despite their many approaches to Heidegger, their hermeneutic orientation brings these scholars together. The essays span themes from the ontic to the ontological, from the specific to the speculative. While the volume does not aim to present a comprehensive interpretation of Heidegger's later thought, it covers much of the terrain of his later thinking and presents new directions for how Heidegger should and should not be read today. Scholars of Heidegger's later thought will find rich and original readings that expand considerations of Heidegger's entire oeuvre.

This first book-length study of what Heidegger called "thinking poetics" expounds the sense of language from the perspective of fundamental ontology. It is based on readings of the pertinent chapters of Being and Time, the lectures on Hölderlin, "The Origin of the Work of Art," and On the Way to Language.

Essential reading for students and anyone interested in the great philosophers, this book opened up appreciation of Martin Heidegger beyond the confines of philosophy to the reaches of poetry. In Heidegger's thinking, poetry is not a mere amusement or form of culture but a force that opens up the realm of truth and brings man to the measure of his being and his world.