Book Review: "A Very Short Introduction to Heidegger" by Michael Inwood

As you know even though I've been to the library I can't seem to stay away from a good Kindle book as well. Back when I was in university, there was a bookshop on campus that sold a whole collection of these books and I never bought them because they were so short that I really couldn't get my money's worth. Anyways, enough history - I finally managed to get a couple of them for cheap on Kindle. This one is on the philosopher Martin Heidegger and apart from the obvious (the fact that he was an avid supporter of the Nazi Party), it also covers what he did in terms of the subject he was a part of.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that Heidegger is purposefully obscure and a terrible writer, though he does make some interesting points. However, I don't think personally, I can get past the whole Nazi thing because it just seems very weird for a guy who initially left the priesthood to go and face another ideology. Not just that, one that is clearly more dangerous than say, just being a calm little Christian. It was this active anti-Semitism that I think people don't tend to read Being and Time nearly as much as they probably used to.

The author goes through the essential ideas of the philosopher in simple terms and even though I did a little bit of this guy at university, I feel like this author definitely clears it up a whole lot more than whatever I was taught (sorry to my professors). Concepts like authenticity, guilt, angst, and care are investigated. Life's authenticity is about confronting mortality and so, something like angst reveals the 'nothingness' about life. I know, it's difficult and sounds almost pointless but it's nice to understand a few things rather than just sitting there thinking about what the whole thing is about.

The author also goes through how Heidegger reconceptualises time. Is it linear? No. Instead it is a series of temporal ecstasies in which the past, present and future are simultaneous (I think). Our awareness of death and dying gives time this special power of knowing it is finite. And so, only when we acknowledge that this is finite, only when we know time will eventually run out for us, we will live authentically. This seems overly simplistic and also seems a bit too 'live, laugh, love' to be Heidegger but it is definitely the honest truth on what this whole thing is about.

The next thing I understood of the author was that he was trying to tell me something about truth being revealed through the language of poetry but honestly, even though it was explained well by Inwood - I don't think Heidegger's essays explain this well at all. It goes back to his obscurity issue. I think we can all see that the idea is there, but when the philosopher goes off expanding it, it becomes lost. However, Inwood comes to our rescue on this one in which he actually explains the shift in Heidegger's focus across essays in which he becomes more and more involved in how art discloses our truths to us.

Inwood definitely doesn't turn away from perhaps the most obvious thing about Heidegger which is the fact that he was a Nazi. Heidegger's critiques of modernity in the 1930s definitely support the fact that he was destined for Nazism and terribly so. In this period, Inwood explains that Heidegger turned towards Nazism as he did towards nationalism, rejecting rationality for something else entirely. Again, it is odd for a man who turned down the priesthood to go towards Nazism, but definitely not unheard of. Some people just need an ideology and he fell into the wrong one.

I won't lie, Heidegger has some good ideas but all of them seem a little obvious or a little out there, there's really no in between. It's Heidegger's own writing I've always found unreadable. It has become the standard kind of jargon-filled excrement that litters the philosophical world and, as a philosopher he was perhaps more mediocre than a lot of people like to think. Be that as it may, Inwood's book is brilliant. He breaks down everything and fits it all into a short introductory text. I would say that out of the two, Inwood is the better writer by a long-shot.