Simon Gros

We inhabit a time of crisis—totalitarianism, environmental collapse, and the unquestioned rule of neoliberal capitalism. Philosopher Jean Vioulac is invested in and worried by all of this, but his main concern lies with how these phenomena all represent a crisis within—and a threat to—thinking itself. In his first book to be translated into English, Vioulac…

While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger’s indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger’s thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson’s comparison…

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger’s Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger’s colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger’s heirs and critics…

Martin Heidegger’s ties to Nazism have tarnished his stature as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The publication of the Black Notebooks in 2014, which revealed the full extent of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and enduring sympathy for National Socialism, only inflamed the controversy. Richard Wolin’s The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger has played…

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger’s early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language, and history. “Unconcealment” is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger’s work, also…

In this essay, which was originally given as a lecture — Was ist das — die Philosophie? — in Normandy in August 1955, Heidegger attempts to explain how an approach to philosophy can be made. Can it be approached in the same way as historiography or biology? Heidegger would say ‘no’. His belief is that,…

Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger’s thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche’s has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and…

Nietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism? What can Nietzsche have in common with this murderous ideology? Frequently described as the “radical aristocrat” of the spirit, Nietzsche abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate an Ubermensch endowed with exceptional mental qualities. What can such a thinker have in common with the fascistic manipulation of the masses for…

Originally published in a French translation in 1987, this controversial work has received a tumultuous reception throughout Europe and continues to be the object of intense debate. In this first English edition, Victor Farias tracks the career of Martin Heidegger—one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy—and documents his intimate involvement with Nazism for…

Heidegger’s philosophy has an extraordinarily complex relationship to Plato. Heidegger sees Plato as the founder of that Western metaphysics which he claims should be overcome. However, his interpretation of Plato, upon which his reconstruction of the history of philosophy rests, is anything but incontestable from a philological point of view, and has generated much criticism.…

Herbert Marcuse was Martin Heidegger’s most famous student. He claimed to have left existentialism behind in 1933 when Heidegger was declared first Nazi rector of Freiburg University and Marcuse fled into exile. The contentious relations between these two thinkers reflected the split in twentieth-century continental philosophy between existentialism and Marxism. But Andrew Feenberg’s careful study…

First published in 1990 as the second part of volume 50 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, Introduction to Philosophy presents Heidegger’s final lecture course given at the University of Freiburg in 1944 before he was drafted into the German army. While the lecture is incomplete, Heidegger provides a clear and provocative discussion of the relation between philosophy and…

Žižek as comedian: jokes in the service of philosophy. “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Žižekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Žižek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings…

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly influenced philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou, and Gilles Deleuze. His accounts…

This anthology establishes the existence of a distinct and important post-Investigations by Wittgenstein, uncovering the overlooked treasures of the final corpus and crystallising key perceptions of what his last thought was achieving. Speaking of a ‘third Wittgenstein’, this book seeks to correct the traditional bipartite conception of Wittgenstein’s thought into his Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations…

In the early 1960s, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari were preparing an Italian edition of Nietzsche’s works. However, they needed a reliable German-language foundation for this. Both the old editions from the archive and the Schlechta edition raised unresolved questions; in particular, none of the previous editions were suitable for a complete edition of Nietzsche’s…