Phenomenology and Deconstruction, Volume Four: Solitude (Volume 4) (Phenomenology & Deconstruction (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Cumming, Robert Denoon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226123723 ISBN 13: 9780226123721

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Synopsis

In this final volume of Robert Denoon Cumming's four-volume history of the phenomenological movement, Cumming examines the bearing of Heidegger's philosophy on his original commitment to Nazism and on his later inability to face up to the implication of that allegiance. Cumming continues his focus, as in previous volumes, on Heidegger's connection with other philosophers. Here, Cumming looks first at Heidegger's relation to Karl Jaspers, an old friend on whom Heidegger turned his back when Hitler consolidated power, and who discredited Heidegger in the denazification that followed World War II. The issues at stake are not merely personal, Cumming argues, but regard the philosophical relevance of the personal.

After the war Heidegger disavowed Sartre, a move related to Heidegger's renunciation of his association with the phenomenological movement at large, and one that illustrates the dynamics of the history Cumming himself has completed. Serving as convincing punctuation for this remarkable series, this book demonstrates the importance of the history of philosophy in coming to grips with the proclaimed end of philosophy.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

After examining Heidegger's relation to Husserl in volume three, Robert Denoon Cumming moves on in this volume to Heidegger's relation to Karl Jaspers, an old friend on whom Heidegger turned his back when Hitler came to power, and who discredited Heidegger in the denazification process which followed World War II. The issues between them were not merely personal, but concern the philosophical relevance of the personal, a stance which Heidegger denied and on which Jaspers insisted.

In this setting, Cumming interprets Heidegger's first postwar essay, the "Letter on Humanism," as explaining how Heidegger became, as he put it, "more emancipated from the contemporary," and able to disregard his earlier Nazi allegiance. Since the "Letter" is also an attack on Sartre, who remained committed to the contemporary, their confrontation provides Cumming with a concluding problem for his four volumes-how philosophies would determine their location in history.

About the Author

Robert Denoon Cumming is the Frederick J. Woodbridge Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He is the author of Human Nature and History, Starting Point: An Introduction to the Dialectic of Existence, and Phenomenology and Deconstruction, Volumes One and Two, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0226123723
• ISBN 13: 9780226123721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192