Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method: Innovating Philosophy in the Age of Global Warming

This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger’s philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change.

Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger’s method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger’s philosophical method, and Heidegger’s conceptualization of philosophical method as explorative confrontation. He is also critical of Heidegger’s conceptuality and develops a post-Heideggerian concept of philosophical method, which provides a new perspective on the role of willing, poetry, and earth-interest in contemporary philosophy. This earth-interest turns out to be particularly important to consider and leads to critical reflections on Heidegger’s concept of Earth, the necessity of Earth-interest in contemporary philosophy, and a post-Heideggerian concept of the Earth.

Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method will be of interest primarily to Heidegger scholars and graduate students, but its discussion of philosophical method and environmental philosophy will also appeal to scholars in other disciplines and areas of philosophy.

Vincent Blok is associate professor in Philosophy of Technology, Business Ethics and Responsible Innovation, Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He holds a PhD in philosophy of technology from Leiden University. His books include Ernst Jünger’s Philosophy of Technology. Heidegger and the Poetics of the Anthropocene (Routledge 2017). See www.vincentblok.nl for more information about his current research.