Logic As the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Aims to transform logic into a reflection on the nature of language.

This first English translation of Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache, volume 38 of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, contains novel ideas on logic and language that are important for anyone wishing to think beyond traditional views of these topics. Based on student transcripts of Heidegger's lectures and manuscripts for a 1934 summer course, the work contains his first public reflection on the nature of language itself. Given shortly after Heidegger's resignation to the rectorship of the University of Freiburg, the course also opens up fresh perspectives on his controversial involvement with the Nazi regime. Heidegger's critical probing of logic involves metaphysics and poetry and intertwines essential questions concerning language as a world-forming power, the human being, history, and time. This work marks a milestone in Heidegger's path of thinking as his first meditation on language as a primal event of being.

Wanda Torres Gregory is Professor of Philosophy at Simmons College and the coeditor (with Donna Giancola) of World Ethics. Yvonne Unna is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seton Hall University. Together, they translated Heidegger's On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word Concerning Herder's Treatise On the Origin of Language, also published by SUNY Press.