The Philosophy of Heidegger: Being, Reason and Truth

This course will be taught e-learning

GOALS

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This course aims to investigate the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) by analysing some of his most important works. Students will develop adequate critical and analytical reading skills of philosophical and interdisciplinary texts on topics concerning the concept of being, the concept of freedom, the concept of reason, the concept of truth, the process of philosophical thinking, the essence and tasks of philosophy and science, the essence of language, the essence of poetry, the essence of technology, and aesthetics. Furthermore, students will learn to navigate philosophical thinking by addressing the following questions: What is philosophy? What is science? What does it mean to think? What is the essence of the human being?

ProgramME

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CLASS ONE (26 August, 2:00–3:00 PM)

Heidegger: Life and Works (1889–1976)

• Michael Inwood, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019).

CLASS TWO (27 August, 2:00–4:00 PM)

On Truth (1925–26)

• Heidegger, Logic: The Question of Truth, trans. by Thomas Sheehan (Indiana University Press, 2010), 1–20, 167–85.

CLASS THREE (29 August, 2:00–4:00 PM)

Being and Time (1926)

• Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh (State University of New York Press, 2010), 1–37.

CLASS FOUR (30 August, 2:00–4:00 PM)

What is Metaphysics? (1929)

• Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (Yale University Press, 2014), 1–56.

CLASS FIVE (2 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

The Essence of the Human Being (1929)

• Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 163–83.

CLASS SIX (3 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

The Essence of Freedom (1930)

• Heidegger, The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. by Ted Sadler (Continuum, 2005), 1–39.

CLASS SEVEN (5 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

The Essence of Language (1934)

• Heidegger, Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language, trans. by Wanda Torres Gregory and Yvonne Unna (State University of New York Press, 2009), 1–43.

CLASS EIGHT (6 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

On Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics (1935–36)

• Heidegger, Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, in Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), ed. by David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 2011), 267–305.

CLASS NINE (9 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

The Essence of Poetry (1936/44)

• Heidegger, Introduction to Philosophy – Thinking and Poetizing, trans. by Phillip Jacques Braunstein (Indiana University Press, 1990), 1–50.
• Heidegger, ‘Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry’, in Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, trans. by Keith Hoeller (Humanity Books, 2000), 51–65.

CLASS TEN (10 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

The Aesthetics of Heidegger (1936)

• Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, in Off the Beaten Track, trans. and ed. by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1–56.

CLASS ELEVEN (12 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

What is Called Thinking? (1951–52)

• Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, trans. by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (Harper & Row, 1968), 3–47.

CLASS TWELVE (13 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

On Technology (1955)

• Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, in Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), ed. by David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 2011), 307–41.

CLASS THIRTEEN (14 September, 2:00–4:00 PM)

Philosophical and Political Writings (1934/66)

• Heidegger, ‘Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?’, trans. by Thomas J. Sheehan, in Philosophical and Political Writings, ed. by Manfred Stassen (Continuum, 2003), 16–18.
• Heidegger, ‘“Only a God can Save Us”: The Spiegel Interview (1966)’, trans. by William J. Richardson, in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. by Thomas Sheehan (Transaction, 2010), 45–72.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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• Dreyfus, Hubert L., Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press, 1991).
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Heidegger’s Ways, translated by John W. Stanley (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994).
• Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective’, translated by John McCumber, Critical Inquiry, 15: 2 (1989), pp. 431–56.
• Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, translated by Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge; Oxford: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1998).
• Inwood, Michael, Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

prerequisites

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The course and readings will be entirely in English. Therefore, an intermediate knowledge of the English language is required.

TEACHERS

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Fabio Tononi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Humanities (CHAM) in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (NOVA FCHS) of NOVA University of Lisbon. He teaches philosophy at the Luís Krus Centre – Lifelong Learning in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (NOVA FCSH) of NOVA University of Lisbon. Tononi is Principal Investigator (PI) of an exploratory project titled IMCS – Imagination and Memory at the Intersection of Culture and Science (2023–2025), funded by CHAM. He is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of The Edgar Wind Journal (ISSN 2785-2903), and a steering committee member of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, which is part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. His research interests include the relationship between art and cognitive neuroscience (specifically as they relate to emotion, empathy, imagination, memory, movement, and the unfinished); the writings of Aby Warburg and Edgar Wind; the essence and tasks of philosophy and science; the interconnection between art and ideology; the concepts of modernism, postmodernism, and hyperculture; Sophocles’ three Theban plays; and poetry. Tononi was the convenor of the Aby Warburg Reading Group and Seminar at the Italian Cultural Institute of London (2020), the Seminar on Freedom and Free Will at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (2019–2020), and the Erasmus and Luther on Free Will Seminar at the Warburg Institute (2018–2019). In 2021, Tononi received a PhD from the Warburg Institute. In 2016, he obtained an M.A. in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture from the Warburg Institute in collaboration with the National Gallery of London. In 2013, he received an M.A. in Art History from the University of Florence. In 2010, he obtained a B.A. in Art History from the University of Parma. Since 2017, Tononi has attended the masterclasses of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. He held an internship at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. During his career, Tononi has co-organised two conferences, chaired twelve panels, and participated in over forty conferences and seminars in highly competitive and international venues. His publications include: Edgar Wind: Art and Embodiment, ed. by Jaynie Anderson, Bernardino Branca and Fabio Tononi, Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York: Peter Lang, 2024, XXIV, 408 Pages, 49 fig. col., 30 fig. b/w.; and “Ernst Gombrich and the Concept of ‘Ill-Defined Area’: Perception and Filling-In”, Journal of Art Historiography, Vol. 29(2), 2023, pp. 1-27.

João Luís Lisboa teaches and researches in the field of cultural history and the history of ideas. He is a researcher at CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH and University of the Azores), of which he has been director since 2022. He is a member of the NOVA FCSH Faculty Council elected in 2022. In the History department, he teaches “Methodology of History”. In the Portuguese Studies department, he is responsible for a seminar, “History of the Book” in the M.A. in Text Editing and Publishing. In the Department of Sociology he has collaborated on the seminar “Women and Human Rights”.