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Heidegger on Death and Being

An Answer to the Seinsfrage

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  • © 2021

Overview

  • Contains a concise and complete study of death in the entire corpus of Heidegger’s philosophy
  • Shows that death is key to understand Heidegger’s thought
  • Provides a unique answer to the question of being
  • Brings together continental and analytical readings of Heidegger
  • Brings together Anglophone, German, Italian, and French Heidegger Scholarship

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Table of contents (19 chapters)

  1. Part I

  2. Part II

  3. Part III

  4. Part IV

Keywords

About this book

The book is the first detailed and full exegesis of the role of death in Heidegger’s philosophy and provides a decisive answer to the question of being.  It is well-known that Heidegger asked the “question of being”. It is equally commonplace to assume that Heidegger failed to provide a proper answer to the question. In this provocative new study Niederhauser argues that Heidegger gives a distinct response to the question of being and that the phenomenon of death is key to finding and understanding it.

The book offers challenging interpretations of crucial moments of Heidegger’s philosophy such as aletheia, the history of being, time, technology, the fourfold, mortality, the meaning of existence, the event, and language. Niederhauser makes the case that any reading of Heidegger that ignores death cannot fully understand those concepts.

The book argues that death is central to Heidegger’s “thinking path” from the early 1920s until his late post-war philosophy. The book thus attempts to show that there is a unity of the early and late Heidegger often ignored by other commentators.  Niederhauser argues that death is the fulcrum of Heidegger’s ontology and the turning point of the history of being.  Death resurfaces at the most crucial moments of the “thinking path” – from beginning to end.

The book is of interest to those invested in current debates on the ethics of dying and the transhumanist project of digital human immortality. The text also shows that for Heidegger philosophy means first and foremost to learn how to die.

This volume speaks to continental and analytical philosophers and students alike as it draws on a number of diverse Heidegger interpretations and appreciates intercultural differences in reading Heidegger.


Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Johannes Achill Niederhauser

About the author

Johannes Achill Niederhauser teaches at Birkbeck College London. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Warwick. In 2015 he was a DFG funded research fellow of the leisure project in Freiburg. He has published several papers on Heidegger on death. Johannes has also published influential philosophical interviews with Michael Sandel, John Gray, Massimo Pigliucci, and Andrew Scull.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Heidegger on Death and Being

  • Book Subtitle: An Answer to the Seinsfrage

  • Authors: Johannes Achill Niederhauser

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51375-7

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-51374-0Published: 22 November 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-51377-1Published: 22 November 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-51375-7Published: 21 November 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXIII, 269

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Existentialism

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