6/6/2023 0 Comments Safranski heidegger pdf![]() ![]() ![]() But what can a biography tell us that a philosopher’s work itself doesn’t, beside some trivial gossip? A good philosophical biography should tell us about the development of a thinker, provide an overview of his or her work and situate the work in its appropriate historical and philosophical context ( "Philosophy is its own time grasped in thought" - Hegel). We can skip the question of why you should be interested in Heidegger anyone coming to a biography has already decided that they are. There has been precisely one person in the history of philosophy who fulfilled these expectations. They should approach as closely as possible the ideal of a robot prophet or saint or a disembodied brain. Their biographies should fit on a postage stamp. They should have no lusts, no moral imperfections, no interests outside of philosophy, no personality. It of course raises the question which plagues any philosophical biography, that is: why does it exist? We want our philosophers to be role models and sages. John Haugeland’s ironic formulation is an allusion to a famous statement of Heidegger during a lecture on Aristotle: “Regarding the personality of a philosopher, our only interest is that he was born at a certain time, that he worked and that he died.” It is also a neat summary of what many people, including many philosophers, will tell you is everything that any decent person needs to know about Heidegger. "Heidegger was born, he was a Nazi, he died." ![]()
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