Heidegger and Nietzsche: Overcoming Metaphysics

Description

Heidegger and Nietzsche: Overcoming Metaphysics charts Heidegger's course of the 1930s that culminates in his notorious confrontation with Nietzsche. During this period, Heidegger revisits some of philosophy's fundamental questions regarding metaphysics, truth and ground and suggests that Western metaphysics is itself an obstacle that impedes the pathway to the meaning of being. For that reason, an overcoming of metaphysics becomes essential in order to initiate a new relation between truth and being. The majority of twentieth-century Continental philosophy judges the Heidegger-Nietzsche dispute in Nietzsche's favour and finds Heidegger's interpretation somewhat contemptible. This book argues that most attempts at placing Heidegger's thought fail to grasp Heidegger's philosophy and accuse him of an inadequate appreciation of reason, ethics and politics. While acknowledging some of the more profound critiques of Heidegger's thought, Louis Blond demonstrates that Heidegger's search for a new foundation for meaning aims at replacing rationality and ethics with a 'preparatory' thinking which hopes to describe a new relationship that 'rectifies' many of the errors of the Western tradition.

Louis Blond received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research focuses on Continental Philosophy and Modern Jewish Philosophy. He has since been a Research Fellow at the Shalem Center, Israel. Currently, he is Lecturer of Jewish Thought at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and conducting research into Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas and other twentieth-century Jewish thinkers.