A Thematic Unity for Heideggers Was Heisst Denken? :: Heidegger Was Heisst Denken Essays

A Thematic Unity for Heideggers Was Heisst Denken?ABSTRACT This essay is primarily an digest of Heideggers Was Heisst Denken? I aim to provide a thematic unity for this obscure text, thereby rendering Heideggers thoughts on sentiment more available to those investigation the nature of human rationality and thinking. The procedure is to gather together nearly of the sundry themes and puzzling features resolved by unpacking this sentence Most ambitious in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking. The chief results of this account include the establishment of a global logic to the text, the identification of being-thoughtful as the proper phenomenon to be studied, and receptivity (listening for what calls for thinking) as the distinguishing mark of the thoughtful. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that precisely this work, of all my publications, is the least read. (1)This remark by Martin Heidegger about Was Heisst Denken? is puzzling given that in the same in terview he suggests that the most important issue facing us is the confrontation with what thinking is. If Heidegger is correct, then why does Was Heisst Denken? not rank among the most read of his whole caboodle? Is it because we are unaware of the importance of encountering thinking? Because we believe already to apprehend thinking (e.g., thinking is having thoughts)? (2) Either of these proposed explanations, it should be noted, would not startle Heidegger he anticipated them in Was Heisst Denken? An explanation that he does not consider, however, is that Was Heisst Denken? is itself puzzling and stands in nearly need of critical clarification.In this essay I hold an epitome of Heideggers Was Heisst Denken? The aim is to provide a thematic unity for this indeterminate text, and thereby to render Heideggers thoughts on thinking more available to those study the nature of human rationality and thinking. I proceed by enumerating some of the puzzling features of the text, and included among them are the ambiguity intentionally built into the German title and the odd fact that Nietzsche and Parmenides take center stage in a series of lectures--which collected form the text--on thinking. The main thesis of my analysis is that one particularly promising way of showing how the twenty-one lectures string up together is by unpacking this sentenceMost thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking. (3) This essay, then, is literally an analysis,